My husband was German but was always very insistent that the "Celts' came from the Black Forest in Germany, therefore, I was really German... From a book written by Gerhard Herm, it states: "This people called Galli by the Romans and Galatai or Keltoi by the Greeks did not fit in with any of the Ancients' notions of humanity. In the words of the Greek historian Diodorus(Himself born in Sicily and hence known as "Siculus"): 'Their aspect is terrifying...they are very tall in stature, with rippling muscles under clear white skin. Their hair is blond, but not ...they look like wood demons....their hair thick and shggy like a horse's mane...' ....on the Caspian Sea there grew up, possibly as early as 1800 BC, the third of the three great barbarian peoples, among whom the Greeks also included the Iberians and the Celts: the Scythians(though the earliest archaeological evidence dates from around 700 BC) Herodorus tells a story about them......there are three main conclusions to be drawn, first, that this steppe people had customs similar to those of the original Indo Europeans and were perhaps related to them.... ...we may presume that traces of the Celtic imagination have survived in fairy tales as an inheritance buried under Latin culture and Germanic traditon..it is clear that the old Irish were a part of the people that built Manching and almost defeated Caesar... As mentioned, the first Celtic speaking tribes came to Ireland as far back as the Hallstatt period. After the beginning of the La Tene era these were followed, via Britain, by other wandering hordes who spoke a Brythonic..,.once they had settled in Ireland, thely took on the old Goidelic language, although it was their art that established itself. Their swords, torcs, and vessels were almost identical with those of the continent; as in Germany...the wheels of their chariots had iron tyres which were laid glowing on to the wooden rims --a Celtic invention..." The Celts originated in Russia and overran Europe, eventually crossing over to England(Belgae Celts) etc. A further quote, "By the twelfth century the nucleus, the people that had started it all, lived hardly anywhere in the old way, save in the far north of Scotland......." Of course there was that intermix with the Vikings.... Also, the north of Ireland (Ulster) the Dalriada was always a separate culture from the south of Ireland....