The regions of Wales were developing along tribal lines by the time the advent of iron ushered in a new cultural change. The Ordovices in the north east and the Silures in the south east are but two of these early tribes, the names of which are not their own but those given them by late Roman invaders.




A more balanced and likely theory is that the actual number of Celtic newcomers was low, and though they managed to dominate the culture of the earlier inhabitants of Wales, they did so without changing the overall physical or racial characteristics. So the Welsh of today are more likely to owe their physiognomy, if not their culture, to the Beaker People rather than the later Celts.

The Iron Age is the age of the Celt in Britain. Over the 500 or so years leading up to the first Roman invasion a Celtic culture established itself throughout the British Isles. Who were these Celts? The Celts as we know them today exist largely in the magnificence of their art and the words of the Romans who fought them.


Where did they come from? What we do know is that the people we call Celts gradually infiltrated England and Wales over the course of the centuries between about 500 and 100 B.C. There was probably never an organized Celtic invasion; for one thing the Celts were so fragmented and given to fighting among themselves that the idea of a concerted invasion would have been ludicrous.


Celtic family life
The basic unit of Celtic life was the clan, a sort of extended family. The term "family" is a bit misleading, for by all accounts the Celts practiced a peculiar form of child rearing; they didn't rear them, they farmed them out. Children were actually raised by foster parents. The foster father was often the brother of the birth-mother. Clans were bound together very loosely with other clans into tribes, each of which had its own social structure and customs, and possibly its own local gods.




The lot of women



They acted as ambassadors in time of war, they composed verse and upheld the law. They were a sort of glue holding together Celtic culture. The Isle of Anglesey seems to have been held in special esteem by the Celtic-Welsh druids.



The Celts at War
The Celts loved war. If one wasn't happening they'd be sure to start one. They were scrappers from the word go. They arrayed themselves as fiercely as possible, sometimes charging into battle fully naked, dyed blue from head to toe, and screaming like banshees to terrify their enemies.



They also had a habit of dragging families and baggage along to their battles, forming a great milling mass of encumbrances, which sometimes cost them a victory, as Queen Boudicca would later discover to her dismay. As mentioned, they beheaded their opponents in battle and it was considered a sign of prowess and social standing to have a goodly number of heads to display.

The main problem with the Celts was that they couldn't stop fighting among themselves long enough to put up a unified front. Each tribe was out for itself, and in the long run this cost them control of Britain.

If the physical makeup of the Welsh people owes more to the Beaker People, Welsh culture is largely a Celtic one. The warlike Celts, with their reverence for martial heroism, left an indelible mark on the folk tales and cultural myths of Wales, myths which grew through time into the mass of legends we know as the Mabinogion.

See our map of the tribes of Celtic Wales here

History of Wales - main index