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THE
ETHNOLOGY
OF
THE BRITISH ISLANDS.
THE
ETHNOLOGY
OF
THE BRITISH ISLANDS.
BY
R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER TO THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK, ETC.
[Device]
LONDON:
JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLII.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY T. E. METCALF, 63, SNOW HILL.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Preliminary Remarks.--Present Populations of the British Isles.--
Romans, &c.--Pre-historic Period.--The Irish Elk.--How far
Contemporaneous with Man.--Stone Period.--Modes of Sepulture.--
The Physical Condition of the Soil.--Its Fauna.--Skulls of the
Stone Period.--The Bronze Period.--Gold Ornaments.--Alloys and
Castings.--How far Native or Foreign.--Effect of the Introduction
of Metals.--Dwellings. 1
CHAPTER II.
Authorities for the Earliest Historical Period.--Herodotus.--
Aristotle.--Polybius.--Onomacritus.--Diodorus Siculus.--Strabo.--
Festus Avienus.--Ultimate sources.--Damnonii.--Ph[oe]nician
Trade.--The Orgies.--South-Eastern Britons of Cæsar.--The Details
of his Attacks.--The Caledonians of Galgacus. 38
CHAPTER III.
Origin of the Britons.--Kelts of Gaul.--The Belgæ.--Whether
Keltic or German.--Evidence of Cæsar.--Attrebates, Belgæ, Remi,
Durotriges and Morini, Chauci and Menapii. 58
CHAPTER IV.
The Picts.--List of Kings.--Penn Fahel.--Aber and Inver.--The
Picts probably, but not certainly, Britons. 76
CHAPTER V.
Origin of the Gaels.--Difficulties of its Investigation.--Not
Elucidated by any Records, nor yet by Traditions.--Arguments from
the Difference between the British and Gaelic Languages.--The
British Language spoken in Gaul.--The Gaelic not known to be
spoken in any part of the Continent.--Lhuyd's Doctrine.--The
Hibernian Hypothesis.--The Caledonian Hypothesis.--Postulates. 83
CHAPTER VI.
Roman Influences.--Agricola.--The Walls and Ramparts of Adrian,
Antoninus, and Severus.--Bonosus.--Carausius.--The Constantian
Family.--Franks and Alemanni in Britain.--Foreign Elements in the
Roman Legions. 90
CHAPTER VII.
Value of the Early British Records.--True and Genuine Traditions
Rare.--Gildas.--Beda.--Nennius.--Annales Cambrenses.--Difference
between Chronicles and Registers.--Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.--Irish
Annals.--Value of the Accounts of the Fifth and Sixth
Centuries.--Questions to which they apply. 104
CHAPTER VIII.
The Angles of Germany: their comparative obscurity.--Notice of
Tacitus.--Extract from Ptolemy.--Conditions of the Angle Area.--
The Varini.--The Reudigni and other Populations of Tacitus.--The
Sabalingii, &c., of Ptolemy.--The Suevi Angili.--Engle and
Ongle.--Original Angle Area. 142
CHAPTER IX.
The Saxons--of Upper Saxony--of Lower, or Old Saxony.--
Nordalbingians.--Saxons of Ptolemy.--Present and Ancient
Populations of Sleswick-Holstein.--North-Frisians.--Probable
Origin of the name Saxon.--The Littus Saxonicum.--Saxones
Bajocassini. 165
CHAPTER X.
The Angles of Germany--Imperfect Reconstruction of their
History--Their Heroic Age.--Beowulf.--Conquest of Anglen.--
Anecdote from Procopius.--Their Reduction under the Carlovingian
Dynasty.--The Angles of Thuringia. 200
CHAPTER XI.
Recapitulations and Illustrations.--Propositions respecting the
Keltic Character of the Original Occupants of Britain, &c.--The
Relations between the Ancient Britons and the Ancient Gauls,
&c.--The Scotch Gaels.--The Picts.--The Date of the Germanic
Invasions.--The names Angle and Saxon. 219
CHAPTER XII.
Analysis of the Germanic Populations of England.--The Jute
Element Questionable.--Frisian Elements Probable.--Other German
Elements, how far Probable.--Forms in -ing. 232
CHAPTER XIII.
The Scandinavians.--Forms in -by: their Import and
Distribution.--Danes of Lincolnshire, &c.; of East Anglia; of
Scotland; of the Isle of Man; of Lancashire and Cheshire; of
Pembrokeshire.--Norwegians of Northumberland, Scotland, and
Ireland, and Isle of Man.--Frisian forms in Yorkshire.--Bogy.--
Old Scratch.--The Picts possibly Scandinavian.--The Normans. 244
ETHNOLOGY
OF
THE BRITISH ISLANDS.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.--PRESENT POPULATIONS OF THE BRITISH
ISLES.--ROMANS, ETC.--PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.--THE IRISH ELK.--HOW FAR
CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH MAN.--STONE PERIOD.--MODES OF SEPULTURE.--THE
PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE SOIL--ITS FAUNA.--SKULLS OF THE STONE
PERIOD.--THE BRONZE PERIOD.--GOLD ORNAMENTS.--ALLOYS AND
CASTINGS.--HOW FAR NATIVE OR FOREIGN.--EFFECT OF THE INTRODUCTION OF
METALS.--DWELLINGS.
The ethnologist, who passes from the history of the varieties of the
human species of the world at large, to the details of some special
family, tribe, or nation, is in the position of the naturalist who rises
from such a work as the _Systema Naturæ_, or the _Règne Animal_, to
concentrate his attention on some special section or subsection of the
sciences of Zoology and Botany. If having done this he should betake
himself to some ponderous folio, bulkier than the one which he read
last, but devoted to a subject so specific and limited as to have
scarcely found a place in the general history of organized beings, the
comparison is all the closer. The subject, in its main characteristics,
is the same in both cases; but the difference of the details is
considerable. A topographical map on the scale of a chart of the world,
a manipulation for the microscope as compared with the preparation of a
wax model, are but types and illustrations of the contrast. A small
field requires working after a fashion impossible for a wide farm; often
with different implements, and often with different objects. A
dissertation upon the Negroes of Africa, and a dissertation upon the
Britons of the Welsh Principality, though both ethnological, have but
few questions in common, at least in the present state of our knowledge;
and out of a hundred pages devoted to each, scarcely ten would embody
the same sort of facts. With the Negro, we should search amongst old
travellers and modern missionaries for such exact statements as we might
be fortunate enough to find respecting his geographical position, the
texture of his hair, the shade of his skin, the peculiarities of his
creed, the structure of his language; and well satisfied should we be if
anything at once new and true fell in our way. But in the case of the
Briton all this is already known to the inquirer, and can be conveyed in
a few sentences to the reader. What then remains? A fresh series of
researches, which our very superiority of knowledge has developed;
inquiries which, with an imperfectly known population, would be
impossible. Who speculates to any extent upon such questions as the
degrees of intermixture between the Moors and the true Negroes of Nubia?
Who grapples with such a problem as the date of the occupation of New
Guinea? Such and such-like points are avoided; simply because the _data_
for working them are wanting. Yet with an area like the British Isles,
they are both possible and pertinent. More than this. In such countries
there must either be no ethnology at all, or it must be of the minute
kind, since the primary and fundamental questions, which constitute
nine-tenths of our inquiries elsewhere, are already answered.
Minute ethnology must be more or less speculative--the less the better.
It must be so, however, to some extent, because it attempts new
problems. Critical too it must be--the more the better. It often works
with unfamiliar instruments, whose manipulation must be explained, and
whose power tested. Again, although the field in which it works be wide,
the tract in which it moves may be beaten. An outlying question may have
been treated by many investigators, and the results may be extremely
different. In British ethnology, the history of opinions only, if given
with the due amount of criticism, would fill more than one volume larger
than the present.
The above has been written to shew that any work upon such a subject as
the present must partake, to a great degree, of the nature of a
disquisition: perhaps indeed, the term _controversy_ would not be too
strong. The undeniable and recognized results of previous investigators
are truisms. That the Britons and Gaels are Kelts, and that the English
are Germans is known wherever Welsh dissent, Irish poverty, or English
misgovernment are the subjects of notice. What such Kelticism or
Germanism may have to do with these same characteristics is neither so
well ascertained, nor yet so easy to discover. On the contrary, there is
much upon these points which may be well _un_-learnt. Kelts, perchance,
may not be so very Keltic, or Germans so very German as is believed; for
it may be that a very slight preponderance of the Keltic elements over
the German, or of the German over the Keltic may have determined the use
of the terms. Such a point as this is surely worth raising; yet it
cannot be answered off-hand. At present, however, it is mentioned as a
sample of minute ethnology, and as a warning of the disquisitional
character which the forthcoming pages, in strict pursuance to the nature
of the subject, must be expected to exhibit.
The extent, then, to which the two stocks that occupy the British Isles
are pure or mixed; the characteristics of each stock in its purest form;
and the effects of intermixture where it has taken place, are some of
our problems; and if they could each and all be satisfactorily answered,
we should have a Natural History of our Civilization. But the answers
are not satisfactory; at any rate they are not conclusive. Nevertheless,
a partial solution can be obtained; a partial solution which is
certainly worth some efforts on the part of both the reader and the
writer. Other questions, too, curious rather than of practical value,
constitute the department of minute ethnology; especially when the area
under notice is an island. The _date_ of its occupancy, although
impossible as an absolute epoch, can still be brought within certain
limits. Whether, however, such limits would not be too wide for any one
but a geologist, is another question.
Now, if I have succeeded in shewing that criticism and disquisition must
necessarily form a large part of such an ethnology as the one before us,
I have given a reason for what may, perhaps, seem an apparent
irregularity in the arrangement of the different parts of the subject.
With the civil historian, the earliest events come first; for, in
following causes to their consequences, he begins with the oldest. The
ethnologist, on the other hand, whenever--as is rarely the case--he can
lay before the reader the whole process and all the steps of his
investigations, reverses this method, and begins with the times in which
he lives; so that by a long series of inferences from effect to cause,
he concludes--so to say--at the beginning; inasmuch as it is his special
business to argue backwards or upwards. Yet the facts of the present
volume will follow neither of these arrangements exactly; though, of
course, the order of them will be, in the main, chronological. They will
be taken, in many cases, as they are wanted for the purposes of the
argument; so that if a fact of the tenth century be necessary for the
full understanding of one of the fifth, it will be taken out of its due
order. Occasional transpositions of this kind are to be found in all
works wherein the investigation of doubtful points preponderates over
the illustration of admitted facts, or in all works where discussion
outweighs exposition.
The period when the British Isles were occupied by Kelts only (or, at
least, supposed to have been so) will form the subject of the earlier
chapters. The facts will, of course, be given as I have been able to
find them; but it may be not unnecessary to state beforehand the nature
of the principal questions upon which they will bear.
The date of the first occupancy of the British Isles by man is one of
them. It can (as already stated) only be brought within certain
wide--very wide--limits; and that hypothetically, or subject to the
accuracy of several preliminary facts.
The division of mankind to which the earliest occupants belonged is the
next; and it is closely connected with the first. If the Kelts were the
earliest occupants of Britain, we can tell within a few thousand years
when they arrived. But what if there were an occupation of Britain
anterior to theirs?
The civilization of the earliest occupants is a question inextricably
interwoven with the other two; since the rate at which it advanced--if
it advanced at all--must depend upon the duration of the occupancy, and
the extent to which it was the occupancy of one, or more than one,
section of mankind. But foreign intercourse may have accelerated this
rate, or a foreign civilization may have altogether replaced that of the
_indigenæ_. The evidence of this is a fourth question.
So interwoven with each other are all these questions, that, although
the facts of the first three chapters will be arranged with the special
view to their elucidation, no statement of the results will be given
until the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, or the introduction of the great
Germanic elements of the British nation, leads us from the field of
early Keltic to that of early Teutonic research; and that will not be
until the details of the Britons as opposed to the Gaels, of the Gaels
as opposed to the Britons, and of the Picts (as far as they can be made
out) have been disposed of.
One of the populations of the British Isles, at the present moment,
speaks a language belonging to the Keltic, the other one belonging to
the Teutonic class of tongues. However, it is by no means certain that
the blood, pedigree, race, descent, or extraction coincides with the
form of speech: indeed it is certain that it does so but partially.
Though few individuals of Teutonic extraction speak any of the Keltic
dialects as their mother-tongue, the converse is exceedingly common; and
numerous Kelts know no other language but the English. Speech, then, is
only _primâ facie_ evidence of descent; nevertheless, it is the most
convenient criterion we have.
The Keltic class falls into divisions and subdivisions. The oldest and
purest portion of the Gaelic Kelts is to be found in Ireland, especially
on the western coast. Situated as Connaught is on the Atlantic, it lies
beyond the influx of any new blood, except from the east and north; yet
from the east and north the introduction of fresh populations has been
but slight. Here, then, we find the Irish Gael in his most typical form.
Scotland, like Ireland, is _Gaelic_ in respect to its Keltic
population, but the stock is less pure. However slight may be the
admixture of English blood in the Highlands and the Western Isles, the
infusion of Scandinavian is very considerable. Caithness has numerous
geographical terms whose meaning is to be found in the Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, and Icelandic. _Sutherland_ shews its political relations by
its name. It is the _Southern Land_; an impossible name if the county be
considered English (for it lies in the very _north_ of the island), but
a natural name if we refer it to Norway, of which Sutherland was, at one
time, a southern dependency, or (if not a dependency), a robbing-ground.
Orkney and Shetland were once as thoroughly Norse as the Faroe Isles or
Iceland.
The third variety of the present British population is in the Isle of
Man, where a language sufficiently like the Gaelic of Ireland and
Scotland to be placed in the same division, is still spoken. Yet the
blood is mixed. The Norsemen preponderated in Man; and the constitution
of the island is in many parts Scandinavian, though the language be
Keltic.
In Wales the language and population are still Keltic, though
sufficiently different from the Scotch, Irish, and Manx, to be
considered as a separate branch of that stock. It is conveniently called
_British_, _Cambrian_, and _Cambro-Briton_. It is quite unintelligible
to any Gael. Neither can any Gael, talking Gaelic, make himself
understood by a Briton. On the other hand, however, a Scotch and an
Irish Gael understand each other; whilst, with some effort, they
understand a Manxman, and _vice versâ_. So that the number of mutually
unintelligible languages of the Keltic stock is two; in other words, the
Keltic dialects of the British Isles are referable to two branches--the
British for the Welsh, and the Gaelic for the Scotch, Irish, and Manx.
The other language of the British Isles is the English, one upon which
it is unnecessary to enlarge; but which makes the third tongue in actual
existence at the present moment, if we count the Irish, Scotch, and Manx
as dialects of the same language, and the fifth if we separate them.
By raising the Lowland Scotch to the rank of a separate language, we may
increase our varieties; but, as it is only a general view which we are
taking at present, it is as well not to multiply distinctions. I believe
that, notwithstanding some strong assertions to the contrary, there are
no two dialects of the English tongue--whether spoken east or west--in
North Britain or to the South of the Tweed--that are not mutually
intelligible, when used as it is the usual practice to use them. That
strange sentences may be made by picking out strange provincialisms,
and stringing them together in a manner that never occurs in common
parlance, is likely enough; but that any two men speaking English shall
be in the same position to each other as an Englishman is to a Dutchman
or Dane, so that one shall not know what the other says, is what I am
wholly unprepared to believe, both from what I have observed in the
practice of provincial speech, and what I have read in the way of
provincial glossaries.
The populations, however, just enumerated, represent but a fraction of
our ethnological varieties. They only give us those of the nineteenth
century. Other sections have become extinct, or, if not, have lost their
distinctive characteristics, which is much the same as dying out
altogether. The ethnology of these populations is a matter of history.
Beginning with those that have most recently been assimilated to the
great body of Englishmen, we have--
1. The Cornishmen of Cornwall.--They are Britons in blood, and until the
seventeenth century, were Britons in language also. When the Cornish
language ceased to be spoken it was still intelligible to a Welshman;
yet in the reign of Henry II., although intelligible, it was still
different. Giraldus Cambrensis especially states that the "Cornubians
and Armoricans used a language almost identical; a language which the
Welsh, from origin and intercourse, understood in _many_ things, and
_almost_ in all."
2. The Cumbrians, of Cumberland, retained the British language till
after the Conquest. This was, probably, spoken as far north as the
Clyde. Earlier, however, than either of these were--
3. The Picts.--The Cumbrian and Cornish Britons were simply members of
the same division with the Welshmen, Welshmen, so to say, when the Welsh
area extended south of the Bristol Channel and north of the Mersey. The
Picts were, probably, in a different category. They may indeed have been
Gaels. They have formed a separate substantive division of Kelts. They
may have been no Kelts at all, but Germans or Scandinavians.
But populations neither Keltic nor Teutonic have, at different times,
settled in England; populations which (like several branches of the
Keltic stock) have either lost their distinctive characteristics, or
become mixed in blood, but which (unlike such Kelts) were not indigenous
to any of the islands. Like the Germans or Teutons, on the other hand,
they were foreigners; but, unlike the Germans or Teutons, they have not
preserved their separate substantive character. Still, some of their
blood runs in both English and Keltic veins; some of their language has
mixed itself with both tongues; and some of their customs have either
corrupted or improved our national character. Thus--
1. The battle of Hastings filled England with Normans, French in
language, French and Scandinavian in blood, but (eventually) English in
the majority of their matrimonial alliances. And before the Normans
came--
2. The Danes--and before the Danes--
3. The Romans.--Such is the general view of the chief populations, past
and present, of England; of which, however, the Keltic and the Angle are
the chief.
The English-and-Scotch, the Normans, the Danes, and the Romans have all
been introduced upon the island within the Historical period--some
earlier than others, but all within the last 2,000 years, so that we
have a fair amount of information as to their history; not so much,
perhaps, as is generally believed, but still a fair amount. We know
within a few degrees of latitude and longitude where they came from; and
we know their ethnological relations to the occupants of the parts
around them.
With the Kelts this is not the case. Of Gael or Manxman, Briton or Pict,
we know next to nothing during their early history. We can guess where
they came from, and we can infer their ethnological relations; but
history, in the strict sense of the term, we have none; for the Keltic
period differs from that of all the others in being pre-historic. This
is but another way of saying that the Keltic populations, and those
only, are the aborigines of the island; or, if not aboriginal, the
earliest known. Yet it is possible that these same Keltic populations,
whose numerous tribes and clans and nations covered both the British and
the Hibernian Isles for generations and generations before the discovery
of the art of writing, or the existence of a historical record, may be
as well understood as their invaders; since ethnology infers where
history is silent, and history, even when speaking, may be indistinct.
At any rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the British Isles
during the Historical period, prepares us with a little light for the
dark walk in the field of its earliest antiquity.
Nothing, as has just been stated, in the earliest historical records of
Britain, throws any light upon the original occupation of the British
Islands by man; indeed, nothing tells us that Britain, when so occupied,
was an island at all. The Straits of Dover may have existed when the
first human being set foot upon what is now the soil of Kent, or an
isthmus may have existed instead. Whether then it was by land, or
whether it was by water, that the population of Europe propagated itself
into England, is far beyond the evidence of any historical memorial--far
beyond the evidence of tradition. Nothing at present indicates the
nature of the primary migration of our earliest ancestors. Neither does
any historical record tell us what manner of men first established
themselves along the valleys of the Thames and Trent, or cleared the
forests along their watersheds. They may have been as much ruder than
the rudest of the tribes seen by Paulinus and Agricola, as those tribes
were ruder than ourselves. They may, on the other hand, have enjoyed a
higher civilization, a civilization which Cæsar saw in its later stages
only; one which Gallic wars, and other evil influences, may have
impaired.
For the consideration of such questions as these it matters but little
whether we begin with the information which the ambition of Cæsar gave
the Romans the opportunity of acquiring, or such accounts of the
Ph[oe]nician traders as found their way into the writings of the Greeks;
Polybius (for instance), Aristotle, or Herodotus. A few centuries, more
or less, are of trifling importance. The social condition in both cases
is the same. There was tin in Cornwall, and iron swords in Kent; in
other words, there was the civilization of men who knew the use of
metals, both on the side of the soldiers who followed Cassibelaunus to
fight against Cæsar, and amongst the miners and traders of the
Land's-end. In both cases, too, there was foreign intercourse; with
Gaul, where there was a tincture of Roman, and with Spain, where there
was a tincture of Ph[oe]nician, civilization. This is not the infancy of
our species, nor yet that of any of its divisions. For this we must go
backwards, and farther back still, from the domain of testimony to that
of inference, admitting a pre-historic period, with its own proper and
peculiar methods of investigation--methods that the ethnologist shares
with the geologist and naturalist, rather than with the civil historian.
In respect to their results, they may be barren or they may be fertile;
but, whether barren or whether fertile, the practice and application of
them is a healthy intellectual exercise.
It must not be thought that the use of metals, and the contact with the
Continent, which have just been noticed, invalidate the statement as to
the insufficiency of our earliest historical notices. It must not be
thought that they tell us more than they really do. It is only at the
first view that the knowledge of certain metallurgic processes, and the
trade and power that such knowledge developes, are presumptions in
favour of a certain degree of antiquity in the occupancy of our island
on the parts of its islanders; and it is only by forgetting the
_insular_ character of Great Britain that we can allow ourselves to
suppose that, though our early arts tell us nothing about our first
introduction, they at any rate prove that it was _no recent event_.
"Time," we may fairly say, "must be allowed for such habits as are
implied by the use of metals to have developed themselves, and,
consequently, generations, centuries, and possibly even millenniums must
have elapsed between the landing of the first vessel of the first
Britons, and the beginning of the trade with the Kassiterides." As a
general rule, such reasoning is valid; yet the earliest known phenomena
of British civilization are compatible with a comparatively modern
introduction of its population. For Great Britain may have been peopled
like Iceland or Madeira, _i.e._, not a generation or two after the
peopling of the nearest parts of the opposite Continent, but many ages
later; in which case both the population and its civilization may be but
things of yesterday. In the twelfth century, Iceland had an alphabet and
the art of writing. Had these grown up within the island itself, the
inference would be that its population was of great antiquity; since
time must be allowed for their evolution--even as time must be allowed
for the growth of acorns on an oak. But the art may be newer than the
population, or the population and the art may be alike recent. Hence, as
the civilization of the earliest Britons may be newer than the stock to
which it belonged, the testimony of ancient writers to its existence is
anything but conclusive against the late origin of the stock itself. It
is best to admit an absolutely pre-historic period, and that without
reservation; and as a corollary, to allow that it may have differed in
kind as well as degree from the historic.
There is another fact that should be noticed. The languages of Great
Britain are reducible to two divisions, both of which agree in many
essential points with certain languages or dialects of Continental
Europe. The British was closely, the Gaelic more distantly, allied to
the ancient tongue of the Gauls. From this affinity we get an argument
_against_ any extreme antiquity of the Britons of the British Isles. The
date of their separation from the tribes of the Continent was not so
remote as to obliterate and annihilate all traces of the original
mother-tongue. It was not long enough for the usual processes by which
languages are changed, to eject from even the Irish Gaelic (the most
unlike of the two) every word and inflection which the progenitors of
the present Irish brought from Gaul, and to replace them by others. So
that, at the first view, we have a limit in this direction; yet unless
we have settled certain preliminaries, the limit is unreal. All that it
gives us is the comparatively recent introduction of the _Keltic_ stock.
Varieties of the human species, _other than Keltic_, may have existed
at an indefinitely early period, and subsequently have been superseded
by the Kelts. Philology, then, tells us little more than history; and it
may not be superfluous to add, that the occupancy of Great Britain by a
stock of the kind in question, earlier than the Keltic, and different
from it, is no imaginary case of the author's, but a doctrine which has
taken the definite form of a recognized hypothesis, and characterizes
one of the best ethnological schools of the Continent--the Scandinavian.
For the ambitious attempt at a reconstruction of the earliest state of
the human kind in Britain, we may prepare ourselves by a double series
of processes. Having taken society as it exists at the present moment,
we eject those elements of civilization which have brought it to its
present condition, beginning with the latest first. We then take up a
smaller question, and consider what arts and what forms of
knowledge--what conditions of society--existing amongst the earlier
populations have been lost or superseded with ourselves. The result is
an approximation to the state of things in the infancy of our species.
We subtract (for instance) from the sum of our present means and
appliances such elements as the knowledge of the power of steam, the art
of printing, and gunpowder; all which we can do under the full light of
history. Stripped of these, society takes a ruder shape. But it is
still not rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of the earth's
surface, at the present moment, where the metals are unknown. There was,
probably, a time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the influences of
such a knowledge as this must be subtracted. And then come weaving and
pottery, the ruder forms of domestic architecture, and boat-building,
lime-burning, dyeing, tanning, and the fermentation of liquors. When and
where were such arts as these wanting to communities? No man can answer
this; yet our methods of investigation require that the question should
be raised.
Other questions, too, which cannot be answered must be suggested, since
they serve to exhibit the trains of reasoning that depend upon them. Was
Britain (a question already indicated) cut off from Gaul by the Straits
of Dover when it was first peopled? If it were, the civilization
required for the building of a boat must have been one of the attributes
of the first aborigines; so that, whatever else in the way of
civilization may have been evolved on British ground, the art of
hollowing a tree, and launching it on the waves was foreign.
Now it is safe to say that the writers who are most willing to assign a
high antiquity to the first occupation of the British Isles by Man,
have never carried their epoch so high as the time when Britain and
Gaul were joined by an isthmus. On the contrary, they all argue as if
the islands were as insular as they are at present, and attribute to the
first settlers the construction and management of some frail
craft--rude, of course, but still a seaworthy piece of mechanism--after
the fashion of the boats of Gaul or Germany; and this is the reasonable
view of the subject.
In Mr. Daniel Wilson's "Pre-historic Annals of Scotland," we have the
best _data_ for the next portion of the question, viz., the extent to
which geological changes have occurred since the first occupancy of our
islands. In the valley of the Forth,[1] alterations in the relations of
the land and sea to the amount of twenty-five feet have occurred since
the art of making deers' horns into harpoons was known in Scotland. Such
at least is the inference from the discovery, in the Carse lands about
Blair Drummond Moss, of the skeleton of a whale, with a harpoon beside
it, twenty-five feet above the present tides of the Forth. As much as
can be told by any single fact is told by this; its valuation being
wholly in the hands of the geologists.
Then, the bone of an Irish elk, according to one view (but _not_
according to another), gives us a second fact. A rib, with an oval
opening, where oval openings should not be, and with an irregular
effusion of callus around it, is found under eleven feet of peat. Dr.
Hart attributes this to a sharp-pointed instrument, wielded by a human
hand, which without penetrating deep enough to cause death, effected a
breach on the continuity of the bone, and caused inflammation to be set
up. But Professor Owen thinks that a weapon of the kind in question, if
left in, to be worked out by the _vix medicatrix_ of Nature, would be
fatal, and consequently he prefers the notion of the wound having been
inflicted by a weapon which was quickly withdrawn, _e.g._, the horn of
some combative rival of its own kind, rather than the human. Now if it
be a difficult matter to say what will, and what will not kill a man in
the year '52, much more so is it to speak chirurgically about Irish elks
of the Pleiocene period. Hence the evidence of man having been
cotemporary with the Megaceros Hibernicus is unsatisfactory.
That a certain amount, then, of change of level between the land and
sea, in a certain part of Scotland, has taken place since Scotchmen
first hunted whales is the chief fact, relative to the date of our
introduction, that we get from geology. From archæology we learn
something more. Those sepulchral monuments which have the clearest and
most satisfactory signs of antiquity, contain numerous implements of
stone and bone, _but none of metal_. When metal is found, the
concomitant characters of the tomb in which it occurs, indicate a later
period. If so, it is a fair inference for the ethnological archæologist
to conclude, that although the earliest colonists reached Britain late
enough to avail themselves of boats, their migration was earlier than
the diffusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has induced the best
investigators to designate the earliest stage in British ethnology by
the name of the STONE PERIOD, a technical and convenient term.
It is the general opinion, that during this period the practice of
inhumation, or simple burial, was commoner than that of cremation or
burning, though each method was adopted. Over the remains disposed of by
the former process, were erected mounds of earth (_tumuli_ or
_barrows_), heaps of stone (_cairns_), or cromlechs. There are strong
suspicions that the practice of _Suttí_ was recognized. Around a
skeleton, more or less entire, are often found, at regular distances,
the ashes of bodies that were burnt; just as if the chief was interred
in the flesh, but his subordinates given over to the flames. The posture
is, frequently, one which, on the other side of the Atlantic, has called
forth numerous remarks. Throughout America, it was observed by Dr.
Morton, that one of the most usual forms of burial was to place the
corpse in a half upright position, or a sitting attitude, with the
knees and hams bent, and the arms folded on the legs. Now this is a
common posture in Britain--a clear proof of the extent to which similar
practices are independent of imitation. If any ornaments be found with
the corpse, they are chiefly of cannel coal. The implements are all of
stone, or bone--the celt, the arrow, the spear-head, the adze, and the
mallet.
What was the physical aspect of the country at this time? The present,
_minus_ the clearings--wood and fen, fen and wood, in interminable
succession; woods of oak in the clay soils; of beech on the chalk; of
birch, pine, and fir in the northern parts of the island. The boats were
essentially _monoxyla_, _i.e._, single trees hollowed out, sometimes by
stone adzes, oftener by fire. The chief dresses were the skins of
beasts.
Such is what archæology tells us. The other questions belong to the
naturalist. What was the ancient Fauna? Whether the earliest men were
cotemporaneous with the latest of the extinct quadrupeds, has been
already asked--the answer being doubtful. How far the earliest beasts of
chase and domestication were the same as the present, is a fresh
question. The sheep may reasonably be considered as a recent
introduction; but with all the other domestic animals there are,
perhaps, as good reasons for deriving them from native species as for
considering them to be of foreign origin. The hog of the present breed,
may indeed be of continental origin; so may the present cat, horse, and
ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and ass, whose bones are found
in the alluvial deposits, may have been domesticated. The Devonshire,
Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may be new; but the _bos
longifrons_ may have originated _some_ native breeds, which the
inhabitants of even the earliest period--the period of stone and bone
implements--may have domesticated. The opinion of Professor Owen is in
favour of this view; and certainly, though it cannot be enforced by mere
authority, it is recommended by its simplicity,--avoiding, as it does,
the unnecessary multiplication of causes. The goat was certainly
indigenous, but no more certainly domesticated than the equally
indigenous deer. This indigenous rein-deer may or may not have been
trained. The miserable aliments of the beach, shell-fish and crustacea,
constituted no small part of the earliest human food; and so (for the
northern part of the isle at least) did eggs, seals, and whales. Surely
in these primitive portions of the Stone period our habits must have
approached those of the Lap, the Samöeid, and the Eskimo, however
different they may be now.
But metals, in the course of time, were introduced; first bronze, and
then iron; gold and lead being, perhaps, earlier than either, earlier
too than silver. Of gold we take but little notice. It was not a useful
metal; but subservient only to the purposes of barbaric ornament. The
next fact is of great importance.
_In those tombs where the implements are most exclusively of stone, and
where the other signs of antiquity correspond, the skulls are of
unusually small capacity. In the next period they are larger. There are
also some notable points of difference in the shape._ Such at least is
the current opinion; although the proofs that such difference is not
referable to difference of age or sex, is by no means irrefragable.
Still we may take the fact as it is supposed and reported to be.
If we do this, we are prepared for another question. How far is the
introduction of metal implements and of new arts, a sign of the
introduction of a fresh stock or variety of the human species? How far,
too, is the difference in the capacity of the skulls? How far the fact
of the two changes coinciding? The answer has generally been in the
affirmative. The men who used implements of bronze were Kelts; the men
who eked out their existence with nothing better than adzes and
arrow-heads of stone, were other than Keltic. They were ante-Keltic
aborigines, whom a Keltic migration annihilated and superseded. Such is
the widely-spread doctrine. Yet it is doubtful whether the premises bear
out the inference--far as it has been recognized. I doubt it myself;
because, admitting (for the sake of argument) that there is a difference
in the size and the shape of the skulls, it by no means follows that a
difference of stock is the only way of accounting for it. Improved
implements, taken by themselves, merely denote either a progress in the
useful arts, or, what is more likely, some new commercial relations. The
same improved implements, if considered as means to an end, denote an
improvement in the nutrition of the individuals who used them. The bones
of a man who hunts stags and oxen with bronze weapons will carry more
flesh, and consequently be more fuller developed than those of a man
who, for want of better instruments than flint and bone arrow-heads,
feeds chiefly upon whale blubber and shell-fish. Now, what applies to
the bones in general, applies--though perhaps in a less degree--to the
skull. In the difference, then, between the crania of the Stone and
Bronze periods I see no introduction of a new variety of our species,
but merely the effects of a better diet, arising from an improvement in
the instruments for obtaining it. If the assumption, then, of a
_pre_-Keltic stock be gratuitous, the question as to the date of our
population is considerably narrowed. Its introduction (as already
indicated) must have been sufficiently late to allow the original
affinities between the Keltic dialects of the British Isles, and the
Keltic dialects of the European Continent, to remain visible. But as
many millenniums would be required for the opposite effect of
obliterating the original similarity, this is saying but little. All
that it is safe to assert is--
1. That the primitive Britons occupied the islands sufficiently _early_
to allow of the relative levels of the land and sea on the valley of the
Forth to alter to the amount of twenty-five feet--there or thereabouts.
2. That they occupied it sufficiently _late_ to allow the common origin
of the Gaelic and British tongues to remain visible in the nineteenth
century.
This latter position rests upon the supposition that the early
inhabitants in question were of the same stock as the present Welsh and
Gaels--the contrary doctrine being held to be, not erroneous, but
gratuitous and unnecessary.
We are now prepared to find that in certain monuments, less ancient than
those of the Stone period, the enclosed relics are of metal, and that
this metal is an alloy of copper and tin--_bronze_--not _brass_, which
is an alloy of copper and zinc. Not only are such relics more elaborate
in respect to their workmanship, but the kinds of them are more varied.
They are referable indeed to the three classes of warlike instruments,
industrial implements, and personal ornaments, but the varieties of
each sort are comparatively numerous. Swords and shields, which would be
well-nigh impossible accoutrements during the Stone period, now come
into use; so do moulds for casting, as well as bracelets and necklaces.
In short, the signs of a higher civilization and fresh means for the
conquest of either Man or Nature appear.
The evidence that the Bronze period succeeded the Stone, is on the whole
satisfactory; indeed its _a priori_ likelihood is so great, as to make a
little go a long way. At the same time, it must not be supposed that in
each individual case the newest monuments wherein we find bone and stone
are older than the oldest wherein we find bronze. No line of demarcation
thus trenchant can be drawn; and no proofs of absolute succession thus
conclusive can be discovered. Upon the whole, however, there was a time
when the early Britons were in the position of the South Sea Islanders
when first discovered, _i.e._, ignorant of the use of metals. As long as
the arts of metallurgy are unknown, the notice of the physical
conditions of the country is confined to its Flora, its Fauna, and its
stone quarries. What was there to cultivate? What was there to hunt or
to domesticate? What was there to build with? Now, however, the
questions change. What were the mineral resources of the soil? It is not
necessary to enlarge on these. The use of coal as a fuel is wholly
recent. On the other hand, certain varieties of it were used as
ornaments--the cannel coal, and the bituminous shale of Dorsetshire
(Kimmeridge clay). So was jet.
The metal first worked was _gold_; and its use dates as far back as the
Stone period; indeed it may belong to the very earliest age of our
island; since the localities where it has been found in Great Britain
are by no means few; and in early times each was richer than at present.
In England, from Alston Moor; in Scotland, from the head-waters of the
Clyde; and in Ireland, from the Avonmore, gold for the adornment of even
the hunters of the bone spear-head, and the woodsmen of the
stone-hatchet might have been procured; and the simple art of working
it, although it may possibly have been Gallic in origin, may quite as
easily have been native. The chief gold ornaments, torcs, armillæ, and
fibulæ have been found in association with bronze articles, but not
exclusively.
With those archæologists and ethnologists who believe that the
introduction of bronze implements coincided with the advent of a new
variety of mankind, the question whether the art of alloying and casting
metals was of native or foreign origin, is a verbal one; since it was
native or foreign just as we define the term--native to the stock which
introduced it on the British soil, foreign to the soil itself. But as
soon as we demur to the notion that the earliest Britons were a separate
and peculiar stock, and commit ourselves to the belief that they were
simply Kelts in a ruder condition, the problem presents itself in a
different and more important form. Was the art of making an alloy of tin
and copper self-evolved, or was it an art which foreign commerce
introduced? Was the art of casting such alloys British? It is well to
keep the two questions separate. The preliminary facts in respect to the
history of the bronze metallurgy are as follows:--
1. The peculiar geographical distribution of tin, which of all the
metals of any wide practical utility is found in the fewest localities,
those localities being far apart, _e.g._, Britain and Malacca--
2. The wide extent of country over which bronze implements are found.
Except in Norway and Sweden, where the use of iron seems to have
immediately followed that of stone and bone, they have been found all
over Europe--
3. The narrow limits to the proportions of alloy--nine-tenths copper,
and one-tenth tin--there or thereabouts--in the majority of cases.
4. The considerable amount of uniformity in the shape of even those
implements wherein a considerable variety of form is admissible. Thus
the bronze sword--a point hereafter to be noticed--is almost always
long, leaf-shaped, pointed, and without a handle.
The last three of these facts suggest the notion that bronze metallurgy
originated with a single population; the first, that that population was
British. Yet neither of these inferences is unimpeachable.
The notion that the bronze implements themselves were made in any single
country, and thence diffused elsewhere, has but few upholders; since, in
most of the countries where they have been found, the moulds for making
them have been found also. Hence the doctrine that the raw material--the
mixed metal only--was brought from some single source is the more
important one. Yet chemical investigations have modified even this.[2]
The proportions in question are the best, and they are easily discovered
to be so. Seven parts copper to one of tin has been shewn by experiment
to be too brittle, and fifteen parts copper to one of tin too soft, for
use. Within these proportions the chief analyses of the ancient bronze
implements range. The exact proportion of ten copper to one of tin, Mr.
Wilson has shewn to be an overstatement. All then that we are warranted
to infer is, that Britain was the chief source of the tin.
This is a great fact in the annals of our early commerce, but not
necessarily of much importance in the natural history of our inventions;
since it by no means follows that because Cornwall supplied tin to such
adventurous merchants as sought to buy it, it therefore discovered the
art of working it.
The chief reason for believing that the art of working in any metal
except gold was as foreign to Britain as the alphabet was to Greece,
rests on a negative fact, of which too little notice has been taken.
Copper is a metal of which England produces plenty. It is a metal, too,
which is the easiest worked of all, except gold and lead. It is the
metal which savage nations, such as some of the American Indians, work
when they work no other; and, lastly, it is a metal of which, in its
unalloyed state, no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone
first; then bronze or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I
cannot get over this hiatus--cannot imagine a metallurgic industry
_beginning with the use of alloys_. Such a phenomenon is a plant without
the seed; and, as such, indicates transplantation rather than growth.
This view assists us in our chronology. If the art of working in bronze
be a native and independent development, its antiquity may be of any
amount--going back to 3000 B.C. as easily as to 2000 B.C., and to 2000
B.C. as easily as to 1000 B.C. It may be of any age whatever, provided
only that it be later than the Stone period. But if it be an exotic art,
it must be subsequent to the rise of the Ph[oe]nician commerce. Such I
believe to have been the case. That the Britons were apt learners, and
that they soon made the art their own, is likely. The existence of
bronze and stone moulds for adzes and celts proves this.
The effects of the introduction of metal implements would be two-fold.
It would act on the social state of the occupants of the British Isles,
and act on the physical condition of the soil. The opportunities of
getting stones and bones for the purposes of warfare, would be pretty
equally distributed over the islands, so that the means of attack and
defence would be pretty equal throughout; but the use of bronze would
give a vast preponderance of power to certain districts, Cornwall,
Wales, and the copper countries. The vast forests, too, upon which stone
hatchets would have but little effect, would be more easily cleared, and
their denizens would be more successfully hunted.
_Amber_ ornaments are found along with the implements of bronze. Do
these imply foreign commerce--commerce with the tribes of Courland and
Prussia--the pre-eminent amber localities? Not necessarily. Amber, in
smaller quantities, is found in Britain.
_Glass_ beads, too, are found. This, I think, _does_ imply commerce. At
any rate, I am slow to believe that the art of fusing glass was of
indigenous growth. The use of it was, most probably, a concomitant of
the tin trade.
Undoubted specimens of weaving and undoubted specimens of pottery, occur
during the Bronze period. Lead, too, is found in some of the bronze
alloys; the word itself being, apparently, of Keltic origin. Whether the
same could not be referred to the Stone period is uncertain. It is
probable, however, that whilst the implements were of stone and bone,
the dress was of skin.
Nothing has yet been said about the dwellings of the early islanders.
This is because it is difficult to assign a date to their remains. They
may belong to the Bronze--they may belong to the Stone period. They may
be more recent than either. At any rate, however, relics of ancient
domestic architecture exist. A foundation sunk in the earth, with stone
walls of loose masonry, and covered, most probably, with reeds and
branches, suggests the idea of a subterranean granary, for which the old
houses of the earliest Britons have been mistaken; but, nevertheless, it
belonged to a house. On the floor of this we find charred bones, and
enormous heaps of oyster and mussel shells. Stone handmills, too, denote
the use of corn; though from the character of the ancient Flora,
vegetable forms of food must have been rarer than animal.
Iron was known in Cæsar's time. How much earlier is doubtful. So was
silver. Both were of later date than gold and bronze; and more than this
it is not safe to say. Of the great monolithic buildings, it is
reasonable to suppose that they are later than the Stone, and earlier
than the Historical, period. Druidism, however, in its germs may be of
any antiquity; not, however, if we suppose that the first introduction
of bronze coincided with the first introduction of the Kelts.
An Iron period succeeds the Bronze; but it will not be the subject of
our immediate consideration, inasmuch as it coincides pretty closely
with the historic epoch. The sequence, however, requires further notice.
That there should be a period in the history of mankind when the use of
metals, and the arts of metallurgy were wholly unknown, and that during
such a period, imperfect implements of bone and stone should minister to
the wants of an underfed and defenceless generation, is not so much a
particular fact in British ethnology as a general doctrine founded upon
our _a priori_ views, and applicable to the history of man at large. For
if each of the useful arts have its own proper origin, referrible to
some particular place, time, and community, there must have been an era
when it was wanting to mankind. Hence, an ante-metallic age is as much
the conception of the speculator, as the discovery of the investigator.
The _order_ in which the metals are discovered, the leading problem in
what may be called the natural history of metallurgy, is far more
dependant upon induction. Induction, however, has given the priority to
copper, just as is expected from the comparative reducibility of its
ores--lead and gold being put out of the question. So that it is not so
much the general fact of the order of succession in respect to the
Stone, Copper, and Iron periods that the laudable investigations of
British archæologists have established as the nature of the concomitant
details, the modifications of the periods themselves, and the exact
character of their sequence. Under each of these heads there is much
worth notice. The difference between the shape and size of the skulls of
the Stone and Bronze periods has been broadly asserted--perhaps it has
been exaggerated, at any rate it has formed the basis of an hypothesis.
The substitution of a Bronze for a Copper period in Britain is an
important modification, mainly attributable to the existence of tin. The
comparative completeness of the sequence is interesting. It by no means
follows that it should be regular. In Norway there is no Bronze period
at all; but Bone and Stone in the first instance, and Iron immediately
afterwards.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _See_ Wilson's "Pre-historic Annals of Scotland."
[2] This is well worked out by Mr. Wilson, in his "Pre-historic Annals
of Scotland."--Pp. 238 &c.