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.
The origin of the Britons has been a question of no great difficulty.
They could not well have come from the west, because Britain lies almost
on the extremity of the ancient world; so we look towards the continent
of Europe, and find, exactly opposite to the Britons, the Gauls,
speaking a mutually intelligible language. On this we rest, just pausing
for a short time to dispose of one or two refinements on the natural
inference.
But if no such language as that of the ancient Gauls, a language
_closely_ akin to the British, had been discovered, the ethnologist
would have been put to straits; indeed, he would have had to be
satisfied with saying that Gaul was the likeliest part of Europe for the
Britons to have come from. No more. A strong presumption is all he would
have obtained. The similarity, however, of the languages has helped him.
Now the difficulty which has just been noticed as a possible one in the
investigation of the origin of the Britons, is a real one in the case of
the Gaels. The exact parallel to the Gaelic language cannot be found on
any part of the continent. Hence, whilst the British branch of the
Keltic is found in both England and Gaul,--on the continent as well as
in the Islands,--the Gaelic is limited to the British Isles exclusively.
Neither in Gaul itself, nor the parts either north or south of Gaul can
any member of the Gaelic branch be found.
Even within the British Islands the Gaelic is limited in its
distribution. There is no British in Ireland, and no Gaelic in South
Britain. In Scotland both the tongues occur, the Gaelic being spoken
north of the British. Now this position of the Gaelic to the west and
north of the British increases the difficulty--since it is cut off from
all connexion with the continent, and unrepresented by any continental
tongue.
The history, then, of the Gaels is that of an isolated branch of the
Keltic stock; and it is this isolation which creates the difficulties of
their ethnology. No historical records throw any light upon their
origin--a statement which the most sanguine investigator must admit. But
tradition, perhaps, is less uncommunicative. Many investigators believe
this. For my own part I should only be glad to be able to do so. As it
is, however, the arguments of the present chapter will proceed as if the
whole legendary history of Ireland and Scotland, so far as it relates to
the migrations by which the islands were originally peopled by the
Gaels, were a blank--the reasons for the scepticism being withheld for
the present. But only for the present. In the seventh chapter they will
be given as fully as space allows.
The present arguments rest wholly upon a fact of which the importance
has more than once been foreshadowed already, and which the reader
anticipates. Let us say, for the sake of illustration, that the British
and Gaelic differ from each other as the Latin and Greek. The parallel
is a rough one, but it will suffice as the basis of some criticism.
Languages thus related cannot be in the relation of mother and daughter,
_i.e._, the one cannot be derived from the other, as the English is from
the Anglo-Saxon, or the Italian from the Latin. The true connexion is
different. It is that of brother and sister, rather than of parent and
child. The actual source is some common mother-tongue; a mother-tongue
which may become extinct after the evolution of its progeny. Hence, in
the particular case before us, the Gaelic and British must have
developed themselves, each independently of the other, out of some
common form of speech. And the development must have taken place within
the British Islands; the doctrine being that out of a language which at
some remote period was neither British nor Gaelic, but which contained
the germs of both, the western form of speech took one form, the
southern another--the results being in the one case the British, in the
other the Gaelic, tongue.
But that common mother-tongue at the remote period in question, the
period of the earliest occupancy of Britain, must have been spoken on
both sides of the Channel--in Gaul as well as the British Islands. And
here (_i.e._, in Gaul) it may have done one of two things. It may have
remained unaltered; or, it may have undergone change. Now in either case
it would be different from both the Gaelic and the British. In the
former alternative it would have been stereotyped as it were, and so
have preserved its original characters, whilst the Gaelic and British
had adopted new ones. In the latter it would have altered itself after
its own peculiar fashion; and those very peculiarities would have made
it other than British as well as other than Gaelic. Yet what is the
fact? The ancient language of Gaul, though as unlike the Gaelic as a
separate and independent development was likely to make it, was _not_
unlike the British. On the contrary, it was sufficiently like it to be
intelligible to a Briton. Now I hold this similarity to be conclusive
against the doctrine that the British and Gaelic languages were
developed out of some common mother-tongue _within the British Islands_.
Had they been so the dialects of Gaul would have been far more unlike
the British than they were.
The _British_ then, at least, did not acquire its British character in
Britain, but on the continent; and it was introduced into England as a
language previously formed in Gaul.
For the Gaelic there is no such necessity for a continental origin;
indeed at the first view, the probabilities are in favour of its having
originated in Britain. It cannot be found on the continent; and, such
being the case, its continental origin is hypothetical. One thing,
however, is certain, viz., that if the Gaelic were once the only
language of the British Isles, the conquests and encroachments of the
Britons who displaced it, must have been enormous. In the whole of South
Britain it must certainly have been superseded, and in half Scotland as
well: whilst, if, before its introduction into Great Britain, it were
spoken on any part of the continent, the displacement must have been
greater still.
Now, the hypothesis as to the origin of the Gaels may take numerous
forms. I indicate the following three.--
1. The first may be called _Lhuyd's_ doctrine, since Humphrey Lhuyd, one
of the best of our earlier archæologists, suggested it. Mr. Garnett has
spoken of it with respect; but he evidently hesitates to admit it. And
it is only with respect that it should be mentioned; for, it is highly
probable. It makes the original population of all the British
Isles--England as well as Scotland and Ireland--to have been Gaelic,
Gaelic to the exclusion of any Britons whatever. It makes a considerable
part of the continent Gaelic as well. In consequence of this, the
Britons are a later and intrusive population, a population which
effected a great and complete displacement of the earlier Gaels over the
whole of South Britain, and the southern part of Scotland. Except that
they were a branch of the same stock as the Gaels, their relation to the
aborigines was that of the Anglo-Saxons to themselves at a later period.
The Gaels first; then the Britons; lastly the Angles. Such is the
sequence. The general distribution of these two branches of the Keltic
stock leads to Lhuyd's hypothesis; in other words, the presumptions are
in its favour. But this is not all. There are certainly some words--the
names, of course, of geographical objects--to be found in both England
and Gaul, which are better explained by the Gaelic than the British
language. The most notable of these is the names of such rivers as the
_Exe_, _Axe_, and (perhaps) _Ouse_, which is better illustrated by the
Irish term _uisge_ (_whiskey_, _water_), than by any Welsh or Armorican
one.
2. The second doctrine may be called the _Hibernian_ hypothesis. It
allows to the Britons of England, and South Scotland any amount of
antiquity, making them aboriginal to Great Britain. The Gaels of the
Scottish Highlands it derives from Ireland; a view supported by a
passage in Beda.[9] Ireland is thus the earliest insular occupancy of
the Gael. But whence came they to Ireland? From some part south and west
of the oldest known south-western limits of the Keltic area, from Spain,
perhaps; in which case a subsequent displacement of the original Kelts
of the continent by the Iberians--the oldest known stock of the
Peninsula--must be assumed. But as there must be some assumptions
somewhere, the only question is as to its legitimacy.
3. The third hypothesis--the _Caledonian_--reverses the second, and
deduces the Irish Gaels from Scotland, and the Scotch Gaels from some
part _north_ of the oldest known Keltic boundary and in the direction of
Scandinavia. Like both the others, this involves a subsequent
displacement of the mother-stock.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] _See_ Chapter viii.