Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/396

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88 Celtic Myth and Saga.

Les mots latins dans Ics langues brittonigues, avec une introduction sur la romanisation de I'lle de Bretagne, par J. Loth. Paris : Bouillon.

THE two years that have passed since the publication of my last report will rank among the most fruitful in the study of Celtic antiquity, thanks chiefly to the labours of Mr. Whitley Stokes and of Professor Heinrich Zimmer. So much new material has been made accessible to students, so far reaching have been the theories advanced and are the conclusions that inevitably force themselves upon the Celtologist, that I despair of being able within the space at my command to adequately express the scope and import of what has been achieved and attempted.^

Following my usual practice in these reports, I deal first with investigations devoted to early continental Celtdom ; then with Ireland, the records of which must ever remain our chief source of knowledge of Celtic antiquity and the Celtic genius ; lastly, with the Brythonic Celts of Britain and Brittany, whose chief importance in so far as these reports are concerned lies in the fact that the Arthurian romance originated among and was mainly elaborated by them.

Prof Rhys's Rhind Lectures may conv^eniently be con- sidered under the first heading, although they are chiefly concerned with the Celtic inhabitants of these islands. Undoubtedly, however, the most suggestive of the many suggestive speculations contained in these lectures are those which attempt to determine the early habitat of the Celtic-speaking peoples, the order in which the hypothetical ancestors of the present Gaels and Brythons spread over the Continent and throughout the British Isles, and their relation to the populations which they conquered or dis- possessed. Prof Rhys's investigations hardly allow of being summarised, and he would be the first to admit that he has

^ I need hardly say that I make no attempt at detailed criticism. My object is to bring clearly before those who are not specialists the salient results and main lines of investigation.