IN NOETH AMBEICA. 29 



is clear and consistent, and may be reconciled with physical facts better than any other 

 hypothesis on the subject. ' " 



The discovery, alluded to in the passage just quoted, of the presence of an Euskarian 

 element in the Pictish language, has led Prof. Ehys in his " Celtic Britain " to pronounce 

 the Pictish people not Celtic, but the pre-Celtic aboriginal inhabitants of Northern 

 Britain, their language having been derived from the same source as the Basque. - 

 The Dioalidonœ of Ammianus Marcellinus (probably eqirivalent to the Douecaledonios 

 of Ptolemy) would, in that case, indicate the union of the Picts and Celts, acting against 

 a common foe. 



The resemblance to " Iberia '" of " Iveruia " (Hibernia, lerne, Erin) has not escaped 

 notice. The eponymous ancestor of the race has likewise a variety of names, Heber, Eber, 

 Emer, 1er, Ir (as in Ireland) and Er (a name which occurs in Plato, though in a ditferent 

 connection).^ 



Heber (the Iberian) and Eremou (the ploughman) may indeed indicate in legendary 

 languaffe the twofold origin of the Ibcro-Celtic tribes. Such wordy analogies may, how- 

 ever, lead to devious and uncertain paths.' Nor, indeed, is it necessary to go in quest of 

 this kind of evidence for a theory which has the support of Latham, Figuier, Dr Beddoe, 

 Prof. Huxley, Prof. Ehys, M. Broca, M. Girard de Rialle, M. Eaymond, Prof. Winchell, H. 

 Hale and others of our foremost ethnologists. We may conclude, therefore, with M. 

 Eaymond, that the earliest inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula were the Iberians ; that 

 from their fusion with the invading Celts were formed the Celt-Iberians, and that the 

 Basques, Vascons, or Euscaldunac (those who have speech) are the purest extant type of 

 that ancient stock. Even if we admit with M. Vinson that the theory thus formulated 

 has not been established on an unassailable scientific basis, it may, at least, be accepted 

 as the best working hypothesis that has yet been framed. 



I find unexpected confirmation of this hypothesis in a work which antedates the 

 years of scientific philology. In a note to the once famous " Dissertation sur l'Origine des 

 Peuples Celtes et sur leurs Anciennes Demeures," of Jean Daniel Schoepflin, inserted in 

 Vol. IV of Pelloutier's still more famous " Histoire des Celtes, " p. 283, the author writes : 

 " Even at the present day there are found within the confines of France, the remains of 

 three ancient languages of Graul. The Bas-Breton represents the ancient Celtic. The Can- 

 tabrian is extant, not only in the cantons of Spain, formerly occupied by the Cantabrians or 

 the ancient Gascons, but even from the district of Soule, under French domination, to 

 Bayonne, on the other side of the Pyrenees. The French call those who use that language 



' The Races of Britain, p. 26. ' Celtic Britain, pp. 265, 270. ■' Rep. x. 13, p. 614. 



"■ In the strikingly characteristic account of the shipwreck in L'Homme qui Rit, Victor Hugo falls into the 

 mistake of making a Basque woman and an Irish woman understand each other's speech. Tlie Irish woman is, 

 represented as repeating the Lord's Prayer in Gaelic, after the outlawed scholar's recitation in Latin, and, her 

 Basque companion in misfortune is made to comprehend the words. Possibly Hugo, who does not seem to have 

 troubled himself much with questions of philology, was misled by the chance resemblance between the Irish alair 

 and the Basque axla, in the opening clause of the Lord's Prayer. Such similarities are frequently met with. In 

 Cahita, a Mexican dialect, atiai is the word for " father," which, again, is mze in a Mosquito dialect. In one of the 

 Friesian Islands tale has the same signification, while lata, totic and tautah are synonymous words in some lan- 

 guages of Central America and the Isthmus of Darien. Max Miiller's Science of Language, i. 59; Bancroft's 

 Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 710, 746, 763 and 794. See also, for other such correspondences, Wilson's 

 Prehistoric Man, ii. 372, 378. 



