He suggested that the change of Q into P had been effected by a conquering group of aliens, who had adopted the Wiro tongue from their subjects, but retained some details of the phonological laws of their original language, which accounted for this labialisation. He further suggested that these alien invaders were the Alpine inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings.[466]
This paper was received with hostile criticism and derision, especially by some German students of Celtic tongues.[467] It had little better reception in France, and the British and Irish Celtic scholars, with a few exceptions, treated the idea with contempt. The theory has never received the consideration and fair criticism which a paper from so eminent an authority on Celtic languages deserved.
The main facts as to the Celtic and Italic dialects are not in dispute. There can be no question that in both of those areas both Q and P groups are or were in existence, and that the Q are in the outer and the P in the inner ring. With regard to Greek however, the case is different, and it is generally considered that the dialect of Herodotus and Hippocrates is purely local and not necessarily primitive, and it has been pointed out that had the original Ionic dialect been a Q tongue, signs of this would have been apparent in Homer. It is also becoming more common to consider Greek as having closer affinities with Persian than with Italic or Celtic, though one wonders whether this connection is not being exaggerated as the pendulum swings from the over-estimated resemblance formerly recognised between the two languages of the Classical world.
We must, however, agree that the Greek part of Rhys’ hypothesis will not stand, at least without considerable emendation, nor have we found from our archæological investigations any reasons for believing that the Alpine inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings over-ran as conquerors the surrounding regions. The evidence, in fact, points in an opposite direction. The deletion of these two points is not fatal to the hypothesis, and we may still consider that there is, on philological evidence, a prima-facie reason for believing that from somewhere in Central Europe, from the area which we have termed the Celtic cradle, two waves of invaders, of Wiro speech if not of Wiro race, set out in various directions, that the Q was the earlier and the P the later, and that both entered Italy and the Celtic lands.
We may further admit the possibility or even the probability, that an alien element, not necessarily non-Wiro, had entered the Celtic cradle before the departure of the second wave, and that it was to this alien element that the labialisation was due. Lastly, we may admit that, though evidence of the Q wave into Greece is non-proven, there is no doubt of the arrival of the P people, but these P people spoke a tongue showing greater affinities with Iranian speech, especially in their names for weapons and other warlike paraphernalia,[468] than is to be recognised in the other P tongues.
Now we have seen from the study of archæological evidence that the men of the leaf-shaped sword passed at one time into Italy, where they settled near Lake Fucino, and a little later some entered the Celtic lands of the west, while earlier a few adventurers reached Greek lands. Later some refugees from the mountain zone reached many parts of France and the British Isles. All these seem to have come from the same Celtic cradle and to have been of the same racial type or, to speak more accurately, types. Later still, we have seen that the Koban folk, who had learned the use of iron in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus, returned to the Danube valley, after which some of them entered Greece as Dorians, while others entered Italy with the Villa-nova culture and a third group pursued their predecessors over all parts of France except the Seine valley. It seems possible, if not probable, that these two waves of invasions may have been those which brought Q and P speech respectively into these different parts of Europe. If this equation be accepted, the main features of Sir John Rhys’ hypothesis have been proved. But it will not be wise to jump too hastily to a conclusion, for the fact that there were two waves of invaders and two of Wiro dialects may be only a coincidence. We must attempt to apply a confirmatory test.
In Greece we have seen that Casson has shown good cause why we should believe that the advance of the men with the iron sword should be equated with the Dorian invasion. The Dorians spoke a P dialect and may well have been the first to introduce such a tongue into Greece. We have seen how Rhys’ view that Q dialects survive in the writings of Herodotus and Hippocrates is open to question, but we have also noted that Wace had equally questioned the “Achæan” invasion proposed by Ridgeway. I have already put forward an amended scheme for the latter, and suggested the arrival of only a few Nordic adventurers. Had these been Wiros of Q speech, they could not, owing to the paucity of their numbers, have imposed their tongue upon their subjects. If, therefore, we accept the equation for Greek lands, we need not expect to find evidence of the survival of Q speech in Greece in the fifth century.
But I have suggested that these “Achæan” adventurers were stragglers from the band of Nordics who were responsible for the Phrygian invasion of Asia Minor. If the equation, which we are endeavouring to prove, were true, we should expect that the Phrygian language was of the Q form. Unfortunately we know little of the Phrygian tongue even in the palmy days of Athens, still less of its form in the thirteenth century.
All philologists are agreed that with the language of Thrace it formed the Thraco-Phrygian group, from which, according to some philologists, modern Albanian is derived. Dacian is also believed to have belonged to the same group. Some years ago Dr. Tomaschek collected together, from Greek and Latin sources, all the words which might be considered as belonging to this group, but most of these are place-names or names of plants. This is not very satisfactory material for our purpose, for place-names may have been inherited from the previous inhabitants, while names of plants may be loan words. Further than this most of the words have been preserved by Greek writers, and there is no Q in the Greek language. Still I have thought it well to search through the lists compiled by Tomaschek, and though the result is, perhaps, not very convincing, the presence of such words as καναρος, κενθος, Quimedava or κουιμε-δαβα, Coila or Cuila, κερκινη, and several others certainly hints that the Thraco-Phrygian tongues may have been Q dialects.[469]
The arguments from the east, while they do not in any way contradict our equation, and may even be said to give it some support, are not quite decisive; at any rate something more conclusive is desirable. It is useless to look for this in the west, in Celtic lands, for our documentary evidence scarcely antedates the time of Julius Cæsar, or, at any rate, such earlier evidence as we possess is both meagre and uncertain. Finally all the evidence has been the subject of dispute, on almost every item differences of opinion have been expressed, and we have no sure or unquestioned data on which to depend. The controversy has also, unhappily, become associated with other differences of opinion.