Northmen as 'Gaill/Goill'

[Gordon Selway]

I've been reading (but not yet fully marked, learned or inwardly digested)
a recent book by a member of the British Museum staff.  He's Simon James,
and the book is called 'The Atlantic Celts: ancient people or modern
invention?'

I've also been trying to gather together all my thoughts on this: as a
(non-non-native, but not mother-tongue, and not often practising these
days) Gael, I sometimes feel (as no doubt some of my forebears did when
outsiders turned up to overturn their societies) resentful and more than a
little disturbed at the way they run about 'my' patch and treat it in a way
which suggests the dangerous little learning rather than the splendours of
knowledge, and (maybe) the use of the past for today's purposes.

Which brings me back to James' book (and possibly indeed one of the points
in the UPenn tree thread).

James' first point is that the inhabitants of these isles most likely did
not, at least before the advent of CI Caesar - and maybe not even then,
have any, let alone any developed, sense of being Irish or British (in
contrast with each other and with being Gaulish).  There were certainly
ties (which may have been piecemeal rather than concentrated and migratory)
within and between the isles, and with either/both and continental Europe.
And after all, as far as I can tell from what information I've been able to
glean, my ancestors and their other descendants have been moving to and fro
between Ireland and Scotland, Scotland and Ireland for for ever.  And as
someone else with a similar ancestry remarked when I asked about this, 'How
do you tell the difference?  I usually say I was born on the
Stranraer-Larne ferry.'

[Apart, btw, from Dennis, are there any other Gaels ono on this list?]

Indeed, James suggests that the political units we know of from the time of
CIC and the next 150 years or so in Britain were quite probably the
essentially personal creations of individual 'Rdubergrafen' (or is it
-baronen?), and did not become (as in Gaul -> France) the core of
longer-lasting territories.

And he also points out that there is little to suggest the arrival of
successive waves of invaders from La Thne or Hallstatt cultures, or
whatever.  Instead he posits cultural dissemination, and the possibility of
languages of what we would regard as a Celtic type in these islands perhaps
from as early as the third millenium BCE.  [Not quite shades of Renfrew,
whose views and approving citation of Dillon James does not endores.]

I'm not sure I would accept all that he writes.  There is some evidence to
show that there were migrations to Britain from the North Sea
Germanic-speaking areas, that there had been a collapse of Roman culture in
Britain, a change of language over much of the country, the introduction of
new institutions in many areas (as well as the piecemeal retention of older
ones), and some discontinuities which may be detected archaeologically, and
well as no apparent discontinuities to correspond with the formal arrival
of the English (this is the case where I live now - English of Wessex
acquire the area by conquest afair in 577 CE, though of course Wessex
arguably had British roots in its formation - yet the Celtic church is
still active a generation or two later).  And I have already posted (not
sure if on this list) about the apparent differences which a local and now
retired chiropodist found in the skeletal features of her local patients
(which seem to go back before the arrival of the English) and those of
recently arrived people/families - and that I show some of her local
skeletal features. [ <g> ]

But the overall picture - that whatever trends can be detected, whatever
changes have been made, are (quite/very) often the result of a host of
individual (and) small changes; that there may have been no mass invasions
at all, but a continuing accretion - remains.  (This is subject to whatever
corrections I need to make when I've finally absorbed the book and think I
have its arguments aright.)

So, perhaps no arrival of Q-Celtic or indeed P-Celtic, but perhaps lots of
arrivals over and over again for many centuries - and with possibly
Q-Celtic coming with the Laiginn - ?sp - in the third century BCE to
produce what appears in history as Gadelic.  [I seem to recall other
possible ports of embarkation for insular Q-Celtic on the Atlantic coast of
Gaul and in the Low Countries, but my notes are packed away.  But then I
also recall, without any reference to hand, a DNA link between Vtzi, the
Brenner iceman, and someone in Co Cork, which may be a sign of migration,
or simply a reflection of the extent of the database trawled/]

Finally, about the subject line.  I do not know how it arose, but as Lady
Bracknell did not quite say, it does not inspire confidence; and to make
one mistake in one language may be viewed as a misfortune, but to make them
in two looks like sheer carelessness.  'mGall' is simple nonsense.  The gp
is 'na nGall/nan Gall' (depending on whether you are using the Irish or the
Scots orthography: eclipsis occurs in Irish and some Scots dialects), the
np is '(na) Gaill/Goill'.

Sorry if I've moved away from the direction the thread was taking.

Gordon
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>

At 3:40 pm 2/9/99, Rick Mc Callister wrote:
>	I've read many times that the Goidelic Celts were the descendants
>of the members of the Halstatt culture while Brythonic Celts were
>descendants of members of the La Tene culture.

>	But given that Celtiberian is also Q-Celtic, I've wondered if
>P-Celtic wasn't an innovation that started at the center and only made it
>as far as the island of Great Britain.

>	The 2 concepts are not necessarily mutually excludable, of course,
>in that the Q-Celts could have moved away from the center during the
>Halstatt phase while the /q/ > /p/ phonomenon began at the center during
>the La Tene phase.

[ moderator snip ]