Here the Jews are an agricultural, industrious, and warlike race. Here

is each township distinct, preserving its distinct traditions. Here are

the settlements at successive periods. There are the emigrants after

the second destruction, as distinguished from those of the first. Then

there are those who came by sea, and those who came through Egypt, who

“did not go to the Babylonish captivity.”

When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, he was compelled by the

Egyptians to retire, and the Jews looking to Egypt for support, and

fearing the return of the Chaldeans, Jeremiah denounced the vengeance

of Heaven against them, and prophesied that those who went to Egypt

never should see their own land again.[253] Jeremiah himself was taken

to Egypt. He again announced the destruction of that country by the

Chaldeans, which he typified by burying the stones over which the

throne of Nebuchadnezzar was to be raised. On the invasion of Egypt by

the Chaldeans, the Jews would naturally have fled a second time. It was

from the “north country” that fear was coming. They must have fled

towards the west. The prophet had announced that they were not to see

the land of their fathers again; and the Jewish peasants inhabiting

Mount Atlas, at a distance of two thousand four hundred years, tell us,

that they left Jerusalem before the Babylonish captivity. While this is

a remarkable confirmation of the accuracy of the Jewish records, and of

the fulfilment of a prophecy the accomplishment of which had not been

recorded, it gives at the same time to the traditions of these people

the weight and force of historical record.

One of their traditions is, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Spain, attacked

the Tyrians at Cadiz, and carried with him in his armies many Jews to

Spain, who were afterwards colonized in these countries. This account

has hitherto been disregarded because there is no historical evidence

for it. The tradition is, however, confirmed by the name of the ancient

capital, Toledo--Toledoth, or the generations with Ascalon, so often

repeated in the names of old Spanish cities, Jaffa, and the others

enumerated by Mariana. The translator of A1 Makhari mentioned to me the

discovery at Toledo of an old manuscript, in Jewish character, but not

Hebrew, and which he supposed to be a sign of the Jews, who had settled

in Spain previous to the Carthaginian conquest, having adopted the

original language of Spain, as their successors have the Spanish. Mr.

Davidson found great disinclination to speak on the dispersion of the

tribes. I have also remarked it in a Jew from Fez; and it suggested to

me a new explanation of the supposed loss of the ten tribes.

The Barbary Jews all profess themselves to be of the tribe of Benjamin.

When I asked the Jew, how a tribe almost extinguished, and the least

of the tribes of Israel, should, to the exclusion of all the rest,

have supplied the whole of the Jewish population now in the west, he

answered by referring to the promise to the seed of Benjamin, and, as

if inwardly recurring to the other promise to the tribe of Judah, he

added, “But we are also of the tribe of Judah, and the two are mixed

together.” It immediately occurred to me, that they made a point of

asserting the tribe of Judah still to exist, as preserving the future

application of the prophecy regarding the Messiah, and that they

brought in the kingdom of Judah, and the two tribes of which it was

composed, as the source from which they sprang, and that thence arose

the habit of speaking of the ten tribes as being lost. There can be no

doubt that the successive emigrations to Spain and to Barbary while the

two kingdoms still remained distinct, were composed of all the tribes,

but in the loss of their several inheritances and separate governments,

they had become confounded in their new settlements.

When this Jew was asserting his descent from Judah, it occurred to me

to ask him to say _shibboleth_. He was confounded, but attempted again

and again, and could not accomplish it. He was very angry.

The resemblance to ancient Canaan is thus described by the illiterate

master of a vessel, shipwrecked upon the coast and carried into the

interior:--

“After leaving the Great Desert, and coming to the country of Sus,

we entered on an extensive plain; and we were struck at the same

moment with the sight of several villages, surrounded with high stone

walls, with gates and towers; and I was told that each of these was

an independent state, and under the command or government of its

own chief, who generally gave himself the title of Prince. When I

learnt the destruction of Widnoon, and the other devastations of the

wandering Arabs, I could not help reflecting--and I made the remark

to my companions--that the province of Sus was what Canaan must have

been in the time of Joshua, in respect to its numerous walled towns,

the fertility of its soil, and several other respects; and that the

eruptions of the Arabs of the Desert resembled much the conduct of the

ancient Israelites when they came out of the Desert into the cultivated

country.”

[253] “When ye shall enter into Egypt, ye shall

be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse,

and a reproach, and ye shall see this place no more.”

Jeremiah xlii. 18.

CHAPTER V.

TANGIER.

From Arzela to Tangier there are two roads, one by the interior and

one by the beach. Not far from the former are the Druidical remains.

I, however, preferred the shore-road, not to lose the sight of that

splendid tumult of waters. We started a little before full-tide. Here

there were no cliffs or rocks along the beach, but flat, open, sand;

and in advance of the shore, at about a quarter of a mile, there was

generally a bank, along which I walked the greater part of the day

barefoot, having now and then to fly before the sudden sweep of a

larger wave. I learnt the difference between walking with the foot that

God had given us, and stumping in the cases constructed by man. Nothing

could be more beautiful than the bank of foam seaward. The waves began

breaking about a mile off, and there were generally three permanent

cataracts, stretching as far as I could see, this way and that, but at

times I could count seven or eight successive lines of surf, which,

constantly rolling, appeared nevertheless permanent waterfalls: beyond,

the sea was smooth, calm, and there was no wind. This was the coast in

its mildest mood, and under its most favourable aspect. In the middle

of the day the sea-breeze came in at about ten knots an hour, and swept

before it with each wave sheets of foam, radiating with prismatic

colours. The coast is strewed with fragments of ships and bones of

sharks. The Arabs will sometimes burn large masses of timber merely to

get the nails that may be in them. To the south it often happens that

whales are wrecked on the coast.

Within about five miles of Cape Spartel, I observed one of the most

beautiful effects of the pattern figures of the sand, and I mention it

as being within the reach of a ride from Tangier. There appeared to be

a stream rising along the ground: it was the fine sand carried inland

by the wind; and in this neighbourhood it has since been observed to

me by persons who had themselves marked the change, that the sand was

gaining upon the cultivated land. It is this, I imagine, that has led

to the belief prevalent amongst the Europeans in this country, that the

sand along the coast of Morocco has been thrown up by the sea; but the

sand thus carried inward is but dust in the balance compared with that

enormous stratum which constitutes the maritime border of the country,

and which is battened down by a skin of rock. The edges of this mass

of sand are worn by the waters, and a slight portion is blown inwards

by the wind; but the mass itself has been the load of an ocean, and

carried to where it now rests, from the interior of Africa itself.

I may here mention the caves of Cape Spartel, which I subsequently

visited. A couple of miles southward of the Cape there is a flat,

projecting rock, about sixty feet high: it is composed of a hard and

porous conglomerate, which forms excellent mill-stones; and it seems to

have been used from all antiquity for that purpose. The summit bears

towards the land the remains of Phœnician walls; the rock is in all

directions burrowed for the mill-stones; they are cut about two and a

half feet in diameter. They chisel them all round; then break off the

part with wedges; and this scooping out has a most singular effect. The

rock is so hard that parts are left standing only a few inches thick,

and, like open trellis-work, over which you may scramble. Forty feet

above the surf, and projecting over it, there are two large caves open

to the sea, into which the waves dash with fury. These, though greatly

extended by the scooping for the mill-stones, were natural caverns, and

no doubt one of them must have been the cave of Hercules. Even within

the last few years a considerable portion of the rock has fallen away.

There is in one a dome, with a circular aperture in the centre. The

rock is all pierced through like a large warren: it contains cavities

filled up with sand and bones, like the Kirkdale caves of Yorkshire.

It was dark when we reached Tangier: the gate of the city was already

closed, though I had sent one of the soldiers in advance. The gate of

the citadel was, however, opened for our admission. On issuing from the

gate of the fortress, we came in sight of the city below us, shining

like a congregation of glowworms. There was not a light to be seen--yet

all was light, shaded, mellowed, and phosphoric. There were here no

lamp-posts in the streets, and no windows in the houses, through which

their lights could be seen: the white walls of the interior courts were

illuminated with a blue reflected light, which produced an optical

delusion; from the want of a direct ray to measure the distance, the

lighted surfaces seemed remote, and the town swelled into magnificence

of proportion. It was, indeed, but for a moment, for the sun soon

corrected the error of the eye.

I reached the door of Miss Duncan, who renders Tangier habitable for

Europeans, in such a condition that, when it was opened and light

brought, it was about to be closed against me as a mad santon, my

scanty habiliments, a shirt and drawers, being torn with briars and

disfigured with mud, while the arms and legs fared no better. Great

was the surprise when from such a body proceeded an English appeal for

shelter, and within an hour I was seated on a chair at a table, before

a fire of sea-coal, with grate, fender, and fire-irons. On the table

stood cruet-stand, knife and fork, Staffordshire plates, and Scotch

broth. While marvelling at the sight, in rushed Hamed with a steaming

dish--“Me know you like Moors’ kuscoussoo.”

The journey from Rabat, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, had

taken me a week of toil and fatigue. The difficulties, from the season

of the year, were, however, the charm of the trip; the weather was mild

and beautiful, but the roads--if they can be so called--were heavy and

deep. This, comparatively speaking, would have mattered little, if

we had been well mounted; our animals were, I think, the worst I ever

journeyed with, and the charge the most exorbitant I ever paid. I could

have bought them outright for one-third more than the sum I gave for

the week’s hire. The charges for the soldiers were in proportion, and

I found that this journey had cost me in time and in money, the same

as posting from Calais to Naples. Each soldier received for his week’s

journey, the price of an ox.

Coming from the south, Tangier was a very different object than when I

crossed the Straits to visit it, as a specimen of Barbary. In fact, it

is a place equally foreign to both. The Moors designate it, “Infidel,”

like the Giaour of the Turks. It is the only place where Europeans

reside, and there is here a mixture of all classes, Brebers, Moors,

Jews, and Europeans, living promiscuously together.

On the cession of the place by the English, it became the property of

the Sultan, who offered it to the Brebers, thinking by that means to

fix them in the towns. Some hundred families accepted the offer, but

their example has not been followed by the rest. They seem originally

to have enjoyed a very free government, by their own municipal body,

which consisted of twelve, and who each in turn was governor of the

city for a month.

The fortifications present a strange jumble of the structure of all

ages, but the only chiselled remains that I saw were Roman, being

capitals, and shafts of Corinthian columns.

The town stands on a deep mass of the relics of former habitations. The

Danish consulate has recently been rebuilt, and in some places they

dug twenty feet below the present level. Twelve feet below the surface

there were found Roman tombs, and eight feet below these, round black

jars containing fragments of burnt bones similar to those which have

been found in mounds in Denmark. I could see none of them, as they had

been all sent to Denmark to the king. A portion of a fine Roman bridge

still stands, leading from Tangier across the river, in the direction

of the northern coast. It resembles the Flavian bridge at Rome, and

is fifteen feet broad between the parapets: an old engraving of the

city, when in possession of the English, represents the port crowded

with vessels. It was in form nearly triangular, the apex being at the

entrance three hundred and fifty fathoms from the base. Two moles were

run out, one protecting it from the north-east, the other from the

north-west: these were destroyed when we surrendered the place.

From here you command a perfect view through the Straits. It is

impossible not to be struck with its superiority over Gibraltar, while

the moles existed. Here you are to windward: with easterly winds you

may work through with the current’s aid, and with westerly winds

you are far enough out of its draught to be able to get away to the

westward. There is, however, a position close by, which is superior to

it. It is a cove two miles to the westward, and at the point of the

cape. It would require, indeed, some clearance out of the sand, and the

addition of a breakwater at each of the horns: there is good anchorage

before it, and nothing more to be feared than from the north. The

coast of Spain terminating at Trafalgar breaks the sea from the north,

and the northerly wind never blows home, as the various influences of

the Straits change it here either into an east or a west wind. The

Americans some years ago cast their eyes on this position, and wished

to obtain it as their Mediterranean emporium, and they offered a large

sum of money for it to the Government of Morocco.

Above this cove is situated a house that has been constructed by an

English gentleman. It had been several months untenanted, and though

there is a road passing close behind it, nothing had been touched.

There was on the steps of the door a child’s toy--a cart--just as it

had been left weeks before; some of the panes of glass were broken, but

this had been done by the pigeons. Garden implements were lying about.

During two years that the proprietor has resided there, he had locked

nothing up, and lost nothing. There are in the neighbourhood several

villages, and no stipendiary magistrate, or rural police.

There is here a restricted but agreeable society of the foreign agents,

and a most imposing assemblage of flag-staffs--or rather masts--which

are struck and housed in bad weather, and which exhibit fore and back

stays, cross-trees, rigging, rattlings, halyards, &c., giving to the

flat roofs of their habitations the appearance of decks, and making

them look like so many vessels, wanting only their yards to be crossed,

and their sails to be bent. In their nautical pretensions, they are,

however, beaten by the English consul at Cadiz, who hoists a pendant,

and whose porter pipes a guest up the stairs with a boatswain’s call.

Amidst the consular masts with their floating standards and streaming

pendants, which make the town look from without rather like a dockyard

than a city, there is not one that bears the blue cross of St. Andrew.

There was the agent of the young republic of the West at work trying to

involve France and Morocco with a view to the settlement of the Oregon

question against England, while the profound cabinet of the North is

so heedless of Morocco as not to have even a consul there. Nay, Russia

is positively so ignorant of the commonest facts connected with this

country, that, when appealed to recently in an affair concerning it,

she replied that she considered it as a _portion of Turkey_.

The circumstances attending the appointment of the present American

consul are curious. He had been consul here formerly, and on no good

terms with the authorities. The Moors are very particular in seeing to

whoever embarks from this place, and the foreign agents, of course,

always give previous notice of their intention. The American consul

on taking his departure, not only gave no such notice, but announced

his intention of not doing so. The Pacha, therefore, sent orders to

the Porte to prevent the embarkation of any one without permission. He

was, consequently, stopped at the gate, on which he drew his sword, and

a very violent scene occurred. An infraction of the law of nations in

his inviolable person, &c.--protest, commotion--the learned consular

body sign--all nations, all Christendom was attacked--and the farce

would have been enough for a war, had it occurred in Turkey or Mexico.

The United States had, however, as yet no mission of civilization in

Morocco, and took no notice of the affair; but, upon the accession of

Mr. Polk, the bearing of Morocco upon England and France was to have

been reconsidered, and the discarded consul sent back without any

previous settlement of the quarrel. When the news reached Morocco,

the government was greatly troubled, and after enlisting the good

services of the French agent, transmitted a statement of the case to

the government of the United States, waving the right of the Emperor to

refuse to admit their agent, and leaving it for the American government

to judge whether such a person was fit to be the channel of intercourse

between two friendly governments; and this representation was to be

backed by the French minister at Washington.

In the meantime, Mr. Carr arrived at Gibraltar. The Moorish government

resolved to say to him, that they would receive him as a private

person, but could not admit him as consul, as they had submitted the

case to his government. But the part had been rehearsed also on the

other side, and to better purpose. Mr. Carr came with two frigates.

On the Pacha’s making his concerted speech, he was answered by the

naval commander: “I don’t know anything about the matter. I have

orders to bring here the consul of the United States; will you receive

him or not, yes or no?” on which the caïd said, that he was ready to

receive him, if the naval officer would give him a paper, saying that

he constrained him to do so. This was the same functionary who had

negotiated with the French, under the threat of having a pistol ball

through his head, and signed the treaty of Tangier without ever having

read it; this is the person, in whose hands are placed the foreign

relations of Morocco; who has property transferred to France, and who

is openly charged with giving bribes to foreign agents, and receiving

bribes from foreign governments.

There is a beautiful walk from the upper part of Tangier, along the

crest of the hill to the cove, so coveted by the Americans. It retains

the name it had when the English were here, of Marchand; the boys

appropriate it for a game which is evidently the origin of billiards;

it is played with two balls of iron, and a ring, which just admits

them. The object is to pocket the ball through the ring; they play

several on a side. Instead of cues they use a piece of wood, of the

form of the old sacrificial knife, with which they impel the ball by a

sweeping motion, drawing its edge along the ground.

The ball is called _bola_, the ring _Arabi_. This game flourishes

particularly at Tangier, where the boy population has profited by

the liberal distribution of grape made by the French. The children

in Morocco are distinguished for their games;--I have seen leap-frog

performed in a manner which would not have disgraced an English clown

in a pantomime. They are dexterous in the use of the single stick,

and they have a mimic imitation of the powder game of the men, which

resembles the French game called _barre_. They have blindman’s buff,

and hunt the slipper, which must be Moorish; and hunt the slipper and

blindman’s buff are combined in one, for they must strike the ground

with a slipper, and having done so, must not leave the spot if the

blinded man approaches them. At the entrance of all the towns we found,

it being holiday time, whirligigs. No inconsiderable portion of Moorish

art is expended on toys: there are drums of pottery-ware, a tube

covered with parchment at one end, with the other open, such as were

used amongst the Jews, and may be detected among the Egyptians.

The habits of children are not to be neglected in the history of

nations, for they are a primitive and original community transmitting

their mariners to their successors, distinct from the nation of adults,

and flowing as a pure source into the turbid stream, and age after age

struggling against it.

I must enumerate the peculiarities of this land before quitting it,

although, indeed, every thing that exists in it is a peculiarity; for

when they do things like other people, they have no more taken it from

them than one man borrows from another the way to breathe.

They have a form of room, tesselated and open court, vermilioned

and cedar beams, lofty arch and thick-set column conjoined, carving

of wood, fretting of walls, colouring in patterns and assortment of

colours, doors, windows, brackets, stables, kitchens, store-houses,

water-closets, and tomb-stones,--all unlike what is to be seen east

or west, north or south. They have carpets like other people, but in

their own style; they have mats, but the figure is Moorish; they have

caps, the form is their own; they have shoes, again, as unlike Eastern

slippers as European boots; they have towels (our name comes from them)

but they are unlike ours; so they have pottery, embroidery, and even

the use of the needle. Using the same letters as the Persians and the

Turks, the Moors have an entirely distinct set of their own instruments

of penmanship. They have one national dish. Unlike any thing else

that is practised amongst men, so is their costume. It is a nation

living under tents, and yet excelling all others in the composition of

materials for fortresses and the structure of gigantic walls. It is a

people that has combined nomade habits with the settled distribution

of property. Jewelry is, again, their own; so are their toys and their

children’s games, the head-dresses of the women, the plaiting of the

hair, their cosmetics, the substances with which they wash; and if they

have, in common with Easterns, the bath, it here, again, assumes a

style that is Moorish.

What is chiefly remarkable, is the absence of all things that are not

in taste. There is no repetition of chintz patterns used for adornments

of wall or floor; there is no glazed or glaring oil paint; there are

no pictures or prints hung for ornament sake; no gilt and gaudy frames

round these unsuited to the apartments in which they are placed. Upon

their persons there are no repetitions of figures, no interminable

variety of tints, and no false ones. Some centuries ago, I might have

increased the list of the peculiarities of Morocco, such as the use of

candles for giving light; of bells to call servants; of knockers to

announce visitors; of straw hats to shade off the sun; of a different

sort of meal in the morning and in the evening; tambourine and crochet

work and lace, to occupy ladies’ fingers or adorn their persons; of

patches for their cheeks; of that beautiful leather of various colours

known by this country’s name, of inlaid leathern patterns; of vases of

ancient figure.

The Moors, with the art requisite to produce works admirable and

exquisite, are in the rudest stage of early craft, and have no less

avoided adopting from us any process or any improvement than they have

been careful to exclude our corruptions of style and manners. They have

not got our plough or our wheel, or our roads, or even the common

pump: they have not got a turning lathe or a shuttle; though they

have Morocco _leather_, they have no tanning vats; they make the most

exquisite silks without a throwing machine; and with the most admirable

woollens they know not the manufacture of cloth. They have never drawn

the metals from their rich mines; they still preserve the incantations

and divinations of the earliest times; they have perfumes and incense,

secrets and mysteries, yet in use in every house. Their maladies are

their own--elephantiasis and biblical leprosy; the travelling scourge

of plague visits them not, and yet they have a plague of their own.

And, finally, they have an intoxicating drug differing from all other

people; they have neither recourse to wine, spirits, nor opium; they

have a plant, the produce of their own country, presenting to them,

when so disposed, delusions and forgetfulness. Their permanency--as

their peculiarities--may be compared to, but exceed, those of China.

The Tartars are masters of Chinese, amounting in numbers to half

the human race, to whom they have not given their religion; the

same Tartars have not been able to subjugate fifteen millions of

Moors, of the same religion. In the midst of the world of conquest,

enterprise, commerce, and letters, they have repelled the invading

arms of Christians and Mussulmans united; they have been overawed by

no superiority of strength or display of science, and neither has

fallacy of speech or temptation of gain seduced them into courses which

their simple instinct told them might ultimately compromise their

independence. The stranger from Europe is welcomed in every tent,

and kindly treated by every Moor. The things of Europe are eschewed

by the community. They are a people of thirty centuries, before whom

we, with our institutions and our ideas, are as insects of yesterday.

This people has outlived the Phœnicians. It has seen in its rise and

passage, decline and fall, the star of Rome. It has shaken off, after

having bent before, the Gothic yoke and the Vandal scourge; conquering,

it converted Spain into a garden; beaten, it retired home. It arrested

on its shores the following tide of invasion; it has kept out modern

change--may it not yet be destined to survive and to see, too, to their

end, the things even of our proud day?

Elsewhere, the records of antiquity are to be sought in characters

traced on marble or on brass; but here they are to be found in the

living men;--not the traces of their early antiquity as that of the

Chinese, because _they_ have not changed, but of ours. Coming from

a common source, flowing from a common fountain, the streams of our

waters have been mingled and overcharged, and here we see what with us

was in the beginning--the key to the legends of Mythology, the original

of the pictures of Homer, the source of the metaphors of the prophets,

the people of the old covenant reserved to our day, and the source of

the religious practices accompanied by which Christianity appeared and

settled itself in Europe.

CHAPTER VI.

DRUIDICAL CIRCLES NEAR TANGIER.--CONNEXION OF THE CELTS WITH

THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF MAURITANIA AND SPAIN.

By taking the sea-road, I missed the Druidical circle, and although I

stayed some time at Tangier, I was too constantly engaged to make an

excursion so far. Mr. Davidson has mentioned them in his journal as

follows:--

“Coming round the side of a hill, you perceive several stones forming

a circle, of which one, called the Peg, is much higher than the rest:

there is likewise a second circle. The whole neighbourhood is full of

similar circles of stones, but smaller: many of the latter have been

worked artificially. The entrance to the circle, which is fifteen

feet wide, faces the west; on the north and south of the Peg are two

openings at equal distances. At about the distance of two hundred feet,

there is a stone placed at an angle of 45°, intending, it is said, to

mark the opening; it is six feet high, and by lying on the back, one

can see directly through the circle.”

Discoveries of a similar kind have been made in the regency of

Tunis,[254] and cinerary vases have been dug up at Tangier, in sinking

a well at the Danish consulate, at the depth of twenty feet, being

eight feet deeper than Roman tombs. These have been sent to Copenhagen,

and it is said, identified with pottery found in the North of Europe. A

cromlech has also been discovered on the banks of the Jordan,[255] and

in the vicinity of Tyre.[256]

I was not aware of the existence of this monument, when it first

occurred to me that the clans must have visited Barbary. It has

therefore, at present, all the greater weight as testimony; so much so,

indeed, as to induce me to advance a new theory as to the derivation

of the Scots, who, towards the period of the Roman conquest, reached

Ireland, and finally settled in Scotland. In tracing that people to

Barbary, a new field of peregrinations is opened, and in pursuing it

either up to that point, or subsequently from that point, we must be

satisfied of their presence and sojourn here. This monument would

give that assurance, were it not for two explanations that have been

offered, either of which would deprive it of value as an historic

record.

Rude stones, it is said, are the first beginnings of architecture:

those called Druidical, need not be referred to any particular people,

and cannot, when found, be adduced to prove the presence of the

Celts.[257]

The simple answer is, that Druidical remains have as decided a

character as Egyptian; and as to the argument[258] that they are found

in Asia and Africa, where the Celts never have been, history teems with

evidence of their presence in those very places. Had the cromlechs and

Druidical circles belonged to the original races of Africa, they would

surely be found in more than two parts of its surface.

The other explanation is not so easily disposed of, as it involves no

less intricate a question than the ancient peopling of the peninsula.

It is, that Spain and the West were inhabited by Celts.

Three theories have been advanced respecting the early races of

Spain. First, that it was colonized from Judæa. This was founded on

the names of men and places,--the Hebrew roots in the Spanish, and

tradition,--and is sustained by Mariana, Florez, Capmany, Alderete,

&c., also by Scaliger and Bochart, Selden and Gesenius. It has been

exploded by modern criticism; or it has been admitted, by _identifying

the Hebrew and Celtic_.[259]

The theory which now seems to prevail is, that the Iberi were

Celts.[260]

The third is a jumble rather than a theory, resulting from the

ethnographical generalization at present in vogue. It seems to point to

the Basques as being the same people as the ancient Iberians.[261]

Ethnography, that very hypothetical science and suspicious word, deals

chiefly, if not exclusively, with language--not its metaphysical, but

its mechanical part--and as the end and means of science are order, the

human race is methodized into genera, and distributed into species, as

if minerals or plants were dealt with, so that out of the very speech

of man proceeds this classification, which disposes of him as of the

dumb beasts of the field, and fishes of the sea. The feat of reducing

the populations of Europe, Celts, Slavs, Basques, and Goths, to one

denomination, has been accomplished just at the time that a hitherto

unheard-of hatred and repulsion has been engendered between races,

threatening society with convulsions as lamentable in their results as

in their causes. They are fantastic and absurd, and the age most versed

in the knowledge of the events of other times, exhibits itself as the

least capable of any that has ever existed, for managing the affairs of

its own.

In all other investigations of a similar description, the point of

departure is _a known language_; here it is an _assumed_ one, just as

if, at a future time, out of some remnants of English, preserved in

Yorkshire, and some Celtic names in Wales, a British language were to

be constructed.

The same fallacy has equally pervaded the three theories. The assertors

of the several origins have each commenced by assuming _one people_.

Each has indubitable proofs in hand, as to the existence of his people,

but each will extirpate the others, and so present vulnerable points to

his antagonist.

Larramendi sees nothing in Spain that is not Basque; Risco nothing that

is not Celtic; Mariana nothing that is not Hebrew; and each is justly

ridiculous in the eyes of his opponent.

In the opening of any field, whether of modern discovery or of ancient

research, we commence by assuming as many people as we find names,

and only on proof do we admit that two or more belong to one tribe or

race. Proceeding by this simple method, and applying to Spain the rule

undeviatingly adopted everywhere else, the ancient population will

present no difficulty. We hear of _Hispani_, of _Iberi_, of _Keltoi_;

unquestionably, then, there were three races distinct in their tongue,

time, and habitation. Each of the theories would annihilate two of

these to establish the third. As soon as we accept the _names handed

down_, the theories fall to the ground.

I commence, therefore, by denying the authority in this case of

“Philology,” “Sprachenkunde,” “Glottology,”[262] or whatever other name

the science may rejoice in; and notwithstanding the contempt to which I

may thereby be exposed,[263] I cannot put aside Herodotus and Strabo,

Cæsar and Pliny. Persisting in the old notions, I cannot see, in the

Iberi, Asiatic-Europeans, or Indo-Germans. I must hold the _Gauls_ to

be Gauls and the _Basques_ Basques, as I should if there never had been

a Babel of bricks or a Babel of philologists--if there were still but

one tongue for man, as but one bark and one bray for the dog and the

ass, and Iberian, Celt, and Basque, preserved in common the tongue of

Edom as they do the limbs of Adam.

The conclusions which I hope to be able to establish are, that the

original inhabitants of Spain were the Hispani, that the next in date

were the Iberi, who entering not as an irruption but peaceably, came

from the south, and by sea, and spread themselves through the western

and southern region; finally, that the Celts made their appearance

there, also, and that, like their predecessors, they were neither

invaders nor conquerors: that as the Iberi won their way by commerce

and cultivation, so did the Celts by arms and discipline--not used

against the Iberi and Hispani--but for their protection against the

dreaded encroachments of the Carthaginians, Romans, and Gauls, beyond

the Pyrenees: that these tribes were sojourners only, entering Spain by

the south and departing from the north: that the Hispani are preserved

in the existing Basques; that the Iberi belonged to the colonising

races of Canaan, and that the Celts were the forefathers of the clans

who at present dwell in the Highlands of Scotland.

Ancient as are the people which inhabit Brittany, Wales, Ireland,

and the Highlands, they are modern when compared with those settled

in the north of Spain. Whence the former came we know--the course

they followed we can trace. But the Basques are like a plant found

on some single hill--its solitariness gives to it its interest, and

we call it indigenous. Such are the pretensions of this people. They

are the only people in Europe who claim to be autochthonic. That a

people not settled on a remote island or in a far oasis, but in the

midst of us--in the country which has ever been the battle-field of

Europe--should preserve a tradition which belongs to times anterior

to history, is a fact calculated to instruct as well as to astonish.

The Basques have lived through the mythology of Greece, the wars of

Carthage, the dominion of Rome, the devastations of the Vandals, the

sway of the Goths, the arms of the Moors, the usurpations of Madrid,

and the opinions of Europe, keeping themselves all the while distinct,

and recollecting themselves alone. It is impossible to present stronger

titles to priority of occupancy.

Nor is this retentiveness of tradition exceptional in their character:

they have preserved their laws, nay, more, they have maintained their

rights.[264] While the other people of Europe clamour for change and

untried experiment, or, at best, seek to recover a lost or abandoned

privilege, they alone hold to what they possess; and who can say that

what they have got they did not already possess while the pyramids were

building, and before the laws of Tages were proclaimed or the Vedas

composed, and what they possess is what they have kept immutable from

the beginning? Why should not a Basque peasant tell us what happened in

the olden time, before Homer or Orpheus sang, when they exhibit to us

in their daily life how primeval communities lived?

Nor has their gratitude been less long-lived than their freedom, or

their memory shorter for favours than pretensions. They acknowledge

to-day as benefactors the descendants of strangers, whose fathers two

thousand years ago aided them in their struggle with Rome.

But traditions and rights do not stand alone. They have a language--one

which has defied every attempt to classify it, and which persists in

utterly denying all acquaintance with Indo-Celtic or Syro-Phœnician.

It has nothing in common with the languages which, migrating westward,

have passed to the north of the Caucasus, nor with the Semitic and

Japhetic tongues, that have spread through the maritime regions of

Europe and over the Western districts of Africa. It is no mosaic work,

made out of the wreck of former tongues; and, Titanic-like, it disdains

Greece and her gods, Phœnicia and her myths.

The Basque language bears intrinsic evidence of having passed through

the Greek and Roman period wholly uninfluenced by them either in

structure or in terms. And by its structure, its terms, its numeration

and calendar, it ascends as high as it is possible for any language

to ascend: it is as primitive as any of the tongues of the Indian

Archipelago; it expresses the same astronomical conclusions as Sabæism;

and while in richness of vocables it has not to fear a comparison

with any of those languages which have not borrowed from others in

constructiveness, in the causal power of the verb it excels in their

various excellences the Hebrew, Russian, and Turkish. The Basques

say that Adam spoke Basque in Paradise; from which it appears that

they imagine that the excellence of a language is a proof of its

antiquity.[265]

That there existed an aboriginal population prior to the emigrations

from Canaan, both in Spain and along the coasts of Africa, is to

be inferred from what we know of Italy, which the Etruscans found

well-peopled. The most remarkable feature of their first colonization

was the drainage of lands, and other works and arts, which would appear

to belong to old states and periods of redundant population.

The traditions which antiquity itself listened to and recorded, are

everywhere of an anterior and abundant population, occupying the

Peninsulas and Islands of the Mediterranean. Whether Umbri and Itali,

Spani and Siculi, Osca and Escara,[266] be from one source or not, it

was never doubted that Sicily, Italy, and Spain had received their

original population the one from the other,[267] before the arrival of

Pelasgi, Etruscans, or Phœnicians. This was believed two thousand years

ago, and was equally reported by the colonists and by the remnants of

the original people. Nor were these people rude and savage: witness

the Latian polity, the Samnite state, the two thousand towers of

Sardinia, the still existing Fueros of the Basque. The Noraghi, and the

“Sepulchres of the Giants,” in Sardinia, are no less distinct from any

known architecture than is the Biscayan from any known tongue.

That the Basques were a great people is proved by their names being

spread all over the Peninsula, even to the sea-board or limit, which in

the Basque furnishes the etymon of the word, _Spain_.[268] That they

inherited the southern shores and were a seafaring people, is proved

by the _asserted_ colonization of Sicily: that they retroceded--that

they abandoned the Southern country and the coasts; that they withdrew

in the direction of the strong and remote country, is indubitable--and

such is the case with every original population encroached upon. It

has happened to the Britons, the Welsh, and the Highlanders. This

second wave of population did not burst over the Alps; it was not a

horde or a conquest; it came from the sea and the south; it could only

be Phœnician or Aramean; its name was Iber--Hebrew. It gave to the

_south country_ the name of Iberia,[269] which name long afterwards

was made general for Spain by the Romans. Along the two great rivers

they strewed the arts of irrigation and canalization, originally

derived from the plains of Mesopotamia, and equally practised by the

Etruscans[270] in Italy. These rivers they named, the one _Iber_--in

Italy there was the _Tiber_[271]--to the other they gave the name of

the law-giver of the Etruscans, _Tages_, who might be the common and

Eastern ancestor of both people.[272]

We have in Spain the Volsci, the Cæretani, Cære, Suessa, Ausa, Urgel

(Virgil), Roma, Alba, &c. We have the proper names, Andubal, Tagus,

Hamilce, Isbal, Caras, Indebal, Lucius, Baal, Telongus, &c. These

identify not merely the tongue of the Iberians with that of the

maritime colonists of the Mediterranean, but the colonies themselves,

with those of Etruria, and separate them entirely from the Northern

people, whose language subsists, and affords us the opportunity of

comparison.

The Iberi had so identified themselves with the Romans, that the

Latin became the common tongue. Already in Cæsar’s time he addressed

them in Latin--that is, without interpreters--as he mentions when

speaking of Gaul. They called the Latin “Lingua Paterna.” A Spaniard,

Antony-Julian, first opened a school of rhetoric in Rome: he was

a rustic who had tilled the glebe; he never changed his costume

or manners, and disdained to discourse in a walled apartment. His

successor was Quinctilian, also a Spaniard. Possibly, “had it not been

for the invasion of the Goths and Moors, Latin would now be the speech

of the Spaniards (Iberians), as it was of the Romans in the time of

Tully.” In the Arab times the struggle was not between the Gothic, but

the Latin and the Arabic. “_Eheu!_” exclaims the Gothic Alvarus, or

Alaric of Cordova, “_Latini linguam propriam ignorant_.”

Sicilians, Africans, Greeks, and the whole people of the East,

preserved their own tongue; the Spaniards, who made resistance above

all others, alone adopted that of Rome. Does not this confirm the

inference, which is inevitable from the names of Etruscan colonies in

Spain, that the Iberi and the people of Latium were of the same race?

Thus also do we find the Latian rights conferred on cities in Spain,

while no such favour was accorded to Sicily or Greece, to Macedon or

Britain. It may be traced wherever the Etruscan colonies extended.

If, then, the Basque has survived, it is because there were two

languages in Spain, and spoken by people whose character was as

different as their tongues.

The Basques still retain a method of culture which is neither the

plough nor the spade. An instrument like a prong is used, each of the

labourers having two: they work in gangs, and turn over the soil with

one-half the labour that is requisite for spade culture. These prongs

are called _laias_;--they are as peculiar to the people as their tongue.

I have elsewhere pointed out the distinction between the two races in

respect to the use of butter, and the names connected with the dairy;

the use of tapia for building, and the ancient armour. In these

matters of the first importance--agriculture, food, building, and

warfare--there is a clear line drawn between the Hispani and Iberi.

The Greeks and the Romans were not philologists, neither were they

ethnographists. In no classical writer is the consanguinity of the

Iberians and Numidians asserted. We have to come down to the Fathers

of the Church to learn, _by statement_, that the Hebrew and Phœnician,

that these and the Arabic were sister-tongues. When the Romans became

acquainted with Spain, a period of time had elapsed from the first

settlement of the Iberians, equal to that from Alfred to our days,

and the Basques or Eskora had been cooped up in the north-east. It is

the least likely of all things that they should have been noticed by

the Romans as a distinct, or have been suspected to be an original

people. Nor can we wonder at such an oversight at that time, when the

same thing has occurred in modern Spain. Learned men have been writing

profound disquisitions on the origin of the Spanish language, and

compiling lexicons and etymologies without the slightest reference to

the existing people of Biscay.

The same thing may be said of St. Isidore, Antonio De Nabrissa, P.

Guadix, Diego de Urrea, &c. A stranger a century ago would have found

in the philologists of modern Spain no more notice of the existence of

the Basque, than of the Chinese language, although at the same time the

Basque writers were enumerating nearly two thousand Basque words in

the Spanish dictionary.

The strangeness of Iberian words to Roman ears confirms this view.

Volsci, Suessa, Cere, Roma could not be strange to them. It could only

be _some_ of the names that were so--that is, the names of places[273]

that had remained from the early occupation of the Basques.

To us, Hispani and Iberi, Hispania and Iberia, mean the same thing.

They belong to two people, and are terms of a different order: the

one is the name of a country applied to a people, the other the

patronymic of a tribe applied to a country. You have in Africa the

name Garb in general use for the country, and for the people Moslemin.

No other words are known there, and our terms for their country would

be as unintelligible to them as theirs are to us. Now suppose that

a conqueror occupied Morocco, ignorant and contemptuous of foreign

tongues: hearing “Garb,” and “Moslemin,” he would, adding his own

termination, take these words as the general names for the country,

and we should have Morocco called “Garbia” or “Mosleminia” (to make

the analogy complete we must suppose Moslemin to apply to a tribe,

not to a faith). If then, after fifteen centuries, and when the

people had undergone great vicissitudes, philosophers should arise to

investigate, they might be nonplused by these two fictitious terms,

and could not possibly see their way until they had discovered that

Garb was a geographical, and Moslemin a tribe name, and that the

ignorant conquerors had not only mistaken the value of these terms,

but had made each general, and had simultaneously employed both. One

nation may govern another as well under a wrong as a right name, and,

perhaps, much better; but it does not follow that a philologist will

indifferently well theorize under the like mistake. Now, what I have

supposed is exactly what has happened. A sentence of Strabo tells the

whole story:--

“The _Spaniards_ restrict the name of _Iberia_ to the part within the

Iber; the Romans call the whole country _Iberia_, dividing it into

hither and thither _Spain_,” which is equivalent to calling Great

Britain “Scotland,” and then dividing it into “England on this and on

that side the Tweed.”[274]

Having thus ascertained the existence of Hispani and Iberi, the Celts

present no difficulty,--they are neither the one nor the other; and if

it were requisite to establish still more distinctly the originality

of the Iberians, we might do so by citing the contrast between them

and the Gauls, which ancient writers have left us. Yet, in the present

times, the opinion prevails that the ancient Spaniards were Celts.

Of the two people, contemporaneous portraits have been sketched by

different hands at various periods. They represent two people wholly

different;--there is not one line of the picture of the one applicable

to the other.

The Iberi were a quiet inoffensive race; the Gauls a warlike and a

restless people. The Iberi began to feel their strength “only after

they were subjugated;” the Gauls were subjugated in consequence of

their overweening confidence in their own strength. The Iberi gave

weapons to the Romans; the Gauls learned from the Romans the art of

war. The Iberi had short, well-tempered swords which they used with

remarkable agility; the Gauls, long, unwieldy swords, which turned and

bent with their own blow.

The Gauls had their Druids. The Iberian temples--those of

Hercules--were venerable structures when the Carthaginians approached

the walls of Saguntum, the Romans those of Numantia. The Gauls and

Iberians acknowledged no kindred with each other. The Gauls claimed

no blood-relationship, like the Iberians, with Rome or Carthage. The

Gauls were never called Iberians, nor the Iberians Gauls; and the

Romans, familiar as they were with the Gauls in Italy, when they first

invaded Spain, would certainly have called its inhabitants by that name

had they belonged to that race. If the Iberians had been Celts, there

would be Druidical remains, and some record of the last stand of the

Druids, as in England and Gaul.

At the period of the foundation of Rome, the word Gaul might be

considered synonymous with European. The Gauls had flowed from the

eastward like an inundation; the middle regions of Europe, which

they filled, became insufficient for them; they passed into Britain;

they descended upon Greece; and they crossed the Bosphorus. Their

adventurous spirit was not arrested by the Alps, nor their courage

daunted by the martial bearing and concentrated power of the lordly

people who then flourished in the peninsula. They were not, however,

able to overrun Italy, though they colonized many parts, remaining a

distinct people. They never crossed the Pyrenees; the Vascones and

Aquitani spread even in advance of that barrier far into Gaul.[275] The

Gallic emigration was arrested there by those already in possession,

whether Hispani or Iberi, who were able, by the confession of the

Romans, to contend with them after the fall of Carthage for the mastery

of the world.

But the name of the Gauls is found in the Peninsula. Is not this

conclusive as to the community of the races? By no means; it only

proves that there were Celts in Spain. The word is Celt-Iberi--the

Celts and the Iberi.[276] The compound term marks _two people_, just as

Medo-Persian, Tyrreno-Pelasgi. Besides, the people mixed with the Iberi

were _Celts_ (Κελτοὶ [Keltoi]) not Galli,[277] as they would have been

called had they crossed the Pyrenees as they did the Alps. The Celts of

Spain must, then, have come across the sea.

The two southern peninsulas of Europe were anciently known by the same

name. They are the only regions of the south that resemble each other.

They both have the same form, stretch in the same direction, adjoin

the same continent, lie on the same internal sea, spread in the same

latitude. Both are shut to the north by a barrier of rocks, and lined

on the Mediterranean shore by a chain of harbours. They bear the same

fruits and grow the same grain. They have been within the range of the

same migrations and subject to the like vicissitudes. Their mythology

and traditions are interwoven; they had the same gods, the same

founders, the same heroes.

In Italy, we have three distinct waves of early population--the first

the Itali, the second the Tyrseni, the third the Galli. Shall we not

look for them in Spain? We have them there, Hispani, Iberi, and Celts,

and thus will be accounted for the threefold affinities which connect

Spain, not with Italy only, but with the whole of the coasts of the

Mediterranean, and even the shores of the Propontis and the Euxine--the

Hispani with Siculi, Itali, Osci, and, perhaps, with the people of

Thrace; the Iberi with Etruscans, Lydians, Phrygians, Brebers, and

Jews; the Celts with the Gauls of Gaul and Italy, and the roving

Galatai and Keltoi of Asia-Minor, Syria, and Africa. This difference,

however, must be borne in mind. The Gauls in Italy were invaders; in

Spain they were not, but on the contrary, allies of the natives against

the foreign invasion which always threatened them from the first

irruption of the Gauls to the final pacification under Augustus.

These affinities have, in modern works, been generalized and applied

to one people or another according to the theory of philologist or

ethnographist. The confusion arising out of the habit of observing

facts through the medium of systems has been then transferred back

to ancient writers, who, without being analytical, are correct, and,

without being systematic, intelligible.

Having now proved that Spain was not Celtic, the Druidical circle at

Tangier becomes an evidence of the presence there of a body of Celts of

considerable importance, and while indicating the point of entrance of

those Celts who had not crossed the Pyrenees, will serve, also, as a

landmark to trace the wandering of the Highland clans.

NOTE ON W. VON HUMBOLDT’S WORK ON THE BASQUES.

The preceding pages were written before I had an opportunity of

consulting W. Von Humboldt’s work. The title is, “Test of the Inquiries

respecting the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Spain, by means of the Basque

Tongue.” The points which, judging by the references to it in other

writers, are assumed or established by it, are, that the present

Basques are the ancient inhabitants of Spain, and that these ancient

inhabitants were the Iberi. I consequently opened it with extreme

curiosity, to find by what arrangement of data, or what sophistry of

argument, he could arrive at such a conclusion. Great was my surprise

to find no conclusion whatever arrived at, and extreme care taken

to avoid appearing to express an opinion. He has not perceived the

distinction between Hispani and Iberi; and had it been pointed out

to him, he would necessarily have hailed it as a light which cleared

all doubts away:--he has not seen it himself, because he has started

from the assumption that the Iberians were _the_ ancient people, and,

consequently, every reference to, or mention of, Hispani was taken

as applying to them; and the only question, as regards distinction

of race, arises with the Celts, viz., whether they were the same as

the Gauls, and in what they differed from or resembled the Iberi _or_

Hispani? All he says is interesting; there is nothing which controverts

the view opened out in the foregoing pages, and much that adds strength

to it.

Starting from the point above-mentioned, he proceeds to find, for every

name recorded in ancient writers, a word in Basque by which to explain

it. When the name is nearly Celtic, Roman, or Carthaginian, or quite

so, he drops it. By such a process the names of any and every country

may be made to belong to any and every other.

M. Von Humboldt having expressed his own inability to decide, earnestly

invites the investigation of the learned, and he suggests to them

a thread by which they may advance securely through the imagined

labyrinth;--this is no other than the study of coins. As well might he

have suggested the investigation of Assyrian antiquities by the books

printed at Babylon and Nineveh.[278]

[254] Possibly the term _Mogadore_ recalls another

Celtic monument. It has no Arabic or Breber etymon. In

O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary, the word _Magh-adhair_ is

given and explained as, “a circle of pillars or stones.”

[255] Irby and Mangles, vol. i. p. 99.

[256] Described by Maundrell.

[257] Mr. Dennis, after attempting to identify

the tombs of Saturnia with Celtic cromlechs, says,

“they (cromlechs) are also to be found in Sardinia,

(?) the Balearic Islands, (?) on the shores of the

Mediterranean, in Spain, in the Regency of Tunis,

on the banks of the Jordan, and other places, and

therefore it is impossible they should be restricted to

the Celtic race.”--_Etruria_, vol. ii. p. 321.

[258] King’s Munimenta Antiqua.

[259] “The original language of Spain was the old

Celtic; a language which bears so vast an affinity

to the ancient Hebrew, that to those who are masters

of both, they plainly appear to be dialects of the

_same_ tongue; or to speak perhaps more properly, the

Celtic is a dialect of the Hebrew, or language of

Noah.”--_Univ. Hist._, vol. xviii. p. 363.

[260] “Celtic Spain.”--MOORE’S _History of Ireland_,

vol. i. p. l.

“The Celts covered with their settlements, and

perhaps even simultaneously possessed a space of

country extending _from the Pillars of Hercules_ to

Asia Minor, and beyond the Caucasus, and from the banks

of the Tiber to the _Ultima Thule_ of Scotland and

Greenland.”--DR. MEYER, _Report of British Association_,

1847, p. 303.

“The Celts were known to the Greeks only by name,

and they included under it, all the people between the

Oder and the Tagus. Even the Romans * * included the

_Iberians_, &c.”--BROWN’S _History of the

Highland Clans_.

Prichard says, “Of the Asiatic European stock,

the _first_ great family is the Celts, once spread

over Asia Minor (_Galatia_), _Spain_, France, Belgium,

Helvetia, a great part of Germany, and throughout

the British Isles.” He includes under this one head,

Thracians, Armenians, Asiatic Iranians, Greeks, Romans,

Slavonians, Lithuanians, and Germans.

[261] “The Basque, or Iberian,” Bunsen.

[262] Suggested by Prichard.

[263] “These propositions no one will doubt, who

has a right to speak.”--BUNSEN.

[264] At the convention of Bergara, these were

recognised. They indeed passed _sub silentio_ the

claims of Don Carlos; but with these, they had nothing

to do, the _de facto_ sovereign of Spain being Lord of

Biscay.

[265] “There are two kinds of richness; the one

of form, the other of material. The former consists

in the variety of precepts, the certainty of rules,

the harmony of syntax; the other in attributes

which belong to the invention of a tongue. In these

attributes, there is not one foreign tongue which

may not be esteemed poor when compared with the

Basque.”--LARRAMENDI, _Intro_, ix.

[266] Humboldt, (pp. 55, 58), considers Osca the

same as Basque, and holds it to have been a generic

name of the whole people. Pliny speaks of sums brought

by the Roman Generals as _Argentum Oscense_ (xxxiv. 10,

46, xl. 43).

[267] Thucyd. l. viii.; Dion. Halic., l. i. Timæus,

as quoted by Diodorus Siculus, l. vi. ch. 2.; Strabo,

l. vi. Ausonius, Lucan, and Silvius Italicus, all

concur in deducing the population, or a population of

Sicily, from Spain.

Seneca (de Consolatione) calls these colonists

not _Iberi_ but _Hispani_, and says their descendants

were like the Cantabrians, who had a distinct costume

and language--distinct of course from the Iberi--and

inhabited in his time the north-eastern part of the

Peninsula.

“Transierunt et _Hispani_, quod ex similitudine

ritus apparet; eadem enim tegumenta capitum, idemque

genus calciamenti, quod _Cantabris_ est, et verba

quæedam.”

[268] “_España_ is the name by which the Spaniards

have known their country from the earliest times,

down to the present day. This word is Basque, without

dropping or adding a letter, and signifies border or

extremity. The analogy is beautiful, and gave rise to

the _ne plus ultra_ of the columns of Hercules. The

letter _n_ is moreover wanting in Celtic, Hebrew, and

Arabic.”--ASTORLOA, p. 194.

[269] The Iberia of Herodotus was only the coast,

l. i. c. 163. In the time of Polybius, the name Iberia

did _not_ extend to the part lying on the ocean.--L.

iii. c. 37, §. 10.

[270] “The Romans stand in close connexion with

the Basques, the intermediaries being the Etruscans.

The languages show a similarity in agriculture, and

in political institutions. Nevertheless I am far from

asserting that the Etruscans were the parent stem of

the Iberians, or the contrary.”--W. HUMBOLDT, _Prüfung_,

p. 117.

[271] _T_ is the article in the Breber.

[272] Aristides (Orat. in Bacch.), compares the

Etruscans in the west, to what the Indians were in the

east, which must be understood of space and limit, as

well as numbers. He therefore included the Iberians.

[273] Nos Celtis genitos et ex Iberis,

Gratos non pudeat referre versu,

Nostræ nomina duriora _terræ_.

_Mart._ l. i. Ep. 135.

Not knowing Celtic or Iberian, he made a mistake,

which the following lines explain:--

Rides nomina? Rideas licebit

Hæc tam rustica, delicate lector,

Hæc tam rustica malo, _quam Britannos_.

“Cantabrorum aliquot populi amnesque sunt, quorum

nomina nostro ore concipi nequeant.”

POMP. MELA, l. iii. c. 2.

[274] L. iii. c. 2.

[275] “The Aquitani differ not merely in their

tongue, but in their bodies, and resemble the Hispani

rather than the Galli.”--STRABO, lib. iv.

“Rousillon is _Spanish_, Gascony is _Basque_,

rather than Castilian. The Bretons are more Celtic than

the Gascons are Basque.”--_Ethnological Outlines of

France_, by M. de VERICOURT.

[276] “Profugisque a gente vetusta Gallorum, celte

miscente nomen Iberi.”--LUCAN, l. iii.

[277] Humboldt (“Prüfung,”&c., sections 41, 43,

44), admits a great contrast between the Celts and the

Gauls, and not that difference between them and the

tribes of the Peninsula, which might be expected from

people of different origin. The union he supposes must

have been of great antiquity, and could not have taken

place by violence. He is not clear that we can call the

Celts Gauls at all, and yet he imagines that there must

have been emigrations from Gaul; then he supposes them

mixed autochthonically with the Iberi, and afterwards

pressed together by foreigners occupying the coasts.

Astorloa (p. 199), denies this mixture of Celts

and Iberians, and explains away the word: if Celts

had crossed into the Peninsula, they would have been

settled, he imagines, close to the Pyrenees, and would

have left traces in the present people.

Neither of these writers suspects the possibility

of their having come from Africa, and having again

quitted the Peninsula.

[278] Coins, as other monuments, have supplied a

few names of cities, but are of far posterior date to

the migrations of even the Phœnicians, and are of no

service in the investigation of events anterior to

history.

From the coins of Spain several alphabets have been

made out; but of course they belong to the Iberian

times and races.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CLANS IN BARBARY.

“Scoti per diversa vagantes.”--AM. MARCELLINUS.

From things which only a Highlander could have observed, I learned that

my forefathers had visited Barbary. I perceived the intercourse of

the two people in their baking and cooking, dairy, dress, ornaments,

superstition and words. If this connexion were with the Celts in

general, it would be a matter of mere ethnography, but it is one of

history, for the coincidences are with the clans alone.

The kirtle, plaid, bonnet, eagle’s plume, family cognisances are

unknown in Brittany; nor do the Bretons call their farm-steads,

_gabhail_, or their greyhounds, _sloghie_. The dress of the clans is

not that of the ancient Gauls: those who advocate its antiquity are

much puzzled to find a source for it, and content themselves with

supposing it to be derived from the Roman. No supposition can be more

groundless: that branch of the Celts which never did submit to Roman

domination could not be the only one to adopt the Roman dress.[279]

The Scots, during the period of Roman power in Britain, never came in

contact with them, and under the empire, the Toga itself had been laid

aside; at least, corpses[280] and statues only wore it.

The costume of the Highlands, then, carries us back beyond Roman times,

and beyond all written record; it alone remains in Europe, a monument

of this order,--that of Barbary alone remains among a people derived

from the East. I have already shown that they are the same; which

carries both back to the plains of Mesopotamia, or the banks of Jordan.

Mr. Layard’s researches above, as well as under ground, have furnished

further evidence in many points of resemblance between their manners

and the scenes carved on the alabasters of the Assyrians, and the

customs preserved by the mountain-tribes in the neighbourhood.

The clans crowned their king on a stone, and threw down their plaids

before him. One full statue only has been found at Nimroud: it is that

of a king, and he is seated on a square stone:[281] doubtless the

Assyrians threw down their mantles before him.

The eagle’s plume is worn in the bonnet by the Tigari.[282] The King at

Nimroud wears a cap standing up in front like the Scotch bonnet; the

straps and ribbons flow behind.[283]

In several bas-reliefs, the kilt appears, and is pointed out by Mr.

Layard:[284] the mountaineers wear a long shirt dyed of one colour, as

was formerly used among the clans.

The chief and impregnable fortress of the Kurds is called the “Castle

of the Cymri,”[285] and, as if to return the compliment, the Celts

have given the name Carne _serai_,[286] to the place in Argyleshire,

where, on a sculpture of the thirteenth century, the long plaids

(philemore)[287] with the double-folds, may be seen, exactly as they

are worn by the Jewish women in Morocco.

In Nineveh there was no bath. The mountain-tribes indulge, in all

ways and in all places, in washing and dabbling in water, without the

slightest regard to the sense of delicacy which is so strong in all

other Eastern people. The clans were formerly remarkable in like manner

for the use of water;--new-born infants were plunged in cold water.[288]

The clan system hinges on the distinction of the different families by

“sets” of colours. In this they differ from all the people of the West,

who have colours in a flag, and not on their persons. The Yezidis,

called the worshippers of the devil, have in like manner their colours,

black and red,[289] which they wear, and with which they adorn their

habitations. The clans passing through these countries, and engaged in

the wars (as I shall presently show they were), of necessity must have

also so distinguished themselves; and being neither a horde migrating,

nor a nation in possession, but serving as mercenaries under distinct

leaders, each of these would adopt distinguishing badges, and thence

the “sets” and tartans of the different clans, and the common name

adopted by them.

The discoveries of Nineveh, and the modes of dyeing among the

population which still lives in the neighbourhood of those ruins,

confirm to the letter what I have said elsewhere respecting the

selection of a standard of colour, and the preservation of it in the

tartan.

The tartan existed only by the art of dyeing: without perfection in

it, the idea of distinction by colours could not be entertained. This

was not a mere difference between black and white, as the _ak_ and

_cara coïnjolou_, or white and black fleeces of the Turks, which was

obtained by natural wool; nor was it the colour of a cap or a slipper

which might be purchased ready dyed: proficiency in one colour did

not suffice, but in all. They had to be dyed in every cottage, or

under every tent. They were applied to the coarsest substances, for

the rudest wear, and to be recognizable so long as the material held

together. This was to be achieved by a migratory and erratic people,

in times when no lac or indigo, no chromates or phosphates were to

be found at every apothecary’s. The dyes were to be sought in the

fields or on the mountain sides;[290] and each emigration involved a

new series of experiments, to be rewarded by new triumphs of unaided

industry and untutored taste. How deeply planted in their natures must

have been the instinct of colours, thus to preserve those tints in

daily wear, which at Nineveh have been saved by being buried in the

bowels of the earth. It was not the colours most easily obtained that

they selected: they had a rule, to which circumstances were made to

bend.

Brown is the natural colour of a large proportion of the fleeces; it is

dyed with a moss (crottle) by simple boiling: the colour is beautiful

and indelible. They like brown as a common wear: shepherd’s coats,

plaids, and trowsers, are made of it, but never was brown seen in a

Tartan! The clans learnt this art where they had occasion to adopt the

badge.

“Dyes of the finest quality, particularly reds and greens, which even

European ingenuity has been unable to equal, are obtained by the

inhabitants of Kurdistan from flowers and herbs, growing abundantly

in their mountains. The art of extracting them is not a recent

discovery, but has been known for ages to people living in the same

country; as we learn from the frequent mention of Babylonian and

Parthian dyes by ancient authors. The carpets of, Kurdistan and Persia

are still unrivalled, not only for the beauty of their texture, but

for the brilliancy of their hues. From the ornaments on the dresses

of the figures in the Assyrian sculptures, we may conclude, that

similar colours were extensively used, either in dyeing the garments

themselves, or the threads with which the material was woven.”[291]

On asking a gentleman well acquainted with these countries,[292] if

he perceived any resemblance between their customs, and those of the

Highlanders, his answer was, “It strikes every one, especially in

respect to their chiefs and clan government: The different tribes may

also be known by the stripes of colour on the shalvar, as the Highland

clans by the stripes on their tartan; and they have the tradition,

that Europe is peopled by tribes that emigrated from their country.”

My informant connected this tradition with the recognised Eastern

origin of the people of Europe, but it cannot refer to these

emigrations. That the Celts came from the East all history attests, and

philology has confirmed its verdict;[293] but the waves of emigration

which flowed westward passed all to the northward of the Caspian Sea.

A physical necessity determined their course; and from the Himalaya

to the Carpathian Seas deserts or mountain barriers extend, which

prevented their overflowing the south, and set them on Europe. The

Turks are an exception, being enabled to cross the desert regions

between the Sea of Aral and the Hindoo Cush by means of their horses,

and their pastoral habits. To the southward, therefore, of this line

no tradition of this peopling of Europe could subsist; and I might

have set this one aside, as some uncertain reverberation of the great

Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic emigrations, had I not recollected the

name which the Jews of Morocco apply to Europe--“_Erse dom_.” They then

were acquainted with the “Erse,”[294] or Gaelic tribes, and must have

known them to have gone to Europe, and called it by their name. This

explained at once how the Koords should have a similar recollection of

the peopling of Europe by tribes who emigrated from their country.

Many coincidences might be added to these. For instance, among the

Irish Scots a higher class of Druids, unknown among the British, was

called _Ollama_, evidently the “Ulema”--the learned--of the East.

The name of fairies in Erse is _shechyan_, the Arab _sheik_. Moore

remarks, that these beings seem to record some lost class or people,

which he supposes to be the Druids. The blood-fine was, for a prince,

a thousand oxen; in Arabia it is a thousand camels. It was commuted

in the Highlands for a coin, which is designated by the Spanish word

_oros_. The soldier’s allowance in the East is called “tain,” whence

_timariot_, the feudal tenure of Turkey. A Celtic poem, attributed to

the sixth century, and “claiming respect as exceeding in antiquity any

production of any vernacular tongue of Europe,”[295] is entitled _Tain

Bho_, which is translated “Spoil of Cattle.”

The Irish Scots are the only people of Europe who have had their

language, not through the Greeks and Romans, but directly from the

first inventors. But I do not lay any stress on this coincidence, as

their letters probably were--or at least may have been--in use in

Ireland long before the arrival of the clans, having been taught by the

Phœnicians.

The peculiarities which distinguish the clans from the Celts in

general, may thus be traced to the countries lying upon the Euphrates

and the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. On the other

hand, in Judæa and the coast of Africa, are to be found cromlechs and

Druidical remains, which attest their passage through these countries.

With the inference thence to be drawn, their own traditions concur.

Great Britain and Ireland were inhabited from the beginning by Gauls.

The Scots, though Gauls, were a distinct and a military body, and they

entered at a subsequent time from a different direction. We trace them

from Scotland to Ireland, where for a time they were the dominant

race. They had reached Ireland from Spain: they had not reached Spain,

however, from Gaul but _from Barbary_,--such were their traditions when

first recorded.[296]

In Westminster Hall there is a stone on which the Kings of England are

crowned. It was carried thither from Scone, where the kings of Scotland

had been crowned upon it; and had been placed there by Kenneth, son of

Alpen, after his victory over the Picts in 843. To Scone it had been

transported from Dunstaffnage, where the successors of Fergus had been

crowned upon it. To Dunstaffnage it had been brought from Tarah,[297]

where the Scottish kings of Ireland had been crowned upon it; and

Ireland had been named from it Innisfail. To Tarah it had been brought

from Spain,[298] and to Spain, it was said, from the Holy Land.[299] It

emitted under the rightful prince a sound like that of the statue of

Memnon,[300] and remained dumb under a usurper. The importance attached

to it was such as to make its removal to England to be considered in

the time of Edward I. a necessary step towards the subjugation of the

Scottish kingdom. They called it the stone of fortune, and the stone of

destiny (Lia fail).[301]

Tradition, among the other people of Europe, is an inventor of fable,

rather than a recorder of facts; but its value is very different among

these races. Supposing that our books were swept away--not one ancient

name could be found in Europe: the Gaul of the North alone would be

able to restore them. He would tell you the names of the islands

of Britain and Ireland which Aristotle used twenty-three centuries

ago--they know no others,[302] therefore are their traditions valuable.

Although I think I have established my proposition without the aid

of history, I can boldly appeal to it. Historical works of authority

are dramas performed by some great people, who are ever on the stage

and in front; and events are assorted so as to wind in and conceal,

if not to disguise and suppress, whatever does not belong to them. In

Livy’s pages the earth is a chess-board, and the players sit in the

senates of Rome and Carthage; but if we go to the sources from which

he drew, and refer to authors who have dealt with special subjects, we

find other actors and other passions. We then see the honour of one

battle transferred from the devotion of a consul to the docility of

quadrupeds, and the glory of another from legionary valour to fameless

barbarians.[303] Roman history is a conspiracy to rob of their fame

the Elephants and the Gauls. What were the conditions imposed by

Rome--what the fate incurred by Carthage? the surrender of her ships,

her elephants, and her _Gauls_. Such was the importance of tribes which

Roman writers exhibit as warlike, yet undisciplined as brave; but

unmanageable, with long unwieldy swords, and rash and aimless impulses.

Here were they _in Africa_ the prop of _Carthage_. They had “learned

from long military service to speak Phœnician,”[304] and yet remained

so distinct a body as to require “interpreters to disclose to the

Carthaginians their decrees.”[305]

Further to the east, a century before, during the convulsions which

followed the death of Alexander, and preceded the great contest between

Carthage and Rome, the part they played is thus described by Justin:

“So powerful at this time was the race of the Gauls, that they filled

all Asia, as if with a swarm: neither did the kings of the East carry

on any war without a mercenary army of Gauls; nor when driven from

their throne did they seek refuge elsewhere than amongst the Gauls.

Such was the terror of the Gaelic name--such the unconquered fortune of

their arms, that dominion was not deemed securely possessed, nor lost

greatness capable of recovery, unless by Gaelic bravery.”

The Gauls are here measured against Greeks,[306] with the art of war

carried to the highest point, and strategy raised into a science,

amongst the general-kings, disputants for the relics of Alexander’s

army and dominion. Here were Gauls--but how different from those of

Gaul! here were Gauls as thoroughly conversant, and as essentially

imbued with the knowledge of all the systems of the East and South, as

those of the North were ignorant of all habits foreign to their own.

Here then is the people to furnish the emigration from the Holy Land to

Spain, and to the Highlands, which their own traditions report: here

are the circumstances to fashion them into that peculiar discipline

which up to this day they have preserved.

According to their own tradition they had crossed into Spain from

Barbary. They were not originally in Africa; they must then have

come all the way round the Mediterranean, and then must they have

derived their origin from those Celts who, six or seven centuries

before the Christian era, having been repulsed from Italy and Greece,

crossed the Bosphorus and settled a large kingdom in Asia Minor:

such is the account given of them by the writers of the period. They

wandered through Asia Minor--as the Arabs and Patans do in India, or

the Albanians in Turkey--before they settled in Galatia, and to this

settlement they were constrained. But probably they did not all so

settle when the Romans conquered that country, and in a manner waged

against them a war of extermination: their wanderings were resumed,

and it must have been to the South that they directed their steps.

Already were they familiarized with these regions, and probably

entertained a peculiar relationship with the most remarkable of its

people.

“Galilee,” and “Galilee _of the Gentiles_,” can only mean a Celtic

colony or settlement.[307] The Gauls are of as frequent occurrence in

Josephus as in Cæsar’s Commentaries. The “Gentiles” of Galilee were not

the ancient inhabitants, for it was the land of the Gergesenes, who

never could become Jews, as the Galileans were in the time of Christ.

The expression “of the Gentiles[308]” must apply to strangers admitted

within the Jewish pale. It was this country that Solomon had desired to

give away, and that Hiram would not take.

This would be the most likely place for a settlement of Gauls. The name

is given at a period which would coincide with the hypothesis; nor is

there anything extraordinary in the Galileans being Celts, seeing that

in the time of Jerome the language of _Treves_ was spoken in nearly its

primitive purity in the centre of Asia Minor.[309]

The idea which we have formed of the barrier between the Jews and

the Gentiles, arises from the extermination of, and the constant

denunciations against the nations of Canaan--the Gibeonites alone

excepted--an exception obtained by fraud. There was no obstacle

whatever to the admission of any stranger to full participation and

entire identification with the Jewish people. Whenever there was an

exception it was in consequence of transactions between that people

and the Jews. The Jew resembled a man whose life is prolonged some

thousand years with a memory unimpaired. He had been enslaved by the

Egyptian--he was ever after shy of him. (The Egyptian became a Jew

only in the third generation.) Amalek had smote him on the way of the

Desert, and he hated him.[310] The exceptions were the Canaanite among

the children of Esau, Amalek and the Egyptians: any other stranger had

only to be circumcised.[311] From the time of the Grecian Conquests,

the Jews themselves attempted to efface this distinction, that they

might appear in the Palestra like the Greeks.

This explains perhaps why Galilee was the chief field of the labours of

Christ, and how his disciples were principally from that people, who

were most untainted by the prevailing superstitions, not ranked amongst

Jewish schisms, and free from the servile imitation of the Greeks.

Thus may we claim for our race a share in the first fishing for men;

and it is not an extravagant stretch of the imagination to picture the

listeners to “the Sermon on the Mount,” decked with the eagle’s plumes

and girded with the sporran and dirk.[312]

The sagacious Ptolemies gathered from Syria all the scattered elements

of strength: they turned elephants to account: they collected Jews and

attracted them into Egypt--they could not have neglected the Gauls. In

common with the Jews, they must have suffered in the convulsions of

Egypt, and those who abandoned Egypt left it always for the West. Down

that slope of the Barbary shore--like so many other races--they must

have slid, and, arriving at the bourne of the wandering Arab, they too

raised their pillar opposite the stones which Hercules placed. This

stone no local tradition consecrates, no ancient belief confirms, no

contemporary monument explains, no people claims. It is their own. The

Arab, as he tents beside it, calls it a “_peg_,” and on it hangs the

history of the Highland clans. Arrested by the ocean--like the Saracens

a thousand years later--they turned to the North, and crossing the

Straits, got back again to Europe.

Thus, by the aid of history and monuments have we brought them down to

Spain, up to which their own traditions had carried them. They appeared

in Spain to continue that contest with Rome which the exterminations of

Galatia had commenced, and their breasts might have been animated by

the remembrance even of Brennus and the capitol. At last, after all

the world had been subjugated by the final conquest of the Asturians

and the Vascones, they took ship to seek new settlements. Gauls were in

great numbers in Asia, Syria, Africa, and Spain: no trace of them is

to be found in the present day, nor any record of them after the first

centuries of the Christian era downwards: they were not a people to

become confounded with the native populations: they passed, then, out

of these regions. Let us see if Spain preserves any record of the event.

To this day the Irish and Scotch are entitled, on setting foot in

Biscay, to every privilege and immunity of the natives;--they have the

rank of nobles, can be elected to any magistracy, and have the right

of holding land. From these privileges Spaniards are excluded. In the

whole range of history no more interesting record will be found of the

friendship of two races divided by 2000 years. This isopolitan league,

recorded in the institutions of Biscay, is a monument of the passage

through Spain, of our mountain clans, not less remarkable than the

Usted of Tangier; and we may be as certain of the event as if the day

of departure and the numbers of the vessels[313] had been chiselled on

granite or engraven on steel.

Driven from Spain by the advance of the Roman arms, where should they

have taken, or where could they have sought refuge? Gaul was occupied,

America not open, Africa and Britain were provinces of Rome; the

North of Europe, if not Roman, distant or difficult of access--there

remained only Ireland. The Romans were in possession of Britain for

400 years; why did they never set foot in Ireland? They had fleets

at their command; a few vessels collected on the coast had sufficed

to cross to Britain--that coast was difficult. Ireland invited their

approach; they had forces to dispose of, even for the conquest of

barren lands; they could send 50,000 men to the North, and support the

expedition by sea; they could circumnavigate the island, push commerce,

spread agriculture, pierce forests with roads, fix on stations, and

fortify camps. Ireland was then green as she is now; wooded as she

is no longer; rich in her produce, refined in her industry. Science

and learning were there; strangers had settled on her soil, and

adventurers from the Holy Land had, perhaps, for a thousand years

exported her produce and worked her mines. Ireland was then every way

attractive;--no British parliament had yet passed an Irish law;--why

then did not the Romans cross from the Severn and the Mersey? _The

Scots were there._

The Roman historians do not mention them; they were not in Caledonia

to meet Agricola or Severus; their first passage into Scotland coming

within the range of history, occurred only A. D. 258, and

it was centuries before they established their dominion in the

North.--The “Stone of Fate” accomplished its pilgrimage to Argyle. A

century after their first passage (368), an incursion into England

is the first recorded instance of collision with the Romans.[314]

And are they not even as we see them--or at least such as they made

themselves felt but a century ago--a people who must have had some such

history, whose adventurous spirit must have been disciplined by long

peregrinations--the Ulysses of nations, seeing the cities and observing

the manners of many people, and having an eye to mark what was

profitable, and a hand to hold what they had thought proper to select?

What other people brought a flag to every breast? in its vestment

conferred upon the humblest the blazon of heraldry, and the insignia of

kings; selecting emblems and signs from the fairest objects of nature,

or the most imaginative inventions of man: primitive colours, flowers

of the field, plume of the sky? Alone in Europe they retain a stamp, a

memory, and a name. After discomfiting the remnant of a line of false

princes, the British parliament feared to dwell in the same island with

the Kilt, nor deemed itself secure where the “battle colours” were dyed

with the heather, spun on the soil, and worn by the clans.[315]

All that remains is the last flickering of the light of a land

extinguished, not by the blast of battle, but by the breath of her

sons. Had Scotland’s chiefs been true to the noblest station in Europe,

she would have held her own and saved England.

[279] Some of them took service, but not before the

fourth century.

[280] “Nemo togam sumit nisi mortuus.”--JUVEN. _Sat._

iii. 171.

[281] Nineveh, v. ii. p. 52.

[282] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 194.

[283] The resemblance appears most in the oldest

sculptures: it is not rendered in the plates to the

work. The same figure is also found in the Toshr--lower

part of the Egyptian head-dress--called _pshent_.

[284] Also in the Xanthian marble, E. ix. No. 45,

50, 157.

[285] Kalah Kumri.--LAYARD, v. i. p. 118.

[286] Carni is also a name in Galilee.

[287] It is figured in the large work of the

Stuarts, they were of course not aware of the meaning

of the double fold.

[288] “The children are bathed night and morning

in cold or warm water.”--HUNTER’S _Western

Islands_, vol. i. p. 194.

“The practice still with those who wear the kilt,

is to wash their limbs every morning as a preventative

against cold.”--BROWN, vol. i. p. 100.

“Strong from the cradle, and of sturdy brood,

We bear our new-born infants to the flood,

There bathed amidst the waves our babes we hold,

Inured to summer’s heat and winter’s cold.”

[289] Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 300, 522.

[290] Ordering some stuff from a Highland woman,

and having fixed the time for its being sent to me,

she ran after me to say, that I must not have the

yellow stripe, or I could not have it till next year.

Inquiring the reason, she said, “for the yellow I must

wait till June, when the heather is in bloom.”

[291] Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 311.

[292] Mr. Ross, the companion of Mr. Layard.

[293] I need only refer to Prichard’s work

entitled, “On the Indian origin of the Celts.”

[294] Erse is the name which the clans give

to their language: it includes Irish, Scotch, and

Manx, and excludes Armorican, Welsh, Cornish, and

Carniolan.--BROWN’S _Highland Clans_.

[295] Report of Highland Society on Ossian.

[296] “The Scots were a nation of Kelts, who

came from Asia along the African shore, into Spain,

and thence into Ireland, which they fill,” says

Nennius, sec. 13, 14, “even to this day.” Afterwards

he says, “other Scots came from Spain, and, by little

and little possessed themselves of many districts

in Ireland. A Scottish colony from Ireland planted

itself in Argyleshire, then called Dabriada, or

Dabreta, where,” says Nennius, “they dwell to this

day; another in the Isle of Man, and the parts

adjacent.”--ANSTEY’S _Laws and Constitution of

England_, p. 38.

[297] Teamhuyr, in the oblique cases Teamhra,

whence Tarah. This is evidently the Temorah celebrated

by Ossian as the Irish capital.

[298] Moore’s Ireland.

[299] “The names of the stone are both of them

derived from a persuasion the ancient Irish had, that

in what country soever the stone remained, there one of

their blood was to reign.”--TOLAND’S _History

of the Druids_, p. 152.

[300] Sir G. Wilkinson found a stone in a statue,

sonorous, and that in its top while concealed from

below, he could by striking it produce a sound.

Referring to this incident, while standing beside the

Assyrian statue, mentioned a few pages back, I struck

it in illustration of the method used. It instantly

answered in Memnon’s voice, with the clear sound of

bell-metal.

[301] Harris, Antiq. of Ireland, c. i. p. 10.

O’Brien gives this as two words “Lia fail,” the fatal

stone, otherwise _cloch na cinncamhuin_, an ominous

accident or destiny, genit. _cinncamhua_. Both concur

in the great veneration in which it was held by the

ancient Irish, on account of its “miraculous virtues.”

Antiquities _ut sup._ p. 10, 124. See also Ledwich’s

Antiq. of Ireland, p. 308.

[302] Grant’s Origin of the Gauls p. 262. Ptolemy’s

names of the tribes can still be nearly all identified,

and he only edited the old work of the Phœnician

mariners.

[303] Compare Livy and Polybius on the battle of

Zama, and these with Ælian on the last struggle of

Macedon for the part played by the Gauls and Elephants.

From the latter it appears, that by an “Elephant and

Castle,” Cæsar crossed the Thames, and won Britain.

[304] Πάλαι στρατευόμενος ἤδει διαλέγεσθαι

Φοίνικ εσι.[Palai strateuomenos êdei dialegesthai

Phoinikesi.]--L. i. p. 80. Ταύτῃ δὲ πῶς οἱ πλείστοι

συνεσαίνοντο τῇ διαλέκτῳ διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς προγεγενημένης

στρατείας. [Tautê de pôs hoi pleistoi synesainonto tê

dialektô dia to mêkos tês progegenêmenes strateias.]

[305] Δι’ ἑρμηνέως τὰ δέδογμένα παρ’ αὐτοὺς διέσαφε

τοῖς ὄχλοις. [Di’ hermêneôs ta dedogmena par’ autous

diesaphe tois ochlois.]--L. iii. p. 197.

[306] Sir W. Scott, in the “Legend of Montrose,”

says that the clans have an ancient order of battle,

which seems to be derived from the Macedonian phalanx.

[307] The names of _Golan_, _Galaza_, _Garne_, _Yara_,

have also been preserved.

[308] “Harosheth of the Gentiles,” see Judges, ch. iv.

[309] “Galatas excepto sermone Græco quo omnis Oriens

loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere Treveros.”--

_Epist. ad Galat. Proem._ l. 2.

[310] “And thou shalt not forget it.”--Deut. xxv. 19.

[311] Exodus xii. 48.

[312] In the Nineveh marbles, the king wears two daggers

in one case, side by side. The Circassians wear a smaller

one on the case of the largest, as the dirk.

[313] The bards do enumerate the vessels of different

expeditions.

[314] They were, however, expelled by Theodosius.

In the fifth century from the _Notitia Imperii_, large

bodies of them appear to have taken service in the

empire: one corps was stationed in Illyricum, one at

Rome, one in Italy.

[315] “Their peaceful glens were visited with the

scourge of a licentious soldiery let loose upon the

helpless inhabitants, and every means taken to break

up the peculiar organization, and consequent power

of the Highland clans. The disarming act, which had

been passed after the insurrection of the year 1715,

was now carried into rigid execution, and with a

view to destroy as much as possible any distinctive

usages of this primeval race and thus to efface their

nationality, an act was passed, proscribing the use of

their ancient garb. The indignity inflicted by this

act was perhaps more keenly felt by the Highlanders,

attached in no ordinary degree to their ancient

customs, than any of the other measures resorted to by

the English Government: but at the same time it must be

admitted, that it effected the object contemplated in

its formation, and that more was accomplished by this

measure, in destroying the nationality, and breaking

up the spirit of the clan’s-men, than by any of the

other acts. The system of clanship was also assailed

by an act passed in the year 1748, by which heritable

jurisdictions were abolished throughout Scotland, and

thus the sanction of law was removed from any claim

which Highland chiefs, or barons, might in future be

disposed to make upon the obedience or service of their

followers.”--SKINNER’S _Sketch_, vol. i. p. 145.

BOOK V.

SEVILLE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ISLAND OF ANDALUZ.

The emporium of the new world and the port of the Western ocean, has

become an inland town; but the shade of orange groves, the white

marble of Moorish halls, the dance, the bull-fight, the garb of the

Andalusian, still attract the wanderer and detain the guest. No where

on the soil of Europe is there so much that is beautiful with so little

that is familiar. The Tower of our metropolis claims the honour of

having for its founder Julius Cæsar. The dictator appears only in the

list of the benefactors of Seville: pressing forward to the bounds of

human memory, she proudly asserts a founder among the gods. Existing

when Rome was founded, and Carthage built, she has witnessed their

catastrophe and survived their decay. From the earliest peopling of

the earth to the present hour, Seville has endured a mother, if not

a mistress, city, and has never known sack or desolation. Italica was

the first Roman colony beyond the Alps--Seville was the capital of the

Goths. Two kings were canonized; the one for its capture, the other for

its defence.

This single provincial city possesses the tradition of the Phœnicians;

traces of the Romans; tombs of the Goths; monuments of the Saracens;

a cathedral that has no equal. It has the highest tower, the purest

air, the longest plain, and the richest soil in Spain. It contains the

masterpiece of Spanish sculpture, and a whole school of unrivalled

painting. It may be true of Spain, if of any country, that

“Cada villa

Tien su maravilla.”

But, according to the old proverb on the lips of every peasant,

Seville herself is the marvel, and nevertheless, she is a truly

Spanish town--a village, not a city.

A noble bust stands in the orange grove of the “House of Pontius

Pilate.” It would appear to be an effort to conjoin the most opposite

qualities, and to represent under one head the distinguishing

attributes of the sexes, strength and daring, voluptuousness and grace.

The head is large, the brow ponderous, the eye full and grave, while

the cheek and lips are robbed from Hebe. It is hard to say whether the

martyr’s palm, the veil of Cythera, or the club of Hercules is the

emblem befitting it. On inquiring where it had been discovered, I was

surprised to learn that it was a head of Cleopatra, a present from a

Roman Pontiff. It must have been sent to the Queen of Guadalquivir, as

the prototype of herself; sensual and heroic, faithful and capricious,

wanton and warlike--handling with equal dexterity and equal grace,

the faggot and the fan; the castanet and navaja; the champion of the

Catholic church against Arianism, the bulwark of Spain against the

Northmen, the first pupil of the Saracens in art, the first rebel

against their power;[316] the competitor of Florence, Venice, Bologna,

and Rome, in design, painting, and architecture; the mother of the

Inquisition; claiming as her founder the representative of force,

and selecting as her patrons two spotless virgins. From her port was

embarked the gold that in former ages adorned the temples of idolatry,

and on her beach has been in modern times landed the gold of Mexico and

Peru, that has left Spain bankrupt and Europe rich in corn and poor in

worth.

A Spaniard, in describing her, commences in these terms: “In the

part of Spain towards the South, in the rich and fertile province of

Andalusia, on the oriental bank of the river Guadalquivir, stands the

beautiful Sevillia, capital and metropolis of four kingdoms, first

court of the Spanish monarchy, and primacy of the churches of Spain.”

Andalusia to the Moors was the Atlantic Island--the garden which they

found wild, and which they filled with new plants, flowers, and fruit.

“God in his justice,” said they, “having denied to the Christians a

heavenly paradise, has given them in exchange an earthly one. It is a

garden where the high places are battle-fields, but whose vales are

free from famine.”

“Seville is a young bride, her husband is Abbab,

Her diadem Asharaf, her necklace Guadalquivir.

Asharaf is a forest without wild beasts,

Guadalquivir, a river without crocodiles.”

So sang one of those Sevillian poets who were so numerous that “Africa

would not have held them, if it had been divided out in portions among

them,” and whose praises had such charms that “had they been bestowed

on the Night they would have made her fairer than the Day.”

The Easterns represent the world as a bird, the East being the head,

Europe the body, the North and the South the wings, and the West the

tail. Haroun-el-Raschid told an Andalusian that he was from the world’s

tail: the Andalusian replied, “the bird _is a peacock_.”

Al-bekir-Al-andalusi thus sums up the excellence of his native country:

“It is equal to Sham (Syria) for purity of air and sweetness of

waters; to Yemen, for mildness of temperature; to Hind (India), for

drugs and aromatic plants; to China, for mines and precious stones; to

Aden (Arabia), for the number and security of its coasts and harbours.”

To that stock of knowledge known to us under the general name

of Saracen, Morocco contributed probably that dexterity in the

distribution of water, and the perfection of agriculture and taste in

gardening, which so enriched and embellished Spain under its dominion.

These arts could not have been furnished by the Nomade tribes of Arabia

Petrea; and they were to be looked for in the descendants of that

people, who for four centuries had made their country the granary of

Rome and the world, who inherited the agricultural science, which had

aided Carthage to extend her dominion. The Tribe government of the

Douar, still subsisting, arose amidst patriarchal manners, and science

triumphs without obscuring the charms of nature, or the taste of man.

This country and its stories are the “Arabian Nights”--not read, but

seen.