534 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Kelts everywhere north of the Garonne. The prehistoric Teutons 

 again, who had advanced beyond the Rhine at an early period 

 (Csesar says antiquitus) into the present Belgium, were mainly con- 

 fined to the northern provinces. Even the historic Teutons (chiefly 

 Franks and Burgundians) penetrated little beyond the Seine in 

 the north and the present Burgundy in the east, while the Vandals, 

 Visigoths and a few others passed rapidly through to Iberia 

 beyond the Pyrenees. 



Thus the greater part of the land, say from the Seine-Marne 

 basin to the Mediterranean, continued to be held by the Romanised 

 Kelts of the Alpine type throughout all the central and most of 

 the southern provinces, and elsewhere in the south by the 

 Romanised long-headed Iberians and Ligurians. This great pre- 

 ponderance of the Romanised Keltic masses explains the rapid 

 absorption of the Teutonic intruders, who were all, except the 

 Fleming section of the Belgas, completely assimilated to the Gallo- 

 Romans before the close of the loth century. It also explains 

 the perhaps still more remarkable fact that the Norsemen who 

 settled (912) under Rollo in Normandy were all practically French- 

 men when a few generations later they followed their Duke William 

 to the conquest of Saxon England. Thus the only intractable 

 groups have proved to be the un-Romanised Iberians (Basques) 

 and Kelts (Bretons), both of whom to this day hold their ground 

 in isolated corners of the country. With these exceptions the 

 whole of France since the loss of Alsace-Lorraine (1871) presents 

 in its speech a certain homogeneous character, the standard 

 language (langue d'oil 1 } being current throughout all the northern 

 and central provinces, while it is steadily gaining upon the 

 southern form (langue d'oc 1 } still surviving in the rural districts 

 of Limousin and Provence. 



1 That is, the languages whose affirmatives were the Latin pronouns hoc illitd 

 (oil] and hoc (oc), the former being more contracted, the latter more expanded, 

 as we see in the very names of the respective Northern and Southern bards : 

 Troitveres and Troubadours. It was customary in medieval times to name lan- 

 guages in this way, Dante, for instance, calling Italian la lingua del si, "the 

 language of yes" ; and, strange to say, the same usage prevails largely amongst 

 the Australian aborigines, who, however, use both the affirmative and the 

 negative particles, so that we have here no- as well asjjw-tribes. 



