| Do The Celts Exist? |
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Cornish people the world over share an ancient Celtic ancestry, yet that ancestry never appears in modern history texts. Craig Weatherhill investigates the conspiracy of the Celtic Cornish cover up. You might have noticed that, over the last decade or so, the very existence of the Celtic Britons – which of course include the Cornish people – has been coming under tremendous attack. Our children are taught about Romans, Vikings and Anglo-Saxons but not about their own history and culture. TV programmes like Time Team choose to omit the dreaded C-word and the recent Seven Ages of Britain series made not a single mention of the indigenous Celtic people. Instead, they became ‘Iron Age folk’, ‘Bronze Age folk’ or ‘Ancient Britons’, a term last used by the Victorians but now making a huge comeback.  Castle Dore, a Celtic stronghold for hundreds of years. In short, we are being written out of British history. All that was built in prehistory is now marketed as English, implying that the English peoples (who didn’t begin to settle in Britain until the mid 5th century AD) were here all the time. How often do you hear an English commentator remarking upon British prehistory and linking it to his ancestors who weren’t here at all but in Germany and the Low Countries? Authors like Malcolm Chapman, Simon James and John Collis go even further. They claim that the British Celts never existed and that the terms Celt/Celtic were inventions of the 18th century; but are they right? Peel away the waffle and their sole argument is that the Celtic people of Britain and Ireland never called themselves Celts. This is unbelievably hollow. We never wrote down our own records until after the Romans left and all that is left are accounts from classical writers, few of whom ever set foot in Britain or encountered any of its people. It is true that no record survives to suggest that the Britons call themselves Celtic but it is equally valid to point out that no record survives to say that they didn’t. There is even one recent book that seriously claims that the language heard by Caesar when he landed in Britain in the 1st century BC was English! Even a recent Time Team programme (July 2005) proudly showed children in London being taught that native (Celtic) Britons were speaking English during the Roman occupation! How come, then, that every place name, personal name and tribal name recorded by the Romans were, except for those of their own Latin coinage, in the Brythonic Celtic language? Of course, these claims are unfounded rubbish. The English language wasn’t heard on British soil until the 5th century AD and wouldn’t be heard on Cornish soil until the 9th century at the very earliest. To teach children such a false and politically motivated version of history, as proudly shown to us all on Time Team, is not only shameful but disgraceful and the Secretary of State for Education should be made to explain herself (again). As for the claim that Celt/Celtic are words of relatively modern coinage, we should leave the answer to Gaius Julius Caesar himself. He wrote of the Gaulish Celts: “We call them Gallae, they call themselves Celtae”. Of the Britons he encountered, both he and Tacitus remarked on them having the same language, social structure, rituals and beliefs as the Gauls. In fact the earliest known reference to the Celts by name was by the Greeks who, around 400 BC, rendered the name they heard as Keltoi. There is another overlooked argument. Throughout Europe, wherever the Celts have been, you will find the Indo-European stem word Gal/Wal, referring exclusively to Celtic people. So, in Asia Minor, Galatia; Wallachia in the Carpathians (Dracula country); Gaul (now France); Wallonia in Belgium; Galicia in north-west Spain and Portugal. In Ireland were the Gaels. The early English coined their own word wealh (plural wealas) from this root and, once they came to Britain, applied it exclusively to the indigenous Britons, hence Wales and Cornwall. So, even they were saying that the native Britons were Celtic. In recent years, Celtic history has been stood completely on its head, not that ‘English’ Heritage and its sympathisers want you to know that. The old idea, current for years, was that the Celts originated somewhere near the headwaters of the Danube, spreading both east and west throughout much of Europe. According to this idea, the Celts and Celtic languages didn’t enter Britain until the early Iron Age, somewhere between 800 and 500 BC. All this, though, was purely based upon finds at the mid-European sites of Hallstatt and La Tene, the former dating from the 6th century BC, the latter considerably later. These are very late in terms of prehistory and, until recently, no one considered Celtic history before the Iron Age. Some classical writers stated that the Celts originated on the far western fringes of Europe and, in their own traditions, the Celts have always looked to the west where lay their otherworlds and lost lands. Could these be folk memories of ancestral homelands in the far west? Such memories can be incredibly long lasting. Take the traditional name of St Michael’s Mount: Carrek Los yn Cos, “grey rock in the wood”, still current in the 16th century. It did once stand in a wood – 4,500 years ago. Now, these traditions do appear to be telling a truth. The new picture of Celtic history has been put forward by archaeologists Professor Barry Cunliffe and Professor Colin Renfrew, as well as linguists John Koch at Aberystwyth and John Waddell at Galway, men who command the very highest respect in their fields. These say we should now discount any significant influxes or “invasions” of people into Britain between the Neolithic era and the Roman occupation, the only real changes being technological practices and materials as well as belief patterns that altered in tune with natural and climatic changes. Instead, the indigenous Britons, now represented by the Cornish and Welsh, have enjoyed an amazing record of continuity for more than 6,000 years, as has their linguistic heritage. Today, we think of Atlantic Arc trading as a modern concept. In fact, nothing could be more ancient. Even in Neolithic times, 6,000 years ago, a major sea trading route linked the west and north coasts of Iberia to the shores of Biscay and Brittany and the whole of Western Britain, including Ireland, as far north as Orkney. It was along this route, as long ago as that, that a branch of Indo-European was developing into distinctive Celtic to become a common language of those trading nations. This trade route flourished for millennia, reaching a peak in the Middle and Late Bronze Age and was still going strong in the Iron Age when Caesar put an abrupt end to it. You shouldn’t be hearing this from an enthusiastic amateur like me. The public purse contributes massively towards professional historians and archaeologists to keep us properly informed and to update the education system accordingly. In this matter they have signally failed to do so and the public – particularly those of Celtic blood – need to start asking why. The mid-5th century AD recolonisation of Brittany and Galicia by south-western Britons has always been something of a mystery. We know of no internal pressures serious enough to have forced a migration, so could there be a far more simple reason? Could it be that, with the collapse of Roman control, south-western British entrepreneurs sought to revive the seaways of old and to control its key points represented by those two regions? Imported goods found at sites like Tintagel and many others confirm that the Atlantic seaway was, by the mid 5th century, once again open for business, its links with the Mediterranean and the Byzantine Empire re-established and again under Celtic control. The genetic evidence is fascinating. In 2000, Dr Brian Sykes of the Institute of Molecular Research carried out a huge genetic survey of Britain that highlighted the fact that, even today, there is a striking contrast between the western side of Britain (Sykes specifically named Cornwall, Wales, the western side of Scotland and the Hebrides, as well as running down into the Atlantic coasts of Europe), and eastern Britain. Echoing the findings of Cunliffe and Renfrew etc, he identified the western pattern as extremely ancient, perhaps originating in the Neolithic era and linking the countries of the Atlantic Arc. The eastern pattern was much younger, showing imported influence from Germany, the Low Countries and Denmark. A similar survey by Trinity College, Dublin in 2004 has confirmed these findings. What further evidence of our distinctiveness is needed? We have language, history and now genetics pointing firmly to a Celtic presence in Britain pre-dating the old central European origins idea by several millennia. Indeed, we can no longer discuss the Celts in terms of the Iron Age only but of the wider prehistory of mankind in Western Europe and the British Isles. In fact, it would seem that all our prehistoric monuments – even the quoits and the stone circles - had Celtic speaking builders. Were these Atlantic peoples Celtic? Certainly, they spoke Celtic languages (and, from Brittany northwards, still do). Their belief system and society structure was also distinctively Celtic. Who else could they have been and, in fact, continue to be? The Celts are often spoken of as a people that existed long ago rather than one that still flourishes. All too often we forget that the ‘Ancient Britons’ still make up a significant proportion of modern Britons, notably today’s Cornish and Welsh people. The words Celt and Celtic were not 18th century inventions (in fact, they had been used in the 16th century) but a revival. Until then, Celtic Britons were content to call themselves Britons, as had Caesar and others of his time. Britain and Britons are themselves Celtic words (originally Pretannike and Pretani). Then, in 1707, came the Act of Union. Suddenly everyone was “British” regardless of ancestry or origin. The name was ripped away from its rightful owners and, at a stroke, an entire and ancient race of people had been deprived of their identity. The revival of the terms Celt and Celtic, attested from antiquity, was the only appropriate answer to re-establishing that identity. The whole argument has been utterly senseless and, frankly, sinister. Do we know that, prior to the 9th century, the English called themselves so (the term “England” wasn’t coined until then)? Did their constituent peoples, the Jutes, Frisians, Angles and Saxons ever actually call themselves by those names? Did they, therefore, exist? Of course they existed and so, too, do the British Celts. The reason for the “Celts don’t exist” argument is, sadly, a political one. It stems from a supremacist mentality that seems determined to undermine internal devolution, to oppose the EU’s adoption of Celtic symbolism to strengthen the case for a unified Europe (Venice 1991) as well as the Atlantic Arc countries’ use of Celtic identity to strengthen opposition to the centralist policies of the London, Paris and Madrid-based governments (Rennes 2001). The view of such people, who appear to dominate organisations like ‘English’ Heritage, is that the Celtic dimension is something to be despised and obliterated from the record rather than one that would positively enhance both Britain and Europe. As a result, Celtic children, particularly in Cornwall, are denied education and knowledge of their own history, culture and language and this in a Britain that claims to champion cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity. This needs to change and the sooner that happens, the better. There is now a huge responsibility upon all Education Authorities, from central government down to Cornwall Council, to right a very great wrong. |