56 C E A N I A BSITANNICA. [CHAP. V. CHAP. V.] HISTOBICAL ETHNOLOGY OP BRITAIN. 57
Ivi- •
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conolusion of Dr. U. G. Latliam, that, " suggestive as this view is, it has stiU to stand the fiJl
ordeal of criticism *."
But though we hesitate to admit that a Tm-amaa population was spread over the British
Isles previous to the arrival of the Celts, we may stUl see reason to conclude that the ancient
Britons were not of strictly homogeneous race. It is clearly possible that intrusive tribes, of a
different lineage, may have effected settlements in some pai-ts of Britain, who may either have
maintained themselves as distinct peoples, or, as is perhaps more probable, have become mixed
•Rdth the surrounding Celts, and have ceased, more or less, to be distinguished either by their
language or manners. The presumption of such elements of population as distinct from the
Celts, refers chiefly, if not entirely (as indicated by the passage already quoted from Tacitus),
to tribes of Iberian and Teutonic race. As respects the latter, whether in regard to its German
or Scandinavian division, we will here only express in general a negative conclusion, reserving
the argument for discussion in connexion with the inquiry as to the origin of the Belgte and
Piets, for both of whom a Teutonic descent has been often claimed.
As to the question of the Iberian origin of certain tribes in the south of Britain and
Ireland, it may be observed that many of the arguments alleged to prove a pre-Celtie, Iberian
population, by Scandinavian and other ethnologists, if inconclusive in such wider sense, may
stiU be urged in favour of the more limited view now under consideration. Ethnologists
are not perfectly agreed whether the Celts or Iberians formed the eaiKer population of the
Spanish peninsula. The prevailing opinion among the ancients, and notwithstanding the opposite
view of Niebuhr, that most in favom- with modern scholars, is, that the Iberians were the
aborigines, and that the Celts were immigrants from Gaul, who, crossing the Pyrenees, overpowered,
and, in many places, mixed with the Iberians t . There seems at least no doubt that,
at the beginning of the historical period, those who were regarded as forming the Spanish people
were really Iberians. Erom Csesar we learn that the Aquitanians, who occupied the whole of
the south of Gaul from the Pyrenees to the Garonne, differed from the Celts to the north of that
river, in language, customs and lawsj. A comparison of this statement with two corresponding
passages in Strabo, clearly shows the identity in race of the Aquitani and Iberians; as he not
only confirms Csesar's testimony as to the difference of their language from that of the Celts, but
adds the important observation, that, in the physical characters of the form of the body and
countenance, the Aquitani resemble the Iberians §. The Iberian origin of the Aquitanians is
further proved by the language spoken by the modern inhabitants of the south-west of Erance,
Gaseony, &c., being a dialect of the Basque of the south of the Pyrenees; and by the fact,
pointed out by "VViUiam von Humboldt, that the geographical names in this part of Erance, as in
Spain, are of Euskarian (Iberian) origin, and that they have plain significations in that language.
"Wliat were the leading physical characteristics of the ancient Iberi may be inferred from
the passage already quoted from Tacitus, alluding to their dark complexion and curly hair.
They were doubtless a black-eyed and dark-haired race, on the whole of less stature than the
Celts, and less stUl than the Germans. Though stiU a controverted question, classical authors
ahnost uniformly agree in attributing a xanthous complexion and light or flaxen hair, to the
* Smith's " Dictionary," &c., p. 440.
t See the argument in Prichard's "Researches," vol.iii.p.45;
Smith's " Dictionary of Greek and Koraan Geography," vol. i.
p. 1087 ; Niebuhr's " Lectures on Ethnography," &c., vol. ii.
Niebuhr thinks it evident that the Celts formed the original
population of the Peninsula, and that " it was the Iberians who
migrated and extended themselves," and were " perhaps reinforced
by their kinsmen from Africa."
i Cffisar, B. G. Ub. i. e. 1.
§ Strabo, lib. iv. c. 1. § 1 ; c. 2. § 1.
ancient Gauls and other Celts, though these characteristics were less marked in them than
in the German race The conjectural inference of an Iberian origin, drawn by Tacitus, from
the contrast as to physical characteristics, presented by the Silures to the other Britons, must
have great weight with the ethnologist, who recognizes the permanency of the types of man,
little susceptible of change, unless by admixture with other races.
Whether the Iberians, dui-ing the pre-historie period, were spread over Gaul or not, they at
least extended to the mouth of the Garonne; and there is nothing improbable in the opinion that
an Iberian colony, from Spain or Aquitania, may have reached the south-west of Britain by sea.
The Iberians themselves do not appear to have been distinguished in navigation, but their
knowledge of this art must in some parts of Spain have been materially advanced by their contact
with the Phoenicians, who had permanent settlements among, and were mixed with, the Iberian
people. It does not appear to have been hitherto pointed out, that the very name of Silura or
Silmia, the country of the Silures, has an Iberian character. William von Humboldt has
shown that names of places compounded of ^lra, which, in the Basque or Euskarian, signifies
water, are of common occurrence in the Peninsula and Iberian part of Gaul, but not elsewhere:
sueh names are Asturia, Ilm-ia, Ilurbiba, &e.1- The country of the Astures and that of the
Silures were separated from each other by the waters of the Bay of Biscay and the British
Ocean; and as the former seem to have derived their name from asta, a rock, and ura, water,
so may the latter have owed theirs to ura, water, with a Basque prefix, sal, zal or soloa
(a meadow) t- We are, moreover, as has been remarked §, by no means compelled to restrict
the observation of Tacitus altogether to the Silures, or to the district to which in his days they
were confined; the Silures perhaps being named, as a more distinguished tribe, gens nobilissima.
The SeiUy Isles themselves, so familar to the Phoenician voyagers from Gades, may not improbably
have possessed an Iberian population, which their stni existing name of Scilly may
indicate. The passage in SoUnus, in which the "insula Silura," "separated by a stormy
channel from the coast of the Damnonii," is named, is probably correctly taken as applying to
these islands II. Dionysius Periegetes (A.D. 290), a better authority than Solinus, and who appears
to preserve the views of the eminent Eratosthenes, expressly declares the ancient inhabitants of
the Cassiterides, or, as he calls them, the " Hesperides, whence tin proceeds," to be descendants
of the Iberians. Priscianus, in his Latin paraphrase of this passage, follows Dionysius almost
literally—" Hesperides, populus tenuit quas fortis Iberi In Strabo's description of the inhabitants
of the Cassiterides, he uses language almost identical with that in which he describes the
manners of some of the people of the south of Spain, the dress of both being said to comprise
* Prichard, "Researches," vol. iii. p. 1S9.
•f For other examples, see Prichard, " Researches," vol. iii.
p. 27.
J Camden quotes a Spanish writer, Florianns del Campo,
who confidently affirms the Iberian origin of the Silures, and
who alludes to places in Spain called Soloria and Siloria. W. von
Humboldt ("Prüfung der Untersuchungen," &c., 1821, p. 33),
alludes to the Möns Solorius of Pliny (lib. iii. ^ 2), Solurius
of Isidorus {Orig. xiv. 8), which, with Ilardouin, he identifies
with the present Sierra de los Vei'tientes, deriving the name
from the Basque soloa and ura, the mountain of the meadowwater,
or, as wc should say, the water-shed.
§ Phillips's "Yorkshire," 1863, p. 261.
II " Polyhistor" (A.D. 240 ?), cap. 22. Solinus is, on a question
of this sort, only an indifferent authority, and may be
thought to have mistaken the country of the Silures in the
present South Wales, for an island ; especially as he describes
the Cassiterides in a subsequent chapter. This, however, is by
no means clear, and the argument from the similarity of the
names remains, even if any such error be admitted. The
Scilly Isles appear certainly to have acquired the name of " Insulse
SyhnEe" at the close of the fourth century (Sulpitius
Severus, lib. ii. cap. 64, 65), and the name may well have been
of very much earlier origin.
% Dionysius Perieg. v. 563. Priscianus Perieg. v. 578.
The corresponding passage in Festus Avienus (Descript. Orb.
Ter. V. 414) is less definite.