Brittany, Scotland and Ireland, where in certain districts they retain their primitive
name of Gael.
The features of these people are strongly marked. They are tall, and
athletic, and little prone to obesity, while their physical strength corresponds to
their muscular proportions. They have the head rather elongated, and the forehead
narrow and hut slightly arched: the brow is low, straight and bushy; the
eyes and hair are light, the nose and mouth large, and the cheek hones high.
The general contour of the face is angular, and the expression harsh.
They are slow hut laborious, and endure fatigue beyond the sufferance of
other men. In disposition they are frank, generous and grateful, yet quicktempered,
pugnacious and brave to a proverb.
In some localities th e ir. physical traits, their moral character and their
peculiar customs, have undergone little change since the time of Caesar. It is
probable that the most unsophisticated Celts are those of the southwest of Ireland,
whose wild look and manner, mud cabins and funereal howlings, recall the
memory of a barbarous age.
The Celts have generally been considered the aboriginal inhabitants of
western Europe; but Sir William Bethain has recently undertaken to show “that
ancient colonies of Phenicians settled in Spain, Ireland, Britain and Gaul, long
before the Christian era; that they called themselves Gael or Celtic; and that the
Irisfi, the Gael of Scotland and the Manks (of the Isle of Man) are now the only
descendants of that ancient people who speak their language.”* The author then
proceeds with an ingenious comparison between the Gaelic and Phenician languages,
and illustrates their affinity to a degree truly surprising.f Strong as the
evidence is on this point, we may still hesitate to acknowledge the afiliation of the
Celts and Phenicians until some remaining discrepancies are explained: for is it
not singular, if the Celts were Phenicians, that they should have inherited so
little of the national splendor, refinement and maritime enterprise of their progenitors?
Betham brings but slender evidence of the civilisation of the ancient
Irish; and Caesar's account is any thing but complimentary to their domestic and
civil relations.
The same learned author gives plausible reasons for supposing that the Piets
or Caledonians of Scotland were not, as is commonly believed, of Celtic origin,
* Inquiry into the Origin of the Gael and Cimbri, Introd. p. 16.
t Betham shows, after Vallancey and others, that the Carthaginian speeches in the Pasnulus of
Plautus are absolutely Gaelic. See his work above quoted, p. 112.
but a branch of the Cymbri of Jutland; and that the Pictish Cimbri conquered
Wales and Cornwall on the fall of the Homan Empire, and are the ancestors of
the present Welsh population of Britain.
At the invasion of Caesar the Belgae, a branch of the Teutonic stock, were
already numerous in the maritime parts of England. Subsequently the establishment
of Roman colonies, the invasion and conquest by the Saxons, and still later
by the Normans, have all contributed to form that extraordinary people whom we
call the English or Anglo-Saxons. Inferior to no one of the Caucasian families in
intellectual endowments, and possessed of indomitable courage and unbounded
enterprise, -it has spread its colonies widely over Asia, Africa and America; and,
the mother of the Anglo-American family, it has already peopled the new world
with a race in no respect inferior to the parent stock**;
While the Celtic appears to be but partially blended with the English blood,
the present French nation partakes of it much more largely. The Romans, the
Germanic tribes, the Goths, the Burgundians and the Franks, who successively
established themselves in France, amalgamated with the native population, thus
forming a new race singularly different from that of the adjacent islands, wherein,
as we have already seen, the social condition of the Celts has always been much
more isolated. “ It is thus,” says Bory de St. Vincent, “ that the Celts and Gauls
have become the modern French, of whom the Franks of the middle ages are not
the parent stock, as those assert who trace their genealogy to the latter barbarians.
It is from their Celtic ancestors that the French derive their vivacity, their inconstancy,
their impetuous courage devoid of perseverance, a vanity often puerile, and
remarkable quickness of perception, together with that levity which is the jest of
a neighboring country.”*
We may in this place remark, that the Caucasian, Germanic and Celtic
families already described, and the Hindoo family to be hereafter noticed, constitute
the great chain of what are called the Indo-European nations. “ It is now
well known,” observes Dr. Prichard, “ that a greater or less degree of affinity
exists between the dialects of. some nations in the south-eastern parts of Asia, and
the most extensively spread and most civilised languages of Europe. By this
affinity is not meant a resemblance of some particular words in the vocabularies
of several nations, such as a casual intercourse may have occasioned, but that sort
of analogy in the primitive words and grammatical structure, which requires a
L’Homme, I, p. 125.