FOOTNOTES:
Published by the Record Office, 1848.
Published by the Royal Academy of Berlin. Vol. VII. contains the Romano-British Inscriptions.
His later books only survive in the epitome of Xiphilinus, a Byzantine writer of the 13th century.
See p. 171.
See p. 256.
In the British (?) village near Glastonbury the bases of shed antlers are found hafted for mallets.
This name is simply given for archaeological convenience, to indicate that these aborigines were non-Aryan, and perhaps of Turanian affinity.
Skeat, however, traces "ogre" (the Spanish "ogro") to the Latin Orcus.
The latest excavations (1902) prove Stonehenge to be a Neolithic erection. No metal was found, but quantities of flint implements, broken in the arduous task of dressing the great Sarsen monoliths. The process seems to have been that still used for granite, viz. to cut parallel channels on the rough surface, and then break and rub down the ridges between. This was done by the use of conical lumps of Sarsen stone, weighing from 20 to 60 lbs., several of which were discovered bearing traces of usage, both in pounding and rubbing. The monoliths examined were found to be thus tooled accurately down to the very bottom, 8 or 9 feet below ground. At Avebury the stones are not dressed.
Sarsen is the same word as Saracen, which in mediaeval English simply means foreign (though originally derived from the Arabic sharq = Eastern). Whence the stones came is still disputed. They may have been boulders deposited in the district by the ice-drift of the Glacial Epoch.
Professor Rhys assigns 600 B.C. as the approximate date of the first Gadhelic arrivals, and 200 B.C. as that of the first Brythonic.
Whether or no this word is (as some authorities hold) derived from the Welsh Prutinach (=Picts) rather than from the Brythons, it must have reached Aristotle through Brythonic channels, for the Gadhelic form is Cruitanach.
A certain amount of British folk-lore was brought back to Greece, according to Plutarch ('De defect. orac.' 2), by the geographer Demetrias of Tarsus about this time. He refers to the cavern of sleeping heroes, so familiar in our mediaeval legends.
The word is said to be derived from the root kâsh, "shine." Some authorities, however, maintain that it came into Sanscrit from the Greek.
'Hist.' III. 112.
See p. 48.
For a full notice of Pytheas see Elton, 'Origins of English History,' pp. 13-75. See also Tozer's 'Ancient Geography,' chap. viii.
Posidonius of Rhodes, the tutor of Cicero, visited Britain about 100 B.C., and wrote a History of his travels in fifty volumes, only known to us by extracts in Strabo (iii. 217, iv. 287, vii. 293), Diodorus Siculus (v. 28, 30), Athenaeus, and others. See Bake's 'Posidonius' (Leyden, 1810).
The ingots of bronze found in the recent [1900] excavations at Gnossus, in Crete, which date approximately from 2000 B.C., are of this shape. Presumably the Britons learnt it from Phoenician sources.
Saxon coracles are spoken of even in the 5th century A.D. See p. 245.
'Coins of the Ancient Britons,' p. 24.
This familiar feature of our climate is often touched on by classical authors. Minucius Felix (A.D. 210) is observant enough to connect it with our warm seas, "its compensation," due to the Gulf Stream.
'Nat. Hist.' xviii. 18.
Ibid. xvii. 4.
Solinus (A.D. 80) adds that bees, like snakes, were unknown in Ireland, and states that bees will even desert a hive if Irish earth be brought near it!
Matthew Martin, 'Western Isles,' published 1673. Quoted by Elton ('Origins of English Hist.,' p. 16), who gives Martin's date as 1703.
Strabo, iv. 277. The word basket is itself of Celtic origin, and passed into Latin as it has passed into English. Martial ('Epig.' xiv. 299) says: "Barbara de pictis veni bascauda Britannis." Strabo wrote shortly before, Martial shortly after, the Roman Conquest of Britain.
One of these primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was found near Cambridge in 1885.
Diod. Siculus, 'Hist.' v. 21.
'British Barrows,' p. 750.
'Geog.' IV.
'Legend of Montrose,' ch. xxii.
Diod. Sic. v. 30: "Saga crebris tessellis florum instar distincta." This sagum was obviously a tartan plaid such as are now in use. The kilt, however, was not worn. It is indeed a comparatively quite modern adaptation of the belted plaid. Ancient Britons wore trousers, drawn tight above the ankles, after the fashion still current amongst agricultural labourers. They were already called "breeches." Martial (Ep. x. 22) satirizes a life "as loose as the old breeches of a British pauper."
Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' viii. 48.
Id. xxviii. 2. Fashions about hair seem to have changed as rapidly amongst Britons (throughout the whole period of this work) as in later times. The hair was sometimes worn short, sometimes long, sometimes strained back from the forehead; sometimes moustaches were in vogue, sometimes a clean shave, more rarely a full beard; but whiskers were quite unknown.
Tozer ('Ancient Geog.' p. 164) states that amber is also exported from the islands fringing the west coast of Schleswig, and considers that these rather than the Baltic shores were the "Amber Islands" of Pytheas.
'Nat. Hist.' xxxvii. 1.
See p. 128.
A lump weighing nearly 12 lbs. was dredged up off Lowestoft in 1902.
A.D. 50.
Seneca speaks of the blue shields of the Yorkshire Brigantes.
See Elton, 'Origins of English History,' p. 116.
Thurnam, 'British Barrows' (Archaeol. xliii. 474).
Propertius, iv. 3, 7.
'Celtic Britain,' p. 40.
This seems the least difficult explanation of this strange name. An alternative theory is that it = Cenomanni (a Gallic tribe-name also found in Lombardy). But with this name (which must have been well known to Caesar) we never again meet in Britain. And it is hard to believe that he would not mention a clan so important and so near the sphere of his campaign as the Iceni.