Galicia, the region of North Western Spain from which my ancestors hail, has long referred to itself as "Terra Celta" (In Galician, Celtic Land) and celebrated its Celtic roots. A new study by an Oxford University team has discovered that Celts are descendants of seafaring Spaniards, fishermen from Coastal Northern Spain according to an August 4 article from The Independent.
I've always been fascinated by the similarities in some of the folk dance, folk costumes and the ubiquitous bagpipe in folk music of Galicia, Ireland and Scotland and thought these might be traced to a common Celtic/Druid ancestry yielding wonderfully different branches of a common tree that share many common traits to this day, not the least of which is a fierce independence and a love for the spoken and written word. It never occurred to me that the original tree might be rooted in coastal Northern Spain, or that Terra Celta could be a literal label rather than a tipping of the hat to the Celtic tribes known to have settled there in the distant past.
Unfortunately, I still cannot bear the sound of bagpipes for other than ceremonial purposes of short duration, be they Scottish, Irish or Galician, and hope that if these musical instruments have any link to Celtic culture, it was only as a tool to drive enemy armies nuts. :)
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