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A TOPOGBAPHICAL AKGUMENT 



IN FAVOUR OF 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE BRITISH ISLES BY CELTS, 

 WHOSE LANGUAGE WAS GAELIC. 



BY NEIL MacNISH, B.C. LL.D. 



I am of opinion that a topographical argument, so far as such an 

 argument can be regarded as valid and satisfactory, can easily be 

 framed out oi the names of the rivers, and mountains, and valleys 

 of England, Scotland and Ireland, in favour of the theory that the 

 branch of the Celtic family whose representatives now are the Gaels 

 of Scotland and Ireland was the first to enter the British Isles ; and 

 that those early Celts, after crossing into England from the Continent 

 of Europe at what is now known as the Straits of Dover, extended 

 northward and westward until they reached the extreme portions of 

 Scotland and Ireland. In his edition of Pritchard's "Eastern Origin 

 of the Celtic Nations" (p. 57), Latham thus expands the views 

 which Adelung advanced in his " Mithridates." " The Belgae, the 

 author, i. e., Adelung, makes Kelto-Germans ; and connects them with 

 the Cimbri, the doctrine running thus : That part of Northern Gaul 

 which Csesar gave to the Belgae, though orginally Keltic, came to 

 be invaded by certain tribes from Germany. These styled them- 

 selves Kimri, or, as the Bomans wrote the word, Cimbri . . . Belgae 

 was the name by which the Gauls designated the Cimbri. Some 

 time, perhaps not very long before the time of Csesar, these Belgic- 

 Cimbri, German in some points, Kelt in others, invaded Britain, 

 until then an Erse or Gaelic country, and occupied certain portions 

 thereof until, themselves invaded by the Bomans, they retired to 

 Wales and thence to Brittanny. If so, the whole of the British 

 Isles was originally Gaelic. If so, the language of Southern and 

 Central Gaul was more or less Gaelic also. If so, the so-called 

 British branch of the Keltic stock had no existence as a separate 



