Celts


Who were the Celts you ask?  They were one of the Indo-European races but that doesn't explain much does it?  Let's go a little deeper shall we?

Ah killy at one time the Celtic nations bestrode Europe like a colossus stretching from Ireland to Asia Minor.  The Galatians of Biblical fame were Celts.  As were the Gauls in what is now France, who sacked Rome once but were later conquered in turn by the Romans despite the valiant struggles of Vercingetorix.  And the Celt-Iberians of Spain who marched with Hannibal as he crossed the Alps.  The Celts were the Britain's who under the leadership of the great queen Boudicca of the Iceni nearly drove the Romans from Britain.

They were the "Sea-Peoples" who attacked Egypt during the reign of Ramesses III (1198--66 B.C.E).

When asked by Alexander the Great what they most feared...expecting to hear them reply it was himself, the Celts instead replied that they feared only that the sky might fall on their heads.  Fifty years later the Celts defeated a Greek army at the famous pass of Thermopylae, where the Greeks(or was it Xena?) had once stopped the mighty Persians and then went on to sack the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

It is from the Greeks that we get the term Celts, for that is what the Greeks recorded that they called themselves. In Greek it is Keltoi and because of this it is generally agreed that the pronunciation should be with a hard c...Kelt...not a soft c...Selt.  Although the French in Brittany differ on this point, favoring the soft c.

The Celts even sacked Rome itself in 590 B.C.E forcing the Romans to pay a great tribute in gold.  When the Romans complained about the size of the weights used to measure the tribute out the Celtic leader Brennus added his sword to the scales with the words

"Vae victis"

"Woe to the conquered"

Alas the Celtic people were too independent to ever unite and this disunity was their downfall as the Roman's played tribe against tribe and with their ruthless efficiency were able to breakdown and assimilate the Celtic nations of Europe, driving their culture to the hinterlands.

The last vestiges of the Celtic people and their language live on in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany(France).  The Celtic language is still spoken by today by several million people, chiefly in the forms of Irish and Scots Gaelic.

Now what was the question again?  Oh yes...Celtic is Irish and Welsh and Scottish and much more besides.  So yes my QoT you are at the very least a quarter Celtic.

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