纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 028巴斯伊于特酒壶（6）

But this is no easy lineage. The problem of studying the ancient Celts is that we are looking at a fifth-century Greek stereotype, compounded by a much later nineteenth-century British and Irish one. The Greeks constructed an image of the 'Keltoi' as a barbaric, violent people. That ancient typecasting was replaced a couple of hundred years ago with an equally fabricated image of a brooding, mystical Celtic identity, that was far removed from the greedy practicalities of the Anglo-Saxon industrial world - the romanticised 'Celtic Twilight' of Ossian and Yeats. Since then, being Celtic has taken on further constructed connotations of national identity - just look at the Celtic clovers and the crosses that for many Scots, Welsh and Irish are visible statements of their tribal identity, or the fact that visitors are welcomed to modern Edinburgh with greetings in Gaelic, a Celtic language never historically spoken there.

The notion of Celtic identity, although strongly felt and articulated today by many, turns out on investigation, to be disturbingly elusive, unfixed and changing. The challenge when looking at objects like the Basse Yutz Flagons is how to get past those distorting layers of myth-making, and let the objects speak as clearly as possible about their own place and their own time. But there may nonetheless be some truth in the enduring stereotype that Northern Europeans, Celtic or not, do know how to drink.