The Ethnology of the British Islands

by R. G. Latham

VALUE OF THE EARLY BRITISH RECORDS.—TRUE AND GENUINE TRADITIONS RARE.—GILDAS.—BEDA.—NENNIUS.—ANNALES CAMBRENSES.—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRONICLES AND REGISTERS.—ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.—IRISH ANNALS.—VALUE OF THE ACCOUNTS OF THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES.—QUESTIONS TO WHICH THEY APPLY.

Not one word has hitherto been said about the early traditions of either Briton or Gael. No word, either, about their early records. Nothing about the Triads, Aneurin, Taliessin, Llywarch Hen, and Merlin on the side of the Welsh; nothing about the Milesian and other legends of the Irish. Why this silence? Have the preceding investigations been so superabundantly clear as to lead us to dispense with all rays of light except those of the most unexceptionable kind?

It is an unusual piece of good fortune when this happens anywhere; and assuredly it has not happened on British or Irish ground as yet. Or has the evidence of such early records and traditions been incompatible with the doctrines of the previous chapters, and, on the strength of its inconvenience, been kept back? If so, there has been a foul piece of disingenuousness on the part of the writer. But he does not plead guilty to this. He[105] attaches but little weight to the evidence of the early British records; and the contents of the present chapter are intended to justify his depreciation of them.

The writer who asserts that the oldest work in any language is of such antiquity as to be separated from the next oldest by any very long interval—by an interval which leaves a wide chasm between the first and second specimens of the literature which no fragments and no traces of any lost compositions are found to fill up—makes an assertion which he is bound to support by evidence of the most cogent kind. For it is not always enough to shew that no intrinsic objections lie against the antiquity of the work in question. It may be so short, or so general in respect to its subject as to leave no room for contradictory and impossible sentences or expressions. It is not enough to shew that there were no reasons against such a literature being developed; since it is difficult to say what conditions absolutely forbid the production of a work stamped by no very definite characteristics. Nor yet will it suffice to say that the preservation of such a work is probable. All that can be got from all this is a presumption in its favour. The great fact of a work existing without giving this impulse to the production of others like it, and the fact of the same means of preservation being[106] wholly neglected in other instances, still stand over. They are not conclusive against certain positions; but they are circumstances which must be fairly met; circumstances which if one writer overlook, others will not; circumstances which the critic will insist on; and circumstances which, if the dazzle of a paradox, or the appeal to the innate and universal sympathy for antiquity keep them in the background for a while, will, sooner or later, rise against the author who overlooked them.

Neither are arguments from the antiquity of language conclusive. When two works differ from each other in respect to the signs of antiquity exhibited in their phraseology, the inference that the oldest in point of speech is proportionably old in point of time is not the only one. It is an easy thing to say that in the Latin literature the language of Ennius represents a date a hundred years earlier than that of Cicero, and that of Cicero a date 400 earlier than the time of Boethius, and that when we meet elsewhere compositions which differ from each other as the Latin of Ennius does from that of Boethius, there is 500 years difference between them. It is by no means certain that any two languages alter at the same rate.

But an average may be struck, and it may be said that greater antiquity of expression is primâ[107] facie evidence of a greater antiquity of date. It is: but is only so when we are quite sure that the dialects of the two specimens are the same. There are works printed this very year in Iceland which, if their dates were unknown, would pass for being a hundred years older than the Swedish of the eleventh century.

It is only when the supporter of the authenticity of a work of singular and unique antiquity can begin with an epoch of comparatively recent date, and argue backwards through a series of continuous works, each older than the other, to one still older than any, that he can reasonably accuse the critic who demurs to his deductions of captiousness. In this way the antiquity of the oldest Chinese annals is invalidated: in this way the date of the Indian Vedas (1400 B.C.). But the great classical literatures stand the test, and from the present time to Claudian, from Claudian to Ennius, and from Ennius to Archilochus we trace a classical literature with all its works in continuity; each pointing to some one older than itself. Even this forbids an excessive antiquity to Homer.

Again—the likelihood of forgery must be continually kept in mind; so much so, that even in the unexceptionable literature of the classics, if it could be shewn that any age between the present and the eighth century B.C., were an age in[108] which the Greek drama, the Greek epics, the Greek histories, or the Greek orations could be forged, a great deal would be subtracted from the proofs of their antiquity. I do not say that it would set them aside; because everything of this kind is a question of degree; but the argument in their favour would be less exceptionable than it is.

For it cannot be too strongly urged that the preservation of records of high antiquity, in and of itself, is naturally and essentially improbable. More than half of the antiquities of the world have been lost; and this alone gives us the odds against an instance of survivorship. This has been insisted on by more than one archæologist—more cautious and candid than the majority of his brotherhood. Whoever doubts this should look around him. How few nations have a literature! How thoroughly is the non-development of a permanent literature the exception rather than the rule! And, even when records come into existence, how numerous are the chances against their preservation. Destruction is the common law: continuance a happy rarity. For extraordinary phenomena we must have extraordinary proofs.

From the present time to the eleventh century we may trace the native Welsh literature continuously; but no farther. If any thing be older than the laws of Hoel Dhu, they must be[109] so by four centuries, with nothing in the interval. This is the measure of the value of Welsh evidence to the events of the fifth century. Writers, however, in Latin existed earlier. Still, this is unsufficient to be conclusive to the validity of a fact in the fourth. Such a statement must be tested by its own intrinsic probability. It cannot come before us invested with the dignity of a historically authenticated event. What this is will soon appear.