Читать книгу The Bronze Age and the Celtic World - Harold Peake - Страница 6

Table of Contents

FOR the last fifteen hundred years the Celtic tongues have been spoken only in the extreme north-west of Europe, in parts of Ireland, the west of Scotland, and the Isle of Man, in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, and for some little time these languages have ceased to be spoken in Cornwall and the Isle of Man.

But we have ample evidence that these tongues had once a wider range, and were pushed westward in the first instance by the spread of Roman culture and the Latin language as the empire increased its bounds, and still more by the Teutonic tribes who invaded the western half of that empire and brought about its fall.

If however we examine the evidence which has come down to us from the first century before the Christian era, especially such material as has been furnished by Cæsar and Strabo, we shall find that languages of the Celtic type were spoken at that time throughout all Europe west of the Rhine and north of the Pyrenees and the southern slopes of the Alps. We shall note also that these tongues were spoken in many parts of Spain and in North Italy, though in both these areas they were of relatively late introduction.

Again there is another area in which Celtic speech was in use at that time, or had been shortly before. This is the mountain or Alpine zone of Central Europe, as far east, at least, as a line drawn from Cracow to Agram. It is possible, too, that such tongues may have been spoken at one time still further east.

The problem before us is to inquire first in what region the Celtic tongues originated, then how and when they spread to the areas in which we find them two thousand years ago. To do this we shall have to review the condition of these areas both from the standpoint of prehistoric archæology and physical anthropology, to see whether the evidence derived from these sciences, taken together with that drawn from comparative philology and the study of place-names, can help us to reach a solution.

But the problem is further complicated by the fact that the Celtic languages fall into two groups. In the one occurs the sound qu, which has in later days become a hard c, while in the other this sound has become labialised and converted into a p or b. It has been thought by some that the qu peoples, spoken of usually as Goidels or Gaels, arrived first from the common Celtic home, and that the p peoples, called Brythons or Cymri, came later from the same centre; this view is, however, strenuously denied by others. We have, therefore, to determine if we can, not only whence and when the Celtic languages arrived in the west, but whether they came in one, two or more waves.

FIG. 1.—CELTIC LANDS AND THE CELTIC CRADLE.

Lastly, we find that the Celtic tongues, as spoken to-day, contain elements of grammar and syntax, and not a few words too, which divide them off sharply from those groups of languages to which they are in other respects akin. Also it is believed by some that non-Celtic languages, such as Pictish, survived in this region until relatively late times, while it is well-known that a primitive non-Celtic tongue, the Basque, is still spoken in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees. It is important, therefore, if we are to have before us all the factors which enter into the problem, that we should inquire what people were here before the first Celts arrived, and that we should make ourselves to some extent familiar with all the different races and cultures which preceded the Celtic invaders.

If we pass across England and Wales from east to west, and the same is almost as true if we cross Scotland, we find, first of all that the population is mainly tall and fair, while as we proceed we come across elements which are darker and shorter, until in Wales and the West Highlands we find the majority of the people are small brunettes of slender build. This dark type is also to be met with in Ireland, especially in the west, the part of that island in which the Erse language has best survived.

It is because the Celtic tongues, whether qu or p, are spoken chiefly by people of this small brunette type, that it is frequently called the Celtic race, and yet all the evidence of ancient authorities goes to show that 2,000 or 2,500 years ago the Celts were looked upon as a tall, fair people.[1] Here is another difficulty which must be taken into consideration as we make our inquiries, for no solution can be considered sound which cannot, without straining the evidence, answer all these questions.

As we have seen the main areas which were Celtic-speaking in the time of Cæsar were the British Isles and Gaul, west of the Rhine; these I shall term Celtic lands, leaving out Spain and Cis-alpine Gaul as areas into which the Celtic invasion arrived at a relatively late date. Now, besides these Celtic lands Celtic tongues were spoken in the Alpine zone, and perhaps at one time still further east. It is from this area that the Celtic languages have been thought by some to have entered the lands of the west. They cannot have been introduced from Spain or Italy, into which they were late entrants, but it has been suggested by some writers that they arrived from the north-east, from the Baltic region. It is true that there is some slight evidence that Celtic place-names have existed in this area, but the balance of evidence, as I shall hope to show, seems to prove that Celtic people arrived there relatively late and not in large numbers, and that they were never the dominant people of that region. There remains only the Alpine zone and the lands to the east of it. This area, from the Jura to the Iron Gates, from the northern slopes of the Carpathians to the southern foot-hills of the Alps, I shall term the Celtic cradle, and I trust that the evidence which I shall produce will convince my readers that I am correct in so doing.