How are celts portrayed in the popular media?

Question

3 egs and how they differ from reality

ancient history

THX XD

Answer 1

Based on what I've seen, they're often portrayed as being redheads and drunks. However, look at famous people like Pierce Brosnan. He's Irish and he's not a redhead.

Answer 2

do you mean modern celts or ancient ones?

Re: ancient ones--films & books tend to portray them as too fluffy, peace-loving earth-worshippers (essentially European equivalents of the Noble savage) who just sang a lot of pretty songs,danced around standing stones and wore spirally jewellery. They show the druids as wise long bearded patriarchs,wandering through the trilithons of Stonehenge mapping the night sky.

In reality the celts were fierce warriors and head hunters who often suspended the skulls of their enemies in their homes or embalmed their heads with cedar oil. They didn't dance round stones (which were considered pretty obsolete ritually), they didn't worship an 'earth mother'-they had loads of different tribal deities,male & female,and the druids neither built nor used Stonehenge (which fell into disuse about 1000 years before the druids were in Britain.) Oh yeah, and whether it was druids or some other priestly caste, they were ritually killing young highborn men by strangling, woundingand drowning, in peat bogs,often near land boundaries.