304
AN GAODHAL.
conquered by Julius Caesar and incorporated with
the Roman Empire, Galatia also became a Roman
province. After that event, though for some cen¬
turies they managed to preserve their characteris¬
tics of race and speech, the Eastern Celts became
gradually blended with the communities around
them and have long since faded away as a distinct
nation.
Of the Celts who remained in Europe the hist¬
ory is much more complicated. They were imper¬
fectly known to the Greeks of the time of Herodo¬
tus as a people dwelling beyond the Pillars of Her¬
cules and bordering upon the territories of the
Cyrenians. The latter were, no doubt, the same
as Iberians, those pre-Aryan settlers in Europe,
who are still represented by the Basques, and who
are generally regarded as of Taranian origin. Some
recent writers have tried to prove that the Eskimo
are a remnant of the same stock which occupied
Europe before the first of the Aryan Adventurers
left their common Asiatic home. According to
this hypothesis, while the hardy Basques or Eus¬
cuara sought refuge from the invaders in the lofty
glens of the Pyrenees, less fortunate members of
the race were driven, by fat succeeding hordes
of conquerors, farther and farther north, till they
reached the verge of the habitable globe on the
shores of the frozen ocean. Even before the an¬
cesters of the Basques, whose kindred also crop up
in Finland and Lapland, had begun to hunt and
fish in the forests and rivers of Europe, they had
been preceded by still other tribes of unknown re¬
lationship whose traces are still found in kitchen-
middens, in the relics of lacustrine settlements,
and even in human remains. But to the Celts
belongs the honor of being the pioneers of Aryan
colonization in Europe. When history begins,
the struggle with their predecessors and rivals
was already past and they were on ground which
they had made their own in Gaul, in Spain, in Bel¬
gium, in Switzerland, and in Northern Italy and
in portions of Germany. They had also settle¬
ments in other regions, but the exact extent and
limits of their domain cannot be stated with confi¬
dence. The history of the Celt is, therefore, the
history of the most important portion of Europe.
We meet them again and again in reading the story
of Ancient Greece. From the Father of History
to Suidas the Lexicographer, the most noted of
chroniclers, philosophers, poets and geographers
have made mention of them. Indeed in ancient
times, as well as today, they compelled attention.
Herodotus full of the victory over the Persians,
had not much to say about them; though a Pho¬
cean colony had, in his time, been long ago estab¬
lished at Marseilles. But the day was to come
when the Greeks, as well as the Romans, had good
reason to know who and what they were. To their
colonies and expeditions, their embassies and
their wars, their generalship and their daring,
many pages of Polybius and Diodorus and Strabo
and Plutarch, of Livy and Caesar and Tacitus, are
devoted. Of the names they gave to rivers and
mountains and forts throughout Western Europe,
many still testify to their presence. Their blood
has been blended with that of Teuton and of Lat¬
in to form new nations. Their poetry, their tradi¬
tions, their quaint humor, their martial fire, have
become the inheritance of even some who reject
their name. Among the races that have built up
European civilization the Cymry and the Gael must
have their place. Take away the Celtic qualities
from those traits which have made Britain
great and there would be a sad defect. For what
the Celt imparted was what neither the Saxon nor
the Roman had to give. "The pure Gael," says
Professor Morley — "now represented by the Irish
and Scotch Celts — was at his best an artist. He
had a sense of literature, he had an active and bold
imagination, joy in bright color, skill in music,
touches of a keen sense of humor in most savage
times, and in religion, fervent and self-sacrificing
zeal. In the Cymry, now represented by the Celts
of Wales, there was the same artist nature. By
natural difference, and partly, no doubt, because
their first known poets learned in suffering what
they taught in song, the old Cymric music comes
to us not like the music of an Irish harp, in throb¬
bings of a pleasant tunefulness, but as a wail that
beats again, again and again some iterated burden
on the ear." The same writer quotes Mr. Fergu¬
son' as saying in his History of Architecture, that
"the true glory of the Celt is his artistic eminence,"
and that, if the English people have a church wor¬
thy of admiration or a picture of which they can
look without shame, it is to the Celt's influence
that it is due. Nor, it must be remembered, is it
only for their productions as a race apart, for what
the Scotch, or the Irish, the Welsh the Manx or
the Bretons have given to the world in their own
name, that the Celts are to be commended. What¬
ever they have, by their fusion with other races,
Latin or Teutonic, endowed them with something
of their own genius, and brought to the birth men
of surpassing gifts and powers, well-balanced and
with an insight that is never deceived — poets, ar¬
tistes, statesmen, prophets, and leaders of men — they
should have their future of the honor. It would
perhaps, be a delicate question to ask how much
of her national greatness England owes to the Cel¬
tic element. But that her glory must to a consid¬
erable extent, be attributed to that source, few
persons will deny.
But while such problems of ethnic distribution
may well engage the labors of some members of a
Celtic Society, it is to the history and relations of
the language, in its various dialects, and to the
study and elucidation of its rich and manifold lit¬
rature, that their efforts will be mainly directed.
The importance of the different branches of Celtic
speech in connection with philological research is
very great. Persons who speak them are the de-
