Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/258

 234 Reviews.

Keltic Researches. Studies in the History and Distribution of the Ancient Goidelic Language and Peoples. By E. W. B. Nicholson. London: H. Frowde. 1904.

This book deals for the most part with matters outside folklore research proper, but it should receive attention from the student of British folklore because of two theses maintained by the author, which, if correct, seriously modify much current speculation con- cerning the development of Celtic myth and romance. Bodley's librarian holds that instead of, as commonly believed, the Goidelic branch of the Celts representing the first wave of Keltic immi- gration driven westward by the later Brythons (Kymry is the term he prefers), the reverse is the case. The Kymry came first, the Goidels later (partly from Spain in consequence of the movements among the Celt-Iberian tribes caused by the Roman conquests of the late 3rd century B.C.). He also holds (refashioning Skene's argument) that the Picts were a Goidelic people, in reality closely allied to the invading Scots, and that Scottish Gaelic is a descendant of Pictish, and not, as commonly held, of the language brought from Ireland by the Dalriadic Scots. As regards this last thesis, one can only say that it explains much that is very difficult to understand otherwise.

Although mainly philological, there are numberless facts scattered throughout Mr. Nicholson's pages which are of moment to students of Keltic folklore.

I cannot refrain from a few remarks suggested by a passage in the writer's preface. Discussing the question of race, he says, " from the statistics of relative nigrescence there is good ground to believe that Lancashire .... zud part of Sussex are as Keltic as North Munster .... while Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire exceed even this degree atid are on a level with South Wales and Ulster^ ^ I am quite prepared to take the author's word for this ; but if so, does it not demonstrate the absolute futility of statistics of "relative nigrescence," or, let me add, size of skulls, &c.? The Bucks peasant may be, physiologically, akin to the man from Kerry or Glamorgan ; psychically he differs profoundly, and it is the psy- chical traits that interest me as a folklorist. It is useless to assert that a recognisable English or Celtic type does not exist, because English- men and Celts are of all degrees of " relative nigrescence " and of

' The italics are mine. — A. N.