OUR ARYAN FOREFATHERS 



Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man ; and 

 the Kymric, or old British, which survives in 

 Welsh and in the dialect of Brittany. A third 

 dialect of Kymric was formerly spoken in Corn- 

 wall, but it died in 1770 with Dame Dolly 

 Dentreath. 



Concerning the fourth and fifth grand divi- 

 sions of Aryan speech the Italic and Hel- 

 lenic but little need be said. These lan- 

 guages are too illustrious to stand in need of 

 much description. The relationship between 

 them is closer than in the case of any other 

 Aryan languages of different class, save the 

 Zend and Sanskrit ; and this close resemblance 

 justifies the inference that the separation be- 

 tween Greeks and Italians was comparatively 

 recent. They would appear to have entered 

 Europe somewhat later than the Kelts, but 

 everything connected with their prehistoric ca- 

 reer is extremely problematical. To the Hel- 

 lenic class belong only two languages, the 

 uncultivated Albanian and the Greek, which 

 was stereotyped so early and so thoroughly by 

 literary culture that to the Athenian schoolboy 

 of to-day the history of Herodotos can hardly 

 seem written in a foreign tongue. To the Italic 

 class belong the ancient Umbrian and Oscan 

 and the Latin, which still survives under the 

 variously modified forms of Italian, French, 

 Proven9al, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumansch, and 



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