298 FOOTPRINTS OF VANISHED RACES IN CORNWALL. 



from Massilia to Northern Europe.^^^ He sailed up the English 

 Channel and landed in Kent, where he found the Celtic farmers 

 busy harvesting, so that the Aryan invasion of Britain had 

 occurred long before. ^^^ 



Between the Celts and Ivernians a long and bitter conflict 

 raged. The Celts were armed with bronze swords and shields, 

 and against these terrible weapons, the stone-pointed spears and 

 arrows of the Ivernians were of but little avail. Still, they 

 faced the invader stoutly, and the struggle went on in various 

 parts of Britain for considerably more than a thousand years. 

 A second wave of Celtic invasion, the Brythonic, followed the 

 Graelic entry, and this Brythonic invasion is placed by the Eev, S- 

 Baring-Grould,^"'* about the sixth century before Christ. The 

 Roman conquest of Britain found the Celts and Ivernians still in 

 conflict, and the latter were still so strong, that they occupied, as 

 isolated peoples. Southern Wales and Northern Scotland. But 

 in Cornwall the Celts were now the dominant race. 



As the Ivernians were driven by the Celts to the wilder 

 parts of Britain, and to the forest recesses and mountain fast- 

 nesses, they were frequently compelled to construct underground 

 dwellings and subterranean hiding places, just as a Scandinavian 

 tradition says that "The dwarfs could not bear daylight, but 

 during the day hid in their holes. "^"^ In Scotland these under- 

 ground dwellings are called " Picts Houses," and have been most 

 ably described by Mr. MacRitchie,^^ in many valuable writings. 

 The "Picts Houses" are double-walled, roofed with stones, and 

 com]3letely covered with a grassy mound, while a long, narrow 

 passage, like a stone drain, leads from the entrance to the central 



192. The good account of the voyage of Pytheas is given in EUon's Origins 

 of English History, chaps, i. and ii. Also in Lord Avebury's Prehistoiic Times, pp- 

 60-64. 



193. There were three great waves of Celtic Invasion. Fiist, the Gaelic or 

 Goidelic. Secondly, the Brythonic. Thirdly, the invasion by the Gaulish King of 

 Soissons, fifty years before Julius Caesar's attack. Csesar, De Bell. Gall., ii, chap. 4, 



194. Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornzvall, vol. xiii., 1898, p. 358. 



195. The Land of the Midnight Snn, by M. duChaillu, vol. ii., pp. 42r, 422. 



196. The Testimony of Tradition and Finns, Fairies, and Picts. The Homes 

 of the Picts, etc. To which valuable works I acknowledge my indebtedness. I am 

 also much indebted to Mr. MacRitchie for his kindness in furnishing me with the 

 results of his personal observations. 



