Wales

by William Watkin Davies

But this period of calm was soon to be interrupted. A new people appeared on the scene, a branch of the great Celtic people to whom for purposes of identification and differentiation the name Goidels has been given. These people were more warlike than the older inhabitants of the island; nevertheless there was no settled policy of extermination or even of expropriation. But slow and silent pressure did its work. The Iberians were gradually pushed into the remoter corners of the west, and especially into the mountainous region which we now call Wales.

It is unnecessary perhaps to impress upon, the reader that there never was at any time anything resembling a Celtic Empire, or even a Celtic nation. It is only the name which we give to a branch of the Aryan or Indo-European family of races which migrated at a very early date from central Asia to the banks of the Rhine, the Main, and the Danube. They became known to the Greeks of classical times, who called them Hyperboreans. A martial folk they were, delighting in combat, and always thirsting for fresh conquests, for glory, and for plunder. Their first struggle was with the Germanic tribes, whom they eventually subjugated. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a writer of the first century B.C. refers to Germany as a Celtic territory. But after a time the Germans turned on their masters and expelled them from what had been their first European home, the region which lies between the Elbe and the Rhine.

It is but natural that wandering nations should in all ages have felt attracted by France. To those, particularly, who came from the arid and frozen steppes of Russia, or from the wind-swept Scandinavian lands, its sunny plains, its fine rivers, its fields so well adapted for the cultivation of grain, its gentle hills on whose slopes the vine flourishes so luxuriantly, must have seemed a veritable paradise. It is therefore not in the least surprising that, from the earliest dawn of history, race should have striven with race for the possession of so fair an inheritance. Among the first invaders within the period of recorded history were the Celts, who invaded France somewhere about the year 600 B.C. Their second invasion occurred some time after 300 B.C. This time they swept over the whole country from the Channel to the Bay of Biscay, and from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The land was then called Gaul; and these were the people against whom the whole might of Rome was directed under the leadership of Julius Cæsar. Invaders and invaded were closely akin in blood. After a stubborn resistance the whole country was subjugated. Latin civilization was speedily assimilated, and Gaul became, after a time, more Roman almost than Rome itself. Even at this distant date, nowhere is it more easy to enter into the spirit of ancient Rome than within the gaunt and gigantic amphitheatre of Arles, by the exquisite Maison Carrée of Nimes, and beneath the stupendous aqueduct of Pont du Gard. But as the power of Rome declined new torrents of invaders swept into Gaul in successive waves, Burgundian giving place to Visigoth, and Visigoth to Frank.

Meanwhile the Celts who had been living on the banks of the Danube had not been idle. For them the path of sunshine and ease led in the direction of Italy and the Balkan Peninsula. Italy, more even than France, has at all times possessed a wonderful, though quite explicable, fascination for the northern nations. Its fine climate, the fertility of its soil, its high state of cultivation and its accumulated riches have proved an irresistible attraction. From the picturesque pages of Livy it is easy to gather that the steady progress of the invaders, the forcing of the Alpine barrier, the march across the northern plain, the pouring through the passes of the Apennines, the capture of Clusium, and finally the holding to ransom of Rome itself, made a profound and indelible impression upon the Romans. It is altogether to the credit of the Celts that they respected the superior civilization which they found in the lands south of the Alps, and that they committed no crimes or outrages like those perpetrated at a later date by Vandals and Huns.

These Celtic tribes, having conquered Macedon and Thessaly, accepted an invitation from Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, and crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor. With their aid Nicomedes speedily defeated his enemies; but it was not long before he had good reason to repent of having brought to the country such formidable allies. The Celts had brought with them their families and all their belongings, and now they settled down on both sides of the river Halys. There they formed a state called Galatia, and became the terror of all their neighbours. Incensed with Mithridates the Great on account of his treachery, they allied themselves with the Romans in the war against him, and after that they remained a Roman client state. Even then they retained their language; and we have it on the authority of St. Jerome that six centuries later the same tongue was spoken on the banks of the Halys as on the banks of the Moselle. With their language they also retained their customs and character; but recent commentators have perhaps been too ready to find evidence of the instability and impressionableness of the modern Welshman in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians!

From France the step was a comparatively easy one into Spain. But once across the Pyrenees, the forward march of the Celts was stubbornly contested. The country was in the hands of a queer assortment of people, consisting of a pre-Aryan race, Iberians, Ligurians, and Phœnicians. Nothing could, however, resist the Celtic advance; and ere long we find them firmly planted in Portugal and among the hills of Galicia and the Asturias.

It will be seen from this that the invasion of Britain by the Goidels was but part of a mighty movement of expansion carried out by the Celts in many different countries. Britain they probably reached sometime about the year 800 B.C. Soon the tin mines of Cornwall acquired something like European fame, and men of enterprise like Pythias came from the ports of the Mediterranean to seek the pearls and the gold so dear to the luxurious inhabitants of southern lands. But it was not until Gaul had become a Roman province, peaceful and well-ordered, and traversed by excellent roads, that Britain came to be regarded as a place within the ordinary range of commercial intercourse.

The last wave of invaders to enter Britain anterior to the coming of the Romans were the Brythons, another branch of the Celtic family. It is probable that they came from north-eastern Gaul at a date which we cannot fix with any precision, but which must have been some time between the fourth and first century B.C. The people found by them in Britain were but poor fighters, and the resistance offered by them to the Brythonic invaders was feeble and brief. They were speedily conquered, and pushed back into the countries of the north and west. At what date they first came to Wales we do not know; but before the end of the Roman occupation we find them living in what is now Montgomeryshire. The Brythons differed in many ways from their predecessors. They were tall, well formed, with long yellow hair, faces shaved clean except for a moustache, light complexioned, agile of limb, and hardy. While excelling in war they were not unmindful of the arts of peace. They were an artistic people, and the weapons and ornaments which they wrought in various metals, as well as their enamel work, are exquisite in design and workmanship. Many of their spindles, their loom-weights, and their weaving combs have survived. Julius Cæsar draws attention to their superb horsemanship. They had also made some headway in the art of boat building. Yet despite the advanced stage of civilization indicated by these things, their mode of life was barbarous. Their huts show practically no advance upon those of earlier people, being circular in shape, with floors of clays and walls of timber and wattle, the interstices being filled with mud. Almost invariably the hut consisted of a single room, in which the whole family laid itself down to sleep, covered with woollen blankets and rugs made of the skins of animals. They knew the value of trade; and before the coming of the Romans used a coinage. The language which they spoke is the direct ancestor of that spoken to-day in Wales and Brittany, just as the Goidelic branch of the parent Celtic tongue is the ancestor of Erse and Gaelic.