March is a very Celtic month. St. David, patron of the Welsh opens the month on the first. Four days later comes St. Piran, Cornwall’s patron. On the 17th — as all the world knows — is St. Patrick, on whose day everyone is Irish. But he also shares the day with St. Joseph of Arimathea, who is the legendary founder of Catholicism in Britain, forever associated with Glastonbury, the Holy Grail, and King Arthur. Truly, little can be more Celtic than that!
It is hard to ignore the Celtic pull on our culture — which does not end nor begin with the festivities on St. Patrick’s day, nor the overarching mythos of the Arthurian legend, nor the haunting tones of Welsh and Cornish choirs for those fortunate enough to hear them. Who has not felt the tug of the pipes — not merely omnipresent at police funerals and various parades, but at Burns’ suppers and St. Andrew’s nights? The allure of Scotch and Irish whisk(e)y is omnipresent, as are the stories of the Fenians, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Owain Glendower, and Sir William Wallace — and the Chouans in the French Revolution, for the Francophone among us. Kilts and Clans attract any number of Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans who feel they can lay claim to membership in one.
But just who were the Celts? More importantly, who are they? Why do they have such a powerful place in our collective imagination? They were a group of Indo-European tribes who first appeared in Austria in about 1200 BC. They rapidly spread across the continent, from Galatia in the east (Asia Minor, now Turkey) to the British Isles and Spain in the West — where they mingled with earlier peoples. After several centuries of splendid and story-filled supremacy, they were sandwich between the nascent Roman Empire, and the incoming Germanic tribes. Those within the Empire were quickly Latinised; apart from a few words, the only trace of Celtic Gaul in the Latin dialect now called French is the numbering system — 70, 80, and 90 are soixante-dix (“sixty-ten”), quatre vingt (“four twenties”), and quatre-vingt-dix (“four twenties-ten”) — it could be expected that, as is true in several French dialects, the words would be septante, octante, and nonante.
Indeed, the surviving Celtic languages — Irish, Scots, and Manx Gaelic; Welsh, Cornish, and Breton — only survived because of their remoter locations on islands and peninsulas. Although only larger or smaller minorities still speak their ancestral tongues, those peoples are to-day considered the “Six Celtic Nations.” Most of them may not be able to speak the language with which they are identified, but they are all connected by similar cultures otherwise: a strange, partly pre-Christian folklore; intense love of music — and often the bagpipe; a reputation for impracticality and a certain pugnacity; loyalty quite literally to the point of clannishness; attachment to various political lost causes; and often a deep religiosity. The Scots in Canada, Welsh in Argentina, Cornish in California and Australia, the Ulster Scots in the Appalachians and the Ozarks, and on and on have proven the abilities of these people to retain their culture and love of the old Country in diverse settlements across the globe. The Celtic strain (thanks to the Bretons and Potvins) is strong even in the Acadians of the Maritime Provinces in Canada, and their Cajun cousins in Louisiana.
While the British Isles and the Breton peninsula are the last refuges of the Celtic languages, there are many areas in Continental Europe whose peoples show the same cultural features above noticed, albeit without the language. These often claim to be Celts as well, and are often also tucked away into remoter areas — often mountainous or deeply forested. Among them are the Galicians, Asturians, and Cantabrians of Northern Spain; the northern Portuguese; the Auvergnats and Savoyards in France; the Piedmontese and Abruzzians in Italy; the Ardennais in Belgium; the Tyrolians; Gorales, Hutsuls, Lemkos, Boykos, and various other peoples of the Carpathians; and a number of others.
The Celts never really had any sort of “Pan-Celtic” governance, and they early lost their political independence. For the most part, they lost their languages as well. And yet they linger on still — Romanticised, often ridiculed, rarely attached to the centres of power. Yet despite it all, they have maintained a real sense of identity and the above-mentioned cultural ethos, despite an endless number of defeats and foreign occupations. This ethos, moreover, remains unbroken even in areas once tyrannised over by the Communists.
So why should all this — fascinating as it is – be important to orthodox American (or any other nationality) Catholics living in the 21st century? Well, apart from the fact that many of our number (this writer included) descend from one or more Celtic strains, their survival in the face of unrelenting pressure to conform and often enough outright hostility is not merely remarkable in itself, it has lessons to offer us in the here and now. We have little political or ecclesiastical protection on the one hand; on the other, we have a treasure to maintain and propagate even greater than the Celtic heritage — our Pearl of Great Price, the Catholic Faith. So let’s look at some of the historic qualities that allowed the Celts not only to remain themselves in the Mother Continent, but to propagate Celtdom across the Seas.
The first is geographical isolation. Now, while this is not something I can really advocate for most people, the fact is that the Celts survived best, as mentioned, on islands, remote peninsulas, mountains, and deep forests — and in colonial countries almost instinctively sought out similar places. When forced into urban areas, they tended to prefer their own neighbourhoods. While not advocating the “Benedict Option” myself, certainly such efforts as joint homeschooling, homesteading, and the like require a certain number of like-minded families to live near each other.
Another was a deep realisation of the fact that the spiritual world is all about us, and greater than the physical world we see. This they knew even before they were Christian — the “Celtic Otherworld” is a motif of countless tales — and from it came the elves, fairies, and various others of its strange denizens who would creep into our world. When they accepted the Gospel, the Celts realised that despite outward appearance, the Catholic Faith was simply reality — and not just truer but more real than its opposition. Thus, the Celtic peoples produced a great many zealous and austere monastics of both sexes, and correspondingly a large number of Saints from their number. They took miracles and apparitions in stride, as an integral part of God’s world. This gave them the strength to face defeat and push through it, time after time. Even the Scots, Welsh, and Cornish who lost the Faith only did so after horrific defeats — and there are still remarkable Catholic pockets in all three countries. We too should make our Faith the centre of our lives, and accept, for example, that the Blessed Sacrament is even more real than the Income Tax.
Closely tied to this religious sense was loyalty. The Celts made a point of personal loyalty — to blood brothers, family members, clansmen, chiefs, and Kings. Historically, this loyalty could range from clan chiefs to ward bosses — and even to-day the Irish and Scots Travellers in the British Isles and America show it to a remarkable degree. It is why they could carry on endless in causes that practically speaking had little nor no chance of winning, as with the Cavaliers in the British Civil Wars, the Jacobites, the Chouans in the Vendee and Brittany, and the endless uprisings in Ireland. So long as they thought the cause was right, the earthly consequences mattered little. This kind of loyalty, applied to the cause of Christ the King and to other Catholics, could do us all a lot of good.
From this loyalty, ultimately inspired by the Faith, came a bravery, a courage that cared nothing for uneven odds. Whether the Irish Wild Geese in the service of France, Spain, Naples, or Austria, or the Scots Regiments in the British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and South African armies, the cry of “Limerick!” or the skirl of the pipes let the enemy know that if defeat was not inevitable, victory would be very hard indeed to gain. This bravery we would be well advised to try to emulate in defence of the Faith.
Mention of the pipes reminds us of how much the Celts loved and love music, storytelling, drink, and celebrations in general — very much the reverse of the medal of the extreme penances to which they were also drawn — be it in the cloister or on pilgrimage. This attitude too we can adopt to our own benefit. When we feast, let us feast; when we fast, let us fast! For the Christian Celts, the Liturgical year regulated their lives — we can and should allow it to do the same for us. Let us love the lesser gifts God has given us of music, good food and drink, the arts and crafts in their time — precisely because He has given them to us, and let us use them to glorify Him as we do our penances.
Of course, the major difference between the Catholic peoples and the Celtic peoples is that the latter are part of an ever changing and ultimately doomed terrestrial scene, whereas the former have a destiny that ultimately transcends it. But let us take the best qualities which helped them survive with some dignity, and use these to make the earthly pilgrimage of the Catholic people (quite a few of whom are Celts, of course) that much more pleasant, more inviting to non-Catholics, and more secure in a world that hates its Maker.
Celtic cross at dawn in Knock, Ireland (at the bus stop to Westport), photo by Sebd, own work, CC BY 2.5. Source.
