Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/44

32 were the original inhabitants of the western shores of Europe opposite to our island, and though the main force of the nation had been wasted in the invasion of the South of Europe and though other nations had for many years pressed upon the remnant of them the Aduatuci, as Cæsar says in the consequent weakness of their condition, yet a certain portion of them was still left by which they may be identified.

3. Having thus shown that the Cimbri formerly inhabited the opposite shores of the continent, to connect them with the modern Cymri or Welsh we have next to show the traces which they if Cymri left there. Remembering Cæsar's statement that the Belgians were for the most part of German origin and the statements of later writers that a small portion of the Cimbri still continued to be found there we have here another instance of the fact that no conquering nation ever entirely extirpates the conquered. They only destroy those who have offered or can offer an effectual resistance, and they preserve the women and others useful to them as slaves. Thus among every conquering people there is always left a remnant of the conquered who infuse some portion more or less of their language and manners among their masters. Accordingly all the continental writers expressly acknowledge the fact that words common to the Celtic tribes occur in the Danish of Jutland and in the Frisian and Low-German of Sleswick and Holstein (see Transactions of the Philological Society Vol. i. p. 190) and several learned writers are investigating at the present time with great assiduity the affinities of the Old Friesic with the Celtic which are so remarkable that it would be difficult to say how they can be explained otherwise than in the way I have suggested.

There is however a still more decided proof to be adduced. Tacitus informs us that there was a people in the North of Germany in his time who spoke the same language as the British. That people seem to have inhabited the country now inhabited by the Wends who are generally supposed to be a branch of the Slavonian family speaking a dialect of the Slavonian language. But their name betokens some affinity to the Cimbri or Cymri as the Veneti were a principal people of Celtic Gaul in Cæsar's time having intimate relationship with the ancient Britons, and Gwynedd the modern Welsh name for Wales is apparently of kindred origin. If this supposition were rightly founded we might accordingly expect to find, as we actually do find, in the Wendish language as now spoken far off from us on the