A brief and rough guide to the language groups of Ireland and Britain, specifically what does Bede mean, writing before 731, when he notes the use of five languages in Britain: English, British, Irish, Pictish and Latin (HE I.1)? Let's deal with the so-called Celtic group first: 
By British, Bede means what is now called Welsh in English, but this term could be expanded to encompass all the Brythonic/Brittonic languages, known to linguists as the P-Celtic group. Three British languages survive: Welsh, Cornish, and Breton; we have lost Cumbric, and ...
most probably, Pictish, though whether Pictish was a P-Celtic language is still a matter of some debate. We have no written records, but Pictish epigraphy suggests it was P-Celtic, perhaps with an isolated, pre-Celtic element, or even that this element survived simultaneously ...
The Goidelic languages are known to linguists as the Q-Celtic group. Three Irish languages survive: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. When Bede refers to Irish as a living language in Britain, in the eighth century, he does not distinguish between Irish and what we now call ...
Scottish Gaelic because no such distinction existed. However, by the fifth century Goidelic was already evolving into a western branch consisting of Irish and an eastern branch consisting of Scottish Gaelic and Manx after the expansion of (Northern) Irish speakers ...
into the Isle of Man and into what we now call Scotland (Land of the Irish). This co-incides with the expansion of the Irish kingdom of Dalriada (Dál Riata) into Britain. We don't actually know when the Brythonic (British) and Goidelic (Irish) language groups split ...
Two principal theories exist as to whether they diverged after arriving in these islands: (1) either in the early Iron age or as part of Bell Beaker Culture (Insular Hypothesis), or (2) if they had already diverged from each other during the Continental period ...
(P-Celtic/Q-Celtic Hypothesis). This hypothesis suggests that proto-Brythonic arrived in Britain from Gaul and that proto-Goidelic arrived in Ireland from Spain, based on the Celtic-Iberian languages of Spain being closer to Goidelic languages, and Gaulish to Old Brittonic.
By contrast, English is a Germanic, as opposed to a so-called Celtic (British or Irish) language. More specifically, and reflective of the regions the Anglo-Saxon peoples originated, it is a West Germanic language.
In spite of all the external changes wrought upon it, from Church Latin (via the Irish and Roman missionaries), Old Norse, Anglo-Norman, French, Renaissance Latin, other languages during the expansion of the British empire, more recently Americanisms, English remains Germanic.
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