Galwegians

[Erpingham]

As part of an ongoing Early Medieval project, I was looking again at 11th century British battles and particularly Galwegians.  As luck would have it, someone had just uploaded this to Medievalist.net

'Naked and Unarmoured': A Reassessment of the Role of the Galwegians at the Battle of the Standard

By Ronan Toolis

Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, Third Series, Volume 78 (2004)


http://www.dgnhas.org.uk/transonline/SerIII-Vol78.pdf#page=88

Though new, it is from an obscure publication so others may not have seen it (I hadn't).  Don't agree with all of it,  such as Galwegians fought literally naked or had a cultural link to Gaesatae for example, but covers a lot of sources.

[Mick Hession]

Thanks for that. I agree with you about the over-literal interpretation of nakedness as Giraldus and others use the term to mean simply unarmoured. I thought the suggestion that Galwegian tactics were similar to those of North Wales is interesting as they do seem to have differed from those of their immediate neighbours.

Cheers
Mick

[Erpingham]

As part of an ongoing Early Medieval project, I was looking again at 11th century British battles and particularly Galwegians.  As luck would have it, someone had just uploaded this to Medievalist.net

'Naked and Unarmoured': A Reassessment of the Role of the Galwegians at the Battle of the Standard

By Ronan Toolis

Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, Third Series, Volume 78 (2004)


http://www.dgnhas.org.uk/transonline/SerIII-Vol78.pdf#page=88

Though not new, it is from an obscure publication so others may not have seen it (I hadn't).  Don't agree with all of it,  such as Galwegians fought literally naked or had a cultural link to Gaesatae for example, but covers a lot of sources.

[aligern]

Most interesting article. I agree that naked and hairy is a matter of chroniclers defining the Celts as barbarians and then applying to them topoi  that civilised Romans would apply to their barbarian neighbours which would encompass dress, language, fighting style and an essential barbarianness as oppised to civilused,brestraineed Romanitas. Gerald if Wales goes so far as to directly refer to  Roman descriptions of barbarians. As the Galwegians are descendants of the North Britons it is perhaps not surprising that they share a military style. The article is a little confusing about their long spears and using long spears as javelins, most likely they have javelins and a long spear that is kept for hand to hand combat. As these societies are metal poor ( hence the huge expense of a mailshirt) it is unlikely that the Galwegians have many swords sona spear for hand to hand makes good sense and this is the weapon set that Giraldus describes for the Welsh.
I am not sure that I follow the author in claiming that the Galwegians had done their job by driving in the English skirmishers. It hardly fits with an argument over precedence and striking the first blow that the Galwegians win to then being allicated the task of chasing in skirmishers! It seems far more likely that the Galwegians are meant to rush acroos the space between the armies, strike at the English spear block and disorder it and then to be folliwed up by the small band of David's knights. It is in the small numbers of The Scots mounted shock troops that we can see the utility of using the Galwegians to assault first, creating an oppirtunity for the wedge of knights. The Galwegians did indeed fail because the combination of archers into the English battle line stung them and then they failed to disorder the English main body.
Loved the article, but felt that underneath it is a current of nationalism that casts its objectivity into doubt, though of course there is a case for defending the reputation of men of Galloway.
Roy

[Erpingham]

I also thought it was a good article but it fell into a couple of traps.  One was an inherent belief in a universal Celtic culture which endured for hundreds of years.  Why should a Celtic society in South West Scotland fight in the manner of a continental tribe/mercenary group over 1,000 years earlier?  If we look at Galloway, it is a good question where these tactics came from.  It was a North British culture but that seems to have given way (on linguistic evidence) to a Gaelic one, with later Norse influences.  Do the tactics represent a North British tradition, stretching from Wales through Cumbria to Southern Scotland?  Or have they migrated from Ireland?  So, I'm not sure that the parallels in weaponry from North Wales automatically translate to similar fighting technique.

The other thing, as Roy notes, is a certain lack of understanding of medieval warfare.  The accounts are reasonably clear, regardless of the fact that they are English, that the Galwegians are the van of an army in multiple lines of battles.  They are not just there to frighten the skirmishers, they were supposed to engage the main English army.  This they failed to do effectively.  That said, their cavalry support does little but chase some people off the field, leaving the main army intact, so the superiority of knightly arms is scarcely obvious.  The suggestion that David, having lost his van, decided to retreat while his army was largely intact rather than try to get a decision, because he knew he could win by other means is interesting, though perhaps leaning a bit on hindsight.

[aligern]

There is a somewhat circular argument about 'Celtic' warfare. Authors have taken Irish sources, particularly the Tain and linked them to descriptions of 'Celts' in Polybius, Livy, Strabo and others. As an aside I have not seen a work which really explains the social structure in Gaul from the information in Caesar, augmented by archaeology. The Irish structures are often held to be part of a Pan Celtic culture that covers Western Europe from Ireland to Bohemia, from Denmark to Apulia in the 4th -2nd century BC. This culture is eroded by the attacks of Germans and Romans and by the 1st century it only survives in Ireland which remains preserved , like an insect in a blob of amber until the 4th century AD  thys giving us a window into an original culture from up to 800 years before. There are definitely some pointers to this, with a widespread artistic taste and some dramatic archaeological evidence such as bog bodies, deposition of weapons, head taking in war. Another big part of the idea of continuity through time and geography is the undoubted yearning of many authors. to belong to something which gives a unity and a historical depth to cultures that found themselves at the fringe of the Roman Empire and then of Feudal (Frankish)  Europe.
Spiedel found a long history of Indo Europeans fighting nude, presumably for divine protection and a long history of warrior animal cults. Given that shamanic practices also have a long history in the northern barbarian area its not surprising if there is continuity of martial practices with a religious context such as fighting naked . Quite how that morphs into a continuity post the Christianisation of these societies is not certain, but interestingly. Viking warriors, described in thirteenth century texts which are written in a Christian context, but describing events often long before, throw off their mailshirts before fighting in a berserk manner.
We do not find it easy to appreciate the attitude of mediaeval authors to classical texts. We live in a world in which past opinions are generally held to be wrong in small or large part. No one writing about the Fall of Western Rome today would feel the need to adjust their opinion to incorporate Gibbon's views. However, for authors in the twelfth century classical sources were revered and so linking back to a description of nirthern barbarians as wild and naked gave a chronicler credibility in a way that describing their patterned tight jackets and cool trews would not. It is also tied up with the horror that the medieval core felt for the periphery, the 'other'.  A monk writing in England is part of a homogenous religious and secular  culture that holds sway from Norway to Spain, from the Norman conquests in Wales to the borders of Croatia. These Galwegians are clearly 'other ' so they get a description that fits with outsiders and savages as Romans perceived them. So nowadays we doubt that comparisons with Gaesatae or the Fianna make much sense, or even that the Gaesatae and the Fianna are that strongly related. We would certainly doubt that the battle style of the Galwegians can go back to the Caledones  catching Roman javelins on their shields or being shown naked under the hooves of armoured Roman cavalry.
All that said we are left with the question of whether the Galwegian way of war goes back uninterrupted to that of the North Britons and through them to a relationship to the Welsh of North Wales.  We are hindered here by the lack of a detailed description of how North British infantry fought. The poetry of these Britons , which is written down well after the events it describes, speaks mainly of cavalry forces with small groups of armoured heroes. Pedyt , or infantry are referred to , but I doubt we get enough  to establish whether they are formed in solid ranks with large shields or are in a looser order rushing forward. We do not know if the North Britons carried long spears. With the Picts we do at least have the benefit of carved stones such as that from Aberlemno that give us an idea of spear length, shield size and tactical useage.  That the style of North Wales and the inhabitants of the former kingdom on the Clyde are similar in the twelfth centuries is suggestive of an original and continuing connection, but Erpingham is quite right that there is a massive discontinuity in the Clyde  area because the North Britons are absorbed into a Scots/ Irish/ Norse  cultural area so the warriors at Northallerton may owe more to the Gall/Gael than to a link with the British kingdoms that once ran from the Clyde to Cornwall or more remotely to the Caledones and the Gaesatae.
Roy

[Erpingham]

What, if anything, Celtic meant at the beginning of the Middle Ages is of course moot.  But then, current opinions on the matter of the Celtic World stretch from a mighty unified culture sphere from Asia Minor to Ireland to a group of separate cultures who shared a taste in art.  Not one we can resolve here

[aligern]

I'm a bit more inclined to see a common Northern European culture. bThe 'Celts' seem to have a common languge as well as to have common aristocratic artistic tastes. They also have a mechanism whereby tribes split up and part goes off the colonise some new area.  That gives a Celtic core and then around that core are peoples who have some Celticusm by an osmotic process, like the Picts or the Ligurians. Its pretty impressive that this common culture and language and some elements of fighting style spreads until it is found in Ireland, Spain, Denmark and Asia Minor. By the twelfth century it is a cultural fringe and one wonders to what extent the Irish saw themselves as more like the Bretons than the Anglo Normans?

[Andreas Johansson]

FWIW, a philologist told me years ago that in late medieval / Renaissance times, no-one suspected that Welsh-Cornish-Breton was anything to do with the Gaelic languages.

[Erpingham]

And yet, at the beginning of the 14th century we have the Bruce's actively seeking to support what in modern times is called a pan-Celtic alliance against the English.  Robert Bruce writes to both Welsh and Irish leaders referring to a shared ancestry and kinship.  Now one can be romantic or pragmatic in one's interpretation of this ( to me Bruce dealt in realpolitik, not rosy notions) but without doubt the concept is expressed.

[Mark G]

It didn't work for Bruce.

And was far more to do with the highway bwtween northern Ireland and ayrshire where Bruce was from, than anything Celtic across Ireland and Scotland and wales.

[Erpingham]

I agree.  I think it was an attempt at political manipulation that didn't work.  But, to have tried it, the idea must have been there.

[Andreas Johansson]

Robert Bruce writes to both Welsh and Irish leaders referring to a shared ancestry and kinship.

But is that shared ancestry as Celtic peoples, or just the natural consequence of elite intermarriage? The Bruce himself was by paternal descent an Anglo-Norman Lowlander and very dubiously "Celtic".

[Erpingham]

Robert Bruce writes to both Welsh and Irish leaders referring to a shared ancestry and kinship.

But is that shared ancestry as Celtic peoples, or just the natural consequence of elite intermarriage? The Bruce himself was by paternal descent an Anglo-Norman Lowlander and very dubiously "Celtic".

It is often pointed out that Bruce personally has more in common with the "English" aristocracy than with any Celt.  It could also be pointed out that much of Scotland wasn't culturally "Celtic" at the time.  Yet Bruce made the argument.  Having read some of the texts, I'm not convinced he is speaking about an intermarriage of nobles.  It seems much more on a national basis (this being a period where the Scots, at least, are trying to assert a coherent national identity).

I don't think I would push for a "folk" belief in a unified Celtic heritage.  But I do think the educated classes could pull one out of the hat if needed, at least in the late Middle Ages.