The Ethnology of the British Islands Part 16

Now there is a certain amount of statements to this very effect, viz., to the Welsh origin of the Armorican. Let them be examined.

Gildas, who mentions the rebellion of Maximus, says nothing of any British migration to Brittany.

Nennius gives us an account beset with inaccuracies, being to the effect that Maximus the seventh _imperator_ in Britain, left the island with all the British soldiers it contained, killed Gratian King of Rome, and held rule over all Europe; that he would not dismiss the soldiers who went with him, but gave them lands in Armorica or the country _over-sea_ (_Ar-mor_-); that, then and there, these soldiers of Maximus slaughtered all the males, married the females, and cut out their tongues lest the children should learn the language of their parents instead of that of their conquerors. For this reason we call them _Letewicion_, or, _half-silent_ (_semi-tacentes_). Thus was Brittany peopled, and Britain emptied; so that strangers took possession of it.

Beda's account is equally unsatisfactory. The Britons were the first who came into the island, and they came _from_ Armorica. It was _from_ Armorica that they came, it was in the south of England that they landed, and it was they who gave the name to the island.

Now there is an error somewhere--if not in Beda, in Nennius; if not in Nennius, in Beda.

Traditions are uniform, inferences vary; and when Nennius brings his Armoricans from Cornwall, and Beda his Cornishmen from Armorica, we have a presumption against a _tradition_ being the basis of their statements.

The real basis was the existence of the British language on both sides of the Channel, a fact which being differently interpreted by the different writers gave us two separate and contradictory inferences--each legitimate, and each (for want of further _data_) wrong.

The present similarity, then, between the Welsh and Armorican remains unaffected by the statements of Beda and Nennius; and the commonsense inference as to the latter language representing the ancient Gallic takes its course.

V.

_The Belgae were Kelts of the British branch._

This implies an objection to all the arguments in favour of a Germanic population occupant of Britain anterior to the Christian era, which are based on the name _Belgae_. (_See_ pp. 61-75.)

VI.

_The Gaelic branch of the Keltic stock may have been developed in either the British Isles or on the continent._--(Chapter V.)

The following list of words in Professor Newman's _Regal Rome_, shewing that a remarkable cla.s.s of words in Latin were Keltic rather than native and Gaelic rather than Welsh, and which was unpublished when the fifth chapter was written, favours the doctrine of the Gaels having been continental as well as insular to an extent for which I was previously unprepared:--

ENGLISH. LATIN. GAELIC.

_Arms_ arma arm.

_Weapon_ telum tailm.

_Helmet_ galea galia.

_s.h.i.+eld_ scutum sgiath.

_Arrow_ sagitta saighead.

_Coat of Mail_ lorica liureach.

_Spoils_ spolia spuill.

_Necklace_ monile fail-muineil.

_Point_ cuspis cusp.

_Spear_ quiris[25] coir.

It also favours Lhuyd's hypothesis rather than the Hibernian. (_See_ pp.

88-89.)

VII.

_The earliest ethnology of Scotland was that the earliest Britons, _i.e._, either British as opposed to Gaelic, or Gaelic which, subsequently, became as British as South Britain itself._

This means that the present Gaels were not aboriginal to the Scotch Highlands, except in the sense that they were aboriginal to Kent or Wales. (_See_ pp. 88-89.)

VIII.

_The present Scotch Gaels are of Irish origin._

These two propositions go together; involving an objection to the so-called "Caledonian hypothesis" (p. 89), with which they are incompatible. Nevertheless, anything confirmatory of that hypothesis would, _pro tanto_, invalidate the present.

The chief facts upon which this doctrine rest are--

1st. The absence of the term _sliabh_, the current Gaelic form for _mountain_, throughout Scotland--even in the Gaelic parts of it.

2nd. The great extent to which the forms in _aber_ are found northwards (see p. 81). These occur so far beyond the Pict area, that, although so good a writer as Mr. Kemble has allowed himself to make it commensurate with the British, and although his list of compounds of _aber_ has been placed in the present writer's chapter on the Picts, as an ill.u.s.tration of a certain line of criticism, the inference that they were Britons in North-Briton _other than Pict_ is highly probable. Hence in the northern parts, at least, the word _aber_ was used not because the country was Pict, but because it was British.

It is well known that the doctrine is, in respect to its results, the current one; from which it differs in resting on ethnological inference, rather than on a piece of history.

The historical account is to the effect, that the _Scots_ of Scotland were originally Irish, so that _Ire_land was the true and proper _Scot_land. It was Ireland where the Scots dwelt when the Picts came from Scythia, Ireland whence the Picts took their Scottish wives; and, finally, Ireland that gave its present Gaelic population to North Britain. Under a leader named _Reuda_ the Scots of Ireland sailed across the Irish Sea, penetrated far into the Firth of Clyde, settled themselves to the north of the Picts, drove that nation southwards, multiplied their kind in the Highlands, and called themselves _Dalriads_ (_Dalreudini_), since _Reuda_ was the name of their chief, and _daal_ meant _part_. The point where the Scots landed was just where the British and Pict areas joined, the parts about Alcluith or Dumbarton--"procedente autem tempore, Britannia post Brittones et Pictos, tertiam Scottorum nationem in Pictorum parte recepit, qui duce Reuda de Hibernia progressi vel amicitia vel ferro sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicarunt; a quo videlicet duce usque hodie _dalreudini_ vocantur, nam eorum lingua 'daal' _partem_ significat."--Hist. Eccl. i. 1.

To agree with Beda in making the Gaels of Scotland intrusive, but to demur to his evidence, is, apparently, to subst.i.tute a bad reason for a good one without affecting the conclusion, _i.e._, gratuitously. We shall soon see how far this is the case.

At present, I remark that all Scotland may have been British without having been wholly Pict; and that--

The parts of Scotland which were not Gaelic at the beginning of the Historical period and have not been so since, never were.[26]

IX.

_The Picts may or may not have been the British Kelts of Scotland: this depending upon the extent to which the gloss _penn fahel_ is a word belonging to the Pict tongue, or only a word belonging to a language spoken within the Pict territory._

Why should it not be Pict? Why disturb the inference by suggesting that they may be Pict only as _man_ or _woman_ are Welsh, _i.e._, words other than Pict, but words used in a Pict area just as English is spoken in the Welsh town of Swansea? I admit that, if we look only to the plain and straight-forward meaning of Beda, this refinement is unnecessary.

There are, however, certain complications.

_Daal_=_part_, is suspiciously like the German _theil_, the English _deal_, the Anglo-Saxon _dael_, the Norse _del_, _dal_; indeed, it is a wonder that Beda took it for a foreign word. Hence, gloss for gloss, it is _nearly_ as good evidence for the Picts being German or Norse as _penn fahel_ is for their being Briton. I say _nearly_, because it is expressly stated to have been _Scotch_. But this it is not. What, then, is our next best explanation? To suppose it to have been a word used by a population other than Scotch, but on the Scotch frontier. Now this population was Pict.

X.

_The Dalriad Conquest may or may not have been real. Being real, it may or may not have given origin to the Gaelic population of Scotland._

This means that Beda's evidence, being exceptionable, may be wholly false--except so far as it is an inference from the existence of Gaels in both Ireland and the Western Highlands.

Even if true as to the fact, its ethnological importance may be over-valued, since the investigation of the origin of the Scotch Gaels inquires, not whether any Irish Scots ever appropriated any part of Scotland, but whether such an appropriation were the one which accounts for the Gaelic population of North Britain. This is the difference between _a_ conquest and _the_ conquest--a difference too often overlooked.

I should not like to say that the Picts were not Scandinavians, a point which will be treated more fully in the thirteenth chapter. Hence--

XI.