Being of Celtic ancestry, it pleases me to no end that I keep finding out cool things about the Celtic people. Among them:
- We were royally bitched out by no less a figure than St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians. (It's in the Bible!) The "Gal"atians--etymologically related to Gaelic and Gaul, lived in a portion of modern-day Turkey that was conquered in previous times by Celtic folks, but by Paul's day was a Roman province. (Fucking Romans.)
- The French people's most patriotic nickname for themselves--Gauls--is derived from Gaul or Gallia, a Celtic land that once stretched from France through Switzerland to Germany. From this vantage point, the Celts once opened a can of whup-ass on the Roman empire, but eventually the Romans drove them to the fringes of Europe, such as the British Isles and eventually Ireland and Scotland. (Fucking Romans.)
- We fought with King Arthur against the Saxons invading Britain, and kicked their Saxon hineys six ways to Sunday. (You can see a fictionalized yet entertaining movie about this at your local theater.) This, of course, was after the Romans turned tail and ran: after centuries of slaughtering Bretons, they'd decided that they didn't want that grubby little island after all. (Fucking Romans.)
Later, of course, there's a long, proud, brave, sad, and joyous history in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and elsewhere. I'm not much of a history buff. Even religious history is interesting to me only so far as there's a clear relevance to our life today. But there are a lot of good stories about the Celts (some of which may actually have happened), and I may continue to see what other ones I can find.
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