ANCIENT AND MODERN CELT. 371 



and in seeking their aid to determine the physical characteristics of 

 Kelt, Oaul or Briton, the results are little less vague, than when he 

 attempts to fix the ethnical character of the Pelasgi, or to group the 

 Etrusci among indigenous races of Italy. The controversies, more- 

 over, of which the term Celtic has furnished the key-note, were long 

 embittered by the narrowest spirit of national prejudice, and exposed 

 thereby to well-merited ridicule.* One recent champion of the Celt, 

 in a communication to the British Association, after characterising 

 the Saxon as "a flaxen-haired, bullet-headed, stupid, sulky boor," 

 proceeds to define the Celtic characteristics recognisable in men who 

 have taken a distinguished place in English or Scottish history, as 

 *' a long cranium, high and expressive features, dark or warm com- 

 plexion, and spare or muscular frame. "f Pinkerton the Teutonic 

 partizan, — who, in like fashion, maintained the opposite side in this 

 controversy, by aiSrming % " "What a lion is to an ass, such is a Goth 

 to a Celt ; " — assigns to the latter : dark hair and eyes, swarthy com- 

 plexion, and inferior stature to the large-limbed, red or yellow-haired 

 Goth, with fair complexion and blue eyes. In so far as the form of 

 the head marks the difference between them, the supposed cranial 

 contrast is indicated in the globular or " bullet-head " assigned to the 

 Saxon, and the long cranium and high features ascribed to the Celt. 

 The latter, at least, is an idea maintained, with more or less definite- 

 ness, by some of the most observant ethnologists ; and so long as the 

 Celt was supposed to belong to an essentially diflFerent division of the 

 human race, it was not unnatural to assume that the opposite type of 

 head must pertain to the Saxon. Few points, however, connected 

 with physical ethnology rest on more uncertain evidence than the 

 distinctive form, colour of hair, and other characteristics, not only of 

 the ancient, but of the modern Celt. 



The Gauls and Britons are the recognised representatives of that 

 ancient people, who after being long regarded as in the most literal 

 sense European aborigines, are even now commonly assumed to be the 

 originators of all primitive art-traces pertaining to purely archseolo- 



* The oaly occasion where Dr. Prichard is tempted beyond the simple language of the 

 scientific investigator is whce, in his Researches., he contrasts Pinkerton's views as a man 

 " of' clear and strong sense, though somewhat peremptory and wrong headed ;" with " the 

 weak and childish dreams of the Celtic antiquarians who descant with amazing absurdity 

 through entire volumes, upon their Phosnician, Punic, Scythian, Spanish, and Magoyian 

 mncestr}/ ! " 



t Mr, John McEIheran. 



