How Did Your Ancestors Get Inked?

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Okay so being of Scottish and Irish decent my own particular ancestors had their own style of ink. If you are a reader and would like to leave a comment or send an email about who your ancestors were, I will do a post about their ancestral inking habits as well! So the Celts are what I come from and true to sense my taste in the recent Celtic art designs are similar. But what about the ancients? How exactly did they do it?

Celtic tattoos were a common sight among Celtic warriors. Much like the Picts who tattooed their warriors to intimidate their enemies, the Celts adopted a similar strategy for their time. A Celt considered battle among the highest of honors and for this reason carefully considered war strategies that included much psychological warfare.

Unfortunately in those days, they didn’t have blaring radios to pipe over loudspeakers played from hovering helicopters, no, they had a different idea altogether. With themselves being considered brutal and primitive beings they played highly on this fact. Those they warred with were commonly weighed down by the trappings common to hand to hand combat styles of war. Hundreds of pounds of armor or weapons tended to slow them down, still made them very efficient killing machines, but slowed them down considerably. A soldier who fell off his horse would never be able to get to his feet in time to avoid death by the sword of his enemy.

However the Celts found the perfect remedy for this. They would engage in battle bare chested and even naked which caused futher intimidation of their foes who were trained to believe you never allowed a spot of bare skin in battle. This shook their foes who wondered if they may indeed be gifted with godly strength or other attributes. A Celtic warrior also used flower paste and bright dyes to manipulate their hair into wildly colored spikes.

The Woad plant was used to perform all of their tattooing since it is a hardy plant native to northern Europe as well as all of the British Isles. Woad is the reason the tattoos were blue as it is an indigo plant. When their tattoos were performed they would need to harvest and dry the Woad plants. The dried leaves would then be boiled and strained, over and over until the liquid became viscous and then tapped into the skin using needle like instruments that would force the indigo stain underneath the layers of skin.