In the preceding lecture, I have claimed to show that, so far as
positive knowledge goes, the period of Celtic expansion from
Mid-Europe lies between the years 600 B.C. and 250 B.C. The spread of
the Celtic peoples and of their power was arrested by a movement of
German expansion on the north, beginning perhaps about 200 B.C., and
by the growth of the Roman Empire, for which a starting point may be
found in the final subjugation of Etruria, 265 B.C. I have also
claimed to show that there was a large northward expansion of the
Celts, resulting in a partial fusion of Celts and Germans, and that
this Celto-Germanic population was afterwards for the most part, but
not all, forced westward across the Rhine by the more purely German
population, and was represented by the Belgae of Cæsar's time.
From the objects discovered at Hallstatt, the early period of Celtic
art in the Iron Age is called by archæologists the Hallstatt period.
It is succeeded by a later stage and higher development of ornamental
art, exemplified in discoveries at La Tène in Switzerland. The period
in which this higher development is found has been named the La Tène
period; but the same stage of Celtic art is exemplified by objects
discovered in the valley of the Marne in northern France, and the term
"Marnian period" is used by French archæologists as an equivalent of
"La Tène period." So far as I am aware these Marnian remains represent
the earliest known substantial appearance of Celtic work, of Celtic
activities of any kind, in the north-western parts of Europe. The La
Tène or Marnian period is estimated to begin about 400 B.C., and not
earlier than 500 B.C. This estimated date is an important part of the
evidence that goes to establish the date of the Celtic migrations to
Britain and Ireland.
Before going more fully into the evidence, it is necessary to deal
with the theory which at present holds the field in British
archæology, and which is based principally on the authority of the
late Sir John Rhys. So completely has his theory dominated, that we
find it stated in summary in books for general instruction. I find a
good exemplification in the volume on Lincolnshire of the Cambridge
County Geographies, a series devised for school study and general
information. The following paragraph purports to tell us how Britain
was peopled before the Roman occupation:
"We may now pause for a moment," says the writer, "to consider who
these people were who inhabited our land in these far-off ages. Of
Palæolithic man we can say nothing. His successors, the people of the
Later Stone Age, are believed to have been largely of Iberian
stock--people, that is, from south-western Europe--who brought with
them their knowledge of such primitive arts and crafts as were then
discovered. How long they remained in undisturbed possession of our
land we do not know, but they were later conquered or driven westward
by a very different race of Celtic origin--the Goidels or Gaels, a
tall light-haired people, workers in bronze, whose descendants and
language are to be found to-day in many parts of Scotland, Ireland,
and the Isle of Man. Another Celtic people poured into the country
about the fourth century b.c.--the Brythons or Britons, who in turn
dispossessed the Gaels, at all events as far as England and Wales are
concerned. The Brythons were the first users of iron in our country."
So far the quotation. The writer is a man of scientific education, a
master of arts, a doctor of medicine, and a Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries. This is the age of science, not of credulity, and in
matters of science men of scientific education are believed to require
scientific proof before they state anything as a fact. If it is the
age of science, it is also the age of invention. The statements made
in the passage I have quoted are definite enough. In fairness to their
writer, however, I shall quote his next paragraph, in which this
definite assurance is somewhat qualified:
"The Romans," he writes, "who first reached our shores in B.C. 55,
held the land till about A.D. 410; but in spite of the length of their
domination they do not seem to have left much mark on the people.
After their departure, treading close on their heels, came the Saxons,
Jutes, and Angles. But with these, and with the incursions of the
Danes and Irish, we have left the uncertain region of the Prehistoric
Age for the surer ground of History."
From what is said just afterwards on the surer ground of History, we
are prepared in some measure to assess the value of what has been
said, very definitely indeed, in the uncertain region of the
Prehistoric Age:
"Of the Celtic population of this county [Lincolnshire]," we are told
in continuation, "at the time of the Roman invasion, but few traces
are left, thus contrasting greatly with what has happened in counties
such as Somerset, Cornwall, and the wilder parts of Wales, and the
Lake district, where the Brythons (hence the name Britain) fled before
the Roman advance and later from the Saxons. These Celts, belonging to
the tribe of Coritani, have left little impression on the names of
places (Lincoln itself being an exception), and probably none on the
actual people of Lincolnshire. On the other hand, the Saxon invasion
and settlement must have been complete early in the sixth century."
Now let us consider first what the English reader and student is asked
to believe in regard of the effect of strictly historical movements on
the population of an English county. "The Romans," we are told, during
about four centuries of occupation, "do not seem to have left much
mark on the people." The writer's object is to show from what early
population elements the modern population is composed. By what tokens
does he assure us that the prolonged Roman occupation left no
permanent element behind? Is it by the scarcity of Roman noses in the
Lincolnshire of to-day? Let us regard the facts.
For generation after generation, the Romans sent legion after legion
of their soldiers into Britain. These legionaries were not all
Italians. They were recruited from various parts of the Roman Empire.
We know that one of the Roman emperors, holding command in Britain,
took a woman of British birth to wife, and that Constantine the Great
was their child. Are we asked to believe that the thousands upon
thousands of Roman legionaries in Britain lived a life of celibacy,
and left no descendants after them? The city of Lincoln was itself no
mere military station but a Roman colony, Lindi Colonia, and the
volume from which I quote shows that Lincolnshire has produced very
extensive traces of its Roman occupation, civil as well as military.
The county appears to have contained no fewer than six Roman military
stations, and was traversed by four Roman roads.
In the preceding lecture, I have alluded to that common illusion of
popular history through which people are led to imagine that the
migratory conquests of ancient times led to the extermination of the
older inhabitants by the newcomers. On this same illusion, lodged in
the mind of a man of scientific education, is based the notion that
the Roman occupation left no mark, in the ethnographical sense, on the
later population. We find the definite expression of this illusion in
the words in which the writer professes to account for the total
disappearance of the Celtic population of Lincolnshire, on whose
people, he says, still speaking ethnographically, the Celts have
probably left no impression. "The Brythons," he tells us, "fled
before the Roman advance." Bear well in mind that we are now on the
surer ground of history. The Roman conquest of Britain was completed
by Agricola in the year 80 of the Christian era. We have the account
of this conquest from a contemporary authority, Tacitus, who was
son-in-law to the conqueror, Agricola. In a remarkable passage,
Tacitus tells how the Britons behaved after Agricola had warred down
their pride:
"During the following winter," he writes, "Agricola was occupied in
carrying out a most salutary policy. The Britons were a rude people,
dwelling in the open country, and for that reason they were readily
disposed to war. Agricola's aim was to reduce them to peace and a life
of ease by ministering to their pleasures. He exhorted them in private
and assisted them in public to build temples, places of assembly, and
houses. [He means, in the Roman manner, and obviously refers
especially to the noble and wealthy of the Britons.] Those who were
quick to act in this way he praised, those who were reluctant he
punished; so that they could not avoid competing with each other for
distinction. He set about providing the culture of a liberal education
for the sons of their chief men, and he used to award the Britons the
palm of excellence over the Gauls in their studies, so that those who
not long before refused to speak the Roman tongue were now actually
eager to exhibit their eloquence in Latin. Even our fashion of dress
became honourable among them, and the toga was quite generally worn.
By degrees they yielded to the attractive apparatus of vices, lounging
in covered walks, frequenting public baths, and enjoying elegant
banquets." The comment of the Imperial historian on the real aim and
character of this "salutary policy" carried out by his father-in-law
has a cynical frankness which is quite refreshing in comparison with
the studied attitude of moral justification that we might expect from
a modern Tacitus: "And this," he says, "was called civilisation by the
ignorant Britons, whereas it was in fact an element of their
enslavement."
We have here a graphic picture of the British nobility, under
distinguished patronage, making themselves familiar with the luxuries
and vices of Imperial Rome, and their sons at school learning to
become eloquent Dempseys in the conqueror's tongue. Compare it with
Dr. Sympson's statement on the surer ground of History: "The Brythons
fled before the Roman advance," to take refuge in the remoter and
wilder parts of the island. Having already fled before the Romans,
they again fled, we are told, before the Saxons. There is just as much
historical foundation for the one statement as for the other. I
remember reading, in one of Archbishop Trench's works on the origin
and growth of the English language, a list of words which passed from
the ancient British tongue into Anglo-Saxon--most of them being names
of things used in ordinary rural industry, and the conclusion drawn
from this class of words, that, under the Anglo-Saxon conquest and
occupation, the menial work of the country continued to be done by
the conquered Britons. There is an old yarn about a whaling crew in
the northern seas. The cold was so intense that, when the seamen tried
to speak, the words were frozen hard as they came from their lips and
could be heard falling on the deck. It must have been under the
operation of some similarly marvellous phenomenon, shall we say the
excessive coolness of the Anglo-Saxons, that they were able to capture
and preserve the vocabulary of the fugitive Britons.
In my first lecture, I have attempted to trace the somewhat academic
origin and growth of the modern Celtic consciousness. The Anglo-Saxon
consciousness has a very similar history. It begins in learned circles
of the reign of Elizabeth, when, under the stimulus of the Anglican
controversy and the special patronage of Archbishop Parker, a keen
interest was aroused in the remains of Anglo-Saxon literature. The
Anglo-Saxon craze appears to reach its high-water mark in some
American universities. I wonder if it will survive the war. The
compiler of the Cambridge Geography of Lincolnshire has outdone Attila
himself in extermination. He has completely wiped out five successive
populations to make Lincolnshire an exclusive habitat for pure-blooded
Low Germans.
Let us now return to the paragraph which summarizes Sir John Rhys's
theory of the peopling of prehistoric Britain. Its first article is
this: "Of Palæolithic man we can say nothing," and we pass on to "his
successors." The people who inhabited Britain in the Early Stone Age
are extirpated in a phrase of six words. It is a less interesting, if
less appalling fate than that which overtook Parthalon's people in the
Book of Invasions. They all died of a plague, and then apparently the
dead buried their dead in "the plague-cemetery of Parthalon's
people"--Támhlacht Mhuinntire Parthalóin, now called Tallaght.
Let us take up another current handbook of popular instruction, the
volume entitled "Prehistoric Britain," by Dr. Munro, in the Home
University Library series. The date of writing is 1913; the same as
the date of the Cambridge volume on Lincolnshire. Dr. Munro discusses
a certain type of skulls found in various parts of England. "All of
these," he says (p. 234), "are usually assigned to the Neolithic
period (the later Stone Age), and represent the prevailing type of
Englishman at the commencement of that period, and probably also in
the latter part of the Palæolithic period (the Early Stone Age). The
skulls mentioned may represent British men and women living thousands
of years apart. They clearly belong to the same race, which, for lack
of a better, we may name 'the river-bed race.' IT IS THE PREVAILING
TYPE IN ENGLAND TO-DAY, and from the scanty evidence at our disposal
we may presume that it _has been_ the dominant form many thousands of
years.... All trace of this race has disappeared in Switzerland,
whereas in England, in spite of invasion of Saxon, Jute, Dane and
Norman, it still thrives abundantly." And further he says (p. 235):
"According to Dr. Keith, Palæolithic blood is as rife in the British
people of to-day as in those of the European continent--a conclusion,"
adds Dr. Munro, "which entirely meets with the present writer's
views."
Thus we see that, according to two eminent British authorities, the
race which inhabited Britain in the Early Stone Age is still the
prevalent type in that island, and has not been displaced by Celt or
Roman or Anglo-Saxon.
[It is, however, due to Dr. Sympson to say that a year earlier, in
1912, Dr. Munro, as he himself observes, thought it "possible that (at
the close of the Early Stone Age) the Palæolithic people would shrink
back to Europe and thus, for a time, leave a gap in the continuity of
human life in Britain" (p. 236); and this, he says, was formerly the
general idea.]
The second population of Britain, "the people of the Later Stone Age,"
says Dr. Sympson, "are believed to have been largely of Iberian
stock--people, that is, from south-western Europe."
Before the discovery of "the law of gravity" and of the operation of
atmospheric pressure, the old-fashioned scientists used to explain the
rising of water in a pump by saying that "Nature abhors a vacuum."
There is no doubt that when the human mind becomes interested in any
department of knowledge and inquiry, it abhors a vacuum, and this very
laudable abhorrence often leaves the mind a victim to almost any
plausible and positive effort to fill the vacuum. That is why such a
very precise and particular term as Iberian comes so handy and brings
so much satisfaction. Ethnologists, however, are agreed that in
prehistoric times, before the Celts had invaded south-western Europe,
there were already at least two very distinct races in that region,
and that both are still well represented in it. To speak of them as
one race, and to call that race Iberian, or to use the term "Iberian"
without distinguishing between them, is merely filling the vacuum.
Rhys has succeeded in popularising the term "Iberian" as a name for
the population which occupied Britain and Ireland before the first
coming of the Celts, and he has identified the Picts with this Iberian
stock. Politics, as well as war, is eager to turn to account the
services of science. There is, perhaps, no more acute and more highly
educated mind in England of to-day than that of Mr. Arthur Balfour. I
wish to remark here that I am only dealing with certain prevalent
views about ancient history, and that I am not arguing politically one
way or the other. But Mr. Balfour, in a written document supporting
certain political views of his with regard to the political claims of
a certain proportion of the Irish people, gave it as a reason for
rejecting the claims in question, that the people of Ireland were in a
large degree of the Iberian race, descendants of the primitive
inhabitants during the Later Stone Age. As for any political
controversy on that point, I have nothing at all to say. I should
prefer to hear it discussed between Mr. Balfour and the Portuguese
ambassador to London. I do confess that I am very curious to know
what political conclusion Mr. Balfour would derive from the scientific
conclusion of Dr. Keith and Dr. Munro, that the prevailing type in the
English population of to-day represents something still more primitive
than Sir John Rhys's Iberians, and is the survival of that "river-bed
race" who, in the words of Dr. Munro, were "miserable shell-eaters."
In Sir John Rhys's theory, the Iberians of the Later Stone Age are
succeeded by the Goidels or Gaels, of Celtic origin, who introduced
the Bronze Age in Britain and also in Ireland. Many centuries after
these came the Brythons, who introduced the Iron Age, and drove the
Gaels out of the greater part of England. Dr. Sympson says that the
Brythons of that invasion drove the Gaels out of Wales also, but for
this he has no warrant from Sir John Rhys. According to Rhys, the
Gaels continued to occupy the more westerly parts of the island, even
after the Roman occupation.
Rhys's theory is still more elaborate. The three divisions of Gaul
with which Cæsar begins the account of his Gallic war are familiar to
students of Latin. Rhys equates his Neolithic Iberians of Britain and
Ireland with the Iberian element in Aquitanian Gaul and Spain, his
Bronze-Age Goidels or Gaels with the Celtae of Cæsar's Gallia Celtica,
and his Iron-Age Brythons of England with the Belgae of Cæsar's Gallia
Belgica. He goes still farther with this process of equation. Finding
that the consonant Q, where it occurs in the most ancient forms of
the Irish language, is replaced by P in the corresponding forms of the
British or ancient Welsh language, he divides the Celts into two
linguistic groups which he labels the Q-Celts and the P-Celts, and
this division he makes to correspond to the other classification into
Celtae and Belgae. In this way, he produces a most interesting and
symmetrical set of equations showing the successive stages of
population-change in Britain.
First, there are the people of the Early Stone Age, not named.
Secondly, the people of the Later Stone Age, Iberians.
Thirdly, the people of the Bronze Age, Goidels or Gaels, or Celtae, or
Q-Celts.
Fourthly, the people of the Iron Age, Brythons or Britons, or Belgae,
or P-Celts.
For the present, let us pass away from the Iberians, and consider the
theory as it concerns the Celtic migrations to Britain and Ireland.
The earliest known habitat of the Celts is the region to the north of
the Alps. The earliest definitely known migration of the Celts is
their southward movement into Northern Italy. For this migration no
earlier date than 600 B.C. is assigned.
The chief authority on the Bronze Age in Ireland belongs to the late
Mr. George Coffey. In his book on the subject, "The Bronze Age in
Ireland," he hesitates to date the close of the Stone Age and the
introduction of the Copper Period as far back as 2500 B.C., which is
the approximate date estimated by Montelius. He puts the close of the
Copper Period between 2000 and 1800 B.C. and the first period of the
true Bronze Age between 1800 and 1500 B.C. Now, according to the
theory prevalent in Britain, the first Celtic invaders introduced the
Bronze Age, and these were the Gaels or Goidels. If we accept this
view and combine it with the best archæological authority, we shall
conclude that the Celts reached Ireland at least 1,200 years before
they are known to have entered Italy--that they pushed out to a
distant island in the ocean more than a millennium before they
occupied the fertile and attractive plains which lay on their very
borders.
But, it may be objected, is it not possible that the Celts of the
Bronze Age had settled far away from the Alps, on the coasts of
north-western Europe. Possible, perhaps, but what is the value of mere
possibilities? We have seen it stated, and the Cambridge handbook is
only a specimen of many publications that accept the view, stated most
definitely that the Gaelic branch of the Celts introduced the Bronze
Age to Britain and Ireland. Surely something more than a mere
possibility, some shade or degree of probability should appear in
support of teaching so positive.
Now let us suppose that the dominant Bronze Age population of Britain
and Ireland were Celts, as we are instructed to believe. Let us see
what would follow from this position. It would follow, beyond
question, that the peculiar art and works of the Bronze Age in Britain
and Ireland would be mainly connected with the art and works of the
Bronze Age in those parts of Europe which were likewise inhabited by
Celts, rather than with other parts of the Continent. I cannot find
that any such connection has been established or is believed in by
archæologists.
The Brythons, we are told, were Belgic invaders who introduced the
Iron Age. Not the faintest probability has been brought forward to
establish this very precise and positive doctrine. Coffey places the
close of the Bronze Age in Ireland and the coming of iron into general
use at about 350 B.C. It is admitted that the Celts of central Europe
were in possession of iron about four centuries earlier. This affords
a most cogent argument that, during the intervening four centuries,
there was no such social and industrial continuity between central
Europe and these islands as must undoubtedly have been if both regions
and the intervening parts of the Continent had been occupied by Celtic
populations.
Again, if the Brythons or Belgic Celts, armed with iron, were able to
cross the channel and displace the western Celts in Britain, it would
surely have been much easier for them to cross the Marne and the Seine
and displace the western Celts in Gaul. The theory seems to presuppose
that an invasion was necessary to bring the Iron Age into Britain, but
the same theory would have it that the Iron Age found its way into
Ireland without any invasion, for it leaves the Bronze Age Goidels of
Ireland to learn the use of iron in some more pleasant way than by
meeting iron-headed spears in the hands of Belgic conquerors.
It is certain that after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from
Britain and after the Anglo-Saxon invasions, there were Gaelic
populations in various parts of western Britain, in Argyllshire, North
and South Wales, and the Cornish peninsula. Rhys supposed these to be
the remnants of the Gaelic population which, in his view, had occupied
all England during the Bronze Age. There is sufficient evidence to
show that they were fresh settlements made by the Irish of Ireland
during and after the collapse of the Roman power in Britain.
The "P and Q" element in the theory is equally unsound. It is certain
that, where the Irish Celts retained the consonant Q in their
language, the British Celts replaced it by P. But no such distinction
has been shown to have existed between the language of the western
Celts and the language of the Belgic Celts on the Continent. Such
phonetic changes as the substitution of P for Q spread in an almost
mysterious way through languages. Their spread may be arrested by a
geographical barrier so considerable as the Irish Sea, but it was not
at all likely to have been brought to a stand by the waters of the
Seine and Marne. Nor can a phonetic change of the kind be taken as
necessarily corresponding to any racial or political boundaries. In
all the western dialects of Latin which grew into the Romance
languages, the initial W of Germanic words was changed into GW, and
this identical change also took place in the Welsh language, but not
in Irish. It took place in Spanish, yet that does not appear to prove
that the Welsh are more near akin to the Spaniards than they are to
the Irish, nor, if history happened to be silent, would it prove that
Britain after the Roman occupation was peopled by a Spanish invasion
which did not extend to Ireland.
There is one serious argument which has been adduced in support of the
view that Britain was in Celtic occupation during the Bronze Age. The
existence of the word _kassiteros_, meaning "tin," is traced in the
Greek language as far back as about 900 B.C. There seems very good
reason for thinking that _kassiteros_ was a Celtic word adopted into
Greek. From this it is argued that the metal itself came from the
Celts to the Greeks, which seems reasonable enough. It is further
argued that the Celts must accordingly have been in possession of the
country which produced the metal, and that this country was Britain.
The conclusion is that the Celts were in occupation of Britain earlier
than 900 B.C. It seems to me, however, that the fact, granting it to
be a fact, that the metal tin reached the Greeks bearing a Celtic name
is by no means proof that it came from a country inhabited at the time
by Celts. If you visit the Zoological Gardens in the Phœnix Park, you
will be invited, before you reach the entrance, to purchase for the
delectation of the monkeys a certain vegetable product, the name of
which, upon inquiry, you will learn to be "pea-nuts." No one will be
rash enough to deny that "pea-nuts" is an English word. I have not
the least idea where pea-nuts grow, but I am quite certain that the
fact of their being named "pea-nuts" is no proof that they grow in
England or in any English-speaking country. It is very good proof,
however, if proof were needed, that the trade in pea-nuts has passed
through the hands of English-speaking people. If _kassiteros_ is a
Celtic word, as I think it very probably is, it proves no more than
that, when the Greeks learned this Celtic name for tin, the trade in
tin passed towards them through the hands of a Celtic-speaking people.
If it was British tin, which again is not improbable, I suggest that
it came to Greece by an overland route through the Celtic region in
Mid-Europe, probably along the Rhine and the Danube or to the head of
the Adriatic. As a matter of fact, the Greek writer Poseidonios states
that in his time British tin reached the Mediterranean by an overland
route. "It is brought," he says, "on horses through the interior of
the Celtic country to the people of Massilia and to the city called
Narbon."
There is, then, no evidence from archæology, history, or language,
sufficient to establish even a moderate degree of probability for the
theory of a Celtic occupation of Ireland or Britain during the Bronze
Age.
On the other hand, taking Coffey's approximate date of 350 B.C. as the
beginning of the period of the general use of iron in Ireland, we
shall, I think, find sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that
the Celts reached Britain and Ireland about that time, and not
earlier, at all events not considerably earlier than that time.
Why not earlier? I think we have conclusive grounds for believing that
the Celtic migrations to Ireland cannot have begun very much, if at
all, sooner than the fourth century B.C. Before stating these grounds,
let us ask is there any discoverable reason for supposing that the
Gaels inhabited Ireland from a time many centuries farther back. I
think it possible that those who in modern times have entertained this
view have been influenced by the dates assigned to the Gaelic
immigration by Irish writers like the Four Masters and Keating. These
dates may be taken to correspond closely enough with the estimates of
archæological authorities for the commencement of the insular Bronze
Age, and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it might be
imagined that they were founded on some basis of tradition.
It is not the habit of popular tradition to encumber itself with
chronology. There is no known instance of ancient reckoning in years
and periods of years that is not based on some era, on the accepted
date of some real or supposed event or events. Nowhere in Irish
tradition has any trace been found of the existence of a native system
of chronology before the introduction of Christian learning. In a
paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (July,
1910), I have shown how the extant written chronology of the Irish
Invasions was first originated. The method was not unlike Sir John
Rhys's series of equations.
The Irish historian found in Latin histories a set of definite epochs
by which antiquity was divided: the beginning of the Assyrian empire,
the beginning of the Median empire, the beginning of the Persian
empire, the usurpation of the Magi in Persia, and the beginning of
Alexander's empire. The chronology of the Irish Invasions was settled
by the easy process of making each invasion coincide exactly in time
with each of these epochs. It is evident that no traditional value can
be attached to a chronological system of this kind.
But, it may be objected, the very remoteness of the time assigned to
the Gaelic invasion by Irish historians may reflect the popular belief
in its remoteness. If that be so, then the earlier the historian is
the more near he is to the popular tradition. In the paper just cited,
I have shown that, in the earliest known version of this chronology of
the Invasions, the Gaelic migration to Ireland coincides with the date
of Alexander's empire, 331 B.C. That is not very far from the date
assigned by Coffey for the end of the Bronze Age in Ireland, about 350
B.C. For my own part, I attach no traditional value to this
coincidence, but if it pleases anyone to insist that Irish prehistoric
chronology has a traditional value, then it must be conceded that
tradition, as far as it is valid, is altogether favourable to the view
that the Gaelic occupation of Ireland belongs to the end, and not to
the beginning, of the Bronze Age.
The migratory movements of the Celts on the Continent have a bearing
which cannot be ignored on the time of the Celtic migrations to
Britain and Ireland. So far as I am aware, no modern investigator has
suggested that the Celts were not already in the Iron Age at the time
of their expansion into Italy and Spain. Why then should it be
imagined, in the absence of any positive indication to the purpose,
that they occupied these islands more than a thousand years earlier?
If I am not mistaken, the archæological evidence is fairly decisive on
the point. Archæologists are agreed in dividing the Celtic Iron Age
into two main periods, the Early Celtic or Hallstatt period, and the
Late Celtic or La Tène period, also called the Marnian period. Each of
these periods is taken to consist roundly of about four centuries, and
the two periods on the Continent together correspond roughly to the
last eight or nine centuries before the Christian Era. The Late Celtic
period is abundantly represented in the antiquities of Great Britain
and Ireland, but the objects that have been found in either country
belonging to the Early Celtic Period are extremely rare. On this head
Coffey writes as follows ("Bronze Age in Ireland," page 5):
"It must be remembered that the Continental Hallstatt period is not at
present well represented in Great Britain and Ireland, and though,
under Hallstatt influence, certain Continental Iron-Age types such as
bronze caldrons, trumpets, round shields, etc., found their way into
Ireland, we cannot as yet definitely separate this period from the end
of the Bronze Age."
In fact, "sporadic finds" are all that represent the Early Celtic
period in Ireland, in Britain, and even in the neighbouring regions of
the Continent. It will not be questioned that during the Hallstatt
period there was quite sufficient intercourse of trade between the
islands and the Continent to explain these sporadic finds as
importations.
The main fact is that, so far as archæological research has
ascertained, the Early Celtic period of the Iron Age is substantially
absent from Ireland and Britain, whereas the Late Celtic period is
abundantly represented. The Bronze Age in Ireland comes down to about
350 B.C., and its Continental affinities are not specially or notably
Celtic. The Bronze Age is succeeded in both Britain and Ireland by the
Late Celtic period of the Iron Age. The inference, to my mind, is
obvious, that the Celts did not reach either Britain or Ireland until
the Late Celtic period, _i.e._, until the fourth or fifth century B.C.
This conclusion agrees well with all that is known of the migratory
movements of the Celts on the Continent.
Let us now revert to the Belgic migrations and consider their bearing
on the matter of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. The Belgae, we
have seen, were a Celto-Germanic group which, according to Cæsar and
Tacitus, occupied the lands stretching from the Rhine to the Seine and
Marne, and expelled from that region the Celtae proper. There is no
indication in what Cæsar says that in his time this movement was one
of remote antiquity. In fact, it is perfectly clear that it was a
movement by no means exhausted but still in active progress when he
took command of the Roman armies in Gaul. The attempted migration of
the Helvetii in the first year of his command, B.C. 58, was a part of
this movement. A little later, Cæsar had to repel similar attempts of
the Usipetes and the Tencteri to cross the middle Rhine and settle in
Gaul; and these, according to Dio, were two Celtic peoples. Still
later, in the time of Augustus, the Ubii migrated from the eastern to
the western side of the Rhine. From all this it is clear that the
Belgic migration was a continuous movement and that its force was far
from being spent at the time of the Roman conquest of the country west
of the Rhine. Cæsar indicates that there were powerful Belgic
settlements west of the Rhine during the great wandering movement of
the Cimbri and the Teutones, _i.e._, about half a century before he
began his Gallic campaigns. There is nothing, however, to show that
these settlements were of earlier date than the second century B.C.,
and I have seen no reason for thinking that they could have been much
earlier.
We now come to the question of the Belgic invasion of Britain and its
probable date. In Rhys's theory, which is still accepted in England,
the Belgic invaders were the first to establish the Iron Age in
Britain. I claim to have shown good grounds for believing that there
was no Celtic occupation of Britain before the Iron Age. I have
already suggested that, if this Celto-Germanic movement was brought to
a standstill on the banks of the Marne, it was not likely to have
succeeded in over-running all England at the commencement of the Iron
Age in England. It will be seen that the Celto-Germanic migrations
extended not merely to Britain but also to Ireland, and I suggest that
if these Celto-German Belgae had been the first people to come over
armed with iron, they would have made an easy conquest of Ireland as
well as of England.
Let us look at the actual evidence of the Belgic conquest of England.
The sole historical witness on the point is Julius Cæsar, and this is
his testimony:
"The interior of Britain is inhabited by those who say that, according
to tradition they are natives of the island; the maritime part by
those who had crossed over from Belgium [meaning Belgic Gaul] for the
sake of plunder, nearly all of whom are called by the same names of
states as the states from which they originated and came thither, and
having made war they settled permanently there and began to till the
land."
From this it is clear that Cæsar was informed of two populations in
Britain, one which was more ancient and claimed to be native, another
which resulted from comparatively recent invasion. The older
population he assigned to the interior, the more recent to the
seaboard. What did Cæsar mean by the seaboard, the maritime part? Sir
John Rhys has no difficulty in supposing that Cæsar did not mean the
whole seaboard of Britain or if he did mean it that he was not fully
informed, for according to Rhys's theory, the older population, which
he supposed to be Gaelic, continued to inhabit the western seaboard of
England and Wales. I also agree that, whatever Cæsar may have
understood, his statement about the maritime part must be taken in a
restricted sense, for no one believes that the Celtic occupation in
Cæsar's time extended to the seaboard of the northern parts of the
island. I agree also with the view that the traditional natives of
whom Cæsar speaks probably included the earlier Celtic colonists,
whose settlements dated, according to my argument, from the fourth
century B.C., about three centuries before Cæsar's time. The more
recent maritime settlements, in that case, would have been very recent
in his time, and I think that his statement leads us to that
conclusion. These later settlers on the seaboard, he tells us, are
known collectively by the same names as the states on the Continent
from which they originated. Now this is a statement about a fact
likely to be within Cæsar's personal knowledge. He was certainly well
acquainted with the names of the states of Belgic Gaul, and there is
no reason why he should have said that populations retaining the same
names existed in his time on the British coast if he did not know it
to be a fact. His testimony on this point, touching a matter within
the scope of his personal observation, is of higher evidential value
than any other part of the statement quoted. Cæsar does not himself
name these states, but in the two following centuries the names of the
various states of Britain are given by Ptolemy and other writers, and
when we compare these names with those of the states of Belgic Gaul,
we find that they coincide only in three instances. These are the
Parisii on the foreland north of the Humber, the Atrebatii in the
district of Berkshire, and the Belgae, eastward from these to the
Bristol Channel. There are some eighteen other states enumerated in
Britain, so that the coincidence of names amounts to only one in
seven, a proportion which by no means corresponds to Cæsar's words,
_fere omnes_, "nearly all." Except for the Parisii, who occupied the
promontory north of the Humber, the states bearing names also found in
Belgic Gaul are located in southern England, south of the Thames and
the Bristol Channel. One of these, and the most extensive, bears the
general name Belgae, which certainly does not suggest that the
remainder of the population was also Belgic. Now the _fere omnes_,
"nearly all," in Cæsar's statement cannot refer to such a small
minority of the states of Britain. Therefore, either Cæsar was grossly
in error, in which case there is not much to be built on his whole
statement, or, if he stated the truth, which is much more likely, then
there were Belgic settlements on the British seaboard in his time
which had lost their identity and passed into insignificance a century
later. This I take to be true, for it will be seen that there were
also Belgic settlements on the Irish coast after Cæsar's time and that
as states they had disappeared a few centuries later. It is indeed
quite possible that the Belgae so named, in southern England,
consisted of a collection of colonies from various states of Belgic
Gaul, whose names were preserved in Cæsar's time, but not one of which
was sufficiently populous or otherwise considerable to be worth naming
by later writers. There may have been similar Belgic colonies on other
parts of the southern and eastern seaboard of Britain, none of them
considerable enough to be reckoned as a state. At all events, I submit
that Cæsar's statement, far from justifying the assumption of a Belgic
conquest on a grand scale, comprising the greater part of Celtic
Britain, is rather contrary to that assumption; also, that it cannot
reasonably be taken to refer to settlements made in Britain at the
close of the Bronze Age three or four centuries before Cæsar's time.
I have referred to the existence at one time of Celto-Germanic
settlements on the coast of Ireland. The authority on the point is
Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished about A.D. 150. In the
south-eastern angle of Ireland, the region of Wexford, he places a
population named Brigantes. There was a very extensive state of this
name in the north of Roman Britain. Its territory extended across the
country from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. Whether the Brigantes
were or were not Belgic colonists in Britain and Ireland, I find no
means to determine. North of the Brigantes, on the Leinster coast,
Ptolemy locates the Manapii. It can hardly be doubted that these were
a Belgic people, a branch of the Menapii,[2] whose territory on the
Continent lay in parts of the countries now called Belgium and
Holland. North of the Manapii on the Leinster coast, Ptolemy places
the Cauci. The topography of Ireland from the time of Saint Patrick
onward is very copious and minute, but no trace has been discovered in
it of these three peoples in the location ascribed to them by
Ptolemy. It seems to me possible that the Manapii may be represented
in later times by a scattered people called the Monaigh or Manaigh.
Some of these dwelt in eastern Ulster, near Belfast. Another branch of
them dwelt in the west of Ulster, and their name is preserved in that
of the county Fermanagh. It is interesting to note that the Irish
genealogists derive the origin of both from Leinster. The only trace
known to me in Irish tradition of a people similarly named on the
south-eastern seaboard is found in the name of Forgall Monach, the
father of Emer who was wife of Cú Chulainn. Who were the Cauci? Their
name, in the Germanic form Chauci, was that of a people of the German
seaboard bordering on the North Sea, who are described in Smith's
_Ancient Geography_ as "skilful navigators and much addicted to
piracy." Tacitus praises them for their love of justice and says that,
though ready for war, they do not provoke war. It must be remembered,
however, that Tacitus was an extreme "pro-German." Elsewhere, he tells
of incursions made by them against neighbouring peoples. We find,
then, two peoples, the Menapii and the Chauci, on the Belgic and
German shores of the North Sea, and also on the Leinster shores of the
Irish Sea; and this shows that in Ireland as well as in Britain there
were Celto-Germanic settlements about the beginning of the Christian
era.
[Footnote 2: The syllables _en_ and _an_ are found interchangeable in
many Celtic words, perhaps varying according to dialect.]
Cæsar is the earliest known writer to give the name Brittania to the
island of Britain and the name Brittani to its people. In earlier
writings the name of the island is Albion. In Cæsar's term Brittani,
there seems to be a confusion of two existing names, one Brittani, the
name of a small local population, the other Pretani which is
recognised to be a British and probably Gaulish equivalent of the
Irish name for the Picts, Cruithin, more anciently Qreteni. Cæsar
fixed the name Brittani in Latin usage, but the form Pretanoi
continued after his time to be used by Greek writers. Polybius and
Ptolemy apply the adjective Pretanic to the two islands, and a still
later geographical tract in Greek says, "the Pretanic islands are two
in number one called Albion and the other Ierne." The Pretanic islands
means the Pictish islands, and this name for them must have been taken
from the Gauls. It points to a time before the Celtic occupation, when
the Pretani or Picts were still regarded as the principal people of
both islands. Here we have another indication of the relatively late
period of the Celtic occupation. Cæsar learned that the natives of
Britain had some curious marital customs which he did not observe
among the Gauls, including the Belgae, on the Continent. A later
writer, Solinus, in whose time the customs of the Britons were more
intimately known to the Romans, ascribes a similar custom, not to the
Britons but to the inhabitants of the Hebrides. Both accounts are
based on a well-established fact, recorded also in Irish writings, the
custom of matriarchy which was peculiar to the Picts. Cæsar's
statement is readily explained, if we understand that the Gauls, from
whom his information was likely to have been derived, still spoke of
Britain and Ireland as the Pictish islands, and regarded this social
custom, which was foreign to them, as a Pictish custom. In the time of
Solinus, the Romans knew that the Picts were limited to the northern
parts of Britain, and the story is accordingly told of the people of
the Hebrides. If a custom peculiar to the Picts was spoken of in
Cæsar's time as common to the inhabitants of Britain, and if Britain
and Ireland were then still regarded in Gaul as Pictish islands, I
suggest that this was because the Celts of Gaul did not look upon the
two islands as having been mainly occupied from any remote period by a
people akin to themselves.
The conclusions which I wish to draw in this lecture are: that neither
Britain nor Ireland was colonised by the Celts until the Late Celtic
period, corresponding to the period which followed the Bronze Age in
these countries; that the Belgic or Celto-Germanic settlements were of
still later date, and extended to Ireland as well as Britain; that the
Belgic settlements in England were not so widespread as they are
represented in modern British writers; and that the distinction
between the ancient Gaels and Britons does not correspond to the
distinction between the Celtae and Belgae of Gaul in Cæsar's time.