Kingdoms of British Celts

It was the Romans who coined the name 'Gaul' to describe the Celtic tribes of what is now France and Belgium, quite possibly based on an original form of the word 'Celt' itself (see feature link). When it came to the Celts of Britain, the name of the islands itself was used: Prydein (Latinised as Prettania or Britannia). Its collective people were Britons, although not all of them were Celts, let alone the same 'type' of Celts. Successive waves of immigration had left a vague mix of Bell Beaker folk, Urnfield proto-Celts, Hallstatt and La Tène waves, and Belgae, the latest arrivals. By the first century BC these latter people dominated the south and east of the isles.

This tribe was located in Fife (now in Scotland) and on both banks of the Tay. The tribe's existence there was recorded between the first and second centuries before perhaps merging into other, later tribal groupings. They were bordered by the Taexali to the north, the Caledonii to the west (perhaps the original tribe of that name into which was lumped all the other western tribes by Roman writers), the Epidii to the south-west, and the Damnonii and Votadini to the south.

The Venicones would seem to have been very successful until the Romans showed up. They dominated a swathe of territory between Fife and the western coast, probably conquering the Epidii either fully, or weakening them and making them subject - this seems to be an easy assertion because the Dal Riada Scots later gained their foothold on the island of Britain by taking the (weakened) Epidii lands.

Unfortunately for the Venicones, they occupied the very region which the Romans needed to invade several times in order to quell attacks by Britons in the east of the Highlands, including attacks by the 'Pictish navy'. A legionary fortress was built at Inchtuthill, Tayside (Pinnata Castra), which remained occupied during the late first century by the Twentieth Legion Valeria (see the map of most of Europe's tribes around the first centuries BC and AD to view this tribe's location in relation to all other Celts).

The precise breadth of Venicones territory has been under scrutiny for some time, as pointed out by Adrian Grant in 2023. Ptolemy says that Orrea Classis was in Venicones territory, and modern scholars generally seem to agree that Orrea Classis was at Monifeith. Ptolemy's 'Taus' on his map which twisted Scotland onto its side is generally taken to refer to the Tay.

However, Christian Marx has carried out the reverse geometric transformations which are needed to straighten the map. In doing this he has relocated the map's Tay estuary location to the Montrose Basin, a natural point of occupation for a maritime and naval-orientated tribe. Even though this looks like a mismatch by a later copyist (Ptolemy's own work in this regard has not survived) it is surely not insignificant. It shows that the Venicones must at least have occupied the coastal strip between Monifeith and Montrose. Almost certainly not coincidental was a temporary Roman naval camp which was located for a time in the Flavian period (late first century AD), on the northern side of Montrose Basin.

The Venicones name was pronounced 'wen-ichones', most likely due to a shift in the language (see feature link). In the case of this tribe, the original name was 'venet' (the 't' becoming a 'ch') plus '-on' (definitive article - as in 'the') plus the later addition of '-es' - another (possibly unnecessary) plural suffix. The Romans would probably have mispronounced it. They apparently added their plural suffix to the already-present plural definitive article, giving us Venicones. The origin of the name suggests (but does not prove) a link to the Veneti tribe of Armorica. Elements may have fled Roman advances, arriving in northern Britain and also, according to the geographer Ptolemy, settling in County Donegal in Ireland as the Venicnii.

Venedotia is said to have been founded by Britons from Manau Gododdin which was located on both sides of the Firth of Forth and the River Forth (see feature link). These Britons had a fort believed to be at what is now Clackmannan ('Stone of Manau'), north of the Forth. A second possible candidate for their fort could be above Tillicoultry (Castle Craig, five kilometres to the north, but unfortunately destroyed by a quarry). Another natural area for a citadel can be found at Stirling (a few kilometres to the west).

Bede mentions Stirling as urbs Guidi, and this was adapted to provide the Firth of Forth with its early Welsh name of merin Iodeo, 'the sea of Iudeu'. Unlike later British writers, Roman writers did not describe this area as Gododdin territory. To them it was the land of a Pictish (British) tribe called the Venicones, and it was these people, perhaps tributary to the Gododdin Britons, who founded Gwynedd, coming from a fort in Fife called Manau, which was nominally under Gododdin overlordship, hence 'Manau Gododdin'.

The region's most famous son is, of course, Cunedda Wledig, the chieftain who, according to Welsh tradition, was invited to found Gwynedd on the condition that he freed the region from Irish raiders. As he hailed from Venicones territory, his traditional ancestry is shown in this list.

Much of the list dates from anything up to the tenth century, so its believability beyond Tacitus ap Cein is highly doubtful and preceding names are backed in lilac to reflect their legendary status. However, given the possibility that elements of the tribe may have been Veneti who fled the first century BC arrival of the Romans in Armorica, the assumed dating for the first name in the list (apart from the dubious addition of a British high king before him), that of Afallach, does lend it something of an air of authenticity. It may be highly speculative to suggest, but perhaps it was this chieftain who led the migration to Britain.

Celtic Kingdoms of the British Isles

Celts of Britain

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