158 CRANIA BRITANNICA. [CHAP. VI.
1 i
i
of " Britaimi*." One beaa-ing such a name and passing across the Straits of Dover, where it had
established a settlement, can scarcely be conceived to have escaped his attention.
Mating the largest allowance for the immigrant tribes aUuded to by JuUus Cffisar, the
settlements of which appear to have been limited in the extent of their territories, the great bulk
of the inhabitants of the two islands of Albion and lerne must be admitted to own some other
origm. They were totally beyond the ken of Julius; but he knew that they constituted a numerous
population—a fact fully supported by evidence derived from every other source—and he,
or his informants, regarded them as indigenous. No wonder that this should always have
appeared an unsatisfactory mode of accounting for their presence. To search out the origin and
derivation of tilings is a universal thirst of the human mind, influencing alike the lowest savage
of the AustraKan scrub and the philosopher of Europe, and which is equally allayed by mythic
fables and legends, wherever knowledge is not to be acquired.
In looking for the sources of an earlier immigration, which might share the responsibilities of
populating our shores with the BelgEe and the Celtse, the ear, rather than the eye, has been directed
to a people famous in Latin story, to whose supposed proliflcness very distant countries of
Eiu-ope are regarded as owing colonies. The Cimbri—whose dubious primary seat is considered
to be pretty nearly the same as that acknowledged by cm- Saxon forefathers, viz. North Germany,
or the Cimbrian Chersonese, i. e. Jutland, where, however, they have not left any particular
trace of their presence, either in language or antiquities—a rude people, who, conjoined with
the Teutones, at the end of the second centm-y before Christ, made formidable descents on the
Roman empire t—have long been viewed as of very uncertain origin. The data afforded by the
ancient geographers and historians are quite ambiguous as to whether they should be regarded as
a Germanic or Celtic people J. This need not excite any surprise when we recoUect the inexact
signadoa Albion, from the Celtic w * Mr. Long {op. cit.) has given the evidence suggested by ords All, In—" The White
the French antiquaries who have written on the district of
" La Marquenterre," and has also, as already mentioned, paid
a visit to " Bretagne " and its neighbourhood. There being no
tribe of Cantii m Gaul, the peopling of the district of Britain
which hes closest to that country, and therefore most likely
to derive its population thence, seemed difficult to explain with
probabiUty. Pliny's mention of the " Bri tanni " of the shores
of the Canche has led to the notice of other names of similar
sound, which are supposed to strengthen the argument for such
a migration. The town of Etaples at the mouth of the river
owns a comparatively modern name. In ancient times a town
in this locaUty, Quanche or Canche, bore the appellation of
Quoentawic, Cantguic of Nennius, and appears as KYENTOVICI
upon Merovingian coins, for it had the privilege of a mmt—a
designation which occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and is
believed to be applied there to Canterbury itself. And Quend,
so Uke to Kent, occurs to the south of the river AutHe frequently,
as in the name of the district " La Marquenterre,"
the country by the Quend sea; Quend-le-vieux, Quend-lejeuue,
&c.
We find Mr. Long in a subsequent portion of his work
has considered the difficulties which have occurred to us, and
admits that the "Britanni" must have crossed the Channel
about 400 years before the Christian era.—lb. p. 84. He expresses
his conviction thatfthe Carthaginians conferred the
eariiest title upon Britain and named it " Samothea;" and
repeats a derivation of much beauty for its next or Celtic de-
Island." Such must have been its most striking aspect to the
mariner from the Gallic coast. This would take away the
native character of the name, which need not be regarded as
any serious difficulty, for uncivilized races frequently have no
collective name for themselves or for the country they inhabit.
See Am. Thierry, i. 68, 118.
t In the triumph of Marius, it is related that the head of
Teutobochus, the king of the Teutones, overtopped the spears
which bore trophies.
X Dr. L. Schmitz, however, states that " the ancients are
almost uuanimons m representing the Cimbri as Celts or
Gauls." StUl CEESar, Strabo, and Tacitus considered them
Germans; and Pliny, who himself visited the region in which
they dwelt, mcludes them among the Ingeevones, in his fivefold
division of the Germans.
Niebuhr attributes to Johannes Müller considerable merit
for having proved the Cimbri to he Celts. Lects. on Anc.
Ethnography, 1853, Ü. 326.
The isolated populations in the mountains near Verona and
Vicenza, respectively distinguished, by the number of the parishes
they occupy, as the people of the Tredici Communi and
of the Setti Communi, are traditionally of Cimbric origin. But
though there is abundant evidence in their language that it is
a Teutonic dialect, they are now regarded as descendants of
the Allemanni and not of the Cimbri. W. F. Edwards, Caract.
Physiol., Mim. de la Soc. Ethnol. 1841, i. 90. Russell's
" L i f e of Mezzofanti," 1858, p. 217.
CHAP. VI.] ETHNOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OE SUCCESSIVE POPULATIONS. 169
knowledge usually possessed of savage nations, looked upon merely as enemies, and with no
critical eye. That they were united with the Teutones (whom it is hard to consider as otter
than a German tribe, especially when derived from a Trans-rhenane source, however imperious
the demands of a contrary hypothesis) in the invasion of Gaul we know; and that they met
with a spirited resistance from the Belgse. Their original country and this confederation, on the
one side, speak to an alliance of race ; and the resistance, on the other, equaUy supports a diversity
from the Celtic Belgse. Zeuss decides unhesitatingly that the Cimbri were Germans *.
The Cimbri, then, are supposed in one hypothesis to have been the progenitors of the Belgai,
and to have established themselves in northern Gaul, and, in another, to have sent swarms of
settlers directly to our shores anterior to the Belgic immigration of Csesar. A foundation for this
latter hypothesis is found principally in the name " Cymry," which belongs to the Welsh, and
in the relation of one of the Triads of that nation, which affirms that " Hu Cadam led the
Cymry first to the Island of Britain." The former hypothesis has found favour with the
learned historian of the Gauls, M. Am. Thierry, and others; and the latter is supported with
much ingenuity by a recent writer, Mr. H. L. Long. This gentleman regards the Cymry, or
Cimbri, as the first wave in " the tide of the human race which, rolling continuously from Asia
and the East, reached eventually the coast of Britain f." This view evidently precludes any
earlier and still more indefinite colonists. It is besides quite concurrent with that of Dr.
Prichard, who says, "it is by no means improbable that they" (the Cimbri) "were the
people who first colonized North Britain t "
That the "Welsh Triads should contain some recital of the mode in which the " Cymry "
reached the shores of Britain is a matter we should have expected. Almost every primitive
people has thus clothed with legend its reflective surmises respecting its own origin; and what
is so likely as that the Cymry or Welsh should be said to be led to Britain by Hu the Powerful ?
There is no reasonable point of departure §, no further account of this leader jj, no circumstance
on which to rest, save the similitude of names. The denomination Cymry does not occur in
Csesar or Ptolemy as the name of any British tribe, where we might have expected it, and is even
regarded as not being very ancient (but this of course involves the question of the antiquity of
the Triads themselves) %; it therefore fails to be indissolubly connected with the Cimbri of ante-
Christian times. In fine, we conclude, however respectably supported this hypothesis may be.
* Die Deutscben uud die Nachbarstamme, 1837, S. 141.
Prichard's Phys. Res. 1841, iii. 98, 358. Latham's Germauia
of Tacitus, 1851, civ. This last is the reprint of a
paper read before the Philological Society, 1844. In a note
appended to this paper, the author adds, "The confiictmg
difficulties have increased with the increase of the attention
that has been bestowed on the subject, * * * what they were
being a greater mystery than ever." Plutarch alludes to their
tall stature and blue eyes, but not in a decisive manner.
t Op. cit. p. 74.
X Phys. Res. iii. 10.1.
§ This is the legend in the Triad form :—" The three pillars
of the nation of the Isle of Britain. First, Hu Gadarn, who
led the nation of the Cymry first to the isle of Britain ; and
from the counti-y of Summer which is called Deffrobani, they
came ; this is where Constantinople is: and through the hazy
ocean they came to the Isle of Britain, and to Llydaw, where
they have remained."—Triad 4. Turner's Hist, of Ang.-Sax.
i. 36. The confusion of Wales, Ceylon, Constantinople, and
Armorica in one imagmary migration, is itself a test of the vahdity
of this romance.
II We should rather say rational account; for, in truth, Hu
the Mighty was the chief hero of the Welsh. " His chariot
was composed of the rays of the sun ; the sacred oxen, one of
his attributes, bellowed in the thunder, and glared in the
lightning."'—Cumberland and Westmoreland, Ancient and
Modern, by J . Sullivan, 1857, p. 112. Hu or Hesus was the
"dux itinerum," par excellence the Celtic Mercury {ante,
p. 129), and believed to be referred to byTaliesiu as " the luminary,"
or " the solar divinity."—Stolberg and Stuart, "Costume
of the Clans," 1845, p. 26.
^ It occurs in the earliest Welsh poems now extant. The
Welsh Lexicographers define it to mean aboriginal, from cyn,
primary, and hro, a country; but Zeuss, " compatriota, qui
est ejusdem terrse."—Grammatica Celtica, 1854, p. 873.
Y 2