Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/29

Rh haud multum diversus." (Vit. Agr. cap. 2.) And the Venerable Bede: "Hæc insula Britones solum a quibus nomen accepit incolas habuit, qui de tractu Armoricano ut fertur Britanniam advecti, australes sibi partes illius vindicarunt." (Hist. Eccles. lib. i. cap. 1.) See Note.

These tribes, then, must have come to the eastern and south-eastern coasts of Britain, whence they would in due course proceed to the interior as their population increased. That such a people did once inhabit those coasts is deducible from the remnants of local names still remaining in England and Scotland. Of the Isle of Wight we find mention in Nennius, cap. 2: "Quam Britones insulam Guied vel Guith quod Latine divortium dici potest." There is no word like this that I can find with the same signification, except the Cymric Gwaheniaeth, which, pronounced quickly, has the sound of Guith. The names of rivers on those coasts also appear to be Cymric; and the application of the term Aber for the mouth of a river, prevalent on the east of Scotland, has been noticed by Professor Newman in his 'Regal Rome,' as unknown in other parts, where the Gaelic equivalent is Inver. While they were thus peopling the island on the one side, the Silures, whom Tacitus judged to have come from Spain, and other Gaelic tribes, also probably from Spain originally, were settling on the south-western and western. This will account for the evident traces of a Gaelic people having inhabited Wales previously to the Cymry, as Lloyd and other Welsh antiquaries have long since pointed out, and as also Prichard and other writers in our day agree. Thus, even now, "the inhabitants of North and South Wales are. clearly two different races. Besides the distinction of dialect, there is a physiological difference" (Jones's 'Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd,' p. 72). And thus even "the natives of the extreme north and extreme south of Cardiganshire are not always mutually intelligible" (ib. p. 44); while the natives of North and South Wales respectively have dialects almost totally unintelligible to each other.

If, then, under these considerations, we suppose the Cymry to have been originally driven from the North of Gaul into Britain, before the more intimate communications arose that afterwards existed between their brethren in mid-Gaul and the Gael of Aquitania, we may easily account for the Cymric and Gaelic languages in these islands remaining comparatively distinct. But the Cymry in the centre of Gaul, associated more with the Aquitani, became more commingled with them, and adopted many of their inflections for nouns