Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/54

42 original inhabitants of Spain were Gaelic, and that they sent forth colonies to Ireland and the South and West of England. The Gael of Ireland afterwards went over to the West of Scotland and obtained there a predominancy; but the Gael of England having been either driven away or trampled down by the Romans were at length so reduced that when the Cymri came among them, they amalgamated with them so as completely to lose the little nationality previously left them.

It is in this way only we can account for so many nouns substantive being common to both languages, when in their structure and framework they are entirely dissimilar. An exemplification of this appears in the language of Brittany. This language, the Armoric, though undoubtedly the same as the Cymric or Welsh, still more resembles the Gaelic than the Welsh does, for it has not only its vocabulary much alike, but also many of the inflections. It is in fact an intermediate language between the Cymric and the Gaelic, and this fact speaks its history. It did not gain its relationship from any connexion with the people of Ireland and Scotland, but from their connexion originally with the people of Aquitaine who were the same as the people of Spain, and thus the same amalgamation went on there in a greater degree that had taken place in Wales. The Gael in Wales had been as I said before considerably reduced, but according to this theory they must have been less reduced in Cornwall. Accordingly though the ancient Cornish language has long been extinct as an oral language, yet we have sufficient of its vocabulary left us preserved by Lhuyd and others to show that it was like the Breton a greater compound of the Gaelic than the Welsh.

To recapitulate shortly my views I contend that the people on the South and West of England at the time of the Roman conquest especially the Damnonii, the Silures and the Brigantes, and I would venture to say the South of England generally, were Gaelic from Spain and the South of France. That the other nations were Cymric with a slight edging of Belgæ. That in the course of the Roman domination both nations became reduced and impoverished so as to become finally rendered almost powerless, but especially those in the West. That when the Romans abandoned the island, the Cimbri, weakened as they were, were pushed on by constantly swarming tribes of Belgic or Saxon or German invaders, call them what you will, until they finally took refuge in their present fastnesses in Wales: that they found there a remnant of the ancient Gaelic inhabitants who had