[93]. Grimm; Church Festivals and Household Words; Butler; Rees, Welsh Saints; Facciolati; Michaelis.
PART V.
CHAPTER I.
Section I.—The Keltic Race.
We now pass to a class of names whose associations belong almost entirely to the modern world, yet whose history is far more obscure than that of those on which we have previously dwelt.
From the Hebrew, the European family have derived their religion; from the Greek, their ideas; from the Roman, their laws; from the Teuton, their blood and their energy; but from the Kelt they have taken little but their fanciful romance. In only one country has the Kelt been dominant, and then with a Latinized speech, and a Teutonic name, testifying to the large modifications that he must have undergone.
Among the rugged moors and cliffs which fence Western Europe from the Atlantic waves, he did indeed preserve his freedom, but without amalgamation with other nations; and in lands where he fell under subjection, he was so lost among the conquerors as to be untraceable in language or feature, and with the exception of the Gaul, has bequeathed nothing of his character to the fused race upon his soil.
We trace the Hebrew nation with certainty from its majestic source; the Greek shines on us in a dazzling sunrise of brilliant myth; the Roman, in a grave, stern dawn of characteristic legend; but of the earlier progress of the wild, impulsive Kelt we have but the faintest indications.
Much as he loved his forefathers, keen as was his delight in celebrating the glories of his race, oral tradition contented him, and very strong was the pressure from the neighbouring nations before his bards recorded anything in writing, even the long genealogies hitherto preserved in each man’s accumulated names. The beauty of their legends did indeed recommend them to the general store-house of European fancy, but though the spirit may be Keltic, the body through which it comes is almost always Teutonic.