CELTS (kelts). Long before the Christian era, while Rome was still a small struggling state, the whole of northwestern Europe was inhabited by a group of war like tribes belonging to the great race called Celts.
Their original home is unknown, but they may have come from the distant steppes beyond the Caspian Sea. At the birth of the Roman republic, they had overrun and settled all the region north of the Alps and west of the Weser River, taking possession of the upper Danube valley, crossing the channel to settle Great Britain and Ireland, and penetrating into Spain.
The iron swords of the Celts carried terror even into Italy and Greece. In 390 B.C. the Celtic Gauls sacked Rome itself and long held the fertile valley of the River Po. Celtic bands from Thrace and Macedonia pillaged the shrine of the great oracle at Delphi in 279 B.C., and crossed over into Asia Minor, where they founded the kingdom of Galatia; it was to their descendants that St. Paul, three centuries later, addressed his Epistle to the Galatians.
Now turn the pages of history forward a thousand years. What has become of the once powerful Celts? They have virtually disappeared as an independent people. Cisalpine Gaul (in Italy) was conquered by Rome (222 B.c.), Julius Caesar had led his legions over the Alps, the short sword and spear of the legionaries had beaten down the long sword of the Gallic warriors, and the whole of Gaul had become a Roman province (58-51 B.c.). Four centuries later the German tribes from beyond the Elbe had pushed westward, the Celts had been driven out of the Rhine valley, and the Franks had conquered—but not Germanized—the Gallo-Romans.
At an earlier date the Carthaginians had overpowered the Celts in Spain. Across the English Channel the Celtic Britons had been enslaved or driven into the remoter parts of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders (5th to 7th centuries, A.D.).
Only on the fringes of Europe did the Celts manage to maintain their racial traits and their language— in Brittany, in Wales, in the highlands of Scotland, in the Isle of Man, and in Ireland. Everywhere else
their individuality was lost or merged in that of their conquerors. The very qualities which lend such charm to Celtic literature—intense poetical imagina tion, romantic fervor, rapid change of mood—made the Celtic peoples less fit to cope with the ruder but more practical and more resolute peoples that overwhelmed them and drove them irresistibly back toward the Atlantic.
It is chiefly in the above-named regions today that we find such traces of the Celtic peoples as have survived—especially the Erse, Manx, Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton languages, and the Celtic folklore.
Some few words in English, French, and other modern languages show Celtic origin, and it is possible to trace in modern peoples some of the physical char acteristics of these once powerful tribes.
The name " Celtic Renaissance" (rebirth) has been given to the revival of interest, in the past 60 or 70 years, in the languages, literatures, and history of these peoples. The movement has been especially strong in Ireland, where it has led to a revival of lace-making and other art industries, and the writing and performance of plays with Celtic-Irish themes, as well as a movement for political independence.
The study of Celtic languages and literatures is now a part of the work of most great universities of Europe and America.
The priestly class of the ancient Celts were called "Druids," and their religion is known as Druidism. Little is known of the Druids, because they did not allow any of their lore to be written out but transmitted it all by word of mouth. Caesar records that they were judges as well as priests. They held the oak and the mistletoe as especially sacred and usually performed their mysterious rites in the depths of oak forests. The many ancient stone monuments and circles scattered over the lands they inhabited were formerly ascribed to the Druids, but scientists now believe that these remains date back to pre-Celtic times.