CELTS, the earliest Aryan settlers in Europe according to the common theory. They appear to have been driven west ward by succeeding waves of Teutons, Slavonians, and others, but there are no means of fixing the periods at which any of these movements took place. Herodo tus mentions them as mixing with the Iberians who dwelt round the river Ebro in Spain. At the beginning of the his toric period they were the predominant race in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, Switzerland, northern Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. The Romans called them generally Galli, that is, Gauls or Gael. They appear to have reached the zenith of their power in the 2d and 3d centuries B. c. Some tribes of them, overrunning Greece, settled in a part of Asia Minor, to which the name of Galatia was given. They finally went down before the resistless power of Rome, and either became absorbed with the conquering races or were cooped up in the extreme N. W. of Europe. At an early date the Celts divided into two great branches, speaking dialects widely differing from each other, but doubtless belonging to the same stock. One of these branches is the Gadhelic or Gaelic, represented by the Highlanders of Scot land, the Celtic Irish, and the Manx; the other is the Cymric, represented by the Welsh, the inhabitants of Cornwall, and those of Brittany. The Cornish dialect
is now extinct.
The sun seems to have been the prin cipal object of worship among the Celts, and groves of oak and the remarkable circles of stone commonly called "Druid ical Circles," their temples of worship. All the old Celts seem to have possessed a kind of literary order called Bards. The ancient Irish wrote in a rude al phabet called the Ogham; later they employed the Roman alphabet, or the Anglo-Saxon form of it. The chief litera ture existing consists of the hymns, mar tyrologies, annals, and laws of Ireland, written from the 9th to the 16th cen turies. The Scottish Gaelic literature extant includes a collection of manu scripts in the Advocates' Library, Edin burgh, some of which date from the 12th century; the "Book of the Dean of Lis more," 16th century; a number of songs from the 17th century to the present day; and the so-called poems of Ossian. The Welsh literary remains date from the 9th century, and consist of glossa ries, grammars, annals, genealogies, his tories, poems, prose tales, etc.