round 500BC, it was the Celts who first stepped out of the cloud of anonymity which engulfed the "barbarian" peoples of European prehistory. From Romania in the east to Spain and Ireland in the west, from northern Italy in the south to Denmark in the north, they were part and parcel of one widespread group. Ethnically and politically diverse, the Celts were, nonetheless, united in a culture bound together by customs, language, religion and art. It took the inexorable onslaught of the conquering Romans, to disrupt this unity.

Yet even in the shadow of Roman occupation, the Celtic flame was never extinguished. Five hundred years on, it was rekindled as the Empire fell into disrepair.

From Ireland to Scotland and Wales at first and, later, towards Brittany an

Galicia on the continent, monks set sail across the sea in, as legend has it, their stone troughs, though, in reality, in frail skin-lined barques. Their purpose was to convert those around them and a new Celtic culture sprang up where they landed and settled.

Almost fifteen centuries later, evidence of this Celtic culture abound : similar abbey ruins, territorial divisions, place names etc. exist on either side of the English channel and the Irish sea.

Irish and Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Breton - in addition to, Manx (Isle of Man) and Cornish - are present-day languages whose origins are to be found in the Celtic dialects once widely spoken throughout much of the continent of Europe. Setting aside the legendary and the imaginative, it is thanks to these dialects that Celticism has remained a living reality.