Note : This small article was written as a reply in the Enya Forum.)To put it linguistically (right spelled ?) - from the langue the Celts are not forgotten at all - they live on in their languages : Irish, scottish, welsh and other dialects (sorry, but I don't know the proper words for these languages <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" /> - and they live on in their tales, legends and what we call "fairy tales" ("Märchen" in German).
Tolkien was a linguist, a professor for languages, and he surely knew many or all european legends, sagas and mystics / mythologies. And some of the rest of the world, too, I guess.
So he took from them and melted them into a great saga - Middleearth.
This was a "background history" for his own, invented language, Quenya, and thus created a whole new genre : The Fantasy literature.
Back to the topic : The celts live on - in some form we cannot see.
Just take a look at all the cultures befiore us, some of those we don't even know anything of : They are still there, like the ground on which a house on a hill is built.
Let me take you to this picture : You live in a house on a hill - and it's been there as long as you can think of it.
What you don't know is the following : This hill wasn't a hill once before. There has been a time when everything around it was plain.
The hill arouse because of the remains of other houses which were burnt down or fell into ruins. The remains became the ground of new houses atop of them. Thus the hill grew on and on, into time and into height. There have been houses there for millennia, and we don't know of them or of their inhabitants.
Archaeological speaking, this kind of hill can be met throughout this world. This was no fairy-tale, these hills do exist. The most prominent example maybe is the hill of Troy.
And I believe we have the same with cultures : The remains of cultures of the past are lying beneath our feet, and we don't know of them. They might appear as strange words no-one can explain (like "nightshade" or "nightshadow", what's in German "Nachtschatten"), or by children's games no-one know why they are there and what they actually might mean.
So - our past is never gone. We are just one layer or level among others, and there will be many generations after us. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
Alrik.
