32 



"wilh the conjecture of Mr. Pinkerton, should be Gothic or Teu- 

 tonic, is the Celtic of Gaul, and was recognized as such by the 

 Saxons, under the name of Wilse. 



I find it difficult to learn from what source, beside that of 

 Ossian, Mr. Pinkerton could affirm, that the Cimbri possessed Scot- 

 land two centuries before the incarnation ; for Britain was unknown 

 lo the learned world before the invasion of Julius Caesar, which 

 occurred about half a century before Christ, and it appears, from 

 Tacitus, that those barbarians, the Britons, could give no informa- 

 tion respecting their origin."* The affinity between their language, 

 that of Cornwall and of Armorica, districts peopled at the same time 

 by other bodies of the same Britons, evinces that those Cimbri were 

 not ' a congenerous people with the Welsh.' And although they 

 call themselves Cimbrians or Cambrians, a denomination which 

 Archbishop Parker deduces from Kambrus,^° one of their chief- 

 tains, they were always known to the world by some name syno- 

 nimous with Welsh or Gauls, 



Having thus ascertained, partly tJu'ough German introduction, 

 the settlers in Britain to be Gallic, Ave are next to learn that se- 

 veral British tribes passed thence over to Ireland. And here the 

 nation of their ancestors is po'petuated by the name, which was 

 transported with them and retained, long after their bards had 

 suffered its tradition to vanish into utter oblivion. This appellation 



7i). Sect. 1 1 . Ceterum Britanniam qui mortales initio coluerint, indigenae an advecti, ut 

 inter barbaros, parum compertum ! 



£0. De antiquitate Britannicse eccl esiae, p. 2+. 



' Cumaiaicc, derived from Cumar, a valley, are a people living in a country full of valleys 

 and hills. Thus the O'Briens of Cumarach in the county of Waterford were called Cumaruicc, 

 as they inhabited the valleys between Dangarvan and the river Shure. Hence also the name 

 of the old Erittans of Cumberland, — and for the same reason the Brittans of Wakt were thus. 

 •aUed.' O'Brien'B Diet, in voce, and also p. 13. of his preface. 



