Ancient Celtic bird

The original Celts who settled in ancient Britain came from the banks of the Danube and were first identified around 1300 BC. Of mixed colouring and type, these wandering farmers established settlements across the plains and valleys of Europe, always peacefully and inevitably becoming the dominant community in their chosen resting place.

I quote from the historical novel, "Sarum".

"The destiny of these strange folk was to be remarkable: they were to dominate much of Northern Europe, to create a great culture, to be subjugated by Rome in body but never in spirit; to flee the Saxons but also to evade them, and to survive intact to the present day and once again carry their astonishing gifts of spirit and imagination all over the globe."

It was at some point in the centuries before Christ that they came to the notice of the Greeks, who gave them the name "Keltoi". The Romans later took over the Greek word to describe them and it has remained unchanged to the present day: they were the Celts.

Why did they make such an impression? What was so remarkable about them? We can only say: their genius. Nothing showed that genius better than the extraordinary language they used, which was adopted wherever they settled and which became by Julius Caesar's time, the lingua franca of all Northern Europe.

The Celtic language was rich; it was poetic, mystical, impassioned. With this language they created their legends, their visions and their epic tales which they have passed down the centuries to present times. The Celtic language has never been destroyed and it survives intact today chiefly in the two variants of Welsh and Irish (Scottish) Gaelic."

"From roughly 500 BC to the birth of Christ came that great flowering of the Celts' astonishing civilization which historians call the La Tene culture, after the great Celtic archaeological site of that name in France; it is in these centuries that the Celts of Northern Europe and Britain created some of the richest and most fantastic treasures of the prehistoric world."

"These Celts are mad" the Romans said. "They eat like senators, they sing, they weep, and then they fight each other for pleasure!"

"They are all poets: drunk with poetry," a merchant once explained. "No...they are all drunk with drink" came the cynical Roman reply.

I rest my case.