Of the British Isles at the time of the Angle invasion we have effected a sketch, rather than a picture; a sketch indistinct in outline, and with several of its details almost invisible. Nevertheless, it is a sketch in which some of the points are pretty clear. Germans of one or more varieties, Kelts either Gaelic or British, Picts who may be anything, Romans and Roman Legionaries are the chief elements. These we have had to distribute in Time and Space as we best could. We have also had, as we best could, to investigate their relations to each other.

Let us look back upon what has been attempted in this respect.

And first in respect to our data. The statements of the early authors, and the value which is due to them, have formed the subject of a separate chapter;[23] and it is hoped, that, without any undue disparagement, they have been shewn[220] to be valid only when they are opposed to a very small amount of either conflicting facts or a priori improbabilities. I also lay but little stress upon them when they assert a negative, and equally little when their apparent testimony may be reduced to an inference. Their absolute testimony, however, must be taken as we find it.

Partly for the sake of recapitulation, and partly with the view to give a further investigation to certain questions which could not well be considered until certain preliminary facts had been laid before the reader, the more important inferences are put in form of the following propositions, to some of which a commentary is attached.

I.

The British Isles were peopled from the Keltic portion of the continent originally and exclusively.

This implies an objection to the doctrine of any pre-Keltic population, and to the inferences deduced from certain real or supposed peculiarities in the shape of the skulls from the tumuli of the Stone period. (See pp. 26-27.)

II.

The Gaels cannot be derived from the Britons,[221] nor the Britons from the Gaels; on the contrary, each branch must have been developed from some common stock.

This rests upon the differences between the British and Gaelic languages. (See Chapter V.)

III.

Of this common stock the British branch, at least, must have been developed on the continent. (See Chapter VI.)

This, of course, assumes that the Galli of Gaul were not derived from Britain; a view which has never been adopted, and which probably has so little to recommend it as to make its investigation superfluous.

The British language of Britain and the Gaelic of Gaul would not have been so much alike as they were had they developed themselves separately, each after their own fashion.

This last proposition depends, however, to a great extent, upon the following, viz., that—

IV.

The similarity between the ancient language of Gaul and the ancient language of Britain is measured by that between the present Welsh and the Armorican of Brittany.

The arguments of pp. 86-87, resting as they do upon the close relationship between the ancient[222] language of Gaul[24] and the British—would be materially impaired by any thing which subtracted from the evidence in favour of that relationship.

Now the present Welsh and the present Armorican of Brittany are languages that are very nearly mutually intelligible.

And as the Armorican represents the ancient Gallic, and the Welsh the ancient British, the affinity between the two old tongues must have been, at least, equal to that between the two new ones.

But what if the Armorican do not represent the ancient Gallic, but be merely so much Welsh or Cornish transferred to Brittany in the fifth century? In such a case the argument is materially weakened.

Now there is a certain amount of statements to this very effect, viz., to the Welsh origin of the Armorican. Let them be examined.

Gildas, who mentions the rebellion of Maximus, says nothing of any British migration to Brittany.

Nennius gives us an account beset with inaccuracies, being to the effect that Maximus the[223] seventh imperator in Britain, left the island with all the British soldiers it contained, killed Gratian King of Rome, and held rule over all Europe; that he would not dismiss the soldiers who went with him, but gave them lands in Armorica or the country over-sea (Ar-mor-); that, then and there, these soldiers of Maximus slaughtered all the males, married the females, and cut out their tongues lest the children should learn the language of their parents instead of that of their conquerors. For this reason we call them Letewicion, or, half-silent (semi-tacentes). Thus was Brittany peopled, and Britain emptied; so that strangers took possession of it.

Beda's account is equally unsatisfactory. The Britons were the first who came into the island, and they came from Armorica. It was from Armorica that they came, it was in the south of England that they landed, and it was they who gave the name to the island.

Now there is an error somewhere—if not in Beda, in Nennius; if not in Nennius, in Beda.

Traditions are uniform, inferences vary; and when Nennius brings his Armoricans from Cornwall, and Beda his Cornishmen from Armorica, we have a presumption against a tradition being the basis of their statements. The real basis was the existence of the British language on both sides of the Channel, a fact which being differently[224] interpreted by the different writers gave us two separate and contradictory inferences—each legitimate, and each (for want of further data) wrong.

The present similarity, then, between the Welsh and Armorican remains unaffected by the statements of Beda and Nennius; and the commonsense inference as to the latter language representing the ancient Gallic takes its course.

V.

The BelgÆ were Kelts of the British branch.

This implies an objection to all the arguments in favour of a Germanic population occupant of Britain anterior to the Christian era, which are based on the name BelgÆ. (See pp. 61-75.)

VI.

The Gaelic branch of the Keltic stock may have been developed in either the British Isles or on the continent.—(Chapter V.)

The following list of words in Professor Newman's Regal Rome, shewing that a remarkable class of words in Latin were Keltic rather than native and Gaelic rather than Welsh, and which was unpublished when the fifth chapter was written, favours the doctrine of the Gaels having been continental as well as insular to an extent for which I was previously unprepared:—

[225]

It also favours Lhuyd's hypothesis rather than the Hibernian. (See pp. 88-89.)

VII.

The earliest ethnology of Scotland was that the earliest Britons, i.e., either British as opposed to Gaelic, or Gaelic which, subsequently, became as British as South Britain itself.

This means that the present Gaels were not aboriginal to the Scotch Highlands, except in the sense that they were aboriginal to Kent or Wales. (See pp. 88-89.)

VIII.

The present Scotch Gaels are of Irish origin.

These two propositions go together; involving an objection to the so-called "Caledonian hypothesis" (p. 89), with which they are incompatible. Nevertheless, anything confirmatory of[226] that hypothesis would, pro tanto, invalidate the present.

The chief facts upon which this doctrine rest are—

1st. The absence of the term sliabh, the current Gaelic form for mountain, throughout Scotland—even in the Gaelic parts of it.

2nd. The great extent to which the forms in aber are found northwards (see p. 81). These occur so far beyond the Pict area, that, although so good a writer as Mr. Kemble has allowed himself to make it commensurate with the British, and although his list of compounds of aber has been placed in the present writer's chapter on the Picts, as an illustration of a certain line of criticism, the inference that they were Britons in North-Briton other than Pict is highly probable. Hence in the northern parts, at least, the word aber was used not because the country was Pict, but because it was British.

It is well known that the doctrine is, in respect to its results, the current one; from which it differs in resting on ethnological inference, rather than on a piece of history.

The historical account is to the effect, that the Scots of Scotland were originally Irish, so that Ireland was the true and proper Scotland. It was Ireland where the Scots dwelt when the Picts came from Scythia, Ireland whence the[227] Picts took their Scottish wives; and, finally, Ireland that gave its present Gaelic population to North Britain. Under a leader named Reuda the Scots of Ireland sailed across the Irish Sea, penetrated far into the Firth of Clyde, settled themselves to the north of the Picts, drove that nation southwards, multiplied their kind in the Highlands, and called themselves Dalriads (Dalreudini), since Reuda was the name of their chief, and daal meant part. The point where the Scots landed was just where the British and Pict areas joined, the parts about Alcluith or Dumbarton—"procedente autem tempore, Britannia post Brittones et Pictos, tertiam Scottorum nationem in Pictorum parte recepit, qui duce Reuda de Hibernia progressi vel amicitia vel ferro sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicarunt; a quo videlicet duce usque hodie dalreudini vocantur, nam eorum lingua 'daal' partem significat."—Hist. Eccl. i. 1.

To agree with Beda in making the Gaels of Scotland intrusive, but to demur to his evidence, is, apparently, to substitute a bad reason for a good one without affecting the conclusion, i.e., gratuitously. We shall soon see how far this is the case.

At present, I remark that all Scotland may have been British without having been wholly Pict; and that[228]—

The parts of Scotland which were not Gaelic at the beginning of the Historical period and have not been so since, never were.[26]

IX.

The Picts may or may not have been the British Kelts of Scotland: this depending upon the extent to which the gloss penn fahel is a word belonging to the Pict tongue, or only a word belonging to a language spoken within the Pict territory.

Why should it not be Pict? Why disturb the inference by suggesting that they may be Pict only as man or woman are Welsh, i.e., words other than Pict, but words used in a Pict area just as English is spoken in the Welsh town of Swansea? I admit that, if we look only to the plain and straight-forward meaning of Beda, this refinement is unnecessary. There are, however, certain complications.[229]

Daal=part, is suspiciously like the German theil, the English deal, the Anglo-Saxon dÆl, the Norse del, dal; indeed, it is a wonder that Beda took it for a foreign word. Hence, gloss for gloss, it is nearly as good evidence for the Picts being German or Norse as penn fahel is for their being Briton. I say nearly, because it is expressly stated to have been Scotch. But this it is not. What, then, is our next best explanation? To suppose it to have been a word used by a population other than Scotch, but on the Scotch frontier. Now this population was Pict.

X.

The Dalriad Conquest may or may not have been real. Being real, it may or may not have given origin to the Gaelic population of Scotland.

This means that Beda's evidence, being exceptionable, may be wholly false—except so far as it is an inference from the existence of Gaels in both Ireland and the Western Highlands.

Even if true as to the fact, its ethnological importance may be over-valued, since the investigation of the origin of the Scotch Gaels inquires, not whether any Irish Scots ever appropriated any part of Scotland, but whether such an appropriation were the one which accounts for the Gaelic population of North Britain. This is the[230] difference between a conquest and the conquest—a difference too often overlooked.

I should not like to say that the Picts were not Scandinavians, a point which will be treated more fully in the thirteenth chapter. Hence—

XI.

Scandinavian settlements may have taken place as early as the earliest notices of the Picts.

In this case the lines would be—Norway, North Scotland, the Hebrides, Ireland and Galloway.

XII.

Germanic elements existed in Britain in the reign of Diocletian.

The notices of the Franks in Kent and Middlesex suggest this. (See p. 96.)

XIII.

The Littus Saxonicum must have been ravaged by Germans as early as the reign of Honorius.

This must be admitted even if we construe Saxonicum as ravaged by Saxons, rather than occupied by Saxons—a construction which is so little natural, that I doubt whether it would ever have been resorted to if the language of Gildas had not been supposed to preclude the notion of any Saxon invasion anterior to A.D. 449. We have seen, however, how little that writer was in[231] the position to make a negative statement, i.e., to state, not only that Hengist and Horsa came over in a given year, but that none of their countrymen ever did so in a previous one.

XIV.

No distinction need be drawn between the Angles and the Saxons of Great Britain on the strength of the difference of name.

This, however, by no means implies that they are to be identified. It merely means that the name goes for but little; and that the difference of origin between the different portions of the Germanic population of Britain is to be determined by the facts of each particular case.

[23] Chapter vii.