Arthur and the "Celtic"
Introduction
In our contemporary culture, the word “Celtic” has come to describe a
bewildering array of themes and motifs. The word is used in scholarly fields such
as linguistics, history and archaeology but is also applied to popular forms of
music and jewellery, and even to rather esoteric aspects of New Age beliefs and
practices. But just what does it mean when something is described as “Celtic”?
How are such ideas used and to what purpose?
One of the greatest figures of Celtic lore is unquestionably Arthur. And it could
be argued that the Medieval and the Celtic come together no more powerfully
than in his person. This study examines two works of Arthurian romance – the
15th century Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory and the late 20th century
The Mists of Avalon by fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley – and thereby
attempts to shed light on the Celtic, how it is employed and to what end. A limit
must be set on the scope of this investigation, indeed not to would broaden it far
beyond any sensible confines, for “Celtic” truly can be “all things to all men”.
Accordingly, only two significant, and strongly related, uses of the Celtic will be
examined. The first is “Celtic = Paganism”, meaning the use of the Celtic to
depict the pre-Christian culture, rituals and practices of those peoples of antiquity
identified by classical writers such as Hecataeus and Herodotus as Keltoí. This
includes any more modern reconstructions of these peoples and cultures. The
second is “Celtic = „Other‟”, which involves the use of the Celtic to denote and
illustrate otherness, whether it is the primary person (or culture) being identified
as Celtic, in opposition to his or her contemporaries, or vice versa.
Celtic = Paganism
One thousand years after the historical era generally associated with Arthur, Sir
Thomas Malory penned his masterwork Le Morte d’Arthur. He drew from the
predominately French sources available to him, which “in contrast to the oldest
Celtic stories” of “the Welsh and Breton traditions”, portray Arthur as “a
Christian feudal ruler in the medieval style” (Meier Dictionary 24). Malory‟s
Arthur and the society and culture in which he lives are thoroughly Christian.
However, even though Malory would hardly have imagined that his stories could
have contained such things, according to modern scholarship, symbols and
motifs from the largely forgotten pre-Christian era in Britain are present and
identifiable in his work.
For example, near the end of Malory‟s text (during Camelot‟s “civil war”), it is
revealed that
Sir Gawain [had] such a grace and gift that an holy man had given to him,
that every day in the year, from undern till high noon, his might increased
those three hours as much as thrice his strength (Malory II 500).
Launcelot realises this and is able to hold on until afternoon in his combat with
Gawain, after which “Sir Gawaine had no more but his own might” (500). The
ancient Celts, like any largely agricultural society, had a strong awareness of the
natural world, being directly dependent upon it for their day-to-day survival. The
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sun was, of course, central to this, and whether or not it was directly
worshipped1, it may be assumed that it played a pivotal rôle in their
understanding of the world in which they lived and the forces active within it.
Gawain‟s waxing and waning strength can be seen as a remnant from an older
story relating to a representative solar figure, rather hurriedly sanctified through
the blessing of “an holy man”.
A comparable reference can be seen in the episode where Arthur “drew his
sword Excalibur, but it was so bright in his enemies‟ eyen, that it gave light like
thirty torches” (Malory I 23). Here, Arthur wielding Excalibur very clearly
embodies the “mythic tradition of the luminescent sword”, the origin of which
can be traced to “the weapon of a deity of lightning” (Puhvel 26), a tradition
common amongst Celtic and other pre-Christian societies in Europe.
A further example of Celtic pagan elements within Malory, this time from Irish
mythology, is the “cauldron of plenty”, described as “the great cauldron that is
never without meat, but that has always enough in it to feed the whole world”
(Gregory 135). And in the Welsh tale “Branwen ferch Lŷr” from the
Mabinogion, Bendigeid Vran (Bran) gives Matholwch a cauldron as a special
gift, telling him “the property of which is, that if one of thy men be slain today,
and be cast therein, tomorrow he will be as well as ever he was at the best”
(Guest 37). The parallels with Malory‟s stories of the Holy Grail are striking:
Then there entered into the hall the Holy Grail covered with white samite,
but there was none might see it, nor who bare it. And there was all the
hall fulfilled with good odours, and every knight had such meats and
drinks as he best loved in this world (Malory II 248).
And following an intensely fought duel between Percival and Ector, where both
knights are left close to death,
right so there came by the holy vessel of the Sangreal with all manner of
sweetness and savour; … and forthwithal they both were as whole of hide
and limb as ever they were in their life-days (Malory II 213).
There are numerous other examples of close parallels between episodes in
Malory (and, naturally, other Arthurian sources) and (pagan) Celtic folktales and
mythological themes. In fact, Malory‟s narrative is heavily populated with
elements that can be linked to pagan practices. For example,
the myth of the sword thrown into the water – to be specific, the sword
Excalibur thrown into a lake at King Arthur‟s command – corresponds to
the real life deposition of offerings, including weapons, into watery places
(Darrah ix).
1
Caution should be exercised regarding assumptions of sun worship: “allusions in Greek and
Roman authors have been adduced as evidence that the Celts worshipped the sun itself as a
divinity, but it is possible that this is no more than a cliché of classical ethnography, in which the
worship of the planets was viewed as an indication of ignorant superstition” (Meier Dictionary
256-7).
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The most celebrated example of this is undoubtedly the La Tène site on Lac de
Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where, in 1858,
archaeologists from Zurich found such a profusion of objects, of such
beauty and sophistication, that the second great period of Celtic
civilisation was declared (Delaney Celts 30).
Even the very common theme of “single combat to the death in a forest clearing”
(Darrah 38) can be linked to pagan practices documented in classical times2:
Reliable Roman authors describe how, … until well after the time of
Christ, each successive holder of this strange religious office retained his
high-sounding title of „King of the Woodland Clearing‟ only for as long
as he could defend himself against a murderous attack from a challenger
for his position (Darrah x).
There is much more – names of characters suspiciously similar to known names
of Celtic deities, the prominence of the festival of Pentecost in the narrative, with
its correspondence to the Celtic rights of Beltane (i.e. Mayday), the frequent
occurrence of decapitation possibly linked to ancient “head cults” and so on.
Some 500 years after her predecessor, Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Mists of
Avalon retells many of Malory‟s stories of Arthur from a markedly different
perspective. Where pagan Celtic elements are hidden in Malory behind a veneer
of later medieval imagery, in Bradley‟s work they are stridently explicit and
deliberately placed. Bradley‟s is “an attempt at recapturing the pre-Christian
religion of the British Isles”, made “conjectural”, in her words, “by the
determined efforts of their successors to extinguish all such traces” (Bradley
viii). Due to this regrettable paucity of contemporary sources relating to the
pagan practices of 5th century Britain, Bradley, not unlike Malory, Tennyson and
others, projects much onto Arthur from the popular worldview of her own era, in
her case perhaps best described as a post-Christian neo-paganism based on the
New Age philosophies of the late 20th century. Bradley sensibly avoids using the
word “Celtic” within her text, only employing it once in her acknowledgements,
where she mentions that she read “an enormous volume on the Druids and Celtic
religion” (Bradley vii) whilst researching. But how much of the world she
constructs is recognisably Celtic? And given the scarcity of contemporary
information, is there any way of knowing?
In order to attempt to answer this, one approach is to turn to the late classical
authors who describe the rituals and practices of the Keltoí peoples of continental
Europe. It may then be reasonably supposed that the rituals and practices of the
inhabitants of Britain, during that time and afterwards, could have been broadly
similar.
Bradley‟s work is conveyed powerfully from the standpoint of a number of
women within her narrative. Foremost is Morgaine, sister to Arthur and pagan
priestess of Avalon. Along with Morgause and Viviane, Raven, Nimue and
2
This practice was recorded in regards to a priest-king at Nemi, near Rome.
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others, she is self-assured, emancipated and empowered, in stark contrast to the
Christian Gwenhwyfar. Just what was the place of women and of the feminine in
pre-Christian Celtic society? Many pre-Christian cultures in Europe, including
Celtic ones, venerated goddesses and, often, a supreme Goddess. For example,
the Anglo-Saxons are thought to have worshipped “Nerthus, or Mother Earth”
(Wilson 23) above all else. There is also some evidence that priestesses did exist
in pagan Celtic Europe, such as the “nine virgin priestesses on the island of Seca
off the coast of Armorica” (Chadwick 79), but it is not evident that they wielded
any great power in their society. However, it seems the druids did hold genuine
positions of power and they are almost exclusively male, according to classical
sources3. Bradley carefully differentiates between the male druidic order and the
priestesses of Avalon, conceivably basing this on the available evidence of
precisely such classical references. The striking digression from generally held
scholarly opinion is her empowerment of her pagan female characters. By
comparison, the druids are not much more than bards. But is it reasonable to
assume that a culture that venerates goddesses (especially a supreme Goddess)
and employs priestesses must therefore generally hold women in high esteem?
The honest answer must be, regrettably, no. The Anglo-Saxons mentioned above
are an example of a culture that worshipped a supreme Goddess but nevertheless
remained strongly patriarchal. Meier goes even further:
The idea of woman [sic] occupying a strong position among the Celts or
even of a Celtic matriarchy only emerged in the 19th C, and is based in
part on the projection of stories about mythical figures such as Macha,
Medb, Rhiannon or Scáthach onto social reality (Meier Dictionary 288).
It seems, then, that Bradley is following a common but rather modern tradition,
prevalent since the 19th century and still very widespread in the “pseudo-Celtic”
of modern times, where women in an imagined Celtic society are afforded
positions of power, often as witches, priestesses, seeresses or prophetesses.
A particularly prominent and overtly pagan episode in The Mists of Avalon
occurs when Arthur as the soon-to-be-crowned king is adorned with antlers and
takes the rôle of “The Horned One”, hunting down the king stag and killing it
(Bradley 198-209). The stag hunt occurs frequently in Celtic mythology, e.g.:
One day Finn and his people were hunting on Slieve Fuad, and a stag
stood against them for a while and fought with his great rough horns, and
then he turned and ran (Gregory 274).
In Bradley‟s text, Arthur is “the chosen one … tested by the ancient rite”
(Bradley 197). Once he has passed this test, he “will become the Horned One, the
King Stag, consort of the Virgin Huntress” (197). Morgaine as priestess of
Avalon is chosen as representative of the Mother Goddess Ceridwen4 and she
and Arthur come together in sexual union, the “Great Marriage” (197). There is
good reason to believe that such “sacred marriages” did indeed play a part in
3
See Chadwick 78-83. Later Irish sources identify druidesses (bandruaid).
Ceridwen is the Welsh name of a “sorceress who prepares drinks in a magic cauldron which
give the gift of poetic powers to the drinker” (Meier Dictionary 69) but, more importantly, often
the name used by New Age neo-pagans to address the supreme Goddess.
4
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Celtic religion, the term referring to “the idea that the king is the spouse of a
goddess or of the female personification of the country” (Meier Dictionary 240).
Although the sacred marriage motif “is particularly prevalent in the Irish
literature of the Middle Ages and the early modern period” (240), it is unclear
how important it actually was in pre-Christian times. There is, however, evidence
of the same practice in many cultures, even “as early as the Sumerians” (240).
We cannot know if Bradley‟s description of this event is close to what may have
happened but her clever combining of two quintessentially Celtic motifs (the stag
hunt and the sacred marriage) to construct a powerfully pagan ritual is as good a
guess as anyone‟s! Even more cleverly, she uses it to explain the siring of
Arthur‟s son Mordred, thereby weaving the explicitly pagan back into the
traditional Arthurian story.
By examining pagan themes in Malory and Bradley, we discover a fundamental
difference between their works, which greatly illuminates the difference in which
the native, pagan Celtic past was viewed in the late Middle Ages compared to
how it is viewed in modern times. The pagan motifs in Malory are largely
forgotten, concealed under multiple layers of later embellishment and adaptation,
an indication of the evolution of the Arthurian narrative over many centuries and
via a number of cultural traditions. In Bradley‟s text a reconstructed paganism is
central to the story. Concealed layers of meaning are removed in favour of
explicit reconstruction. By doing this, Bradley invents a world that seems, to the
modern reader, at least partially historically plausible and which is, to many, very
appealing. Appealing, because it is largely a projection of modern ideas and
longings. It is, in essence, the same world evoked by the Celtic Romanticism of
the past two centuries that conjures up “a host of images: memories of gold and
music, of bards, princes and Druids, of fighting, talking and horsemanship”
(Delaney Celts 15).
Celtic = “Other”
Whether he existed as an historical character or not, the person of Arthur is
generally accepted to be a late 5th century British military leader during the time
of upheaval between the collapse of centralised Roman rule in Britain (usually
given as 410, the year Rome ceased supporting her legions in Britain) and the
establishment of permanent fiefdoms on the island of Britain by the invading
Angles, Jutes and Saxons. Under Arthur‟s leadership, the native Britons enjoyed
a brief period of hegemony over the invading Germanic tribes.
One thousand years after this “historic” Arthur, at the other end of the Middle
Ages, Sir Thomas Malory created his Le Morte d’Arthur, which has become the
central Arthurian text in the English language.
The ubiquitous Wikipedia provides us with a useful definition:
The term Celts refers to any of a number of ancient peoples in Europe
using the Celtic languages, which form a branch of Indo-European
languages, as well as others whose language is unknown but where
associated cultural traits such as Celtic art are found in archaeological
evidence (Wikipedia Celt)
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According to this designation, the “historical” Arthur was (as a member of an
existing native culture in Britain) a Celt, and the society in which he lived Celtic,
albeit with a very significant Roman influence after nearly four centuries of
imperial rule. Now, the very word Keltoí can be understood to mean “the
strangers, the people who are different” (Delaney Legends x). In classical times,
this is precisely how the Celts, on the fringes of the “civilised” world, were
viewed. But is Malory‟s Arthur (and his society) in any way identifiably Celtic
and therefore “other” than the author and his society? Or is there any awareness
in Malory‟s text of a difference between his 15th century England and the
remnant Celtic nations on her fringe?
In his accounts of the exploits of Arthur and his knights, Malory is, of course,
writing about an imagined nobility, existing in an imagined past era in Britain.
The nobility of England in the 15th century was Anglo-Norman, as was much of
the ruling classes at that time in Wales, Cornwall, Lowland Scotland and at least
within the Pale in Ireland. It seems unlikely that it would have occurred to
Malory to associate his Arthur, seen by him as the forefather of the nobility of his
day, in any way at all with the largely subdued nations on England‟s fringes.
Malory‟s Arthur doesn‟t fight any Saxons. His Arthurian traditions had come via
the French and were, superficially at least, not in any way connected with
anything “other” than his own dominant culture. This can be seen time and again
within the text. Although there were “many kings within the realm of England,
and in Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall” (Malory I 60), Arthur is repeatedly
portrayed as superior to these, a “High King” of all Britain and beyond. In
Merlin‟s words, Arthur was destined to be “king of all England, and have under
his obeissance Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, and more realms than I will now
rehearse” (22). Arthur and other characters in the narrative move between Wales,
Logris/England and Cornwall without any apparent sense of “foreignness”
between these domains. Arthur is conceived in Cornwall, born in London, raised
elsewhere in England and crowned in Wales. He resides there for some time in
his castle in Caerleon before moving to Camelot, which, according to Malory‟s
publisher William Caxton, was also a town in Wales (5)5.
However, there is no doubt that the other realms on the island of Britain, i.e.
Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, were seen by Malory as separate lands to his
Arthur‟s England, as can be observed very clearly early in the first book, where
military strategy requires Arthur to “fortify all the fortresses in the marches of
Cornwall” (44) and to “put more knights in all the marches of Wales and
Scotland” (44). Now, a march is “a boundary or debatable strip between two
countries6”, which seems to indicate a very clear differentiation in the author‟s
mind between these different lands. So, although all of the territories of Britain
and even beyond were seen as being held within Arthur‟s demesne, the
constituent parts retained their separate identities, at least geographically. But
Malory does not in general portray them or their inhabitants as being different to
England and the English. Most notably, although Wales is mentioned repeatedly
in the text (more than 50 times), only once is a minor character described as
being Welsh (Malory II 421) and the only attribute one can surmise from his brief
5
Malory himself, however, uniquely equates Camelot with the English city of Winchester
(Malory I 91). The possible significance of this is discussed below.
6
The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary
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cameo is that he is generous (he happily lends his shield to Sir Gareth). Could
this be a sign of the times from Malory‟s late 15th century? There were many
Welshmen prominently involved in the War of the Roses during the 15th century,
most notably those of the Tudor family. With the “Tudor century” on the
threshold, “when the Welsh were hoisted to a temporary pinnacle of prestige”
(Williams 193), was there a greater need to portray the Welsh aristocracy as
being very much the same as the English, eliminating any need (or wish) to
represent the Cymry as “other”?
One possible, and rather amusing, contrast to this homogenisation could be the
frequent references to Cornish knights in the books relating to Sir Tristram. This
great hero of Cornwall repeatedly elicits expressions of dismay from his
vanquished foes, that a knight of Cornwall should have bettered them. So Sir
Ector “now am I ashamed that ever any Cornish knight should overcome me”
(Malory I 337) and Sir Sagramore “for it is seldom seen … that ye Cornish
knights be valiant men of arms”(331) and numerous others. The courage of
Cornish knights in combat seems, then, to be something generally doubted. Why
would this be so? Perhaps because the Cornish had already been largely
contained and subdued by the Anglo-Saxons: they were defeated, along with
their Danish allies, in 838 by Egbert on Hingston Down. After this loss, “there
are no further reliable references suggesting Cornish rulers or independent
Cornish action” (Pearce 253), although it is not until 936 that Athelstan finally
“drove the Cornish out of Exeter and defeated Hywel” and “fixed the River
Tamar as the boundary” (Berresford Ellis 8). The Normans installed an Earl of
Cornwall of their choice shortly after their conquest of England. They included
Cornwall as part of England in 1086 in the Domesday Book. And within a
generation or two of the publishing of Malory‟s book, laws were no longer being
drafted as having jurisdiction in Anglia et Cornubia (Stoyle 30) (i.e. in England
and Cornwall) but rather just in Anglia, with the obvious implication that
Cornwall was, by the late 15th century, fast becoming regarded as a county within
England. However, the “otherness” of the Cornish does not vanish at this point.
Even more than a century later, during her reign, Elizabeth I is said to have been
conversant in the languages of all her subjects, including Cornish. As Stoyle
writes, “that Cornish was one of the languages which the Queen [took] … the
trouble to master is a point of some significance … as late as 1603, the
inhabitants of Cornwall were still widely regarded as a separate ethnic group”
(Stoyle 33). Perhaps because Cornwall was still seen as “other” than England
and because it had long been “tamed”, it could easily be held up to ridicule, and
so it could not be imagined that a Cornish knight could in any way be the equal
of his English (or Welsh) counterpart.
It also seems clear that Tristram was readily identified as a knight of Cornwall,
even before revealing his identity, for example, in his encounter with Sir Kay,
where he is addressed as “Sir knight of Cornwall” (Malory I 60). The most
obvious reason is the “shield of Cornwall” (e.g. 423) which he bears but could
there be another identifier? A clue to this comes when Sir Lamorak encounters
King Mark of Cornwall (without being aware of his identity):
But when Sir Lamorak heard King Mark speak, then wist he well by his
speech that he was a Cornish knight. (Malory II 17)
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It appears that in Malory‟s mind, Cornishmen could be identified as such through
their manner of speech. Malory would have known that the Cornish had their
own language and perhaps had heard (and been amused by?) their attempts at
speaking his mother tongue. Cornish was still the dominant language in Cornwall
in the 15th century, in fact it was at this time that it “was reaching its highest
development” (Berresford Ellis 11)7. This noticeable linguistic difference, along
with the assumption that the Cornish were lacking in valour, gives that people a
distinctiveness that does not seem to be attributed to any Welsh, Breton, Scottish
or even Irish characters within the narrative. It is precisely because the Cornish
are considered part of English society, while not actually being the same as the
English, that their “otherness” is so noteworthy. The Cornish are the “other”
within Malory‟s own 15th century English society.
It is worth noting briefly the relationship between Malory‟s Arthur and the
Anglo-Saxons. Not only is there no mention of Arthur fighting any Saxons, his
court of Camelot is explicitly located at Winchester (Malory I 91), seat of the
greatest of the Old English kings. Malory is the only Arthurian author to equate
these two (Meier Dictionary 55). Is he here subtly creating an harmonious royal
lineage from Arthur‟s time through to his own era, including even the Saxon
kings? This would set him apart from the general tendency of the time:
From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries … Geoffrey of Monmouth‟s
historicization of Arthur … was adopted enthusiastically … throughout
the Anglo-Norman establishment … because it was embedded within an
historical tradition redolent with ancient and prestigious British, as
opposed to Anglo-Saxon, origins to which they could attach themselves
(Higham 265).
In Malory, not even the Saxons are “other” anymore.
Racing forward again into the late 20th century, it is interesting to ask who is
“other” in Bradley‟s The Mists of Avalon. The world of Arthur is presented to the
reader from a pagan Celtic perspective, thereby making that the “home” culture
or worldview of the narrative. It is the Latin Christians, especially the priests,
who are most immediately and obviously “other” to this culture, although they
are, like the Cornish in Malory, an “other” within the same society. It is,
however, the “fairy folk” of Bradley‟s text who are represented most strikingly
through the use of some very typical motifs from Celtic Romanticism, and this is
done in order to highlight their otherness. These fairy folk are a “little and ugly”
(Bradley 182) people who live apart from mainstream society and adhere
exclusively to the pagan ways. It is they who participate in the rituals
surrounding the “sacred marriage” passage (198-209). Their blood is said to
show itself in those of “small, dark” appearance such as Morgaine (182). To
credit fairies with small stature is a relatively modern idea, “of old there were
7
Contrary to popular belief, the Cornish language did not die out in the 18 th century, but rather
survived as a mother tongue into the last years of the 19th century, passing exclusively into the
hands (and mouths) of “revivalists” upon the death of John Davey of Zennor in 1891 (see
Berresford Ellis 20). Hence, there has never been a moment, in all its long history, that the
Cornish language has not been spoken by someone in Cornwall.
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indeed some inhabitants of Faërie that were small (though hardly diminutive),
but smallness was not characteristic of that people as a whole” (Tolkien 6). There
is also the clichéd description of the (Celtic) Welsh as “small and dark, stocky
and a little swarthy” (Delaney Celts 16). Bradley doesn‟t stop with their stature.
In an episode to make that woad-warrior Braveheart proud, blue dye is used by a
fairy woman to paint ritual symbols on Morgaine‟s body for the sacred marriage
ceremony (Bradley 199). And even the otherness of the fairy folk‟s language is
used to great effect, when, as part of the sacred marriage ritual, they sing a song,
“sung in an old language Morgaine could only half understand” (Bradley 204).
This device of the partially (or not at all) comprehended ancient (but native)
tongue is normally reserved for the Celtic languages themselves! In John
Boorman‟s Excalibur, Old Irish is rather surprisingly used for Merlin‟s
incantations (Excalibur was filmed in Ireland). In Braveheart, a handful of
(modern) Scots Gaelic phrases are thrown in, most notably the sluagh-ghairm
(slogan, or war-cry) “Alba gu brath!”. Scotland forever! Here, Bradley uses the
same device, one step further removed: the “fairy folk” are the pre-Celtic
inhabitants of Britain, still singing and conversing in their original pre-Celtic
language in the 5th century. The effect is particularly reminiscent of modern day
Celtic countries, especially Wales, where there are for many, “half understood
hymns sung on ritual occasions” (Williams 196) in “a sacerdotal tongue, a sacred
language” (193).
What we see then, is that where Celtic individuals or societies are depicted in
Malory, it is done unselfconsciously, with any taint of their otherness being
overwhelmed by a stronger sense of commonality between them and the
dominant culture of the narrative. Bradley, conversely, takes a number of
typically Celtic motifs and uses them quite deliberately and conspicuously to
instil her fairy folk with a sense of otherness, age and mystery. Once again, the
Celtic in Malory can be described as concealed and inherited, whereas the Celtic
in Bradley is explicit, reconstructed and very much drawn from modern Celtic
Romanticism.
Conclusion
This investigation has only explored a minute part of the vast Celtic cosmos but
has nevertheless identified certain important aspects of the Celtic. Whereas, in
medieval literature, Celtic themes and motifs are present but obscured, in more
modern times they have become explicitly and deliberately employed. This
parallels the linguistic history of the very word Celtic. Its origins in the Keltoí of
classical writers was followed by centuries of non-use which include all of the
Middle Ages. In fact
even in the early medieval period the Irish, Scots, Bretons and Welsh had
lost all awareness of the continuity of their language and culture with that
of the ancient Celts (Meier Celts 4).
It wasn‟t until the 16th century that the “relationship between the surviving
insular Celtic tongues and the Celts of antiquity” (5) was re-established. And it
was first in the 19th century that
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the romantic revival of the national and regional heritage awoke in the
last speakers of Celtic languages a sense of historical and cultural
community (5).
There are, then, three distinct eras in the history of the Celtic and it is these that
help us to understand its presence and significance through the centuries. Firstly,
there is the era of the Keltoí, antiquity, when “the Celts were primarily the focus
of collective fears” (251), i.e. they were the barbarian or primitive “other” as
viewed from classical society. During the Middle Ages the term ceased to have
any meaning and correspondingly, Celtic motifs or identity can only be
recognised indirectly, concealed under the layers of other, more dominant
cultures. Finally, in modern times, the Celtic reappears “as an ideal screen on
which to project individual and collective yearnings” (251). Once again the
Celtic is depicted as “other”, but this time in a positive, idealised light.
It seems that the Celtic, as we utilise it, is in fact, like the Medieval, a mirror that
we have fashioned and into which we gaze in order to understand ourselves
better. Let us hope then, in spite of our tendency to appropriate such things for
our own purposes, that the culture “which has troubled, fascinated and repeatedly
enriched western civilisation from prehistoric times to the present” (Meier Celts
253) will continue to do so. And long may the Rex Quondam et Futurus, in his
many guises, ever return to aid this!
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Primary Sources
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. St Ives: Penguin Books Ltd;
1993.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d’Arthur Volume I. St. Ives: Penguin Books Ltd;
2004.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d’Arthur Volume II. St. Ives: Penguin Books Ltd;
2004.
Secondary Sources cited
------. The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Melbourne: Oxford University
Press; 1976.
Braveheart. Dir. Mel Gibson. 20th Century Fox; 1995.
Berresford Ellis, P. The Story of the Cornish Language. Penryn: Tor Mark Press;
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