Re: What is a Celt?

Cloudberry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
"Iain MacGiolla-odhar" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4700085A.60809@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Alfred C. Shine wrote:
Can someone define for me, please, a Celt? I've heard and read so
many differing and conflicting definitions.
A Celt is anyone who takes Celtic culture as their own. Typically, it is someone who:

1. Uses or is learning a Celtic language.
2. Takes part in Celtic cultural events such as (as a small sample) choirs, festivals, music, dancing, sporting events.
3. Feels part of the Celtic world.

It is not based on genetic descent, especially since the genome of Celts is already a mixture of people with a Basque base plus Anatolian/Adriatic Indo-European, Berber, Egyptian and Semitic influences.

Point 1, Anyone can learn a Celtic language, and indeed they would if there were any literature of note written in any of the Celtic languages, which there is not.
Yes, lots of people of all origins are learning Celtic languages - particularly Dutch, German, English and Polish people. This makes them part of the Celtic cultural club in my opinion. Before the oppression of English and French nationalism, we accepted all comers into our culture (even the remnants of the Anglo-Saxon elite as refugess wiped out elsewhere by the Norman-Breton-Flemish knights on and after 1066) and today we are getting back to that hopefully.
Ever heard of Taliesin, Aneurin, the Mabinogion (in Cymraeg), the numerous books of Irish Mythology (in Gaelige) - I could recite the names of a score of these books, Carmina Gadelica (in Gaidhlig), ... ? But most importantly, what about the rich heritage of song and poetry in Celtic languages that is so strongly a part of local and global culture today ?

Point 2. Celtic folklore is more important than jigging up and down to harps and fiddles.
Please don't disparage the interests of other people - music and dance are important to me. You have added folklore which is good too.

Point 3. Your view about descent rejects French people, the French are direct descendents of the Gauls, they are just as Celtic as you, perhaps even more so. Feeling part of the Celtic world, IF all parts of the Celtic world are included, is o.k., for example some Turkish and Czeck "feel" Celtic.

The problem is the filthy Southern English claim that everyone south of Hadrian's Wall, west of the River Tamar, and West of Offa's Dike (NOT Offa's wife please note), are genetically pure members of the white Anglo-Saxon master race.
Only those English that adhere to the fascist rantings of English Heritage and the like.

Cloudberry


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