266 BRITISH ETHNOLOGY v 



completely overpowered by the more or less 

 modified Latin, which it found already in posses- 

 sion ; and what Teutonic blood there may be in 

 modern Frenchmen is not adequately represented 

 in their language. In Britain, on the contrary, 

 the Teutonic dialects have overpowered the pre- 

 existing forms of speech, and the people are vastly 

 less " Teutonic " than their language. Whatever 

 may have been the extent to which the Celtic- 

 speaking population of the eastern half of Britain 

 was trodden out and supplanted by the Teutonic- 

 speaking Saxons and Danes, it is quite certain 

 that no considerable displacement of the Celtic- 

 speaking people occurred in Cornwall, Wales, or 

 the Highlands of Scotland; and that nothing 

 approaching to the extinction of that people took 

 place in Devonshire, Somerset, or the western 

 moiety of Britain generally. Nevertheless, the 

 fundamentally Teutonic English language is now 

 spoken throughout Britain, except by an insignifi- 

 cant fraction of the population in Wales and the 

 Western Highlands. But it is obvious that this 

 fact affords not the slightest justification for the 

 common practice of speaking of the present in- 

 habitants of Britain as an "Anglo-Saxon" race. 

 It is, in fact, just as absurd as the habit of talking 

 of the French people as a " Latin " race, because 

 they speak a language which is, in the main, 

 derived from Latin. And the absurdity becomes 

 the more patent when those who have no hesita- 



