The Last of the Celts

by Marcus Tanner

What has become of the Celtic peoples whose culture once spanned Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea? Does the current faddish interest in Celtic nationalism, music, and arts signal the beginning of a revival for Celtic communities, or the last flicker of a dying culture? Award-winning author Marcus Tanner has journeyed throughout the Celtic world—from the wilds of Northwest Scotland to the Isle of Man, from Brittany to Patagonia, and from Boston to Cape Breton—seeking to discover the Celtic past and what remains of authentic Celtic culture today.
Weaving together extensive historical research with first-hand observations of Celtic people in far-flung communities, Tanner finds that talk of a Celtic revival is largely misplaced. He describes the fading prospects of those who have maintained a Celtic identity in the face of powerful pressures to assimilate. Despite great public interest in all things “Celtic,” the threats to the world’s remaining Celtic communities, their language, and their culture are relentless. A distinct Celtic identity may not survive, Tanner fears, and such a loss would impoverish us all.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ireland, Sociology

398 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting at times, eye opening, but nevertheless somewhat disappointing. Perhaps because the scope was so wide Tanner was unable to really dig in to any particular subject in a way that provides enough context to support the point he makes about what the loss of "celticness" might mean. I often thought, "that's it?," when I would come to the end of the chapter and see we have already moved on to the next Celtic group. I enjoyed his examination of the steady attempt to revive culture over the past couple of centuries, and found the Scots chapter almost worth the entire read.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough treatment of the historical 'demise' of the groups we lump under the cultural term "Celt". Tanner addresses language loss, religious conversion, conquest, assimilation, and revival. His acknowledgement that all aspects of culture are intertwined so that change in any part effects the whole is important to note. This is esspecialy relevant to revival movements that focus on singular aspects of culture. Very well written, but you better be ready to dig in with a vested interst.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author takes us to the present and past of the so-called Celtic countries (the Gaels and the Bretons in Ireland, Man, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Bretagne) and two of the diaspora regions (Patagonia and Nova Scotia), describing the downfall of the Celtic language communities who could not withstand the onslaught of the dominant languages (English, French and even Spanish) and outlines a pessimistic perspective on the survival of these same languages in the first decades of the 21st century. There's a lot of melancholia for the reader in this book, at times a lengthy discussion on church matters (though undoubtedly essential to understanding the evolution of these linguistic groups) and unfortunately too few (in my opinion) descriptions of present-day Celtic communities. I ended this book with a sense of disappointment and hopelessness at the survival of these beautiful languages (as a kid, I attempted to learn Cornish and have always wanted to learn Gaelic!).

[Maurice Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

When the writer came to this via his family's Welsh roots, how can he think the Vale of Glamorgan is an expression for all of Glamorgan and includes the Rhondda-Merthyr region? In case you want to know, it specifically means one non-mining rural lowland region on the coast. And how did they typeset Merthyr's ironworks as "Cyfartha" without the second F, at every mention?
The book's thesis carries the same level of reliance. It is a study of shrinkage and overwhelming of Celtic Fringe cultures, including a look at abstract national feeling, but defining their survival by the Celtic languages' survival. This when he is not in the position of having one as his first language: his family had migrated to London and never taught him Welsh, he needed to learn it when his family research in Wales got him interested in the his subject. Yet, without personal axe to grind re the languages, he equates their survival with their nations' continued existence, which is a morally dodgy assumption. Not all nations have their own languages, and as Scotland never had a single national language spanning the Lowland)Highland divide, his point of view does not seem to support that such thing as Scotland exists. He seems to treat just its historically Gaelic-speaking Western regions as constituting a country, and that the idea of Scotland only exists because of that part, though the way its monarchy developed chances to make the kingdom span a bigger area. As he is pessimistic for all the languages and regards cultural assimilation as a demographically unstoppable eventual historical process, he regards the entire Celtic world as a dying out relic. He completely undervalues counter feeling and history feeling in these countries including in their anglicised or English-speaking parts.
He even realises there is an uncomfortable difficulty distinguishing from racism the perception, which he shares with each country's more militant cultural nats, that English immigration and demographic flows of "incomers" take over and assimilate the Celtic cultures. Yet he rightly calls out those migrants to the Isle of Man or Wakes whose motive was to escape England's multiculturalism, holding this same perception of its position.
He has visited each country and discussed their situation with the folks there: that is certainly the good side of his work. Looks at Man, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany as wholes, but only Belfast and west coast Connemara for Ireland, only the Gaelic-speaking Hebrides for Scotland. He has the demographic inspiration to look at 2 emigrated/cleared pockets of ethnically Celtic community across the Atlantic too: Scottish clearances descended Nova Scotia in Canada, and planted Welsh colony Patagonia in Argentina.
For a book on a social issue that is not a religious book, there is far too much church history. Some chapters clogged up with it. He sees the Celtic societies'peripherality as making them susceptible to Evangelical Christian waves of influence, leading to dominating of society, during recent centuries. Through the secular power that a country's strongest church used to have in pre-democratic history, and through the influence of church leaders' attitudes, he sees them as the main decisive power over what happened to languages and whether literary or musical culture was in favour. It offends me that he calls this actually saving the Celtic countries' existence! He defines their existence by anything making them feel distinct from England, and regards all non-Anglican religious revivals as doing that. It offends that it means he does not regard the nations' existence as innate, or able to exist by historical memory, but as down to lucky accidents of a few inspired ppl's work causing these cultural waves of preservation That does not ring true to the strong quantities of cultural memory, Including pre-Christian, in each country!

[Edward Gillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, just excellent. A very entertaining rich narrative of history and scholarship around the British Isles and beyond interlaced with the author's travels. A very discerning view, you come to understand the intersections of religion and technology and culture in a new way. It summarises and encapsulates so much information while maintaining clarity.

[Balloon Bruce · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish it.

[Tana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often long-winded and wandered in ways that didn't necessarily make chronological sense to me, but interesting topic.

[Moses · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative, if indifferently-written and pessimistic, appraisal of the Celtic nations today.

Tanner writes almost entirely without personality, and with a distinctively British post-imperial jaded, sighing pessimism about the future of the Celtic nations. The languages especially he despairs of; Scottish Gaelic basically dead already, Irish rare and even receding even in the powerhouse economy of Ireland, the Welsh resurgence merely a fad (Tanner perhaps did not visit the extreme north of Wales, as we did on our trip, where EVERYONE spoke with a thick Welsh acent), Breton persecuted by the French and dying, Cornish and Manx dead for centuries.

On the whole, Tanner's pessimism overwhelms what could have been an excellent book. There is no insight, not even real appraisal, or opinion; just one false hope after another.

The church in its various forms is blamed for some of the problems facing the Celtic nations, but credited for some of its successes. Tanner is a true 21st-Century secularist--he does not even fear religion, as the atheists do. To him, it is only a force of the past.

This shines through in his strident attack on Celtic spirituality and even music.

All in all, I enjoyed it--merely because of the information it provided--and would have I'm sure enjoyed it more if it had been a little less despairing and disdainful.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me almost exactly a year to read this book, through no fault of its own. Detailed reporting and thorough history of the Celtic languages, their slow disappearances, and the efforts to preserve them. The author contends that Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Breton will disappear in a generation or maybe two, and he makes a strong case; the most interesting aspect of the book is its description of the various attitudes (both from within and without) towards these languages and cultures from the 18th century to the present.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book surveys the main Celtic nations, and looks at their history and prospects. Overall, the author is pessimistic about Celtic languages and traditions. The book is somewhat interesting because of the unusual topic and the level of research that the author clearly completed in writing this book. However, it is infused with an overall pretentious tone that detracts from the quality of the work.

[tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to speak Irish.