The Survival of the Celtic Tradition.The Nature of the Evidence
The Survival of the Celtic Tradition.The Nature of the Evidence

Summary/Abstract: The author critically examines the ethno-archaeological data from many areas of our information about the Celts and those of the vernacular literary tradition and the forms of perpetuation of Celticism. The first major signs of progress in the knowledge of the vernacular substratum were visible owing to comparative linguistics, which brought into evidence the so-called “ethnic reactions”, that is the influence of the substratum. Undoubtedly, the most conservatory domain remains that of religion and funerary practices. The survival of certain ancestral religious traditions in the Gallo-Roman epoch represents one of the most evident clues about the vitality of Celticism. An extremely interesting element – the persistence of Celtic mental traditions – was stressed through comparative mythology and the folkloric-ethnographic studies. These spiritual signs of permanence are mostly reflected by the abundant epic literature of the insular Celts. During the lasting tradition from the Antiquity to the medieval world – when the intellectual culture becomes the monopoly of the Church – we witness the renaissance of a traditional culture, of rural nuance and evidently Celtic origin, in the West.

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