The Irish are part of a larger ethnic grouping called the Celts (preferably pronounced with a hard “c”) who first entered western consciousness about 600 B.C. – only a century and a half after the legendary founding of the City of Rome – when, like the German barbarians long after them, they crossed the Rhine. One branch of the Celtic tree settled in present-day France and became the Gauls, whom Julius Caesar would conquer in the century before Christ and who in their Romanized phase would produce the effete Ausonius. A cognate tribe settled the Iberian peninsula and became great sea traders; indeed, found as far afield as New Hampshire – which would make the Celts the first Europeans to reach the Americas. In the third century B.C., Celts invaded the Greek world, advancing as far south as Delphi and settling in present-day Turkey, where, as the Galatians (note the similarity of consonantal sounds in “Celt,” “Gaul,” and “Galatian”), they were recipients of one of Paul’s letters.
Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, p.79
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Entrusted to the Dirt 