MYSTERIOUS CELTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 284, 4 December 1935, Page 6

MYSTERIOUS CELTS

what was their origin? clue of the pins j Ike ha uil . o f Celt ha. been used to , •'••■Mgnate ;he big red men of el as ,ieuj I ■ Jthor>, the short round heads described ■ many Ireneh writers, the oval-faeed 'ngheads v. ,th dark hair and biown or " British description.-. U a sOr "• Fleure in the the wX G "“ r,llan - An 'l a visit to ti(i . ■ , < Uicklv confirms the seieui vnelusion that its inhabitants mdude mane lng redients that have come . .. biological gult "X ;™ ‘>lt and >oI The origin. the i eitic languam-. ami their associated traditions are” a 'T cu 1 su, ’j«t, though some knowI a"’" 11 01 Jaie .'ears, thank--irogu tile stu.lv of distribution of | -n- ol antiquities. In Mesopotaium i *' —m ( — ,r mr regions beyond the East I. r n .Meull. riaoean men dieovened how work metal, and esjieeiallv how to make bronze, ami this great art spread m our Europe:,„ |; r „ uze a ft( _ r .Hout B.i .. and led to a great en «, i,,cnt *’ r i’fe rt, at did not ever, - I here go on continuously to th e present nay, partly because about the ninth ■ ng.iti! e ntury B. i . ou r continent •■•<‘T»red iron- a long succession of cold ''i. seasons, the famous Fimbul winter or rhe Norse legends. Ere that time metallurgy had been =o developed that iron could be worked, there was a difficulty ' ; I boul ’ r naming if. an d. for example 1 about Jim. j;. , . Ihe we| . ( , I a.d.. to keep the Israelites in subjection >y allowing no smith in the land. I 'I-’ t l ''' advanced peoples of the eat the growth of -•'■it in iron did nor make bronze » r o out be cast into line | .'.mp.-s, h „d at |,. a , t trom 120 fl Bt . oj , wards safety-pins, or fibulae, of bronze became a mark of culture. When the ver West began to recover t.’Hi: the eojtl seasons, perhaps after -. ’ .. it was naturally as disposed ... receive -Mediterranean ideas as the j natives of Africa now are to receive | guns :tn .l spirits that are leading eat “ r <?s Of European vulture. The safe- ’ V pin. among many other features, thus st. Cu linear lesig s • ia'-..-aI ai.-u spread west and gave us the Thames shield, one of the major rre;t'un < ot the British -Museum. Within three larger circles worked in raised outline are elaborate patterns of curves to. using ~n twenty-seven small circles • onta’ning figures nearlv like the swastika. each being on a background of red enamel which sets off the bronze of the 'h.e.Li in striking fashion. The shield wa«- made at some time in the last two | •‘•’ituric- B. an.l the idea of the beautiful vurves was carried to Ireland, to find expression later on in the famous Irish manuscripts such as the book ot Kells. Instead of covering pages with gold, or writing in gold, silver, or red. the artist who wrote the gospels that make up the Book of Kells deI signed wonderful capital lettens. imI prc-.*i\e because of the elaboration of their curve-. This treasure of the eighth .•■eniury A.D. is now in the librarv of • Trinity < dllege. Dublin. ■ But let us return to safety-pins, uliich are su>-h useful dues because thvv got lost casually, as brooyhes still ■ i ». rhey spread from South Germany to Franco, east of Paris, and thence to South England in rhe fifth, fourth, and third centuries B. and our legendary histories mention, for about these dates, new connections established between Britain and Segin, Duke of the Allobroges in Gaul. No doubt the people who sprea.l. or caught, ideas in the West at that time spoke a Celtic- language. and Rhine and Danube are among the <’eltic names that abound in South Germany. Further back than the early Iron Age •f South Germany, ahour the ninth > en-

U,-V ’ VVe Can on J y halting steps. 1 he period of cold, wet, summers had impoverished an old-established! peu.-antry in South Germany and given the advantage to stock-raisers spreading apparently from the south-east; it' n;u! also caused the Swiss lakes tn rise and flood out iae pile villages of the Bronze Age. How far was it the old and impoverished folk, and how far the conquerors that formed the Celtic languages? If we. realise that we are dealing here less with a military conquest than with the spread of sto*ck-rearing peoples, we shall understand that women, as well as men were involved, and so the stock-raisers may have contributed much to the resulting language. Y et by analogy we may infer that many a herder took unto himself the damsels of the older folk, and that these danisels who became mothers taught sometiling of the old forms of speech to their babe*. Uu-ltic South Germanv spread its influence to Catalonia in Spain, where Celtic place names in -acus arose in a prehistoric period which, to judge from pottery and other evidences of kinship with South Germany, was before the seventh century B. C. A later, more mixed wave, whivli we can associate most probablv with the spread of safe-ty-pins already mentioned, undoubtedly used alid helped to spread in Britain a Celtic speech related to Welsh and Breton. What of Gaelic and Erse? Rhys, Peake. Esyn Evans and others think that the basal element of these languages spread to their present homes across Britain through the influence of conquerors, perhaps the swordsmen who seem to have played a great part in the life of Europe in the latter part of the Bronze Age. Kuno Meyer believed they came to Ireland from Fiance, barely touching Britain, which as Ekwall savs, lacks Gaelic place names save, in Scotland. It is nrobablc that Gaelic and

Erse are the local offsprings of a marriage between an early form of Celtic and some old language of a stage before the influence of the long-lipped folk of Central Europe had spread far. It is difficult to say how old these languages are in Ireland. They have been thought to go back to the dawn of the Bronze Age, hut it may be suggested that there is a good deal evidence of a revival in the last three centuries B. C. of the maritime intercourse that had been characteristic along Atlant shores nearly 2000 years earlier. North-western Spain, Western Brittany, Western Britain, and parts of Ireland share features of culture of the days a little before the Romans, andone cannot but recall the of sea-faring Veneti.