Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/83

Rh archæologist have corrupted the author's good manners. These gentlemen are continually confounding fact and inference from fact. Thus it may be a fact that a skull found in Ireland corresponds to a skull found in Germany, it is not a fact that the same race inhabited both countries; it may be a fact that the ornament on a Mycenæ vase corresponds to that on an Irish menhir, it is not a fact that Mycenæan civilisation influenced Ireland or that both lands passed through similar stages of culture. In these instances we have inferences from facts, inferences which may or may not be valid, but the validity of which cannot be judged solely by their relation to their parent fact. Yet anyone familiar with the literature of modern pre-historic archæology must have noticed a standing tendency to treat inference and fact as equivalent, a tendency far more marked, I make bold to say, than in folklore research, which is commonly supposed to be peculiarly subject to this failing.

What then is the general character of the proof adduced by Mr. Borlase? In the first place he cites a number of interesting parallels between the traditions of the Celtic-speaking Irish or British, and German or Slavonic-speaking inhabitants of Central and North Central Europeans. But this is entirely beside the mark. Even if Central Europe had always been Germanic, there is no reason why the kindred Aryan peoples of Celtic and Germanic speech should not possess kindred traditions; but as a matter of fact Central Europe from the Rhine to the Don, and from the Elbe to the Po, was dominated centuries long by Celtic tribes which must have been closely allied to those which settled in Britain and Ireland. If the prejudice (in itself utterly unscientific) against the possession by kindred races of kindred traditions is too strong to admit common pre-historic origin, historic contact between Celt and German in pre-Christian times amply suffices to account for the similarity in question. Mr. Borlase then instances numerous resemblances of nomenclature, whether place or personal, between Ireland and the mainland of Europe. Here again, community of race, kinship of speech, must inevitably have produced many resemblances. Apart from this, the author's comparisons are of the most fantastic kind. Irish tradition mentions a people called the Gaileoin. Ptolemy mentions a people called the Galindæ on the southern Baltic coast. Near neighbours of the Galindæ were the Aiste or Esthones, the just or good