498 Rev. Mr Williams on one Source of the 



words are Celtic, and individually recognizable, but their mean- 

 ing, when strung into sentences, requires an CEdipus. In con. 

 firmation of this, I appeal to the various attempts which profess 

 to be translations of the Gododin of Aneurin. With the 

 Anglo-Saxon literature, both for its antiquity and extent, the 

 best representative of the ancient Teutonic, I do not profess an 

 accurate acquaintance. I have read much of it, and have studied 

 its vocabulary and grammar with care, but cannot call myself an 

 Anglo-Saxon scholar. To a general knowledge of the modern 

 languages of the south-west of Europe, I can add a slight ac- 

 quaintance with the Gaelic and Basque tongues. 



In a course of study thus followed up, with occasional excur- 

 sions into other paths of knowledge, for more than twenty years, 

 it has been my fortune to make, as I conceive, some important 

 discoveries. Had I the command of the requisite time, they 

 might be embodied in one great work, but as that is not the case, 

 I willingly avail myself of the medium of this Society, in order 

 to communicate some detached fragments to those who take an 

 interest in such studies. I confine myself, on the present occa- 

 sion, to the subject of the original population of central Italy, 

 and to the question which I intend to affirm, that it was of the 

 Cumrian or Cimbrian race, cognate with the Cumri of our island, 

 and that their language formed some portion of the non-Hellenic 

 elements of the Latin tongue. To pave the way for this, I pro- 

 pose to show that the Umbri, an ancient people of Italy, were of 

 the same race and lineage with those who within our islands call 

 themselves Cumri, and that they, through their colonies, formed 

 no small part of the original population of Rome. 1 We are told 

 by Florus, " that the Umbri were the most ancient people of 



1 It is my intention to write the words as they sound to the ear, not as they appear 

 disguised in the modern spelling of the Welsh, a spelling which has done more to 

 throw the language into obscurity, and render its very appearance disgustino- to the 

 eye of a civilized man, than all other causes put together. It not only has done this, 

 but has absolutely served to render it more abstruse to the Cumri themselves. The 

 vowel w, equal in power to the double o in wood, I shall retain, and ii with two points 



