Every people has two distinct lines of descent--by blood and by
tradition. When we consider the physical descent of a people, we
regard them purely as animals. As in any breed of animals, so in a
people, the tokens of physical descent are mainly physical
attributes--such as stature, complexion, the shape of the skull and
members, the formation of the features. When we speak of a particular
_race_ of men, if we speak accurately, we mean a collection of people
whose personal appearance and bodily characters, inherited from their
ancestors and perhaps modified by climate and occupation, distinguish
them notably from the rest of mankind. It is important for us to be
quite clear in our minds about this meaning of Race, for the word Race
is often used in a very loose and very misleading way in popular
writings and discussions. Thus we hear and read of the Latin races,
the Teutonic race, the Anglo-Saxon race, the Celtic race. If these
phrases had any value in clear thinking, they would imply that in each
instance it is possible to distinguish a section of mankind which, by
its inherited physical characters, differs notably from the rest of
mankind. Now in not one of the instances mentioned is any such
distinction known to those who have made the races of man the subject
of their special study. There is no existing Latin race, no Teutonic
race, no Anglo-Saxon race, and no Celtic race. Each of the groups to
whom these names are popularly applied is a mixture of various races
which can be distinguished, and for the most part they are a mixture
of the same races, though not in every case in the same proportions.
In the case of the populations which are recognised to be Celtic, it
is particularly true that no distinction of race is found among them.
And this is true of them even in the earliest times of their history.
Tacitus, in the remarkable introductory chapters of his book, "De
Moribus Germanorum," gives a brief physical description of the Germans
of his time. "Their physical aspect," he says, "even in so numerous a
population, is the same for all of them: fierce blue eyes, reddish
hair, bodies of great size and powerful only in attack." Upon this the
well-read editor of the Elzevir edition of 1573 has the following
remarks: "What Tacitus says here of the Germans, the same is said by
Florus and Livy in describing the Gauls.... Hence," he continues, "it
appears that those ancient Gauls and Germans were remarkably similar
in the nature of their bodies as well as of their minds." He goes on
to develop the comparison, and sums up as follows: "Who then will deny
that those earliest Celts were similar to the Germans and were in fact
Germans?"
These Latin writers were contemporary witnesses, and among the
captives taken by Roman armies they must have seen the men that they
describe. Thus, in early times the Romans observed the same physical
semblance in the two peoples, Celts and Germans. It may be pointed
out, however, that the physical characteristics on which they lay
stress are those which exhibit the greatest difference between these
northern peoples and the peoples of southern Europe. For that reason
we may suspect a certain element of exaggeration in the description.
We may take leave to doubt whether all the Germans of antiquity were
fair-haired and blue-eyed, as Tacitus describes them. It was the
fair-haired and blue-eyed Germans and Celts that attracted the
attention of Latin writers, accustomed to a population almost
uniformly dark-haired and dark-eyed, and they would naturally seize
upon the points of distinction and regard them as generally typical.
If, then, by the name Celts we cannot properly understand a distinct
race, what are we to understand by it? By what criterion do we
recognise any ancient population to have been Celts? The answer is
undoubted--every ancient people that is known to have spoken any
Celtic language is said to be a Celtic people. The term Celtic is
indicative of language, not of race. We give the name Celts to the
Irish and the Britons because we know that the ancient language of
each people is a Celtic language.
A certain amount of enthusiasm, culminating in what is called
Pan-Celticism, has gathered around the recognition of this fact that
the Irish, the Gaels of Scotland, the Welsh and the Bretons are Celtic
peoples. So much favour attached to the name Celtic that in our own
time the Irish language was, so to speak, smuggled into the curricula
of the Royal University and of the Intermediate Board under that name.
What ancient writers called _opus Hibernicum_, "Irish work," is
popularly known in Ireland as Celtic ornament. In the same way people
speak of Celtic crosses, and there are even Celtic athletic clubs.
There is no small amount of pride in the notion of being Celtic. It is
somewhat remarkable, then, to find that throughout all their early
history and tradition the Irish and the Britons alike show not the
slightest atom of recognition that they were Celtic peoples. We do not
find them acknowledging any kinship with the Gauls, or even with each
other. In Christian times, their men of letters shaped out
genealogical trees tracing the descent of each people from Japhet--and
in these genealogies Gael and Briton and Gaul descend by lines as
distinct as German and Greek. This absence of acknowledgment of
kinship is all the more noteworthy because there is little reason to
suppose that, before Latin displaced the Celtic speech of Gaul, the
differences of dialect in the Celtic speech of Gaul, Britain, and
Ireland were sufficient to prevent intercourse without interpreters.
From this ignorance of their Celtic kinship and origin we must draw
one important conclusion. The extraordinary vitality of popular
tradition in some respects must be set off by its extraordinary
mortality in other respects. There must have been a time when the
Celts of Ireland, Britain and Gaul were fully aware that they were
nearer akin to each other than to the Germans and Italians, but this
knowledge perished altogether from the popular memory and the popular
consciousness.
It was re-discovered and re-established by a Scottish Gael, George
Buchanan, in the sixteenth century. Buchanan, in his history of
Scotland, published in 1589, dismissed as fabulous that section of the
Irish and British genealogies that purported to trace the origin of
each people, generation by generation, from Japhet. He was a man of
great classical learning. No better refutation could be adduced of the
notion that Bacon, who was a child when Buchanan wrote, established
the inductive method of scientific proof than the clear and
well-marshalled argument by which Buchanan proves from numerous Greek
and Latin sources that the Gaels and the Britons were branches of the
ancient Celtic people of the Continent.
An account of Buchanan's discourse on this subject will be found in an
article by me in the "Irish Review," of December, 1913. Buchanan's
discovery seems to have lain dormant, as regards any effect on
learning or the popular mind, for more than a century. In his argument
he dealt rather severely with the statements of a contemporary Welsh
antiquary, Humphrey Llwyd, and this controversy had probably the
effect of sowing the seed of what may be called Celtic consciousness
in the soil of Welsh learning. In Ireland, though Buchanan's work was
doubtless known and read, his theory of the Celtic origin of the Irish
people and their language, and of their kinship to the Britons and the
Continental Celts, does not appear to have been thought worth
discussion, so firmly established were the ancient accounts which
attributed to the Gaels of Ireland a Scythian origin. Yet these
ancient accounts, as I propose to show in the third lecture of this
series, did not belong to the true national tradition, ran counter to
tradition, and owed their invention to the Latin learning of Ireland
in the early Christian period.
In 1707 the publication of the first volume of Edward Llwyd's
"Archæologia Britannica" exhibits the first fruiting of Buchanan's
theory, in the form of a sort of conspectus of the Celtic languages
then extant, namely, the Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland, and the
British languages of Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. From this time
onward, the existence of a group of Celtic peoples may be taken as a
recognised fact in the learned world. I do not know whether anyone has
yet traced the early stages of the recognition of the same fact in
Continental learning.
The Celtic languages now began to attract attention from outside. I
ought, however, to note here that already for a brief period the Irish
language had seemed about to extend its influence beyond the limits of
its own people. It will be remembered that Edmund Spenser, during his
residence in Ireland (1586-1598), made some small acquaintance with
Irish poetry which was translated for him, and that he was pleased in
some degree with its peculiarities. About the same time an English
official in Dublin reports to his masters in London that "the English
in Dublin do now all speak Irish," and adds that they take a pleasure
in speaking Irish. A primer of the Irish language was composed by the
Baron of Delvin for the special use of Queen Elizabeth, and a
facsimile of portion of it may be seen in Sir John Gilbert's "National
Manuscripts of Ireland."
The growing interest in Celtic literature among outsiders is
exemplified in some of the work of the English poet Gray, who died in
1771. His poem of "The Bard," reflected, if it did not initiate, the
notions long afterwards fashionable of the character of the Celtic
bards and of the spirit of their poetry. Gray had the reputation in
his time of being an antiquarian. He made an English version of the
vision-poem on the battle of Clontarf from the Icelandic saga of Burnt
Njal, and from this same poem part of the inspiration of his "Bard" is
acknowledged by him to have been derived. Gray also wrote English
versions of some Welsh poems, and the novelty of poetic expression
which he borrowed here seems to have baffled for once the critical
experience of Johnson, who contents himself with saying that "the
language is unlike the language of other poets." "The Bard" was
published in 1755, and, if I am not mistaken, its weird rhapsodical
spirit contained the germ of the Celtic literary revival, for Gray's
"Bard" may be regarded as the literary parent of Macpherson's
"Ossian." In 1760, five years after the publication of "The Bard,"
appeared the first collection of Macpherson's pretended translations,
entitled "Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of
Scotland." The consequences of this publication are fitly described by
Dr. Magnus MacLean: "The arrival of James Macpherson marks a great
moment in the history of Celtic literature. It was the signal for a
general resurrection. It would seem as if he sounded the trumpet, and
the graves of ancient manuscripts were opened, the books were read,
and the dead were judged out of the things that were written in them."
In 1764 was published Evans's "Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient
Welsh Bards"--which supplied Gray with fresh material. In 1784
appeared "Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards," and from
that time onward the stream of translations from Welsh to English was
fairly continuous. Notwithstanding the controversy that soon arose
about the authenticity of Macpherson's compositions, their direct
influence and vogue went on increasing for half a century. Among those
who shared in the Macpherson craze were Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte.
In France, de Villemarqué published his "Chants populaires de la
Bretagne," a collection of poems from the Breton. In Scotland,
Macpherson had several imitators. In Wales, the new movement took
shape in the revival of the National Eisteddfod in 1819. In Ireland,
the first fruits of Macpherson's genius are found in Walker's
"Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards," published in 1786, and in
Charlotte Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," published in 1789. The
originals in this case were genuine, including a number of poems of
the kind called, since Macpherson's time, Ossianic.[1] The English
versions supplied by Miss Brooke were in close imitation of the style
and diction of Macpherson. The same influence extends to Hardiman's
"Irish Minstrelsy," published in 1831.
[Footnote 1: The Irish term for this class of poetry is
"Fianaidheacht," and is of great antiquity.]
The expansion of the new Celtic consciousness is exemplified in the
publication in 1804 of a tract in French on the Irish Alphabet by Jean
Jacques Marcel. The first important philological treatise on the
Celtic languages was published by the French philologist Pictet in
1837, dealing with "the affinity of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit."
Next year, 1838, appeared Bopp's work in German, showing the relation
of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, German, etc.
The Celtic literary enthusiasm was henceforth supplemented by solid
scientific research.
In these particulars is presented, I think, a fairly accurate sketch
of the wholly modern development of the Celtic consciousness. I wish
to recall here the fact that from the earliest traceable traditions of
the Gaelic people down to the time of George Buchanan, there is not
found the slightest glimmer of recognition that the Celts of Ireland
were Celts, or that they were more nearly akin to the Celts of Britain
and the Continent than to any other population of white men. The
second fact which I wish particularly to emphasise is that throughout
all its history the term Celtic bears a linguistic and not a racial
significance.
It need hardly be re-stated here that the Celts are a linguistic
offshoot of a prehistoric people whose descendants--also in the line
of language--comprise many ancient and modern populations in Europe
and Asia. It would be out of place now to discuss the central location
from which the various branches of this prehistoric people spread
themselves over so wide an area. Indeed, it is a facile and fanciful
assumption to suppose that the spreading took place from one central
habitat. It is enough to say that, whereas the earlier philologists
took for granted that the original population, before its division
into various linguistic groups, was located in Western Asia, the later
philologists are strongly inclined to place its home in Europe, in the
region south-east of the Baltic Sea.
The oldest known geographical descriptions of Europe are those of
Hecatæus, who flourished about 500 years before the Christian Era, and
Herodotus, about half a century after him. Their knowledge of the
European mainland, north of the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean and its inlets, was of the most vague and general kind.
They divided the whole of northern and middle Europe between two
peoples, the Scythians in the eastern, and the Celts in the western
parts. They also knew of the Iberians in the south-west, in the
Spanish peninsula and the adjoining parts of France. Herodotus,
however, recognised to the west of the Celts a people whom he calls
Kunēsioi and Kunētai, and in the furthest north of Europe a population
distinct from the Celts and Scythians, but unknown to him by any name
of their own, for he calls them Hyperboreans, _i.e._, out and out
northerns. In the time of Eratosthenes, about 200 B.C., this knowledge
does not appear to have been very much increased among the Greeks.
They knew, however, of the existence of the islands of Ireland, which
they called Ierne, and Britain, which they called Albion, and also of
a country beyond the Baltic; but they still divided the northern
mainland of Europe between the Celts and the Scythians.
I have already remarked how ancient Irish tradition ignores the Celtic
origin and affinities of the Irish. We may go farther and say that our
ancient writers, when they set about exploring the geographical
knowledge of the world that came to them in Latin writings, had it
very definitely in their minds that the Irish were not of Celtic
origin; for, of the three great populations of northern and western
Europe known to the oldest classical writers--the Iberians, the Celts,
and the Scythians--they excluded the Celts, and included the other
two, some selecting the Iberians and others the Scythians as the
ancestral people from which the Gaels were descended.
The reason why to the Greek mind, in the early centuries of history,
the Celts appeared to occupy so much of Middle Europe and to occupy it
so exclusively, was I think this: the Celts at that time actually
occupied the upper valleys of the Danube, the Rhone, the Rhine, and
the Elbe, and the high ground between. These rivers were the principal
highways of such transcontinental commerce as then existed, and this
commerce was probably considerable, comprising various metals, salt,
amber, etc. Whatever came and went in the course of transcontinental
trade from north-western Europe to the Mediterranean countries
followed trade routes which lay through the central region north of
the Alps, and all this region was held by the Celts. In this way, the
Celts seem to be more extensively spread over northern middle Europe
than they actually were.
Archæology takes us back farther and tells us more than history in
relation to the Celts while they were as yet, so far as we know,
located solely or mainly in the mid-European region to the north of
the Alps. It is not questioned that the ancient cemetery discovered
and explored many years ago at Hallstatt in Upper Austria belonged to
Celts and that the curious remains of art and industry found there are
the work of a Celtic people. The period assigned for that work begins
in the ninth century before the Christian Era and may extend onward
for several centuries. The discoveries indicate an organised and
progressive community, among whose resources were agriculture and the
working of mines for metals and salt; but the principal fact disclosed
is that, already in that early time, the Celts were acquainted with
the use and manufacture of iron. In the northern parts of Europe, in
Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland, as archæologists are agreed, the
Iron Age did not make its appearance until several centuries later.
We need not doubt that it was this possession of iron in abundance
and of skill in its manufacture, at a time when neighbouring peoples
found in bronze the highest class of material for their implements of
industry and war, that gave the Celts the power and prosperity which
they long enjoyed in Mid-Europe and enabled them to conquer and
colonize all the countries that surrounded them.
One effect of the mastery of iron, for a people occupying an inland
region with small facilities for water-traffic, was that the Celts
acquired a notable skill in the making of vehicles. From them in a
later age the Romans borrowed the names of nearly every variety of
wheeled vehicle that the Romans used: _carrus_ or _carrum_,
_carpentum_, _esseda_, _rheda_, _petorritum_. From this it obviously
follows that the Celts were also great road-makers. During the nine
years that Julius Cæsar spent in the conquest of Transalpine Gaul, and
marched his legions in every direction over that vast region, it is
quite evident that he was operating in a country already well supplied
with roads.
The earliest recorded expansion of the Celts from the region north of
the Alps was over northern Italy, and no historian supposes or
suggests that the first Celtic occupation of northern Italy was
earlier than about 600 B.C. This item ought to be borne in mind, for
it has an important bearing on the date of the early Celtic migrations
to Britain and Ireland. It was probably about the same time that they
began to move westward across the Rhone, occupying the parts of France
between the Garonne on the south and the English Channel on the north,
which parts are specifically described by Julius Cæsar as Gallia
Celtica, Celtic Gaul. Between 500 and 400 B.C. they spread
south-westward into Spain, apparently more as conquerors than as
colonists, for the resultant of the Celtic occupation of the Spanish
Peninsula was the formation of a mixed people, partly Celts and partly
Iberians, whom ancient writers distinguish from the Celts by giving
them what we may call a hyphenated name, Celtiberians. We are not to
imagine from this that Celtic conquests elsewhere were of an
exterminating character, or that they did not result in a fusion of
peoples. The notion that the migratory conquests of antiquity resulted
in the displacement of one population by another is one of the
favourite illusions of popular history. In Spain no doubt the Celtic
element was relatively less numerous than in Gallia Celtica, and also
perhaps the Celtic civilisation became less dominant, for the Iberians
were in touch more or less with another and still more highly
developed civilisation, that of the Phœnicians. That there was a
somewhat distinctive civilisation south of the Garonne is clearly to
be inferred from Cæsar's account, which tells us that the people of
Celtic Gaul differed from those of Aquitaine, as well as from those of
Belgic Gaul, in language, culture, and institutions.
In the fourth century B.C. a second wave of Celtic migration poured
over Italy. The Celts in this movement captured and destroyed the city
of Rome. But they also appear to have destroyed the predominance of
the Etrurians, and thereby to have facilitated the later imperial
expansion of the Roman power. There was also an eastward Celtic
movement along the Danube. In the third century B.C. the Celts overran
most of what is called the Balkan Peninsula, including Greece, and in
278 B.C. large bodies of them passed over into Asia Minor and settled
in the country which after them was named Galatia.
Let it be noted at this point that so far as history casts light on
the subject, the known period of Celtic expansion on the Continent
lies within the years 650 B.C. and 250 B.C. We shall have to recur to
this fact when we come to consider, in the following lecture, the
probable date of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. We shall see also
that the evidence from archæology leads to the same conclusion as the
evidence from history.
History recognises the expansion of the Celts from inland and central
Europe southward, westward and eastward, but is silent about any
expansion northward. No one doubts that in these early times the parts
of Europe northward of the old Celtic country already described were
occupied by the Germans, but Greek and Latin writings have no word of
the Germans until the last quarter of the third century B.C. Yet we
know from archæology that there was trade intercourse long before that
time between the Mediterranean countries and the shores of the Baltic,
extending even to Scandinavia. As geographical facts, the Baltic and
Scandinavia were known to the Greeks, if only vaguely known to them,
in the time of Eratosthenes, _i.e._, about 200 B.C. How is it, then,
that the Germans are not mentioned by that name or by any name? I
suggest that the reason was that the Germans of that period were so
much under Celtic domination that they were not recognised as a
distinct people of importance.
The first mention of Germans in history is found in the Roman Acta
Triumphalia for the year 222 B.C., in the record of the battle of
Clastidium. Clastidium, now called Casteggio, is in northern Italy, on
the south side of the river Po and a few miles from that river. It is
a little west of the meridian of Milan, which at the time of the
battle was Mediolanum, the chief town of the Insubrian Gauls. In the
battle, the Roman consul Marcellus overcame the Insubrians and gained
the _spolia opima_ by slaying with his own hand their commander
Virdumarus. The Acta Triumphalia state that he triumphed "over the
Insubrian Gauls and the Germans." Now so far as is known or thought
probable there was no German population at the time settled anywhere
within hundreds of miles of Clastidium, whereas the Insubrian Gauls
were settled on the spot or in its near neighbourhood. Moreover,
unless the Germans were there fighting in considerable force, it is
most unlikely that any notice of them would have appeared in the
record. The commander was a Gaul, bearing an undoubted Celtic name.
Therefore the Germans at Clastidium were not fighting for their own
hand, they had not come there as invaders. Thus we are brought to the
interesting conclusion that, on this first appearance of the Germans
in history, they had been brought from their own country, hundreds of
miles away, to assist a Celtic people resident in the valley of the
Po. To assist them in what capacity? Undoubtedly either as hired
troops or as forces levied on a subject territory. Whichever view we
take, the presence of German forces at the battle of Clastidium in 222
B.C. must be regarded as an indication that the German people, or
portion of them, were still at that time under Celtic predominance. I
say "still at that time," because it will be seen that the Celtic
ascendancy over the Germans soon afterwards came to an end.
What is thus inferred from the historical record is corroborated by
philology. A number of words of Celtic origin are found spread through
the whole group of Germanic languages, including the Scandinavian
languages and English, which was originally a mixture of Low German
dialects. Some of these words are especially connected with the
political side of civilisation and are therefore especially indicative
of Celtic political predominance at the time of their adoption into
Germanic speech. Thus the German word _reich_, meaning realm or royal
dominion, is traced to the Celtic _rigion_, represented in early Irish
by _rige_, meaning kingship. From the Celtic word _ambactus_, used by
Cæsar in the sense of "client" or "dependent," indicating one of the
retainers of a Gallic nobleman, but originally signifying "one who is
sent about," a minister or envoy--from _ambactus_ is derived the
German word _amt_, meaning "office, charge, employment." From
_ambactus_ are also derived the words _embassy_ and _ambassador_, with
their kindred terms in the Romance languages. From the Celtic word
_dunon_, a fortified place, represented in Irish by _dun_, is derived
the word _town_ in English and the cognate words in the other Germanic
languages. Professor Marstrander holds that several of the names of
the numerals in all the Germanic languages, and therefore in the
original German speech from which they have diverged, are formed from
or influenced by Celtic names of the same numerals. If this is so, it
indicates a thoroughly penetrating Celtic influence among the ancient
Germans, for the names of the numerals may be regarded as among the
most native elements of speech, so much so that it is said that
facility in the speaking of two languages rarely exists to the degree
of being able to reckon numbers with equal readiness in both, and that
the language a person uses in ordinary reckoning must be regarded as
his native and natural speech.
This matter of the early intermingling of Celts and Germans in
northern Mid-Europe will be afterwards seen to have a special interest
in reference to the Celtic colonisation of Britain and Ireland. Before
concluding the evidence I have to bring forward on the subject, it
will make the drift of the matter clearer if I state the later outcome
of the Celtic migrations northward among the Germanic population. We
have already seen that, as archaeologists are agreed, the Celts north
of the Alps were in possession of iron long before the use and
manufacture of iron was established in the more northern parts of
Europe. It is mainly to this advantage that we may ascribe the
predominance acquired by the Celts among the Germans. In the German
regions, however, the Celts were for the most part an ascendant
minority. Their domination must have lasted for several centuries. A
time came when, in those parts which in the Celts were numerically and
otherwise in greatest strength, a fusion of peoples took place,
resulting in a Celto-Germanic population, Celtic in language but
mainly Germanic in race. Meanwhile, the less blended section of the
Germans, retaining their native language, had acquired the craft of
ironwork, and were advancing in civilisation and no doubt increasing
at the same time in numbers. Eventually the German-speaking Germans
became more powerful than the once dominant Celtic minority and more
powerful also than the Celto-Germanic folk who had become Celtic in
language. A sense of distinct nationality grew up between the two
populations. The Celticised Germans were located in western Germany,
towards the Rhine, the un-Celticised Germans farther east. Under
hostile pressure from the German-speaking element, the Celtic-speaking
element were forced westwards across the Rhine into Gaul. Here they in
turn pressed back the Celts who had settled in north-eastern Gaul, and
modern events will help to fix in the mind the fact that this overflow
of Celto-Germans into Gaul extended as far west as the river Marne,
where it was brought to a stand by the resistance of the earlier
Celtic inhabitants. The date of this migration was probably later than
that of the battle of Clastidium, 222 B.C., when, as we have seen, the
Celts appear to have still held sway over the Germans. The
Celto-Germanic settlers between the Rhine and the Marne were the
Belgae of Cæsar's time.
At first sight, this account may seem to be too precise an effort to
fill up a blank in history, but the testimony of Cæsar and Tacitus,
witnesses of prime authority, seems to leave no room for any
alternative view.
Cæsar is the first writer in whom any mention of the Belgae is found.
Holding the Gallic command for about nine years, he reduced the whole
of Gaul to obedience to the Roman power. For him, Gaul, Gallia,
signified the whole country between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. All
its inhabitants in general were named Galli by him, but we also find
that he uses the name Galli in a more precise sense as proper to the
people of those parts which were not occupied by the Belgae. He also
calls this people Celtae, Celts. Therefore in Cæsar's mind the Belgae
were less Gallic and less Celtic than their neighbours to the west.
His evidence on this subject however is much more precise.
The Rhine was for Cæsar the main boundary line between Gaul and
Germany, between the Belgae and the Germans. The Belgae, he states,
differ from the Celtae, as these from the Aquitani, in language,
culture, and institutions. The difference between the Celtae proper
and the Aquitani has already been accounted for. The Aquitani,
bordering on Spain, were the same Celtiberian mixture as the people of
Spain; they were Celtic, or mainly so, in language, but otherwise
mainly Iberian. I am proceeding to show that the difference between
the Celtae and the Belgae is to be explained in a similar way. The
Belgae were likewise Celtic in language, at all events mainly so, but
otherwise they were mainly Germanic. When Cæsar says that the three
divisions of Gaul differed from each other in language, we must
understand that he refers to broad distinctions of dialect, for the
names of persons and places in Belgic Gaul at that time appear to the
reader to be quite as Celtic as those in Gallia Celtica or western
Gaul. Cæsar tells us that the Belgae are ruder, less civilised and
more warlike than the Celtae or Galli more properly so called, and his
explanation for this is that they have less commerce and less
intercourse with outsiders, and so are less softened by refinement and
luxury. This is interesting, because it implies that Gallia Celtica
had a sufficient degree of commerce, intercourse, refinement and
luxury to considerably soften down the character of its inhabitants.
The westward and southward pressure of the Germans, then a very
powerful and numerous people, was in full force in Cæsar's time, so
much so that it seems certain that Cæsar's conquest of Gaul came just
in time to stay and delay that tide of Germanic invasion which overran
Gaul some centuries later. His first operations in Gaul were against
the Helvetii, whose country corresponded to the modern Switzerland. He
tells us that the Belgae are at continual war with the Germans along
the Rhine, and also that the Helvetii in their own country fight
almost daily battles with the Germans. In the first year of Cæsar's
Gallic command, the Helvetii came to a decision to migrate from their
country westward, and Cæsar's first campaign was conducted with the
purpose of forcing them to return to their own country. He ordered
them to return thither, he states, lest the Germans should take
possession of the territory and thus become neighbours to the old
Roman province in southern Gaul.
Cæsar states plainly that the Belgae for the most part are of German
origin; that in former times they had crossed the Rhine and
dispossessed the Galli (here he used the name Galli as proper to the
other inhabitants of Gaul in distinction from the Belgae). He
indicates that, after this migration, they had offered a successful
resistance to the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (between 113 and
102 B.C.).
Modern Frenchmen, though their national name is in origin the name of
a Germanic people, show a tendency, easily understood, to minimise the
Germanic element in their composition, and M. D'Arbois de Jubainville,
dealing with Cæsar's statement that the Belgae were mainly of Germanic
origin, seeks to explain that this was true geographically not
ethnographically, that they came from German lands but did not come of
German ancestry. Against the plain statement of a contemporary
observer, such explanations are always to be received with caution. In
this instance, there is corroborative evidence which indicates that
Cæsar's words are to be taken at their face value. Cæsar also tells us
that the Condrusi, Eburones, Cærosi and Paemani "uno nomine Germani
vocantur"--are called by the common name of Germans. Again he says
that the Segni and Condrusi are "ex gente et numero Germanorum"--of
the German nation and so accounted. Strabo, writing within a century
of Cæsar, says that "the Nervii are a Germanic people." According to
Cæsar, the Nervii had no commerce, avoided wine and other luxuries,
and were fierce men of great valour. They led the rest of the Belgae
in opposing him. Tacitus is a hardly less valid authority, for his
father-in-law Agricola had been engaged in long campaigns against the
Germans in the Rhine country. "The Treveri and the Nervii," he says,
"are especially forward in asserting their German origin, as though by
this boast of race to be distinguished from the pacific character of
the Gauls." It was surely not a geographical origin that was claimed
in such a way. The Treveri dwelt on the west side of the Rhine. They
were a Celtic-speaking people, and unlike most of the inhabitants of
Gaul they seem to have retained their Celtic language throughout the
period of Roman domination, for St. Jerome, writing in the late part
of the fourth century, says that "the Galatians (of Asia Minor), apart
from the Greek language, which all the East speaks, have a language of
their own almost the same as the Treveri." In one respect the Treveri,
Cæsar tells us, resembled the Germans of his time--they excelled in
cavalry; and his continuator, Hirtius, writes that "in fierceness and
in manner of life they differed little from the Germans." The
Advatuci, he writes, "were descendants of the Cimbri and Teutoni."
All these peoples dwelt in Belgic Gaul and came under the common
appellation of Belgae. In addition to Cæsar's statement that the
Belgae as he learned, not supposed, were, for the most part of German
origin, we have detailed evidence that, of about eighteen States
composing Belgic Gaul, no fewer than eight, in Cæsar's time and long
after it, were still accounted to be German.
On the other hand, then and afterwards, a number of peoples reckoned
to be Celtic continued to inhabit countries to the east of the Rhine.
The Tencteri and the Usipetae, on the German side of the Rhine, were
Celts, according to Dio Cassius. Tacitus, speaking of the Helvetii and
the Boii, says that "both are Gallic nations," yet in another passage
he speaks of "the Boii, a nation of the Germans." Still further east
dwelt the Cotini and the Osi, of whom he writes: "The Cotini by their
use of the Gallic language and the Osi by their use of the Pannonic
language are proved not to be Germans": from which it appears that
language was the criterion by which the Romans were accustomed to
distinguish Germans from Celts. Again Tacitus writes: "The Triboci,
Vangiones and Nemetes are certainly Germans," but modern German
authorities recognise that the Triboci and Nemetes are Celtic in these
very names. Of the Aestyi, dwelling apparently on the northern
seaboard of Germany, Tacitus says that their language resembles that
of Britain.
Further evidence of Celtic occupation of regions considered German in
Cæsar's time and ever since then is afforded by a number of ancient
place-names. For example, there were two towns or stations named
Carrodunon, _i.e._ "wagon-fortress," one on the river Oder, the other
in the upper valley of the Vistula. Other Celtic place-names, like
Lugidunum, Eburodunum, Meliodunum, are found in central Germany.
Tacitus confirms the evidence of Cæsar to the effect that the Belgae
were a Germano-Celtic people who came westward over the Rhine and
conquered part of the country already occupied by the Celts. "Those,"
he says, "who first crossed the Rhine and expelled the Gauls were then
named Germans but now Tungri." The Tungri inhabited a part of Belgic
Gaul between the Nervii and the Treveri.
It seems to me, then, to be certain that the Belgae not only came into
Gaul from Germany, but were themselves a mixed population of Celts and
Germans speaking a Celtic dialect. Holder assigns their migration into
Gaul to the third century B.C. It is, however, undesirable to attempt
to fix anything but a somewhat extended period for migratory movements
of the kind. The instance of the Helvetii proves that down to Cæsar's
time the Celts in contact with the Germans were still in a very mobile
condition.
Before using the facts hitherto stated and the conclusions derived
from them to throw whatever light they can on the Celtic colonisation
of Ireland, it may be well to state in a general way what can be said
as to the stage of civilisation reached by the continental Celts
before their subjugation by the Romans.
Some modern writers, but not very recently, have written about a
Celtic Empire in ancient Europe. The nearest approach to authority for
the existence of such an empire is a statement by Livy, who says:
"While the elder Tarquin reigned in Rome, the supremacy among the
Celts belonged to the Bituriges. They gave a king to the Celtic land.
Ambigatus was his name, a very mighty man in valour and in his private
and public resources, under whose rule Gaul was so abounding in men
and in the fruits of the earth that it seemed impossible to govern so
great a population."
The most that can be made of this passage, supposing that Livy had it
on better authority than some other parts of his history, is that at
one time the Bituriges held what the Greeks called hegemony, a
political primacy among the Gauls, and this, too, only in the time of
a single king. It may reflect a genuine Celtic tradition, going back
to the time when the Celts were still a compact nation inhabiting a
relatively small territory.
When we come to contemporary evidence of the political condition of
the Celts, we find that everywhere on the continent and in Asia Minor,
their form of government resembles that of the Roman Republic. There
are no kings, and the power of the state is vested in a senate with
certain high executive officers. The Celtic form of government in
historical time was that of a patrician republic. The Celtic people
was divided into a large number of small states without any organised
superior power. From time to time, however, one or other of these
states might acquire a degree of political pre-eminence over a group
of neighbouring states, forming a loose federation in which it took
chief direction of the common affairs. We find the same tendency among
the states of ancient Greece. In Asia Minor, the three states of the
Galatae formed themselves into a strict federation, with a fixed
constitution, a common council of state and a common executive both
civil and military.
So far as I have been able to trace, wherever the Greeks and Romans
came in contact with Celts so as to acquire a closer knowledge of
Celtic affairs, they found this kind of patrician republican
government. Cæsar found no kings in Transalpine Gaul, and the
governing authority, when he mentions it, belongs to senates and
magistrates, _i.e._, chief officers of state. It was apparently so in
Spain a century earlier; and in distant Lusitania, corresponding to
the modern Portugal, the most western Celtic region on the continent,
in resisting the Roman conquest the chief command is held by Viriatus,
who is not called a king by the Roman and Greek historians, nor is any
king mentioned in his time. Nor do we read of kings in Cisalpine Gaul.
Thus from farthest east to farthest west, the patrician republican
form of government seems to have prevailed in all Celtic communities
with the probable exception of Ireland; and this was probably their
political condition as far back as 300 B.C., or earlier, before the
Galatians passed into Asia Minor.
At some earlier period, the Celts were undoubtedly governed by kings.
The word for king, represented by the Irish word _ri_, is widely
exemplified in ancient Celtic names. From it, as I have already
remarked, the Germanic languages took their word for kingdom or realm.
Sometimes it is found in the names of peoples, _e.g._, the Bituriges,
Caturiges, etc.; sometimes in the names of men, _e.g._, Dumnorix,
Ambiorix, Vercingetorix. We find evidence, too, of a strong
anti-monarchical sentiment, as among the Romans. The law of the
Helvetii made it a capital offence, under penalty of being burned
alive, to aim at autocratic power.
Not only the Celts, but the Germans of that time, were governed
without kings, as Tacitus records. He adds, however, that they
appointed kings to command them when they went to war. Here we have a
parallel to the Roman dictatorship, the vesting of the power of the
republic in the hands of a single ruler during a time of critical
warfare.
I have already mentioned the proficiency of the Celts in the
construction of wheeled vehicles, and the consequent deduction that
they were practised in the making of roads. The passage already quoted
from Livy shows that, with all their military ardour, they were known
to be active in agriculture; and this is corroborated by other ancient
authorities. The countries occupied by the Celts excelled in ordinary
agriculture not only during what we may call Celtic times but in
subsequent ages, and it is these countries that have furnished the
most excellent breeds of domestic animals--cattle, sheep, poultry,
dogs.
Originally an inland people, the Celts who occupied the seaboard soon
became proficient in navigation. Cæsar bears witness to their skill in
ship building, and he seems to have found no great difficulty in
collecting from the Belgic coast a sufficient fleet of ships to
transport his army and supplies to Britain.
From the Greek settlement at Massilia (Marseille) two arts especially
appear to have spread among the Celts of Transalpine Gaul: sculpture
and the use of letters. The remains of Celtic sculpture in Gaul show
evident signs of Greek origin. Cæsar makes the remarkable statement
that the Gauls in his time use Greek writing in almost all their
business, both public and private. The Romans of Cæsar's time had not
long emerged, under Greek influence, from a state of comparative
illiteracy, as every student of Latin literature must recognise. Among
the spoils of the Helvetii captured by Cæsar, he found a complete
census of the people written in Greek characters. Inscriptions in the
Celtic language before the Roman conquest are in Greek characters,
except in Cisalpine Gaul, where the characters are Etruscan.
On the subject of ancient Celtic art on the continent, reference may
be made to the book by Romilly Allen, from which also a good idea of
the skill and taste of the Celts in metal work may be obtained.
In general, it is clear that the Celts were a highly progressive
people with a strong civilising tendency. Under the Druids, the
western Celts developed a system of education and some kind of
philosophy. With regard to their religion and to the part played by
the Druids in Celtic life, I have summarised my own studies in a
brochure entitled "Celtic Religion," which is published by the
Catholic Truth Society of England.