Garach, Batde of. [I] The final battle in the Tain saga, where the armies of Ailill and Medb face those of Conchobhar Mac Nessa on the Plain of Garach. It is here that the Ulster army defeats the invading army of Connacht.

Gast Rhymri. [W] A dog whose cub hounds comprise the pack with which Mabon has to hunt the Twrch Trwyd.

Gaul. Regarded as "the heartland" of the ancient Celts, covering Switzetland, France, and Belgium. It is generally argued that the Celts developed in the area around the headwaters of the Danube, the Rhine, and the Rhone. All three rivers still retain their Celtic names; the Danube is cognate with Don, Dana-the "mother goddess"; the Rhine, from renos-"the sea"; the Rhone, from road way river"; and even the Rhur retains its Celtic origin, from Raura, along whose banks dwelt a Celtic tribe, the Raurici. The tributaries of these rivers also retain Celtic names. Scholars believe that the Celts were living in this region as an aboriginal population. Most also believe in the "expansion" theory, that Celtic speakers moved outwards at the start of the first millennium B.C. into northern Italy, into Spain, into eastern Europe, and into the western fringes. The Greeks had established a trading colony at Massilia (Marseilles) in 600 D.C., making it into one of the great commercial centres of the Mediterranean world. In 125 D.C. the Romans saw an opportunity to interfere with this independent Greek city-state by offering military support to the Massilots against the surrounding Celts. The Romans conquered the Celtic tribes in this area and by 118 D.C. established their own colony at Narbo (Narbonne) and created a province called Gallia Narbonensis. It was later simply called "the province" and has remained Provence until modern times. Not only the Celts were absorbed into this part of the Roman Empire but also the Massilots.
It was not until 58 D.C. that the Romans seized an opportunity to enter Gaul proper. The Celtic Helvetii of Switzerland began one of the last great Celtic migrations westward at this time and Rome used the excuse to send an army into Gaul, under Julius Caesar, to turn them back into Switzerland. Caesar then used the opportunityto begin the conquest ofGaul. By 55 D.C. it was thought the Gauls had been defeated and Rome was in control. Caesar was able to launch two expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 D.C. But in 54 D.C., during the winter, Gaul rose up in general insurrection against Rome. It was not until 51 D.C. that the last independent Celtic hill fort was destroyed. Nevertheless, insurrections continued in Gaul in 46 D.C., 44 D.C., 33-30 D.C., and 27-5 D.C., when Gaul was finally declared a Roman province.
The Celts of Gaul, pressed first by the Romans and then by the westward sweep of the Germanic tribes-particularly the Franks finally disappeared, annihilated or assimilated. Only the peninsula of Amorica (the land by the sea, later to become Brittany), reinforced by Celtic migrations from Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, retained its Celtic heritage. See Gaulish and Gaulish Mythology.

Gaulish. The language of Continental Celts, imperfectly known from inscriptions. The longest inscription in Gaulish was found in 1983 in L'Hospitalet du Larzac (Aveyron). It is written in Latin cursive on a lead tablet. [Etudes celtiques, vol. XXII, 1985.] Prior to this time the Coligny calendar (Musee des Arts, Lyons), dated to the first century D.C., was considered the most extensive document. Gaulish has been identified as similar to the Brythonic (British) Celtic spoken during the Roman Occupation, from which Welsh, Cornish, and Breton derive. Close similarities can also be seen with Old Irish. For example:

GAULISH	OLD IRISH	ENGLISH
maros	mor	big
nertomaros	nertmar	powerfull
senobena	seben	old woman
uxellos	uasal	high
vindomagos	findmag	fair/plain
vindos	fionn	fair/white

Gaulish was spoken throughout Celtic Europe, from what is now Belgium and France, through Switzerland and Northern Europe, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and parts of the Balkans, to the Celtic state of Galatia in central Turkey. It is obvious that the people in these areas shared a common mythological tradition. It is difficult to be specific as to when Gaulish vanished in Europe and Asia Minor. St. Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymous), during the fourth century A.D., spent some time in Ancyra (Ankara), capital of the Celtic Trocmi, and reported that the Galatians still spoke Celtic and likened it to the language of the Treveri (in Treves, northern France). Jerome was not guessing, for he had also spent time among the Treverii. The Celtic language of Galatian probably vanished sometime betWeen the fifth and eighth centuries A.D.
In the European areas in which the Celts settled, like northern Italy, the language seems to have vanished at afar eatlier period. In the area we now accept as "Gaul," modern France and Belgium, it is populatly thought that Gaulish vanished with the commencement of the Roman occupation. This is, of course, not so. Gaius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius (ca. A.D. 430-ca. 480), bishop of the Arvenri, states that the leading families of Gaul were, in his day, still trying to throw off the "scurf" of Celtic speech, as he puts it.. If the leading families of Gaul in the late fifth century A.D. were trying to distance themselves from speaking Celtic, then the language must have been pretty widespread among the ordinary people. Indeed, a considerable Celtic vocabulary has actually survived in modern French. See Breton.

Gaulish Mythology. Since the Gauls left no written literature, we cannot speak of their myths or religious attitudes with complete authority. What fragments we have, however, seem cognate with their insular counterparts whose culture has survived the millennia. With the gods of Gaul, unfortunately, we can only glimpse them through Greek or Roman eyes, especially the eyes of Lucan and Caius Julius Caesar, who tried to place Roman equivalents on them. Caesar refers to six gods, whom he equates with Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva, Apollo, and Dis Pater (Pluto). This unfortunate interpretatio Romana has merely confused their identity and functions, but some of them are clearly cognate with the gods of Britain and Ireland, Ogmios and Belenus, for example.
While the Irish and British Celtic "origin myths" have survived, we have no such myths about the origin of the Gauls. However , from Livy we can trace a story about the start of the Celtic spread through Europe. Livy, who was raised in Cisalpine Gaul, was undoubtedly recording a native Celtic tradition, and Henri Hubert believes his source was the Celtic writer Cornelius Nepos (ca. lOO-ca. 25 B.C.). Livy says that the Celts were ruled by Ambicatos.
Gaul was so fertile and populous that the immense multitude threatened to be hard to rule. So the King, being old and wishing to relieve his kingdom of its excess population, declared that he would send his sister's sons, Bellovesos and Sigovesos, who were energetic youths, to whatever country the gods should indicate by omens, and they could take as many men as they wished, so that no people should be able to resist their advance. The omens assigned the Hercynian Forests [central Germany] to Sigovesos, and to the more fortunate Bellovesos, the road to Italy.
Another Latinised Celtic historian, Trogus Pompeius, compared the Celtic migrations through Europe with the Roman ver sacrum (sacred spring), when, in times of emergencies, the overpopulated community expelled their members aged tWenty years to go where they pleased and found new communities. The story of the earlyCeltic migrations through Europe was certainly accepted by the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul in Livy's time. It has become obvious that the fabulous and epic nature of Livy's histories, so unlike most Latin accounts, is full of Celtic traditions. It was first pointed out by Camille Jullian that Livy was born in Patavium (Padua) and grew up in, Cisalpine Gaul among a Celtic population. One episoderecounted by Livy, which he ascribed to an event in 345 B.C. during a campaign by the Romans against the Celts of northern Italy, is remarkably similar to an episode in the Irish epic Tdin Eo Cuailgne in which the goddess of death and battles, the M6rrfg3.n, in theform of a crow, attacks Cuchulainn, who has spurned her love. The crow, or raven, was the symbol of the Celtic goddess of death and battles. Livy has a crow attack a Celtic chieftain to protect a Romanand hide the Roman with its wings. Such examples could well indicate, on further research, that a strong case could be made for Gaulish traditions to be cognate with the Celtic traditions of Ireland and Wales that have survived in written form.