THE ISLE OF HONEY 21 



Phoenician traders are certain to have prospected 

 the coast much farther eastward than is recorded, 

 and thus to have materially hastened British 

 advance in civilisation — at least, as far as the 

 southern tribes were concerned. 



It has been claimed — on what evidence it is diffi- 

 cult to determine — that the Romans, besides teach- 

 ing the Britons all other arts of manufacture and 

 husbandry, introduced the practice of bee-culture 

 into the conquered isles. But Pliny, giving an 

 account of the voyages of Pytheas, which are sup- 

 posed to have been undertaken some three hundred 

 years before Caesar ever set foot here, mentions 

 the Geographer of Marseilles as landing in Britain, 

 and finding the people brewing a drink from 

 wheat and honey. There is, however, another 

 source of testimony on this point, of infinitely 

 greater antiquity than any yet enumerated. Long 

 before the Phoenician sailors discovered their tin- 

 country, there were bards in Eilenban — the White 

 Island — hymning the prowess of their Celtic 

 heroes and the traditional doings of their race. 

 These old wild songs were handed down from 

 singer to singer through the ages, and many of 

 them, still extant among the records of the Welsh 

 bards, must be of unfathomable antiquity. These 

 profess to describe the state of Britain from the 

 very earliest beginnings of the human race. And 

 in some of them, which are seemingly among the 

 oldest, Britain is called the Isle of Honey, because 



