Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/88



O subject has had more attraction for inquirers into the early history of these islands than the question of the earliest intercourse between Britain and the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean, to whom all the civilisation of Europe is due. Camden, the Father of English Archæology, identified the Cassiterides of the ancients with the Scilly Isles, and gave currency to the belief, which has prevailed ever since, that the Phœnicians traded to Britain. Mr. Elton (Origins of English History) has given good reasons for doubting this hypothesis, and has shown that the Tin Islands of the ancient writers are rather a group of small islands off the coast of Northern Spain.

But we can have no doubt that there was an extensive trade between Gaul and Britain before Julius Cæsar ever set foot on this island. The nature of this trade in general we learn from Strabo; for it is not likely that there had been great variation in the nature of the objects exported and imported between 55 B.C. and the time when the geographer wrote (cir. A.D. 1-19). Strabo (iv, 199) enumerates corn (wheat, ), cattle, gold, silver, iron, skins, slaves, and dogs, used by the Kelts for war as well as the chase, and gives us likewise the list of imports into Britain, which comprised “ivory bracelets and necklaces, and red amber beads and vessels of glass, and such like trumpery wares .” Strangely enough, Strabo omits tin from his schedule of products and exports, although elsewhere, as we shall see, he quotes a passage from Posidonius referring to that trade, and Cæsar mentions it amongst the products of Britain as being found in the interior (in mediterraneis regionibus, B.G.,