376 BRITISH MAMMALS 



met with in Scotland, Ireland, France, and Portugal, which is, in 

 fact, the only racial type one can associate with the speaking of 

 Keltic languages. The blue-eyed, absolutely golden-haired 

 Aryan, the race found in Scandinavia, in Ancient Greece, in 

 Russia, in Germany, and Anglo-Saxon England, is a marked 

 type of apparently recent birth — recent, that is to say, in the 

 history of human development. This type for the sake of 

 convenience one may style the Aryan, since it is associated 

 with the introduction of the Aryan family of languages. 



The next invader of Britain after the Iberian was the red- 

 haired Kelt, who had an Aryan language imposed on him, no 

 doubt by conquest, at the hands of the true golden-haired 

 Aryans. Arriving in Britain from Belgium, having already 

 seemingly differentiated his Keltic vocabulary into two groups,^ 

 represented by the modern Welsh and Gaelic, he possessed, no 

 doubt, some advantage of physique and weapons, but was 

 nevertheless unable or unwilling completely to exterminate his 

 Iberian predecessors, on whom, however, he imposed his Aryan 

 vocabulary. The children resulting from the mixed marriages 

 between the red-haired Kelt and the black-haired Iberian retained 

 from their mothers the Iberian grammar and structure of their 

 speech. The result is that Welsh and Gaelic represent a curious 

 compromise : the grammar and structure of the tongues are 

 akin to that of the Berber languages, are, in short, North 

 African, while the vocabulary is mainly Aryan or North 

 European. No doubt much the same linguistic compromise 

 was accomplished in France, and perhaps to some lesser extent 

 in Italy and Northern Spain. The only remains of the aboriginal 

 Iberian tongue is modern Basque, spoken in the Pyrenees. 



The Brythonic, or British branch of the Keltic group, may 

 also have been the original speech of the flaxen-haired, blue- 

 eyed Belgians who invaded Eastern Britain after the red-haired 

 Kelts. 



The Roman invasion introduced a small but powerful ele- 

 ment of very diverse origin. There were dark-haired Iberians 

 ' Brythonic and Goidhelic, 



