History of the Celts:
from Celebration of CeltsTHE CELTS:
Ancient Founders of European Culture
by John Charles Macpherson
For
over 2000 years – 2000 B.C. through 200 A.D. - the Celts dominated Europe that
is three times as long as the viable life of the Roman Empire. Their fierce
warriors were made invincible by their own most talented smiths who were the
first in Europe to introduce iron and their intrepid explorers who brought the
horse to central Europe. They were masters of the arts – particularly sculpture
and fine jewelry making but also including the household items such as cooking
and serving vessels. Their aggressive tradesmen developing trade routes were a
great and single influence through Europe from the shores of the Viking peoples
on the north side of the of the Baltic Sea, the British Isles (called so
originally from the Britons/Celts who lived there) also in the north. This vast
collection of Celtic tribes with their common culture dominated far into
southern Europe over the Pyrenees into central Spain, to the Mediterranean Sea,
half way down the boot of Italy, across the Adriatic Sea and over the entire
Balkan Peninsula. This area of Celtic influence reached over the Vistula River
in the Poland of today and further south to the shores of the Black Sea and the
Aegean Sea.
The furthest eastern reach went to central Turkey known then and even yet by
some of their descendants as Galatia. Adventurous Celtic people were quite
likely on the shores of North America – the enormous standing stones of New
Hampshire and Vermont were certainly not raised by an American Indian culture to
imitate the styles of the British Isles, France, Spain and Portugal. Some of
these erections carbon date to 1500 BC.
The men and women of this great people held each other as equals. A man was a
warrior and his woman was just as likely to be one too fighting side by side to
death or victory. A woman could be of the priestly class, she could be Queen in
her own right, she could be a judge, attend schools of her own choosing, keep
her own name in marriage, and before the Romanization of the Celtic Christian
Church, she could obtain a divorce and count on a fair property settlement. One
can easily see that Celtic women were better off until about 600 A.D. than even
women in our Western culture of today.
Today the culture survives in the seven nations – Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
Brittany, Isle of Mann, Cornwall, and Galicia in the northwest of Spain. The
people of these nations have had great influence in the creation of our country
and all of the Western Hemisphere. They have been soldiers, statesmen, writers,
composers, artists, doctors, philosophers, economists, inventors and
businessmen.
The Celts of Columbia by Dale Nicholson, PhD
BACKGROUND
The Celts originated in eastern Europe, and then moved west to occupy the
central and western parts of the continent from southern France through Germany
to what is now the Czech Republic. This happened sometime in the last millennium
before the birth of Christ. The Greeks, apparently the first to notice their
existence, gave them their name--Keltoi or Kelts. By the fourth century they
were on their way to becoming a great power. In fact before the days of Roman
greatness few other cultures could compare with the Celts in terms of power and
influence. Ankara, Turkey; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Milan, Italy; and Cologne,
Germany all fell under Celtic control at one time or another. During the 200’s
BC the Celts were on the move all over western and southern Europe and even into
the Middle East, invading Italy and putting great pressure on the ancient
Etruscans living just north of Rome. In 279 Celtic marauders rampaged through
Macedonia, defeated the Greek phalanxes at Thermopylae, even reaching Delphi,
the home of the famous oracle. Another group of Celts returned to Greece, took
control of the northern part of the country and ruled it until 210. Yet another
tribe marched through Asia Minor, now Turkey, to establish the kingdom of
Galatia.
Perhaps the strongest of all Celtic peoples were located farther to the
west—Gallia in Latin, Gaul in English. The Galli inhabited what is now (roughly)
modern France. Beginning about 400 the Celtae, as they called themselves, began
moving south towards the Alps, eventually establishing a strong presence in
Spain and in Cisalpine Gaul in the Italian Po Valley. The Romans took immediate
notice and sounded the alarm. It was bad enough in their eyes to have a strong
foreign presence on their doorstep, but the reputation of the Galli as half,
maybe fully, crazed warriors set Roman teeth on edge. They fought, witnesses’
claimed, totally naked with “red hot waves of ecstasy.” They were said to
challenge their enemies, announcing before battle the fate awaiting
them--excruciating pain, instant death, and decapitation--and sometimes offering
to settle matters by having each side choose a single champion and fight to the
death--sort of an early form of psychological warfare. They generally charged on
horse and foot, beating drums, screaming at the top of their lungs, heaving
javelins and spears with such fury that it sometimes brought victory before the
battle had really begun. Indeed, a Latin nickname the Romans devised for the
Gauls was furor celticus. Later, the heads of the slain would be posted on the
top of Gallic doorways as a warning for other enemies to be! By using something
like these methods, the Celts succeeded in sacking much of the city of Rome in
387 and threatened to do so again in 226.
But these were the high points of their influence in Europe. Now Roman power
increased while the Galli sharply declined. But it had been a near thing--the
Celts possibly could have won all of Italy, and if that had been the case, the
history of Western Europe would have been very different from what it turned out
to be. But the Romans had superior organization, and for the time an advanced
military technology. These factors, combined with the Roman advantage in
leadership and tactics, make it clear that the Celts over the long run probably
never had a chance.
Hundreds of years later the Romans were again on the move. As the Romans plowed
into what is now France they once again ran up against their old enemies. A
collision course now awaited, with Julius Caesar, the great Roman commander and
his vast legions on one side of a divide, the Gallic warriors on the other.
Caesar was on the march, determined to make a name for himself and for Rome and
no one would stand in his way. He defeated the Galli in a tough campaign lasting
from 58 to 51 BC. He wrote of them in his famous Commentaries on the Gallic
Wars, admiring their great military prowess and the headlong bravery they showed
in the face of certain defeat. The Romans won and the Celtic tribes receded
until they formed only a small rump spread about in isolated parts of the
continent. Their days of greatness on the continent were at an end.
As the events described above were going on many Celts decided to move from
Europe over the channel to the British Isles— specifically, to now Ireland,
England, the Isle of Man, Wales, and Scotland. Over time each people would build
their own local culture and their own variety of Celtic language--Gaelic, Welsh,
British, Cornish, and Manx among them. But once again they were to be challenged
by the persistent, ever present Romans, and by their old nemesis, Julius Caesar.
The Romans never got to Ireland, but between 43 BC and 400 AD they conquered
most of the Island of Great Britain up to southern Scotland. And as soon as the
Romans departed in the early fifth century the Angles and Saxons from northern
Germany and Denmark subjected the beleaguered Celts to yet another foreign
invasion. What did the Celtic Britons do in the face of this new threat? For
years, even centuries, they resisted the Germanic forces by fighting a long
series of rear guard actions led by many military chieftains, perhaps even the
semi-legendary King Arthur, possibly a Welsh or British nobleman or prince.(
Incidentally, the story of Camelot, Arthur’s court--including Guinevere, Merlin,
the Knights of the Grail, Sir Lancelot du Lac, and others--all took place in
Celtic Britain.) Finally, some others took the opportunity to depart from
Britain altogether, embarking for Armorica, a small peninsula in northwest
France, which they named, aptly, Brittany.
The Irish, left alone by Roman or Saxon, continued on their merry way, creating
a rich culture of song, legend, and literature, including beautifully crafted
illuminated manuscripts and epic poetry of great power, especially the Ulster
saga called the Tain Bo Cuailgne, or the Cattle Raid at Cooley. This was a rural
society where the family, tribe (tuath), aristocracy, druid priests, and later
Christian monks came to be mainstays of the social order. Eventually great
houses of Irish kings (Ri) would supplant the aristocrats. For years the
civilization of early Ireland, pagan and Christian, excited the imagination of
all Europe. Christianized by St.Patrick, himself a Romanized Briton, they sent
out saints, missionaries, and scholars like Colum cille or St. Columba, the
priest-warrior and his followers, to convert the pagans of northern Britain to
the new faith. They and the Celtic Britons took a hand also in civilizing parts
of Europe. Alcuin, the great Charlemagne’s top assistant, and Einhard, his
biographer, were originally from Britain. But sadly Ireland ceased to be an
independent entity starting first during the time of Queen Elizabeth I in the
1500’s, when the English began to clap an ever tightening hammer lock on the
Irish, not to be fully relinquished in the south until 1937, and continuing in
the north even to this day. English gradually supplanted Gaelic until today the
Irish tongue is spoken on a daily basis only in the western counties of the old
province of Connacht, and even there by a minority.
Scotland developed in a different way from the rest of Britain or Ireland, yet
there were for many years close links between all peoples who inhabited the
Celtic world of the British Isles. Its early inhabitants, the Cruithin, were
called Picti or Picts by the Romans, because the latter thought they tattooed
their bodies with designs and pictures. They controlled the north and central
regions of the country. Other Celtic tribes, the Britons, settled in Strathclyde
in the southwest, just below Scotland’s now largest city, Glasgow. Non-Celtic
Angles and Saxons would come from England to found Edinburgh in the southeast
(Edwin’s town or city). But a new influx of Celts riding in from northern
Ireland called the Dalriada Scots actually gave their name to the
nation—Scotland. In 843 one Kenneth MacAlpin became the king of a united
monarchy of Picts and Highland Scots named Alba. Eventually this line of kings
conquered almost all of Celtic Scotland. Then for about five hundred years a
Norse-Gaelic empire, the Lordship of the Isles, under Clan Donald, consisting of
the mainland of northwestern Scotland and the inner and outer Hebrides, a small
series of islands off the west coast, held sway. Maintaining close relations,
each country developed its own Celtic tongue-- Erse or Irish and Highland
Gaelic(usually pronounced Gallic by the Scots). People moved back and forth
between the two areas—Ireland and Scotland – and shared a great deal. Indeed,
its not overstating matters to say that until late in the sixteenth century the
two countries shared basically the same civilization, with only slightly
differing tendencies.
The early Irish and Scots wrote their own music, with the harp(Clarsach) and
various forms of the bagpipe taking center stage. Today we call it folk music,
the traditional music of a people. They were great dancers and musicians putting
many hours into the creation of a huge variety of reels, jigs, planxties,
strathspeys, and step, country, and highland dancing. Poetry and story telling
based on Irish and Scottish myths, stories, and legends combined to create a
rich and vibrant oral tradition, in which incidentally, second sight (an da
shealladh,), the ability to look into the future was a prominent, if
controversial, feature. These mythic tales and stories were later transformed
into an equally rich printed literature in which both Scots and Irish excelled.
In modernity the Irish in particular have become, or so it seems, a nation of
writers, a few of the quality of James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Seumas Heaney.
Material artistry was highly prized as well with fine filigree work intricately
displayed in a mass of interlaced circles set into silver, bronze, and gold.
Beautifully crafted brooches and other jewelry were the order of the day. They
dressed distinctively too, in something resembling the kilt of today, with the
Scots later developing fine plaid tartans to identify each clan. In physical
appearance many men were strong and tall, with reddish or dark hair, pale skins,
and blue eyes, the women charmingly outgoing with peaches and cream complexions.
Traditionally, Scots and Irish together formed a strong warrior culture in which
the martial arts were highly prized, supplying mercenaries to many countries
outside the Gaidhealtachd (land of the Gaels). Irish soldiers were known as
“wild geese,” and fought for Russia, Prussia, and other states. Scots
highlanders and islanders did the same.
But sadly, after the 1400’s there occurred a sharp break in the unity of the
Gaels. Ireland and Scotland now pursued very different historical development,
especially in religion and national identity. The Irish retained their fervent
Roman Catholicism; the Scots during the Reformation became Protestant. The
latter folk even became divided against themselves, the lowlands taking up
English, the highlands trying desperately to retain their Celtic ways. The Irish
after many years of bloodshed and struggle became totally independent from Great
Britain, but Scotland yet remains, although increasingly restive, a constituent
part of the United Kingdom. We have even witnessed the horrific spectacle of
Gael fighting Gael, when Scottish highland regiments as part of the British
army, like the Black Watch or the Argylls and Sutherlands, were sent to fight
their cousins in Northern Ireland, who were demanding independence from Great
Britain.
Today, even after many years of modernization, there is something magical and
strange about the Irish and Scottish countryside. They yet haunt the
imagination. As you walk through the heather on moorland and crag on a late
summer eve one can almost hear through the wind the incantation of druid and
filidh(bardic) rites, the recitation by sacred memory of the history of the
great clans and families—the O’Neils and O’Connors, the Campbells and MacDonalds—,
the slow, stately recounting of their bloody defeats and glorious victories.
These were and are melancholy, ghost ridden lands, where deep in the countryside
its possible to find elderly people who can still speak of sithichean or fairy
folk, of water sprites or uruis, and of the keen, the unearthly wail of the
living for the dead. The old chants and lamentations speak to a time, long gone
now, when the culture of the Gaidheil ruled the day, when a form of Gaelic was
on the lips of nearly every Albannaich(Gaelic for Scots) and child of Eire. But
hark, according to the prophecies of the Brahan Seer, Mairi Mor, Thomas the
Rhymer and others known to be blessed or cursed with the Sight, those days will
come again. The Gaels will return to the glens and all will be as it once was.
COLUMBIA COUNTY
What has all this to do with Columbia County, a small locale in New York’s
Hudson Valley? Plenty. Celts were here early--a few intermixed with the Dutch in
Kinderhook of the 1650’s. They were Scots and Irish and almost certainly
Protestant. Later, in the early 1700’s Scottish folk showed up in the Livingston
patents in now Ancram,( named after Ancrum of old Scotland), Livingston, and
Clermont to work the iron forges and lead foundries brought here by that great
baronial family. One of these communities was so filled with Caledonians it was
labeled Scotchtown. The Livingstons, themselves originally Scots, were powerful
enough at one time to contend for the crown, narrowly missing their chance to
form Scotland’s royal house. To this day they continue as a significant clan
here in the states and the old country.
In the next century Protestant and now many Catholic Irish gained employment
building the Erie Canal built between Albany west to Lake Erie (ca1814-1824).
Some of these undoubtedly settled in Columbia County. Of the pre-famine Irish
moving here (before 1840), we estimate that perhaps twenty-five to thirty cent
were actually Protestants from the north of Ireland—what are usually called
Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish, who moved there from Scotland over the years.
Lowland Scots and some with traditional highland surnames emigrated to work in
the various textile mills sprinkled throughout the county, but particularly in
Hudson and Stottville. They labored in all departments of the mills: hence they
were weavers, spinners, spoolers, dyers, fullers, carders, and laborers. The
woolen factory surpassing all others in size and importance in the county was
the Atlantic or Julliard Mill of Stottville,(more correctly mills rather than
mill, since the firm was actually composed of a number of buildings.) These
factories began in the early 1800’s, started by the Stott family, and remained
in business until the 1950’s. At one time they employed as many as eight hundred
workers, not a few of them Scots and Irish.
The floodgates to Celtic immigration came down completely in the middle and late
1840’s when thousands of Catholic Irish, doing their best to keep body and soul
together in face of one of the worst famines in world history, poured into
Hudson and surrounding communities. In the middle 1840’s the potato crop resting
in the bins of millions of Irish cellars began to rot from the inside out. This
wouldn’t have been so catastrophic had the tuber not formed the main staple for
the people. It’s said that the spud made up over ninety per cent of the Irish
diet. Soon famine haunted the land. Before it died out one seventh of the people
had died; one seventh were forced to emigrate. Fleeing westward over the
Atlantic in the dread “coffin ships,” they landed in Boston, Philadelphia, and
New York. A certain percentage made their way up the Hudson River valley finding
work where they could get it. Many helped the railroad lay tracks for the main
trunk line going up between New York City and Albany, and later were firemen,
engineers, conductors, and station agents in Hudson and Chatham. Irish girls and
young women, generally unmarried, increasingly became maids, nannies, and
servants to the well to do. This employment pattern lasted well through the
century. Martin Van Buren, eighth U.S. president, was just one of their
employers, taking on four or five of them at Lindenwald, his retirement estate
in Kinderhook.
By the mid-fifties they lived mainly in the city of Hudson containing over eight
hundred native Irish Catholics, and the towns of Chatham, Kinderhook, Ghent, and
New Lebanon, each holding well over two hundred. Some got out to the more rural
townships in the east where they worked the “hot ground” or lead mines in Ancram
and the iron ore beds in Copake. Small numbers became farmers, their main
occupation in the homeland. By 1855 in Hudson they had come to form well over
sixteen per cent of the total population in the city, and about twenty-five per
cent in the first and second wards. Desperately poor, often illiterate because
they were denied education in the homeland, ready to take any job offered them,
they were not always welcomed by their Protestant neighbors. As an example,
occasional advertisements would appear in local papers with the listing:
“Wanted, Protestant Maid.“ Some had come not directly from Ireland but rather
from New York City, perhaps from the Five Points section in lower Manhatten,
considered one of the poorest and most violent slums in the country. This was
the place where the terrible draft riots of 1863 were to begin, eventually
killing hundreds of people during the Civil War. The culture clash between the
Catholic Irish and their new almost universally Protestant neighbors was
palpable. Records indicate that between 1830 and 1850 the largest number of
incoming Roman Catholic Irish were from the western counties of Donegal and
Roscommon, both largely Irish speaking at the time. Later, they were more likely
to hail from eastern areas outside the sphere of Gaelic—Cork or Tipperary, for
instance. It is probable then that many Irish new to the area could speak little
English, and even when they could it was often difficult for others to
understand them. Some may have worn what old line Americans must have seen as
passing strange, a kind of dress, a kilt like affair, said to have the added
advantage of warding off evil fairies.
The Protestant Scottish-Americans and Scots–Irish, vastly outnumbered after 1830
by the Catholic Irish, were probably as mixed in their attitude towards the
immigrants as any other group of county residents. Most Scots had been here in
the county for a fairly long time and even though the new immigrants may have
been fellow Celts the social differences were too great for the development of
easy relations between the two groups. So much time had passed that they seemed
to inhabit different universes.
By the time the second generation came along in the 1870’s, the Irish, after
performing admirably in the war, still formed the largest number of foreign born
in the county, but had become far more acculturated to America, working their
way into better jobs, such as service positions as police and firemen. They were
now better off, but along with African-Americans still the poorest of all ethnic
groups in Columbia. But they were now at least upwardly mobile, many rising from
manual labor jobs to the middle class. They went into politics especially in
Hudson, where they formed the core of the Democratic Party, electing their first
Irish-American aldermen in the 1870’s and the mayor in the 1890’s. Some became
businessmen, teachers, clerks, and managers.
After 1875, the numbers of native Irish and Scots living in the county decreased
sharply in comparison with a great influx of east and southern Europeans, but
these two Celtic groups continued to make their mark in other ways. Many an
Irish-American family sent pennies and nickels home to bring their kinfolk over
to America. Appeals were put on in Catholic parishes to help the poor of the
motherland and to rid the country of the British. In this last instance, some
took stronger action than merely passing the hat. Some Hudson Irish lads got
involved with the Fenian uprisings of the 1870’s and 1880’s, brave if ill fated
attempts to achieve home rule for Ireland. The Fenians attacked Canada because
that country was still controlled loosely by the hated British monarchy of Queen
Victoria. The Hudson contingent met in a building not far from the parish
church, and heard Fenian speakers from the old sod imploring them to join the
cause of Irish freedom. They took the rails to Buffalo to join the fighting. In
reality the risings were put down quickly, but not before they excited much
consternation and comment on either side of the border. Though they failed, they
helped to set a template upon which others, like Michael Collins and Eamon de
Valera were to use to eventually achieve full independence for the nation.
Scottish-Americans continued their upper mobility. Originally from mainly rural
areas like Antrim in northern Ireland and in Scotland, more urban places, such
as Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, they were usually literate and often well
educated. They frequently became skilled workers and craftsmen, landowners,
civic leaders, and entrepreneurs.
CULTURE and RELIGION
In early times church and temple created the basis for American ethnic and
social life. Wherever Celts moved they brought their faith and their distinctive
cultures. The mostly Protestant Scots and Scots-Irish were instrumental in the
establishment and functioning of nine Presbyterian churches in Columbia by 1845
in Hudson, Kinderhook, Hillsdale, Chatham and other places. Hardworking and
sober minded, they often went into business, or became foreman in shops and
textile mills. Through the years Scottish-Americans would put together informal
networks for the advance of socialization, with neighbors coming together of a
Sunday afternoon to take tea and talk of life in this new world they now lived
in and to share nostalgic reminders of the old. The Scots living in Stottville
were particularly well known for this.
Familiar foods were often imported from home or made fresh in many a
Scottish-American kitchen—special jams and marmalades, oatcakes, bridies,
porridge oats(oatmeal), shortbread, cock o’ leekie( chicken with leeks or
onions), the ever present tatties and neeps (potatoes and turnips), meat pies,
blood sausage, steak and kidney puddings, finnan haddie(baked haddock with a
cream sauce), and even haggis(a concoction of oatmeal and various organ meats
formed into a loaf), usually reserved for the three major days of national
remembrance—the birthdays of the great Scottish writers—Sir Walter Scott and
Robert Burns, and the feast of St. Andrew, the patron saint of the Scots. Papers
from home, especially from the big cities, but also the small rural weeklies,
were brought in. We have no record of St. Andrew Societies in the county, but
some people traveled to Albany or Schnectady to join this organization of
displaced sons of Caledonia. Scottish Games were of great appeal. They served as
a kind of country fair of Gaelic culture—massed pipers, tossing the caber,
piobaireachd or solo pipe competition, throwing the sheaf, the hammer throw,
classical highland dancing, and so forth. New Years , or as the as Scots still
call it—Hogmanay, in Gaelic, Oidhche Chaillain—was a special time of celebration
and friendly visits back and forth.
The Irish saw the church as a bastion in an America not much given to toleration
of Catholics. In fact through much of U.S. history the church was the subject of
much hostility and even violence. Catholicism in the last fifty years of the
nineteenth century was largely Irish and it protected its flock with gusto and
occasionally real courage. In return the Irish showed great and persevering
loyalty to the Church of Rome. St. Mary’s of Hudson was the first Catholic
parish in the county, established in 1848. Irish cultural life was centered here
and in the home. Women joined sodalities, men confraternities. St. Patrick’s Day
brought parades, special masses, and much convivial drinking. But it was more a
religious holiday than is the case today. Everybody socialized after masses and
vespers, a special service held Wednesday and Sunday evenings.
Home was generally in Irishtown, the lower wards in Hudson, nearest the river,
the ones where the poor people live. After the long hours of work, or on a
Sunday afternoon, their only day off, they might gather on the porch and chew
over the day’s events. Those who were Irish speakers, and there were many,
sometimes used the old tongue. Their kids did not. Street English was good
enough for them. After talk the pennywhistle, Irish flute or the Uillean or
elbow pipes might be dragged out. They joined in all the good old songs from
home. Afterwards, the men might drift off to the local pub for more gab and
stout, or to disappear into to a nearby alley for the bloody sport of chicken
fighting.
This then in brief was the world of the Columbia Celts. Slowly they became
Americanized, forgetting many of their closely held ancestral memories, the way
things used to be. But today there is fresh interest even among the young into
looking into one’s family and ethnic history. There has to be more than just our
own lives, we reason. There must be some connection to a past that hides itself,
some kind of ethnic identification that might give ourselves a link to a world
long gone. We understand now that cutting ourselves off from history makes us
orphans in time. As we reflect upon our lives we want to know who we are, where
we come from, what cultural baggage was carried by our ancestors, even remote
ones. What were they like, these people from the darkness, these people of our
blood? The past someone once said is a different country, foreign to us now,
alien, and strange. Yet in a different sense it is always with us. It has not
even passed, as William Faulkner once wrote. It is present in our blood, in our
genes, in what we are and how we think. And it is there for the taking, but it
must be taken.
For people of Celtic background, that means largely the Irish, Scots, and Welsh,
the matter is urgent. The Celtic languages are falling into disuse, and even
though there are splendid efforts going on now in the old countries to revive
them, only minor successes are happening here in the States. These tongues are
beautifully expressive and it would be a great tragedy to have them go extinct.
It is not enough that we join the Ancient Order of Hiberbians or St. Andrew
Societies and immerse ourselves in Celtic lore by attending Irish festivals or
Highland games. Language is the very life blood of any culture and today these
languages—Scots and Irish Gaelic and Welsh—are under grave attack. Only we can
save them.
Source
From Celebration of Celts
Anne & John Macpherson
THE CELTIC NATIONS - THEIR HISTORY:
[CLICK
ON FLAG GRAPHIC FOR FLAGS AND HISTORY]
