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THE
ETHNOLOGY
OF
THE BRITISH COLONIES
AND
DEPENDENCIES.
BY
R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER TO THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK,
ETC. ETC.
[Device]
LONDON:
JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.
M.DCCC.LI.
LONDON:
Printed by SAMUEL BENTLEY and CO.,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
DEPENDENCIES IN EUROPE.
PAGE
Heligoland and the Frisians.--Gibraltar and the Spanish Stock.--
Malta.--The Ionian Islands.--The Channel Islands. 1
CHAPTER II.
DEPENDENCIES IN AFRICA.
The Gambia Settlements.--Sierra Leone.--The Gold Coast.--The
Cape.--The Mauritius.--The Negroes of America. 34
CHAPTER III.
BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES IN ASIA.
Aden.--The Mongolian Variety.--The Monosyllabic Languages.--Hong
Kong.--The Tenasserim Provinces; Maulmein, Ye, Tavoy, Tenasserim,
the Mergui Archipelago.--The Môn, Siamese, Avans, Kariens, and
Silong.--Arakhan.--Mugs, Khyens.--Chittagong, Tippera, and
Sylhet.--Kuki.--Kasia.--Cachars.--Assam.--Nagas.--Singpho.--Jili.
--Khamti.--Mishimi.--Abors and Bor-Abors.--Dufla.--Aka.--Muttucks
and Miri, and other Tribes of the Valley of Assam.--The Garo.--
Classification.--Mr. Brown's Tables.--The Bodo.--Dhimal.--Kocch.
--Lepchas of Sikkim.--Rawat of Kumaon.--Polyandria.--The Tamulian
Populations.--Rajmahali Mountaineers.--Kúlis, Khonds, Goands,
Chenchwars.--Tudas, &c.--Bhils.--Waralis.--The Tamul, Telinga,
Kanara, and Malayalam Languages. 92
CHAPTER IV.
The Sanskrit Language.--Its Relations to certain Modern Languages
of India; to the Slavonic and Lithuanic of Europe.--Inferences.--
Brahminism of the Puranas.--Of the Institutes of Menu.--Extract.
--Of the Vedas.--Extract.--Inferences.--The Hindús.--Sikhs.--
Biluchi.--Afghans.--Wandering Tribes.--Miscellaneous Populations.
--Ceylon.--Buddhism.--Devil-worship.--Vaddahs. 150
CHAPTER V.
British Dependencies in the Malayan Peninsula.--The Oceanic Stock
and its Divisions.--The Malay, Semang, and Dyak Types.--The Orang
Binua.--Jakuns.--The Biduanda Kallang.--The Orang Sletar.--The
Sarawak Tribes.--The New Zealanders.--The Australians.--The
Tasmanians. 203
CHAPTER VI.
DEPENDENCIES IN AMERICA.
The Athabaskans of the Hudson's Bay Country.--The Algonkin Stock.
--The Iroquois.--The Sioux.--Assineboins.--The Eskimo.--The
Kolúch.--The Nehanni.--Digothi.--The Atsina.--Indians of British
Oregon, Quadra's and Vancouver's Island.--Haidah.--Chimsheyan.--
Billichula.--Hailtsa.--Nutka.--Atna.--Kitunaha Indians.--
Particular Algonkin Tribes.--The Nascopi.--The Bethuck.--Numerals
from Fitz-Hugh Sound.--The Moskito Indians.--South American
Indians of British Guiana.--Caribs.--Warows.--Wapisianas.--
Tarumas.--Caribs of St. Vincent.--Trinidad. 224
PREFACE.
The following pages represent a Course of Six Lectures delivered at the
Royal Institution, Manchester, in the months of February and March of
the present year; the matter being now laid before the public in a
somewhat fuller and more systematic form than was compatible with the
original delivery.
ETHNOLOGY
OF
THE BRITISH DEPENDENCIES.
CHAPTER I.
DEPENDENCIES IN EUROPE.
HELIGOLAND AND THE FRISIANS.--GIBRALTAR AND THE SPANISH
STOCK.--MALTA.--THE IONIAN ISLANDS.--THE CHANNEL ISLANDS.
_Heligoland._--We learn from a passage in the _Germania_ of Tacitus,
that certain tribes agreed with each other in the worship of a goddess
who was revered as _Earth the Mother_; that a sacred grove, in a sacred
island, was dedicated to her; and that, in that grove, there stood a
holy wagon, covered with a pall, and touched by the priest only. The
goddess herself was drawn by heifers; and as long as she vouchsafed her
presence among men, there was joy, and feasts, and hospitality; and
peace amongst otherwise fierce tribes instead of war and violence. After
a time, however, the goddess withdrew herself to her secret
temple--satiated with the converse of mankind; and then the wagon, the
pall, and the deity herself were bathed in the holy lake. The
administrant slaves were sucked up by its waters. There was terror and
there was ignorance; the reality being revealed to those alone who thus
suddenly passed from life to death.
Now we know, by name at least, five of the tribes who are thus connected
by a common worship--mysterious and obscure as it is. They are the
Reudigni, the Aviones, the Eudoses, the Suardones, and the Nuithones.
Two others we know by something more than name--the Varini and the
Langobardi.
The eighth is our own parent stock--the _Angli_.
Such is one of the earliest notices of the old creed of our German
forefathers; and, fragmentary and indefinite as it is, it is one of the
fullest which has reached us. I subjoin the original text, premising
that, instead of _Herthum_, certain MSS. read _Nerthum_.
"----Langobardos paucitas nobilitat: plurimis ac valentissimis
nationibus cincti, non per obsequium sed pr[oe]liis et periclitando tuti
sunt. Reudigni deinde, et Aviones, et _Angli_, et Varini, et Eudoses, et
Suardones, et Nuithones, fluminibus aut silvis muniuntur: nec quidquam
notabile in singulis, nisi quod in commune Herthum, id est, Terram
matrem colunt, eamque intervenire rebus hominum, invehi populis,
arbitrantur. Est in insula Oceani Castum nemus, dicatumque in eo
vehiculum, veste contectum, attingere uni sacerdoti concessum. Is adesse
penetrali deam intelligit, vectamque bobus feminis multâ cum veneratione
prosequitur. Læti tunc dies, festa loca, quæcumque adventu hospitioque
dignatur. Non bella ineunt, non arma sumunt, clausum omne ferrum; pax et
quies tunc tantùm nota, tunc tantùm amata, donec idem sacerdos satiatam
conversatione mortalium deam templo reddat; mox vehiculum et vestes, et,
si credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant,
quos statim idem lacus haurit. Arcanus hinc terror, sanctaque
ignorantia, quid sit id, quod tantùm perituri vident."--"De Moribus
Germanorum," 40.
What connects the passage with the ethnology of Heligoland? Heligoland
is, probably, the _island of the Holy Grove_. Its present name indicates
this--_the holy land_. Its position in the main sea, or _Ocean_, does
the same. So does its vicinity to the country of Germans.
At the same time it must not be concealed from the reader that the Isle
of Rugen, off the coast of Pomerania, has its claims. It is an
island--but not an island of the _Ocean_. It is full of religious
remains--but those remains are _Slavonic_ rather than _German_.
I believe, for my own part, that the seat of the worship of _Earth the
Mother_, was the island which we are now considering.
In respect to its inhabitants, it must serve as a slight text for a long
commentary. A population of about two thousand fishers; characterized,
like the ancient Venetians, by an utter absence of horses, mules,
ponies, asses, carts, wagons, or any of the ordinary applications of
animal power to the purposes of locomotion, confined to a small rock,
and but little interrupted with foreign elements, is, if considered in
respect to itself alone, no great subject for either the ethnologist or
the geographer. But what if its relations to the population of the
continent be remarkable? What if the source of its population be other
than that which, from the occupants of the nearest portion of the
continent, we are prepared to expect? In this case, the narrow area of
an isolated rock assumes an importance which its magnitude would never
have created.
The nearest part of the opposite continent is German--Cuxhaven, Bremen,
and Hamburg, being all German towns. And what the towns are the country
is also--or nearly so. It is German--which Heligoland is _not_.
The Heligolanders are no Germans, but _Frisians_. I have lying before me
the Heligoland version of _God save the Queen_. A Dutchman would
understand this, easier than a Low German, a Low German easier than an
Englishman, and (I _think_) an Englishman easier than a German of
Bavaria. The same applies to another sample of the Heligoland muse--_the
contented Heligolander's wife_ (_Dii tofreden Hjelgelünnerin_), a pretty
little song in Hettema's collection of Frisian poems; with which,
however, the native literature ends. There is plenty of Frisian verse in
general; but little enough of the particular Frisian of Heligoland.
A difference like that between the Frisians of Heligoland and the
Germans of Hanover, is always suggestive of an ethnological alternative;
since it is a general rule, supported both by induction and common
sense, that, except under certain modifying circumstances, islands
derive their inhabitants from the nearest part of the nearest continent.
When, however, the populations differ, one of two views has to be taken.
Either some more distant point than the one which geographical proximity
suggests has supplied the original occupants, or a change has taken
place on the part of one or both of the populations since the period of
the original migration.
Which has been the case here? The latter. The present Germans of the
coast between the Elbe and Weser are not the Germans who peopled
Heligoland, nor yet the descendants of them. Allied to them they are;
inasmuch as Germany is a wide country, and German a comprehensive term;
but they are not the same. The two peoples, though like, are different.
Of what sort, then, were the men and women that the present Germans of
the Oldenburg and Hanoverian coast have displaced and superseded? Let us
investigate. Whoever rises from the perusal of those numerous notices of
the ancient Germans which we find in the classical writers, to the usual
tour of Rhenish Germany, will find a notable contrast between the
natives of that region as they _were_ and as they _are_. His mind may be
full of their _golden_ hair, expecting to find it _flaxen_ at least.
Blue and grey eyes, too, he will expect to preponderate over the black
and hazel. This is what he will have read about, and what he will _not_
find--at least along the routine lines of travel. As little will there
be of massive muscularity in the limbs, and height in the stature. Has
the type changed, or have the old records been inaccurate? Has the wrong
part of Germany been described? or has the contrast between the Goth and
the Italian engendered an exaggeration of the differences? It is no part
of the present treatise to enter upon this question. It is enough to
indicate the difference between the actual German of the greater part of
Germany in respect to the colour of his hair, eyes, and skin, and the
epithets of the classical writers.
But all is not bare from Dan to Beersheba. The German of the old
Germanic type is to be found if sought for. His locality, however, is
away from the more frequented parts of his country. Still it is the part
which Tacitus knew best, and which he more especially described. This is
the parts on the Lower rather than the Upper Rhine; and it is the parts
about the Ems and Weser rather than those of the Rhine at all--sacred as
is this latter stream to the patriotism of the Prussian and Suabian. It
is Lower rather than Upper Germany, Holland rather than Germany at all,
and Friesland rather than any of the other Dutch provinces. It is
Westphalia, and Oldenburg, as much, perhaps, as Friesland. The tract
thus identified extends far into the Cimbric Peninsula,--so that the
Jutlander, though a Dane in tongue, is a Low German in appearance.
The preceding observations are by no means the present writer's, who has
no wish to be responsible for the apparent paradox that the _Germans in
Germany are not Germanic_. It is little more than a repetition of one of
Prichard's,[1] in which he is supported by both Niebuhr and the
Chevalier Bunsen. The former expressly states that the yellow or red
hair, blue eyes, and light complexion has now become uncommon, whilst
the latter has "often looked in vain for the auburn or golden locks and
the light cerulean eyes of the old Germans, and never verified the
picture given by the ancients of his countrymen, till he visited
Scandinavia; there he found himself surrounded by the Germans of
Tacitus."
For _Scandinavia_, I would simply substitute the _fen districts of
Friesland, Oldenburg, Hanover, and Holstein_--all of them the old area
of the Frisian.
Such is the physiognomy. What are the other peculiarities of the
Frisian? His language, his distribution, his history.
The Frisian of Friesland, is not the Dutch of Holland; nor yet a mere
provincial dialect of it. Instead of the infinitive moods and plural
numbers ending in -_n_ as in Holland, the former end in -_a_, the latter
in -_ar_. And so they did when the language was first reduced to
writing,--which it has been for nearly a thousand years. So they did
when the laws of the Old Frisian republic were composed, and when the
so-called _Old_ Frisian was the language of the country. So they did in
the sixteenth century, when the popular poet, Gysbert Japicx, wrote in
the _Middle_ Frisian; and so they do now--when, under the auspices of
Postumus and Hettema, we have Frisian translations of Shakespeare's "As
You Like it," "Julius Cæsar," and "Cymbeline."
Now the oldest Frisian is older than the oldest Dutch; in other words,
of the two languages it was the former which was first reduced to
writing. Yet the doctrine that it is the mother-tongue of the Dutch, is
as inaccurate as the opposite notion of its being a mere provincial
dialect. I state this, because I doubt whether the Dutch forms in -_n_,
could well be evolved out of the Frisian in -_r_, or -_a_. The -_n_
belongs to the older form,--which at one time was common to both
languages, but which in the Frisian became omitted as early as the tenth
century; whereas, in the Dutch, it remains up to the present day.
If the Frisian differ from the Dutch, it differs still more from the
proper Low German dialects of Westphalia, Oldenburg, and Holstein; all
of which have the differential characteristics of the Dutch in a greater
degree than the Dutch itself.
The closest likeness to the Frisian has ceased to exist as a language.
It has disappeared on the Continent. It has changed in the island which
adopted it. That island is Great Britain.
No existing nation, as tested by its language, is so near the Angle of
England as the Frisian of Friesland. This, to the Englishman, is the
great element of its interest.
The history of the Frisian Germans must begin with their present
distribution. They constitute the present agricultural population of the
province of Friesland; so that if Dutch be the language of the towns, it
is Frisian which we find in the villages and lone farm-houses. And this
is the case with that remarkable series of islands which runs like a row
of breakwaters from the Helder to the Weser, and serves as a front to
the continent behind them. Such are Ameland, Terschelling, Wangeroog,
and the others--each with its dialect or sub-dialect.
But beyond this, the continuity of the range of language is broken.
Frisian is _not_ the present dialect of Groningen. Nor yet of Oldenburg
generally--though in one or two of the fenniest villages of that duchy a
remnant of it still continues to be spoken; and is known to philologists
and antiquarians as the _Saterland_ dialect.
It was spoken in parts of East Friesland as late as the middle of the
last century--but only in parts; the Low German, or Platt-Deutsch, being
the current tongue of the districts around.
It is spoken--as already stated--in Heligoland.
And, lastly, it is spoken in an isolated locality as far north as the
Duchy of Sleswick, in the neighbourhood of Husum and Bredsted.
It was these Frisians of Sleswick who alone, during the late struggle of
Denmark against Germany, looked upon the contest with the same
indifference as the frogs viewed the battles of the oxen. They were not
Germans to favour the aggressors from the South, nor Danes to feel the
patriotism of the Northmen. They were neither one nor the other--simply
Frisians, members of an isolated and disconnected brotherhood.
The epithet _free_ originated with the Frisians of Friesland Proper, and
it has adhered to them. With their language they have preserved many of
their old laws and privileges, and from first to last, have always
contrived that the authority of the sovereigns of the Netherlands should
sit lightly on them.
Nevertheless, they are a broken and disjointed population; inasmuch, as
the natural inference from their present distribution is the doctrine
that, at some earlier period, they were spread over the whole of the
sea-coast from Holland to Jutland, in other words, that they were the
oldest inhabitants of Friesland, Oldenburg, Lower Hanover, and Holstein.
If so, they must have been the _Frisii_ of Tacitus. No one doubts this.
They must also have been the _Chauci_ of that writer, the German form of
whose names, as we know from the oldest Anglo-Saxon poems, was _Hocing_.
This is not so universally admitted; nevertheless, it is difficult to
say who the Chauci were if they were not Frisians, or why we find
Frisians to the north of the Elbe, unless the population was at one time
continuous.
When was this continuity disturbed? From the earliest times the
sea-coast of Germany seems to have been Frisian, and from the earliest
times the tribes of the interior seem to have moved from the inland
country towards the sea. Their faces were turned towards Britain; or, if
not towards Britain, towards France, or the Baltic. I believe, then,
that as early as 100 B.C. the displacement of some of the occupants of
the Frisian area had begun; this being an inference from the statement
of Cæsar, that the Batavians of Holland were, in his own time,
considered to have been an immigrant population. From these Batavians
have come the present Dutch, and as the present Dutch differ from the
Frisians of A.D. 1851, so did their respective great ancestors in B.C.
100--there, or thereabouts. But the encroachment of the Dutch upon the
Frisian was but slow. The map tells us this. Just as in some parts of
Great Britain we have _Shiptons_ and _Charltons_, whereas in others the
form is _Skipton_ and _Carlton_; just as in Scotland they talk of the
_kirk_, and in England of the _church_;[2] and just as such differences
are explained by the difference of dialect on the part of the original
occupants, so do we see in Holland that certain places have the names in
a Dutch, and others in a Frisian form. The Dutch compounds of _man_ are
like the English, and end in -_n_. The Frisians never end so. They drop
the consonant, and end in -_a_; as _Hettema_, _Halberts-ma_, &c.
Again--all three languages--English, Dutch, and Frisian--have numerous
compounds of the word _hám_=_home_, as _Threekingham_, _Eastham_,
_Petersham_, &c. In English the form is what we have just seen. In
Holland the termination is -_hem_, as in _Arn-hem_, _Berg-hem_. In
Frisian the vowel is _u_, and the _h_ is omitted altogether, _e.g._,
_Dokk-um_, _Borst-um_, &c.
Bearing this in mind, we may take up a map of the Netherlands. Nine
places out of ten in Friesland end in -_um_, and none in -_hem_. In
Groningen the proportion is less; and in Guelderland and Overijssel, it
is less still. Nevertheless, as far south as the Maas, and in parts of
the true Dutch Netherlands, where no approach to the Frisian language
can now be discovered, a certain per-centage of Frisian forms for
geographical localities occurs.[3]
The remainder of the displacement of the Frisians was, most probably,
effected by the introduction of the Low Germans of the empire of
Charlemagne, into the present countries of Oldenburg and Hanover; and I
believe that the same series of conquests, which then broke up the
speakers of the Frisian, annihilated the Germanic representatives of the
Anglo-Saxons of England; since it is an undeniable fact that of the
numerous dialects of the country called Lower Saxony, all (with the
exception of the Frisian) are forms of the Platt-Deutsch, and none of
them descendants of the Anglo-Saxon. Hence, as far as the language
represents the descent, whatever we Anglo-Saxons may be in Great
Britain, America, Hindostan, Australia, New Zealand, or Africa, we are
the least of our kith and kin in Germany. And we can afford to be so.
Otherwise, if we were a petty people, and given to ethnological
sentimentality, we might talk about the Franks of Charlemagne, as the
Celts talk of us; for, without doubt, the same Franks either
exterminated or denationalized us in the land of our birth, and
displaced the language of Alfred and Ælfric in the country upon which it
first reflected a literature.
There are no absolute descendants of the ancestors of the English in
their ancestral country of Germany; the Germans that eliminated them
being but step-brothers at best. But there is something of the sort. The
conquest that destroyed the Angles, broke up the Frisians. Each shared
each other's ruin. This gives the common bond of misfortune. But there
is more than this. It is quite safe to say that the Saxons and
Frisians[4] were closely--_very_ closely--connected in respect to all
the great elements of ethnological affinity--language, traditions,
geographical position, history. Nor is this confined to mere
generalities. The opinion, first, I believe, indicated by Archbishop
Usher, and recommended to further consideration by Mr. Kemble, that the
Frisians took an important part in the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Great
Britain is gaining ground. True, indeed, it is that the current texts
from Beda and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle make no mention of them. They
speak only of Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. And true it is, that no
provincial dialect has been discovered in England which stands in the
same contrast to the languages of the parts about it, as the Frisian
does to the Dutch and Low German. Yet it is also true that, according to
some traditions, Hengist was a Frisian hero. And it is equally true
that, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, we find more than one incidental
mention of Frisians in England--their presence being noticed as a matter
of course, and without any reference to their introduction. This is
shown in the following extract:--"That same year, the armies from among
the East-Anglians, and from among the North-Humbrians, harassed the land
of the West-Saxons chiefly, most of all by their _æscs_, which they had
built many years before. Then King Alfred commanded long ships to be
built to oppose the æscs; they were full-nigh twice as long as the
others; some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were both swifter
and steadier, and also higher than the others. They were shapen neither
like the Frisian nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him that they
would be most efficient. Then some time in the same year, there came six
ships to Wight, and there did much harm, as well as in Devon, and
elsewhere along the sea-coast. Then the king commanded nine of the new
ships to go thither, and they obstructed their passage from the port
towards the outer sea. Then went they with three of their ships out
against them; and three lay in the upper part of the port in the dry;
the men were gone from them ashore. Then took they two of the three
ships at the outer part of the port, and killed the men, and the other
ship escaped; in that also the men were killed except five; they got
away because the other ships were aground. They also were aground very
disadvantageously, three lay aground on that side of the deep on which
the Danish ships were aground, and all the rest upon the other side, so
that no one of them could get to the others. But when the water had
ebbed many furlongs from the ships, the Danish men went from their three
ships to the other three which were left by the tide on their side, and
then they there fought against them. There was slain Lucumon the king's
reeve, and Wulfheard the Frisian, and Æbbe the Frisian, and Æthelhere
the Frisian, and Æthelferth the king's _geneat_, and of all the men,
Frisians and English, seventy-two; and of the Danish men one hundred and
twenty."
Lastly, we have the evidence of Procopius that "three numerous nations
inhabit Britain,--the Angles, the Frisians, and the Britons."[5]
Whatever interpretation we may put upon the preceding extracts, it is
certain that the Frisians are the nearest German representatives of our
Germanic ancestors; whilst it is not uninteresting to find that the
little island of Heligoland, is the only part of the British Empire
where the ethnological and political relations coincide.
_Gibraltar._--This isolated possession serves as a text for the
ethnology of Spain; and there is no country wherein the investigation is
more difficult.
It is difficult, if we look at the analysis of the present population,
and attempt to ascertain the proportion of its different ingredients.
There is Moorish blood, and there is Gothic, Roman, and Ph[oe]nician;
some little Greek, and, older than any, the primitive and original
Iberic. Perhaps, too, there is a Celtic element,--at least such is the
inference from the term _Celtiberian_. Yet it is doubtful whether it be
a true one; and, even if it be, there still stands over the question
whether the _Celtic_ or the _Iberic_ element be the older.
When this is settled, the hardest problem of all remains behind; _viz._,
the ethnological position of the Iberians. What they were, in
themselves, we partially know from history; and what their descendants
are we know also from their language. But we only know them as an
isolated branch of the human species. Their _relation_ to the
neighbouring families is a mystery. Reasons may be given for connecting
them with the Celts of Gaul; reasons for connecting them with the
Africans of the other side of the Straits; and reasons for connecting
them with tribes and families so distant in place, and so different in
manners as the Finns of Finland, and the Laps of Lapland. Nay
more,--affinities have been found between their language and the Hebrew,
Arabic, and Syriac; between it and the Georgian; between it and half the
tongues of the Old World. Even in the forms of speech of America,
_analogies_ have been either found or fancied.
Be this, however, as it may, the oldest inhabitants of the Spanish
peninsula were the different tribes of the Iberians proper, and the
Celtiberians; the first being the most easily disposed of. They it was,
whose country was partially colonized by Ph[oe]nician colonists; either
directly from Tyre and Sidon, or indirectly from Carthage. They it was
who, at a somewhat later period, came in contact with the Greeks of
Marseilles and their own town of _Emporia_. They it was who could not
fail to receive some intermixture of African blood; whether it were from
Africans crossing over on their own account, or from the Libyans,
Gætulians, and Mauritanians of the Carthaginian levies.
And now the great western peninsula becomes the battle-ground for Rome
and Carthage; the theatre of the Scipios on the one side, and the great
family of the Barcas on the other. On Iberian ground does Hannibal swear
his deadly and undying enmity to Rome. At this time, the numerous
primitive tribes of Spain may boast a civilization equal to that of the
most favoured spots of the earth,--Greece, and the parts between the
Nile, the Euphrates and the Mediterranean alone being excepted. As
tested by their agricultural mode of life, their commercial and mining
industry, their susceptibility of discipline as soldiers, and, above
all, by the size and number of their cities, the Iberian of Spain is on
the same level with the Celt of Gaul, and the Celt of Gaul on that of
the Italian of Italy,--_i.e._, _as far as the civilization of the latter
is his own, and not of Greek origin_. But this is a point of European
rather than Spanish ethnology.
That the obstinate spirit of resistance to organized armies by means of
a _guerilla_ warfare, the savage patriotism which suggests such
expressions as _war even to the knife_, and the endurance behind stone
walls, which characterizes the modern Spaniards, is foreshadowed in the
times of their earliest history, has often been remarked, and that
truly. Numantia is an early Saragossa, Saragossa a modern Numantia.
Viriathus has had innumerable counterparts. Where the indomitable
Cantabrian held out against the power of Rome, the Biscayan of the year
1851 adheres to his privileges and his language; and what the Cantabrian
was to the Roman, the Asturian was to the Moor. Both trusted their
freedom to their impracticable mountains and stubborn spirits--and kept
it accordingly. It is an easy matter to refer the peculiarities of the
Spanish character to the infusion of Oriental blood; and with some of
them it may be the case. But with many of them, the reference is a false
one. Half the Spanish character was Iberic and Lusitanian before either
Jew or Saracen had seen the Rock of Gibraltar.
Of the early Spanish religion, we know but little. A remarkable passage
in Strabo speaks to their literature. They had an _alphabet_. This is
known from coins and inscriptions. And it was of foreign origin--Greek
or Ph[oe]nician. This nothing but the most inconsiderate and uncritical
patriotism can deny. Denied, however, it has been; and the indigenous
and independent evolution of an alphabet has been claimed; the
particular tribe to which it has more especially been ascribed being the
_Turdetani_. These--and the passage I am about to quote is the passage
of Strabo just alluded to--are "put forward as the wisest of the Iberi,
and they have the use of letters; and they have records of ancient
history, and poems, and metrical laws for six thousand years--as they
say."[6]
Now, whatever may be the doubts implied by the last three words of this
extract, the evidence is to the effect that the old Iberians were a
lettered nation; the antiquity of their civilization being another
question. To modify our scepticism on the point, the text has been
tampered with, and it has been proposed to read _poems_ ({epôn}) instead
of years ({etôn}). The change, to be sure, is slight enough--that of a
single letter--from _p_ ({p}) to _t_ ({t}); nevertheless, as it is more
than cautious criticism will allow, the reading must stand as it is, and
the claim of the Turdetanians must be for a literature nearly as old as
the supposed age of the world in the current century,--a long date, and
a date which would be improbable, even if we divided it by twelve, and
rendered {etos} by _month_ instead of _year_. It denotes either some
shorter period (perhaps a day) or nothing at all.
So much for the Iberians; of which the Lusitanians of Portugal were a
branch; and of which there were several divisions and subdivisions
involving considerable varieties both of manners and language. In
respect to the latter there is the special evidence of Strabo that their
tongues and alphabets differed. And so did their mythologies. The
Callaici had the reputation of being _atheists_; whilst the Celtiberi
worshipped an anonymous God,[7] at the full of the moon, with feasts and
dances.
But who were the Celtiberi? I have already said that there were
difficulties upon this point. The name makes them a mixed people; half
Celt and half Iberic. If so, the French influence in the Spanish
Peninsula was as great in the time of Hannibal, as it was wished to be
in the time of Louis XIV.
With the exception of Niebuhr, the chief authorities have considered the
Iberi as the aborigines, and the Celts as emigrants from Gaul. To this,
however, Niebuhr took exceptions. He considered the warlike character of
the Iberians; and this made him unwilling to think that any invader from
the north had displaced them. And he considered the geographical
_distribution_ of the Celtiberi. This was not in the fertile plains nor
along the banks of fertilizing rivers, nor yet in the districts of the
golden corn and the precious wool of Hispania, but in the rougher
mountain tracts, in the quarters whereto an aboriginal inhabitant would
be more likely to retire, than an invading conqueror to covet, I admit
the difficulty implied in his objection; but I admit it only as a
_presumption_--against which there is a decided preponderance of
material facts.
In the first place, there are the oldest names of the geographical
localities throughout Spain. These, as shown by the well-known monograph
of Humboldt, are _not_ Celtic, and are _Iberic_.
In the next place, the Celtic frontier was by no means so near the
geographical boundary of the Peninsula as it is often supposed to have
been. Instead of the Celtic of Gaul reaching the Pyrenees, the Iberic of
Spain reached the Loire--so that the province of Aquitania, although
Gallic in politics, was Iberic in ethnology. This, again, is shown by
Humboldt.
For my own part, instead of discussing the relation of the Celts of
Celtiberia to the other inhabitants of Spain, I would open a new
question, and investigate the grounds upon which we believe in an
intermixture at all. Whatever respect we may pay to the statements of
the classical writers, the _name_ itself is not conclusive; since it
would be just as likely to be given from an approach on the part of an
Iberic population to the Celtic manners, or from the adoption of any
_supposed_ Celtic characteristic, as from absolute ethnological
intermixture. Like modern observers, the ancient writers were too fond
of gratuitously assuming an intermixture of blood for the explanation
of the results of common physical or social conditions. Hence--without
pressing my opinion on the reader--I confine myself to an expression of
doubt as to the existence of Celts amongst the Celtiberi _at all_.
But this only simplifies the question as to the ethnological position of
the Iberic variety of the human species. It does not even suggest an
answer. They were the aborigines of Spain. They are the ancestors of the
present Biscayans. Their tongue survives in the north-west provinces of
Spain, and in the north-east corner of France. It _has no recognized
affinity with any known tongue; and it has undeniable points of contrast
with all the languages of the countries around._
Yet it is only by means of the Basque language that the problem can be
attempted. The physical conformation of the still extant Iberians, has
nothing definitely characteristic about it. The ancient mythology has
died away. The tribes most immediately allied have ceased to be other
than unmixed. So the language alone remains--and that has yet to find
its interpreter.
An Iberic basis--Greek, Ph[oe]nician, and Mauritanian
intermixtures--possibly a Celtic element--Roman sufficient to change the
language through four-fifths of the Peninsula--Gothic blood introduced
by the followers of Euric--Arabian influences, second in importance to
those of Rome only--such is the analysis of ethnological elements of the
Spanish stock. The proportions, of course, differ in different parts of
the Peninsula, and, although they are nowhere ascertained, it is
reasonable to suppose that the Arab blood increases as we go southwards,
and the Gothic and Iberic as we approach the Pyrenees. This makes
Gibraltar the most Moorish part of Europe; and such I believe it to be.
_Malta._--When we have subtracted the English, Italians, Greeks, and
other nations of the Levant from the population of Malta, there still
remain the primitive islanders, with their peculiar language.
Now this language is a form of the Arabic; and, with the exception of
some of the dialects of Syria, it is the only instance of that language
in the mouth of a Christian population. So thoroughly are the language
and the religion of the Koran co-extensive.
At what period this tongue found its way to Malta is undetermined. As
compared with any of the present languages of the island it is
_ancient_. But it is not certain that, though old, it is the earliest.
Carthaginians may have preceded the Arabs; Greeks the Carthaginians;
and, possibly, Sicanians, or the earliest occupants of Sicily, the
Greeks. I am unable, however, to carry my reader beyond the simple fact
of the _language being Arabic_.
The only other Arabic dependency of Great Britain is Aden.[8]
_The Ionian Islands._--The reader may have remarked the peculiar
character of European ethnology. It consists chiefly in the _analysis_
of the component parts of particular populations; and this it
investigates so exclusively as to leave no room for the description of
manners, customs, physiognomy, and the like--paramount in importance as
these matters are when we come to the other quarters of the world. There
are two reasons for this difference. First--the peculiarities of the
European nations are by no means of the same extent and character with
those of the ruder families of mankind. A similar civilization, and a
similar religion, have effected a remarkable amount of uniformity; and,
hence, the differences are those that the historian deals with more
appropriately than the ethnologist. Secondly--such external and palpable
differences as exist are generally known and appreciated. The
_analysis_ of blood, or stock, which, partially, accounts for them, is
less completely understood.
Hence, in treating of the Maltese, there was no description of the
Arabic stock at all. All that was stated was a reason for believing that
the Maltese belonged to it. Such also, to a great degree, was the case
with the Gibraltar population, and the Heligolanders. And such will be
the case with the Ionian Islanders. It will not be thought necessary to
enlarge upon the Greeks; it will only be requisite to ask how far the
group in question is Grecian.
The very oldest population of the Ionian Islands I believe to have been
_barbarous_--a term which, in the present classical localities, is
convenient.
In the smaller islands, such as Ithaca and Zacynthus, the population had
become Hellenized at the time of the composition of the Homeric poems.
In Corcyra, on the other hand, the original barbarism lasted longer.
Such, at least, is the way in which I interpret the passages in the
Odyssey concerning the Phæacians (who were certainly not Greek), and the
later language of Thucydides respecting the relations of the Corinthian
colonies of Epidamnus, and Corcyra. The whole context leads to the
belief that, originally, the {apoikoi} were Greeks in contact with a
population which was _not_ Greek.
In respect to the stock to which these early and ante-Hellenic
islanders belonged, the presumption is in favour of its having been the
Illyrian; a stock known only in its probable remains--the Skipitar
(Albanians, or Arnaouts) of Albania.
Time, however, made them all equally Hellenic, a result which was,
probably, completed before the decline of Greek independence; since
which epoch there have been the following elements of intermixture:--
1. Albanian blood, from the opposite coast.
2. Slavonic, from Dalmatia.
3. Italian, from Italy.
4. Turk--I have no pretence to the minute ethnological knowledge which
would enable me even to guess at the proportions.
Upon the whole, however, I believe the Ionian islanders to be what their
language represents them--Greek. At the same time they are Greeks of an
exceedingly mixed blood.[9]
Again--of the foreign elements I imagine the Italian to be the chief.
This, however, is an impression rather than a matured opinion.
The Slavonic element, too, is likely to be considerable. The Byzantine
historians speak of numerous and permanent settlements, during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, both in Thessaly, and in the Morea;
statements which the frequency of Slavonic names for Greek geographical
localities confirms.[10] Neither, however, outweighs the undoubted
Hellenic character of the language, which is still the representative of
the great medium of the fathers of literature and philosophy.
_The Channel Islands._--As Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark, are no
parts of Great Britain, and are, nevertheless, European, I make a brief
mention of them; although they are neither colonies nor dependencies:
indeed, in strict history, Great Britain is a dependency of theirs.
They are _Norman_ rather than _French_, and the illustration of this
distinction, which will re-appear when we come to the Canadas--concludes
the chapter.
The _earliest_ population of France was twofold--Celtic for the north,
Iberic for the south.
Its _second_ population was Roman.
Its language is Roman--all that remains of the old tongues of the tribes
which Cæsar conquered being (1) certain words in the present French,
(2) the Breton of Brittany, which is closely akin to the Welsh Celtic,
and (3) the Basque dialects of Gascony, which is Iberic.
Now whether the old Gallic blood be as fully displaced by that of the
Roman conquerors, as the old Gallic language has been displaced by the
Latin is uncertain. It is only certain that the old and indigenous
elements of the French nation, however indeterminate in amount--were not
of a uniform character, _i.e._, neither wholly Celtic, nor wholly
Iberic; but Celtic for one part of the country, and Iberic for another.
The ancient tribes of Normandy were _Celtic_. Hence, when the third
element of the present Norman population was introduced, all that was
not Italian was Welsh--just as it was in Picardy and Orleans, and just
as it was _not_ in Gascony and Poitou. _There_ the old element was
Iberic.
The _third element_--just alluded to--was Germanic; Germanic of
different kinds, but chiefly Frank or Burgundian.
The _fourth_ great element was the Norse or Scandinavian; introduced by
the so-called _Sea-kings_ of Denmark and Norway in the ninth and tenth
centuries. These, as the empire of Charlemagne declined, insulted and
dismembered it. They converted Neustria in _Normandy_=_the country of
the Northmen_. The exact amount of their influence has not been
ascertained; nor is the investigation easy. The process, however, by
which we measured the original extent of the Frisian area is applicable
to that of the Northmen. There are Norse names for French localities. Of
these the most important are the compounds of -_tot_, -_fleur_, and
-_bec_; like Yve-_tot_, Har-_fleur_, and Caude-_bec_.
FRENCH. NORSE. ENGLISH.
-tot toft _village_.
-fleur flöt _stream_.
-bec beck _brook_.[11]
Names of places thus ending are almost exclusively limited to Normandy;
occurring, even there, most numerously within a few miles of either the
sea or the Seine.
Furthermore, there is a fresh element suggested by a term of the
"Notitia Utriusque Imperii," a document of the latter end of the fourth
century. This is _Litus Saxonicum per Britannias_, a tract extending
from the Wash to Portsmouth. Now the opposite shore of the continent was
a _litus Saxonicum_ also; within which lay Normandy. I believe that
these Saxons were part of the same branch of Germans which invaded
England; in other words, that portions of France, like portions of
England, were _Anglicized_; the two processes differing in respect to
their extent and duration. What was general and permanent on the
island, was partial and temporary on the continent. That there were
Saxons at Bayeux in the tenth century is asserted by express evidence.
Taking in the account the preceding invasions, and remembering that,
both from Germany and Italy, Normandy is one of the most distant of the
French provinces, we arrive at the following analysis.
The Channel Islanders are what the Normans are.
The Normans are Romanized Celts; the Roman element being somewhat less
than it is elsewhere.
The Frank and Burgundian elements are also less.
But a Saxon element is greater.
And a Norse element is pre-eminently Norman.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Natural History of Man," p. 197.
[2] The form in _c_ and _sk_ (_Skipton_ and _Carlton_) being of Danish,
whilst those in _ch_ and _sh_ are of Anglo-Saxon origin.--_See_
"Quarterly Review," No. CLXIV.
[3] The details of this investigation are given in full in the present
writer's "Taciti Germania with Ethnological notes," now in course of
publication.
[4] I include in this term the so-called old Saxons of Westphalia.
[5] The original passage is as follows:--"{Brittian de tên nêson ethnê
tria polyanthrôpotata echousi, basileus te heis autôn hekastô
ephestêken, onomata de keitai tois ethnesi toutois Angiloi te kai
Phrissones kai hoi tê nêsô homônymoi Brittônes. Tosautê de hê tônde tôn
ethnôn polyanthrôpia phainetai ousa hôste ana pan etos kata pollous
enthende metanistamenoi xyn gynaixi kai paisin es Phrangous
chôrousin.}"--Procop. B. G. iv. 20.
Reasons which have induced me to go farther than any previous writer in
respect to the importance of the Frisian element in the Anglo-Saxon
invasion, and to believe that instead of _Saxon_ being a native German
name for any portion of the Germanic population, it was only a Celtic
and Roman term for the Germans of the sea-coast, and (amongst these) for
the Frisians most especially, are given, at large, in my ethnological
edition of the "Germania of Tacitus."
[6] {Sophôtatoi d' exetazontai tôn Ibêrôn houtoi, kai grammatikê
chrôntai; kai tês palaias mnêmês echousi ta syngrammata, kai poiêmata
kai nomous emmetrous hexakischiliôn etôn, hôs phasi.}
[7] This was probably the case with the Callaici.
[8] The famous Knighthood of Malta--_without fear_, but (though,
perhaps, the best of its class) not _without reproach_, has no place
here. Its ethnology belongs to the different countries which it
dignified by its valour, or dishonoured by its profligacy.
[9] This I believe to have been the case with the ancient Greeks also;
though the proof would require an elaborate monograph.
[10] The two together have led to a doctrine which has been best
developed by Fallmerayer. It is this--_that the modern Greeks are
Sclavonians_. The Russian school are the chief believers of this. In the
few countries where ethnology is scientific rather than political, the
more moderate opinion of the modern Greeks being a mixed stock prevails.
[11] Or _beck_.