'Celt' was not a word commonly used in Britain in the twelfth century. The only people who would have been aware of it were a few churchmen familiar with classical texts. 'Celt' was a term used by Greeks and Romans to refer to a broad cultural and linguistic group. In the twelfth century, Anna Kommene used it to refer to French crusaders, even though the people of Gaul now spoke a Latin-based language. It never seems to have been a word anyone who spoke a Celtic language or came from a once-Celtic country used to describe themselves. In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the Celts are described as coming 'from the north' implying that they are meant to be Scots. The fact that they dye their skin with woad adds to this impression, though there's nothing to suggest that the people once known as the Picts (painted ones) were doing this by the twelfth century.

In terms of Romanisation, well that's a tough one. The Romans never conquered northern Scotland (where the Picts and later the Scots lived) or Ireland. They certainly didn't speak a Latin-based language but, then again, the English and Welsh didn't either by this point. 'Barbarian' is just a word the Romans used to mean people who weren't them. To them, the Persians were barbarians, even though their society and economy were similarly advanced. As such, the word barbarian says a lot more about the attitude of the user than it does of the condition of the subject.

There certainly were differences between people in northern Scotland and people in eastern England. The former's economy was much more based around livestock, and their aristocracy was more localised. They were poorer and so went into battle with inferior equipment, which in turn affected their tactics. Overall however, not all that much separated a peasant in England from a peasant in Ireland or Scotland. Romanisation's biggest influence was on the upper echelons of society, the aristocracy and the clergy.

To the English, the Scots and Irish did seem alien and barbaric. Gerald of Wales's Topographia Hibernica is indicative of some contemporary attitudes:

'This people then, is truly barbarous, being not only barbarous in their dress but suffering their hair and beards to grow enormously in an uncouth manner, just like the modern fashion recently introduced; indeed, all their habits are barbarisms.'

However, the 'civilisation' that Gerald believed in was entirely relative as a label. To Anna Kommene, western Europeans were barbarians.