Celtic Revival - History

History

Antiquarian researches into the Celtic culture and history of Great Britain and Ireland gathered pace from the late 17th century, with people like Owen Jones in Wales and Charles O'Conor in Ireland. The key surviving manuscript sources were gradually located, edited and translated, monuments identified and published, and other essential groundwork in recording stories, music and language done. The Welsh antiquarian and author Iolo Morganwg fed the growing fascination in all things Celtic by founding the Gorsedd, which (along with his writings) would in turn spark the Neo-druidism movement. Interest in Scottish Gaelic culture greatly increased during the onset of the Romantic period in the late 18th century, with James Macpherson's Ossian achieving international fame, along with the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the poetry and song lyrics of the London-based Irishman Thomas Moore, Byron's friend and executor. Throughout Europe, the Romantic movement inspired a great revival of interest in folklore, folk tales, and folk music; even Beethoven was commissioned to produce a set of arrangements of Scottish folk-songs. As elsewhere, in what was then the United Kingdom of the whole archipelago, this encouraged and fed off a rise in nationalism, which was especially intense in Ireland.

In the mid-19th century the revival continued, with Sir Samuel Ferguson, the Young Ireland movement and others in Ireland, and a great army, now almost entirely forgotten, of popularizing writers of folk tales, dubious works of history, and other material at work in all the nations with a claim to be Celtic. At the same time, archaeological and historical work was beginning to make progress in constructing a better understanding of Celtic history. Interest in ornamental Celtic art developed, and Celtic motifs began to be used in all sorts of contexts, including architecture, drawing on works like the Grammar of Ornament by (another) Owen Jones. Imitations of the ornate Insular penannular brooches of the 7-9th centuries were worn by Queen Victoria among others from the late 1840s, many produced in Dublin by West & Son and other makers. Celtic motifs continue to be used in many popular contexts such as tattoos.