Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/33

21 version translated "told Abram the Hebrew," is rendered in the Septuagint ; and thus also, in other parts of the same version, by other terms of equivalent sig- nification, as and, in the 1st book of Samuel. From this, then, we may judge, that the same general term which had been applied by the Phœni- cians to the Israelites, and to the wandering tribes of the country now known as Georgia, had been also applied by them to those they found in Spain, and had come to the Greeks and Romans as a national appellation. However this may be, it is certain that the name Iberi was applied by Greek and Roman writers to the people inhabiting Spain in their times, and that these Iberi were not any former class of in- habitants, but essentially the same people who were by others of those writers also called Gauls, Celts, Scythians, or Celtiberians.

The Irish histories and traditions are mixed up with so many palpable fictions, that it is impossible for us in reason to rely on them as authorities. Still, so far as they may be received, they show us that the first inhabitants of Ireland came from Spain; and certainly that important branch of them, the Scots, who first gave their name to that island, and afterwards to North Britain, as in the present day. The traditions and histories of Spain on this point coincide with the Irish, and so also do the English (see Nennius, § 13), so that we have both authority and probability in support of our assumption. We have already cited Strabo as noticing the personal resemblance of the Aquitani to the people of Spain; and Tacitus, for the same reason, judged the Silures of Wales to have been of Spanish origin. Such national resemblances are well worthy of remark; and thus, even now, after the lapse of 2000 years, there may be traced an extraordinary similarity of personal appearance between the lower classes of the Irish and those of Galicia in Spain, whence the colonists are said to have proceeded. To that province the Gael left their name, and there the coast is yet designated Brigantina. Thence, also, the slightest observation of the map will show, that any vessel, sailing even at random, would as easily get to Ireland as to the south-western parts of England, where others of their family had no doubt settled in the same manner. This being allowed, the conclusion necessarily follows, that the original colonists took their language with them; and as they have ever since remained a distinct people in Ireland, have thus been able to retain it.

Spain itself was subjected so relentlessly to the