CHAPTER II.
CELTS.
Of all the forms of bronze instruments the hatchet or axe, to which the name of celt has been applied, is perhaps the most common and the best known. It is also probably among the earliest of the instruments fabricated from metal, though in this country it is possible that some of the cutting instruments, such as the knife-daggers, which required a less amount of metal for their formation, are of equal or greater antiquity.
These tools or weapons—for, like the American tomahawk, they seem to have been in use for peaceful as well as warlike purposes—may be divided into several classes. Celts may be described as flat; flanged, or having ribs along the sides; winged, or having the side flanges extended so as almost to form a socket for the handle on either side of the blade, to which variety the name of palstave has been given; and socketed. Of most of these classes there are several varieties, as will be seen farther on.
The name of celt which has been given to these instruments is derived from the doubtful Latin word “celtis” or “celtes,” a chisel, which is in its turn said to be derived à cœlando (from carving), and to be the equivalent of cœlum.
The only author in whose works the word is found is St. Jerome, and it is employed both in his Vulgate translation of the Book of Job[105] and in a quotation from that book in his Epistle to Pammachius. The word also occurs in an inscription recorded by Gruter and Aldus,[106] but as this inscription is a modern forgery, it does not add to the authority of the word “celtis.”
Mr. Knight Watson, Sec. S. A., in an interesting paper communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of London,[107] has given several details as to the origin and use of this word, which he considers to have been founded on a misreading of the word certe, and the derivation of which from cœlo he regards as impossible. There can be no doubt, as Beger pointed out two centuries ago, that a number of MSS. of the Vulgate read certe instead of celte in the passage in Job already mentioned, and that in all probability these are the most ancient and the best. But this only adds to the difficulty of understanding how a recently invented and an unknown word, such as celte is presumed to be, can have ever supplanted a well-known word like certe; and so far as the Burial Service of the Roman Catholic Church is concerned can have maintained its ground for centuries. Nor is this difficulty diminished when we consider that the ordinary and proper translation of the Hebrew לֹער is either “in æternum” or “in testimonium,” according as the word is pointed לָעַר or לְעֵר, and that, so far as I am aware, there is no other instance of its being translated “certe.” On the other hand, a nearly similar word, פְעֵס “with a stylus,” or, as it is translated, “a pen,” occurs in the same passage; and assuming that this was by some accident read for לער by St. Jerome, he would have thought that the word for stylus was used twice over, and have inserted some word to designate a graving tool, by way of a synonym. The probability of such an error would be increased if his MS. had the lines arranged in couplets in accordance with its poetical character, the passage standing thus when un-pointed:—
עפרתו ברול בעס
יתצבון בַצזר לער
Very possibly the word used by St. Jerome may not have been celte but cœlo, and the corruption into celte in order to make a distinction between heaven and a chisel would then at all events have been possible.