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The Chairman. — I have now on behalf of this meeting to return thanks to 
Mr. Howard for the very learned and interesting paper he has just read. 
“ Learned and interesting ” are two attributes that are not always joined 
together. Sometimes we have papers that are learned and not interesting, 
and I have also heard papers that have been interesting without being very 
learned, but here we have both together. (Hear, hear.) We shall now be 
happy to hear any remarks that may be made upon the subject. 
Eev. 5". Fisher, D.D. — The paper is one that is interesting to several classes 
of people. It is interesting to the linguist, to the ethnologist, and, in a 
certain way, to the historian and to the Christian. The writer has, I think, 
shown us that man did not come hither in an uncivilized or savage state. 
Mr. Howard has said, the language of the W elsh people is a philosophic 
language which evidently was not gathered in the first instance from men 
grunting or barking, and from that gradually developed into so noble a 
language as that of the old Gaul. I think it would prove a very interesting 
and useful study if someone who has the time at his disposal would take the 
hint and give us something like a dictionary of all those words, whether 
names of places or names of men, or whatever else, that are really Gaelic 
in origin. (Hear.) There is no fear, however, of their being lost, for I have 
no doubt that the manuscripts and books we have will suffice to preserve the 
language. It certainly would be a great pity that it should be lost or 
displaced. Of course it is abundantly apparent that the English language is 
displacing other languages in many countries. It appears very clearly from 
Mr. Howard’s paper that our ancestors far away in the olden days had a 
knowledge of, and believed in, the unity of God. For my part I believe 
that that word Belus — Baal — is the same in the Babylonian, Phoenician, 
Celtic, and so on. Our old “ May-day ” in this country was “ Beltina,” the 
“ Fire of Baal and to this day May-fires are kindled in Ireland. 
The Chairman. — May I here introduce what I have thought might be 
a very interesting passage from this book, to which Mr. Howard has 
not alluded. It is a passage from Ammicinus Marcellinus , who was a 
soldier in the army of Julian, and who lived in the time of Theodosius. 
Writing at the date A.D. 370, he makes remarks on the subject of the 
religion of the Gauls, and says pretty much what Strabo says. He 
writes something like this : — “ In this country men are generally trained 
up in the pursuits of laudable doctrine or laudable learning furnished 
largely from the Bards, Euhages and Druids.” “ Euhages ” is the spelling 
given here, but that is wrong ; it should be “ Euhates,” but Ammianus spells 
the word “ Euhages,” meaning to express what is expressed by Strabo’s book 
by Ouates, or, as the Latins wrote it, “ Vates” (one of the words which shows 
a connection between the Latin and the Celtic), therefore the three orders of 
the Bards were the Bards proper, the Yates, and the Druids. “ The Bards,” 
he says, “ wrote the deeds of illustrious men in heroic verse, and sang them 
with the sweet accompaniment of the lyre ; the Euhages examine into the 
order and mysteries of nature, and endeavour to explain them ; the Druids 
