Celtic Nations: Choose your favorite or least-hated

not voting out of sense of fraternity, also total disgust with ireland tbph

would you wear this y/n?

http://www.scottish-wedding-dreams.com/images/PanCelticFestival-DingleIreland.jpg

I am not required to live on the auld sod, and therefore I am allowed to feel a certain affection for the place, despite the many severe shortcomings of The Plain People of Ireland, who shall always be with us.

we're watching you

reaches for his shillelagh

oopsie

The Bezen Perrot (formerly Bezen Kadoudal) was a Breton collaborationist force during the Nazi occupation of France that grew from the earlier Lu Brezhon militia. Led by Célestin Lainé and Alan Heusaff, as many as 70 to 80 people joined the ranks of the Bezen Perrot, or "Perrot Unit", at one point or another. They fought under German uniform and command, as the Bretonische Waffenverband der SS.

70 to 80 people joined the ranks of the Bezen Perrot

Compare this to the croats, who were more than enthusiastic nazi collaborators. All in all the catholic church in much of europe was pretty damn collaborationist both before and during wwii and no one should fail to point this out whenever appropriate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYIgzI6Rl4c

Q Is the Isle of Man crime free?

A No otherwise there would be no need for a police force, having said that, the quality of life in the Island is second to none and the amount of violent crime is very very much lower than that in most other places. The number of burglaries is also much lower and is usually an opportunist crime when premises have been left insecure. Vehicles are very rarely stolen since such have to be removed from the Island which is very difficult with the one Island port providing ferrying services. School damage of a very minor nature is also committed which has a bigger nuisance value than the crime static. All in all the detection rate of crime in Island is second to none in the British Isles.

http://www.askafrenchman.net/ginger-red-hair-france/

ayo leon britton and my swansea kin, or something. i shall listen to that welsh rare bit comp fondly as you fall by the wayside

sorry to sour the party but

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/10/mythsofbritishancestry/

Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.” What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.

hope this helps

genetic analysis

well it's not so much that there were no Celts as that the Celtic nations probably aren't descended from them to any really different extent than the rest of western Europe?

think we all know sense of "nationhood" largely based on myths of some sort

Kernow bys vyken! Duh.

And the existence of different language groups certainly proves the existence of different cultures, not to mention different laws, different governing structures, etc.

^^ yah, more what this is about (to the extent that this is serious, which it ain't)

also,

Freckles - C/D?

Brittany, because I have no particular reason to hate it and everyone loves Ireland anyway.

yeah sorry not trying to debunk or hate fun more interested in the mechanics of nationalism, also prehistoric settlement patterns

I've developed a genuine affection for Ireland, in recent years, despite spending 95% of my time there in Offaly.

The settlement pattern thing is interesting though. I'd've thought the usual myth of tribes moving in wholesale and pushing the celtic/berber/etruscan populations to the margins must be rare, historically - though it's a lot easier to think of examples of the former. How does a country like Turkey see itself, for example? No way is it made up purely of descendants of a tribe moving out of Central Asia.

I keep telling people to read The Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer, which examines the linguistic evidence, the DNA evidence and the settlement patterns - but of course the problem is that what all this evidence points to (that Pre-Roman Britain was settled by two different groups who came up either side of the peninsula as the Ice Age retreated, the "Celts" along the coast from Iberia, and the "Saxons" across the landbridge from Eastern Europe) is very politically unacceptable for p obvious reasons - i.e. it disrupts the "OMG Saxon invaders!" narrative, even while it does not invalidate "Celtic" nationhood.

Also, the word "Celt" itself is a total misnomer, based on a Roman historian's completely inaccurate grasp of geography of places he had never visited, blah blah we have this argument every time there is a "Celtic" or "British Peoples" thread. They would have called themselves Gaelic or Brythonic depending on whether their language favoured Q/K/G sounds or P/B sounds.

Anyway I quite fancy a rogue vote for PICTS.

Lad in my Cornish class quite fancies the theory that the PICTS were actually a Pre-Celtic people who made their way into Celtic legend as the Piskies" - completely ignoring all evidence marking them as speaking a P-Celtic language related to Cumbrian.

jeez sharivari, yr tolerance levels are high indeed, i b'leeve offaly didn't fare well in our three-year discussion of the worst counties in ireland

two different groups who came up either side of the peninsula

Is such a divide obvious in England? I can well believe it for Scotland, where the eastern & western halves feel like two different countries.

fukn liverpool fans

Well, after a couple of thousand years of Danelaw and Viking raiding and infighting and mixing and matching it's not so much a boundary as a gradient. It's been a couple of years since I read the book but ideas included were that there was a "Saxon Shore" in Southeast England at least as far back as the Romans - it's highly unlikely that places like East Anglia were ever "Celtic" (they shared far more with the settlements on the other side of the landbridge) in the same way that Cornwall and Wales were "Celtic". However, even in post-Roman times, for example, the border of Cornwall (or the "West Welsh" as they were known at the time) stretched at least as far as the river Exe. Even in megalithic monument types, there is a kind of diagonal line that stretches across Britain as to which types of monument are found where - and it's not entirely dependent on the underlying rock type, either, so it does point to differing cultural groups.

Oppenheimer portrays the Saxons not so much as invasion as two groups of people pushing each other back across a moving boundary line.

I need to reread that book, it's none too fresh in my mind.

http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images8/Irish_Setter_A_Poud_Dog.jpg

Vs

http://www.greatdogsite.com/admin/uploaded_files/1190778226brittany_spaniel.jpg

Vs

http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images10/PembrokeLucy2.jpg

Vs GTFO

Wales FTW

Sorry, CYMRU

Also, the word "Celt" itself is a total misnomer, based on a Roman historian's completely inaccurate grasp of geography of places he had never visited, blah blah we have this argument every time there is a "Celtic" or "British Peoples" thread. They would have called themselves Gaelic or Brythonic depending on whether their language favoured Q/K/G sounds or P/B sounds.

Need some expansion on this - surely "Celtic" makes sense from a linguistic POV as the common ancestor of both P- and Q-Celtic? If you're just saying that people weren't going round calling themselves Celts then I get your point.

favourite: ireland, least favourite: ireland.

yeah otm

yep

tbs tbs

I pondered the question and decided that the only meaningful way I can respond is to rate them based on the hotness of their womenfolk in my personal experience. Voted Breizh with Eire a close second and followed by Scots lasses. I don't recall ever lusting after Manx or Cornish or Welsh women but I'm sure I would if given the chance.

ha posts vmic

just remembered the first girl i ever loved and now i will need a few minutes

Write in for Dalriada.

Dal Riata were Irish (Scoti), mostly, and it was a kingdom not a nation.

favourite: ireland, least favourite: ireland.

ro-ro on the mo-mo

Ok I'm on a bus so this may be riddled with errors. "Celtic" is used as a designation for a family of languages. That doesn't necessarily mean that the groups of people using those languages were from a common background.

Think about the family of "Romance" languages for example. They all share a common root - Latin. That doesn't mean that people in Roumania have common ancestors with people in Spain. Or indeed that people in 5th century "France" would have called themselves Romans - maybe more likely Gauls or Franks or Bretons or whatever the ancient term for themselves were.

Languages and cultures get to places for other reasons than they evolved there, if that's even the right word. They fet there through invasion, but also through trade and cultural exchange and settlement. It's possible that forms of "Celtic" got passed along with new fangled forms of technology like "agriculture" in the 1000s of years since the last Ice Age. Maybe they were new settlers. Maybe they were ancient Beaker People who learned this swank new way of talking from the people who bought their tin.

As stated above the reason that North Britons speak a Gaelic language rather than their native Pictish (or whatever they called it - Pictii is a Roman term imposed from outside - kinda like "Welsh") is because they were invaded by the Scotii from Ireland.

You can draw the assumption that ppl who share a language probably share a culture, especially in close proximity (there was more traffic between Ireland and Cornwall than Cornwall and England from pre-Roman times up until the Tamar Bridge was built) but you can't assume from a *family* of languages that they were all the same "people" or would have thought of themselves as such.

I might even go so far as to say there would be no idea of "Celtic Nations" if they weren't all united by hating the English but I'd be thrown out of Kowethas Kernewek for suggesting that. ;-)

I can't even reread what I've written so I apologize again for typoons.

the irish love/hatred for ourselves is a thing to behold.

Kate, while I agree with you generally, there are probably closer ethnic and genetic ties amongst 'Celts' or at least amongst certain sub-groups since they were originally rather small immigrant populations headed west.

I thought Pictish was thought to be a P-Celtic language, possibly related to Gaulish?

Only Irish people should be allowed to say bad things about Ireland. And we never get tired of saying them

"If you put an Irishman on a spit you can always find another Irishman to baste him"

If M White can vote based on the hotness of the women, I'm voting Scotland for the sexy indie boys.

How many times do I have to ask for government names not to be used before people remember?

Tbh I forget every single time I respond to you in any way, and have to go back and take it out.

WCC upthread - that makes sense, I don't know enough about the non-linguistic side of things to comment much but I certainly agree that cultural/colonial transmission is much more plausible story than large waves of invaders pushing the snakes/previous inhabitants into the sea.

If I had time I'd go look for some choice quotes from the Annals of the Four Masters about the 10 or so historically unimpugnable waves of invasions predating the Celts (including detailed descriptions of prehistoric kingdoms that disappeared without leaving any trace) that were still appearing in "authoritative" history books in the 20th century.

How does a country like Turkey see itself, for example? No way is it made up purely of descendants of a tribe moving out of Central Asia.

Turkish cultural identity's really interesting, although i can't claim any expertise. A significant proportion of citizens wouldn't necessarily consider themselves "ethnic Turks" but nobody seems to be able to determine what percentage that might be or what "ethnic Turks" really means. Inevitably, when you go from being an extensive empire to a nation, you're going to have a diverse mix of people but the trend over the last hundred years has been to emphasise a "pan-Turkic" identity for political reasons which makes the issue of genetics and heritage hugely controversial.

There's a cultural festival in my local park each year that attracts about 25,000, i think, and it doesn't really use the term "Turkish" much in its advertising. It's billed as 'Anatolian" which, again, is either bigger than the Turkish state or a specific sub-set of people who were swallowed up by it, depending on who you talk to.

I can respond is to rate them based on the hotness of their womenfolk in my personal experience

The Welsh win that one easily

the irish love/hatred for ourselves is a thing to behold.

Whereas the Scots just love themselves and hate the English

before people remember?

Sorry, it's either my geriatric memory or I'd never seen that request.

The Welsh win that one easily

I'd gladly concede but I've met very few Welsh women.

might vote scotland for kelly macdonald alone

I apologize again for typoons

Are they the things you kill whales with?

If we're going by the hottness of the dudes, does this flaming Celt count for Cornwall, Ireland or Wales? (Actually, he claims he lives in Scotland now, so could bag at least 4 Celtic Nations that way.)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S-aKKfzumHs/Tee11K5aGTI/AAAAAAAAAC4/LWMqKiUUIjc/s1600/aphex+twin+first+pic.jpg

was hoping that'd be Irvine Welsh

Large waves of invaders/settlers *might* make sense if you think about the expansion of the agrarian way of life compared to hunter/gatherer - that the same small patch of land can sustain a much larger number of people if they practice agriculture rather than hunter-gathering. The question is, what happened to the hunter-gatherers that were there before? Do they get pushed our or die off? Or do they get absorbed and assimilated? Who knows? Writing hadn't been invented yet so there are no reliable records. This bloke Oppenheimer was trying to establish this through clusters of DNA tags. That there was population movement, as new genes were introduced and disseminated in waves, but there was also indication for stable population for some time - that the great Anglo-Saxon invasion as depicted in Arthurian legendry was probably a myth, or happened a lot earlier, i.e. not after the Roman occupation at all.

Three guesses who used that particular myth as the basis of nation-building? Like, an invading group of people who wanted to promote the idea that the Saxons weren't really entitled to the land that they were settled on, in order to invade and impose feudalism on them? (And then to go on and invade and then eat the "Celtic" nations in their turn?) Interesting that the people who invented the concept of Britain weren't even English at all when it came down to it. But I'm super exhausted from walking all around Hampton Court Palace today and I really need to eat something and have a lie-down because I'm no longer making sense.

I blame the Normans. They ruined everything.

I'm guessing Yorke is a fucken Viking with that name, and doesn't count at all, Danelaw GTFO.

Greek nationhood is even more curious from what little I understand xps, perhaps due to being the predecessor empire. Aiui the land that is now Greece is only a fragment of that occupied by the diaspora a century ago, the population is genetically indistinguishable from the Slavs to the north, there were Greek mininations marooned throughout the Soviet Union all through communism, and I doubt the 1920s population transfers between there and Turkey were based on much more than language or religion. Yet it's pretty strong and cohesive for all that.

Brittany has the best food: crepes obviously, also the mighty Kouign-Amann:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Kouignamann.JPG/569px-Kouignamann.JPG

(This is where Melissa reminds me that he's actually Scottish. Or from Rugby, I can never remember.)

The myths of the formation of the nation-states we would recognise as countries from city-states or old kingdoms is a fascinating process, and it's interesting to see how recent it was in some cases - things like, when the concept of "Italy" as a country evolved. Or "Spain" (and that one's fracturing almost as much as Britain these days, at least 3 distinct cultures that could claim nation-hood.)

Whose national dish is causing a minor scandal at the minute? Whose?

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02179/osborne-pasty_2179486i.jpg

oggyoggyoggy

But I'm super exhausted from walking all around Hampton Court Palace today

Lovely grounds as I recall

York is from Jorvik, the Danish name, but it was founded by the Romans as Eboracum.

Also, it's always been my understanding that the Amglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th century were ones of marauding tribes that dominated the exisitng population not replaced it or even outnumbered it. Same thing for France - the Franks (as was often pointed out during the Revolution) formed the basis of the aristocracy but the peasantry was gaulois.

Btw, I recommend this book. Very interesting argument.

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-English/dp/B002BWQ59K

Why do we say “I am reading a catalog” instead of “I read a catalog”? Why do we say “do” at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.

provocative

His theory is that the masses were mostly illiterate bryhtonic speakers who adopted Anglisc and Saxon but changed their grammars.

And yes, you do have to look past the publishing hype to get to his core argument which is linguistic.

You mean "didn't change"? If the argument is that the grammar of English has non-Germanic aspects that's fine, it has little to do with "cultural values" though.

^ that was an xp obv

Oh wait I guess you're coreferring "their" with A+S not the speakers. Ignore me.

Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values?

He agrees.

I have read at least half a dozen different biographies of the English language, all with their different competing theories, I might add that one to my collection, but it's not even a theory that makes sense to me, as it conflicts with ones that do. I'm too tired to go and dig the sources out, though.

My favourite was more along the lines that Old English lost its grammar through rubbing up against the Danelaw, because Saxon and Old Danish were close enough to be intelligible-ish to one another, but the grammar and endings were different, they kept the root words that were close and discarded the bits that differed. It also explains why word order is so important to English in a way that it isn't important to other languages, and why the endings and irregular grammar is such a mess. It was already that way before the Normans even got here.

And as to Celtic not being dominant culturally in the SouthEast corner of England (where the Romans located the Saxon Shore as already existent) the best record is in placenames. You get Celtic placenames turning up in the borders of Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, etc but you don't get them in South East. Or you get these "unknown origin" terms where people theorise "Oh, Thames is Tamesis which we think might be Celtic (related to Tamar maybe?) or might be a pre-celtic survival." Or it might not be.

And I studied Latin, thank you very much, I know what Eboracum means, we've done this before, this discussion has occurred on many, many ILX threads. I also know what Evrek means.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Goidelic 17

Brythonic 17

Gingers and freckles win all round.

yay Wales

tied with BRITTANY? disgraceful showing

Who are all these weird Breton fans?

(I'm not going to say how many of the Cornish votes were my socks.)

Ireland joint 3rd with Brittany? Where were all the American voters?

American here; voted Wales

Americans have found the Celtic Tiger to be somewhat toothless.

Or else Torchwood seduced them away.