Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/330

320[March 6, 1869] Having thus demolished, or at all events greatly impaired, the authority of Gildas, the next step of Dr. Nicholas is to ascertain, whether his extraordinary statement as to the all but total extermination of his countrymen gains any corroboration from subsequent facts with which he, and the men of his day were unacquainted. If the Ancient Britons over the greater part of England were exterminated in the sixth century, how could they be numerous in any part of England in the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries? It is, in answer to this question, that the Philoceltism of Dr. Nicholas becomes apparent. He denies the extermination, and proves that, although the Celtic language disappeared, in consequence of the gradual adoption by the British masses of the superior Saxon or Anglo-Saxon tongue, the Celts themselves remained. In the time of Athelstan, the Saxon king, five hundred years after the arrival of Hengist and Horsa (if these were the names of real people, and did not signify horse and mare, from the devices on the banners of the invaders), communities of Cymry (Celts) speaking Celtic, and observing their own usages, were in existence in the very heart of the kingdom of Wessex. In the reign of Egbert, four hundred years after the days of Hengist and Horsa, it appears from the "will of King Alfred," published in Oxford in 1788, that the counties of Dorset, Devon, Wilts, and Somerset, were all considered as belonging to the Weal-cynne (Welkin), the dominion or Kingdom of the Welsh, or Ancient Britons. "Throughout the country, even in the central parts," says Dr. Nicholas, "such as Bedford, Banbury, Potterton, Bath, we find so late as between the years 552 and 658, mighty battles fought by the Britons proper of those districts, who rose to avenge the oppressive exactions of their conquerors, as is proved by the Saxon Chronicle under those dates. During all this time," he adds, "West Wales, or Cornwall and Devon, great part of Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and the south of Scotland, as well as the whole of Wales, the patria intacta of the Cymry, were in the possession of those Britons who had hitherto kept themselves unmixed with the Teutons." Regarding the manner in which the Britons were disposed of—a hundred and twenty-five years after Gildas wrote of their extermination—a curious instance is recorded in Camden's Britannica, and quoted by Dr. Nicholas. In the year 685, "Egfrid, King of Northumbria, makes a grant of the district of Cartmel with the Britons thereupon, to the see of Lindisfarne." Cartmel is in Furness, Lancashire; and it appears, as Dr. Nicholas states, "that when an Anglo-Saxon king obtained the power of absolute disposal of the native inhabitants of a whole district, he exercised the power not by their extermination, not by their consignment to bondage, but by bestowing them as a holy gift to the Church, thus handing them over to the best protection then existing." In short, the researches of modern authors are sufficient to prove, that the Britons made a gallant fight against both the Saxons and the Danes; that their conquest was not easy; that neither the Saxons nor the Danes ever sought to exterminate, but only to subdue them; and that as time wore on, and Saxon rule became more firmly established, the two races blended together, and the Celts became so Saxonified and the Saxons so Celtified by constant intermarriage, that Danes, Saxons, and Celts gradually fused into one people, called the English. The last conquest of England added to, and did not diminish, the Celtic element, inasmuch as the Normans, who came over with William, were of Celtic origin. This fusion of race was fortunate alike for Celts and Saxons, and produced not only a noble people, but a noble language. The Celts are martial, quick-witted, imaginative, musical, generous, and rash, but lack continuity of purpose, and sustained energy; while the Saxons are solid, plodding, industrious, prudent, slow to anger, sure to complete what they once take earnestly in hand, while they are deficient in wit, fancy, and imagination. The Celtic poetry of Shakespeare, Scott, and Burns, are combined in the English character with the Saxon energy, and sound sense of such men as Watt, Stephenson, Cobden, and Palmerston; while the language that has sprung from the two, promises to be the language of the world.

One of the arguments which Dr. Nicholas uses in support of his proposition, and which he might have extended with great advantage, had he been as well acquainted with the Irish and Scottish varieties of the Celtic language as he appears to be with the Cymric, is that the names of nearly all the ancient towns and cities, and all the rivers in Great Britain, are Celtic. In point of fact, the names of all the great rivers and mountain ranges of Europe are Celtic, which, however, proves nothing more than the antiquity of the Celtic race, and goes little towards making out the non-extermination of the British Celts in the sixth century by the Saxons or Angles. A better argument in support of the proposition that the Celts and Cymri were not exterminated, but were gradually amalgamated with their successive military conquerors, is to be found in the very considerable admixture of Celtic words, both Welsh and Gaelic, in the English language, especially in those words that are to a greater extent colloquial and popular than literary, and in the great variety of Celtic surnames borne by the English people as distinguished from those Scotch, Welsh, and Irish surnames, whose Celtic origin is better known.

The compilers of our best English dictionaries, from the days of Samuel Johnson to our own, have greatly neglected the Celtic etymology of the language, and have been content to trace the roots of words either to the Anglo-Saxon, the Danish, the Latin, the Greek, and the French, without troubling themselves to ascertain the origin of words of which these were not the sources. The words "boy" and "girl," which are both Celtic, may serve as instances of this