The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts

CATHBAD OF ULSTER

See Religion: Druids.

CATUVELLAUNI

A very powerful British tribe in the first centuries BC and AD. Its territory extended across the modern counties of Hertfordshire, south Bedfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, but the Catuvellauni reached out to control their neighbors. Their kings were very strong and the lack of hillforts within their borders shows that they had their petty kings and local chiefs firmly under control.

There was a long-term power struggle between the Catuvellauni and their neighbors to the east, the Trinovantes. It was probably pressure from the Catuvellauni that led to the expulsion of the Trinovantian prince Mandubracius. He went to appeal to Julius Caesar in Gaul. Rome found political refugees like Mandubracius useful, especially when they were looking for an excuse to intervene; disaffected princes must also have been a useful fund of intelligence.

Other British tribes who feared the Catuvellauni joined the Trinovantes, including the Iceni. This was a great bonus for Caesar, because they brought with them exactly the information he needed—the whereabouts of Cassivellaunus’s headquarters. Cassivellaunus was King of the Catuvellauni, but he had adopted the Trinovantian capital, Camulodunum, as his base. It speaks highly of the loyalty that he inspired that he was able to keep this secret for so long. Caesar marched on Camulodunum at once.

The defenders ran away and it seems that Cassivellaunus escaped. He appealed for peace through Commius, King of the Atrebates, and the resistance to Caesar was over. Surprisingly, Caesar had already decided to withdraw from Britain to Gaul for the winter, because he had intelligence of an imminent uprising there. Perhaps Cassivellaunus should have gone on fighting; Caesar could scarcely have coped with a continuing British insurrection and the large-scale Vercingetorix rising that was about to erupt.

At the pinnacle of their power, the Catuvellauni achieved the confederation of south-eastern England in an informal Southern Kingdom (See Tasciovanus, Trinovantes).

CAUUS

Cauus or Caw of Alclud (see Places: Alcluith) was the father of Gildas. He lived in the upper Forth valley, perhaps 20 miles (30km) north of Glasgow. In about 495, he and his family moved to Wales. Legend gives him a second son, Cuil, who stayed in Scotland and died fighting against Arthur, but legend also makes Cauus a giant, because the word “cawr” in Welsh means “giant” (See Funeral Odes).

CAW

See Cauus; Funeral Odes.

CELTOMANIA

There has been a surge of renewed enthusiasm for all things Celtic in modern times. It began in the early eighteenth century with the awareness that there were links between the ancient languages of the Atlantic Celts, and intensified with the growing awareness that these languages were in retreat.

The surge of interest in tartan and Celtic art in the nineteenth century and Celtic music in the twentieth century were further symptoms of Celtomania. There has recently been a political dimension too, as people have become aware that peripheral regions of Europe could lose their cultural identity as the hub of the European Union develops and strengthens (see Part 6: Celtic Twilight and Revival).

CENOMANI

A Celtic tribe in Gaul; its main center was at Le Mans.

CERDIC

See Natan-Leod.

CERETIC GULETIC

The King of Alcluith (Clyde) at the end of the fifth century. He appears in the story of St. Patrick as King Coroticus; Patrick claimed to have turned him into a fox.

Ceretic’s fleet went across to raid the Irish in the middle of the fifth century.

He died in 500 and was succeeded by his son Dyfnwal.

CHARIOTS

Chariots were used for showing off before battle. Queen Medb of Connaught, for example, was driven in her chariot around her camp as a prelude to battle.

Here is what Julius Caesar had to say about the British Celts on the battlefield:

In chariot fighting the Britons begin by driving all over the field hurling javelins, and generally the terror inspired by the horses and the noise of the wheels are sufficient to throw the opponents’ ranks into disorder. Then, after making their way between the squadrons of their own cavalry, they jump down from the chariots and engage on foot. In the meantime their charioteers retire a short distance from the battle and place the chariots in such a position that their masters, if hard pressed by numbers, have an easy means of retreat to their own lines. Thus they combine the mobility of cavalry with the staying-power of infantry; and by daily training and practice they are able to control the horse at full gallop, and to check and turn them in a moment. They can run along the chariot pole, stand on the yoke, and get back into the chariot as quick as lightning.

Caesar saw all this first hand and he was impressed by what he saw.

Chariots could also acquire cult status. Two Gaulish cult vehicles were imported, dismantled, and buried in a mound with a cremation burial at Dejbjerg in Denmark in the first century BC. There was a throne at the center of each wagon, and the bodies buried at the site are believed to have been female. Were they perhaps warrior queens?

No British Iron Age chariots have survived, though a chariot wheel was found in a second-century rubbish pit. It was a single piece of ash bent in a circle, fixed to an elm hub, with willow spokes. Early Irish folk-tales, such as The Wooing of Emer, from the Ulster Cycle, offer descriptions of working chariots:

I see a chariot of fine wood with wickerwork, moving on wheels of white bronze. Its frame very high, of creaking copper, rounded and firm. A strong curved yoke of gold; two firm-plaited yellow reins; the shafts hard and straight as sword blades.

CHILDHOOD

Very young children had low status in Celtic society, counting as extensions of the family. Individual identity was allowed only as a child grew. Among the nobility, the education of children took place away from the parents. There was a widespread practice of sending children away to be brought up by another family, often with the intention of creating new kinship ties with a group far away. This fostering practice was carried through into the Middle Ages. The Druids took charge of the education of many children.

Julius Caesar mentions that in Gaul boys were not allowed to appear in public until they were old enough to bear arms. It was considered a disgrace to the father if a son who was still a child stood beside him in public. The change in status marked by bearing arms suggests a rite of passage of some kind, and it is likely that there were complex initiation rites associated with status changes at different ages. In the Irish tales about Cú Chulainn, we hear about the rites of passage he has to undergo with other boys to acquire manly status. In one ritual, he is attacked by 159 boys throwing their hurley sticks at him. The young hero manages to dodge all of them.

Probably headhunting marked a later rite of passage. In Ireland, killing a foe and taking his head was the signal that a youth’s military instruction was complete.

A further rite of passage was marriage, which had, in Irish folk-tales at least, to be preceded by an adventure. Cú Chulainn has to undertake a long journey, during the course of which he has to undergo various ordeals. When he returns to take his bride-prize, he finds he has to force his way into her house and abduct her. This is no doubt a heightened version of some real trial by adversity that real-life grooms had to undergo.

CIARAN OF SAIGAR

An Irish saint, born in Ossory, Ciaran lived for 30 years in Ireland, unbaptized because the community he lived in was pagan. He went to Rome in the time of Pope Hilary (461–68) and was consecrated bishop. He founded a double monastery, for men and women, with his mother in charge of the women.

Ciaran, Ailbe, Declan, and Ibar were the four bishops of southern Ireland who preached before Patrick.

Ciaran was abused by Aillel, King of Munster, and stopped a war between Aillel and Loegaire, the Irish High King. He visited Tours and died in Cornwall.

CIVILIS

See Religion: Druids.

CLEMENS

See Petroc.

CLYTO

See Fingar of Gwinnear.

COEL GODEBOG

“Coel the Magnificent,” according to one tradition, was a prince of Cornwall, son of Tegvan ap Dehevraint. The tradition is that he took upon himself the kingdom of Britain in 272 and held it for 28 years. The Romans were in power at that time, so it is scarcely possible for Coel to have been in any real sense “King of Britain.” There may, even so, have been some sort of agreement among the native kings and chieftains as to seniority.

Another tradition has Coel as Lord of Colchester, a local ruler who was allowed to rule under Rome with status of a municipal senator or Decurion.

COEL HEN

“Coel the Old” lived around 350–430. According to one tradition he was Coel Godebog’s successor as Lord of Colchester, and was the last ruler there, under Rome, at the time when the Romans left. He earned his nickname because he was long-lived.

But there was an early tradition, which therefore may be more authentic, that Coel Hen was a powerful king in the north of England. According to this version, he ruled the kingdom of York and perhaps the whole of the north, south of Hadrian’s Wall.

Coel’s mother went by the extraordinary name of Stradwawl, “Street Wall.” He named his daughter simply Wawl, “Wall.”

Apart from this, we know very little about the real Coel. He lives on, just, in a children’s nursery rhyme:

Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

and a merry old soul was he;

he called for his pipe,

and called for his bowl

and he called for his fiddlers three.

This is a reminder that the Celtic inheritance is a strange one, sometimes more colorful than its origin, but sometimes a paler and weaker wraith. The nursery rhyme really tells us nothing about the flesh-and-blood King Coel.

COGIDUMNUS

Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus was the king of the Regnenses tribe (West Sussex and Hampshire) in the first century AD. He was a tribal chief in the years before the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, then a British client king under Rome.

The Regnenses were a group within the Atrebates tribe, and Cogidumnus may have been king over all of the Atrebates. In one Roman document he is said to have governed several civitates as a client ruler after the conquest and to have been loyal to Rome “down to our own times” (in the 70s). His name is on a damaged inscription found in the Roman city of Chichester, a few miles from Fishbourne, which reads, “To Neptune and Minerva, for the welfare of the Divine House, by the authority of Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus, great King of the Britons, the guild of smiths and those in it gave this temple at their own expense.” This indicates that he was given Roman citizenship by the emperor Claudius.

Cogidumnus’s collaboration with Rome ensured the success of Vespasian’s conquest of central-southern Britain, not least because Vespasian was able to utilize Chichester Harbor, which the Romans called “The Great Harbor,” for their fleet.

Sir Barry Cunliffe, the principal excavator of the Roman palace at Fishbourne, at the head of Chichester Harbor, believes that Fishbourne was the palace of Cogidumnus.

COINAGE

The Celts on the European mainland began minting coins in the fourth century BC, with designs based on Greek originals. Many of these found their way into Britain during the course of trading and eventually, in the first century BC, British kings began minting their own coins. This started in Cantium (Kent), with cast imitations of bronze coins of the Ambiana tribe across the Channel in northern Gaul.

Coins were made in surprisingly large numbers. It is said that from the middle of the La Tène period, they were minted by the million.

Pre-Roman Celtic coins sometimes have figurative images on them: representations of animals or people. These are evidently heavily symbolic. Some coins show a boar, and this is a motif on other objects too, such as the Witham shield made in the second century BC. It is also thought that coins had a special role as largesse and as an indicator of wealth, which would have made the imagery more potent.

A Gaulish coin found near Maidstone shows a stag and a boar running together. The stag has a huge eye and over-large antlers. The boar has over-large bristles. There are three different circular symbols, one of which may represent a rayed sun.

Coins of the Aulerci Eburovices tribe, who lived in the Evreux region in Gaul, show a boar image superimposed on the neck of a manlike image. This has a link with a similar pairing on a stone carved from Euffigneix: a human figure wearing a torc, with a boar carved along its torso.

By AD 10, the Camulodunum mint was turning out magnificent gold coins inscribed in full with name of the king, CVNOBELINVS. More often, kings contented themselves with an abbreviated form of their names and the names of their mints, so some coins had CVN and CAM (or CAMV) on them or CVN REX TASCIO F, “King Cunobelin, son of Tasciovanus.”

A British coin bearing King Cunobelin has the short form of his name on one side, CVNO, and the abbreviated name of his capital on the other, CAM for Camulodunum. The designs are admirably simple, compared with the fussy designs on modern coins.

The imagery on these coins sometimes tells us a lot about the tribal mindset. Cunobelin was setting out to be as Roman as could be. Other tribes portrayed totem images. Others went on imitating Gaulish coins, in ever-freer styles, so that the images became totally abstract. The head of Apollo was transformed into a swirl of hair. The image of a horse became more and more stylized until it was reduced to a few sweeping lines. The exploded horse image was already in existence in Britain, drawn on the chalk hillside at Uffington, and that had been there since the very beginning of the Iron Age, so the image was already available, and it is possible that the coin image was copied from it.

On the other hand, some northern tribes, such as the Parisii and the Brigantes, seem to have held back from engaging in the money economy and never struck any coins of their own.

COLUMBA OF IONA

Columba was born a prince of the northern Ui Neill in 521. Two of his first cousins became kings during his lifetime, and he himself was eligible for kingship. When he was in his twenties, he was hostile to the overriding influence of the (non-aristocratic) Ciaran of Clonmacnoise.

Columba is said to have founded around 40 monastic houses in Ireland: the first at Derry, close to the dynastic home of his family at Ailech.

Without permission, he copied the Gospel Book of Finnian belonging to Moville, who sought judgment against him from King Diarmait. Diarmait had executed the King of Connacht’s son, who had killed a youth while playing games and who had sought sanctuary with Columba. Columba rallied the monks and the regional kings of Ireland against Diarmait’s centralized and tyrannical rule. He also won a military victory against him at the bloody battle of Cuil Dremhne in 563.

The consequence was exile, imposed on Columba by a monastic synod that deplored the involvement of monks in political warfare. This is how Columba arrived at Iona.

Once there, Columba converted Brudeus or Bridei, King of the Picts, and consecrated Aedan, King of the Scots, at Dal Riada. He appointed monks as bishops to communities in Britain; as monks, they remained under Columba’s authority. He visited Ireland several times, and also the Irish colonists in Dal Riada in Britain; he made at least two journeys to visit the northern Picts, where Bridei had enormous respect for him.

Overall, Columba had enormous influence over the development of the Church in northern Britain and Ireland. He also wielded considerable political power, and it was probably his influence that kept the northern kingdoms at peace with one another.

CONAN

See Brioc.

CONCHOBAR MAC NESSA

See Myths: The Ulster Cycle; Symbols: Sky Falling Down.

CONOMORUS

See Gildas, Leonorus.

CORIOSOLITES

An Iron Age Celtic tribe living on the north coast of Brittany, around St. Malo. The main tribal center was at Corseul.

CORMAC MACAIRT

See Symbols: Magic.

COROTICUS

See Ceretic Guletic.

CORREUS

See Bellovaci.

CULTURES

The central European Celts of the Iron Age had their origins in the Urnfield culture of the late Bronze Age. This had its beginnings in about 1300 BC, just 50 years before the Trojan War. It flourished at the same time as the great warrior-hero culture of the Mycenaeans and its growth may be connected with the decline of Mycenaean power.

As the name suggests, Urnfield was associated with a distinctive type of cemetery: large-scale cremation burials laid out in flat cemeteries, without burial mounds. These cemeteries were widespread over such a large area that archeologists have been confident in identifying the Urnfield people as proto-Celts, the immediate predecessors of the Celts.

The introduction of cremation (instead of the burial of the unburned body) suggests a change in beliefs regarding death and the afterlife. The use of large quantities of sheet bronze implies industrial-scale production of metal and reliable, well-organized trade routes to supply that industry. The sheet-bronze was used to make a variety of objects, including large vessels and shields. Sometimes the vessels were mounted on wagons for religious ritual.

The development of religious paraphernalia shows an increasingly complex religious symbolism and more integrated and uniform ways of expressing religious ideas.

Other changes were under way as well. By about 800 BC horses were used not just as draft animals but for riding. The horse became a symbol of the warrior elite, just as the horse-drawn chariot had been the symbol of the Mycenaean warrior heroes.

By 700 BC the Hallstatt culture had emerged out of Urnfield. This is the first of the classically recognized Celtic cultures. It was at Hallstatt, a picture-postcard lakeside village in Austria, that archeologists first identified new types of metal horse harness. The salt mines in the mountains were the basis of the prosperity and fame of this area between 700 and 400 BC. For the first time iron-working appears on a big scale. Hundreds of years before, the Mycenaeans evidently knew about iron, but they did not think of using it for tools or for weapon-making. The practice of iron-making was quickly copied at site after site. By 600 BC, the Atlantic Celts were making iron in Britain and Ireland.

The Hallstatt culture in central Europe has distinctive hallmarks. One is the rich burial of a warrior-prince or king in a timber mortuary-house, often with a four-wheeled wagon (sometimes in dismantled kit form), covered by a burial mound made of earth. Often in these burials there are three sets of horse-harness. The wagon-team would have comprised a pair of horses, just like a Mycenaean chariot, so what is the third set of trappings for? It is possible that it represented the prince’s or king’s personal steed: his charger.

The elite men, and sometimes women, buried in these opulent graves were rich enough to import wine from the Mediterranean lands.

By 500 BC the power centers had moved away from Austria, north and west toward the Rhineland and the Marne Valley in northern France. Changes in burial custom at the same time led archeologists to identify this development as a new culture: La Tène. The culture was named after a site in Switzerland, on the shore of Lake Neuchatel. La Tène means “The Shallows” and it was a location along the lakeshore that was seen as sacred: a fit place to leave offerings to please the gods. When the site was excavated in 1906–17, it yielded a rich haul of objects that were of new types, including iron swords and everyday ironwork.

There was still a warrior aristocracy and it still went in for burials with funerary carts, but now the carts were a more elegant two-wheeled type rather than the heavier four-wheeled type: a chariot more on the lines of the Mycenaean chariot; a two-wheeled vehicle was far more maneuverable. The old four-wheeled wagons were more the vehicles of fighting farmers; the new two-wheeled chariots were skillfully designed, showing collaboration between carpenters, blacksmiths, and wheelwrights to produce a professional fighting machine.