Linguistic study being older than anthropological study, the classing of the best known peoples in Europe is that which is based on difference of language. Nearly every one knows that the ethnic groups of our continent are as a consequence distributed into “Aryan” and an-Aryan peoples. The former are divided (1) into three great linguistic families, Latin or Roman in the south-west of Europe, Teutonic in the centre and north, Slav in the south-east and east; and (2) into three smaller ones: Celtic in the extreme north-west of the continent, Helleno-Illyrian in the extreme south-east, and Letto-Lithuanian in the centre. As to the non-Aryan group, it comprises the Basques, the Finno-Ugrians, the Turks, the Mongols, the Semites, and the Caucasian peoples.
These groups are heterogeneous enough in physical type and civilisation. What, for example, have the two Latin peoples, the Portuguese and Romans, in common? or the two Slav peoples, like the Kashoobs, fair, short, thick-set, peaceful cultivators of the plain, and the Montenegrins, dark, tall, slender, warlike shepherds of the mountain? What more striking contrast can we imagine than that between a Norwegian, tall and fair, a bold sailor, whose flag floats in every port of the world, and a Tyrolese of the north, dark and short, a sedentary cultivator of the soil, whose horizon is bounded by the summits of his mountains? However, both these are included in the “Germanic” group.
Nevertheless, and only to bring out better the differences between linguistic divisions and those of ethnography and ethnology, I shall rapidly pass in review the “peoples” of Europe, according to the linguistic grouping as outlined above.
A. ETHNIC “ARYAN” GROUPS.
I. Latin or Roman Peoples, that is to say speaking languages derived from the Latin. The majority of philologists divide them into seven distinct groups, viz., French of the north, Languedocian-Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese-Galego, Italian, Romansch-Ladino, and Rumanian.
1. The French group of the north, or the Langue d’oil, comprises the populations (Fig. [98]) on the north of the line which, starting from the Gironde, passes by Angoulême, Montmorillon, Montlucon, Lyons, and the crests of the Jura, to terminate in the neighbourhood of Berne in Switzerland.[375] Among the numerous dialects recognisable in it, we must make special mention of Wallon, spoken in the southern part of the department of the north in France, and in the southern half of Belgium,[376] in the commune of Malmedy in Prussia, and in several places in the grand duchy of Luxemburg. Northern French is likewise spoken in the west part of Lorraine and lower Alsace annexed to Germany, as well as in several places in upper Alsace.
FIG. 97.—Anglian type,
common in north and north-east of England.
(After Beddoe.)
2. The Languedocian-Catalan group, or the Langue d’oc, situated south of the line referred to above, comprises four great dialectal divisions which make a distinction between the Gascons (south of the Garonne) (Figs. [99] and [100]) and the Languedocians and Provençals (Fig. [94]), while admitting the mixed so-called Rhodanian group (basin of the upper Rhone, Roman Switzerland, Savoy, and the French valleys of Piedmont)[377] and the Catalan group (Roussillon in France, Catalonia and Valencia in Spain, the Balearic Islands, and a point on the west coast of Sardinia).