Feasting and fighting were major Celtic preoccupations, with elaborate boasting a frequent cause of bloodshed. For example, in the Irish tale of Mac Da Tho’s pig, the hero. Get Mag Magach, takes his knife at the feast to cut the champion’s portion of the pig and invites any Ulsterman to challenge his
Right to it. A succession of challengers receive Cet’s insults: one has been blinded, another emasculated, and a third, the king’s son, is nicknamed the ‘Stammerer of Macha’ because Get had wounded him in the throat. Finally, the Ulster hero Conall steps down and challenges Get. When Get retaliates by saying that his champion Auluan would wipe Gonall out on the spot, Gonall pulls out Auluan’s head from under his tunic and flings it at Get ‘so that a rush of blood broke over his lips’.
The classical accounts provide some very detailed descriptions of Geltic methods of warfare, including the weapons they used. Here, for example, Tacitus explains how a group of Batavian and Tungrian mercenaries hired for the British campaigns were able to defeat the British Gelts:
The fighting began with exchange of missiles, and the Britons showed both steadiness and skill in parrying our spears with their huge swords or catching them on their little shields, while they themselves rained volleys on us. At last Agricola called on four cohorts of Batavians and two of Tungrians to close and fight it out at the sword’s point. These old soldiers had been well-drilled in sword-fighting, while the enemy were awkward at it, with their small shields and unwieldy swords, especially as the latter, having no points, were quite unsuitable for a cut-and-thrust struggle at close quarters. The Batavians, raining blow after blow, striking them with the bosses of their shields, and stabbing them in the face, felled the Britons posted on the plain and pushed on up the hillsides.
Celtic warriors from the Gundestrup cauldron. The three warriors on the right are blowing camyxes or battle-homs.
A typically Celtic fortification was the hillfort, built on a natural elevation and surrounded by ramparts and ditches. The tribe would live a semi-nomadic existence, leading its herds from pasture to pasture, with more permanent settlements on land cleared, ploughed and seeded, but with retreat to the safety of the hillfort an ever-present option. One of the best examples of a Celtic hillfort is Danebury in Hampshire, England. The site, which was occupied from about 650 to 100 BC, has been extensively excavated and has revealed much useful information about the early British Celtic way of life. One of the most dramatic hillforts is that at South Cadbury in Somerset, which some have claimed to be the stronghold of the historical Arthur, in other words the real and original Camelot; the site offers a commanding view across the Glastonbury plain, and I can attest from personal experience that its atmosphere is very imposing. The Hibernian Celts built circular towers of unmortared stone, now called brochs, on their hillfort sites, the remains of which can still be found in the Highlands and Islands, notably at Dun Telve in Gleann Beage and Clickhimin in Shetland.
Spears, swords and shields were traditional Celtic weapons, but not bows and arrows. The swords of the La Tene era were short, but the swords of the second and first centuries BC were long, heavy swords used for hacking and slashing, and Tacitus’s description, given earlier, suggests that they continued in use in Britain well into the first century AD. Spears were of two kinds, a long one for throwing and a short one for thrusting in hand-to-hand combat. The Irish texts mention a special spear called the ga bulga, which tore out entrails as it was withdrawn, which suggests that it might be either spiral in shape or fitted with some kind of hooks. Helmets have been found, but their comparative scarcity, and the often elaborate nature of their design, suggests that they may have been as much decorative as functional.
Several of the classical authors tell us that Celtic battles were noisy. Diodorus tells us about their battle trumpets which were ‘of a peculiarly barbaric type’ and produced ‘a harsh sound which suits the tumult of war’. War trumpets are depicted on the famous cauldron from Gundestrup, in Denmark. We also know that battle cries, ululation from the women and the hurling of insults from the men, and perhaps war drums, pipes and rattles, may have contributed to the battle din. Add to that picture the spectacle of warriors charging into battle completely naked, the intended effect being to show the enemy how little death mattered, and the classical depictions of the Celts as awe-inspiring, even terrifying foes make good sense. Tacitus tells us that the legionaries who confronted the druids and their retinues at Anglesey in AD 61 were so shocked by the insults, battle cries and ululations of the druidic priestesses that they were badly shaken and had to be whipped back into the ranks.
The most distinctively Celtic weapon was actually a vehicle. It was the chariot, a small and very light wickerwork structure mounted on an axled frame, usually drawn by a pair of swift-turning, sure-footed ponies. As was mentioned earlier, the modern word ‘car’ is derived from currus, the Roman
Version of the original Celtic name for this unique transport. The chariot was usually driven by two riders, often kinsmen. One would drive the horses, while the other threw spears. The usual practice against the Romans was to hurl the chariot at high speed into the slow-moving ranks of infantry, fire off a rapid volley of spears, leap down to engage in swift hand-to-hand combat while the chariot spun quickly to change direction, then leap aboard again to retreat to safety and prepare the next assault. It was a highly efficient and effective battle tactic, and the Romans quickly adopted and adapted chariots to their own use, as anyone who has seen Ben Hur will know. (The Celtic war chariots were actually much lighter and quicker than the later Roman versions.) Among the Gauls and Celtiberians, military horsemanship replaced chariot warfare and a more traditional style of cavalry fighting emerged. Early Celtic saddles had tall pommels to help the rider remain seated, but there were no stirrups, which were not introduced until the post-Roman period.
A Celtic shield dating from the first century AD, throum into the River Thames at Battersea, London as a votive offering.
A sword hilt found at North Grimston, Yorkshire, England. Weapons were often given individual names and personal attributes.
When large armies of Celts fought together against a common enemy, the clan structure led to frequent confusion and competition for supremacy of command, with the notable exceptions of the one or two Celtic kings like Vercingetorix or Ambiorix who managed to inspire confidence among many tribes or clans simultaneously. The Celts also frequently fought as mercenaries, the best recorded examples being those given in the classical descriptions of the Punic Wars, which included Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. One group was called Gaesaetae, which Polybius translated as ‘mercenaries’, but actually means ‘spearmen’. Accounts of the Battle of Telamon tell us that they fought naked there, while the Cisalpine Gauls (those who lived on the Italian side of the Alps) wore breeches and cloaks. Celtic mercenaries served in Anatolia, Macedonia and Egypt, and latei; of course, after prolonged Roman domination, as soldiers and even citizens of the Empire.
As Caesar discovered, the Celts could fight at sea, as well as on land. The Veneti, from the region of Gaul which is now Brittany, battled the Roman quinqueremes with heavy, squat ships; the Gaulish vessels had high foredecks and afterdecks which thwarted the Roman archers and stone-throwers, and ‘for the same reason it was still less easy to seize them with grappling-hooks’. The Celtic ships used leather sails, which were presumably more resistant to Atlantic storms than cloth ones.
A Stone door-post with a skull niche, found at Roquepertuse, Bouches-du-Rhone, France, probably dating from the third century BC.
The Celtic warrior was reputed to hold death in contempt. Caesar tells us that Celts would arrange to meet and pay back cash debts in the next world if they happened to fall in battle, so absolute was their belief in a real and immediate afterlife. The defeated King Catuvolcus of the Eburones hanged himself from a yew tree rather than submit to Roman rule. Unfortunately, the same high pride and dismissal of danger which made Celtic armies so intimidating also made them vulnerable; the fighting was as much a matter of personal, individual pride as of achieving any joint objective, and quests for death and glory often thwarted broader military objectives.
The Celts collected heads, but nobody is certain why. There may have been a straightforward coup-counting purpose, each head being a tally of the number of the enemy killed, but the evidence suggests that it was not that simple. Heads of defeated enemies were displayed in specially constructed wall niches, and greatly prized heads were preserved in oil and possibly mounted as trophies, like game in a later age. The Celts held that the spirit resided in the head, and there seems to have been a mystic or religious element in the practice, as well as whatever purposes of battle glory were met. The Welsh tale of the Assembly of the Wondrous Head, in which the severed head of Bendigeidfran (‘Bran the Blessed’) stays alive for many years, before finally being buried at White Hill in London, seems related to the religious or
Mystic aspects of head-hunting. White Hill is the site of the Tower of London, and the legend that if the ravens ever leave the Tower; then London, and eventually all of Britain, will fall to a foreign enemy derives from the earlier; Celtic myth. The name Bran, an important Celtic father-god, means ‘raven’ - bran is still the modern Celtic word for ‘crow’ or ‘raven’.
So important was religion to the Celts, and so deeply connected with the patterns and traditions of Celtic kingship, that the topic merits a chapter to itself, and to that subject we now turn.
World History
