The Ethnology of the British Islands Part 2

This will be noticed in the sequel.

No reason for excluding these lines lies in the fact of their being forgeries. Provided that they were composed before the time of Caesar, the authors.h.i.+p matters but little. If, as is the common practice, we attribute them to Onomacritus, a cotemporary of Mardonius and Miltiades, they are older than the notice of Herodotus.

It cannot be denied that these _data_ for the times anterior to Caesar are scanty. A little consideration will shew that they can be augmented.

Between the time of Julius Caesar and Claudius--a period of nearly a hundred years--no new information concerning Britain beyond that which was given by Caesar himself, found its way to Rome; since neither Augustus nor Tiberius followed up the aggressions of the Great Dictator.

Consequently, the notices in the "_Bellum Gallic.u.m_" exhaust the subject as far as it was ill.u.s.trated by any Roman observers. Now if we find in any writer of the time of Augustus or Tiberius, notices of our island which can not be traced to Caesar, they must be referred to other and earlier sources; and may be added to the list of the _Greek_ authorities.

If we limit these overmuch, we confine ourselves unnecessarily. Inquiry began as early as the days of Herodotus; and opportunities increased as time advanced. The Baltic seems to have been visited when Aristotle wrote; and between his era and that of Polybius the intellectual activity of the Alexandrian Greeks had begun to work upon many branches of science--upon none more keenly than physical geography.

From the beginning of the Historical period, the first-hand information--for it is almost superfluous to remark that none of the Greek authors speak from personal observation--flows from two sources; from the inhabitants of western and southern Gaul, and from the Phnicians. The text of Herodotus suggests this. In the pa.s.sage which has been quoted, he speaks of the _Ka.s.siterides_; and _Ka.s.siterides_ is a term which a Phnician only would have used. No Gaul would have understood the meaning of the word. It was the Asiatic name for either tin itself, or for some tin-like alloy; and the pa.s.sage wherein it occurs is one which follows a notice of _Africa_.

In two other pa.s.sages, however, the consideration of the populations and geography of Western Europe is approached from another quarter. The course of the Danube is under notice, and this is what is said:--

"The river Ister, beginning with the Kelts, and the city of Pyrene, flows so as to cut Europe in half. But the Kelts are beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and they join the _Kynesii_, who are the furthest inhabitants of Europe towards the setting-sun."--ii. 33.

"The Ister flows through the whole of Europe, beginning with the Kelts who, next to the _Kynetae_, dwell furthest west in Europe."--iv. 49.

The _Kynetae_ have reasonably been identified with the _Veneti_ of Caesar, whose native name is _Gwynedd_, and whose locality, in Western Brittany, exactly coincides with the notice of Herodotus. If so, the name is Gallic, and (as such) in all probability transmitted to Herodotus from Gallic informants. So that there were two routes for the earliest information about Britain--the overland line (so to say), whereon the intelligence was of Gallic origin; and the way of the Mediterranean, wherein the facts were due to the merchants of Tyre, Carthage, or Gades.

Direct information, too, may have been derived from the Greeks of Ma.r.s.eilles, though the evidence for this is wanting.

The two foremost writers to whose texts the preceding observations have been preliminary, are Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, both of whom lived during the reign of Augustus, too early for any information over and above that which was to be found in the pages of Caesar. Yet as each contains much that Caesar never told, and, perhaps, never knew, the immediate authorities must be supposed to be geographical writers of Alexandria, one of whom, Eratosthenes, is quoted by Caesar himself; the remoter ones being the Phnician and Gallic traders. The thoroughly Phnician origin of the statement of these two authors is well collected from the following extracts, which we must consider to be as little descriptive of the Britannia of Caesar and the Romans, as they are of the Britannia of the year 51 B.C. Caesar's Britain is Kent, in the last half-century before the Christian era. Diodorus' Britain is Cornwall, some 300 years earlier. "They who dwell near the promontory of Britain, which is called Belerium, are singularly fond of strangers; and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, civilized in their habits. These people obtain the tin by skilfully working the soil which produces it; this being rocky, has earthy interstices, in which, working the ore and then fusing, they reduce it to metal; and when they have formed it into cubical shapes they convey it to certain islands lying off Britain, named Ictis; for at the low tides, the intervening s.p.a.ce being laid dry, they carry thither in waggons the tin in great abundance. A singular circ.u.mstance happens with respect to the neighbouring islands lying between Europe and Britain; for, at the high tides, the intervening pa.s.sage being flooded, they seem islands; but at the low tides, the sea retreating and leaving much s.p.a.ce dry, they appear peninsulas. From hence the merchants purchase the tin from the natives, and carry it across into Gaul; and finally journeying by land through Gaul for about thirty days, they convey their burdens on horses to the outlet of the river Rhone."--v. 21, 22.

So is Strabo's.--"The Ca.s.siterides are ten in number, and lie near each other in the ocean, towards the north from the haven of the Artabri. One of them is a desert, but the others are inhabited by men in black cloaks, clad in tunics reaching to the feet, and girt about the breast.

Walking with staves, and bearded like goats; they subsist by their cattle, leading for the most part a wandering life. And having metals of tin and lead, these and skins they barter with the merchants for earthenware, and salt, and brazen vessels. Formerly the Phnicians alone carried on this traffic from Gadeira, concealing the pa.s.sage from every one; and when the Romans followed a certain s.h.i.+p-master, that they also might find the mart, the s.h.i.+p-master, out of jealousy, purposely ran his vessel upon a shoal, and leading on those who followed him into the same destructive disaster, he himself escaped by means of a fragment of the s.h.i.+p, and received from the State the value of the cargo he had lost. But the Romans, nevertheless, making frequent efforts, discovered the pa.s.sage; and as soon as Publius Cra.s.sus, pa.s.sing over to them, perceived that the metals were dug out at a little depth, and that the men being at peace were already beginning, in consequence of their leisure, to busy themselves about the sea, he pointed out this pa.s.sage to such as were willing to attempt it, although it was longer than that to Britain."--Lib. iii. p. 239.

Pliny is, to a great degree, in the same predicament with Strabo and Diodorus. Some of the statements which are not common to him and Caesar, are undoubtedly referrible to the information which the conquest of Britain under Claudius supplied. Yet the greater part of them is old material--Greek in origin, and, as such, referrible to Western rather than Eastern Britain, and to the era of the Carthaginians rather than the Romans. Solinus' account is of this character; his _Britain_ being Western Britain and Ireland almost exclusively.

A poem of Festus Avienus, itself no earlier than the end of the fourth century, concludes the list of those authors who represent the predecessors of Caesar in the description of Britain. Recent as it is, it is important; since some of the details are taken from the voyage of Himilco, a Carthaginian. He supplies us with a commentary upon the word _Demeter_, in the so-called Orphic poem--a commentary which will soon be exhibited.

The points then of contact between the British Isles and the Continent of Europe, were two in number. They were far apart, and the nations that visited them were different. Both, indeed, were in the south; but one was due east, the other due west. The first, or Kentish Britain, was described late, described by Caesar, commercially and politically connected with Gaul, and known to a great extent from Gallic accounts.

The second, or Cornish Britain, was in political and commercial relation with the Phnician portions of Spain and Africa, or with Phnicia itself; was known to the cotemporaries of Herodotus, and was a.s.sociated with Ireland in more than one notice. Both were British. But who shall answer for the uniformity of manners throughout? It is better to be on our guard against the influence of general terms, and to limit rather than extend certain accounts of early writers. A practice may be called British, and yet be foreign to nine-tenths of the British Islands. There were war-chariots in Kent and in Aberdeens.h.i.+re, and so far war-chariots were part of the British armoury; but what authority allows us to attribute to the old Cornishmen and Devonians? Better keep to particulars where we can.

As the ancient name for the populations of Cornwall and Devons.h.i.+re was _d.a.m.nonii_, the _d.a.m.nonii_ will be dealt with separately. It will be time enough to call them Britons when a more general term becomes necessary. Two-thirds of the notice of them have been given already in the extracts from Strabo and Diodorus, in which the long beards and black dress must be noticed for the sake of contrast. No such description would suit the Britons of the eastern coast.

The so-called _Orphic_ poem places the _wide houses of the G.o.ddess Demeter_ in Britain. Standing by itself, this is a mysterious pa.s.sage.

But it has been said that an extract from Avienus will help to explain it--

----"Hic chorus ingens Faminei ctus pulchri colit orgia Bacchi.

Producit noctem ludus sacer; aera pulsant Vocibus, et crebris late sola calcibus urgent.

Non sic Absynthi prope flumina Thracis alumnae Bistonides, non qua celeri ruit agmine Ganges, Indorum populi stata curant festa Lyaeo."

There were maddening orgies amongst the sacred rites of the Britons--orgies, that whilst they reminded one writer of the Bacchic dances, reminded another of the wors.h.i.+p of Demeter. That these belonged to the western Britons is an inference from the fact of their being mentioned by the Greek writers, _i.e._, from those who drew most from Phnician authorities. Avienus, as we have seen, thinks of the Bacchae as a parallel. So does Pausanius--

"Nec spatii distant Nesidum litora longe; In quibus uxores Amnitum Bacchica sacra Concelebrant, hederae foliis tectaeque corymbis."

So does Dionysius Periegetes; indeed the three accounts seem all referrible to one source. But not so Strabo. That writer, or rather his authority Artemidorus, finds his parallel in Ceres. "Artemidorus states, with regard to Ceres and Proserpine, what is more worthy of credit. For he says, that there is an island near Britain wherein are celebrated sacred rites, similar to such as are celebrated in Samothrace to these G.o.ddesses."

Strabo's--or rather Artemidorus'--parallel is the same as that of the Orphic poem, and, probably, is referrible to the same source. d.a.m.nonian Britain, then, or the tin-country, had its orgies--orgies which may as easily have been Phnician as indigenous, and as easily indigenous as Phnician: orgies, too, may have been wholly independent of Druidism, and representative of another superst.i.tion.

[Sidenote: B.C. 57.]

Between the d.a.m.nonian Britons of the Land's-end and the Britons of Kent, as described by Caesar, there may or there may not have been strong points of contrast. That there were several minor points of difference is nearly certain. The _a priori_ probabilities arising from the peculiarities of their industrial occupations and commercial relations suggest the view; the historical notices confirm rather than invalidate it. Fragments, however, of this history is all that can be collected. We have followed the Alexandrian critics in the west; let us now follow a personal observer in the east, Caesar--himself _a great part of the events_ that he describes. The Britons of Kent first appear as either tributaries or subjects to one of the Gallic chiefs, Divitiacus, king of the Suessiones, or people of Soissons in Champagne; so that they are the members of a considerable empire, or at least of an important political confederation, before a single Roman plants his foot on their island.

But the va.s.salage is either partial or nominal, nor is it limited to the members of the Belgic branch of the Gauls; for the Veneti were a people of Brittany, whose name is still preserved under the form Vannes, the name of a Breton district, and who were true Galli. Yet, in the next year, they call upon the Britons for a.s.sistance, which is afforded them, in the shape of s.h.i.+ps and sailors; the Veneti being amongst the most maritime of the Gallic populations.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56.]

In looking at these two alliances it may, perhaps, be allowed us to suppose that the parts most under the control of Divitiacus were the districts that lay nearest to him, Kent and Herts; whereas it was the southern coast that was in so intimate a relation with the Veneti. This is what I meant when I said that the sovereignty of Divitiacus might have been partial.

[Sidenote: B.C. 55.]

Caesar prepares to punish the islanders for their a.s.sistance to his continental enemies; partly tempted by the report of the value of the British pearls, a fact which indicates commerce and trade between the two populations. The Britons send amba.s.sadors, whom Caesar sends back, and along with them Commius the _Attrebatian_, a man of the parts about _Artois_. _Commius_ the _Crooked_, as, possibly, he was named, from the Keltic _Cam_, and a namesake of the valiant Welshman David _Gam_, who fought so valiantly more than 1300 years afterwards at Agincourt. He was a king of Caesar's own making, and had had dealings with the Britons before; with whom he had, also, considerable authority. From him Caesar seems to have obtained his chief preliminary information. But he applied to traders as well; telling us, however, that it was only the coast of Britain that was at all well known. He is resisted and cut off from supplies at landing, and unexpectedly attacked after he has succeeded in doing so. So that he finds reason to respect both the valour and the prudence of his opponents; and, eventually leaves the country for Gaul, having demanded hostages from the different States. Two, only, send them.

[Sidenote: B.C. 54.]

The following year the invasion is repeated. In the first we had a few details, but no names of either the clans, or their chief. The second is more fruitful in both. It gives us the campaign of Ca.s.sibelaunus. The most formidable part of the British armoury was the war-chariots. These were driven up and down, before and into, the hostile ranks, by charioteers sufficiently skilful to keep steady in rough places and declivities, to take up their master when pressed, to wheel round and return to the charge with dangerous dexterity. Meanwhile the master, himself, either hurled his javelins on the enemy from a short distance, or jumping from the chariot--from the body or yoke indifferently--descended on the ground, and fought single-handed. When pressed by the cavalry they retreated to the woods; which, in many cases, were artificially strengthened by stockades.

About eighty miles from the sea, Caesar reached the boundaries of the kingdom of Ca.s.sibelaunus, now the head of the whole Britannic Confederacy; but until the discordant populations became united by a sense of their common danger, an aggressive and ambitious warrior, involved in continuous hostilities with the populations around. His name is evidently compound. The termination, -_belaunus_, or -_belinus_, we shall meet with again. The _Ca.s.s_- is not unreasonably supposed to exist at the present moment in the name of the Hundred of _Ca.s.sio_, in Herts (whence _Ca.s.sio_-bury).

This is the first British proper name. The next is that of the _Trin.o.bantes_--beginning with the common Keltic prefix (_tre_-) meaning _place_. Imanuentius, the king, had been slain in some previous act of aggression by Ca.s.sibelaunus, and his son Mandubratius had fled to Caesar whilst in Gaul. He is now restored upon giving hostages.

In the list which follows of the population who sent hostages to Caesar, we find the name of the _Ca.s.si_; which suggests the notion of Ca.s.sibelaunus' own subjects have become unfaithful to him. The others are Cenimagni, the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, and the Bibroci.

Caesar seems now to be in Hertfords.h.i.+re, west of London, _i.e._, about Ca.s.s...o...b..ry, the stockaded village, or head-quarters, of Ca.s.sibelaunus--Ca.s.sibelaunus himself being in Kent. Here he succeeds in exciting four chiefs, Cingetorix (observe the Keltic termination, -_orix_), Carvilius, Taximagulus, and Segonax, to attack the s.h.i.+ps; in which attempt they are repulsed with the loss of one of their princ.i.p.al men, Lugot-_orix_.

The campaign ends in Caesar coming to terms with Ca.s.sibelaunus, forbidding any attacks during his absence on Mandubratius and the Trin.o.bantes, and returning to Gaul with hostages.

From an incidental notice of the British boats in a different part of Caesar's books, we learn that those on the Thames, like those on the Severn, were made of wicker-work and hides--_coracles_ in short; and from a pa.s.sage of Avienus we learn that the Severn boats were like those of the Thames--

Non hi carinas quippe pinu texere Acereve norunt, non abiete, ut usus est, Curvant faselos; sed rei ad miraculum Navigia juncta semper aptant pellibus, Corioque vastum saepe percurrunt salum.

Caesar's conquest was to all intents and purposes no conquest at all.

Nevertheless, Augustus received British amba.s.sadors, and, perhaps, a nominal tribute. Probably, this was on the strength of the dependence of the Eastern Britons on some portion of Gaul. At any rate, there was no invasion.

[Sidenote: A.D. 20 to 43.]

The latter part of the reign of Tiberius, and the short one of Caligula, give us the palmy period for native Britain--the reign of Cyn.o.belin, the father of Caractacus, the last of her independent kings.

Coins have been found in many places; but as it is not always certain that they were not Gallic, the proofs of a very early coinage in Britain is inconclusive. Indeed, the notion that the tin trade--to which may be added that in fur and salt--was carried on by barter is the more probable. But the coins of Cyn.o.belin are numerous. They have been well ill.u.s.trated;[4] are of gold and silver; and whether stamped in Gaul or Britain, indicate civilization of commerce and industry. The measure of the progress of Britain from the Stone period upwards, partly referrible to indigenous development, partly to Gallic, and partly to Phnician, intercourse, is to be found in these coins. It is the civilization of a brave people endowed with the arts of agriculture and metallurgy, capable of considerable political organization, and with more than one point of contact with the continent--their war-chariots, their language, and their Druidism being their chief distinctive characters. Iron was in use at this time--though, perhaps, it was rare.

The conquests under Claudius carry us over new localities; and they are related by a great historian, with more than ordinary means of information. In Tacitus we read the accounts of Agricola. Yet the information, with the exception of a few interesting details, is confirmatory of what we have been told before, rather than suggestive of any essential differences between the Britons of the interior and the Britons of the southern coast. The war-chariot was limited to certain districts. The rule of a woman was tolerated. The wives and mothers looked-on upon the battles of the husbands and daughters. They may be said, indeed, to have shared in them. Their cries, and shrieks, and reproaches, their dishevelled hair, all helped to stimulate the warriors, who opposed Suetonius Paulinus in the fastnesses of the Isle of Anglesey. The Druids added fuel to the fiery energy thus excited.

There was the political organization that consolidates kingdoms. There was the spirit of faction which disintegrates them. As were the Brigantes, so were the Iceni; as were the Iceni, so were the Silures and Ordovices. The same family likeness runs throughout; likeness in essentials, difference in detail. In Caledonia the hair was flaxen; in South Wales curled and black. The complexion too was florid, from which Tacitus has drawn certain inferences.

The conquests under Vespasian carry us further still into Scotland, and to the Grampians, against the _Caledonians_ under Galgacus. The extent to which they differed from the Britons is not to be collected from the account of Tacitus. We expect that they will be as brave; but ruder.

Still, the details which we get from the life of Agricola are few. They fought from chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt. As the swords of the Bronze period were thin and pointed, this is an argument in favour of iron having become the usual material for warlike weapons as far north as the Grampians. The historical testimony to the inferior civilization of the North Britons, or Caledonians, is to be found in a later writer, Dio Ca.s.sius, in his history of the campaigns of Severus.

"Amongst the Britons the two greatest tribes are the Caledonians and the Maeatae; for even the names of the others, as may be said, have merged in these. The Maeatae dwell close to the wall which divides the island into two parts; the Caledonians beyond them. Each of these people inhabit mountains wild and waterless, and plains desert and marshy, having neither walls nor cities, nor tilth, but living by pasturage, by the chase, and on certain berries; for of their fish, though abundant and inexhaustible, they never taste. They live in tents, naked and barefooted, having wives in common, and rearing the whole of their progeny. Their state is chiefly democratical, and they are above all things delighted by pillage; they fight from chariots, having small swift horses; they fight also on foot, are very fleet when running, and most resolute when compelled to stand; their arms consist of a s.h.i.+eld and a short spear, having a brazen k.n.o.b at the extremity of a shaft, that when shaken it may terrify the enemy by its noise; they use daggers also; and are capable of enduring hunger, thirst, and hards.h.i.+ps of every description; for when plunged in the marshes they abide there many days, with their heads only out of water; and in the woods they subsist on bark and roots; they prepare, for all emergencies, a certain kind of food, of which, if they eat only so much as the size of a bean, they neither hunger nor thirst. Such, then, is the Island Britannia, and such the inhabitants of that part of it which is hostile to us."

Of Ireland, we have no definite accounts till much later, so that, with the exception of a few details, the characteristics of the social condition of that island must be inferred from the a.n.a.logy of Great Britain, and from the subsequent history of the Irish. Now a rough view of even the British characteristics is all that has been attempted in the present chapter. No historic events have been narrated, except so far as they elucidate some national or local habit; and no such habits and customs have been noted unless they could be referred to some particular branch of our populations; for the object has been specification rather than generalization, the indication of certain _Cornubian_, _Kentish_, or _Caledonian_ peculiarities rather than of _British_ ones. At the same time, the fact that all the occupants of the British Islands are referrible to the great Keltic stock, implies the likelihood of these differences lying within a comparatively small compa.s.s.