Your Irish heritage or simply your love for Celtic knot design could inspire you to choose a Celtic fighting dog tattoo for your next tattoo. Whether a solitary symbol of woven into an elaborate full sleeve, you get more than a friendly mutt with this highly stylized ink.
In the last few years, Celtic tattoos have enjoyed a revival. The Celtic people transmitted their culture orally, and they were never writing down history or some facts. Because of this, there is an extreme lack of knowledge about them before their contact with the classical civilizations of Greece, as well as Rome. They were generally well-educated people, particularly on topics like religion, philosophy, geography, as well as astronomy.
The Celtic people of ancient Britain were also known for cross-breeding wolves with hounds, in order to produce a powerful fighting dog for battle. The Celtic hounds were a breed of dogs in Gaelic Ireland described in Irish legends. They may have corresponded to Grey-hound, Scottish Deer-hound, as well as Irish Wolf-hound, or ancestors of all of these breeds. They were a symbol of hunting, healing, as well as Otherworld in the Celtic legends. Hounds were also the traditional guardian animals of roads and crossways, and they are believed to protect and guide lost souls in the Otherworld.
In Ireland, one legend tells of a struggle between one Irish mythological hero, named Cu Chulainn and the war goddess Morrigan in which the hero has been attacked by the goddess. She has taken a form of she-wolf as he dared to spurn her romantic advances. The hero is believed to be an incarnation of the god Lugh, who is also his father. Also, the word ‘Cu’ means ‘hound’ in the Celtic language.
This particular British fighting dog is taken from the Book of Kells, and it is probably best known of the illuminated manuscripts from which so much of Celtic tattoo artwork is drawn today.
A tattoo in the spirit of Cu Chulainn stands for strength, faithfulness, as well as dedication and heroism.
