CELTIC NATIONS, one of the groups of the great Aryan (q.v.) family.
Languages.—in addition to the English, and retreating before it, there are at present four languages spoken in the British isles—the Irish, the Highland Scotch (or Gaelic), the Manx, in the isle of Man—all three nearly related to one another, and constituting the northern (Erse, Gadhelic) branch of the Celtic languages; whilst the fourth language, the Welsh, constitutes, together with the Cornish of Cornwall (extinct since 1778) and the Bas Breton of Brittany, the southern (Briton, Cymric, Cambric) branch. The remains of the language of the Gauls or Celts, the ancient inhabitants of France, closely resemble the British and Gadhelic idioms; hence the name Celtic languages has been applied to the whole of them. The Celtic idioms belong to the Indo-German (Aryan) family, as their numerals show. Compare The Gaulish was nearer to the Cymric branch, its numerals 4 and 5 having been petor, pempe. There are a few Gaulish inscriptions which show a declension with full inflec tions; in old Irish, five eases still exist, but the terminations are very much mutilated; in Welsh, they have disappeared. Thus, the Gaulish name Segomaros is declined: gen. -ri, dat. -ru, ace. -ron; the old Irish. fer, a man, has the gen. fir, dat. fiur, sec. fer, voe. fir; whilst the correspondent Welsh gwr is inflexible. Hence it follows that the pseudo simplicity of the 'Welch is the result of grammatical decay, common in all Aryan languages. and does not at all warrant Latham's theory, that the Celts branched off from the primitive Indo-German nation before the development of case inflections.
Ilistory. —Of the separation of the Celts from the other Aryans or Indo-Germans, and their early migrations to western Europe; no record has come down, the stories about Milesian colonies in Ireland, and migrations from Troy into Wales, being simply monk ish fictions. At the dawn of history, we find the Gauls occupying France (Gallia), which was divided into Aquitania, between the Pyrenees and Garonne; Gallia Celtica proper, between Garonne and Seine; and Belyica, from the Seine to the Rhine. The land about the Rhone being more early conquered by the Romans than the rest, was set apart by them under the name of Gallia Xarbonensis. or Gatlin Lugdanensis (from the towns Narbo and Lugdunum, Narbonne and Lyon). The whole of the four was called Gaul beyond the Alps (Gallia Transalpina). A great many tribes of Gauls had settled in Lombardy, where they founded Mediolanum (Milan), and which therefore took the name Gallia, Cisalpina (Gaul this side the Alps). Other Gauls had penetrated into Spain, where they became mixed with the native Iberians, and thus gave rise to the Celtiberians about the river Iberus (Ebro). Numerous hosts migrated across the Rhine, occupied southern Germany and Bohemia, and, following the course of the Danube, sonic invaded Thrace and Greece (278 n c.); but being repelled, the main body of them settled in Asia Minor, in the province called after them Galatia. The Romans found the Gauls at first very formidable enemies; Rome itself was burned by them (389 n.c.), but gradually the Romans conquered first Gallia Cisalpina (222), then Gallia Narbonensis (112), and lastly, Caesar subjected all France (52 n.c.), after which the Gauls soon became Rotnanized. The Gauls of Asia Minor, for a long time the terror of all the neighbor
hood, were defeated by the Romans (187), and their land finally made a province of the empire (25 n.c.).—The Britons (Britanal; Welsh, Brython) were little known before Cresar's two unsuccessful expeditions into Britannia; the country was conquered by the Roman gen. Agricola (78-84 A.D.), who secured the new province against the inroads of the Caledonians of Scotland by a fortification across the Scotch lowlands, between the Forth and the Clyde, afterwards removed by the emperor Hadrian further south ward, to between Solway firth and the mouth of the Tyne. The Britons were so much influenced by Roman civilization—they were also early converted to Christianity—that the heathen Angles and Saxons, who conquered them in the 5th and 6th centuries, called them Welsh; a name which, with the other Teutons, applies to all nations speak ing languages of Latin descent. A few of the Britons maintained their independence in Cornwall, Cumberland, and in the mountains of Wales. On the last, the name Welsh was ultimately fixed by the English; they themselves, however, called their nation Cpnro, pl. Cyntry (a compound of cm with, in common, and bro, land = having a common country, countrymen, in contradistinction to the foreign invader), a name which has nothino. to do with Cimbri and Cimmerii. The Welsh remained independent under different petty princes till 1282, when Edward I. conquered them. A part of the Britons went over in the 4th c. to France, where they took possession of Brittany, which maintained a doubtful independence under dukes of its own till about 1500.— Whether the Caledonians, the oldest inhabitants of Scotland, were Celts of the Cymric or Erse branch, is unknown. After the 3d c., their name disappears, and we hear, instead, of the Scoti and Picti. As to the latter, the same doubt prevails; but the Seoti were emi grants from Ireland, both Se,:tas and Gadhelus being common national names of the old Irish. From Gadhel, the modern Gael, Gaelic is derived, which has nothing to do with the name of the Galli.—Ireland (Hibernia, whence the modern Eirinn is derived), enters into the light of history with its conversion to Christianity by St. Patrick (460). The four centuries following on this event are the brightest period in its history. Ireland was then the seat of piety and learning, and sent forth numerous missionaries, by whom many monasteries, centers of civilization, were founded—as Iona, in Scotland, by Columba (563); St. Gall, by Gallus (615); Wiirzburg, by Kilian (687). In the 7th c., we find Irish bishops at Ratisbon; and Virgillus (Feargal), (died 784), bishop of Salzburg, played no small part in the ecclesiastical history of Germany. But lreland remained politically divided among many princes, and so became an easy prey of those "black heathens' the Scandinavians, whose invasions began '795, and who founded Norse kino.doms at Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, etc. In the tierce battles between the two nations, the prosperity of Ireland rapidly declined, and the English conquest (1171) only completed the ruin.—The isle of Man, inhabited by a branch of the Irish, after having been subject to Welsh, Scotch, Norse princes in turn, acknowledged England's sover eignty in 1344.