Irish and Scottish roots in Galicia/ North Western Spain

[denmcdough]

Yes, we Irish, Scottish, Wesh, etc. are very much related to the Iberian folks. In fact, if you were to go to Galacia, their music would make you think you were in Ireland. Pretty cool, huh?

A member of the musical group, The Chieftans (don't know which one), was doing a study to link Spanish music to Irish, and then to connect it to Caribbean. Even Irish dance is somewhat similar to flamenco.

I was also reading, somewhere, that ancient Galacian burial sites had bodies clothed in garments that were similar to a kilt, and it was tartan cloth. Hope that's not an internet makeup story!???

Anyway, great OP on the Celtic connection. I find it extremely fascinating!

[denmcdough]

Oh, I forgot to add this: the red hair associated with the Irish is, in fact, more of a Nordic trait.

[Galician]

Funny that you mention the fact that red hair is linked to the Nordic folk.

I heard at a Ceildbh(?) that in Scotland there is a custom of sending one's darkhaired sons at New Year's Eve to greet the neighbors. It has to be a boy with dark hair, because if it's a blonde boy, he could be a Viking marauder.

[BoldHighlander]

Funny that you mention the fact that red hair is linked to the Nordic folk.

I heard at a Ceildbh(?) that in Scotland there is a custom of sending one's darkhaired sons at New Year's Eve to greet the neighbors. It has to be a boy with dark hair, because if it's a blonde boy, he could be a Viking marauder.

Extracted from The Highlander, November / December 2005

Firstfooters: In Scotland, it was, and still is, the custom for a stranger to enter the house after midnight on New Year's Eve. There were taboos about the luck such a stranger would bring, especially in the days of hospitality to traveling strangers. A fair-haired visitor was considered bad luck in most areas, partly due to fighting between the dark Scots and the fair Norse invaders. However, in Christian times a fair-haired man was considered very lucky providing his name was Andrew (because St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland). The firstfooter must make an offering, or handsel. The offering can be food, drink or fuel for the fire. Rituals which have evolved from this custom are many. An offering of food or drink must be accepted by sharing it with everyone present, including the visitor. Fuel must be placed onto the fire by the visitor with the words "A good New Year to one and all and many may you see." In today's fireless society, the fuel is usually presented as a polished piece of coal, or wood, which can be preserved for the year as an ornament.

[Rob]

The 2004 study by Dr Bradley is rather dated now. His conclusions concerning Scots and Irish being descendents of early migrants from Northern Iberia have since been verified in later more detailed studies by Professor Bryan Sykes and Professor Stephen Oppenheimer (both of Oxford University). However, both Sykes and Oppenheimer have concluded that it does not only apply to the Scots and the Irish, but to most of the people of Britain and Ireland, and that the migrations began soon after the ice receded at the end of the last Ice Age between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago.

The more extensive genetic survey by Sykes (over 10,000 samples) reveals that overall, 72.9% of Scotsmen share an ancient Northern Iberian ancestry (ranging from 59.9% in Orkney and Shetland to 83.5% in the Grampian region).

In England the overall figure is 64% sharing ancient Northern Iberian ancestry (ranging from 51.2% in East Anglia to 78.2% in the Southwest, i.e. Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset).

In Wales the overall figure is 83.2% sharing ancient Northern Iberian ancestry (ranging from 78.5% in North Wales to 86.4% in Mid Wales).

When these early migrations occurred, the Celtic languages (Brythonic and Goidelic) did not exist, so the early post-Ice Age migrants may have spoken an early non-Indo-European language similar to the Basque language at that time. However, after a few thousand years a Celtic language established itself in Iberia (Celtiberian), and it is thought that Celtic speech spread to Britain and Ireland either through later smaller-scale migrations from Iberia or from trading links.

One myth that these studies clearly destroy is the one that the English are predominantly of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and therefore fundamentally different from the Scots, Irish and Welsh. It would seem from the genetic surveys that most English have the same ancient ancestry as the Scots, Irish and Welsh. Therefore the name “England” (meaning ‘land of the Angles’) could be construed as being inappropriate. Similarly the name “Wales” (meaning ‘land of the foreigners’ in Old English) is also inappropriate. Even the name “Scotland” is derived from the name of a minority invading Irish tribe “Scotti” (or ‘Dalriada’), so perhaps a more appropriate name would have been the old one of “Caledonia”.

How does "X Marks the Caledonian" sound?

[Rob]

Even the term "Celtic" when applied to the Gaelic and Brythonic languages of Ireland, Scotland and Wales is somewhat of a misnomer. There is no evidence that the ancient Celts were the originators of that branch of the Indo-European language group that would go on to evolve into the Goidelic and Brythonic languages that we call "Celtic" today. The original Celts, a tribe known as the Celtici, were located in what is today western Spain and were originally a distinct people from the Gaels/Gauls/Galicians according to the earliest accounts given by ancient Greek and Roman scholars who were familiar with both peoples. Writing in the first century B.C.E. Diodorus Siculus spoke of how the Celts and Gauls were originally two distinct people, but had become merged, saying:

"It is useful now to point out a distinction unknown by most. Those tribes that live inland from Massalia (Marseilles) as well as those around the Alps and on the eastern side of the Pyrenees are called Celts. But those tribes in the northern area near the ocean, those near the Hercynian mountain (probably in today’s Czech republic) and those beyond as far as Scythia are called Galatae. The Romans, however, group all these tribes together as Galatae."

As Dioderus Siculus did not have access to modern population genetics analysis techniques, there is no way that he could have known for certain who the ancient ancestors of the Gaels/Gauls/Galicians were. Many writers of that era make assumptions, which are later assumed to be accurate. For instance, Herodotus wrote in the 6th century BC:-
“The Nile starts at a distance from its mouth equal to that of the Ister [Danube]; for the river Ister begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe).”

It is quite clear from this that Herodotus is saying that the Keltoi lived in Iberia, but he has mistakenly believed that the source of the Danube was in the Pyrenees, and not in Germany as we now know. Unfortunately, later writers (such as Diodorus Siculus) took Herodotus’s word for it that the Keltoi lived at the source of the Danube, which they then knew to be in what is now Germany.

In fact, it was not until 1707 that the Gaelic and Brythonic speaking inhabitants of the British Isles and their cousins in Brittany and Galacia on the European continent came to be identified as "Celts" by the 17th century antiquarian Edward Lhuyd, who first hypothesised that the Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons represented the descendants of the ancient tribes referred to as the "Keltoi" by the Greeks and the "Celtae" by the Romans, who learned of these people through the writings of early Classical explorers.

It is indeed correct that the Britons were not referred to as ‘Celts’ until 1707 when Lhuyd (and others) identified Brythonic and Goidelic languages as belonging to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language tree.

In fact, the Gaels/Gauls/Galacians as well as the Cymry are said in ancient records to have come to the British Isles from a region once known as Scythia, which covered a vast territory in Eastern Europe located roughly in the area of the present-day Ukraine, very near the original homeland of the ancient Aryan or Indo-European root language.

It is now known from extensive genetic surveys that the Gaels and the Cymry did not originate from Scythia, but from Northern Iberia after the last Ice Age, at a time long before the Celtic languages were spoken.

If we look at genetics through DNA research, we find that the majority of the people living in countries like Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall are predominately of the R1b genetic haplogroup. The R1b haplotype is in fact the predominant haplogroup in Western Europe and occurs among a majority of the population in the same areas where the ancient megalithic monuments (dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, and barrows like Newgrange, Callanish, Maes Howe, Avebury, Stonehenge, and Carnac) are found - which suggests that the majority of the people who we identify as "Celtic" are in fact descended from an aboriginal population that was native to Western Europe all the way back to the Stone Age.

The reason that the R1b Y-chromosome haplogroup is so common in Western Europe is because they are almost all descendents of the post-Ice Age migration north along the Atlantic coastal regions from the Northern Iberian Ice-Age refuge. However only the Gauls and the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland later acquired Celtic speech, replacing earlier non-Indo-European languages.

Another interesting thing to consider is that Indo-European languages like Gaelic and Cymraeg would not have evolved among these people, but would have been introduced from Eastern Europe - the Aryan/Indo-European homeland, where the predominate haplotype is R1a - a fact which perfectly fits the old histories that record the Gaels as having originated in Scythia (present day Ukraine). So the Gaels/Gauls/Galacians who we think of today as being "Celtic" would not originally have been, as the real "Celts" - the prehistoric R1b haplotype megalithic culture would have spoken a non-Indo European language probably very closely related to Basque.

It was the proto-Indo-European language that started out in Eastern Europe and gradually spread west, not the Celtic branch. The language gradually evolved into its various branches (including the Celtic branch) as it moved west over a period of thousands of years, as shown in the following link:-

http://www.bio.unc.edu/Faculty/Hurlbert/lab/langtree.htm

There is no evidence (such as ancient place-names) that the Celtic branch languages were ever spoken in Eastern Europe. This branch appears to have been limited to the Atlantic coastal territories, i.e. Iberia (except the Basque lands), Gaul, Britain and Ireland. There is therefore no evidence that the Celtic language branch originated among the Y-haplogroup R1a population of Eastern Europe.

[Galician]

Interesting array of statistics and facts. Sorry, but they leave me confused as to what this all means in terms of the issue. Could someone make the picture a bit clearer for those of us whose eyes glaze over with tons of numbers?

[xman]

The Galician roots to Ireland and Scotland are a lot stronger than previously understood and even include England because it happened a LOT earlier than was expected. I think that's it.

[O'Callaghan]

It means that the Celts were the indigenous, aboriginal inhabitants of most of western Europe, including Spain, France, Britain and Ireland, and that most of the native population of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and much of England is genetically related to the Basque people, whose non-Indo European language evolved from the pre-Gallic language spoken by the Keltoi, and that the Celts were descended from the megalithic culture that was responsible for erecting the standing stone monuments found throughout Spain, France, Ireland and Britain.

Gaelic is Indo-European, though, even though Basque (Euskara) isn't. There are some basic words in Gaelige (Irish) that are obviously IE in origin. Not that I speak it properly, I'm just learning.

FWIW, I used to work with a Basque girl. Her first name was Kelly! I don't think that proves any Basque/Irish connection, though. Perhaps only her father was Basque. She could speak Euskara, and she was short and dark complexioned, as you might expect. Actually, she was very short.