EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE BRITISH ISLES BY CELTS. 311 
substantive form of speech, being merely a mixture.” According to 
the reasoning of Adelung, therefore, the earliest settlers of the 
British Isles were those Celts who spoke Gaelic and whose descend- 
ants are the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland; and the Cimbri, whose 
descendants the Welsh are, entered Britain at a later date. 
Nicholas, in his preface to The Pedigree of the English People, 
(p. 7), thus writes respecting the argument which he pursues in his 
book: “It is first shown that the numerous tribes found by the 
Romans in possession of the British Isles were all presumably of 
what is called the Celtic race, and presented only such dissimilarities 
as would arise from separation into independent Clans or States. 
Although among these numerous tribes, the Cymry may 
rightfully claim pre-eminence, as that branch of the family which 
both sustained the heaviest shock from the Teutonic invasion and 
tinged most deeply the new race with Celtic blood-—the Gaels 
having from remote ages pushed their way northward and into 
Treland—the term ancient Britons cannot be confined to them, but 
must be made to comprehend in short all the early Celtic inhabitants 
of Britain and Ireland.” 
Tt is important to notice that in the judgment of Nicholas, the 
Gaels pushed their way in the far-off past and before the arrival of 
the Cymry, northward and into Ireland: in other words, that the 
Gaels arrived before the Cymry in the British Isles, and that enter- 
ing these Isles in the south of England, they gradually extended to 
Scotland and Ireland. According to Nicholas (p. 34), Meyer assigns 
two principal routes to the Celtic tribes in their westward progress 
from Asia: ‘One route he traces through Syria and Egypt, along 
the northern coast of Africa, across the Straits of Gibraltar, and 
through Spain to Gaul, where it separates into three branches, one 
terminating in the British Isles, the other in Italy, and the third 
near the Black Sea. ‘The other great stream of migration ran less 
circuitously and more northwards through Scythia in Europe, the 
shores of the Black Sea, Scandinavia, or Jutland, Prussia, through 
Northern Germany, the plains of the Elbe, and to Britain across the 
German Ocean. It is conjectured that the stream which came by 
Africa and Spain was the earliest to reach Britain. They may have 
been the Gaels.” 
As to who the Cimbri were, and as to where their home on the 
Continent of Europe was, Nicholas thus writes (p. 31):  ‘ Local 
