Do Celtic Nations exist?

Celts and Celtic peoples get a lot of publicity as a group, but do they even exist? What is common to all Celts in the modern world? Is there anything which makes Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, Ireland Mann and Bretagne linked to each other, or is there some deeper bond between them?

In this video we take a look at the origin of the word 'Celt' and compare the Celtic nations of today as they are now, to find out this question with these fascinating nations.

00:00
01:03 History of the word Celt/Celtic
05:44 What is Celtic?
07:22 Many ways to classify
08:22 The Languages themselves
13:21 Religion
17:17 Politics
21:45 The Law
24:56 Some thoughts on this

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Gear I use:

[heathenhammer]

Great information with a perfect ASMR voice.

[yannschonfeld]

Language is part of culture. Ethnicity does not have to be about culture. Culture is a process of belonging by birth or by acculturation usually via language. Britain was conquered (as was the rest of the Roman empire) by the Romans and so they brought in other peoples into their empire. So then in Britain or Brittany you can find people whose ancestry stems back to other parts of that empire. Language is the glue that binds a people together. In the late '70s I knew (in rural areas) people in western Brittany who were monolingual Bret"n speakers, knew no French. They were my grandparents generation. Tregorese Bret"n and Kernewek are very close and almost inter intelligible. Cymraeg much less so despite the vast similar vocabulary. Still, easy for a genuiine Bret'n speaker to learn.

You have undertaken a daunting topic and dealt with it admirably. On a side note, some scholars trace the "Scoti"that were the raiders or pirtates that invaded the British Isles just as Roman Britain was vanishing.Even the isle of Man was Brythonic speaking until the Scoti took that island. So was much of "Scotland". On a personal note, my ex wife did a genetic heritage test (her ancestors were Bret"n through and through) and the test said it was Middle Scotland. Except 1500 years ago, there was no Scotland. It was Britain. The Bret'ns fled the Irish pirate attacks along with the Anglo-Saxon invasions. In the end, these so called "Keltic" kingdoms were small communities like the rest of Europe of their times but yes conquered by other linguistic groups and so found themselves in minorities and ever shrinking ones. This is where we are at this point in the early 21st century. That as linguistic minorities we have survived 2000 years so far, is, I think, quite promising. Merci bras deoc'h.

[Lusi-PT]

Love your insights Ben! Thank you for creating this thoughtful content. Scotts pushed everyone out.

[mioszpospiech]

I keep my fingers crossed for the Celtic languages, nations and their sovereignty🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇮🇪 As a Pole, I believe that Celtic culture or languages ​​are the most beautiful and you Celts should take care of them

Words of support from Poland 🇵🇱🇪🇺

[fusion-music]

It's quite funny in Scotland, we use "Scottish" words, which are actually old English. Interesting subject.

[richardanderson]

I really like that the comments and discussions here are very much centred on language and culture. I think that's absolutely the basis for comparing England and Wales, England and Scotland. Wales and other countries.
That's because if we look at DNA, we now see that the 'English' are generally only 10-40% Germanic, and so are essentially also Brythonic in a very real sense. The English are those whose ruling class were supplanted by the Saxons, and who had to adapt. Though it was a two way exchange: that ruling class, and those who migrated in with them, were also influenced by the Britons. Wales was able to repel that takeover far longer, and so kept the language and much of the culture.

With regards the 'Celtic' element of this... I attended Simon James presentation and Q&A in 1999 when his book 'The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People Or Modern Invention?' was published. I found the arguments fairly compelling. I think there is evidence that the peoples on the islands didn't 'arrive' around the 6th century BC, they may have been here well before, but through trade, that's when many of those 'Celtic' artefacts, the 'La Tène' metalwork especially, began to appear in the British Isles.

So, I tend to think that the 'Celtic' identity is indeed, a bit of an invention, and actually hides what may be a far more interesting story, going back further in the islands.

[BIATEC]

👏 👏 👏 great stuff. 👍 Love this video. Love the details. Brilliant thank you.

[MP-hziz]

All of these nations share and have shared a battle to preserve their languages and customs from the encroachment of an hegemonic power and language (England and English in the case of all but Brittany, France and French for Brittany). Which is what I suspect your Welsh nationalist friends were getting at. Brythonic and Goidelic languages also share a likely common ancestor that is not Germanic. Those things are significant I would suggest, but as each nations's history and experience has been very different over the past 3-2000 years, as you explain in the video, it's a stretch to argue they share much else in common.

[mmurney]

The ‘invasion’ hypothesis of the Goidelic language arriving in Scotland in the 5th century, is now largely rejected. The narrative that it arrived and developed in North Western Scotland, concurrent with Ireland, at some far earlier date is now widely accepted (See Dauvit Brown, Trinity Lectures 2015 etc)

Also, I doubt in the extreme that Native Goidelic/Early Scottish Gaelic was not the governmental language of the emerging Scottish/Alban state circa 800AD. If it wasn’t, then what was? While Anglic was present in the Lothians at this time, early English (or Flemish/French for that matter) made no headway in lowland Scotland until the establishment of the Burghs in mid 12th Century.

Even then, the speed and extent of Gaelic retreat from this area has been totally overestimated; with the Gaelic heritage of Eastern Scotland being almost totally whitewashed.

Scotland has had many languages, but barring Orkney/Shetland, I would challenge anyone to show me a place within it where Goidelic Gaelic was not spoken for at least upwards of century, or produced the majority of its place names. A sure indicator of the main language spoken by its historical inhabitants

[skathwoelya]

Meur ras dhis, Ben. A very good video indeed. It has given me a new perspective on being Kernewek (kernewes goth ov). ☺

[donalbreathnach]

There is evidence that Gaelic developed naturally from Proto-Celtic in Scotland because of Dál Riata and close links across the sea. It’s not necessarily known for sure that Pictish was ever spoken in every place that Gaelic became spoken that wasn’t Brythonic or Anglic. The west coast might not have ever spoken Pictish, especially Argyll which is an ancient region with direct reference to the Gaels in its name “Earra-Ghàidheal”.

[BIATEC]

Signed up mate. Like the videos I've seen so far. Me wife's gonna sign up to.

[BIATEC]

Hey Ben Llywelyn. Could you do a video about Welsh names. And lesser known or rarer Welsh names. As I understand it most Cymru Alba and Eire family names mean son of. I'm interested in the family names that don't follow that style and are not meaning son of, but mean for example. Lord with strong grip or some such thing. This would be of great interest to me. Thank you.

[daniellyons]

I think another way of looking at whether a culture is Celtic would be looking at if its traditions have Celtic origins. Examples might be clooties, tartan, mummers' plays, wishing wells, well-dressing, and celebrating Halloween and May Day (I'm not sure about the origins of all of these and if they're all Celtic).

Another aspect with regards to religion is whether they have a history of 'Celtic' Christianity. For example, religious sites like Iona and Lindisfarne have a strong Celtic heritage, and Celtic saints such as Colm Cille, Kentigern, and Cuthbert are venerated. In this regard, there is a lot of cultural fusion with Anglo-Saxons, such as Hiberno-Saxon art forms and Anglo-Saxons with Celtic Christian beliefs (such as Saint Cuthbert and Saint Oswald).

Perhaps another example would be in artefacts and structures from historical Celtic cultures. For example, brochs in Scotland, hillforts throughout Britain, and the castros of Galicia.

[gwilwilliams]

I was also interested to read on Wikipedia, as a follow-up to your video, that the flag of Breton is known as the Gwenn ha du. Maybe there is a clue.

[tepodmabkerlevenez]

Yes they do. Of course. At mine opinion, we should not ask this kind of questions. BEcause some people we tell "no the don't".... -_-

[gamermapper]

Hey idk why you wrote Brittany in your description as "Bretagne" when its indigenous name is Breizh

[michaelmerrigan]

Interesting video and, in particular, your take on the use of the term 'Celtic' and the process of 'othering' (alterity) - a process to avoid identifying these "othered peoples" with the terms like 'aboriginal' or 'indigenous'. Indeed, your point on the appropriation of the terms 'British' and 'Briton' by the English is well made. Another aspect of this process of appropriation is the use of nomenclature to erase or make invisible the existence of "othered peoples" like, for example, the continued use by some of the anachronistic geopolitical term 'British Isles' when including the island of Ireland. Maybe, you'll take a moment to reflect on the above and, hopefully, drop the term in your future videos. Finally, the point in your video about the legal structures in Ireland failed to highlight that, unlike the others mentioned, it is a republic with a written constitution where the people are sovereign etc. Anyway, keep up the good work! Diolch yn fawr.

[Alasdair]

I agree that "Celtic" is really not a good term and honestly we need a new term. to me what I mean by "Celtic" is the native cultures and languages of the peoples in these areas of the Atlantic zone who were not conquered by the Romans or in the case of Wales and Cornwall held on to their pre-roman language and identity. this is a very loose term that covers a wide and diverse group of people. The "Celts" are not and have never been a homogeneous group of people. (And in the case of Breton these were people from the British isles who colonized that part of France and they too had a pre roman identity)

[BIATEC]

My uncle C Skillycorn was from the Isle of man and heavily identified with the Vikings as he called them.