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says1 that the Belgæ and Celti had the same Gaulish form, though both differed widely in physical characters from the Aquitanians. As to language, Cæsar's statement that the Belgic and Keltic differed, probably refers only to dialectical differences. If a close ethnical relationship can be established between the Celti and the Belgæ, British ethnology clearly gains in simplification. To what extent the Belgic settlers in this country resembled the neighbouring British tribes must remain a moot point. According to Strabo, the Britons were taller than the Celti, with hair less yellow, and they were slighter in build. By the French school of ethnologists the Belgæ are identified with the Cymry, and are described as a tall fair people, similar to the Cimbri already mentioned; and Dr. Prichard, the founder of English anthropology, was led long ago to describe the Keltic type in similar terms.4

3

Yet, as we pass across Britain westwards, and advance towards those parts which are reputed to be predominently Keltic, the proportion of tall fair folk, speaking in general terms, diminishes, while the short and dark element in the population increases, until it probably attains its maximum somewhere in South Wales. As popular impressions are apt to lead us astray, let us turn for accuracy to the valuable mass of statistics collected in Dr. Beddoe's well-known paper "On the Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles", a paper to which every student refers with unfailing confidence, and which will probably remain our

1 Lib. iv, c. i.

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2 "Quand César dit: Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus, inter se differunt, il faut traduire ici le mot lingua par dialecte."-Les Derniers Bretons. Par Emile Souvestre, vol. i, p. 141.

3 Lib. iv, c. 5.

4 Researches into the Physical History of Mankind. By J. C. Prichard, M.D., F.R.S., vol. iii, p. 189.

5 Mem. Anthrop. Soc. Lond., vol. iii, 1870, p. 384.

Dr.

standard authority until the labours of our Anthropometric Committee are sufficiently matured for publication. Beddoe, summing up his observations on the physical characters of the Welsh as a whole, defines them as of "short stature, with good weight, and a tendency to darkness of eyes, hair, and skin". Dr. Beddoe, in another paper,1 indicated the tendency to darkness by a numerical expression which he termed the index of nigrescence. "In the coastdistricts and low-lands of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, the ancient seats of Saxon, Norman, and Flemish colonisation, I find", says this observer, "the indices of hair and eyes so low as 33.5 and 63; while in the interior, excluding the children of English and Irish immigrants, the figures rise to 57.3 and 109.5—this last ratio indicating a prevalence of dark eyes surpassing what I have met with in any other part of Britain" (p. 43).

Many years ago, Mr. Matthew Moggridge furnished the authors of the Crania Britannica with notes of the physical characteristics of the Welsh of Glamorganshire. He defined the people as having "eyes (long) bright, of dark or hazel colour, hair generally black, or a very dark brown, lank, generally late in turning grey.'

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There can be no question, then, as to the prevalence of melanism in this district. Nor does it seem possible to account for this tendency, as some anthropologists have suggested, by the influence of the surrounding media. Even those who believe most firmly in the potency of the environment will hardly be inclined to accept the opinion seriously entertained some years ago by the Rev. T. Price, that the black eyes of Glamorganshire are due to the pre

1 "On the Testimony of Local Phenomena in the West of England to the Permanence of Anthropological Types."-Ibid., vol. ii, 1866, p. 37.

2 Cran. Brit., vol. i, p. 53.

valence of coal fires.1 Long before coal came into use there was the same tendency to nigrescence among the Welsh. This may be seen, as Dr. Nicholas has pointed out, in the bardic names preserved in ancient Welsh records, where the cognomen of du, or "black", very frequently occurs. Thus, in the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, between A.D. 1280 and 1330, there are registered four "blacks" to one "red" and one "grey"—namely, Gwilym Ddu, Llywelyn Ddu, Goronwy Ddu, and Dafydd Ddu.2

The origin of this dark element in the Welsh is to be explained, as everyone will have anticipated, by reference. to the famous passage in Tacitus, which has been worn threadbare by ethnologists. Tacitus tells us that the ancient British tribe of Silures-a tribe inhabiting what is now Glamorganshire, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, and parts at least of Brecknockshire and Radnor-had a swarthy complexion, mostly with curly hair, and that from their situation opposite to Spain there was reason to believe that the Iberians had passed over the sea and gained possession of the country.3 It will be observed that although Tacitus speaks of their dark complexion, he does not definitely state that the hair was dark; but this omission has, curiously enough, been supplied by Jornandes, a Goth, who, in the sixth century, wrote a work which professes to be an extract from the lost history of Cassiodorus, wherein the very words of Tacitus are reproduced with the necessary addition.*

1 Essay on the Physiognomy and Physiology of the Present Inhabitants of Britain, 1829.

2 The Pedigree of the English People, fifth edition, 1878, p. 467.

3 "Silurum colorati vultus et torti plerumque crines, et posita contra Hispania, Iberos veteres trajecisse, easque sedes occupasse, fidem faciunt."-Agricola, c. xi.

4 "Sylorum (Silurum) colorati vultus, torto plerique crine, et nigro nascuntur."-De Rebus Geticis, c. ii; quoted in Mon. Hist. Brit., Excerpta, p. lxxxiii. It is conjectured that the classical word Silures is

With these passages before us, can we reasonably doubt that the swart blood in the Welsh of the present day is a direct legacy from their Silurian ancestors?

Setting what Tacitus here says about the Silures against what he says in the next sentence about the Britons nearest to Gaul (p. 76), it is clear that we must recognise a duality of type in the population of Southern Britain in his day. This fact has been clearly pointed out by Professor Huxley as one of the few "fixed points in British ethnology". At the dawn of history in this country, eighteen centuries ago, the population was not homogeneous, but contained representatives both of Professor Huxley's Melanochroi and of his Xanthochroi. If we have any regard whatever for the persistence of anthropological types, we should hesitate to refer both of these to one and the same elementary stock. We are led, then, to ask which of these two types, if either, is to be regarded as Keltic ?

It is because both of these types, in turn, have been called Keltic that so much confusion has been imported into ethnological nomenclature. The common-sense conclusion, therefore, seems to be that neither type can strictly be termed Keltic, and that such a term had better be used only in linguistic anthropology. The Kelt is merely a person who speaks a Keltic language, quite regardless of his race, though it necessarily follows that all persons who speak similar languages, if not actually of one blood, must have been at some period of their history in close social contact. In this sense, all the inhabitants of Britain at the period of the Roman invasion, notwithstanding the distinction between Xanthroderived from the British name Essyllwyr, the people of Essyllwg. See Nicholas's History of Glamorganshire, 1874, p. 1. It is difficult to determine how far and in what respects the Silures resembled, or differed from, the other inland tribes. Of the Caledonians and of the Belge we know something, but of the other inhabitants we are quite ignorant. 1 Critiques and Addresses, p. 166.

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chroi and Melanochroi, were probably to be styled Kelts. There can be little doubt that the xanthous Britons always spoke a Keltic tongue; but it is not so easy to decide what was the original speech of their melanochroic neighbours.

The existence of two types of population, dark and fair, side by side, is a phenomenon which was repeated in ancient Gaul. As the Silures were to Britain, so were the Aquitani to Gaul-they were the dark Iberian element. Strabo states that while the natives of Keltic and Belgic Gaul resembled each other, the Aquitanians differed in their physical characters from both of these peoples, and resembled the Iberians. But Tacitus has left on record the opinion that the Silures also resembled the Iberians; hence the conclusion that the Silures and the Aquitanians were more or less alike. Now it is generally believed that the relics of the old Aquitanian population are still to be found lingering in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees, being represented at the present day by the Basques. A popular notion has thus got abroad that the ancient Silures must have been remotely affined to the Basque populations of France and Spain. Nevertheless, the modern Basques are so mixed a race that, although retaining their ancient language, their physical characters have been so modified that we can hardly expect to find in them the features of the old Silurians. Thus, according to the Rev. Wentworth Webster, the average colour of the Basque hair at the present day is not darker than chestnut.1

Neither does language render us any aid towards solving the Basque problem. If the Silures were in this country prior to the advent of the Cymry, and if they were cognate with the Basques, it seems only reasonable to suppose that some spoor of their Iberian speech, however scant, might still be lingering amongst us. Yet philologists have sought

1 "The Basque and the Kelt."-Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. v, 1876, p. 5.

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