They originated (c. 1500 BC) in SW Germany and spread through France to N.Spain and the British Isles. Successive Celtic invasions reached upper Italy, Bohemia, Hungary, Illyria,
and Asia Minor. The Romans and the barbarians eventually absorbed
them. Siblings of the Gaulish Celts crossed to Britain as early
as 400 BC, becoming the Britons, who nine centuries later would
be gradually pushed by the Angles and Saxons into Cornwall, where
they would become the Cornish, and into Wales, where they would become the Welsh.
It is from these Breton Celts that the legends of King Arthur and
the Knights of the Round Table would spring. About 350 BC, some
50 years after the Celtic tribes began their invasion of Britain,they
reached IRELAND. Some came by way of Britain, but most who gained ascendancy were Iberian Celts, whose language was somewhat different than the Briton Celts.
These became the Irish; and the language they spoke belongs NOT to the Brythonic branch of Welsh and Breton but to a Celtic branch called "Goidelic" by scholars - whose present-day shoots are the last living
Gaelic tongues: IRISH and SCOTS Gaelic.
IRELAND itself is the only Celtic nation-state in our world; all the other Celts
have been absorbed by larger political entities.
