\'The myth of Celtic and Roman Britain\'

[Nathan Ross]

When we think of Celts in Britain today we think of Wales, the South West, Scotland, Ireland etc. That identity is linked to the Act of Union and is quite artificial, made worse by the Victorians and Scottish tartan shortbread etc.

The poor old Victorians do get the blame for this often, but as far as I know ideas of a common 'celtic' British heritage were thriving back in the 17th century and before. Victorian images of shortbread and tartan in the misty glens were more connected with developing theories of subject peoples and martial races, noble savagery and the virtues of austerity - all part of the ongoing discourse of imperial sovereignty and colonial rule, in other words. But Victorian popular culture did not sentimentalise the Irish, and largely ignored the Welsh - 19th century celtomania was an almost entirely Scots-English dialogue.

We don't think of the germanic speaking nations, England, the Netherlands, Germany and the Scandinavian countries etc as all having the same lifestyle and culture, so why do we do it with the celtic speaking nations?

But England, Germany and the Netherlands are modern nation states, products of modern history and speaking modern languages. The 'celtic speaking nations' are an interpretation of the ancient past. We do, in fact, commonly assume (correctly or otherwise) that the 'germanic speaking nations' (or tribal groups, or whatever) of antiquity had certain cultural and political connections - evidence is scarce, but the migration, combination and miscegenation of these groups may suggest a commonality of culture and a shared ethnic identity over quite a wide region. Although that could be a whole other can of worms! :?

The notion that the British isles as a whole possessed a shared linguistic, cultural and ethnic connection - call it celtic for want of better - and that this connection was similarly shared by many of the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard and western continental Europe, may be disputed now. Differing cultural standards between Brigantes and Yorkshiremen may indeed suggest a wider discontinuity. But it's also clear that many people still find the paradigm workable, and not all of them are Victorian throwbacks. The flight of the Gallic Commius to Britain was mentioned above; there's also Caratacus, a southern British king turning up in (modern) Wales as leader of the Silures before heading north into Brigantia. No reason why this should mean that the Catuvellauni, Silures and Brigantes were all the same, of course - but a suggestion that they may have been rather more than just close neighbours. Why does Tacitus have Calgacus claiming community with the conquered tribes of southern Britain? Why does Ptolemy give the tribes of northern Scotland 'celtic' names? How does a Caledonian chieftain called Argentocoxus turn up in the third century? All these points could easily be demolished as evidence in isolation, but taken together these sort of things tend to count against the picture of ancient Britain as a collection of entirely discrete ethnic and political units, disconnected from continental Europe.

- Nathan