strous kinds of men, whose fantastic manners and customs threw so much discredit on the true reports of the first explorers of the world. We may use the words of Tacitus who refused to admit the creatures of fancy into his Germany." "All the rest is legend, as that these people have the faces and looks of men but the bodies and limbs of beasts, and the like: of which matters I know nothing for certain and therefore will leave them alone."1

1 Tac. Germ. c. 46.

CHAPTER IV.

Recapitulation.-Later Greek travellers.-Artemidorus.-Posidonius the Stoic-His travels in Western Europe.-Condition of the Celts in Britain.-Difficulty of framing general rules.-Division of population into three stocks.-British Gauls.— Insular Britons.-Præ-Celtic tribes.-Methods of finding their ancient settlements. -Antiquarian research.—Philological method.-Division of the Celtic languages.— Living forms in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Man, Brittany.-Dead forms: Welsh of Strathclyde, Pictish, Cornish, Gaulish, Celtic of Thrace and Galatia, Celtiberian. -Originals from which the groups are derived.—Lingua Britannica.—Affinities of Old Welsh-Whether more related to the Irish or the Gaulish.-Theory of the division of the Celtic stock, Gael and Cymry.—Origin of the Theory. Similarity of Welsh and Gaulish languages.-The likeness explained.—Arose from independent causes. The languages not similar at the same time.-Likeness between old forms of Welsh and Irish.—Welsh and Irish at one time united.-Occupation of Britain by one Celtic horde.-Separation of Welsh and Irish languages.-British language distinct from Gaulish.-Practical result of accepting the theory.

WE have dust always remain obscure.

WE have dealt, as best we might, with a subject

that must

We have

"1

seen how Pytheas revealed a new world to the Greeks, and how the story became confused with legend until it seemed no better than an idle fancy, "as if a name and a tale were invented about a country which never had been." By the aid of the ancient criticisms we are able to guess very near to what the traveller said, even where his personal authority cannot now be cited, and wherever his actual words remain we may, of course, feel confidence in the reconstructed history. It is possible, however, that an incident here or there, a Gallic or a German custom, should rather be attributed to Posidonius the Stoic, or to Artemidorus the famous geographer of Ephesus, or some

1 Plutarch, Jul. Cæsar, 16.

other of the Greek explorers who followed on the track of Pytheas.

Of these later travellers Posidonius' is the most important. He seems to have visited every corner of the West, soon after the destruction of the Cimbric horde; and his lively descriptions, first published in his lecture-room at Rhodes, are still among the best authorities for the customs of the peoples whom he visited. He received from the lips of Marius the story of the massacre of the Teutones, and drew that strange and brilliant picture of the barbarian armies which Plutarch has preserved in his biography of the Roman conqueror. We have already taken from Posidonius some parts of his description of Northern Spain, where stood "those mountains of uncoined money heaped up by some bounteous Fortune," where the soil was not so much "rich" rich" as "absolutely made of riches": we have borrowed from the sketches of life in Cornwall, and on the mud-flats of the German shore, which are believed to be fragments of his History; and his authority will be cited again, when we come to consider the manners of the Gauls in Britain. But his work survives only in extracts which cannot now be pieced together. Enough remains to show his enthusiasm of research, and the vividness and elegance of his style: but the loss of his volumes on the Celts and the Germans must always be counted among the great disasters of literature.

From the remains of such ancient descriptions, and

1 See Bake's Posidonius (Leyden, 1810); and for extracts and anecdotes from the fifty volumes of the " Histories," see Strabo, iii. 217, iv. 287, vii. 293; Diod. Sic., v. 28, 30; Athenæus (Deipno soph.) iv. 153, vi. 233; Eustath. in Odyss., viii. 475; and in Iliad., p. 915, 35.

from the discoveries of modern research, we shall endeavour to reconstruct another portion of our history and we shall seek in this part of the work to collect what is known of the Celts in the South of Britain, at a time when their local differences were not yet merged in the spread of the Roman culture.

The obvious difficulty presents itself, that no single description will suit an assemblage of tribes differing in their origin, language, and customs. We can hardly attribute the population to less than three separate stocks : and it is not improbable, that the most primitive of these may be resolved into several elements. The civilized Gauls had settled on the eastern coasts before the Roman invasions began, and were to spread across the island before the Roman conquest was complete. The Celts of the older migration were established to the north and west, ruling from the Gaulish settlements as far as the Irish Sea. And here and there we find the traces of still older peoples, who are best known as the tomb-builders and the constructors of the pre-historic monuments.

It is difficult, after the lapse of so many ages, to ascertain the boundaries and limits of the ancient settlements. Something, however, has been learned by exploring the caves and tombs, by following the lines of old tradingroads, and by tracing old earthworks and boundary-dykes ; and the highest gratitude is due to the numerous scholars who have engaged in these special fields of research. Even more has been gained by the systematic measurement of ancient skulls and skeletons, and the comparison of the scattered ornaments, and implements of stone and metal, which are found in the tombs of the chieftains. But the safest method must consist in the study of the

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Celtic languages, or of their slight remains, surviving in glosses" or marginal interpretations of the words used in ancient manuscripts, in the titles of gods and legendary kings, in the local names of Gaul and Britain, or in fragments of the superscriptions upon altars, coins, and

medals.

The philologists have become familiar with the subject of the Celtic tongues. Very little indeed was known about the matter till Zeuss, with wonderful patience, constructed his comparative grammar. The science has now advanced so far, that some of his most striking conclusions seem doubtful in the light of the later evidence; but his methods are still fruitful, and it may be said that his very mistakes are instructive.

The Celtic languages are for the most part dead, and of some even the tradition is now almost forgotten. Those which survive are found in Wales and Ireland, in some parts of the Highlands, in the Isle of Man, and in Brittany. Of those that are dead we may mention, for our own country, the Pictish and the Welsh of Strathclyde, and the Cornish1 or West-Welsh, which died out in Devon in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and finally disappeared in Cornwall a little more than a century ago. In close connection with these is the living "Brezonec," or Welsh of Brittany, carried across the seas by the refugees from Britain. There remain traces and remnants besides of several idioms, which may all be classified as Gaulish; there were similar forms once used in Thrace

1 There were six dialects of Cornish. Many of the words are still in use among the country people, See Williams, Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum, 1862.

H