played, and as the company drank they bowed to the right, in honour of their god. The guests sat in three rings,nobles, shield-bearers, and javelin-men, all in order of their precedence, and everyone of whatever rank had his full share of the meat and drink. If the warriors quarrelled about their helping of food, or on any matter of precedence, they would get up and fight the question out to the death; and in more ancient times the strongest man would seize the joint and defy the company to mortal combat. If no duel occurred during the meal, the guests were entertained with a sword-play,' or sometimes a man would die to amuse the rest. The careless Gaul would bargain for a reward to be paid to his friends, and then would lie down on his long shield and allow his throat to be cut or his body to be transfixed with a lance.

1 For the German quarrels at meals, see Tac. Germ. c. 22. For the sword-play, ibid. c. 24. "They have but one kind of show, and they use it at every gathering. Naked lads, who know the game, leap among swords and in front of spears. Practice gives cleverness, and cleverness grace but it is not a trade, or a thing done for hire; however venturesome the sport, their only payment is the delight of the crowd."

CHAPTER VI.

CELTS AND NON-CELTIC TRIBES.

The population outside the Gaulish settlements.-Insular Celts.-Pre-Celtic tribes.— How classified.-The Stone Age.-Bronze Age.-Iron Age.-Evidence of sequence in use of metals.-Special evidence as to Britain.-Remains of Paleolithic Age.— Britons of the Later Stone Age.-Tombs of the kings.-Cromlechs-Rites and superstitions connected with them-Examples.-Stories of Wayland's Smithy.Trous des Nutons. -Classification of barrows-Chambered and unchambered varieties-Their contents.-Physical characteristics of the Tomb-builders.-The nature of their society.-Lake-dwellings.-Survival of the neolithic race.-Legends of Irish bards.—The Firbolgs. —Black Celts.—The Silures-Their character and habits. Commencement of Bronze Age-On the Continent-In Britain.-Tribes of Finnish type-Contents of their barrows-Implements-Ornaments-Their agriculture-Nature of their society.

THE

HE Gaulish settlers had become so nearly civilized, that they were ready to adopt the fashions of the South almost as soon as they felt the approach of the Roman power. Their fitful spirit yielded in advance; and their conquerors observed with contempt "how soon sloth following on ease crept over them, and how they lost their courage along with their freedom." Henceforth we shall have to do with the history of bolder races, as much excelling the Gauls in the vigour and ingenuity of their defence, as they fell short in matters of culture and refinement.

The districts undisturbed by the new colonies were held by the Celts of an earlier immigration, save where the remoter or less desirable regions may have been retained by tribes surviving from the ages of stone and bronze. We shall be concerned later with the history of the

Celtic Clans; but we must begin by analyzing in the first place the more primitive elements, of which the presence is still to be observed in portions of the modern population.

The periods of pre-historic time, so far as relate to the growth of our own society, are usefully distinguished by the transitions from the possession of polished flint and bone to that of bronze and afterwards of iron and steel. The date at which a metal or alloy became known to particular peoples must have depended in each case on a variety of local circumstances. No one speaking generally for all the world could tell whether the working of iron preceded or followed the manufacture of bronze. The existence of the alloy implies a previous knowledge of the components. Copper "celts" are found in Ireland and Switzerland, axes in Scotland, Scania, Italy, and Hungary:1 while the word "axe" itself is said to be phonologically the same as old Celtic names for copper; so that we may conclude that the invention of bronze was the result of an

attempt to harden the edges of the weapons of pure copper. As to tin again, no remains have been found of its use in a pure state, except a few beads, coins, and knife-handles of comparatively recent times; but we are not without evidence that it was used in Central Asia many centuries before the Christian era, and its Eastern names imply that it was introduced to supply for some purposes the place which had before been given to lead; its western names have come from some unknown tongue prevailing in the countries frequented by the merchants.

These calculations would take us back to the vast antiquity of the Asian Empires. But if the inquiry is 1 Westropp, Prehist. Phases, 71; Wilde, Catal. R. I. Acad.

confined to our own country, and the neighbouring coasts from which its population has been from time to time derived, we shall find that the "age of polished-stone," when no metals were known but gold, was succeeded suddenly and abruptly by a period distinguished by the number and variety of its weapons, tools, implements, and jewels of bronze'; and that several centuries must have elapsed before the art of working in iron prevailed.

The nations of pre-historic Britain may be classified according to a system derived from the history of the metals. The oldest races were in the pre-metallic stage, when bronze was introduced by a new nation, sometimes identified with the oldest Celts, but now more generally attributed to the Finnish or Ugrian stock. When the Celts arrived in their turn, they may have brought in the knowledge of iron and silver: the Continental Celts are known to have used iron broad-swords at the Battle of the Anio in the fourth century before Christ, and iron was certainly worked in Sussex by the Britons of Julius Cæsar's time; but as no objects of iron have been recovered from our Celtic tumuli, except in some instances of a doubtful date, it will be safer to assume that the British Celts belonged to the Later Bronze Age as well as to the Age of Iron.

We shall now deal in order with what is known of these several kinds of men, following as far as may be the course of their immigration from the East. We shall collect the most striking results of the inquiries into their ancient customs, so that having thus cleared the ground we may form some useful estimate of the influence which can be attributed to their descendants.

We need not describe in detail the relics of the palæo

lithic tribes, who ranged the country under an almost arctic climate, waging their precarious wars with the wild animals of the Quaternary Age. The searching of their caves and rock-shelters, and of the drifts and beds of loam and gravel, in England and the neighbouring countries, has brought to light great numbers of their flint-knives, hammers, and adzes, and instruments for working in leather. Their rough "dug-out" canoes are found in the mouths of the estuaries. The beads and amulets, and the sketches of the mammoth and groups of reindeer which have been found in the French deposits, show that they were not without some rudiments of intelligence and skill; and, at any rate, they could trap and defeat the larger carnivorous animals. We cannot gain a clearer notion of their life than that which is given by the picture of the Fennic tribes of whom Tacitus said, that they attained the most difficult of all things, to be "beyond the need of prayer." "They are wonderfully savage (he said) and miserably poor. They have no weapons, no horses, no homes: they feed on herbs and are clad with the skins of beasts; the ground is their bed, and their only hope of life is in their arrows, which for lack of iron they sharpen with tips of bone. The women live by hunting, just like the men; for they accompany the men in their wanderings and seek their share of the prey. And they have no other refuge for their young children against wild beasts or storms, than to cover them up in a nest made of interlacing boughs. Such are the homes to which the young men return, in which the old men take their rest."1

1 Tac. Germ. c. 46. Good descriptions of the paleolithic societies will be found in Figuier's Primitive Man (Tylor's edit.) and in "L'Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre," by Dupont (Paris, 1872). Prof. Rolleston