Читать книгу Myths of the Rhine - M. Xavier - Страница 27

These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and all bore the same name of Celts.

But where was the first source from which this flood of families, of peoples, of nations, broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in successive waves spread over the greater part of the Old World? Whence came these vast multitudes of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown, who broke the mournful silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were the frozen regions of the North pole, at that early time, really so fertile in men? We call upon men of science to answer our question. The question is a serious one, perhaps an indiscreet one, for who can be appealed to on such a difficult point? History? It did not exist. Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had never dreamt yet of writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence put it out of the power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they confess that they are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never condescend to make such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a language, a dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient Bretagne as well as in the Principality of Wales.

Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to school once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which science is capable, deserves our admiration.

After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found themselves once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom of the Brahmins, the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old Celtic tongue, and thus of the Breton.