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Celtophilia is fine, just not when they turn them into not Celts.

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Ranika,

some of those Gaelic speaking islands off the west of Ireland were settled by Cromwells soldiers.

All of the languages you mentioned as influences on Welsh have been influences on Gaelic too (as well as Scandinavian and Welsh influences on Gaelic).

However, I doubt that either language could be described as uninfluenced by other languages (I don't like the term corrupted as outside influences show up in all but the most isolated linguistic communities and tend to go both ways).

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Run that one past me again?

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actually, i think he's saying celtophilia is fine until people start celebrating crap that isn't even celtic (e.g. "new-age" celticism). may be wrong though.

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Very tolerant of you .

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I'm aware, but certain islands were much more isolated; some still had traditional Irish clothing into the late 1900s as the standard of day-to-day wear. I am aware some were settled by soldiers from Britain though. Simply saying that more influence, I'd expect would be on Welsh. I'm fully aware of the influences on Irish (I never said it was uninfluenced; more that I believe parts of it can be described as substantially less so), my sticking point of study has always been linguistics; also, Saxon has no great influence on Irish except through English; Saxon itself is a seperate language, and any affect it'd have on Irish (before it became what we recognize as early/old English) would be far more minimal than its influence on Welsh, though it does have a pronounced affect on the Scottish language (as they had substantially more direct dealings with Saxon speakers). The more Welsh is picked apart these days, the more we seem to find it is influenced by things we hadn't originally expected, and in more heavy a way. It is clearly still a Celtic language (as are the Gaelic languages and Bretonic), and so long as it's spoken it'll be recognized as one. It's just a matter of development. Calling any modern Celtic (or any other) language truly 'pure' of external influence is without merit; it's simply not possible. Modern Celtic languages do experience, in general, much less external influence than a lot of better known languages, but that's a matter of placement and regularity; they're not major languages in multiple nations, where they would be absorbing all manner of local slang, other local languages through loanwords, and local accents through which one develops a seperate style of pronunciation, and thus dialects.

As to Celtophilia; I think it's fine to take an interest in things, but I think it does a great dishonor to the people you find interesting to believe things of them that you shouldn't. The peaceful, mystic interpretation of Celts does them a great disservice, as it ignores their quite blatantly violent behaviors to outsiders, and their understanding of sciences and other completely non-mystical factors of life; it ignores that they were a real live people, and does them a disservice by turning them into some fantasy beings (in either a positive or negative light). And the problem isn't just with Celtophilia, but with any culture worship; it's completely unnecessary. Rather than extrapolate the merits they have, people often change or create merits (like the mystical thing) that fit better with what they want, while totally ignoring truly good things.

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Give the man a cookie!
Exactly right. I'd be a hypocrit if I said liking a particular group of people was wrong, but only you like them for what they really were, not for fantasy ideas.

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The erudite Ranika, is, (as always ) right about Gaeilge, and how it has been comparatively less influenced by other languages than other Celtic languages, such as Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx and Gaidhlig (or whatever the spelling of Scot's Gaelic is). There are several reasons for this:

1) If one closely examines a map, as one can, it is noted that Wales and Brittany are physically attached to the nations that would later conquer them. Surprisingly, this had an influence on their native tongues.

2) Returning to the same map, we will notice that Ireland is an island, and one lacking in valuable resources. As a result, the Goidils/Gaels were left to their own devices until the Vikings starting poking around our area.

3) Due to this isolation, we were left unconquered for longer in comparison to Wales and Brittany. This allowed the Irish language and its dialects to retain their individuality for longer.

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Tolerance is for GIRLY MEN!,

And for the reccord I too think the Celtic newage crap is just that, a load of crap. I fell in love with Celtic and ancient Germanic civilizations for their great warrior spirits and their greater respect for women and females in general when compared to the Grecco/Roman civilizations whom more or less treated women like crap.

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such as Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx and Gaidhlig (or whatever the spelling of Scot's Gaelic is

Gaelic just i'm afraid, although pronounced with an 'a' rather than an 'a'.

incidentally one of the interesting things with gaelic and gaelic is that speakers of Donegal Gaelic i know feel it is far closer to Islay and S Argyll Gaelic than either N Hebrides Gaelic or south of Ulster Gaelic. Not really surprising as the sea is a connector rather than a divider along the west coast, and we shouldn't judge the borders of the past by the borders of today. But just a nice reminder that the modern division of Ireland and Scotland is not so simple in prehistory as we might imagine

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A funny thing is, Scots for a very long time after the formation of what we would call Scotland (though it lacked the Hebrides and such), still considered themselves an Irish kingdom (and were called Irish by Saxons/English for a long time). The relations began to fall away as the Scots grew culturally distinct from the Irish; where they had been essentially identical as Dal Riadans, as they took control of the north of Britain, they grew to be culturally distinct, but essentially still 'Irish'; they had their own customs and unique traits, but, so did all Irish kingdoms; more or less, they became seperate from the clans of Ulster in custom and tradition. When the last Dal Riadan holdings in Ireland were lost, their direct connection to Ireland was severed, but connections were still, more or less, close. However, they remained, essentially, an 'Irish' kingdom; however, conflicts with Northumbria introduced very long-lived land claims in the south of modern Scotland/north of modern England, between who actually had the right to what. So many treaties were rather ambigous, so there was constant conflict over interpretation; one didn't much like the thought of a foreign king collecting tax or raising levies from people who didn't belong to their land. This inevitably led to the influx of Anglo-Saxons into the area we would come to call the 'lowlands'; invaders, migrants, and by way of marriages. Marriages were meant to try and ensure peace, but that never lasted long in the earlier periods; that most weighs on the very much Gaelic culture of the early Scots, which doesn't recognize marriages that well, since the Gaelic clan societies had no concrete nobility, just various ranks of aristocracy that could fluctuate; a marriage agreement good in one generation can very suddenly become utter rubbish. Until the introduction of the Norman feudal system (where feudal noble houses merged with clan systems to an extent, though Norman political styles became predominant), the Saxons/English were dealing with a people who had a wholely different system of politics. The introduction of Norman systems did change a lot. Ireland (at first), despite Norman presence, and despite descending, in large part, into anarchy, preserved much of Gaelic political systems. Normans were Gaelicized; they started following similar systems. Gaelic/Norse Irish took well to some Norman customs, but found many rather abhorrent and flat out barbaric (the concept of 'divine right', particularly, which even most Irish aristocrats, who would benefit, didn't adopt for generations). The Scots in the lowlands changed far quicker; they had been directly associated with the Saxons and then Normans for a longer time than the Irish. Through marriages and just political situation, they adopted many more customs, much quicker. Normano-Irish and Normano-Scots were wholely different groups; the Normano-Irish were more Irish with strong Norman influences (they were simply substantially more prevalent, and the Norman culture was being submerged in Irish culture), and Normano-Scots were more Norman with strong Gaelic Scot influences (not a matter of numbers here; Saxon and then Norman feudalist influences had been being absorbed for some time); this would be a major shift culturally between the two. However, highland Scots, though affected more heavily by Norse culture (though both were substantially influenced by it) were still like the Irish in many respects, though they also had absorbed Pict culture, and had existed in their own land now for centuries, so they, of course, followed a different course of development; by this point, Scots and Irish are most distinctly different groups. However, things still changed more. That's only the Norman invasions and developments; we could explore further (much further), but I think that's a good time to declare the genuine split between the Irish and Scots into completely distinct cultures, though I could understand arguments placing it earlier or even a bit later.

That said; the kingdom of Dal Riada, despite being across the sea (mostly, it had some coastal holdings in Ireland for a while) was, I think, Irish. I don't see much debate in it; while they did change (northern Briton and Pict influences), they could still converse with the Irish easily, shared most of the same customs, etc. Scots and Irish are culturally distinct today (and I'm sure any of us from either would remind you), but it is something of note that we weren't always.

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I tend to agree with most of what you're saying i think. I see the modern divisions between Ireland and Scotland as somewhat misleading for this period. I wouldn't say Dal Riata was 'irish' as such as i think that puts a modern spin on things, but i agree that culturally these areas were similar. Argyll and the southern hebrides and much of Ulster can really be seen as a single unit. I go with the idea that the supposed 'invasion' of west scotland by the Scots was nothing of the sort. This was predominantly later attempts to explain why the west coast of Scotland had a Gaelic culture. Rather what existed was a cultural and geographical unit encompassing the north of Ireland and Argyll and some other parts of Scotland. Of course this was a dynamic process and power structures shifted between various areas within this unit at different times and interactions with external bodies had strong effects, but the so-called invasion is unlikely to have ever happened. The connections and existence of this socio-cultural sphere had always been there.

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Right; I only use the term 'Irish' as it's something people can understand quicker than trying to draw out a more nebulous concept of culture and tradition. The 'invasion' of Dal Riada has been determined, more and more, to have actually been more of a slow migration; remains of early Gaelic houses from substantially earlier than the proposed period of the 'invasion' exist, so clearly, Gaels existed in Argyll. It's not hard to see why; it's a very short distance between the closest point of Ireland and Scotland; it would be easy to simply determine that one could 'hop the pond' and set up a community; it'd be more of a slow expansion into a relatively unpopulated region. The invasion concept seems more, to me, as an attempt to explain the hostilities that arose between the Picts and Dal Riadans; if the Dal Riadans had violently invaded and conquered the region, it would give more of a valid reason for hostilities between the two, but, as it is, it seems they rather peacefully migrated, and hostilities probably escalated over unrelated matters; probably just a land grab. It's a lot less epic that way I suppose; people want colorful wars, but, that's just not how people spread all the time.

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Casse looking good, EB. I've never bothered to play the Britons in vanilla and (no offense) probably won't play Casse either, but still - Casse looks great.

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That isn't offensive; even if one doesn't intend to play a faction, we want to provide good opposition (hence also spending time on making regionals and rebels and such). It's not that fun to play a game where the enemies are boring or ugly. It's much more exciting if the opposition is colorful

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Hi im new to this forum, infact I just joined a few minutes ago, but I have been viewing the progress of this mod for quite some time and I must say im very impressed.

I do however have just a few quesitons concerning the fantastic Rycalawre unit.

1) I have indeed seen the real life helmet that inspired that design in this mod, however was it defiantly used in combat? and if so would it be used by such an elite unit of men?
I have read about the celts being somewhat intimidating due to their natural height , and also that they would add to this natural height by wearing horned helmets like the ones the Rycalawre are wearing, however I'd assume that they would wear this more to shock the enemy rather than go right into combat with them, the helmets dont seem very practical.
anyway getting to my point, the Rycalawre unit seem to be the supreme fighting experts of this factions unit list, so i ask you , would they really go into combat wearing such highly decorative helmets?

2)the Rycalawre is a very attractive unit, the chain mail and the swords and helmets etc all look very good, and I cant wait to play this mod becuase of units like this but theres one problem.........the shirt/tunic.

would it be possible to change the texture of the shirt to something a bit less...bright and clashing? Dont get me wrong, im not trying to insult the skin artists of this mod, I wouldnt be here if i wasnt 100% impressed with the project, I just think that the shirt doesnt look very good on this unit. I understand historical accuracy is more important than simply looking good, but from what ive read the various celtic peoples were somewhat....well, fancy when it came to their clothes and I doubt that a group of elites that belonged to a culture that was extremely fond of being well dressed would wear such a brightly colored shirt that clashed with their trousers and just about everything else it came into contact with.

so is there a chance you could change the shirt?

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