Scottish Highlanders designate that people Gael Erinnich, or Gael of Erin, and themselves Gael Albinnich, or Gael of Albin. Albin, or Albion, appears to have been anciently the name of the whole island of Great Britain, and that by which it was first known to the Greeks and Romans. The writer of the geographical treatise ascribed to Aristotle, to which we have referred in a former page, says that the two British islands were called Albion and Ierne. Pliny intimates that, the whole group of islands being called Britannia, the former name of that then called Britannia was Albion. Eustathius, the commentator on the Greek geographical poem of Dionysius Periegetes, tells us that the British islands are two in number, Ouernia and Alouion, or Bernia and Albion. Albinn, according to Mr. Grant, means in Gaelic white or fair island. "The Gael of Scotland and Ireland," he observes, never knew any other name for Scotland than that of Albinn; it is the name used by them at this day; the appellation of Scotia, or any appellation similar to it in sound, is entirely unknown to them. The Gael have preserved, and apply at this day to the kingdom of Scotland, the most ancient name known to the Greeks and Romans, to denominate the whole island of Great Britain. The etymology of the name serves to show that it was denominated Albinn by the continental Gauls, and was naturally called by them the Fair or White Island, from the chalky appearance of the British coast opposite to the nearest part of the coast of ancient Gaul.” * An old name given to the island by the Welsh is stated to have been Innis-wen, which also in their language signifies the Fair or White Island.†

IV. The Welsh, as every one is aware, have been in the habit of regarding themselves as the genuine descendants and representatives of the ancient Britons, who possessed the whole of the southern portion of the island before the arrival of the Saxons, and were indeed the same people that inhabited the country when it was first invaded by the Romans, and had probably occupied it for many preceding centuries. This descent being assumed, the Welsh language has generally been held to be a Celtic dialect, and essentially the same that was spoken by the original Britons, only mixed with some words of Latin derivation, which it is supposed to have received from the intercourse of those who used it with the Roman colonists.

It would probably be difficult to produce any direct evidence for these notions; but they have been, until very recently, the almost universally

Thoughts on the Gael, p. 297.

The author of "Britannia after the Romans," however, contends that we must consider the ancient and correct form of Albion to be Alouion or Alwion. "Neither p nor b," he is pleased to say, "is capable of mutation into w; nor is the converse possible." The Romans, he proceeds, modified the sound of the word "to suit the etymology furnished by their own language, but not existing in the Greek, albus, white. And they harped upon that idea so long, that it was adopted in the island itself while it was their province." Alwion, he is inclined to think, is the Land of Gwion, which appears to have been a name of "the Hermes, or Mercury, whom the ancient Britons revered above all other deities, and who (in the alchemic su. perstitions) presided over the permutations of nature."-pp, lxivlxviii.

received faith among the students of British antiquities.

Yet it is certain, in the first place, that no trace is to be found in the notices of Britain by the Greek or Roman writers, of any people or tribe settled in the district now called Wales, from which the Welsh can with any probability be supposed to have sprung. They exhibit no marks which would lead us to suspect their progenitors to have been the Silures, whose swarthy countenances and curled hair gave them to Tacitus the appearance of a Spanish race. The Welsh have always called themselves Cymry; there is no resemblance between this name, and either that of the Silures, or that of the Demetæ, or that of the Ordovices, the only British tribes whom we read of, either in Ptolemy, or in any of the historians of the Roman wars, as occupying Wales in the time of the Romans. Indeed, no name resembling the Cymry occurs anywhere in the ancient geography of the island, so far as it is to be collected from these authorities. It is not pretended that this appellation has been adopted by the Welsh since the time of the Romans; if therefore the people bearing it were then in the island, and more especially if they formed, as the common account would seem to imply, the most ancient and illustrious of all the tribes by which the country was occupied, how did it happen that they wholly escaped notice? How are we to account for the fact of tribes with other appellations altogether being set down by contemporary geographers and historians in the very district which the Cymry claim as their proper and ancient residence?

But further, it clearly appears, and has been acknowledged by some of the ablest and most learned of the Welsh antiquaries themselves, that the district now called Wales must have been inhabited in ancient times by another race than the present Welsh. The oldest names of natural objects and localities throughout Wales are not Welsh. This was long ago stated by Humphrey Lhuyd, and has been since abundantly established.

Lhuyd's statement is that the old names throughout Wales are Irish; and until very lately it was universally assumed that the Welsh and the Irish were only two dialects of the same Celtic speech. It was unquestionable that the Irish and Scottish Gaelic was, as its name imports, the language of the ancient Gael or Celts; and as no doubt was entertained that the Welsh, as descendants of the old Britons, were a Celtic race, it was taken for granted that their language also was only another sister dialect of the Celtic. But it would seem that this too was another notion adopted without any evidence, and indeed in the face of evidence, if it had been looked into, quite sufficient to disprove it. It would not, we apprehend, be possible to quote, in support of the asserted identity of the Welsh and Irish, or Gaelic, the authority of any writer who had really made himself master of the two languages, or even examined them attentively with the view of ascertaining in how far they resembled or differed from

each other, and whether they were properly to be regarded as belonging to the same or to different stocks. On the other hand, we have in denial of their relationship the distinctly pronounced judgment both of Welshmen, of Irishmen, and of inquirers having no partialities of origin to influence their conclusions, all speaking upon a question which they have deliberately considered, and which some of them, at least, possessed all the necessary qualifications for deciding. The same opinion that had been first expressed upon the subject by the learned and acute Bishop Percy, an Englishman, has since been maintained as not admitting of any doubt both by the Welsh antiquary Roberts, and the Irish O'Connor, and has also been adopted by the German Adelung, and finally, to all appearance, unanswerably established by Sir William Betham, who has devoted many years to the study of both languages. All these authorities declare in substance that the Cymraeg tongue spoken in Wales, and the Gaelic spoken in Ireland and Scotland, exhibit little resemblance even in vocabulary, and, to use the words of Dr. O'Connor,

This view of the Welsh language throws an entirely new light upon other points that have given occasion to a world of controversy. We have already seen that nearly all inquirers are agreed in considering the Picts to have been of the same race with the ancient Caledonians. But it had still continued to be a keenly agitated question, whether the Picts were a Celtic or a Teutonic people. Without entering into any detail of this long controversy, in which the Celtic origin of the Picts has been maintained by Camden, Lloyd (Bishop of St. Asaph), the very learned and able Father Innes, and the late George Chalmers, in his elaborate work entitled Caledonia," while the opposite side of the question has been supported by Archbishop Usher, Bishop Stillingfleet, and the late John Pinkerton, to whom may be added, Dr. Jamieson, in the Introduction to his Scottish Dictionary; we shall merely remark, that the assertors of the Teutonic lineage of the Picts have evidently all along had the best of the argument on all other grounds, excepting only on the important ground of the evidence afforded by the language of the lost people. All the historical evidence is in favour of their Teutonic or Germanic descent. Still, if it could be clearly proved that they spoke a Celtic language, that single fact would go far to prove them to have been Celts, notwithstanding even all the direct historical testimony there is to the contrary. Now, this Camden and his followers conceive not to admit of any doubt, from the remains of the Pictish language which are still to be collected, and Chalmers especially has, by a minute examination of the old topographical nomenclature of the part of Scotland formerly occupied by the Picts, completely, as he thinks, established the position that their

| language was Celtic. But how is this demonstration made out? Altogether by the assumption, never for a moment suspected to be unfounded or doubtful, that the ancient British Celtic tongue is still substantially preserved in the modern Welsh. All the instances adduced by Camden, and the much longer list enumerated by Chalmers, are instances of Pictish names of places which are not Irish or Gaelic, but Welsh. Chalmers even shows that on the country, after having been occupied by the Picts, falling into the possession of the Celtic Scots, the Welsh, or, as he calls it, the CambroBritish name was in some cases changed into a Celtic name of the same import. The Welsh Aber, for example, applied to places situated at the mouths of rivers, is found to have in this way given place in several names to the corresponding Gaelic term Inver. In examining the list of the Pictish kings, the same writer observes that the names of those kings are not Irish, and, "consequently," he adds, "they are British:" they are,' says elsewhere, "undoubtedly Cambro-British." And in like manner, the single Pictish word which Bede has preserved, Pengvahel, the name of the place where the Pictish wall commenced, is acknowledged to be not Gaelic, but Welsh.

" he

The opinion expressed by Camden and Innes, that the Picts were Welsh, may therefore be admitted, without the consequence which they supposed to be involved in it, that either were Celts, being at all established. On the contrary, it would appear from what has been said above, that the fact of the language of the Picts having been the same with that spoken by the present inhabitants of Wales, is the best of all proofs that the former people were not Celts. It comes in confirmation of all the other arguments bearing upon the question, the decided tendency of which is to make it probable that they were a Teutonic race.

Here, then, we have two remarkable facts; the one, that the part of England now occupied by the Cymry, as the present Welsh call themselves, was apparently not occupied by them in ancient times; the other, that the part of Scotland known to have constituted what is called the Pictish kingdom, was in ancient times occupied by a people speaking the same language with the modern Welsh. It seems impossible to resist the conclusion, that the same Cymry who are now settled in the west of England were previously settled in the east of Scotland-in other words, that the present Welsh are the descendants of the Picts.

Usher has, without reference to the evidence of language, and merely upon the strength of the historic testimony and the general probabilities of the case, advanced the opinion that the Picts were Cimbrians. The name of Cymri, borne by the Welsh, has long ago suggested a belief that they are a remnant of the ancient Cimbri. Their own traditions, as we have already seen, make them to have been conducted into Britain by their great leader, Hu Cadarn, across the German Ocean. Bede expressly states that the Picts came from Scythia, a

name which, as is well known, comprehended at one time all the regions forming the north of modern Germany and Denmark, the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Peninsula of Jutland, among the rest. Bede also informs us, that, before arriving in Britain, the Picts were driven towards Ireland, and touched in the first instance at that island. In

this relation the venerable Saxon historian is confirmed by the Irish bardic histories, which, in like manner, represent the Picts to have sought a settlement in Ireland, before they resorted to Britain. Finally, it may be mentioned as a curious confirmation of the identity here assumed of the Cimbri and the modern Welsh, that the only word which has been preserved of the language of the former people, namely, the term Morimarusa, which Pliny quotes as meaning the Dead Sea, appears to be Welsh, Mor in that language signifying the sea, and Maru dead.*

That the Welsh, indeed, were in very ancient times established in Scotland, is matter of authentic and undoubted history. Their kingdom of Strathclyde, or Reged, otherwise called Regnum Cumbrense, or the kingdom of the Cymry, lay in the south-west of Scotland. There are certainly no probable grounds for believing that there were any Cymry in England till an age subsequent to the establishment of this northern kingdom.

66

"Most

of the great Welsh pedigrees," observes Mr. Moore, commence their line from princes of the Cumbrian kingdom, and the archaiologist Lhuyd himself boasts of his descent from ancestors in the 'province of Reged in Scotland, in the fourth century, before the Saxons came into Britain.' To this epoch of their northern kingdom, all the traditions of the modern Welsh refer for their most boasted antiquities and favourite themes of romance. The name of their chivalrous hero, Arthur, still lends a charm to much of the topography of North Britain; and among the many romantic traditions connected with Stirling Castle, is that of its having once been the scene of the festivities of the Round Table. Aneurin and Taliessin, the former born in the neighbourhood of the banks of the Clyde, graced the court, we are told, of Urien, the king of Reged or Cumbria; and the title Caledonius bestowed on the enchanter Merlin, who was also a native of Strath-Clyde, sufficiently attests his northern and Pictish race." †

The poets

We have thus, however cursorily, taken a survey of the subject of the original population of these islands, in its whole extent, and have endea

We find the following passage in a forgotten, and in most respects sufficiently absurd, book, entitled, "The Pronunciation of the English Language Vindicated," &c.. by the Rev. James Adams, 8vo. Edin. 1799:-" The Welsh dialect (of the English language) is cha racterized by a peculiar intonation, and by the vicarious

change of consonants, k for g, t for d and p, ƒ for r, and s for z. Now this twang and change being common to the Germans, and moreover not being found in Irish or Highland English (the author means the pronunciation of English by the Scotch Highlanders), there is an opening for a curious inquiry I never met with."-pp. 141, 145.

+ History of Ireland, p. 103. The view that has been taken of the origin of the Welsh is substantially the same with that given both by Mr. Moore and by Sir William Betham,

voured, as we went along, both to note the principal of the various opinions that have been entertained on the many obscure and difficult questions it presents, and to collect, from the lights of history and the evidence of facts together, what appears to be the most consistent and otherwise probable conclusion on each controverted point. The following may be given as a summary of the views that have been offered. Beginning with Ireland, it may be affirmed that everything in that country indicates the decidedly Celtic character of its primitive population; and taking the geographical position of the island along with the traditions of the people, we can have little doubt that the quarter from which chiefly it was originally colonized was the opposite peninsula of Spain. That settlements were also effected in various parts of it, before the dawn of recorded history, by bodies of people from other parts of the continent-from Gaul, from Germany, from Scandinavia, and even possibly from the neighbouring coast of Britain-is highly probable; but although several of these foreign bands of other blood seem to have acquired in succession the dominion of the country, their numbers do not appear in any instance to have been considerable enough to alter the thoroughly Celtic character of the great body of the population, of their language, of their customs, and even of their institutions. Thus, the Scots, who appear to have been originally a Teutonic people from the northern parts of thre European continent, although they eventually subjugated the divided native Irish so completely as to impose their own name upon the island and the whole of its inhabitants, were yet themselves more truly subjugated, by being melted down and absorbed into the mass of the more numerous Celtic race among whom they had settled. The invasion of Ireland by the Scots, and the subsequent intermixture of the conquerors with the conquered, resembled the subjugation of Saxon Britain by the Normans, or still more nearly that of Celtic or Romanized Gaul by the Franks, in which latter case the conquerors, indeed, as happened in Ireland, gave their name to the country, but the native inhabitants in turn gave their language to the conquerors. In this manner it happened that the Irish, after they came to be called Scots, were really as much a Celtic or Gaelic people as ever. The Scots from Ireland who colonized the western coast of North Britain, and came at last to give their name to the whole of that part of our island, were undoubtedly a race of Gael. They were called Scots merely because the whole of Ireland had, by that time, come to be known by the name of the country of the Scots, who had obtained the dominion of it. The original population of ancient Caledonia, however, appears to have been of Gothic lineage, and to have come from the opposite coasts of Germany, and what is now called Denmark. Long after the arrival of the Irish Scots in the western part of the country, this original Gothic race, or possibly another body of settlers who had subsequently poured in from the