By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



105 



altogether uninhabited, or else very thinly peopled by a feeble and 

 scattered race. Here then the Ciinmerii, or Cymry, or Celtic 

 hordes generally, (for they are all in reality identical) settled, and 

 spread themselves over central Europe ; in their turn driving the 

 inhabitants they dispossessed towards the north ; and as from time 

 to time a fresh impulsion from the East propelled them more and 

 more westwards, they soon came to occupy the remote regions of 

 Gaul and finally Britain. 1 



Corroborative of the above statement of the origin and migration 

 of the Celts, and that too as supporting other evidence, by no 

 means to be neglected, is tradition : and while on the one hand 

 tradition is not favourable to the hypothesis of a primitive family 

 of mankind settled in Britain prior to the arrival of the Celts, 2 

 that nation had an unvarying tradition that they came from the 

 East : 3 and it is a fact, concerning which there can be no question, 

 that one of the main divisions of the Celtic people has always 

 borne the name of Cymry as its special national designation. 



Then with regard to the language of the Celts, it has been proved 

 that traces of Sanskrit 4 are to be found in it ; while other philolo- 

 gists assert that the Hebrew 5 and Celtic 6 tongues are very nearly 



1861, p. 489, describing the results of a recent visit to Denmark made by him 

 in company with Messrs Busk Prestwich and Galton. " At the present day in 

 Tierra del Fuego and the adjoining islands are similar refuse heaps of the 

 modern inhabitants, in every sheltered cove where the wigwams are placed : they 

 are from 6 to 10 feet high, and from 20 to 50 yards in length, and contain stone 

 tools, flint knives, arrow heads and spears, such as are in use at this day 

 amongst the savages of Polynesia,- Australia, Northernmost America, and Arctic 

 Asia." [Extract of a letter to the Times from R. Fitzroy, April, 1863.] 



1 Compare Thucydides account of the first colonization of Greece, book i. 

 chap. 2. 



2 " The English at Home," by Alphonse Esquiros, 1861. 

 3 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii., p. 186. 



4 Higgins' Celtic Druids, p. 58. 



" The English at Home," by Alphonse Esquiros. 



5 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii , p. 280. 

 Higgins' Celtic Druids, p. 62. 



6 In many parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the mass of the population 

 is still mainly or entirely Celtic. Four Celtic dialects, (the Manx, the Gaelic, 

 the Erse, and the Welsh,) are spoken in our country ; and the pure Celtic type 

 survives alike in the Bretons, the Welsh, the native Irish, the people of the Isle 

 of Man, and the Scottish Highlanders, of whom the two former represent the 



