A Brief History of the Celts (15 page)

Elen decide to leave Gaul with her children and go back to Britain where she began to work assiduously on behalf of the Christian Church. Place-names attesting to her influence include various
Llanelens. Elen occupied a position that caused Celtic leaders, even in the Isle of Man, to acknowledge her as a source of their sovereignty. Certainly her sons and daughters founded dynasties. Leo
became king of the Cantii; Cystennin ruled at Segontium in Gwynedd; Owain is said to be ancestor of the kings of Glywsing (South Wales); Demetus founded the dynasty which ruled Dyfed; Antonius is
claimed as ancestor of the kings of the Isle of Man. Plebig became a disciple of St Ninian. Her daughter Sevira married Vortigern, the famous king ruling at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion.
His son, Brydw, was blessed by St Germanus of Auxerre during one of his visits to Britain.

Elen’s home is said to have been at Dinas Emrys, a fortress which can still be seen at Bedgelert. We are told by Nennius that Dinas Emrys played a central part in the overthrow of
Vortigern, who was regarded as betraying Britain to the Anglo-Saxons. It is named after Emrys (Ambrosius) who is said to have toppled Vortigern. At one time scholars tried to prove that Emrys was
the real historical figure of Arthur. However, Arthur and Emrys, in historical record, are clearly two different people. Elen Luyddog was undoubtedly dead by the time Vortigern emerged as the
‘overlord’ of southern Britain.

Women have played a prominent part in Celtic life, from the mother goddess and the pantheon of female deities down to a whole range of powerful historical female leaders, priestesses
and Christian saints. Their role did not stop with the coming of Christianity but continued into medieval times among the insular Celts. As has been pointed out before, a unique piece
of ‘feminist’ literature emerges from twelfth-century Ireland in the form of the
Banshenchas
, a book on the genealogies of leading woman. In fact, this could be claimed as the
first European book about women in their own right.

CELTIC FARMERS

T
he economic backbone of Celtic society, which was essentially rural like most ancient societies, was in its farms. Celtic farmers were part of a
continuum which archaeologists can trace back to the Bronze Age. Archaeology disproves the popular notion of the Celts being an itinerant people, constantly travelling Europe in great hordes,
attacking and looting as they went. Both agricultural and pastoral farming were practised and indeed became highly sophisticated as the Celts combined their technology with other rural knowledge
and skills. They were a long way removed from the picture that Caesar would have us believe when he speaks of the British Celts in these propaganda terms: ‘. . . many of the inland Britons do
not grow corn. They live on milk and flesh and are clothed in skins.’

In fact, Celtic farmers, in whatever part of the ancient Celtic world they lived, could have taught the Romans a few lessons on farming. Their wheeled transport was superior to the Romans’
and their technology allowed them to produce the first harvesting machine; the Celtic plough, fitted with a
mobile coulter, was greatly superior to the Roman swing plough of
the same period.

The plough, of course, was the very basis of agriculture. The earliest picture of a Celtic plough is found in a rock carving in the Val Camonica, north of Milan, where the Celts had settled from
the start of the Hallstatt period. The Camonica rock carvings are an excellent source of information on the Celts and show the first known rendition of the Celtic god Cernunnos together with
wagons, scenes of hunting and so forth. Some of the carvings date from the seventh century
BC
.

Double ploughing, running a plough twice across the field, seemed a common practice in early European societies for the plough did not entirely turn the sod. However, innovative Celtic
technology provided the plough with a coulter, a sharp knife attached to the plough beam which made a vertical cut through the soil at the same time that the share made the horizontal cut and thus
the soil was turned over upon itself.

The Celts developed iron shares while their neighbours continued to use wooden ones. The iron provided the Celts with, literally, an ‘edge’ over their neighbours. The plough was
often pulled by two yoked oxen and by this means they were able to open up vast tracts of arable land. The Celtic farmers would penetrate regions previously impossible to plough and cultivate.

Among the British Celts, the iron share and coulter, plus the practice of crop rotating and manuring, seemed to mark a major change in intensive farming before the end of the second century
BC
. Land was being cleared at an unprecedented rate and some areas, such as marshy, clay soil valleys, were actually being drained and brought under the plough. When the
Romans arrived in Britain, in total contradiction to Caesar’s assertions, a patchwork of hedged, fenced or walled fields, with others delineated by ditches, and smaller woodlands, would have
been the landscape seen by the invaders. In
other words, the countryside was not too dissimilar to what we see today.

Throughout the Celtic world the intensive exploitation of agricultural land required manuring to ensure that the soil remained fertile. Classical writers attest to the fertilisation of lands by
Celtic farmers using lime and marl, which is a limey clay.

Essential to this agricultural progress was the development of the wheel, and the general purpose wagon and other wheeled machinery helped Celtic farmers to make rapid advances. They evolved the
first harvesting machine, the
messor
, later called
vallus
by the Romans. According to Pliny, this was a ‘big box, the edges armed with teeth and supported by two wheels,
which moved through the cornfield pushed by an ox rather; the ears of corn were uprooted by the teeth and fell into the box.’ A stone relief found in Brussels is the best representation of
this Celtic harvesting machine.

The introduction of iron obviously helped farmers in that sickles, scythes, spades, forks, axes and billhooks became more powerful and sophisticated. The former socketed hafting was now replaced
by shaft-holes, while cutting tools were attached to their handles by means of a sharp spike on the tool going into a wooden handle or haft. The hand tools which we still use today were all
anticipated by Celtic craftsmen at least by the first century
BC
.

The Celtic farmers grew a large variety of crops and these depended on what area of the Celtic world they farmed. Mainly they produced cereals, notably several varieties of wheat such as emmer,
spelt and bread wheat. Millet was a major crop in Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul; this was a gramina-ceous plant giving a crop of nutritious seeds. The species of millet called panicum, or panic, was a
particular Celtic crop of the Po valley. Barley, rye and oats were produced as well as fibrous plants, such as hemp and flax, the latter grown not only for linen to make clothes but for oil as
well.

Crops like pulses, beans, peas and lentils, were also grown. From archaeological evidence, we find that a wide variety of fruits and berries were cultivated. While in
northern Celtic climates, from the sixth century
BC
, wine was imported from Etruscan and Greek sources, and later from Roman merchants, it appears that the Celts of the Po
valley and then the Celts of southern Gaul soon began to cultivate the vine and produce their own wines. Even in southern Britain during the Roman occupation, there is evidence of vines being
cultivated and wine produced. The Saluvii of southern Gaul also started to grow olives. Archaeologists have found the presence of olive and grape presses at the Saluvii capital of Entremont.

Corn was ground by circular millstones which were turned by hand, and then dried in kilns or stored in large granaries. These querns were often worked by two people, sitting facing each other,
passing the handle or both handles from one to another. Even so quern grinding was tedious work, for it would take about an hour to grind 5 kilograms of meal in this fashion. This type of grinding
was found throughout the Indo-European world; an ancient word in Irish for the quern was
meile
, cognate with
melyn
in Welsh,
mola
in Latin and
mylen
in
Anglo-Saxon.

Where the Celts had water power they adopted the water mill. In the
Dindshenchas
there is a story of how the water mill supposedly came to Ireland. We are told that King Cormac mac Art
(said to have reigned
AD
254–277) fell in love with a woman whose job was grinding corn. In order to relieve her from her task, the king sent ‘across the
sea’ for a millwright (
saer-muilinn
) and asked him to construct a mill on a stream called the Nith (Ir.
nemnach
, sparkling) beside the royal palace at Tara. Whether this is
true or not, water mills were in general use in Ireland by this time.

In a world without refrigeration, storage was an essential in case of crop failure, war or some other disaster. The Celts were great salt producers and salting was their chosen method
of preservation, especially of meats. Celtic salt pork, from Gaul, was an early export to the peoples of the Italian peninsula.

The main method of storage was by the use of pits. A large number have been found and for a long time they provided archaeologists with a problem. Charred grain had been discovered in many of
them but the idea that such holes in the ground could be safely used to store grain or vegetables in a dry condition seemed nonsensical. However, experiments, particularly those at the Butser
Celtic Farm, Hampshire, suggest that if the pit was sealed, the grain in contact with the damp walls would germinate, using available oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. This would cause the rest
of the grain to go into a form of suspended animation so that it lasted in perfect condition for many months.

These pits are often called souterrains and in Cornwall they are given the Cornish name
fougou
, meaning a subterranean chamber. There are similar structures in Ireland, also called
souterrains. These are built of dry-stone walling surmounted by large lintels forming the roof. Some of them are quite lengthy in that the passages connect with elaborate small chambers. Those at
Carn Euny, Sancreed and Boleigh, in Cornwall, are good examples that have survived. While local folklore imagined all sorts of dark practices taking place within these narrow passages and chambers,
they were nothing more than winter storage places.

As well as agriculture, the Celts practised pastoral farming. They kept sheep, cattle and pigs, but their varieties were very different from modern-day domestic farm animals. The bones of sheep
discovered by archaeologists show that the breeds kept by the Celtic farmers were small and goat-like, rather like the modern Soay sheep from St Kilda, in Scotland. The wool of this breed is short,
coarse and usually dark. They were exploited for their wool and milk rather than meat. The production of woollen goods from Britain was well known in
Caesar’s time for
such items were part of a thriving export business from Britain to Rome.

The cattle – the now extinct Celtic Shorthorn, which was smaller than modern breeds – were also bred to produce powerful oxen for pulling ploughs and wagons. The modern Dexter cattle
seem to be the closest approximation of the early breeds used by the Celts. Physical knowledge is based on archaeological finds of bones at Celtic sites and settlements. From this we know that
cattle were not only draught animals but supplied meat and milk. Cattle occur as the most frequent of domestic animals. Certainly, from early Irish literary sources we find that the number of his
cattle was the indicator of the wealth and social status of a man and his family. Early Irish units of exchange were based on a
séd
, which was the value of one milch cow. Three
séd
made a
cumal
, being the value of three milch cows. A
cumal
was also a unit of land measurement.

Because of the importance of cattle in Celtic society, bulls played a major role in Celtic culture. Images of bulls begin to appear in the Hallstatt culture and they are frequently connected
with sacrificial rituals, one of which is mentioned by Pliny. We have already referred to the royal
tarbhfeis
, or bull ritual, in connection with kingship. This is described in the
Serglige Con Culainn
and
Togail Bruidne Da Derga
. The significance of bulls can be seen in insular Celtic mythology, particularly the Irish saga of the
Táin Bó
Cuailgne
. Over forty images of mystic three-horned bulls have been discovered in Gaul together with a relief showing what appears to be a deity called the ‘Bull with the Three
Cranes’ – Tarvos Trigaranus – from Paris. In this inscription, the Celtic word for bull is recognisable, cognate to old Irish
tarb
and Welsh
tarw
, also the word
tri
(three) and the Welsh cognate
garan
for crane.

Pigs were the second most common domesticated animals in the Celtic world. Pigs and boars came to have a religious significance among the Celts and they were assigned to aristocrats
as part of their grave goods. Pigs also play a prominent role in insular Celtic literatures. In the Welsh epics, Pryderi possesses a herd of pigs acquired from Arawn who ruled Annwfn,
the Otherworld. In Irish myth, in the story of
Scéla mucce Meic Dathó
, we find the dissection of a gigantic pig playing an important role. Celtic warriors also appear with
symbols of boars on their helmets, and sculptures of boars and pigs occur frequently in Celtic art. The boar became one of the royal symbols among the early Irish kings.

Horses and dogs were bred for both hunting and warfare. There seems no trace of the use of donkeys and mules before contact with the Italian peninsula. Chickens and cats were also found in
Celtic farmsteads. Caesar says of the British Celts: ‘Hares, fowl, and geese they think it unlawful to eat, but rear them for pleasure and amusement.’