The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-07


the most part of Celtic and French elements
has grown English. The invasion which thus
changed the language of Britain introduced
no new element into the physical conforma-
tion of the people, so far as stature and COM
plexion are concerned, though it may have
done SO in the matter of cranial conformation.
1t is unquestioned that Norsemen, Danes, and
Saxons were alike TALL fair-haired people,
and their immigration strengthened the Kan
thochroic element of our population, but added
nothing new, unless it were longer form of
head. Thus, to put the matter in another
way tall stature, fair hair, and blue eyes, in
native OF Britain, are no evidence of his
descent rather from the primary Celtic-speak-
ing, than from the immigrant Teutonic-speak-
ing element of our population, or the reverse.
He is as likely to be ''Celt' as "Teuton,"
a 'Teuton" as "Celt."
But history teaches MS more than this.
There is the clearest evidence that the Gauls
the Celtic-speaking people who burnt Rome
nearly four centuries before our era-be-
longed to the fair type, and neither by their
stature, their compilations, the color of their
eyes or their hair, we're dlstingulshable from
such Teutonic-speaking people as the Goths,
who sacked Rome four centuries after it;
and that, for these eight centuries at any rate,
Northwestern, Central, Eastern Europe and
the western part of Central Asia were occu-
Dl6u ny ldll, DluO-6ySu DbODle, WHO
were known by the name of Celte, Beige
the language which they spoke), Germani,
Venedi, or Wsnds, and Alani, accord
ing to the districts which they occupied, and
the language whick they spoke.
Those who have any doubts upon this sub
iect had better consult the great work of
Kaspar Zeuss, ''Die Deutschen und die Mach
barstumme, published thirty years ago; or
the excellent discussion, mainly based upon
Zeuss, in Prichard; or to the instructive works
of Brandes and De Belloguet.
Thus, when history first makes known the
Celtic language to us, it is in the mouths of a
people physically identical with the Germans
and the Slavonians; and when the affinities of
the Celtic, the Teutonic, and Slavonic Ian
guages are worked out by the philologer they
are all found to belong to the same great
group of Aryan languages. The argument to
be drawn from the physical affinity of the
Celtic-speaking with the Teutonic-speaking
people is therefore supported and intensified
by the linguistic affinities between the Celtic
and the Teutonic tongues; and philology con-
ours with history in testifying to the ethnic
unity of the Celtic-speaking people on the
left bank of thes Rhine with the Teutonic-
speaking people to the eastward. In their
clothing, in their arms, in their houses, in
their employment of horses and wheeled
carriages, no differences of moment obtain
between the Celtic-speaking and Teutonic-
speaking people of old Europe; nor in
their, their fashion of government, their
their theology, do there seem to be any
greater differences than are readily accounted
for by the fact that the Teutonic-speaking
nations were more remote from the corrupt
ing influences of wealth and civilization. The
Tonga Islanders of Mariners time offered
the same contrast to the Tahitians that the
Germans of Tacitus do to the Gauls; but no
one would dream, on that ground, of declar-
ing them to be of different races.
Hence, there can be no reasonable doubt
that the fair element of the Celtic-speaking
population of these islands 1900 years ago
was simply the western fringe of that vast
stock which can be traced to Central Asia,
and the existence of which on the confines of
China in ancient times is testified by Chinese
annalists Throughout the central parts of
the immense areas which it covers, the peo-
pie of this stock speak Aryan languages-be-
longing, that is, to the same family as the
old Persian, or Zend, and the Sanskrit. And
they remain still largely represented among
the Affghans and the Siahpoots on the frontiers
of Persia on the one hand, and Hindostan on
the other. But the old Sanskrit literature
proves that the Aryan population of India
came In from the northwest, at least three
thousand years ago. And in the Vedas these
people portray themselves in characters which
might have fitted the Gauls, the Germans,
or the Goths. Unfortunately there Is no evil
dence whether they were fair-haired or not.
In India there was a pre-existing darkroom
plexioned people more like the Australians
than any one else, and speaking group of
languages called Drawidian. They were
fenced in on the north by the barrier of the
Himalayas; but the Aryans poured from the
plains of Central Asia over the Himalayas,
into the great river basins of the Indus and
the Ganges, where they have been, in the
main, absorbed into the pre-existing
population, leaving as evidence of their i'm
migration an extensive modification of the
physical characters of the population, Ian
guage, and literature. Italy is to the Alps
what Hindostan is to the Himalayas. The
Po is its Ganges. Four centuries b. @. it was
peopled mainly by the dark and short stock
represented by Ligurians Etruscans and old
Italians. The Gauls poured into it over the
northwestern passes, and settled in Cis-
Alpine Gaul, modifying the physical charac-
ters and the language of the population, but
becoming lost eventually in the great Roman
nationality. The correspondence of the
names of places in Gaul and ancient Britain
fully confirms Caesars statement that the
Belgic Gauls had, at some comparatively re-
cent time, colonized Southeastern Britain in
great numbers. But the primitive colonial
ton of Britain from the mainland by the fail
people is doubtless of extreme antiquity.
1 have now, 1 believe, accounted for the
fair Celtic-speaking population of ancient
Britain. There remains the problem, Why
did Britain contain another Oeltic-speakine
population of totally different type?
| The kew TO this riddle is [ believe with