304 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



well as the Laplanders. They seem, indeed, scarcely to have 

 been capable of successful resistance against Celtic invaders, 

 in their more pure stunted growth ; and that their physical 

 strength was only on a par, and sometimes superior to them, 

 when they were united with the giant forms of Yeta or Gothic 

 origin, who no doubt lorded it over them, but certainly had 

 also protective inclinations. Now tribes of this class, independ- 

 ent of immediate rulers, are constantly found to accompany the 

 smaller race, as in the Pyrenees, where the Gascons of low 

 stature have the stalwart Cantabrians for neighbors and kin- 

 dred ; and, again, where the first mentioned form of man is no 

 longer traceable in history, the second is readily detected by 

 names which always have reference to giant statures, as we 

 have already remarked of the Tyrhenians, &c. So, again, in 

 the swampy islands (paludes) of ancient Flanders, a small race 

 seems once to have resided under the early protection of the 

 Frieslanders, Vuriesen and Huinen, both denoting giants in 

 the Theotisk dialect of Belgium, as it was spoken in the time 

 of Charlemagne. 1 * 



Huin, pronounced somewhat in English with the sound of 

 ox in coin, gives Hoin, which immediately reminds the reader 

 of the name of the Huns, who are now admitted to have been 

 an Ouralian Finnic people, allied to the Goths, and sweeping 

 with it, in the train of temporary conquest, several hordes of 

 Mongolians from the east, whose strange aspect misled, or 

 suited the vituperative dismay of Anna Comnena, and the 

 Greek and Roman ecclesiastical writers of the time, who had 

 little better than abusive epithets to oppose to the conquerors. 



* There is an imperfect vocabulary of this form of the old western Teu- 

 tonic in Olivarius Vredius, Hist. Comitum Flandrias, together with some 

 fragments of Solomon's Song-, &c, in the same. Two centuries after, it 

 was nearly similar to the Anglo-Saxon. The present dialect of Flanders 

 still contains many most ancient Theotisk words disregarded in dictiona- 

 ries. But the examination of the whole question is well worthy the atten- 

 tion ;f English Saxon scholars. 



