2"dS. No 29., July 19, '66.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



55 



to whose old Gyz tongues the Berber language 

 approaches more nearly. I should have expected 

 the African peasantry to have retained rather 

 their old tongue, the Berber, than the Punic ; but 

 in the time of Leo Atricanus, the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, all the cities on the African coast spoke 

 Arabic, and the use of this language has since ex- 

 tended in the north of Africa. 1 say nothing of 

 the inscription on the columns at the pillars of 

 Hercules, mentioned by the Greek historian of the 

 Vandal war, Procopius, and doubted by Gibbon, 

 as its authenticity is not believed.* The Hebrew, 

 or a dialect of it, is said to have been the lan- 

 guage of the Jews, Phoenicians, and Philistines, 

 and the Punic scene In Plautus's comedy is trans- 

 lated or explained by Hebrew, as is a Carthaginian 

 inscription of prices of victims for sacrifice, on a 

 tablet found in 1845 at Marseilles, near the site of 

 the Temple of Diana of Ephesus, the tutelar deity 

 of the ancient Massilia ; and there are other in- 

 scriptions at Athens, and in the Mediterranean 

 Islands, all of which lead to the same conclusion, 

 the identity of the Phoenician and Hebrew lan- 

 guages. Had Hannibal (whose name contains the 

 Canaanite Baal) prevailed over the Eomans, the 

 world might have been Canaanite, as it might 

 afterwards have been Arabian, had not Charles 

 Martel vanquished the Moors at the great battle 

 contested so long and so obstinately between the 

 Christian Franks and the Mahometan Moors, 

 fought in A.D. 732, in the plains between Tours 

 and Poictiers, in the south of France. This pecu- 

 liarity is remarked, that the Canaanites descended 

 of Ham spoke a language of the people descended 

 of the elder brother Shem, the ancestor of the 

 Asiatic nations. The Jews springing from the 

 Chaldini or Chaldeans derive their origin from a 

 Shemite source ; while the Philistines, in the south 

 of Phoenicia, are said to be from Crete, or from 

 the north of Arabia, and to be descended also 

 from Ham, but differing from the northern Phoe- 

 nicians, who along with the Jews and Egyptians 

 practised circumcision, in not using that rite. 



I would wish to find the Celts in Asia. Pri- 

 chard has published a volume supplementary to his 

 great work of Researches into the Physical History 

 of Mankind, to trace their Eastern Origin by com- 

 parison of the Celtic Dialects with tJie Sanscrit, 

 Greek, Latin, and Teutonic Languages ; but I do 

 not know of any historical evidence, or of any 



* The inscription is, " We are those who fled from the 

 face of the robber Joshua, the son of Nun." {Phoenicia, 

 p. 67.) M. Munk, in Palestine, p. 81., remarks in a note, 

 that the expression of the original Greek Englished from 

 the face is Hebrew, but not Greek, and thence inferred 

 that Procopius, a Pagan, did not forge the inscription, but 

 in his narration translated a Phoenician expression. The 

 existence of this fabulous tradition may also show a belief 

 .in the identity of the Phoenicians and Canaanites to have 

 been entertained when Procopius wrote in the sixth cen- 

 tury. 



archseological antiquities out of Europe, that can 

 be said to be exclusively Celtic. There are circles 

 of stones In India, and other remains in Asia. De 

 Saulay mentions a heap of stoned at Hebron, and 

 another monument at a place near the north end 

 of the Dead Sea, both which appeared to re- 

 semble Celtic remains, but he gives no drawing of 

 either, and does not speak certainly. (Voyage 

 autour de la Mer Morte, torn. ii. pp. 92. 168.) 

 The European circles and underground buildings 

 are not established to belong exclusively to the 

 Celts, but are seen in the mist of a remote an- 

 tiquity. Amedee Thierry, In his History of the 

 Gauls from the earliest Period till their ultimate and 

 entire Subjugation by the Romans, a.d. 79, during 

 the Reign of the Emperor Vespasian, assigned 

 them previous to their final subjection a seat and 

 nation in Gaul of 1700 years, which would place 

 them in their European residence at a date about 

 600 years only from the confusion of languages at 

 the building of the Tower of Babel, 2247 years 

 before Christ according to received chronology. 

 I am aware that Mr. Kenrick, in which he is fol- 

 lowed by Prichard, objects to the chronology of 

 the early ages, as not allowing sufficient time for 

 the origin and development of races and nations. 

 The Irish Celts I have understood to be Gallic of 

 the earliest wave of the race, perhaps the most 

 ancient Celts of tlie British Empire, and their an- 

 tiquity may reasonably be supposed to be akin to 

 that of the Gallic Celts in Gaul. Their connection 

 with the Phoenicians or Berbers, or I may add, the 

 Euskaldunes, the Basques, is not so readily to be 

 conjectured or entertained. W. H. F. 



Kirkwall. 



NOTES ON REGIMENTS. 



(2°i S. i. 516.) 



I am induced to make a few remarks on the 

 article in your pages entitled " Notes on Regi- 

 ments," In order that certain inaccuracies and 

 misstatements therein mentioned may not pass 

 uncontradicted. 



In those Notes the 80th regiment are called the 

 " Connaught Rangers." The 80th are the " Staf- 

 fordshire Volunteers." Any Army List would 

 show that the above appellation applies alone to 

 the gallant 88th, on whom it was conferred when 

 they were first raised in that part of Ireland in 

 1795, by Lord Clanricarde. 



The 56th are called Pompadours, not from 

 their present (purple) facings, but from the fol- 

 lowing circumstance, as related to me by an old 

 officer of the regiment nearly thirty years ago. 

 In 1756, when this regiment was first raised, its 

 facings were a crimson or puce colour, called in 

 those days "Pompadour," from the celebrated lady 



