upon British Ethnologiy. 
191 
part of our present population to be not only largely a 
survival from Neolithic times, but to be akin to the Iberian 
element of South-western France and North-western Spain. 
One of the latest and ablest, however, Mr. Elton, considers 
that the evidence for this view is insufficient, inasmuch as we 
find no traces in this country of the exaltation of women 
above men, and of the strange custom of the Couvade, which 
still prevails among the Iberians. This custom of the 
Couvade, however, is not specially Basque (or Iberian), but 
is found among certain tribes of North and South America, 
India, and other parts of the world, having apparently origi¬ 
nated independently in various countries. And while its co¬ 
existence in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees and among 
Britons of the Silurian type would have gone far to establish 
affinity of race, its absence from Britain is by no means 
testimony equally strong against affinity. For the Basque 
language is still spoken by a considerable number of persons 
on both sides of the Pyrenees, but no pre-Celtic tongue has 
been spoken in Britain for many centuries, though compara¬ 
tive philologists tell us that the British Celtic languages show 
undoubted signs of having been influenced by older forms of 
speech now extinct. And it is but natural that the influences 
which have wholly extinguished pre-Celtic languages should 
also have swept away pre-Celtic customs, which are found 
where the pre-Celtic tongue has been preserved. Besides, as 
regards the Iberian reverence for woman, we must also 
remember that to a race invading Britain at a later date we 
owe the popular rhyme :— 
“ A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, 
The more you beat them the better they be,” 
which discloses a way of regarding woman very different from 
that of the ancient Iberians. 4 
I have stated that the remains of British Neolithic man 
are found in long barrows. These long barrows are con¬ 
sidered by Canon Greenwell to be the earliest sepulchral 
4 Mr. Metcalfe, in ‘ The Englishman and the Scandinavian,’ remarks, 
p. 147, “ Singular to relate, woman’s love is nowhere described in extant 
Anglo-Saxon poetry.” 
