Celts. #0274

--''Perhaps the only real definition of a Celt, now as in the past, is that a Celt is a person who believes him - or herself to be Celtic.''
-- < Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts. 1997 >
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--I was fascinated as a schoolboy with the advent of Christianity into the Islands of the Mighty. In my studies, these were seen by the Asgardians as the home of the Vanir, the red-headed female shamans inimical to wandering Norse who happened into their forests. The Roman military records that I deciphered, tell of an oak, not a particular druid oak, but just a tree their centurion had said was to be removed so a straight Roman road could eventuate. Now I realize that those first Romans of pre-Claudius were not the later tall angles or proto-goths of later legions, but even with schoolboys of an average 5'8", a circle hand to hand of twenty, is a big circumference for the bole of one tree. Today when I think of that description, of twenty legionnaires around the bole of a tree, considering how to clear it for a road, I can see in my mind's eye a two hundred foot tall oak with a spread that starts thirty or forty feet up with branches that are so long that the narrow outer ends have bent down to touch the ground or sweep along at a few feet higher if the ground is lowering. One can see how the natives might travel far and fast within such a forest, running along branches and stepping to other branches, appearing and disappearing in the the forest gloom. Not the 'magic' attributed but similar skills to Australian aborigines who in their environment, can step into an appearance, or disappear as easily, with to civilized eyes nothing there but an occasional saltbush, and sun or moon shade from dead ground, that can deceive the eye. The story behind the story of Arthur of legendary fame, is, I believe the development of the riding of horses in the four hundred years of Roman occupancy. The native Iceni of what is now Suffolk and Norfolk, were people of the horse, and in between the wetlands of that country, bred fine ponies for the chariots we associate with Boudicca, even today, Imperial Britannia. But with a history of a very hard won Logres and Cymri, Alba was a sore point. They had lost a whole legion in the mists. Emporer Hadrian had them build a wall from the Hebridean sea to the Norse sea, and still Alba presented difficulties. This frontier created in the Romans, a use for horses other than just infantry carriers, very like the Norse used them later in their wars on what became Wessex. Some researchers say that some Roman auxiliaries of those last years before Saxon Britain, were Germanic and Hungarian horseman from central Europe, but it is known that by the beginning of the fifth century there were stirrups in use in and around some Roman horse encampments. Attila the Hun had just about destroyed Western Rome, Arthur was in full legendary flush, and Charlemagne was a young boy on his way to a settling for western Europe. So around the time of Attila and into the time of Arthur Christianity had established a solid foothold on Britain. Patrick, who it was said had been enslaved in Eire early in his life, and had taken a small company of Christian Roman legionnaires on his first return, to secure him whilst he converted the leaders and chieftains of the Green Isle., said, in 450 AD : ''Our God is the God of all men, [this is conversion, heaping all classes of society together to bring the disparacies within the fold of one worship.] the God of Heaven and Earth, of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountains and the lowly valley, [this is a paraphrase of a druidic blessing, and goes on paraphrasing.] the God above Heaven, the God in Heaven, the God under Heaven. He has His dwelling around [Celtic blessings - a round.] Heaven and Earth and all that in them is. He inspires all, He quickens all, He dominates all, He sustains all. [again, last sentence is directly druidic.] He lights the light of the sun; [directed straight at the druid propensity to know the local sun and moon movements.] He furnishes the light of light; He has put springs in the dry land and has set stars to minister to the greater light.[Here Patrick has directly taken all power to his god. In 'Ireland' he has taken the very rain to himself, and turns the astrological knowledge that pre-dates his church into servants of his god, to empower his servants over the knowledgeable druids.]
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--''I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
---I am the wave of the ocean,
--I am the murmer of the billows,
---I am the ox of the seven combats,
--I am the vulture upon the rocks,
---I am a beam of the sun,
--I am the fairest of plants,
---I am the wild boar in valour,
--I am a salmon in the water,
---I am a lake in the plain,
--I am a word of knowledge,
---I am the point of the lance of battle,
--I am the God who created the fire in the head.
-- < Amergin. Circa 500 B.C.E. >
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''May the blessings be.''