The Celts.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

Barbarism, paganism, mysticism, tribalism, romanticism -- all have been associated with the Celts during their migration across Europe since the Ice Age. Battling seemingly everyone from the Romans to the Normans to 20th-century British "occupation armies," they became outcasts and exiles, struggling to maintain their cultural and spiritual heritage in a hostile world. Their survival in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and North America is the capstone to this fascinating five-and-a-half-hour, three-cassette, epic video presentation.

Each cassette consists of two episodes of what originally was a BBC documentary. The first traces the origins of the Celtic people from numerous tribes that had flowed into Europe around the eighth century B.C. The second depicts their creation of homelands in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Brittany after they had been driven from the Continent, except for a few scattered pockets, and the subsequent 11th-century invasion of the British isles by the Normans, virtually ending the Golden Age of Celticism. Parts three and four explore Celtic...