A STUDY ON THE BELQ^I IN SOUTH BKITAIN. 37 



with whom they fought and the strongholds which they won are 

 named by the words which are clearly, in body, words of Celtic 

 speech, and the anomymous geographer of Ravenna gives a long 

 list of towns in Britain, and some of them in Belgic Britain, 

 under Latin forms of British ones, but none of them of Teu- 

 tonic ones ; and it is not said anywhere in the chronicles, or other 

 writings of the Saxons, that, in their fightings with Islanders, 

 in Wessex, they met with a folk other than Celtic Britons, or 

 with men of a speech akin to their own. Whether they fought 

 in Hants, Wilts, or Somerset, or elsewhere, they fought with 

 the Weallas, as they called the Britons, so that we have no 

 ground for believing that there were any Teutonic Belgae above 

 Dorset. Our word Welsh for the Cymry is a Teutonic one 



meaning foreign. 



S. Welisc ] 



Waelisc j 



Ger Welsch \ 



Walsh ) 



The Germans call French or Italian, Welsh, and, in Dorset, 

 walnut is welshnut. Caesar V. 12 says that the Belgee who 

 settled in Britain began to till the ground. These landtilling 

 Belgso could hardly be the Teutonic ones, who by Csesar (Com. 

 L. 1.) and other authorities, were very rough and warlike, and 

 the least civilized of the tribes of Gaul, and so cannot seem to 

 have given themselves to tillage. Strabo sets the Belgse between 

 the Rhone and the Loire, and says with Caesar that they were 

 brave, and wore a rough little cloak or mantle. " Laene," 

 Lien, Welsh. The Lat. Laena. 



These Belgse were surely Celtic as is thus shown by the 

 Celtic name of their mantle, y Lien, as the Welsh 

 might now call it ; and it is markworthy that the Gaul 

 who is carved as before his hut on the Antonine column 

 at Rome is given, as clad in a tunic with such a 

 little cloke or mantle, a Lien ? hanging over his shoulder. 



It was therefore a Gaulish robe, and so a strong token that 

 those Belgaj were Gauls and not Teutons. 



