634 GENERAL REMARKS 



Without going into the arguments which the Rev. Wentworth 

 Webster has (see Journal Anth. Inst. London, v. p. 5, July, 1875) 

 brought forward against the view which would identify the Basques 

 with the earlier dark-haired dolicho-cephali of Great Britain, it may 

 be well to state the history of the opinion which connects certain 

 Welsh and Irish inhabitants of Wales and Ireland with the Iberian 

 inhabitants of Spain. This, so far as I have been able to make it 

 out, is as follows. Tacitus, in the eleventh chapter of his Agricola, 

 says with reference to the Silures that their ' colorati vultiis' their 

 ' torti cnnes^ and ^ posita contra Hisjoanica, H'lheros veteres trajecisse 

 ensqiie sedes hahltasse Jidem faciunt.'' The boldness of this suggestion 

 contrasts strongly with the caution of the opening sentence of the 

 same chapter, ' Ceterum Britanniarum qui mortales initio coluerint in- 

 digent an advecti, ut inter harbaros, parum compertum y' nevertheless, 

 Jornandes, as quoted p. 630, and Irish and Spanish histories and 

 traditions are constantly (see, e.g.. Professor Morley, English Writers, 

 1867, vol. i. pt. i. p. 159) referred to as agreeing in asserting that 

 the Irish Gael came from Spain ; and it is even added, as if the pro- 

 cess had been actually observed in the Bay of Biscay, that ' by 

 means of their small ships^ slowly and in the course of years, the 

 Spanish Gaels colonised Ireland and our western coasts.' It seems 

 obvious enough that what is thus put forward as a consensus of 

 evidence means merely that a number of inferior writers repeated, 

 as is so often the case, with particular emphasis and increase of 

 precision one of the very few rash suggestions which a really great 

 writer may have made \ 



^ Pricliard, Pbys. Hist. iii. 108, who speaks of Tacitus as having been ' under the 

 mistake of supposing Spain to be opposite to South Wales/ and of ' undue stress ' 

 having been laid by various writers, including Niebuhr, upon ' the idea of attributing 

 an Iberian origin to the Silures,' seems to think that it was not his ' deliberate opinion 

 that the Silures came from Spain.' A good deal depends upon the reading of the 

 over-terse phi-aseology of the historian ; I incline to think that by the words ' proximi 

 Gallis et similes sunt ' Tacitus meant to indicate that a third division of the inhabi- 

 tants of Great Britain, in opposition to the Caledonians and the Silures, was constituted 

 by those inhabiting the south-east corner of the island, next to Gaul, of whom Julius 

 Cffisar had spoken in a parallel passage, B. G. 5. 14. If this be the true meaning of 

 those five words, the words which Prichard refers to as qualifying the suggestion as 

 to the Silures, 'i« tmiversum tamen cEstimanti Gallos vicinam insulam occupasse credi- 

 hile est,' would not really have any relation to them. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, p. 202, is 

 as distinctly condemnatory of his suggestion as is Prichard : 'Mit eben so ungeniigendem 

 Griinden wie die Volker von Caledonien von Germanien werden diese Silm-es von 

 Tacitus von den Iberern abgeleitet.' As regards the Irish tradition of a connection 

 between Ireland and Spain, Professor Rhys writes to me to the effect that it is not 

 a genuine tradition at all but only an etymological one, all turning on (H)iberus and 

 Hibernns or Gallicia and Gael. 



