Read more about the article Bog Bodies of Ireland

Bog Bodies of Ireland

Peatlands are beneficial watery environments (… with the occasional human body hidden away).

Around Ireland you find peatlands – wetlands where, over thousands of years, Sphagnum moss and other plant matter have accumulated and degraded. These areas have watery, acidic, and anaerobic conditions so the organic material within peat lands break down but never fully degrades. This long drawn out layered accumulation & compression of vegetation means peatlands are a carbon sink. Despite covering only 3% of the Earth’s surface peatlands store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined.

Peatlands and peat harvesting
Peatlands have been a source of fuel in Ireland for centuries.

Beyond the environmental benefit, peat (aka “turf” in Ireland) can be a building material as well as a fuel source. Peat has been harvested for centuries in Ireland where it is cut from the ground into long rectangular briquettes, dried (it’s 80% moisture when fresh), and then burned. A special shovel called a sleán is used when cutting by hand, but tractors and other industrial machinery can do the job faster. That said by the 1970s most people in Ireland were running their homes with coal, electric, or oil heating, no longer relying on turf.

It’s during the cutting of the turf, digging out sections of peat, that people occasionally find human bodies.

Bog bodies

Bog bodies are naturally mummified human remains found in peatlands. Because of the ground conditions the bodies are remarkably well preserved (considering their age). Tollund Man, who was found in Denmark in 1950, looks as if he is sleeping he is so well preserved (despite having died around 405–384 BCE).

Ireland has numerous bog bodies, most of whom are men having died between the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Some examples include:

  • Cashel Man, died circa 2000 BCE Early Bronze Age, found in 2011
  • Gallagh Man, 400-200 BCE Early Iron Age, found in 1821
  • Clonycavan Man, 392-201 BCE Early Iron Age, found in 2003
  • Old Croughan Man, 362-175 BCE Early Iron Age, found in 2003
  • Ballymacombs More Woman, 343-1 BCE Early Iron Age, found in 2023
  • Baronstown West Man, 200-400 CE Early Iron Age, found in 1953

Many Irish bog bodies share another characteristic – they suffered violent deaths. Old Croghan Man was stabbed in the chest and later decapitated as well as cut in half. Clonycavan Man’s skull was split open and then disembowelled. The consistent pattern of violence & mutilation leads researchers to believe that these people were ritualistically killed as human sacrifices.

Celtic bog bodies discovered in the peatlands of Ireland
Celtic bog bodies, and some objects, discovered in the peatlands of Ireland.

Looking for clues

The ancient Celts did not keep written records so it is uncertain exactly why these bodies were placed out in the peatlands, or why they died as they did, but there are clues. From the 2nd century BCE onward cremation was the standard burial practice, so non-cremated remains of people who met violent ends is unusual and purposeful.

The next clue is where these bodies were placed. The distribution of bodies is frequently at the boundaries of territorial lands. Some of these bodies were deposited alongside objects of ritual significance (weapons, jewelry, clothing, feasting equipment, horse harnesses, food, etc).

Human sacrifice & Kingship

When an ancient Celtic man became king he was thought to symbolically marry the earth goddess, the goddess who looked after the fertility of the land. If the king was good then the land & people would flourish. Conversely if the king was bad this would also be reflected in the land & people. Famine, storms, war, poor harvests, etc. could all be signs that the king was an unjust ruler and perhaps in need of replacement.

It’s possible some of these Irish bog men were kings or perhaps rejected candidates for kingship. Several of them show no signs of manual labor (for example Old Croghan Man had manicured nails) and most were well fed. An additional clue as to their potential kingship is that several had their nipples mutilated.

In ancient Celtic society you would plead fealty to the king by sucking his nipples – Saint Patrick has a story involving this practice, as he gained passage on a boat. To remove or damage a man’s nipples would deny him kingship. Old Croghan Man was found with deep cuts under each nipple while Clonycavan Man was found with no nipples at all. Its possible decomposition played a role in both, but ritualistic mutilation is a leading theory.

Kings in the Bogs

Male Irish bog bodies seem to be kings who fortune turned against and were ritualistically sacrificed to appease a higher power. In killing a king the people hoped the goddess would be happier with the new king and improve their living conditions. As this practice seems to have gone on sporadically across thousands of years it’s unknown just how many bodies may still be hidden away in the peatlands.

Added info: Ireland has largely turned away from peat as a fuel source. Burning peat is not sustainable as it was being consumed faster than it could replenish itself. Further, the burning of peat releases the very carbon it was beneficially holding onto, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021 the government owned company Bord na Móna ceased peat harvesting and in 2022 the selling of peat as fuel was largely outlawed.

Besides holding carbon and ritualistic burials, peatlands also hold bog butter. For thousands of years people would bury wooden containers of butter or cheese in the peatlands. Whether to hide it from thieves, age it in the ground, or to keep it fresh, peatlands act as (essentially) natural refrigerators.

Peatland and the cutting of the turf.

Some science explaining peatlands.

QI discusses Richard Harris as well as the nipples of Celtic Kings.
Read more about the article Beyond the Pale

Beyond the Pale

The expression about unacceptable behavior that’s based in Irish history.

Around 16,000 BCE the melting ice from the Ice Age raised sea levels and separated Ireland from Britain. Then around 6,000 BCE Britain became separated from mainland Europe. Since around 8,000 BCE the island of Ireland has been steadily inhabited but whether these early settlers arrived on a disappearing land bridge or by boats is unknown. The Celts came much later (exactly when is debated) but somewhere starting around 500 BCE.

The long conflict between the Irish and English stems from the 1169 CE Norman invasion of Ireland. An 1155 papal decree by Pope Adrian IV (who, what a coincidence, was English himself) granted King Henry II of England the right to invade & govern Ireland. This was the start of the next several hundred years of brutal English colonization of Ireland.

Us From Them

The Lordship of Ireland began in 1177 but, in the beginning, England really only ruled over parts of Ireland. Some of the Lords who had been given land assimilated to the local Irish culture, the crown gained land and lost land, and gradually the area under English control shrank. By the 14th century only a region around Dublin was still under English control. To clearly mark the King’s territory, to separate “us from them”, a wooden fence was constructed along portions of the border. This border was the pale, from the Latin “palus” for a stake or fence. So, the native Irish living free outside of the control of the English crown were “beyond the pale.”

To try and control their subjects the English put in place various laws to prevent Irish influence. Marriage between English settlers and the Irish was forbidden, as was speaking Irish Gaelic, dressing like the Irish, or even cutting your hair like an Irish person. These activities were deemed unacceptable behavior and were “beyond the pale.”

Today the idiom “beyond the pale” continues to mean things that are offensive or unacceptable, just like what the English thought centuries ago.

Added info: the oldest structures in Ireland, sometimes thought of as Celtic, existed long before the Celts arrived in Ireland. Newgrange, the 5,200 year old passage tomb just North of Dublin, was created 2,500 years before the Celts arrival (it was also created before the pyramids of Giza).

Read more about the article Celtic to Gaelic to Irish

Celtic to Gaelic to Irish

What we call “Celtic” is a bit of a misnomer that misses the bigger picture

People use the term “Celtic” to generally describe traditional Irish (as well as Scottish and Welsh) types of art, literature, music, etc. Celtic crosses, Celtic dance, Celtic jewelry, Celtic tattoos even, all have a certain “look” we call Celtic, but it didn’t start out that way.

What we call “Celtic” is largely because of the Celtic Revival movements of the 19th & 20th centuries. This term constitutes a series of narrowly selected cultural elements from a limited range of time in the British Isles. While this generated renewed interest in these particular traditional cultures, the Celtic Revival movements also oversimplified (and flat-out got wrong) other elements of Celtic culture.

Celtic

The Celtic Revival focused on the Celtic cultures found in the British Isles, but the Celts were a lot bigger than that. The Celts were a mix of tribal peoples who originated in central Europe (more or less around Austria) a few thousand years ago. Pinning down exactly where the Celts came from and when they came into being is debatable.

Eventually the Celts worked their way westward claiming land across Europe and around the 6th century BCE began migrating up into the British Isles. In 1st century BCE the Romans expanded their empire, killing off many of the Celts in mainland Europe in the process. As a result the primary surviving Celtic cultures were in the British Isles but a few small pockets of territory along coastal Western Europe also survived.

Part of this culture was language. The Celts had their own language which evolved over the centuries depending on where in Europe they were. Eventually Celtic got split into three categories:

  • Continental: which created a few now extinct languages
  • Britonic: which created a few extinct languages as well as Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.
  • Gaelic

Gaelic

In Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man the Celts became the Gaels who developed their own language of Gaelic. Gaelic became the basis of three languages:

  • Manx: the (mostly extinct) language of the Isle of Man
  • Scottish Gaelic: spoken in the highlands & the Hebrides of Scotland, it is also called Scottish (which is different though than Scots, which is a different Scottish language that is Germanic based)
  • Irish Gaelic

Irish

The Gaels who made Ireland their home developed their own culture and their own Gaelic language of Irish Gaelic, also just called Irish. Today Irish is one of two official languages of the Republic of Ireland (the other being English). Because of early Irish Gaels leaving Ireland for Scotland and the Isle of Man, Irish Gaelic was the basis of what became Scottish Gaelic and Manx.

Today most people in Ireland speak English as their primary language. Most media, politics, and business is in English. That said, according to the 2016 Irish census 39.8% of the country (1.7 million people) said they could speak Irish. But of those Irish speakers only around 73,000 people (around 1.7% of the population) speak Irish as their primary language. To help the language survive & grow the Irish government has programs & plans in place such as Irish being a mandatory subject in school.

So while “Celtic” tends to mean all things Irish in pop culture, the true roots of Celtic culture are much older and much more diverse. While large parts of Irish culture (including the language) are originally Celtic, not all things Celtic are Irish.


Also: Celtic is pronounced with a hard “k” sound as “keltic”, unless you are referring to the Boston basketball team or the Glasgow football club which use a soft “s” sound as “seltic”.