It is presumably the Mongolian influence in Prussia, the home of the square-headed, that justified Matthew Arnold in writing: “The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone—this is the weak side, the industry, the well-doing, the patient, steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of human activity—this is the strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent results.”
The unimaginative and plodding German is the antithesis to the impressionable, poetic, and romantic Celt, as probably were the loathed Magogei to the chic Cretans whose national characteristics are commemorated in their frescoes and vases. I have already suggested that the same antipathies existed between the ugsome Mongolians and the swarthy slim Iberians of Epirus or Albania. Descendants of both Mongolians and Jous undoubtedly exist to-day in Britain, particularly in Cornwall, where Dr. Beddoe notes and comments upon the slanting Ugrian or Mongolian eye. The same authority observes that anthropologists had long been calling out for the remains of an Iberian, or pre-Celtic, language in the British Isles before their philological brethren awoke to the consciousness of their existence. “Mongolian or Ugrian types have been recognised though less distinctly; and now Ugrian grammatical forms are being dimly discerned in the Welsh and Irish languages.”[1013] In Ireland only two Iberian words are known to have survived, one of which, as we have seen, was fern, meaning anything good. In view of the fact that the Celtiberians were also known as Virones,[1014] and as the Berones (these last named neighbouring the Pyrenees), it would seem possible that the Iberians were the Hibernians, and had originally a first-class reputation. As already noted our records state of Prydain, the son of Aedd, that before his advent there was little gentleness in Britain, and only a superiority in oppression.
It is probable that the Iberians were the original builders of barrows, and the excavators of the stupendous burrows, found from Burmah to Peru, and from Aparica to Barra: in which direction the Iberian culture flowed it would be premature at present to discuss, but the question will ultimately be settled by an exercise of the perfectly sound canon of etymology, that in comparing two words a and b belonging to the same language, of which a contains a lesser number of syllables, a must be taken to be a more original word unless there be evidence of contractions or other corruption. The theory of a generation ago that our innumerable British monosyllables are testimonies of phonetic decay is probably as false as many similar notions that have recently been relegated to limbo. In a paroxysm of enthusiasm for the German-made Science of Language, and for the theory that sound etymology has nothing to do with sound, one of the disciples of Max Müller has observed that unless every letter in a modern word can be scientifically accounted for according to rule the derivation and definition cannot be accepted. The Dictionaries now prove that spelling was a whimsical, temporary, shallow thing, and it will, I am confident, be an accepted axiom in the future that “Language begins with voice, language ends with voice”. If the present book fails to add any weight to this dictum of Latham the evidence is none the less everywhere, and is merely awaiting the shaping hand of a stronger, more competent, and more influential workman than the present writer.
Whether or not the radicals I have used will prove to be chips of Iberian speech remains to be further tested, but in any case, the official contention that the language we speak to-day is, “of course, in no sense native to England but was brought thither by the German tribes who conquered the island in the fifth and sixth centuries”[1015] may be confidently impugned: Prof. Smith is, however, doubtless correct in his statement that when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors came first to ravage Britain, and finally to settle there, they found the island inhabited by a people “weaker, indeed, but infinitely more civilised than themselves”.
The present essay will not have been published in vain if to any extent it discredits the dull contempt in which our traditions and ancient coinage are now held; still less if it negatives the offensive supposition that England was “the one purely German nation which arose out of the wreck of Rome,” and that practically all our English place-names are of German origin.
On re-reading my MSS. in as far as possible a detached and impartial spirit, there would appear to be much prima facie evidence in favour of the traditional belief that these islands once possessed a very ancient culture, and that the Kimbri, or followers of Brute, were originally pirates or adventurers who reached these shores “over the hazy sea from the summer country which is called Deffrobani, that is where Constantinoblys now stands”.[1016] Constantinople—originally the Greek colony of Byzantium—is the city nearest the site of Troy; Ægean influences have long been recognised in Britain, and the accepted theory is that these influences penetrated overland via Gaul. This supposition seems, however, to be strikingly negatived in a fact noted recently by Prof. Macalister, who, speaking of the spiral decoration found alike at Mykenae and New Grange, observes: “But spirals cannot travel through the air; they must be depicted on some portable object in order to find their way from Orchomenos to the neighbourhood of Drogheda. The lines of the trade routes connecting these distant places ought to be peppered with objects of late Minoan Art-bearing spirals. Even a few painted potsherds would be sufficient. But there is no such thing. The media through which the spiral patterns were ex hypothesi carried to the north have totally disappeared.”[1017] We have seen a similar lack of connective evidence in the case of the British spearhead, which seemingly either evolved independently in this country, or was brought hither by sea from the Ægean.
With regard to Celtic and Ægean spiral decoration, Prof. Macalister writes: “People in the cultural stage of the builders of New Grange do not cultivate Art for Art’s sake. Some simple religious or magical significance must lie hidden in these patterns.... Therefore, if we are to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the Ægean merchants we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading missionary who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of business. I, for one, cannot believe in that engaging altruist. I prefer to believe that the spirals at New Grange are not derived from the Ægean at all, but that they are an independent growth.”[1018]
The Trojans were proverbially a pious race, and personally I should prefer the theory of enthusiastic (sea) trading missionaries to the painfully overworked hypothesis of independent growth.
According to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie the process of developing symbols from natural objects can be traced even in the Paleolithic Age:[1019] the earliest town at Troy which was built in the Neolithic Age existed on a hillock and has been likened to the ubiquitous hill fort of Caledonia; seemingly Troy was originally a Dunhill and it was not until about 2500 B.C. that the original hillock, dunhill, or Athene Hill,[1020] was levelled. It is a most remarkable fact that, according to Prof. Virchow, “the few skulls which were saved out of the lower cities have this in common, that without exception they present the character of a more civilised people: all savage peculiarities in the stricter sense are entirely wanting in them”.[1021] So far, then, as the testimony of anthropology carries weight, the Trojan fell from a high state of grace, and neolithic Man was quite as capable of the fair humanities as any modern Doctor of Divinity.
If, as I now suggest, the Iberians, the Hebrews, and the British or Kimbry were originally one and the same race, and if, as I further suggest, fragments of the “British” language are recoverable, it follows that the same words will unlock doors in every direction where Iberian or Kimbrian influence permeated: this in a subsequent volume I shall endeavour to show is actually the case, from Burmah to Peru.[1022]