Samhain or Sauin is a Gaelic festival on 1 November marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter, or the "darker half" of the year. It is also the Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Galician name for November, reflecting similar celebrations held by Celtic populations in the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in Galicia, where it is often known as Samaín. Some historians suggest that Galicia could be a significant origin point for Samhain-like observances on the Iberian Peninsula, as the region has preserved many Celtic customs. Celebrations begin on the evening of 31 October, as the Celtic day began and ended at sunset. This is about halfway between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice. It is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals along with Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasa. Historically, it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Galicia, sharing roots in common Celtic seasonal customs. Its Brittonic Celtic equivalent is called Calan Gaeaf in Wales.
Artio is a Celtic bear goddess. Evidence of her worship has notably been found at Bern in Switzerland. Her name is derived from the Gaulish word for 'bear', artos.
The Hooded Spirits or Genii Cucullati are figures found in religious sculpture across the Romano-Celtic region from Britain to Pannonia, depicted as "cloaked scurrying figures carved in an almost abstract manner". They are found with a particular concentration in the Rhineland (Hutton). In Britain they tend to be found in a triple deity form, which seems to be specific to the British representations.
In ancient Celtic religion, Maponos or Maponus is a god of youth known mainly in northern Britain but also in Gaul. In Roman Britain, he was equated with Apollo.
Tarvos Trigaranus or Taruos Trigaranos is a divine figure who appears on a relief panel of the Pillar of the Boatmen as a bull with three cranes perched on his back. He stands under a tree, and on an adjacent panel, the god Esus is chopping down a tree, possibly a willow, with an axe.
In ancient times, Armorica or Aremorica was a region of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire that includes the Brittany Peninsula, and much of historical Normandy.
The Celtic Revival is a variety of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries that see a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Artists and writers drew on the traditions of Gaelic literature, Welsh-language literature, and Celtic art—what historians call insular art. Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields and in various countries in Northwest Europe, its best known incarnation is probably the Irish Literary Revival. Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, "Æ" Russell, Edward Martyn, Alice Milligan and Edward Plunkett stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The modern Celts are a related group of ethnicities who share similar Celtic languages, cultures and artistic histories, and who live in or descend from one of the regions on the western extremities of Europe populated by the Celts.
The Coligny calendar is a bronze plaque with an inscribed calendar, made in Roman Gaul in the 2nd century CE. It lays out a five-year cycle of a lunisolar calendar, each year with twelve lunar months. An intercalary month is inserted before each 2.5 years. The lunar phase is tracked with exceptional precision, adjusted when necessary by a variable month, and the calendar uses the 19-year Metonic cycle to keep track of the solar year. It is the most important evidence for the reconstruction of an ancient Celtic calendar.
The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles and Brittany. Continental Celtic is a geographic, rather than linguistic, grouping of the ancient Celtic languages.
Alan is a masculine given name in the English and Breton languages. Its surname form is Aland.
Braccae is the Latin term for "trousers", and in this context is today used to refer to a style of trousers made from wool. According to the Romans, this style of clothing originated from the Gauls.
Litavis is a Gallic deity whose cult is primarily attested in east-central Gaul during the Roman period. She was probably originally an earth-goddess. In medieval Celtic languages, various terms derived from *Litauia came to designate the Brittany Peninsula.
Celtic toponymy is the study of place names wholly or partially of Celtic origin. These names are found throughout continental Europe, Britain, Ireland, Anatolia and, latterly, through various other parts of the globe not originally occupied by Celts.
The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Celtic languages containing the languages of Ancient Gaul and Celtic Britain, which share certain features. Besides common linguistic innovations, speakers of these languages shared cultural features and history. The cultural aspects are commonality of art styles and worship of similar gods. Coinage just prior to the British Roman period was also similar. In Julius Caesar's time, the Atrebates held land on both sides of the English Channel.
Celtic mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Celtic peoples. Like other Iron Age Europeans, Celtic peoples followed a polytheistic religion, having many gods and goddesses. The mythologies of continental Celtic peoples, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, did not survive their conquest by the Roman Empire, the loss of their Celtic languages and their subsequent conversion to Christianity. Only remnants are found in Greco-Roman sources and archaeology. Most surviving Celtic mythology belongs to the Insular Celtic peoples. They preserved some of their myths in oral lore, which were eventually written down by Christian scribes in the Middle Ages. Irish mythology has the largest written body of myths, followed by Welsh mythology.
Common Brittonic, also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages.
Gaulish is an extinct Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul. In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.
The Chamalières tablet is a lead tablet, six by four centimeters, that was discovered in 1971 in Chamalières, France, at the Source des Roches excavation. The tablet is dated somewhere between 50 BC and 50 AD. The text is written in the Gaulish language, with cursive Latin letters. With 396 letters grouped in 47 words, it is the third-longest extant text in Gaulish, giving it great importance in the study of this language.
Pierre-Yves Lambert is a French linguist and scholar of Celtic studies. He is a researcher at the CNRS and a lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Celtic linguistics and philology. Lambert is the director of the journal Études Celtiques.
