INTRODUCTION. Vll 



Were the round-barrow people descendants of the long- 

 barrow men ? 



Was either the long or the round-barrow men of a Celtic, 

 or of what other race ? 



Distinct and reliable answers to these queries are much 

 to be desired. 



One thing is certain, that on some animal bones found in 

 ancient sepulchres, excellent graven representations of seve- 

 ral animal forms have been found ; another is, that nothing 

 at all in the way of letters or notation has been discovered, 

 though we must be certain that those antique men possessed 

 an articulate language. 



The peoples of the stone ages have left us no trace of any- 

 thing of the kind. 



We must come down to the bronze — and iron — using 

 people before we can find anything like language that has 

 been transmitted through the later generations to the present 

 time. 



The earliest inhabitants of the British islands known to 

 history were — 1st, those with whom the Phoenicians and 

 perhaps other nations trafficked for tin and doubtless other 

 commodities, of whom we know not the race with certainty ; 

 and 2nd, those whom Julius Caesar encountered. These men 

 used bronze and iron implements, and their speech was a 

 dialect of the Celtic. This was long thought to be the oldest 

 language of Britain. Of late, however, philologists have 

 inferred, from some fragments of language, the probable 

 existence of a language spoken here before the coming of 

 the Celtic tribes.* 



* The Rev. J. Taylor, in Ms ' Words and Places', new edition 18S2, at page 113, says 

 that " the Gaelic peasantry in Sutherland call the country Oatuibh. This word and the 

 first syllable of Caithness are probably vestiges of an Ugrian occupation, which pre- 

 ceded the arrival of the Celts. In the Lapp language letje means an end or extremity. 

 The black-haired, short-statured race which is found here, in the south-west of 

 Ireland, and in parts of Wales, is undoubtedly of Ugrian or Euskarian, not of Celtic 

 blood.'' 



