j 88 [ proc - B.N.F.C., 



sketch he had presented to them. The lecturer thought the most 

 reliable evidence of very ancient occupation of these countries by 

 two distinct races in the relationship suggested was afforded by the 

 long and round burial mounds of Britain, and the cromlechs and 

 round barrows of Ireland. He then proceeded to deal with this 

 part of his subject at some length. The evidence of the British 

 barrows was very definite that the great ethnographical event had 

 in these countries, at any rate, taken place towards the close of 

 the later stone age. The evidence of the cromlechs was very 

 interesting in connecting the Ivernian (non-Aryan) element of the 

 Irish population with the Iberian race of the Continent. An 

 interesting literary discovery of recent date was also dealt with, the 

 purport of which was that many of the most difficult idioms of both 

 the Welsh and Irish branches of the spoken Celtic could only be 

 accounted for by the ancestors of the Welsh and Irish-speaking 

 peoples having been influenced by long contact with a people who 

 spoke a language of the Hamitic or African group. This would 

 be accounted for if they assumed that the long barrow people of 

 Britain and the dolmen builders of Ireland were of the Iberian 

 stock. Dealing summarily with the invasions with which the Irish 

 history books began, Mr. Milligan expressed the view that they 

 all, without exception, referred to the arrival at various times of 

 successive groups of Celtic people. These, no doubt, together 

 wkh many of pre-Celtic stock, who by that time were merged with 

 the predominant partners, were all represented in the eponymous 

 genealogy of Mile, son of Bile. In this connection the lecturer 

 dissented from the view of those moderns who regard the conflict 

 of the Tuatha de Dannan with the Firbolg as indicating the first 

 meeting of the Celtic and the non-Aryan peoples of Ireland, 

 pointing out that the use of the iron spears by both parties in the 

 alleged battle of Moytura stamped it as an event belonging to a 

 much later period. 



The conclusion of the lecture was followed by a most 

 interesting discussion, in which Mrs. Hobson, Mr. John M. 



