Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/49

Rh also trace their remains among the people of the East of England in other respects. When a weaker nation is obliged to succumb to any invaders, they of necessity seek refuge in the mountains or other inaccessible places in their country. The fens of Lincolnshire were to the ancient Cymri what the mountains of Wales were as a refuge to their descendants, and accordingly we find there people of an evidently different nationality from others in their neighbourhood. We find persons there in fact more resembling the natives of Wales than they do the people on the coasts, and though among them many traces snowing their descent may not now be any clearly ascertainable, yet I believe it would not be difficult to give good proofs of the assertion in their provincialisms, or in their past usages. Thus for instance in the use of the Bagpipe which is so undoubtedly a Celtic instrument that we may claim any people using it as Celtic, though it is unknown now in these districts, yet it must have been common there in Shakespeare's days as he speaks of the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe as a proverbial saying.

5. Having thus shown that some people of whom the modern Cymri or Welsh are the representatives formerly inhabited the Western shores of Europe and the Eastern shores of this island, I have it my next point to show from the Cymric records or traditions also that they afford evidences of the same fact. And here I cannot but acknowledge my full acquiescence in whatever merits the modern Cymri attach to those records. They seem to me to bear intrinsic proofs of their truthfulness, for unlike the improbable narratives of fictitious chroniclers, they give exactly such accounts of the early history of the nation as we might be prepared to expect on a philosophical consideration of its character.

These records are given in the form of Triads which of itself seems to betoken their antiquity and genuineness, as if this were the remains of ancient Druidic lore half forgotten, but originally cast in a form intended for learning by memory. This we are told the Druids insisted on as the discipline of their schools; they bespeak a philosophy akin to their institutions. The historical triads which purport to be memorials and records of the events which befel the race of the Cymri from the age of ages give us the following intimations of the primary colonization of the island.

"There were three names given to the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it was inhabited it was called Clas Merddin (the sea girt green spot). After it was inhabited