[310] 
A TOPOGRAPHICAL ARGUMENT 
IN FAVOUR OF 
THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE BRITISH ISLES BY CELTS, 
WHOSE LANGUAGE WAS GAELIC. 
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BY NEIL MacNISH, B.D.. LL.D. 
I am of opinion that a topographical argument, so far as such an 
argument can be regarded as valid and satisfactory, can easily be 
framed out of the names of the rivers, and mountains, and valleys 
of England, Scotland and Ireland, in favour of the theory that the 
branch of the Celtic family whose representatives now are the Gaels 
of Scotland and Ireland was the first to enter the British Isles; and 
that those early Celts, after crossing into England from the Continent 
of Europe at what is now known as the Straits of Dover, extended 
northward and westward until they reached the extreme portions of 
Scotland and Ireland. In his edition of Pritchard’s “ Hastern Origin 
of the Celtic Nations,” (p. 57), Latham thus expands the views 
which Adelung advanced in his ‘“‘ Mithridates.” ‘The Belgae, the 
author, 7. e., Adelung, makes Kelto-Germans ; and connects them with 
the Cimbri, the doctrine running thus: That part of Northern Gaul 
which Cesar gave to the Belgae, though orginally Keltic, came to 
be invaded by certain tribes from Germany. These styled them- 
selves Kimri, or, as the Romans wrote the word, Cimbri . . . Belgae 
was the name by which the Gauls designated the Cimbri. Some 
time, perhaps not very long before the time of Czsar, these Belgic- 
Cimbri, German in some points, Kelt in others, invaded Britain, 
until then an Erse or Gaelic country, and occupied certain portions 
thereof until, themselves invaded by the Romans, they retired to 
Wales and thence to Brittanny. If so, the whole of the British 
Isles was originally Gaelic. If so, the language of Southern and 
Central Gaul was more or less Gaelic also. If so, the so-called 
British branch of the Keltic stock had no existence as a separate 
