Gabhra, Battle of. [I] Anglicised as Gowra. The last great battle in which the Fianna took part and in which they were exterminated. Said to be fought on the site of Garristown, Co. Dublin, the battle is full of melancholy grandeur and a fitting end to the Fenian Cycle. The High King Cairbre, trying to curb the power of the Fianna 1 following the death of Fionn Mac Cumhail, provokes the conflict. The hero, Oscar, commands the Fianna and slays Cairbre, but is himself mortally wounded. Fionn himself returns from the Otherworld to mourn his grandson, while Oisin and Celta carry Oscar's body from the field on a bier.

Gae-Bolg. [I] Cuchulainn's famous "belly spear," which was given him by the female champion Scathach, who taught him the martial arts. It made one wound when entering and opened into thirry barbs once in the body.

Gael. [I] See Goidel.

Gaiar. [I] A son of Manannin Mac Lir who had an affair with Becuma, which caused her expulsion from Tir Tairnigiri, the Land of Promise.

Galahad. [W] Originally Gwalchafed, "Falcon of Summer." He became famous in the medieval versions of the Arthurian sagas as the only knight to find the Holy Grail. See Grail.

Galan Mai. [W] Equivalent of Beltaine, Welsh spring festival on May I.

Galatia. The first Celtic state about which we have evidence of how it was governed. Galatia, an area in central Turkey, was settled by the Celts in ca. 275 B.C. There were three main tribal groups, the Tolistoboii, the Tectosages, and the Trocmi. The Tolistoboii settled the upper valley of Sangarios (Sakarya), in which the famous ciry of Gordium (now Polatli) stood; the Tectosages settled around Tavium and eastwards. The Trocmi settled along the banks of the River Halys (Kizirmak), with Ancyra (Ankara) as their chief settlement Strabo records that each tribe had four septs, making twelve septs altogether, all of whom sent a total of 300 elected representatives to an assembly at Drunemeton. Elsewhere it is recorded that Pessinus was their chief city, in the territory of the Tolistoboii, so perhaps this was the same as Drunemeton ("the sanctuary of oaks"). The Galatian Celts issued their own coinage. Galatia remained independent for 250 years until on the defeat of Deiotaros II, the last king, Galatia became a Roman province (25 B.C.). Paul of Tarsus made Galatia famous in Christian terms by visiting the land of the Tolistoboii and staying in Pessinus between A.D. 40 and 50. He later wrote his famous "Epistle to Galatians." St. Jerome, staying in Ancyra (Ankara) in the early fifth century, reported that the Galatians still spoke a Celtic language that was similar to that spoken in Gaul, with which he was familiar. At what period the Celtic language of Galatia, its culture, customs, and historical traditions ceased to exist is difficult to estimate. The language was probably dead by the eighth century, when the earliest records of modern Turkish are to be found. There seems, within Turkish culture and the surrounding Greek culture, to be little trace of the seven centuries of Celtic occupation in the area.

Galicia. Northwest Spain. During the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., as the Anglo-Saxons began to push into Britain to carve Englandout of the former Celtic territory, British tribes began to migrate.The major migrations were to the Armorican peninsula-Brittany.Others settled in Celtic pockets elsewhere, such as Brittenberg on the Rhine, while more groups went to Ireland. Other tribal groups arrived on the northern seaboard of Spain, in Galicia and Asturias, settling among a Latin-speaking population. The settlers were recognised at the Council of Lugo in A.D. 567 as constituting the Christian episcopal See of Bretofia, whose bishop, Mahiloc, signed the acta of the Second Council of Braga in A.D. 572. The settlers have a Celtic name for the area-Galicia-argued to be the same root as Galatia. But these Brythonic Celtic-speaking settlements in Galicia and Asturias were quickly absorbed and the Celtic Church influence, which they had imported, ceased when Roman orthodoxy was accepted at the Council of Toledo in A.D. 633. However, the See of Bretofia existed until at least A.D. 830.
Celtic influence in the area had disappeared long before the ninth century A.D. Asturias, with its capital at Leon (name from the Celtic Lugdunum), became the centre from which the liberation of Iberia from the conquest of the Moors began in the eighth century A.D.There are some identifiable signs of a Celtic culture in Galicia today; some words of Celtic origin have survived in the Galician language, which is a Romance language, deriving from the same Hispanic dialect as Portuguese. Musical expression in the area also has an echo of Celtic forms. These Celtic elements came from the fifth and sixth century settlements and not from the pre-Roman conquest period of Celtiberia.

Galioin. [I] Fir Gilioin, one of three groups identified as people of the Firbolg.

Gall. [I] The oldest meaning of the word was a person from Gaul. Insubsequent usage, in Irish, Manx, and Scots Gaelic, it became the word for a stranger or foreigner.

Gallia Cisalpina. A Celtic country between the Alps and the Appennines, along the Po Valley. A confederation of Celtic tribes (including the Bituriges, Arverni, Senones, Aedui, Ambarri, Carnutes, Auelerci, Insurbres, and Taurini) had established themselves in the Po Valley by the sixth century B.C. Livy records their "invasion myth" in that they were led by Bellosvesos ("he who can kill").
They defeated the Etruscans in battle, particularly in 474 B.C. at Ticino. On July 18,390 B.C., they defeated the Romans at the River Allia and went on to take Rome itself. The story is almost apart of Latin mythology.
By 349 B.C. the Celts were still ranging south as far as Apulia.Titus Livius, better known as Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17), grew up at Patavium (Padua) in the country of the Celts. His family were settlers during the aftermath of the Roman conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. His Ab urbe condita libri (History of Rome from its Foundation) is fabulous and epic, and unlike most Latin histories. Camille Jullian has suggested that it is made up of Celtic traditions, which Livy would have known well from his childhood. There is one episode concerning Marcus Valerius Corvus (Corvus = crow) that bears a remarkable likeness to an episode in the Tain Bo Cuailgne.
The Celts of northern Italy were continually at war with Rome, allying themselves with the Etruscans and Sabines, with Pyrrhus of Epirus, and later with Hannibal of Carthage. In 237 B.C. the Romans seized the Senones' territory at Picenum and began to colonise it. In 225 B.C. a Celtic army was defeated at Clusium,85 miles north of Rome, which allowed the Romans to begin a full scale invasion of Cisalpine Gaul during the following year. The battle of Clastidium was a major defeat for the Celts in 222 B.C. The Cisalpine Gauls made an alliance with Hannibal, and 10,000 warriors joined him during his campaign against Rome in 218-207 B.C.
With the defeat of the Carthaginians, in 198 B.C., Rome began a systematic conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. In 192 B.C. the chieftain of the Boii, the last major Celtic tribe, surrendered to the Romans and was slaughtered with his family to provide entertainment for one of the consuls. In 173 B.C. there occurs the last record of conflict betWeen the Celts of the Po Valley and Rome. Rome began asystematic colonisation of the entire area. In 82 B.C. Cisalpine Gaul was declared a Roman province. Celtic was spoken in the area into Imperial times, and numerous Celtic place-names have been left throughout northern Italy.

Importantly for Latin literature, many Cisalpine Celts began to write in Latin. As early as the first century B.C. Rome .recognised a school of Celtic poets from Cisalpine Gaul. A leading figure was Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 85-54 B.C.). His name is derived from catos-clever. Another member of the school was a Cenomani poet, Helvius Cinna, who actually introduced a number of Celtic words into his Latin. Furius Bibaculus (ca. 103-25 B.C.) was another member of the school whose work has only survived in epigrams. He refers to another Cisalpine Celtic poet, Valerius Cato. M. Terentius Varro (b. 82 B.C.) wrote among other things a war epic, Bellum Sequanicum, thought to have been about the conquest of his own people, the Sequani Celts. In Galli Transalpini, Lucius Pomponius of Bononia (Bologna) satirises his fellow Celts-satire being a traditional Celtic literary form.
Perhaps the most famous of these Celtic writers in Latin was Cornelius Nepos (ca. 100-ca. 25 B.C.), an Insubrean who wrote a universal history, love poems, and biographical works. A Celt from the Vocontii tribe was Trogus Pompeius (ca. 27B.c.-ca. A.D.14), who also wrote a universal history in 44 books entitled Historiae Philippicae. T. Catius, another Insubrean of the period, wrote on philosophy. More contentious was Publicus Vergilius Maro, the famous Virgil (70-19 B.C.). He was born. and raised in Cisalpine Gaul, but whether he was a Celt or merely of a Roman settler family is not certain. According to Professor H. D. Rankin, "We need not deny Celtic influences in the background of Virgil's life." His poems are rooted in the life of the Po Valley Celts.
Certainly Livy, much influenced by Celtic cultural traditions, was of a settler family. Episodes from Livy's history compare fascinatingly with episodes in insular Celtic myth. [A critical examination of the contribution of the Celts to Latin literature is given in Celts and the Classical World, H. D. Rankin, Croom Helm, London, 1987.)