IX. THE CELTS
1. Little can be added to what has been said in the previous section about the physical characteristics of the Celtic invaders of Britain. Some Celtic scholars, as we shall presently see,[2008] deny that any Goidels reached this country before the Roman conquest; but, assuming that some did so, there is no reason to suppose that they differed much physically from the Brythons. If Strabo[2009] was right in saying that the Britons generally were less fair-haired than the Gauls, the inference would seem to be that the Celtic invaders of Britain had intermarried more freely than those of Gaul with the descendants of the aborigines; nor would this inference be weakened by the fact that, according to the same authority,[2010] they were conspicuously taller than their Gallic kinsmen.[2011] I believe, however, that Strabo’s statements were based upon nothing more than his own observation of the few Britons whom he says that he himself saw in Rome, supplemented perhaps by hearsay evidence derived from Roman soldiers or traders who were not trained observers; and that his testimony is worth neither more nor less than that of Lucan, who speaks of ‘the fair-haired Britons’.[2012] Dr. Beddoe[2013] has concluded, from his observation of the modern inhabitants of ‘those parts of Scotland and the north of England where Kymric blood may well be supposed to remain in large proportion,’ that the Belgae who invaded Britain as well as those of Gaul were on the whole somewhat dark: but his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere,[2014] do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves.[2015]
2. Professor Rhys has more than once changed his opinion about the Celtic invaders of Britain since he began to handle the subject. In the second edition of his Lectures on Welsh Philology[2016] he argued that they were not ‘two distinct nationalities, speaking two distinct languages’; in other words, he maintained that the Goidelic and Brythonic dialects had been evolved within the British Isles after the Celts had entered them. In the preface to Celtic Britain, however, which was written in January, 1884, he recanted; and his old view is now obsolete. For many years past he has maintained that the earliest invaders were Goidels, or, as he now prefers to call them, Celticans;[2017] and that the later comers were Brythons. But whereas until a recent date he held that the only Brythonic invasion was that of the Belgae, and that Pytheas, who visited Britain towards the end of the fourth century B.C., ‘is not likely to have found any Brythons here,’[2018] he now holds, or at all events held a few weeks before the time when I am writing, that the first Brythonic invaders ‘appear to have settled here before the middle of the fourth century B. C., for Pytheas ... gives indirect evidence to their presence’.[2019] To this view I hope he will firmly adhere. There is, indeed, no direct evidence that any Brythonic immigrants landed in Britain before the Belgae. But indirect evidence there is; and that of two kinds. The first has been already noticed in the section on the Picts. There are good grounds for believing that the authority whom Diodorus Siculus followed in his notices of Britain was Pytheas.[2020] Diodorus speaks of the British Isles as Πρετ(τ)ανικαὶ νῆσοι;[2021] and the P in Πρετ(τ)ανικαί (if that reading is certain), shows that Pytheas learned the word from lips which spoke a Brythonic, or Gaulish dialect. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville asserts that his informants were Gauls:[2022] but that is simply his opinion; it is open to any one to argue that Pytheas probably learned the name of the Britons as well as the facts which he reported about them and their country in Britain, and not in Gaul. Be this, however, as it may, it is, as we shall presently see, certain that during the earlier period of the Roman occupation, the greater part of England and a considerable part of Scotland were inhabited by Brythons; and, as we shall also see, it is extremely improbable that they were all of Belgic origin. The question of the chronological order of the various Celtic invasions is, according to Professor Rhys,[2023] answered by the present geographical distribution of the Celtic-speaking peoples of the British Isles: ‘it may be regarded,’ he says, ‘as fairly certain that those who are found driven furthest to the west were the earliest comers.’ The argument might be sound enough (though the word ‘driven’ begs the question) if we were considering the British Isles as a whole, and not merely Britain;[2024] and even those who maintain that there were no people of Goidelic descent in Britain in the time of Caesar could hardly answer Professor Rhys unless they assumed that the Goidelic invaders of Ireland came from Spain, or that they dared not risk a contest with the Southern Britons; for otherwise it is hard to believe that they would not have directed their immigration towards Britain, the nearer country.
Professor Rhys, in his Celtic Britain,[2025] endeavours to trace the distribution of the Brythonic and Goidelic peoples, as he believes it to have existed at the time of the coming of the Romans; and in so doing he uses materials on which he founds another argument to show that there were Goidels in Britain at that time. These materials are Goidelic inscriptions which have been found in North Wales, in Cornwall, and in Devonshire:[2026] but not one of them belongs to an earlier date than the fifth century of our era. With the exception of the districts in which they occur, of the greater part of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, of South Wales and the adjoining parts of England which lie between the Severn and the Teme, and of Cumberland, part of Westmorland, the Isle of Man, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown, Ayrshire, Renfrew, and part of Lanarkshire, the professor regards the whole of Britain south of the Firths of Clyde and Forth as Brythonic; and he prints a list of proper names, most of which are certainly Brythonic, in support of this conclusion.[2027] The northern part of the island he divides, for reasons which have been already examined, between Goidels and aboriginal tribes, whom he identifies with the Picts properly so called.[2028] It will, however, of course be understood that when he speaks of Goidelic and Brythonic tribes, he means tribes who spoke the Goidelic and Brythonic dialects. The former he regards as mingled largely with the aborigines, and the latter with both Goidels and aborigines. But it is difficult to understand how he has been able to maintain that the Dumnonii of Cornwall and Devonshire were Goidels in the face of the fact that most of the British emigrants who invaded Brittany came from the Cornish peninsula,[2029] bringing the name Dumnonii with them, and that he himself formerly insisted that the Dumnonii who inhabited what is now Renfrew and Ayrshire were Brythons.[2030] I say ‘formerly’, because this is one of the many opinions which the professor has felt obliged to discard: ‘the southern portion’ of the Scottish Dumnonii have just been transformed by a stroke of the pen into ‘Goidels who adopted Brythonic speech’.[2031] However, as M. d’Arbois de Jubainville says, referring to the inscriptions upon which Professor Rhys relies, ‘To conclude from the fact that five Goidels were buried, during the period which elapsed from about 400 to about 700 A.D., in the territory of the Dumnonii, that the entire population of that territory was Goidelic seems extremely rash;’[2032] and, he asks,[2033] ‘if they were Goidels, how came it that they brought a Brythonic dialect into Brittany?’ Further, he asks why Professor Rhys maintains that the Novantae of Galloway were Goidels when he admits that the Trinovantes of Essex were Brythons;[2034] and the only answer which the professor vouchsafes to this question is that the name Novantae was ‘given them probably by Brythons’.[2035] What are the grounds of his opinion, he does not say. I may add that while he explains[2036] that ‘the consonantal combination of cs or x’ is Gaulish, that is to say, Gallo-Brythonic, he says[2037] that it is ‘remarkable’ that ‘most of the early names with x belong to districts which have before been pointed out as non-Brythonic’. When we look for these districts, we find[2038] that they were those of the Taexali, the Vacomagi, the Scottish Dumnonii, the Selgovae, and Cumberland. When we ask on what grounds the inhabitants of these districts had been ‘pointed out as non-Brythonic’, we find[2039] that the Taexali and the Vacomagi were Pictish, that is to say ‘no doubt’ aboriginal; that the Dumnonii, according to the professor himself,[2040] were ‘undoubtedly Brythons’, and remained so until, discovering perhaps that he had inadvertently given his case away, he changed them by his enchanter’s wand into ‘Goidels who adopted Brythonic speech’;[2041] and that the Selgovae are asserted to have been, like the Novantae, ‘in a great measure ... most likely a remnant of the aboriginial inhabitants.’[2042] Why? Because they were afterwards included under the name Atecotti, which ‘appears to have meant old or ancient’, and was ‘possibly given to them by the Brythons’.[2043] Doubtless they were ‘in a great measure’ aboriginal, as were doubtless all the British tribes; but seeing that Uxellon, the name of a town in their country, is Gaulish, the natural conclusion is that their Celtic masters were not Goidels but Brythons.
3. Professor Kuno Meyer holds that ‘no Gael ever set his foot on British soil save on a vessel that had put out from Ireland’;[2044] and his words are echoed by Dr. Macbain.[2045] Professor Meyer points out that ‘we have the concurrent testimony of Irish and Welsh tradition that from the second century of our era till the sixth a series of partial conquests of Britain took place’.[2046] Dr. Beddoe[2047] has indeed argued that it is extremely improbable that ‘the Romans would have allowed the Irish Gael to acquire by violence possession of a large portion of one of their provinces’; and Professor Meyer, who admits the difficulty, says that he will not attempt to explain it away. He might have noted that the author of the panegyric which was addressed A.D. 296 to Constantius Chlorus[2048] expressly affirms that such invasions did take place. Professor Meyer also points out that the Gaelic inscriptions which have been found in Southern Britain belong almost exclusively to South Wales, the quarter to which the invasions may be assumed to have been directed, very few having come to light in North Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall.[2049] On the other hand, it will be admitted that the record of these invasions is no proof that Goidels had not settled in Britain in pre-Roman times.
4. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville holds, as we have already seen,[2050] that Goidels, or rather a people who spoke ‘the Celtic dialect from which Goidelic was evolved’,[2051] were masters of the British Isles in the time of Pytheas, and that between his time and that of Caesar Britain was conquered by the Cymric Brittones. So far he is substantially in agreement with the view which, until a recent date, commended itself to Professor Rhys,[2052] who, as the reader knows, now believes that there were two successive Brythonic invasions.[2053] The more important differences between the two scholars lie partly in their views, which have been already examined, of the Pictish question; partly in the fact that M. d’Arbois is unable to accept the evidence which satisfies Professor Rhys that in Caesar’s time and later Goidelic tribes still remained in Western and Northern Britain. He holds that many of them had been driven by the Belgae into Ireland, and that in Britain they only survived as a vanquished people who had been forced to adopt the language of their Gaulish conquerors.[2054] I am inclined to believe, from the analogy of Gaul,[2055] that in Caesar’s time Goidelic was still spoken in remoter parts of the island.
5. Mr. Nicholson has recently attempted to prove that all his predecessors are entirely mistaken even on the few points on which they are agreed. According to him, the earliest Celtic invaders of the British Isles were Brythons, whom, however, he prefers to call Kymri; after them came a horde of Goidels; in the third century before Christ the Picts, who were also Goidels, invaded Scotland; and finally came the Belgae, who were Goidels too! The result was that ‘apparently the great majority of the tribes inhabiting Roman Britain were Goidels’,[2056] although ‘of the later Kymric recovery and victory in Wales and some other parts there is no manner of doubt’.[2057] It will, at all events, be admitted that a victory, however late, gained by a small minority, was no mean achievement.
How does Mr. Nicholson set about proving this revolutionary theory? He tells us that ‘on the map of Roman Britain’ he can only see one ‘certainly Kymric geographical name’[2058]—Pennocrucium (now Penkridge) in Staffordshire. The long lists of Cymric names which have been drawn up by Professor Rhys, Dr. Whitley Stokes, M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, and Dr. Macbain do not move him at all. When he is confronted with geographical, tribal, or personal names belonging to Pictland—names such as Argentocoxos, Epidii, Gartnait, the Ochil Hills, and the prefixes aber and pet—he either ignores them or, as his opponents would say, explains them away.[2059] Professor Rhys’s list[2060] is disposed of with the same breezy self-confidence. Corstopiton, Epeiacon, (Mons) Graupius, Leucopibia, Maponi, Parisi, Petuaria, Prasutagos, Rutupiae, Toliapis,—these names are either left out of account or explained as Goidelic by the simple method of affirming or ‘suspecting’ that the p in each case is ‘Indo-European’.[2061] The reader will form his own opinion if he can; only he will bear in mind that the weight of authority is all on one side. When doctors disagree, the patient must decide for himself which is the quack.
So much for the assertion that the Goidels, who, according to Professor Kuno Meyer and Dr. Macbain, were non-existent in Britain at the time when the Roman conquest began, formed then ‘the great majority’ of the population. What is the evidence for the theory that they came later than the Brythons?
There is no doubt that the Celts who first entered Gaul were Goidels[2062] (assuming that Goidelic was then a distinct dialect[2063]), and that the latest Celtic invaders of Gaul as of Britain were Belgae.[2064] If the Belgae had been Goidels, we should then have to admit that Gaul was invaded first by Goidels, then by ‘Cymri’, and finally by Goidels again. Is this likely? And is it not likely that if Goidels were the first Celts who invaded Gaul, they were also the first who invaded Britain?
Mr. Nicholson offers the following arguments in favour of his theory. Remarking that the Menapii were a Belgic tribe, he says[2065] that ‘the Isle of Man(n) [which Caesar calls Mona] is called Monapia by Pliny (iv, 103)’; and that the Gaelic dialect which is spoken in the island is evidence that its inhabitants in Pliny’s time were Goidels.
Now I ask, first, is it certain that Pliny’s Monapia, rather than Caesar’s Mona, was the name by which the Isle of Man was known to its own inhabitants? Is it not probable that the name Monapia, which is, at all events presumably, Brythonic, came to Pliny from a Brythonic source?[2066] Secondly, assuming that the names Monapia and Menapii are etymologically connected, does it necessarily follow that Monapia was a name peculiar to the Belgae, seeing that the tribal name Ceutrones occurs not only in Belgic Gaul but in the Alps?[2067] Thirdly, is Mr. Nicholson prepared to prove that the Isle of Man was not colonized by Goidels after it had received the name Monapia from Brythons? Lastly, since Mr. Nicholson himself affirms[2068] that although the name Aremorici is ‘certainly Kymric’, it nevertheless ‘is no proof that the Aremoricans were Kymric’, why does he insist that the fact, if it is a fact, that Monapia was Goidelic proves that the Belgae were Goidels?
Again, he says that the Parisi, who lived near the mouth of the Humber, were Belgae,[2069] and he believes that ‘their name preserves Indo-European p’.[2070] But Caesar did not include the Gallic Parisii among the Belgae, and did include them among the Celtae.[2071] Mr. Nicholson’s belief, that the p in their name is Indo-European, is not shared by any other Celtic scholar.
Thirdly, he argues that the Atrebates, who were certainly Belgae, were Goidels; for, he says,[2072] ‘With one exception, no ogam-inscription has ever been found in these isles outside territory which is known to have been once in Goidelic occupation. The single exception is that of the stone found at Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester).’ But, according to Mr. Nicholson himself, ‘the great majority’ of the British tribes were Goidelic: yet in only a small minority of their territories are ogam inscriptions forthcoming; and that minority, with the possible exception of the Atrebates, is in the west of England. What then is proved by the solitary inscription at Silchester? The individual who erected it was doubtless a Goidel:[2073] but if it is to be regarded as a proof that the Atrebates were Goidels, then the existence of synagogues in Great Britain proves the truth of that widespread delusion which Professor Tylor[2074] has described as ‘abject nonsense’,—the ‘Anglo-Israel theory’.[2075]
Fourthly, Mr. Nicholson remarks[2076] that between the Parisi and the Iceni, the name of whose king, Prasutagus,[2077] he regards ‘as containing Ind.-Eur. p’, while all other Celtic scholars regard it as Brythonic, dwelled the Coritani.[2078] ‘From their position on the coast,’ he says, ‘they should belong to the same Picto-Belgic family, and I submit that their name is simply Qṛtanoi, Cruitni.’ In other words, Mr. Nicholson submits that a single tribe, which he assumes to have been Belgic, called itself by the same name which, on his own showing,[2079] had been given to the entire population of Great Britain[2080] long before the Belgae set foot in the land!
6. I have set down the gist of the linguistic evidence which has been offered in support of the various theories about the Goidels and the Brythons in order that the reader may be able to form an independent judgement about its value. It goes without saying that on any particular question of Celtic etymology no opinion except that of a competent Celtic scholar is worth listening to: on most of the questions that concern us competent Celtic scholars differ widely among themselves: Professor Rhys differs from himself; and Mr. Nicholson, whose competence I neither affirm nor deny, differs from everybody. Even the lay reader who has studied the writings of Dr. Windisch, of Professor Rhys, of Dr. Whitley Stokes, of Dr. Macbain, of Mr. Nicholson, and of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, and who has made much use of Alfred Holder’s Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz cannot but see how few of the etymologies that relate to ethnology are to be accepted as certain. It would of course be absurd to sneer at the services which philology has rendered to ethnology and history; nevertheless the fact remains that on almost all the fundamental questions of Celtic ethnology the philologists agree to differ. And, at the risk of appearing flippant, I cannot help saying that when I read some of Mr. Nicholson’s pages, when I see how M. Salomon Reinach demonstrates, with the approval of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville and of Professor Rhys, who for once find themselves in agreement, that κασσίτερος, the Greek word for tin, must be of Celtic derivation because the root cassi- is found in numerous Celtic names,[2081] I ask myself whether some future philologist will not adduce the similarity between Tamesis and Tamesi, the name of a Mexican river, as a proof that the Celts once colonized Central America; whether he will not compare the name of Admiral Togo with that of the British prince, Togo-dumnos, and prove that ‘the Japanese Nelson’ was of Celtic extraction.[2082]
7. Caesar, in a familiar passage, states that ‘the maritime districts [of Britain are inhabited] by people who crossed over from Belgium to plunder and attack [the aborigines], almost all of them being called after the tribes from whom the invaders were an offshoot’.[2083] It is, however, impossible to define the limits of the region which, in Caesar’s time and during the period that elapsed between the date of his departure and that of the Claudian conquest, was occupied by the Belgae. The only tribal names that indicate their presence are those of the Catuvellauni,[2084] who, about the commencement of the Christian era, occupied a territory of uncertain area round Verulamium, or St. Albans, which included Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and probably parts of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire; the Atrebates, who possessed parts of Hampshire and Berkshire; and the Belgae, whose chief towns, according to Ptolemy,[2085] were Aquae Calidae, or Bath, and Venta, or Winchester.[2086] Caesar’s words would certainly lead us to believe that the Cantii, the Trinovantes, and the Regni were also Belgic peoples, although their names do not occur in the list of the Belgic tribes of Gaul.[2087] Professor Rhys indeed affirmed in the second edition of Celtic Britain[2088] that ‘there is no evidence that the Cantii ... should be considered Belgic’; and this statement is repeated in the edition which has recently been published: one feels therefore that the evolution of the professor’s views is quite normal when one reads in an intermediate volume, published two years ago,[2089] that the earliest Belgic invaders of Britain were probably the Brittani,[2090] and that the Brittani were probably the Cantii.
8. Finally, Dr. Macalister regards certain skeletons which have been found in the War Ditches of Cambridgeshire below layers that contained traces of late Roman occupation as Anglian[2091]; and it may be that they testify to a pre-Roman immigration from Northern Germany.