evidence of a northward movement to Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and
the fact that these Type B swords continue in the north an independent
development suggests that the party who carried them thither were not
engaged in a temporary raid. I am inclined to see in this movement
the arrival in the north of that band of Wiros, who introduced into
the Baltic region Teutonic speech and the legends and the cult of
Odin.[489] As we have seen Wiros had arrived there more than a thousand
years before, but these earlier invaders, I have suggested, had spoken
languages more akin to the Baltic group, and were, if my interpretation
of the facts is correct, the red-haired worshippers of Thor.[490]
Thus we get the three groups of people, forming the three classes
of serfs, farmers, and nobles, which are mentioned in Scandinavian
legend,[491] by the super-position of the sword-bearing Teutonic Wiros
upon the early group of Baltic-speaking Wiros, who had in their turn
mastered and enslaved the Mongoloid people responsible for the Arctic
culture.[492]
It was soon after 1300 /B.C./ that a small group from the Italic
zone, coming probably from Bosnia, passed south and then crossed
the Adriatic, landing a little south of Ancona at the mouth of the
Truentus. Passing up the valley of that river some settled at Batia
near its head waters, while others crossed the Apennines to the valley
of the Velinus and thence to Reatæ, which stood at its junction with
the Himella. Thence some passed south eastward to Lacus Fucinus and
others north-westward to Lacus Trasimenus. These, as I have endeavoured
to prove, were the Wiros who introduced into the peninsula the Latin
tongue and formed the essential Roman patrician _gentes_.
About the same time there were irruptions from the plain; the movements
were probably gradual and may have begun somewhat earlier, but direct
evidence of this phase is at present lacking. These people of the plain
advanced into Thrace, introducing there the Thracian tongue and the
worship of Ares; they dominated the aborigines, including the thrifty
lake-dwelling Pæonians, and made themselves masters of much of what
was afterwards known as Macedonia. Some of these tribes, notably the
Briges, crossed the Hellespont and introduced Phrygian speech into
Asia Minor, in the east of which it still survives as Armenian.
It was some straggling adventurers from this movement who about 1250
/B.C./ entered Thessaly, where, as we have seen, some Wiros had long
been settled. Some may have come from Thracian lands, some down the
Vardar valley, and some stragglers from the Latin group, perhaps, down
the Spercheus valley, having tarried awhile around Dodona. These were
the “Achæan” heroes, who seem to have made themselves masters of the
Mycenean city states, groaning under the rule of Minoan tyrants. A
generation later these joined others in attacking Egypt, and it was
their grandsons who, under the leadership of the king of men, sacked
the city of Priam.
The next movement came from the Celtic mountain zone. It was between
1200 and 1175 /B.C./ that the Celtic lords, accompanied by the bravest
of their henchmen, left the Celtic cradle, crossed the Rhine, and
passed through the Belfort gap into Gaul. By degrees they conquered the
whole of the country, though they made their mark less in Aquitaine and
Brittany. Others, passing in all probability down the Rhine, landed on
the east coast of Great Britain, and settled in the eastern counties
and in Wessex. It is too soon, as yet, to define the area which they
occupied, but the available evidence, derived from the swords and the
finger-tip ware, suggests the region south-east of the chalk scarp.
Later on a few of these passed across the densely-wooded Midland plain,
across Wales by the upper Severn valley and the Bala cleft, and reached
the gold fields of Ireland. It was some little time, however, before
they settled in any numbers in the land which still preserves their
language.
This seems to be all that we can as yet restore of the movements of the
Q Wiros, though there is a sequel to be added later; we must turn now
to the problem of the P speaking people. We have seen that about the
time that the Celts were leaving the mountain zone for the west, bands
of Wiros from the plain, passing through the Moravian gate, across
Galicia and Podolia, reached the rich valley of the Koban to the north
of the Caucasus mountains. Here they learned the use of iron from
their humble neighbours on the other side of the mountains, who were
perhaps the Chalybes, and made for themselves steel blades for their
swords. It was during their sojourn here that they must have mixed with
other Wiros who were still roaming the steppes of this region, and who
were almost certainly of Iranian speech, which was spoken in this area
in the time of Herodotus, and still survives among the Ossetes[493]
in the Caucasus mountains. They may, too, have come into contact and
intermarried with other folk, who were perhaps not Wiros. For some
reason, which I do not pretend to explain, their speech, which on their
arrival must have been allied to Thracian, changed its phonological
laws, and they acquired the habit of labialising the Qu of their
original tongue.
Rostovtzeff has suggested that these Koban Wiros were the
Cimmerians,[494] and since, as we have seen, these P speaking people
appear a few years later in Gaul, and again are found approaching,
if they do not actually reach, the peninsula of Jutland, it seems
reasonable to believe that the statement of Posidonius,[495] which has
received Ridgeway’s approval,[496] is correct, and that the Cimmerians
of Russia and of the west,[497] as well as the people who gave their
name to the Cimbric Chersonese are all one P speaking people, and
that we must include in their number the Brythonic Cymry of Britain,
in spite of what Rhys has written to the contrary.[498] Whether the
name was originally _com-brox_, _compatriots_, or not, I must leave to
philologists to determine, but if Rhys’ etymology is correct, these
compatriots were those who set out from the Koban to conquer the
greater part of Europe. If this be so the statement quoted by Pliny
from Lycophron that the Cimmerii were a people living around Lake
Avernus[499] may not be a poetic fable, as has been supposed, but may
show us that some of the Villa-nova invaders of Italy retained for a
time the common name which survives in Wales to-day. Thus I am assuming
that the words κιμμέριοι, κίμμεροι, Cimbri Cymry are all one, and
suggest the use of the term Kimri[500] for the whole group.
Herodotus tells us that the Russian Cimmerians built castles or
forts,[501] a custom which is found among the early iron age or
Hallstatt inhabitants of the mountain zone,[502] and reached
this country somewhat later in the form of Hill-top camps. Their
distribution has not yet been well worked out, but their date is
Hallstatt or sometimes later, and the available evidence from their
distribution in time and space suggests that they were the work of
different branches of the Kimri.
A large number of the Kimri, perhaps the greater part, remained in the
Koban region until the seventh century, when they were displaced by
incoming Scythian hordes, who appear to have been of mixed Iranian and
Mongol origin; then they overran Asia Minor as far as Sardis.[503] But
many of these Kimri left the steppe almost immediately after they had
developed their iron swords and settled in Thrace; later they moved up
the Danube valley as far, at least, as its junction with the Save. It
was not long before the bulk of them moved southwards, probably down
the Vardar valley, and about 1000 /B.C./ began the Dorian invasion of
Greece. These introduced into that country iron swords and a P tongue,
which, owing to their having mingled with Iranian neighbours in the
steppe, retained marked affinities with that group of languages,
especially in connection with weapons and other warlike materials.
The remainder divided, the larger group pushing up the Danube valley
towards Ulm and Sigmaringen where they adopted the Celtic speech
of their subjects, but labialising the Qs. The smaller group made
themselves masters of North Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, and like their
fellows adopted the language of the country, which was allied to Latin,
but with the usual changes.
It was the latter group which was the first to move, either across the
Adriatic or to the north-west and then over the Predil pass into the
Friuli. Though they introduced their culture among the Veneti they did
not supplant their language, but they pushed on across the Po valley,
destroying the Terramara settlements and dispersing their inhabitants
to Etruria, Latium and the region around Tarentum. They settled in
the plain to the north of the Apennines, with their headquarters at
Felsina or Bononia, and gradually conquered all the peninsula except
Etruria, the Greek colonies and the lands occupied by the Latin tribes.
It is doubtful whether these Kimri who invaded Italy were ever known
to themselves by one name, but to others they were summed up as Ombri
or Umbri. Later, as we have seen, one of their tribes, the Sabines,
issuing by night from Amiternum, displaced some of the Latin tribes
from the region around Reatæ, whence the dispossessed Latins departed
towards the mouth of the Tiber. Here some of them coalesced with
Terramara refugees, who had erected a dry _terramara_ on a hill-top
beside the river, and to this hill they gave the name of one of their
abandoned cities, Palatium, so that it became _mons palatinus_. Later,
when it had been freshly laid out and surrounded by a wall, it was
called Rome.
The Sabines, who had overrun much of the Latin territory, even as far
as the hill overlooking the Palatine, seem to have adopted the Latin
language, while retaining a few features of their original Umbrian
dialect. Soon afterwards some Kimri from Felsina seem to have made
themselves war lords over Etruria, and to have for a time extended the
Etruscan empire from the Alps to Pompeii, but being a small military
aristocracy in a land with an ancient and advanced culture, they failed
to impose their Wiro language upon the inhabitants.
But the larger group of Kimri had settled by the upper waters of the
Danube and had adopted with modifications the Celtic speech. About
900 /B.C./ disagreements arose between them and the Q speaking Gaelic
lords of the villages in the mountain zone, and no time was lost in
attacking these communities in Switzerland and Savoy, in burning the
pile-dwellings and expelling the inhabitants.
We must now take up again the tale of the bronze-using Q-speaking
Celts, the story of fresh Gaelic movements, but this time a story of
flight rather than of invasion. This was not a question only of Gaelic
lords, for the Alpine peasants, who doubtless spoke a Celtic dialect
and called themselves Celts, were also involved in this ruin. They fled
by divers routes to the north and the west. By the swords of Type G we
can trace their wanderings over Gaul, down the Rhone, the Loire and
the Seine. Others seem to have fled northwards to Schleswig, Jutland,
Sweden and even Finland, to escape their pursuers, while a large party
landed in England, mainly between the Thames and the Wash, and found
refuge with their relations who had settled on the open downs some
centuries before.
The former arrivals had been Nordic lords, with perhaps a few
half-breed retainers; the refugees were largely Alpine peasants,
unaccustomed to pastoral pursuits on the high downs, and more anxious
for water-meadows and arable patches by the margins of lakes and
rivers. Settlements were made by the banks of the Thames between London
and Richmond, and doubtless higher up the river. Lowlands were cleared
in Wessex in the Vale of Pewsey, such as the village at All Cannings,
and other settlements were made by lakes and marshes in South Wales.
In most parts of Gaul the Kimri followed the refugees, and drove them
from the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire into the hills. In the
Seine valley, however, the Sequani were left undisturbed and gave their
name to the river. Though no positive evidence has appeared, so far
as I know, there is reason for believing that many of these Gaelic
wanderers found refuge in south Brittany and La Vendée, and persisted
in their lake-dwelling culture. No pile-dwellings have been found in
these parts, so far as I am aware, yet I suspect their existence; but
perhaps the numerous islets in the Bay of Morbihan were a sufficiently
safe refuge for these poor folk.
The Kimric invasion of Gaul reached at first neither to the extreme
west nor to the north, for its main advance was down the Rhone valley
to the Midi. But there is evidence that small bands moved towards the
north-east, down the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle, and we can pick
up their traces again in Belgium.[504] So far direct archæological
evidence still further north fails us, at least in Hallstatt times,
though perhaps the Kimri did not cross the mouth of the Rhine until
they had adopted La Tène culture; but if, as I have suggested, we are
to consider the name Cimbri as a variant of Kimri, they must have
reached the peninsula of Jutland, to which they gave the name of the
Cimbric Chersonese. That they came within sight of the Baltic sea is
clear, for an old name for that sea, _Morimarusam_,[505] is Celtic.
If, however, Rhys is correct in considering the word Goidelic,[506] it
must have been given to the sea by the Gaelic refugees. In Jutland the
Kimri came into contact with the Teutones, descendants of the Wiros who
had carried northwards the Type B swords. Whether they fought them at
first is uncertain, but by the second century they had made an unholy
alliance with them to ravage the lands to the south, and they would
again have carried fire and sword throughout Europe had not their
operations been cut short in 102 /B.C./ at Aquæ Sextiæ by the Roman
army under Marius.
It was apparently in the fourth century, or a few years earlier, that
certain tribes of these Kimri, whether a southern branch of the Cimbri
or tribes living to the south-west of the chersonese in Frisia, Holland
or Belgium, is uncertain, began to move southwards and westwards.
These were the Galati, Galli and Belgæ. They began in various waves to
disturb southern Europe, and to harry the settled communities as far as
Asia Minor, where they survived for several centuries as Galatians.
It is not necessary for our purpose to trace in detail these movements,
except in so far as they affect our problem. In the second century,
or thereabouts, the Veneti, one of these tribes, who had taken to the
sea, sailed down the channel and settled at Vannes, at the head of the
Morbihan bay.
Their arrival seems to have disturbed the Gaelic lake-dwellers of
this region, for about this time we find people, whose culture show
Breton affinities, settling on either side of the Irish channel. In
the lake-villages of Glastonbury[507] and Meare we have evidence of
the arrival of these refugees, and similar evidence may be found in
Ireland, which received its first knowledge of iron and La Tène culture
about this time.[508] In Ireland these timid folk built their usual
lake-dwellings, and _crannogs_, in the lakes, though Macalister has
recently seen in these fortified habitations evidence of the arrival of
Gaelic conquerors, who thus defended themselves from the treachery of
their subjects, among whom they were very unpopular.[509] But, as we
have seen, the Gaelic war lords, with their bronze swords, had reached
Ireland nearly a thousand years before.
It was during one of these late Kimric movements that the Belgian
tribes began to cross the channel into Great Britain. It is doubtful,
at present, whether the introduction of the use of iron and La Tène
culture, which took place about 450 /B.C./, is to be attributed to
them, for there were probably many trading posts along the coast,
like the one excavated at Hengistbury Head,[510] which were in touch
with the continent and could have imported these wares. Some of these
settlements may even be earlier than the La Tène period; this is
suspected in the case of Hengistbury, and was certainly the case at
Eastbourne,[511] if the pottery found there recently really betokens a
trading post, and not the arrival of a small group of Gaelic refugees
from the further bank of the upper Rhine.
But these Belgic invaders were almost certainly responsible for the
hill-top camps, which in the south of England seem to be earlier than
200 /B.C./, though probably much later in the north and west. To them
we must also attribute the introduction of pedestal vases and other
types of pottery which come, undoubtedly, from the Belgic area on the
continent. Such Belgic movements continued until the first century, and
had only ceased shortly before the arrival of Julius Cæsar in northern
Gaul.
Thus the Kimri, or as we may now call them the Cymry, did not enter
England until about 300 /B.C./, and for a time seem to have limited
their settlements to the chalk lands. By degrees they spread to the
oolite ridge, but it is doubtful whether they had progressed farther
when Cæsar landed here. The dense Midland forest kept them back, and
they seem to have made no attempt to reach Ireland, or, until after
Cæsar’s time, to dispossess the Gaels of the Parret marshes. But early
in the Christian era civil wars occurred between the tribes on either
side of the Thames, which led eventually to Roman interference, and
it was during the campaign of Aulus Plautius and his successors that
dispossessed Cymric leaders, like Caractacus, fled with their followers
to the west, and introduced into Wales a Cymric or Brythonic speech,
the first Wiro dialect to be spoken regularly in the principality,
except along trade routes and in the small Gaelic settlements above
Cardiff.
/Chapter XV/
CONCLUSION
We have now traced in outline the history of Celtic peoples and Celtic
lands from the Wurmian glaciation to the Roman conquest of Britain, and
have cited as evidence the conclusions drawn from linguistic science
and an extensive array of data of an anthropological and archæological
character. Though most of the main conclusions arrived at have been
suggested before, many of them to be subsequently discarded as lacking
sufficient evidence, the main story of the Wiros and their wanderings,
as I have outlined it above, seems to be compatible with all the
positive information we possess, though it is in conflict, as I am well
aware, with many theories that have been built upon them.
My views will not, I feel sure, meet with ready acquiescence from
some Celtic scholars, especially from those who follow Zimmer and
Kuno Meyer. This school has for thirty years been engaged in proving
that there is no philological evidence for the existence of Goidelic
speech in England or Wales, except such as was introduced from Ireland
in the third or fourth century, /A.D./ I do not wish to dispute the
philological evidence, nor do I feel competent to do so. I am ready to
admit, at any rate for the sake of argument, that no such philological
evidence exists. But England has been overrun by Kimri, Romans and
Saxons, since the Gaels are believed to have come, and the absence of
such evidence is not surprising.
I would, however, point out that the absence of philological evidence
of their presence is not conclusive evidence of their absence. If
my equation of the bronze swords and the finger-tip pottery with Q
speaking people is correct, and the evidence from Italy and the Seine
valley seems incontrovertible, the Gaels not only came to England, but
settled there in considerable numbers, and even inhabited the southern
slopes of the Glamorgan hills. No absence of Goidelic elements in
British place-names is proof against such positive evidence. A few of
the Gaels may have reached Ireland from the mouth of the Loire, in fact
it seems probable that some such movement took place, though positive
archæological evidence from the French side is for the present lacking.
Lastly there is an idea prevalent in some quarters that at one time
there was in Europe a great Celtic empire. Some writers speak of this
as though it had been a Gaelic empire. I have been unable as yet to
trace this superstition to its source. I suspect that the chapters on
Brennius in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Britons[512] are
the real foundation for this strange belief, though naturally no-one
to-day would base a serious hypothesis upon so shifty a foundation. M.
d’Arbois de Jubainville[513] seems to rely mainly on a passage from
Livy[514], in which the writer states that Bellovesus and Sigovesus,
nephews of Ambigatus, king of the Bituriges, were sent simultaneously
on two expeditions. Livy says nothing of an empire, and the movements
which he dates at 600 /B.C./ seem to have occurred 300 years later.
Déchelette[515] had dealt with this absurd notion according to its
deserts.
The empire of Ambigatus, if such a thing existed, must have been
a Kimric not a Gaelic power. But empires, if we are to understand
the word in the sense in which it is ordinarily used, need settled
conditions, such as did not prevail in north or north-west Europe until
the arrival in the latter region of the _pax Romana_. It is conceivably
possible that among the Kimri the tribal chiefs paid some form of loose
allegiance to a super-chief, just as the Dorians, and to some extent
the Hellenic world, recognised, very occasionally the hegemony of
Sparta; but the evidence which we possess from classical sources does
not even imply the existence of any such over-lordship among the Celts.
In any case such vague hegemony could only have existed among the
Kimric tribes, who for a thousand years harried the people of Celtic
lands and the Celtic cradle, Gaelic lords or non-Wiro subjects alike.
Before their arrival the Gaelic chiefs ruled only in the mountain zone,
and the establishment of an empire in a mountainous country, draining
into four rivers and four seas, would have been more impossible than in
the open steppe.
/Appendix I/
CHRONOLOGY
Before the days of written history positive chronology is to some
extent a matter of speculation, and until the beginning of this century
it was little more than guesswork. But the discoveries of Cnossos
provided synchronisms between the archæological remains of Egypt
and Europe, and since then rival systems have arisen, all of which
approximate more or less nearly to the truth. The palæolithic age,
however, still remained in the region of guesswork, and wild and very
discrepant attempts have been made to estimate its length. It is still
the fashion for some writers to use inflated dates and to count years
in hundreds of thousands, but the trend of the evidence produced of
late is to encourage moderation, and it seems to me possible that the
men responsible for the Fox Hall flints, if indeed they are of human
workmanship, may not have been separated from their discoverer by a
period of time exceeding 150,000 years.
When matters are so problematical, cautious writers are prone to
be content with a comparative chronology, or to speak in terms of
millennia. This method has advantages, for such writers run little risk
of having to confess that they have made miscalculations. On the other
hand, the use of actual dates leads to clear thinking, and to gaining
a vivid impression of the story, and since we have now good grounds
for estimating such dates, (and I shall not be ashamed to own up if
later discoveries prove my estimates to be incorrect), I have adopted
positive dates throughout, indicating where special uncertainty exists
and the direction in which modification may be expected.