Maeshowe forum 16 room
Image by wideford
close
more_vert

"the name that the natives called themselves" - that is probably unanswerable. First you have to be certain that the natives had a concept of single identity - ie nationhood. In the case of the Inuits - apparently that word just means "The People" - we are the people - you are "other"

Names of small groups often derive from a legendary leader or deity, but the inhabitants of large territories had no common identy other than that imposed on them by incomers - traders or invaders. Such names are often descriptive eg Lombards from Langobards (long beards), Barbarians because they gabbled and their language sounded like bar-bar-bar, Picti certainly and probably Pretanike and its variants. On balance, I suspect that the peoples of Britain had no name for "the People of Britain" because they were fractured tribes rather than one nation. For certain sure - they didn't call themselves Celts - nor did anyone else until the 17th century AD

>I suspect that the peoples of Britain had no name for "the People of Britain" because they were fractured tribes rather than one nation.<

I'm inclined to agree with you on this.

Pytheus was, in effect, our Columbus .... lucky, I suppose, we could have ended up as Pytheusland or some such!!

Putting aside the name Celt (and Druid) however there does seem to have been a fair degree of homogeny in these islands by the time of Caesar's raid in 55 BC...

"A great many old farmsteads in Britain, today, are on Celtic sites. During his raid on Celtic Britain in 55 B.C., Julius Caesar commented on its high population and numerous farms and cattle. The unifying bond between all the Celtic tribes was their common priesthood, the Druids. Their efforts preserved common culture, religion, history, laws, scholarship, and science. They had paramount authority over every tribal chief and, since their office was sacred, they could move where they wanted, settling disputes and stopping battles by compelling the rival parties to arbitration.

They managed the higher legal system and the courts of appeal, and their colleges in Britain were famous throughout the Continent. Up to twenty years of oral instruction and memorizing was required of a pupil before being admitted into their order. Minstrels and bards were educated by the Druids for similar periods.

Knowledge of the Druids comes directly from classical writers of their time. They were compared to the learned priesthoods of antiquity, the Indian Brahmins, the Pythagoreans, and the Chaldean astronomers of Babylon. Caesar wrote that they,

"know much about the stars and celestial motions, and about the size of the earth and universe, and about the essential nature of things, and about the powers and authority of the immortal gods; and these things they teach to their pupils."

They also taught the traditional doctrine of the soul's immortality. They must have professed detailed knowledge of the workings of reincarnation, for one writer said that they allowed debts incurred in one lifetime to be repaid in the next.

A significant remark of Caesar's was that Druidism originated in Britain, which was its stronghold. Indeed, it has all the appearance of a native religion, being deeply rooted in the primeval native culture. Its myths and heroic legends are related to the ancient holy places of Britain, and they may largely have been adapted from much earlier traditions. In Celtic, as in all previous times, the same holy wells and nature shrines were visited on certain days for their spiritual virtues. The overall pattern of life was scarcely changed. In the course of time, society became more structured and elaborate and the Druid laws more rigid, but the beginning of the Celtic period in Britain was evidently not marked by any major break in tradition."*

* http://www.britannia.com/wonder/michell2.html

Maybe they did'nt call themselves celts, but in our neck of the woods, the celtic influence (Bath, Somerset,etc) is so strong that sometimes I think it is still floating round! Bath itself with its sacred spring dominated by the male celtic head is just one example, the juxtaposition of pagan roman temples within hillforts; the later celtic monks that seem to have established themselves around the Bristol/Severn channel right up to Hereford, and the later saxon incursion that overran and predominated this area, all seem to overlap in settlement, and probably in people. Strangely enough whilst out visiting friends in a remote hamlet on the Cotswold yesterday, they lived in Turkdean, vague thoughts that it was french but no it turns out that it translates back to the celtic, Valley of the Boars - Twrch = boar; dene = valley.. to go back to etymology.