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TKANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANTHEOPOLOGT. 613 



"Whether we use the word Kelt in its wide linguistic sense or in the narrower 

 sense to which it has been reduced by the French anthropologists, it is important 

 to remember that the Welsh do not designate, and never have designated them- 

 selves by this term or by any similar word. Their national name is Cymry, the plural 

 of Cymro. My former colleague, the Rev. Professor Silvan Evans, kindly informs 

 me that the most probable derivation of this word is from cydr- (the d being 

 changed to m for assimilation with the following b, like the n of its Latin cognate 

 con) and bro , ' country,' the old form of which is brog, as found in Allobroya, and 

 some other ancient names. The meaning of Cymry is therefore ' fellow-country- 

 men,' or compatriots. Such a meaning naturally suggests that the name must 

 have been assumed in consequence of some foreign invasion — possibly when the 

 Welsh were banded together against either the Romans or the English. If this 

 assumption be correct it must be a word of comparatively late origin. 



At the same time, the similarity between Cymry and Cimbri — the name of 

 those dread foes of the Romans whom Marius eventually conquered — is so close as 

 to naturally suggest a common origin for the two names, if not for the people who 

 bore the names. ^ The warlike Cimbri have generally been identified with the 

 people who inhabited the Cimbric peninsula, the Chersonesus Cimbrica, now called 

 Jutland. Whether they were connected or not with the Kimmerioi, who dwelt in 

 the valley of the Danube and in the Tauric Chersonesus, or Crimea, is a wider 

 question with which we are not at the moment concerned. As to the ethnical 

 relations of the Cimbri, two views have been current, the one regarding them as 

 of Germanic, the other as of Keltic stock. Canon Rawlinsou, in summing up the 

 evidence on both sides, believes that the balance of opinion inclines to the Keltic 

 view.^ These Cimbri are described, however, as having been tall, blue-eyed, and 

 yellow- or flaxen-haired men. Can we trace anything like these characters in the 

 Cymry ? 



All the evidence which the ethnologist is able to glean from classical writers 

 with respect to the physical characters and ethnical relations of the ancient in- 

 habitants of this country, may be put into a nutshell, with room to spare. The 

 exceeding meagreness of our data from this source will be admitted by anyone 

 who glances over the passages relating to Britain which are collected in the 

 Mvnumenta Historica Britannica. As to the people in the south, there is the 

 well-known statement in Csesar that the maritime parts of Britain, the southern 

 parts which he personally visited, were peopled by those who had crossed over 

 from the Belgse, for what purpose we need not inquire. Of the Britons of the 

 interior, whom he never saw, he merely repeats a popular tradition which repre- 

 sented them as aborigines.^ They maj', therefore, have been Keltic tribes, akin to 

 the Celtiof Gaul, though there is nothing in Cresars words to support such a view. 



Tacitus, in writing the life of his father-in-law, Agricola, says that the Britons 

 nearest to Gaul resembled the Gauls.'* If he refers here to the sea-coast tribes in 

 the south-east of Britain, the comparison must be with the Belgic and not with 

 the Keltic Gauls. But his subsequent reference to the resemblance between the 

 sacred rites of the Britons and those of the Gauls suggests that his remarks 

 may be fairly extended to the inland tribes beyond the limits of the Belgic Britons, 

 in which case the resembance may be rather with the Gaulish Kelts. Indeed, this 

 inference, apart from the testimony of language, is the chief evidence upon which 

 ethnologists have based their conclusion as to the Keltic origin of the Britons. 



Our data for restoring the anthropological characteristics of the ancient Britons 



' Prof. Ehys, however, has pointed out that there is no relation between the 

 names. See British Barrows, by Canon Greenwell and Prof. Rolleston, 1677, p. 632. 



■-■ ' On the Ethnography of the Cimbri.' By Canon Eawlinson. Jonrn. Anthrop. 

 Inst., vol. vi. 1877, p. 150. See also Dr. Latham's paper, and postscript, ' On the 

 FiVidence of a Connection between the Cimbri and the Chersonesus Cimbrica,' pub- 

 lished in his Germania of Tacitus. 



' ' Britannia; pars interior ab iis incolitur, quos natos in insula ipsi memoria 

 proditum dicunt : maritima pars ab iis, qui priedae ac belli inferendi causa ex Belgis 

 transieraut.' — Be Bella Gallico, lib. v. c. 12. 



• 'Proximi Gallis et similes swa^ .'— Agricola , c. xi. 



