A Brief History of the Celts (19 page)

The Corlea roadway of 148
BC
shows that highly sophisticated planning and organisation were needed, together with a massive quantity of timber and a large labour force.
Oak and birch were the principal woods used in the construction together with alder, elm, hazel and a few yew trees. Birch formed the substructure, supporting the weight of the upper timbers. Oak
planks were put on the birch runners. The roadway was consistently 3–4 metres wide and the oak planks were often carefully adzed to ensure a smooth, flat surface.

To build a roadway crossing a bogland, strong enough to take wagon transport, was a difficult feat in the second century
BC
. The Celtic engineers showed a brilliance of
ingenuity. Professor Barry Raftery, the leading Irish archaeologist, has said:

Corlea is the largest stretch of early Celtic roadway which has survived. But it is not unique. Similar roads have been found in other parts of the Celtic world such as in Dümmer, south of
Oldenburg, in Lower Saxony, where the road, in former peatland, shows remarkable similarities of construction. This survival also seems to date from the second century
BC
.
The oldest Celtic roadways have been found in Gwent, in southern Wales; these are also of wooden construction and are laid across the mudflats adjacent to the Severn. The first of
these to be found, called the Upton track, has been radiocarbon-dated to around 410
BC
.

Evidence for early Irish roads, bridges and causeways abounds in early Irish literature. The five main roads leading to Tara are mentioned in the oldest manuscripts and these were called
slige
, significantly from
sligim
, I hew. Cormac’s Glossary says that such roads were built so that two chariots could pass each other comfortably on the road. These five
great roads were often referred to in the annals as well as other literature. The Slige Asail ran north-westerly; the Slige Mudluachra went northwards from Tara in one direction and southwards in
the other. The Slige Cualan ran south-east through Dublin across the Liffey by the hurdle bridge which still gives the Irish name to Dublin – Baile Atha Cliath, Town of the Hurdle Ford. The
Slige Dála ran south-west from Tara to Ossory, Co. Kilkenny. The fifth road, the Slige Mór, ran south-west from Tara to join the Eiscir Riada, a natural ridge running across the whole
country from Dublin to Galway. Significantly the name means ‘Sandhill of Chariot Driving’.

There is an abundance of terms for a road in old Irish, each name apparently denoting the size and the quality of the road, rather like modern M, A and B categories in England. The ancient Irish
were more particular and used no fewer than seven categories ranging from the
slige
to a
lámrota
, a term for a small byway literally meaning a hand-road, from
lámh
, hand, and
rót
, a small road which is defined as being made for a single-horsed chariot.

The Brehon Laws state that the king or chief of the territory through which the road ran was responsible for its upkeep. If a traveller was injured on the road, compensation had to be paid. If
the traveller himself did damage to the road, he had to pay damages to the king or chief. All roads had to have three major renovations, during the winter, at the time of the fairs or horse racing,
and during a time of war.

There was also a system of bridges and the
Senchus Mór
lays down precise rules on the construction of these bridges. The ancient word in Irish was
droichet
. As well as bridges, causeways or
tóchar
were built. Caesar refers to bridges in Gaul during his conquest of the country.

Long before Caesar’s time, the Latin language had adopted many Celtic words connected with transport and forms of transport, even the measure of distance – a league, entering Latin
as
leuca
or
leaga.

One of the earliest and most popular Celtic words for a chariot entered Latin as
carpentum
. It came from the Celtic root
carbanto
, describing a two-wheeled carriage, and was
later used by the Romans specifically for a baggage wagon. From this evolved such words as carpenter, car and cart in a number of European languages. The original Celtic word may be seen in such
place-names as Carbantorate, Carpentorate and Carbantoritum. Florus uses the word to describe the silver-mounted vehicle in which the Arverni king Bituitus was paraded after his defeat in 121
BC
. By Caesar’s day it was in general use in Latin for a civil vehicle built especially for women.

There was the
carruca
, a four-wheeled carriage, and the
carrus
, a four-wheeled goods wagon. The
essedum
was a war chariot and the warrior who fought from it was an
essedarius
, from the Celtic
ensedo
, implying something for sitting in. The
essedum
became a Roman pleasure vehicle and during the time of Seneca they were all too common
in Rome. Professor Piggott points out that ‘we are in a world where foreign names are in use for wholly Roman vehicles, like nineteenth-century London when gentlemen might discuss the
relative comfort of the beline or landau as against brougham and tilbury.’

The
reda
or
rheda
was a four-wheeled carriage used for long distance journeys, driven by a
redarius
, and the
petorritum
was an open four-wheeled Celtic wagon.
It was Martial, himself an Iberian Celt, who introduced another Celtic loan
word –
covinus
, a war chariot, which eventually became a Roman
covinarius
or travelling cart. The word is from the Celtic
covignos
, implying a shared transport.

Another Celtic term for a wagon,
plaustrum
or
ploxenum
, was applied to a vehicle used among the Cisalpine Gauls. Catullus, Cato, Varro and Virgil all describe it as a heavy
duty wagon drawn by oxen, asses or mules, with disc wheels and iron tyres. Ovid, curiously, says that
plaustrum
was the Celtic name for the constellation Ursus Major (the Great Bear).

Celtic words pertaining to horses were also borrowed, including
caballus
itself – originally a pack horse but eventually evolving into similar words in many languages, for example
(in English) cavalier, cavalry and cavalcade. One of the towns of the Aedui was called Cabillonum, now Châlonsur-Saône.

This high preponderance of Celtic words in Latin at so early a stage is indicative of Celtic pre-eminence in the field of roadways and transport in their early contacts with Rome.

Obviously the Celtic world was open to land trade and the movement of goods in heavy wagons. Additionally, however, the Celts built river-going craft and traders moved easily along the great
Celtic river routes, along the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhône, the Seine, the Loire and the Po. The question that springs to mind is whether the ancient Celts were also a sea-going people.

At least one area of the Celtic world was, otherwise we would have great difficulty explaining the presence of Celts in the north-western islands of Ireland and Britain. The traditions of
migrations from the Iberian peninsula and the later migrations of the Belgae would have been impossible if the Celts were unable to master the turbulent seas off Europe’s north-west
coastline. But to what extent were the ancient Celts ship builders?

Apart from insular records, we have to rely for our most detailed account on Julius Caesar. He says:

Caesar is telling us that the Celts of this coast all have fleets but that the Veneti have the largest and are very skilled in navigating the western seas. Caesar goes on:

We know that the use of flax and linen was well established, so Caesar’s second explanation appears the more likely. Caesar says the Celtic sea-going vessels were solidly
built and weathered the storms easily. They could not be damaged by ramming with the Roman vessels. Caesar’s description of the Veneti ships is endorsed by Strabo.

Unfortunately, archaeologists have not discovered any
surviving examples of these sea-going vessels though they have come across remains of river craft, a typical example
being a large dug-out type from Hasholme, in East Yorkshire, dated to the third century
BC
. However, a vessel remarkably like the one described by Caesar, with high prow and
stern, appears on a Pictish cross slab from Cossans, Angus, known as St Orland’s stone.

Certainly, the insular Celts and their Gaulish sea coast neighbours were advanced in this area. In the early centuries of the Christian period the Picts were famed for their fleet, just as the
Veneti had been. The
Annals of Tighernach
allude to the might of the Pictish navy. There are descriptions of a warship from the Dàl Riada kingdom in Argyll – a small compact
vessel which, when not under sail, was propelled by twenty-eight oarsmen seated on seven benches with seven oars on each side.

Caesar himself makes it clear that there was much intercourse between Gaul and Britain during his time. He met several Britons in Gaul who probably gave him false information about the poverty
of Britain in order to dissuade him from invading, for not everything he wrote could be put down to sheer propaganda.

There was trade with the Celts of Britain and Ireland long before Julius Caesar and the Romans made their first military voyages. As has been mentioned, during the century before Rome’s
major conquest of Britain, the period in which southern Britain seemed to be under the high kingship of Cunobelinus, Britain’s trade with the Mediterranean world was much valued. Wheat,
cattle, gold, silver, iron, leather goods, hides and hunting dogs were the main exports. Indeed, Strabo (60–24
BC
) argued that trade with Britain produced more revenue
for Rome than would accrue if the island were to become a Roman province and the Roman treasury had to pay for a standing army and civil service to run the country.

Ireland, too, had sea-going vessels and it was obvious that
there was much contact between Ireland and Britain and Ireland and Europe. Tacitus tells how an Irish king
visited Britain and was taken hostage by Agricola, the Roman governor, and, incidentally, Tacitus’ father-in-law, who planned to invade Ireland. A war in northern Britain forestalled him.

The Brehon Laws list three types of ship: the
ler-longa
or sea-going vessels, the
barca
, or small coastal vessels, also called
serrcinn
, and lastly the river vessels
or
curragh
. The
longa
is not a loan word from Latin
longus
or Saxon
long
, but merely a cognate, as is
barc
. The Irish word is used in the earliest
manuscripts. Certainly in the early Christian period the Irish were making many expeditions to Britain, travelling to Cornwall and establishing larger colonies, such as the kingdom of Dyfed, in
what is now Wales, and the kingdom of Dál Riada, in what is now Scotland. Irish traders and missionaries were also making their presence felt in Europe.

The discovery of early wine amphorae from the Continent in south-western Ireland indicates the extent of the trade. Certainly we know that Phoenician and Greek traders were visiting Ireland
several centuries
BC
and there is no reason not to suppose that Irish traders were making reciprocal visits. As the early Irish texts speak of their ancestors arriving from
the Iberian peninsula, and as the Iberian peninsula was settled by the Celts by the start of the first millennium
BC
, the use of sea-going ships must have been well
established among the Celts.

In the early Christian period we know that groups of Irish missionaries and settlers had reached Iceland before the Norse and were on the Faroes by the time Diciul was writing in the eighth
century. In 1976 explorer Tom Severin and his team reconstructed a sixth-century Irish ship using ethnographic, literary and archaeological sources. They built a leather-covered boat some 11 metres
long with a beam of 2.5 metres and fitted with sails and oars. Using the Irish classic
Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis
, which is said to be a factual account of a voyage made by St
Brendan of Clonfert (
c.
AD
486–578),
and the earliest manuscript copies of which survive from the tenth century, Severin traced the
voyage from Galway, sailing on 17 May 1976, travelling by way of the Hebrides, Faroes, Iceland and Greenland, and making landfall in Newfoundland on 26 June 1977. He thus proved that the Irish of
this period would have been capable of crossing the Atlantic as the
Navigatio
had apparently recorded.