Thoughts on Galicia?

[OC Richard]

Very old art found in Galicia seems to depict folk wearing tartan. Not possible to prove it was.

About proving that it was tartan, it just depends on how one defines "tartan". If tartan is defined as a Highland Scottish system of specific patterns signifying specific families or surnames, "tartan" cannot exist anywhere outwith Highland Scotland. And, I might point out that "tartan" so defined didn't exist in the Highlands of Scotland until the 19th century.

So putting that issue aside, and speaking of woven cloth that has patterns created by stripes in the warp and weft, such cloth exists the world over and is part of many folk traditions.

Traditional folk art the world over tends to love pattern. Ceramic bowls will have decoration, cloth will be woven in patterns, cloth will be embroidered, leatherwork will be tooled, metalwork will be engraved or cast with patterns, woodwork will be carved.

The theory is that, at least in ancient times, the patterning of surfaces was due to the concept of horror vacui, the fear of empty spaces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui

Anyhow here are some traditional Bulgarian folk costumes:



A traditional Igbo wedding



Dancers in Thailand



So it seems to me that there isn't anything inherently Celtic about horizontal and vertical patterns in woven cloth.

About Galicia, I don't think Galicia is any more or less "Celtic" than any other part of Europe which had spoken Celtic languages until the coming of the Romans.

[tripleblessed]

Two things relevant: 1), checking several sources on the etymology, the word appears to predate the kilt; 2), the oldest examples
found come from eastern Asia in an area where the people were physically very like what we think of as Celts, and the cloth is found
everywhere they migrated to, and to this point I have never seen any reference to the fabric being found anywhere in Europe prior
to the arrival of Celts. So, as of this writing, I would have to conclude that Scotland has no claim to the word or the pattern. That
could certainly change, as I do my best to learn continually; new info and findings surface, and most importantly, as improbable as it
might sound, there is research I haven't run across.

The tendency of the British Crown to send kilted troops around the world as ambassadors of British culture spread the pattern and the
kilt widely. The presence of the kilt and the heritage of that presence virtually worldwide predate the legislation proclaiming a national
dress. Not that we ignore the Highland traditions and thinking about how it is worn there, just that we also consider the thinking where
it was planted, often well before the 1820s revival.

[OC Richard]

checking several sources on the etymology, the word appears to predate the kilt

What word are you referring to?

eastern Asia in an area where the people were physically very like what we think of as Celts

I'm assuming you mean the Tarim mummies. The Tarim Basin is in western China. DNA testing has shown that the mummies have mixed DNA from both east, west, and south.

I know that many people think of red hair etc as being "Celtic" however I have read that the red hair seen in Ireland and Scotland is a legacy of Viking occupation.

the cloth is found everywhere they migrated to

Do you mean everywhere the Tarim Basin people migrated to? I'd not heard that there was evidence of them migrating.

I have never seen any reference to the fabric being found anywhere in Europe prior to the arrival of Celts.

As I was demonstrating, patterned fabric has long existed all over the world, including pre-Columbian America. Weaving cloth seems to be one of those things, like language, that modern humans have always been doing, and took with them as they spread all over the globe.

We can find out about ancient clothing from written accounts, iconography, and surviving examples. Woven cloth usually doesn't preserve very well, and many early peoples had no written language. So I wouldn't expect to see much clear evidence, except for things like the mummies you referenced.

About "the arrival of the Celts" this way of thinking of ancient peoples mainly in terms of migrations has been questioned in recent times. Some writers have questioned the notion that the Celts arrived from anywhere... well of course ultimately ancient peoples came from Africa, but they might not have had anything "Celtic" about them on arrival.

Proto-Indo-European had to be spoken by a speech community somewhere (just where is a topic of debate) but the Indo-European speaking world includes many peoples we wouldn't think of as being "Celtic". It would be quite a stretch to equate Indo-European migrations with the spread of Celtic-ness.

I would have to conclude that Scotland has no claim to the word

What word are you referring to?

[tripleblessed]

About proving that it was tartan, it just depends on how one defines "tartan". If tartan is defined as a Highland Scottish system of specific patterns signifying specific families or surnames, "tartan" cannot exist anywhere outwith Highland Scotland. And, I might point out that "tartan" so defined didn't exist in the Highlands of Scotland until the 19th century.

I beg your pardon. I clearly failed to be clear. The definition in the discussion being "tartan", I took off having failed to file a flight plan.

There have been several references made here on the forum and elsewhere about the DNA studies prompted by the distribution of red hair.
The Tarim Basin mummies having demonstrated the presence of it in that area surprised some folk, and they looked for connections in other
populations with that trait. The closest relatives of the Tarim Basin mummies appear to be the Sami along the Arctic Circle. Their next
closest relatives appear to be the red haired folk in Ireland. Each of the northern populations is closer kin to the Tarim Basin folk than they
are to each other. I know for a fact this is true, as I read it on the web. As has been noted before, tartan patterned textiles were
found in the Basin as well. Most likely not so labeled, but nevertheless the pattern. People from that area of the world migrated and/or
traveled far and wide, or were visited from afar, as demonstrated by the red hair connections. No one can say where red hair or tartan
first appeared, only that Tarim Basin is the earliest dated instance of red hair, and they had textiles of this pattern.

Thus my statement that Scotland can certainly claim the tartan kilt as national dress, but its association with tartan came after long use
in various places elsewhere.

[Damion]

It's a slippery slope. They're not really Celtic, the whole region being fully Romanised 2000 odd years ago. It'd be like England claiming it was Celtic because of scraps of culture that survived into the modern age.
For a couple of centuries there was a Briton community in the north of Spain. When the Saxons invaded southern Britain creating places like Wessex, Britons who could, fled. The largest group went to Gaul where they established Brittany. A smaller group went to Spain where they established Britonia. This was around the 6th century ad. It was too small to survive and was soon absorbed into the local population.

Galicians probably have pipes for the same reason the Scots have them. The tradition didn't die out because of the remoteness of these places. Bagpipes were once common across Europe. The highland ones come from Ireland where they'd been developed as war pipes but Ireland was likely introduced to the pipes some time during the middle ages through contact with Europe or even the English Pale settlements.

If they want to consider themselves Celts then that's up to them, but given they speak a Romance language they should at least try to resurrect a Celtic cant there.
Tartan like cloth is something that appears to be common to the ancient Celts and scraps of it have been found in ancient salt mines, suggesting that even low class workers wore it. More intact examples exist amongst the Tarim mummies and there are bog bodies from Ireland wearing tartan clothing. Not to mention the Romans record the Gauls as wearing striped clothing and clothes covered in squares and there are statues showing clothing that appears to be checked.
Tartan like cloth also appears in various places in Europe during the middle ages worn by both males and females as patterned cloth but otherwise in normal fashion for the time.

[ELY]

It's a slippery slope. They're not really Celtic, the whole region being fully Romanised 2000 odd years ago. It'd be like England claiming it was Celtic because of scraps of culture that survived into the modern age.
For a couple of centuries there was a Briton community in the north of Spain. When the Saxons invaded southern Britain creating places like Wessex, Britons who could, fled. The largest group went to Gaul where they established Brittany. A smaller group went to Spain where they established Britonia. This was around the 6th century ad. It was too small to survive and was soon absorbed into the local population.

Galicians probably have pipes for the same reason the Scots have them. The tradition didn't die out because of the remoteness of these places. Bagpipes were once common across Europe. The highland ones come from Ireland where they'd been developed as war pipes but Ireland was likely introduced to the pipes some time during the middle ages through contact with Europe or even the English Pale settlements.

If they want to consider themselves Celts then that's up to them, but given they speak a Romance language they should at least try to resurrect a Celtic cant there.
Tartan like cloth is something that appears to be common to the ancient Celts and scraps of it have been found in ancient salt mines, suggesting that even low class workers wore it. More intact examples exist amongst the Tarim mummies and there are bog bodies from Ireland wearing tartan clothing. Not to mention the Romans record the Gauls as wearing striped clothing and clothes covered in squares and there are statues showing clothing that appears to be checked.
Tartan like cloth also appears in various places in Europe during the middle ages worn by both males and females as patterned cloth but otherwise in normal fashion for the time.

I live in Spain, and have Galician relatives. They cherish their Celtic roots and are very proud of their heritage. The earliest (to date) historical depiction of a kilt (skirtlike garment with plaid design) are several Celtic warrior statues from the Castro culture (1st or 2nd century B.C.)


As you have said, centuries of external influence have managed to water down their pre-Roman and pre-Catholic roots, but some things have survived.

There are many words in the Galician language that have Celtic origins. I am including a link to one of many pages that researches the Galician/Celtic people.
http://www.celtiberia.net/es/biblioteca/?id=698

There are many cherry blond blue eyed Galicians. That trait has managed to survive.

So, whether the chicken came first, or if it was the egg, I don't know. But there are Celts in Galicia.

[Damion]

Those statues are interesting and it would be great to know what they originally represented.
They're similar in style to the warriors on the Bormio stele from Lombardy which dates to the 5th century BC.

[kingandrew]

This is all rather complicated. We are dealing with a rather vague and modern idea of "Celticness" that arose in the Romantic period and applying it backwards to ages when no one would have claimed such an identity. Then we use a few very limited scraps of information as evidence to support a much more sweeping claim.

As noted above, the idea of "Celts" comes from Roman sources applying names to the various "barbarian" (i.e. not Roman) groups they encountered in their march of conquest. There is little doubt that members of these tribes are among the ancestors of todays Scots, Irish, Galicians and so on. But there is little doubt that many others have also left their cultural and genetic heritage in these places over the years, especially the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and the Vikings, among many others.

And of course the intermarriage and cultural influences went the other way, too. So ideas and spouses from one area would move to other places. The Vikings were especially widely-traveled, trading and settling in places as widespread as Iceland, Sicily, Russian, the Byzantine Empire (in today's Turkey), and briefly in America. So scattered examples of some of their traits (blue eyes, light hair, artistic styles) are found widely across these areas.

Language creates group identity more powerfully than most other cultural ties. And the fact that the Scots, Irish, Welsh, and others were at the far edge of Europe made it easier for their distinct languages to survive into the modern era. This is not unique, as there are odd language survivals in other parts of Europe, too, such as Basque, Romansch, or Sami.

In the Romantic Era, beginning in the late 1700s, there was a renewed interest in folk traditions and the idea that language groups constituted "nations." During the 19th and 20th centuries, these ideas often translated into political and military efforts to provide these nations with geographic political independence from their neighboring language nations. Since there had been much trade, intermarriage, and movement of individuals over the centuries, such efforts were always messy and groups were well mixed regardless of where borders might be drawn. We are still seeing this process at work in the various Balkan conflicts of the 1990s and the ongoing independence movements of the Basque and Catalans in Spain.

Scholars, artists, and politicians of the early 19th century began to use the survival of the related languages of Scots and Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and the Breton speech of Brittany as a reason to clump these groups together as "Celts." Many factors helped to popularize this idea, but the huge popularity of Sir Walter Scot's novels and MacPherson's "Ossian" poems helped to popularize the idea of Celtic culture and heritage far and wide. The colorful Highland dress of the Scots and the distinctive styles of folk music and dance associated with these groups also made for an easily-identified cultural "package."

The importance of Scottish Enlightenment academics and authors, the political tensions in Ireland, and the widespread immigration of people from these areas to the Americas and various parts of the British Empire helped to make the elements of folk culture that survived into a focus for identity for people across the diaspora of these groups. Hence the existence of Highland games or Burns Suppers in places like Florida or Shanghai (where I have attended them).

As with the whole "clan tartan" idea, the fact that a tradition is "only" a coupe of centuries old (dating from the Romantic period) does not negate the fact it is a tradition. Obviously I enjoy these cultural expressions and am happy to see Galicians who feel similarly. I don't think anyone has exclusive claim on these elements. The Galicians have obviously maintained piping and other traditions that connect with Celtic culture and have just as much right to identify that way as Lowland Scots (or Americans like me) have to wear the kilt. I just tend to downplay claims of "ancient" or unique traditions, since we can see that various elements (bagpipes, "plaid" patterned fabric, men in skirt like garments) are quite widespread through history. I welcome any who wish to embrace some or all of these things.

Putting them together in the mix we recognize and enjoy today is a relatively recent development, but still one I happily participate in. I just think it's all too easy for some to begin concocting dangerous and unwarranted "blood and soil" type ideas from these cultural expressions, which I would strongly discourage. It is also too easy to create rigid lines in one's mind of what is or isn't "Celtic," an idea that projects a few romantic modern ideas onto a hazy and distant past where they don't really apply.

[Damion]

Nah, we're on fairly solid ground when it comes to recognising that there was a common culture that stretched from Britain, across France, southern Germany and into the Balkans. Same language, same culture. You can argue over what their collective name for themselves was, assuming they had one, but you can't say they didn't exist as a distinct people.

[Damion]

So putting that issue aside, and speaking of woven cloth that has patterns created by stripes in the warp and weft, such cloth exists the world over and is part of many folk traditions.

Not so much. The Igbo patterns here are obviously modern in design and not traditional because they had no such tradition before contact with Europeans. There are 19th century photos of Nigerian warriors wearing European made tartan and striped blankets around their waists.

The same with the Thais, traditional Thai cloth is far more complicated than tartan, I suspect the shawls here also have a European origin. It would be like taking a standard kilt suit today and determining that the old Highlanders loved black jackets and white socks.