Transcript Celtic Cultures in Transition

Celtic Cultures in
Transition
Introduction (2)
Celtic Identity:
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Talking about identity is a complicated issue,
and not one that can be reduced to easy
labels.
The ‘Celtic’ peoples of Britain, Ireland and
France (Brittany) today are frequently boxed
together as if they all shared a common
culture, common aspirations, and a common
‘Celtic’ history.
Celtic identity:
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If a case can be made for specific ‘Celtic’
identity in the case of these peoples, it is
largely a modern creation (18th century)
This does not mean that it is any less potent.
But often it obscures the real fabric of each of
these nation’s identity, rooted in individual
historical experience, both in the past and
present.
‘Celtic’ identities
Being Celtic
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To many, perhaps to most people outside the
company of the great scholars, past and
present, ‘Celtic’ of any sort is ….a magic bag,
into which…anything is possible in the
fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much
a twilight of the gods as of the reason.
J.R.R Tolkien 1963.
Being Celtic
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The Celtic Congress of 1899 asked the very
pertinent question, who are the Celts, and
what is a Celtic country?
For many at the time, to be a Celt it was
necessary to speak a Celtic language, but
such a narrow definition would have excluded
the Cornish.
In 1899, the definition agreed to was that the
Celts are the inhabitants of those countries
where people speak Celtic languages.
Being Celtic
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The same definition also added that a Celtic
country was one in which a Celtic language
had been spoken until recent times.
This is a definition that many people would
adher to in our own time, but probably as
many people would reject such a definition
for themselves.
Being Celtic
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By no means all the inhabitants of Scotland,
Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Brittany,
Cornwall would accept that they are primarily
Celts (if at all).
The insistence on language by ‘pan-Celts’
certainly raises the issue of how important
language really is to the modern Celtic
identity.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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The sense that Celtic-speaking peoples had
some ‘linguistic and cultural’ kinship led in the
nineteenth century to the Pan-Celtic
movement.
There were other similar movements in
Europe at the time:
Pan-Slavism, Pan-Scandinavianism.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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The Pan-Celtic movement grew from the
desire of (enlightened) Celtic speakers (Irish,
Scottish-Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Manx) to
feel that they had allies in the face of the
threat to their cultures.
However, the movement never fully
developed into a successful political
movement.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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The suspicion that pan-Celticism did not
strike a cord with ordinary people in the Celtic
countries was reflected by the lack of interest
shown to it by the newly formed Irish Free
State in 1922.
It was more of an intellectual movement.
Irish immigrants to Scotland and Wales were
not greeted with a sense of fellow-feeling
during the 20th century. It was not a grassroots movement.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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The beginnings of the movement go back to
the 1820s with cooperation between the
Welsh and the Bretons.
A place in south-east Wales- Abergavenny (Y
Fenni) became a favourite meeting place for
scholars from Wales, Brittany and other
Celtic countries.
This emphasized its elitist origins.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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From this developed the first Pan-Celtic
Congress in Abergavenny in 1838, and in
1868 Charles de Gaulle (the uncle of the later
president of France with the same name)
called for the establishment of an annual
Celtic Congress, as well as the development
of a common Celtic language, and ultimately
a federation of independent Celtic countries.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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The annual Celtic Congress began finally in
1899.
It is fair to say that the Bretons have been the
most enthusiastic of the pan-Celticists.
This is easily explained: the Bretons (in
Brittany, France) were/are the ones facing the
greatest degree of government hostility, and
their need to find allies was stronger.
The Pan-Celtic movement
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Pan-Celticism still persists in some quarters,
perhaps again mainly in Brittany.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second
World War, the French state attempted to
suppress the Breton Movement (An Emsav)
entirely.
It is not perhaps surprising that one of the
most important pan-Celtic musical events
today is the annual Lorient Festival in
Brittany.
The Pan-Celtic Movement
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Another initiative in the direction of panCelticism also came from Brittany and the
writer Alan Heusaff who founded the monthly
journal Carn which published news articles in
all the Celtic languages, as well as English
and French.
Carn and the Celtic League
Celtic Identities
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Yet, many people living in Celtic countries do
not see their identity mainly in terms of being
‘Celtic’.
It might be best to see that Celtic identity as
an alternative add-on to the identity package
that an individual embraces.
Often it has romantic overtones, implying
some kind of common origin- however
dubious that might be.
Celtic Identities
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Is such an identity (Celtic) beneficial or
detrimental to our understanding of the
peoples living in those countries (Ireland,
Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, Isle of
Man)?
To what extent is one embraced by those
peoples, or one that is imposed from outside?
Or both!
Being Celtic
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Simon James: The Atlantic Celts 1999
Are the modern Celts bogus?
He argued that the concept of a race, nation
or ethnic group called Celts in ancient Britain
and Ireland was a modern invention from the
18th and 19th centuries.
Being Celtic
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For James (1999) the creation of the Celts
was a theoretical construct masquerading as
fact, based on fragments of evidence drawn
from a wide range of societies across space
and time.
The word ‘Celtic’ ( he said) has accumulated
so much baggage, and confusing meanings
and associations that it is totally
compromised as even a general label.
Being Celtic
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Over time the peoples described as ‘Celtic’
organized themselves in a diversity of ways.
James states the undoubted similarities and
relations between them are best explained as
parallel developments of peoples in close
cultural contact.
This is true even of the Celtic languages they
spoke, he claims.
Being Celtic
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Briefly, James refutes the idea of ancient
Celts as a homogenous people spread over
great swathes of Europe.
What he does accept is the idea of the
gradual development of ethnic identities in
early modern Europe. (Perhaps more
acurately late medieval and early modern
Europe).
Being Celtic
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Certainly modern ethnic identities in Britain
(perhaps also in Ireland*) have a number of
recurrent themes:
(*In the case of Ireland, Gaelic culture (with
its strong sense of regional differences:
Ulster, Leinster etc) gave way, with language
change, to a new way of thinking about being
Irish- the mainly anglophone Irish person,
whose cultural roots are in the 18th century.)
Being Celtic- and British?
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They arise from a sense of shared difference,
and usually perceived threat from another
group with which they are in contact.
In the case of Britain, the ethnic Welsh, Scots
(Lowlanders and Highlanders), saw this
common cultural threat as coming from
England (or at least the ideologies
represented by England).
Being Celtic
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That main ideology in modern times was
‘Britishness’ (referred to in Welsh political
discourse as ‘Prydeindod’).
This represented a basically English
uniformity in custom and language.
This becomes a state reality after 1707
(Union with Scotland) and further in 1801
when Ireland was also incorporated into this
political and ideological union. (The ‘UK’).
Being Celtic
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Secondly, identity of many ethnic groups is
expressed by attaching symbolic value to
aspects of their culture which deemed
characteristic.
Language is often of fundamental
importance, and it was possession of a
distinctive group-related languages that
formed the criterion for the new Celtic
identity.
Being Celtic
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For some, there is such a thing as a Celtic
identity, although this is by no means
accepted by the majority of people in Celtic
countries.
This apparent cohesion of Celtic peoples was
created largely by scholars in the 17th century
(Lhuyd and Pezron) who drew attention to the
similarities of the various Celtic languages to
each other (although they are mutually
unintelligible today).
Being Celtic
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Each of the ethnic
groups in Britain, as
well as Ireland and
Brittany has and had a
name for themselves.
The word ‘Celt’ was
unknown in their
languages until after
the 18th century.
Bretons
Breiziz
Welsh
Cymry
Scots
Irish
Gaeil
Scottis
Gaeil
Cornish
Kernowyon
Manx
Manninee
Being Celtic
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Yet, possibly as much from the English side
as anything, they became collectively called
‘Celts’.
In fact they were on the ‘Celtic’ fringe of
Britain.
They became a kind of colonized ‘Other’ and
were presumed to possess characteristics at
odds with the perceived logical nature of the
‘British’ (which increasingly meant someone
who had assumed ‘British’ identity).
Being Celtic
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The actual identities of the various Celticspeaking peoples of Britain, Ireland and
Brittany had their origin in other ethnic
formations, which ultimately were tribal.
But with the ‘discovery’ of the ‘Celts’, these
ethnic groups were thought of as having a
common history.
Being Celtic
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The erroneous theory that claimed Britain
and Ireland had been invaded at some point
(usually c600BC) by ‘Celts’, added to this
idea of modern ‘Celtic’ identity. (This theory is
still found in books about the ancient ‘Celts’).
However, if we accept that the continuum of a
‘Celtic’ identity through the ages is very
doubtful, this does not invalidate modern
Celtic identities.
Edward Lhuyd (1660?-1709)
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The father of Celtic identity?
He published the first book that compared the
‘Celtic’ languages. In fact he was the one
who coined the term ‘Celtic’ languages.
This started a kind of celtomania that has not
receded even in our own time.
Being Celtic
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Edward Lhuyd’s monumental volume called
in Latin Archaeologia Britannia which
appeared in 1707 was very much the first
book to suggest that the Welsh (aca Britons)
were Celts, very much on the linguistic basis.
It is interesting that this first statement of
Celticity of the Welsh (Bretons and Cornish)
was made during the year of the Act of Union
between Scotland and England in 1707.
Being Celtic
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In one sense we can see Lhuyd’s affirmation
of the Celtic origins of the language of Wales,
Brittany and Cornwall as a political comment
at a time when the English state became the
British State with the Act of Union with
Scotland (1707).
Yet, Lhuyd did not have a great influence on
his countrymen.
Being Celtic
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In fact, other less scientific theories about the
origins and identity of the Welsh were
published especially by Theophilus Evans
(1716). He preferred to emphasis the
legendary history of the Britons first invented
by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He emphasizes
the ancient Britons and their struggles
against the Romans.
The word ‘Celt’ makes no appearance.
Being Celtic
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In fact, the invented medieval theories about
the ultimate Trojan origins of the Welsh are
preferred by him.
Evans’ book was enormously popular until
almost 1900, when more scholarly books
appeared.
In Ireland, we find a similar tendency:
Being Celtic
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It would be possible to say that the 17th
century Irish historian Seathrun Ceitinn was
quite similar in his approach to that of Evans.
Ceitinn’s work based on legend, myth and
popular belief (which gave the Irish a middle
eastern origin) was immensely popular in
Gaelic circles in Ireland until the 19th century.
Being Celtic
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It is fascinating to note that the descendants
of the Gaels in Ireland, and of the Britons or
Cymry of Wales were not especially drawn to
an identity which included references to the
‘Celts’.
Becoming Celtic?
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If in certain intellectual circles the concept of
being ‘Celtic’ was growing (together with the
specific national identities- Irish, Welsh,
Breton, Scottish),
We can also observe a tendency for the term
‘Celt’ to be used as a marker for the peoples
of Ireland, Wales, Scotland (especially the
Highlands).
Becoming Celtic
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In the Celtic fringe itself, assuming a Celtic
identity served to give pride in one’s past, yet
it was also used as a way of describing the
same peoples in a patronizing or disparaging
way.
Matthew Arnold:
Matthew Arnold and the Growth of Celticism
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Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was an English
poet and literary critic who spent most of his
professional life as a ‘headmaster’ at Rugby
School.
In terms of the growth of ideas about Celticity,
he is famous for his series of lectures which
he gave at Oxford called ‘Lectures on Celtic
Literature’. He published them in 1867
(republished in 1891).
Lectures on Celtic Literature
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He could not read any of the Celtic
languages, but had to depend on translations
that were available.
In these lectures, he came to a series of
conclusions about the ‘Celtic mentality’.
Unfortunately, some of his conclusions reflect
the political thinking of his time, with its focus
on race. His work was widely read.
Lectures on Celtic Literature
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Arnold placed much emphasis on perceived
‘racial’ differences between the ‘Celts,
Saxons and Normans’.
He did concentrate his attention and
admiration on Celtic literatures of the middle
ages, but ironically he was hostile to the
survival of Celtic languages, and their
traditions in his day.
Lectures on Celtic Literature
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On the other hand his admiration for the
undoubted qualities of Irish and Welsh
medieval texts brought about some
understanding (in the academic world at
least) of the importance of those peoples who
had produced them.
The Chair of Celtic in Oxford in 1877.
Being Celtic
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How is that?
Certainly identities are formed even in very
modern times and become powerful forces
politically and in terms of the creativity of
peoples, new and old.
Although it might seem that Celtic identities in
Britain and Ireland are the creations of those
who speak ‘Celtic’ languages, this may not be
entirely the case.
Being Celtic
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Even if there is a general consensus that
refers to the Irish, Scots, Welsh, Bretons,
Manx and Cornish as ‘Celts’, this does not
mean that a ‘Celtic’ identity is an integral part
of the identity of those peoples when they
think about themselves.