208 
Notes on the Evidence bearing 
people think themselves more thoroughly English than the 
inhabitants of English counties on the Welsh border ; though 
the difference of race is almost imperceptible, the distinction 
of language decides the feeling of nationality. 
The evidence of place-names also, though most interesting 
and valuable, is necessarily equally inconclusive as testimony 
to the relative proportions of the different races inhabiting a 
country. For example, the pre-Teutonic place-names in 
Britain south of the Forth are almost all of the Cymric or 
Brythonic family. Yet, as we have seen, there is evidence 
of the existence of two pre-Celtic peoples and of the Celtic 
Gfaels in the same district prior to the advent of the Bryfchons, 
and there is conclusive evidence against the extermination of 
the earlier races by the Brythons. But the Cymry, Lloegriaus 
and Brythons, known collectively by the latter name, doubt¬ 
less spoke a tongue intelligible to each other, and their lan¬ 
guage naturally acquired the same advantage over the Celtic 
and pre-Celtic dialects, spoken when they arrived here, that 
the tongue of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes obtained over the 
Latin and British dialects spoken here in the fifth century. 
Thus neither the supremacy of the Brythonic tongue in 
Britain on the coming of the Romans, nor that of the Angles 
and Saxons some centuries after their departure, necessarily 
imply any considerable slaughter of the pre-existing races. 
On this point, as we have seen, our histories can tell us 
nothing. It has often occurred to me that we are too apt to 
forget that the period between the Anglo-Saxon invasion and 
the reign of Alfred (871-901) was as long as that between the 
Wars of the Roses and the present day, in other words a period 
of more than 400 years. Yet even in Alfred’s time not only 
Cornwall and Devon, but Somerset and even parts of Wiltshire 
were still regarded as Welsh , the term implying not only that 
their inhabitants were of British race, but that a British tongue 
was still spoken there. Many centuries have elapsed since 
English became the language of Wiltshire and Somerset, and 
since it predominated in Devonshire and Cornwall. Yet though 
these counties have entirely changed their language we have 
no reason to suppose them to be less British in blood than 
