Wales, like western Ireland, is a museum of racial antiquities and being an unattractive and poor country has exported men rather than received immigration, while such invasions as did arrive came with spent force.
The mass of the population of Wales especially in the upland or moorland districts is Mediterranean, with a considerable addition of Paleolithic remnants. With changing social and industrial conditions these Neolithic Mediterraneans are pushing into the valleys or towns with a resultant replacement of the Nordic types.
Recent and intensive investigations reveal everywhere in Wales distinct physical types living side by side or in adjoining villages unchanged and unchangeable throughout the centuries. Extensive blending has not taken place though much crossing has occurred and the persistence of the skull shape has been particularly marked. Such individuals as are of pure Nordic type are generally members of the old county families and land owning class.
As to language in Wales, the Cymric is everywhere spoken in various dialects, but there are indications of the ancient underlying Goidelic. In fact, Brythonic or Cymric may not have reached Wales much before the Roman conquest of Britain. The earlier Goidelic survived in parts of Wales as late as the seventh century but by the eleventh century all consciousness of race and linguistic distinctions had disappeared in the common name of Cymry. This name should perhaps be limited to the Brythons of England and not used for their kindred on the Continent.
In Cornwall and along the Welsh border racial types are often grouped in separate villages and the intellectual and moral distinctions between them are well recognized.
The Nordic species of man in its various branches made Gaul the land of the Franks and made Britain the land of the Angles and the Englishmen who built the British Empire and founded America were of the Nordic and not of the Mediterranean type.
One of the most vigorous Nordic elements in France, England and America was contributed by the Normans and their influence on the development of these countries cannot be ignored. The descendants of the Danish and Norse Vikings who settled in Normandy as Teutonic-speaking heathen and who as Normans crossed over to Saxon England and conquered it in 1066 are among the finest and noblest examples of the Nordic race. Their only rivals in these characters were the early Goths.
This Norman strain, while purely Nordic, seems to have been radically different in its mental makeup, and to some extent in its physical detail from the Saxons of England and also from their kindred in Scandinavia.
The Normans appear to have been “fine race” to use a French idiom and their descendants are often characterized by a tall, slender figure, much less bulky than the typical Teuton, of proud bearing and with clearly marked features of classic Greek regularity. The type is seldom extremely blond and is often dark. These Latinized Vikings were and are animated by a restless and nomadic energy and by a fierce aggressiveness. They played a brilliant role during the twelfth and following centuries but later, on the continent, this strain ran out, though leaving here and there traces of its former presence, notably in Sicily where the grayish blue Sicilian eye called “the Norman eye” is still found among the old noble families.
The Norman type is still very common among the English of good family and especially among hunters, explorers, navigators, adventurers and officers in the British army. These latter-day Normans are natural rulers and administrators and it is to this type that England largely owes her extraordinary ability to govern justly and firmly the lower races. This Norman blood occurs often among the native Americans but with the changing social conditions and the filling up of the waste places of the earth it is doomed to a speedy extinction.