HISTORY—THE CELTS.
Careful study and research have enabled philologists to establish a system of linguistic classification. They have given us such families as the Chinese, the Polynesian, the Scythian, the Semitic, and others; and above them all the great Indo-European Family, which comprehends ten members—three Asiatic and seven European.
Seven of these ten families have long been recognized, namely: Iranian, or Ancient and Modern Persian; Indian, or Sanskrit, used in Hindostan; Hellenic—Ancient and Modern Greek; Italic, that is, the Latin and its descendants—Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Provençal, Rheto-Romanic, and Wallachian; Slavonic, preëminently the Russian; Celtic, or Keltic, made up of the Cymric and the Gaelic; Teutonic, subdivided into Gothic, Scandinavian, High German, and Low German. Into the Low German the English falls. Recent scholars have added to these seven the Lithuanian, Armenian, and Albanian, making ten in all.
So unlike are these languages now, that it was not suspected until this century that they were once the same speech spoken by a people dwelling together long enough to build up a respectable vocabulary and a common language. The home of this mother-tribe is involved in obscurity. Conjecture, at one time, placed it upon the high table-land of Eastern Persia. Recent surmise, principally German, locates it in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Russia just north of the Caucasus mountains. When, and in what order, the migrations took place is also conjectural. That great migrations did occur, and that each migrating horde carried along with it the parent speech, is no longer questioned. Strong authorities make it credible that the Celtic tribes were the first to abandon the old homestead and seek their fortunes in new and strange lands.
Of this people, the Celts, when first they appear upon the historical horizon, some prefatory remarks are needed. They occupied the Spanish Peninsula, Gaul when conquered by Cæsar, and Britain, when visited by him in 55 and 54 B. C. In Britain, they were divided into many tribes, and were seldom known to unite in a common cause. They lived in houses hollowed out of the hills, built with low stone walls, thatched with reeds and straw, and lighted only by the door. Their dress consisted of the tunic and short trousers. Fruits, milk, flesh, and grain bruised and baked, constituted their food. They manufactured earthenware, war chariots, arrows, the sword, the spear, the battle-axe, and the shield, burned or buried their dead, tattooed their bodies, and were largely controlled by their priests. The latter—the druids—monopolized the learning, took to themselves supreme authority, settled all disputes, civil and criminal, and were exempt from taxation and all public duties.
No determined resistance was offered by the Celts to Roman occupancy of Britain, for, under Agricola, the Romans had by 84 A. D., conquered as far north as the Firth of Forth, which they joined to the river Clyde by the wall of Antoninus. Subsequently, they built as additional protection against the Picts, the noted wall of Severus, sometimes called Hadrian’s wall, which united the Solway and the Tyne. No attempt of a thorough conquest of the island was made by the Romans, but with their headquarters at Eboracum, now York, they held it by a chain of fortified posts, whose site is now mainly indicated by towns with names terminating in chester, cester or caster—modifications of the Latin castra, a camp. These posts the Romans connected by broad and straight military roads over which their legions could readily march.
Roman aggrandizement was of primary importance. Taxes were levied on arable land, on pasture land, and on fruits, and duties were exacted at the ports. Agriculture was fostered, and large quantities of grain exported to Rome. But the imperial city whose empire was so wide, and whose armies were mostly composed of conscripts from subjugated people, and led by generals of their own blood, was threatened by invading hordes, and was compelled to withdraw her legions for home defense. By 420 the soldiers had all been withdrawn, and the Celts were themselves once more. But their freedom and rejoicing were of short continuance. A more formidable invasion than that of the Roman followed, and by the middle of the fifth century they were the slaves of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.
Upon the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain, the unsubdued Picts and Scots of the north attacked the Celts of the south, who had been subjects of Roman oppression. Whether the assailed Britons detached the Gothic tribes from an alliance with the Picts and Scots, and turned them against their former allies; whether, without having been in league with them, the strangers came from their home beyond the North Sea to help beat back the Picts and Scots; or whether, tempted by the fertile soil, they came on their own account, we may never know; but one thing is certain, that they came, and that they came never to go away. Their coming is of weighty significance, for they became the basis of the English nation, and their speech the parent of the English language.
The unconquered Celts of the west and north spoke their own tongue—the Celtic—while that of the conquered portion was overwhelmingly the language of the conquerors, and was called the Anglo-Saxon. It was not, however, entirely pure, for some few Celtic words had unavoidably entered it. The names for the rivers, lakes, hills and mountains, given by the Celts, clung pertinaciously to these objects, and are found with the English of the present day. Throughout the whole of England there is hardly a river-name that is not Celtic. Avon, Celtic for water, occurs as the name of fourteen English rivers upon our maps. Esk, of like meaning, designates more than twenty, and has also entered into the names of towns, as in Axminster, Exeter, Oxford, and Uxbridge. Cam, Humber, Ouse, Thames, and Wye, and many other river-names, are Celtic. Pen, or Ben, Celtic for mountain, is seen in the name for the range called Pennine, in that of the hills called Pentland, and in Ben-Nevis and Ben-Lomond. Dun, a hill-fortress, is found in Dumbarton, Dundee, Dunkeld. Hundreds of other Celtic words can be observed on almost any map of England, and, indeed, on the maps of Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. The names of the rivers Rhine, Rhone, Garonne, and Seine are Celtic. Italy is Celtic for “beautiful region,” and German for “rough man.” Besides the numerous geographical names of Europe that are traceable to this language, such common names as camel, clock, comma, fodder, gun, snake, and whiskey, owe to it their origin, not to mention scores of well-known family names of every-day occurrence.
The remains of the Celtic language are still to be found in the Welsh, the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlands, the Erse or Irish, and the Manx of the Isle of Man.