TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 893 



puzzled ancient authors. I will cite only one instance, to wit, from Golding's 16th 

 century translation of what then passed as the production of Solinus, and what 

 may pass now, even according to Mommsen, as quite old enough for my present 

 purpose. It runs thus : ' Next come the lies called Hebudes, live in number, the 

 inhabiters whereof know not what corne meaneth, but liue onely by lishe and 

 milke. They are all vnder the gouernment of one King. For as manie of them 

 as bee, they are seuered but with a narrowe groope one from another. The King 

 hath nothing of hys own, but taketh of euery mans. He is bounde to equitie by 

 certaine lawes : and least he may start from right through couetousnesse, he 

 learneth Justice by pouertie, as who may have nothing proper or peculiar to 

 himselfe, but is found at the charges of the Realme. Hee is not sufiered to 

 haue anie woman to himselfe, but whomsoeuev he hath minde vnto, he borroweth 

 her for a tyme, and so others by turnes. "VVherby it commeth to passe that he 

 hath neither desire nor hope of issue.' 



The man who wrote in that way presumably failed to see that the king was 

 not subject to any special hardship as compared with the other men in his kingdom, 

 where none of them had any offspring that he could individually call his own. 

 This, be it noticed, refers to the Hebrides, not, as sometimes happens with such 

 references, to the more distant island of Thule, where there was also a king, as any 

 reader of Faust will tell us. 



We now come to the Celts, and begin with Pliny's version of Caesar's words 

 about the division of Gaul into three parts, as follows : Gallia oimiis Comata una 

 nomine appellata in tria populornm genera dividitur, amnibus maxims distijicta. 

 A Scalde ad Sequanam Belf/ica, ab eo ad Garunnam Celtica eademque Lugdunensis, 

 inde ad Pyrencei montis excursum Aquitanica, Aremorica antea dicta. We may 

 for the present dismiss the third or Aquitanic Gaul from our minds ; but Belgic 

 and Celtican Gaul may be taken as representing the two sets of Celts of our own 

 islands. The Belgic Gauls began last to come to this country, and their advent 

 seems to fall between the visits of Pytheas and Julius Cctsar: that is, roughly 

 speaking, between the middle of the fourth century and that of the first 

 century B.C. In this country they came to be known collectively as Brittanni or 

 Brittones, the linguistic ancestors of the peoples who have spoken Brythonic or the 

 Lingua Brittannica, such as the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Strathclyde Britons. 

 As to the other Celts, it is much harder to say when or whence exactly they 

 came — I mean the linguistic ancestors of the Gaels of Ireland, Man, and Scotland, 

 that is to say, the peoples whose language has been Goidelic. Some scholars are 

 of opinion that there were no Goidelic-speaking peoples in Britain till some such 

 came here from Ireland on sundry occasions, beginning with the second century, in 

 the time of the Roman occupation ; but how the Goidels would be supposed by 

 them to have reached Ireland I do not exactly know. My own notion is that the 

 bulk of them reached that country by way of Britain, and that they arrived in 

 Britain, like the Belgic Gauls later, from the nearest parts of the Continent; for 

 this would be previous to the appearance of the Belgic Gauls on the western sea- 

 board of Europe : that is to say, at a time when Celtica extended not merely to the 

 Seine, but to the Scheldt or to the Rhine, if not even further. Then as to the time 

 of the coming of the ancestors of the Goidels, it has been supposed coincident with 

 a period of great movements among the Celts of the Continent, in particular the 

 movements which resulted, among other things, in some of them reaching the 

 shores of the Mediterranean and penetrating to the heart of the Iberic peninsula. 

 Perhaps one would not be far wrong in fixing on the seventh and the sixth 

 centuries B.C. as covering the time of the coming of the earlier Celts to our 

 shores. 



In Britain I should suppose these earlier hordes of Celts to have conquered 

 most of the southern half of the island ; and the Brythonic Celts, when they 

 arrived, miiy have overrun much the same area, pu$>hing the Go'delic ( elts more and 

 more towaids the west. Under that pressure it is natural to suppose that sume 

 of the latter made their way to Ireland, but it is quite possible that their 

 emigration thither had begun before. Some time or other previous to the Roman 

 occupation the Bi-ythonic people of the Ordovices seem to have penetrated to the 



