I began watching an impressive collection of performances from an eclectic mix of dancers and troupes. It was the introduction to a BBC programme ‘Steps of Freedom’ the history of Irish dance.

Then the programme drifted off into a fictitious, or at least a recent, history claiming this to be Celtic. There is no question in my mind that Irish dancing, with its flicks and high kicks, does not belong to the Celtic or Gaelic people at all. They may have adopted it after colonisation, but it belongs to the Pictish people who came initially from Crete. The Picts, as Farley Mowatt clearly shows in the Alban Quest, drifted to these islands during the centuries following the collapse of the Minoan empire. They came first to Italy and then up through the land and around the coast eventually to settle in Britain. The very name of Britain is taken from the Celtic word Prydain which refers to the ‘land of the painted ones’.

But the Picts were conquered by the Celtic invaders and the Roman traders who followed them, prior to the collapse of that Empire. The next waves of invaders were Germanic warriors in the form of Saxons, Danes, and Vikings. Consider for a moment the dances of these later nations. Particularly the Germanic ones. They are not known for dancing and their music tends to fall into a regular 4/4 rhythm, with wild escapades into 3 /4 time. This though, I think, came later. No, the Saxon people were not dancers but singers. Albeit rowdy ones, with songs like ‘ten green bottles hanging on the wall’ and other good drinking songs. They were jesters and jokers, with riddles as their principle entertainment. This is not to suggest that they did not have a serious side.

There is a wonderful tradition of communal singing in southern Germany among the Allemanen people and the Swabians, in which harmonies flow as simply as their melodies. There is no self-consciousness, as is found among the English, but then these last are northern Germanic tribes, embarrassed at being noticed. To identify Swabian music for you I would suggest the songs ‘Tannenbaum’, Oh Christmas tree, or Elvis Presley’s song ‘Wooden heart’. Beautiful in their wistfulness. But I digress.

The high kicks and flicks of Irish dancing are characteristic, but they are not unique. There is an even more expressive dance in Europe to be found, surprise surprise, on the island of Crete, the very heartland and home of the Pictish people before their migration to the West.

It irks me to hear the denial of this ancient people under the banner of ‘pro-celtic nostalgia’. It is an insult to a once civilised and civilising nation whose greatness was swamped by Gaulish ‘brutishness’. To give an example, the game of hurling is an elegant game, Shinty and Golf likewise, for all their combativeness. All of these derive from Pictish lands, the Scottish Highlands and the West coast of Ireland. By contrast the game of Rugby is beloved of Ireland and Scotland, but this is a Gaulish game. A game played by Gaels and Celts, like ‘badger in the bag’. In this game a closed sack would be kicked around the floor and beaten with sticks until it stopped moving and wriggling and then opened to reveal the badger – or person – who had thus been anonymously despatched.

Another instance from Celtic history illustrates the termperament of these people. It tells of the defeat of the Roman army at the gates of Rome itself. Having defeated the Roman army – the invincible army of the time – the Celts held a party and got drunk, so giving the military minded Romans a chance to regroup and defend their city. It was enough for the Celts that they had beaten them. The same rivalry exists today in the 6 nations between Wales and England.

The elegant decoration of the Book of Kells is claimed to belong to Celtic Christianity, and to be a masterpiece of that religion. No mention is made of the fact that it was illustrated by Pictish monks. These are the same people that left the long horses and giant figures on the chalk hills of southern England, and the stone carvings across these lands. They had a keen eye and left their illustrations of nature in the hieroglyphs, as well as carved into the stones of Scotland. Distinct types of fish and birds are identifiable in each of these sources – stone carvings or Egyptian hieroglyphs – demonstrating their close association with Nature and the accuracy of its observation. Characteristic among these are the marked eyes of the bulls, for example. Just as the women of Egypt wore heavy mascara to emphasise their cow-like eyes.

The Picts left their heritage in the family names of Carver and Stone, as well as in the English language, among words such as ‘depict’, ‘picture’, and tools like the pick axe. They left their steps in the dance. The syncopated rhythms of Irish music with its triple time, 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 lead the self out of its lumpishness, away from the ‘lumpen proletariat’ that Marx spoke of. Such rhythms and gaiety are unthinkable in English music, or the oompah oompah of Bavarian brass bands. But so close in their irregularity to the 7/8 and 9/8 of Cretan and Greek music.