CELTIC MSS. IN RELATION TO THE MACPHERSON FRAUD, &c.
My attention was lately directed to a lengthy
article that appeared in The Scotsman of the
12th of last November, bearing the initials of
Mr. Mackinnon, Professor of Celtic at the
University of Edinburgh, to whom I sent a copy
of my book, Celticism a Myth, then just issued
from the press. The article begins with a
tribute to the assiduity of the Historiographer
Royal in the cause of Celtic literature; but is
plainly intended as a refutation of my statement
to the effect that “It is no longer pretended
that any Gaelic poetry has been preserved in
early manuscripts,” &c. In citing the remark of
Dr. Irving it was certainly not my intention to
call down an exhibition of Professor Mackinnon’s
Celtic wares—of the authenticity and character
of which I am profoundly ignorant—but simply
to express my conviction that the alleged manuscript
documents of which Macpherson professed
to give a translation did not exist. De non
existentibus et non apparentibus Dr. Johnson
says, eadem est ratio. There are unfortunately
now no Doctor Johnsons, or Pinkertons or
John Hill Burtons to deal with these possible
inventions or forgeries of a later age, the
perhaps “other evidences” of what the great lexicographer
characterised as “Scotch conspiracy
in national falsehood.” Ample time and opportunity
has been afforded since 1762—the date
when Macpherson first gave to the world his
Ossian the Son of Fingal—to fabricate missing
documents or supply others of more startling
character. A pungent criticism from the pen
of Mr. Hill Burton, or a crushing commentary
by either of the other named critics, would
probably have relegated these so-called Celtic
MSS.—some of them at least—to the nothingness
whence they came. It is clear that what Professor
Mackinnon brings forward is not evidence,
certainly not such as would be accepted in a
Court of Law. There is no substantiation of
the Macpherson manuscripts save the statements,
and what I fear must be regarded as the fabrications,
of a number of interested individuals
retailed at second-hand, none of all whom can
be accepted as unprejudiced witnesses. After
the strictest search for the originals of Ossian,
Dr. Johnson came to the conclusion that as
regards Scotland and the pretensions of James
Macpherson, there was not in existence “an
Erse manuscript a hundred years old.” Any
attempt therefore, in our day to bring into
agreement this literary imposture with the
difficulties which stultify all conception of its
genuineness is foredoomed to failure. If, as
Mr. Mackinnon alleges, it be “perfectly established”
that Macpherson carried away from the
North-West Highlands several Gaelic manuscripts
it is equally certain he never exhibited
them to anyone capable of forming a judgment as
to their authenticity. “The collection proper,”
it would appear, “consists of sixty-three
separate parcels.” How many of these are
genuine we shall probably never know. These
are “Transcripts of several MSS. or portions of
MSS. by Mr. McLachlan, and the Rev. Donald
Mackintosh,” and collections of “Ossianic poetry
made by a schoolmaster at Kilmelford,” volumes
of tales which belonged to Mr. Campbell of
Islay, a collection of Gaelic poetry made by a
schoolmaster at Dunkeld, the MSS. whatever
these may be, written in “The old Gaelic hand!”
the use of which, we are told, was discontinued
about the middle of the last century. “Regarding
the history of the great majority of these documents,”
it is said “we are ignorant”—certainly
at least, I am, most profoundly. It appears
however, that “The Rev. Mr. Gallie saw in
Macpherson’s possession” ‘several volumes,
small octavos, or rather large duodecimo in the
Gaelic language and characters’! Scarcely less
authentic is the fact that Lachlan Macviurich
“remembers well that Clanranald made his
father give up the Red book to James Macpherson,”
and that Macpherson himself deposited certain
MSS. with his publishers Messrs. Beckett and
Dehondt which for a whole year remained in the
custody of that firm. These manuscripts mentioned
by Mr. Mackinnon were probably the
Gaelic leases of Macleod of Rasay referred to
by me in Celticism a Myth. The fact that
Macpherson so prostituted his talents, and
character for integrity was stated to me many
years ago by an aged clergyman of the Church
of Scotland, who vouched for his statement on
the faith of his friend George Dempster of
Dunichen, who was cognizant of the circumstance.
Father Farquharson, it is alleged, made a
collection of Gaelic MSS. before 1745, the last
leaves of which were used to kindle a stove fire
in the Roman Catholic College at Douay, a
circumstance, as I think, not greatly to be
deplored, while the “illiterate descendant” of
the Seanachies attached to the family of
Clanranald describes the dispersion of the manuscript
library accumulated by his ancestors, and
the fate of certain parchments [? old leases]
which were cut down for tailors’ measuring tapes.
“He himself” (the descendant of the Seanachies)
“had possession of some parchments after his
father’s death,” but not being able to read, these
disappeared from view. A valuable witness
truly in the identification of doubtful MSS.
“Such acts of vandalism,” we are told, “are
not likely to occur again.” Probably not. Like
Joshua arresting the Sun and the Moon, they
are “things that have once been done but can
be done no more.” The fact of the dispersion,
however, and the fate of the parchments, leases,
title deeds, literary treasures or by whatever name
they may be called, rests on the testimony
of this Celtic ignoramus who, it is to be feared,
would not be too particular in any relation
concerning the “glories and greatness” of
his country, his personal consequence, or the
departed grandeur of his clan. I well remember,
many years ago, meeting with an ignorant Highlander
of some property, who offered to sell for
ten pounds an ancient claymore, with a pretentious,
but unauthenticated pedigree, for which
he declared, with the voluntary accompaniment
of an oath, he had previously declined “A
Sousand pounds.” It is my experience that to
persons of this class it comes more natural to
state a falsehood than to speak the truth. We
all remember Charles Surface’s exculpatory
witness in The School for Scandal, “Oh yes, I
swear.” Mr. Mackinnon states that “The
Gaelic text of Ossian which James Macpherson
handed over to Mr. Mackenzie, and which was
given to the editor of the edition of 1807, has
disappeared.” How very odd that manuscripts
on which the human eye never rested should
thus so strangely disappear! Can that be said
to disappear which was never visible? Of the
poems of Ossian, Dr. Irving says, “We are
required to believe that these were composed in
the third century; and that by means of oral
tradition, they were delivered by one generation
to another for the space of nearly fifteen hundred
years. If this account could be received as
authentic, if these poems could be regarded as
genuine, they must be classed among the most
extraordinary effort of human genius. That a
nation so rude in other arts, and even unacquainted
with the use of letters, should yet have
carried the most elegant of all arts to so high a
degree of perfection, would not only be sufficient
to overturn every established theory, but would
exceed all the possibilities of rational assent.
But if we could suppose an untaught barbarian
capable of combining the rules of ancient poetry
with the refinements of modern sentiment one
difficulty is indeed removed; but another difficulty
scarcely less formidable still remains—By
what rare felicity were many thousand
verses, only written on the frail tablet of memory,
to be safely transmitted through fifty generations
of mankind? If Ossian could compose epic
poems on the same model as Homer, how was it
possible for them to preserve their original
texture through the fearful vicissitudes of nearly
fifteen centuries? * * * * It is utterly
incredible that such poems as Fingal and Temora,
consisting each of several thousand lines were
thus transmitted from the supposed age of Ossian
to the age of Macpherson.” “It is” Dr. Irving
continues “no longer pretended that any Gaelic
poetry has been preserved in early manuscripts;
and indeed the period when Gaelic can be traced
as a written language is comparatively modern.”
“That many poems and fragments of poems,”
he goes on to say, “were preserved in the Highlands
of Scotland cannot however be doubted;
and it is sufficiently ascertained that Macpherson
was assiduously employed in collecting such
popular reliques, some of which had perhaps
existed for many ages. From the materials
which he had thus procured he appears to have
fabricated the various works which he delivered
to the public under the name of Ossian, and
afterwards to have adjusted the Gaelic by the
English text.” “The ground upon which Hume
finally decided against the authenticity of the
Poems of Ossian, was the impossibility of any man
of sense imagining that they should have been
orally preserved ‘during fifty generations, by
the rudest, perhaps of all European nations;
the most necessitous, the most turbulent, and the
most unsettled.’” Such is the historian Hume’s
estimate of the Macpherson fraud as stated by
the Edinburgh Review, and such the beggarly
array of evidence on which, according to the
abettors of Macpherson, the honour and glory of
Scotland, must rest in all time to come. The
Scotch are a stubborn race on which to operate,
especially in matters that concern their nationality.
They have conceived the idea that in
the dark ages—dark to all but them—their
countrymen, a Celtic race, were skilled in the
sciences and acquainted with art. This as an
article of faith has hardened into a conviction
not to be shaken, and is that which, in their
view, distinguishes Scotland above all competitors.
In it, in the remote ages of the past,
there existed culture and refinement rivalling
that of the most literary nations of antiquity
whether Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek or Roman.
The roving Northmen, according to their
account, were but plundering pirates, and other
nations barbarians. No evidence, however
overwhelming, will alter or modify this opinion.
Not on any terms will they be induced to give
up their preconceptions. Philologers and Ethnologists,
Professors, and specialists, et hoc genus
omne, are called to the rescue, while they refuse
to look at the clearest facts. When their
favourite idol begins to shake they rush into the
market-place crying “Great is Diana of the
Ephesians.” It is impossible to doubt that
Macpherson was an impudent impostor. When
his veracity was impugned no simpler method of
clearing his reputation from the aspersions cast
upon it could have been devised than the very
reasonable plan suggested by Dr. Johnson, that
he should place the manuscripts in the hands of
the professors at Aberdeen where there were
persons capable of judging of their authenticity.
The manuscripts were never produced, and in
admitting this fact the defenders of Macpherson
resign the whole question. “To refuse,” Dr.
Johnson says, “to gratify a reasonable curiosity
is the last refuge of impudent mendacity.” Dr.
Johnson’s letter to this vain-glorious boaster
repelling a threat of personal violence is a
master-piece of contemptuous scorn and defiance.
“Mr. James Macpherson, I received your
foolish and impudent letter. Any violence
offered me I shall do my best to repel, and what
I cannot do myself the law will do for me. I
hope I shall never be deterred from detecting
what I think a cheat by the menaces of a
ruffian. What would you have me retract? I
thought your book an imposture. I think it an
imposture still. For this opinion I have given
my reasons to the public which I here dare you
to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities
since your Homer are not so formidable, and
what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay
regard, not to what you shall say, but to what
you shall prove. You may print this if you
will.”
We are told that the subject of the Pictish
language has been thoroughly discussed by Dr.
W. F. Skene in his Four Ancient Books of
Wales, that, in addition to Pean Fahel, the sole
Pictish word formerly known he has discovered
four other distinct words, besides a number of
syllables entering into proper names; and from
all these he deduces the opinion that Pictish
“Is not Welsh, neither is it Gaelic; but it is a
Gaelic dialect partaking largely of Welsh forms”
whatever that may mean. “More especially,”
we are told, “he holds that Pictish as compared
with Gaelic, was a Low dialect, that it differed
from the Gaelic in much the same way that Low
German differs from High.” It is perhaps unnecessary
to add that I regard this supposed
solution of the Pictish difficulty as so much
figment. It is simply the arbitrary conclusion
of a man looking into a mill stone, and giving a
deliverance in regard to which he is in no more
commanding position than the most illiterate
specimen of humanity to be found in the slums
of the Northern Metropolis. On the other side
of the question it is open to me to state that the
Pictish words which Mr. Skene persuades himself
he has discovered, and which on his own
shewing are neither Welsh nor Gaelic but,
belonging to a Low dialect of the latter may
after all be only the obsolete remains of an early
Gothic speech. The ruler of the Picts about
the end of the sixth century, it is said, was
Brude, the son of Mailcon, who died in 586.
The most active of all the Pictish sovereigns,
according to the received accounts, was Hungus
or Ængus who began to reign in 730. In so
far then as these names may not be absolute
myth, they may be claimed as Scandinavian.
With Brude compare the Norse personal names
Brodi, Breid-r, and Brodd-r (the r final
separated by a hyphen being merely the sign of
the nominative case). Mailcon is the united
Scandinavian personal names of Miöl and Kon-r.
With Hungus or Ængus compare the Scoto-Norwegian
names Magnus Anguson, and Angus
Magnuson.
The Norwegians in Man, in the Hebrides, and
in the North, and North-Western Highlands
were confessedly the dominant and more
numerous race, and there for upwards of four
centuries held uninterrupted sway.
Did the Norwegian colonists eventually go off
in vapour, leaving behind them only a native
residuum speaking a purely Celtic dialect freed
from all taint of the Northman’s language after
the close contact of so many centuries? If the
Norwegian element was not so sublimated, but
as Pinkerton affirms, and which I believe, continues
in the modern population of those portions
of the United Kingdom, what becomes of the
purity of the so-called “Primitive Celtic tongue”?
Assuming that it was Celts among whom the
Norwegians settled, is it possible to conceive
that men of such force of character as the Northmen
made no lasting impression on the speech
of the wretched Celtic inhabitants whom they
trampled under foot? Despite the researches
of philologers is it rational to conclude that what
is now called Celtic can on any intelligible
hypothesis be the primeval speech of the unlettered
savages who before the advent of the
Romans had been driven into the western portion
of the Island by the Belgae? “It is not in nature,”
the Saturday Reviewer says, “that people should
accept Mr. Roger’s or Pinkerton’s opinion in
preference to the universally held belief that the
Celtic speech is a language of the Indo-European
family of speech,” &c. But it is not alone Mr.
Roger and Pinkerton with whom the Reviewer
has to deal. The late Lord Neaves, an eminent
Scotch judge and antiquary, held an opinion
very much akin to that of Pinkerton, that the
Erse, and Gaelic, and Manx dialects, if not
entirely a form of obsolete Gothic speech, contain
at least a very large admixture of the northern
tongue. The editor of the Athenæum too, in
reviewing Skene’s Highlanders of Scotland,
draws attention to the fact of the striking resemblance
between the oldest Erse monuments
and those dialects confessedly Teutonic, holding
this decisive of the question that the Scots were
Germans. On the same side of the question is
the strongly expressed opinion of the late Dr.
R. Angus Smith, F.R.S. “I consider,” he says,
“those who hold the nations called Celtic and
those called Teutonic, as one race, to be simply
abolishing the knowledge we get from history,
and refusing to look at very clear facts.” I am
not however going to quarrel with the Saturday
Reviewer, who virtually concedes all for which I
contend, that the Celts were entirely without
art or culture, of which more hereafter. On the
question of civilizing influences we have the
testimony of Professor Kirkpatrick, of the
Scotch Bar, a gentleman of well-known scholarly
accomplishments, who occupies the Chair of
Constitutional Law and History in the University
of Edinburgh. “I have long been of opinion,”
he writes, “that we owe the whole of our civilization
to Scandinavian and Teutonic ancestors,
and partly to Roman influence, and your very
interesting volume confirms that opinion.”
There is still another phase of the question
with which the philological critic has to deal,
and this is, that only where the Northmen
settled are found those remains of what is
called Celtic speech. “The Northmen formed
colonies in Wales, in Cornwall, in Brittany,
in Ireland, in the Highlands and islands of
Scotland, and in the Isle of Man, and there
only do we find those dialects usually known as
Celtic.” I do not pretend to explain this, but I
state it as an outside fact, which, in my view, it
is incumbent on the Celtic philologer to explain. It
is, of course, impossible to reach any confident conclusion
as to what may have been the language on
which the Northman grafted his Teutonic speech,
though it must be obvious to every unprejudiced
enquirer, that those dialects must now be very
much mixed and altered and corrupted from
close contact for many centuries with the language
of a dominant race. Having regard to this fact,
the question arises whether “the universally
held belief” referred to by the Saturday Review,
be not founded on the Gothic accretions derived
from the Northmen, rather than on the structural
peculiarities of the original language of the
people among whom the Northmen settled. It
is evident from the remarks of Professor Max
Muller that too much importance is not to be
attached to what is told us by the Celtic philologer.
“Celtic words,” he says, “may be
found in German, Slavonic, and even Latin,
but only as foreign terms, and their number is
much smaller than commonly supposed. A
far larger number of Latin and German words
have since found their way into the modern
Celtic dialects, and these have frequently been
mistaken by Celtic enthusiasts for original words
from which German and Latin might in their
turn be derived.”
Professor Kirkpatrick’s opinion suggests a
natural connection between the Celtic myth, and
M. du Chaillu’s account of The Viking Age.
The Scotsman, in its review of this book,
wonders what Professor Freeman will say, and
we are not long left in doubt. He looks down
upon M. du Chaillu from a lofty eminence, evidently
regarding him with something like pitying
contempt. He is not sure he should have
thought the doctrine set forth by M. du Chaillu
worthy of serious examination, but for the
singular relation in which it stands to Mr.
Seebohm’s “slightly older teaching,” in his
book called The English Village Community.
Mr. Seebohm’s views, he says, are the evident
result of honest work at original materials, and
eminently entitled to be considered, and if need
be, answered. But obviously both are eminently
objectionable. Though differing in method, they
rival each other in daring and absurdity. The
only question is whether M. du Chaillu’s theory
need be discussed at all. Professor Freeman has
decreed this, and after so supreme a master in
the art of criticism it is vain to question it.
It will thus be seen he lauds the one in order
to disparage the other. He compliments Mr.
Seebohm and spits contemptuously in M. du
Chaillu’s face. I am Jupiter, and by contrast
in the scale of intelligence, you, M. du Chaillu,
are only a black beetle. “The strife in its new
form,” he tells us, “has become more deadly.”
M. du Chaillu threatens to wipe out entirely
Professor Freeman’s antiquated conception of
a Saxon invasion, and the latter is constrained
to worship in secret the divinity he pretends to
despise. Professor Freeman’s views will be
found in The Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and
Britain. He has had his say, and “if anybody
cares to know what that say is, he may read it
for himself.” Professor Freeman has written
what he has written, and woe to him who reads
to controvert. It does not, however, follow that
what Professor Freeman has written is necessarily
the gospel of English history. Both
theories alike, it would appear—Mr. Seebohm’s
and M. du Chaillu’s—throw aside the recorded
facts of history! What are the recorded facts
of history in relation to the so-called Saxon
invasion? The Saxon invasion was doubted
in the days of Bishop Nicolson, who refers to
the short and pithy despatch Sir William Temple
makes of the Saxon times, and the contempt
with which he speaks of its historians. The
good Bishop himself is constrained to admit he
does not know what has become of the book
written by King Alfred against corrupt judges,
nor of that gifted King’s collection of old Saxon
sonnets.[1] The late J. M. Kemble taught the
learned world to believe that, “the received
accounts of the Saxon immigration, and subsequent
fortunes, and ultimate settlement are
devoid of historical truth in every detail.”
Here is an eminent scholar who, having
examined the subject with perfect historical
candour, regarded the Saxon invasion as fiction
and fabrication from beginning to end, and who
surely may be accepted as a valuable witness.
To the same purpose we have the statement of
Mr. James Rankin, F.R.A.S., “Who the Saxons
were, or when they arrived, or where they
settled, is a subject on which tradition is entirely
silent, for of written history there is none.”
Professor Freeman says that M. du Chaillu has
put forth two very pretty volumes with abundance
of illustrations of Scandinavian objects.
He contemns the pictures but admires the frames.
Most of them, however, he adds, will be found
in “various Scandinavian books,” but he does
not suggest that the “various Scandinavian
books” are not readily accessible to the English
reader.
Professor Freeman indulges in that species of
raillery to which men usually resort when they
are driven into a corner. “We are really not
ourselves,” he says, “but somebody else.” “The
belief as to their own origin which the English
of Britain have held ever since there have been
Englishmen,” and such incoherent trifling. The
ordinary average Englishman has no independent
belief on the subject. He is told in his youth
the story about Hengist and Horsa, and if he
remembers it at all it gives him no particular
concern. The bulk of Englishmen and Scotchmen
too, are profoundly ignorant as to their
history and origin. The Englishman has some
vague conception that he is an “Anglo-Saxon,”
while the Scot takes it for granted that all
Scotchmen are Celts, and that all art found in
Scotland is Celtic. Sir Daniel Wilson could
discern in the rude rock scroll the “stately
Cathedral.” There are others “who can see a
coffin in a flake of soot.” It is hardly by such
an adversary as M. du Chaillu, Professor Freeman
says: “that we shall be beaten out of the belief
that there is such a thing as English people in
Britain. Perhaps too we shall not be more
inclined to give up our national being, when we
see its earliest records tossed aside with all the
ignorant scorn of the eighteenth century.” This
is absolutely childish. It reads more like mental
imbecility than intellectual acumen. M. du
Chaillu does not deny that there is an English
people in Britain. He only doubts that the
English people are Saxon, and affirms that they
are Scandinavian, and in this view of the matter
he is sustained by many and strong presumptions.
Neither does he ask us “to give up our national
being,” which he does not assail. Macaulay
says: “it is only in Britain that an age of fable
separates two ages of truth,” and the void, it
would appear, is to be filled up with “some
hints” by Professor Freeman, who, to his own
satisfaction, at least, has bridged over the dreary
gulf. Professor Freeman thinks it odd that the
so-called Saxons were led into such strange
mistakes as to their own name and origin. Is it
an exceptional thing for a nation to be mistaken
as to its remote history? Can Professor Freeman
tell us who were the aborigines of Ancient
Greece? Professor Freeman declines to be
brought from the North by M. du Chaillu even
more strongly than he declines to be brought
from the South by Mr. Seebohm. Mr. Seebohm,
according to Professor Freeman, “does leave
some scrap of separate national being to the
‘Anglo-Saxon invaders’ * * * * M. du
Chaillu takes away our last shreds; we are
mere impostors,” &c. Must a nation be accounted
impostor because it does not possess
an accurate knowledge of its remote history?
We might, indeed, be justly termed impostors if
in the face of overwhelming evidence we should
continue to adhere to the foregone conclusions
of dogmatic historians built on the fictions and
figment of monkish tradition. “As far as M. du
Chaillu’s theory can be made out,” Professor
Freeman holds it to be this, “The Suiones of
Tacitus are the Swedes, and the Suiones had
ships; so far no one need cavil. But we do not
hear of the Suiones or any other Scandinavian
people doing anything by sea for several centuries.
But though we do not hear of it they
must have been doing something. What was it
they did? Now in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries
we hear of the Saxons doing a good deal
by sea; therefore the name Saxones must be a
mistake of the Latin writer’s for Suiones.” The
assumption that goes through all this, Professor
Freeman continues, is that “because the Suiones
had ships in the days of Tacitus, as they could
not have left off using ships it must have been
they who did the acts attributed to the Saxons.”
He condescends to admit that “a good deal is
involved in this last assumption; it is at least
conceivable,” he says, “and not at all unlike the
later history of Sweden, that the Suiones went
on using their ships, but used them somewhere
else, and not on the coasts of Gaul and Britain.”
But this begs the question in dispute. Setting
aside M. du Chaillu’s conjecture as to the possible
confounding of names,[2] the question still
remains who were the Saxons? Whether is it
more reasonable to believe that the Suiones or
Swedes referred to by Tacitus, not to mention
the Danes and Norwegians, did not continue to
make their descent on the shores of Britain so
readily accessible to their fleets, or that the
so-named Saxon invader was one and the same
with the Scandinavian? “There is nothing
very strange,” the Quarterly thinks, “in supposing
that some of the ‘Angles’ or ‘Saxons’
may have descended from the Suiones of
Tacitus.” M. du Chaillu, it says, “rests his
case mainly on the fact that, while the so-called
Anglo-Saxon remains found in England correspond
minutely with those discovered in enormous
quantities in Norway, Sweden and Denmark,
there are no traces of such objects in the
basins of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine,
nor anywhere else, save in places which Scandinavians
are known to have visited.” “Every
tumulus,” M. du Chaillu says, “described by
antiquaries as a Saxon or Frankish grave, is
the counterpart of a northern grave, thus
showing conclusively the common origin of the
people.” Professor Freeman considers M. du
Chaillu’s theory “several degrees more amazing
than that of Mr. Seebohm,” though why the two
should be connected I hardly know. “No one denies,”
Mr. Freeman says, that the Scandinavian
infusion in England is “real, great, and valuable,”
only the date of the Scandinavian descent on the
shores of Britain, and the degree and manner
of the northern immigration must be taken on
the faith of Professor Freeman. According to
his account the Scandinavian invasion was an
infusion that dates from the ninth century.
This is exactly the pivot on which the whole
question turns. There are strong grounds for
believing that the Northman incursions and
settlements in Britain were not limited to the
Danish invasions of the ninth century. Did
the fleets of the Northmen fully equipped start
into existence in the middle or end of the ninth
century? If not, how were they engaged
during the centuries that immediately preceded?
Professor Freeman affirms that they were employed
“somewhere else.” If they were not
used in the subjugation of Britain, perhaps
Professor Freeman will state circumstantially
what portions of Europe are comprehended
under the vague generality of “Somewhere else.”
We want something more convincing than his
ipse dixit. Danish writers, we are told, have
often greatly exaggerated the amount of Scandinavian
influence in England, a remark that
applies with equal force to the advocates of the
Saxon and Celtic theories. Things, it is said,
have been set down as signs of direct Scandinavian
influence, which “are part of the
common heritage of the Teutonic race.” Admitting
this “common heritage,” and having
regard to the fact, that the language of the
Scandinavian, and that of the so-called Anglo-Saxon
are almost identical, who shall decide
between their conflicting claims? The Quarterly,
citing from the Corpus Poeticum Boreale of
Vigfússon and Powell in reference to the
poetry of the Norsemen, says, “The men from
whom these poems sprung took no small share
in the making of England; their blood is in our
veins, and their speech in our mouths.”[3] The
preponderance of the direct Scandinavian element
in the English language has been shown
by Archbishop Trench, who states “That of a
hundred English words, sixty come from the
Scandinavian, thirty from the Latin, five from
the Greek, and five from other sources.” “Dane
and Angle, Dane and Saxon,” according to
Professor Freeman’s own shewing “were near
enough each other to learn from one another,
and to profit by one another.” Their dialectic
difference was never such as to prevent them
from understanding each other. “There is,”
the Quarterly affirms, “very high authority for
saying that there was as little difference in
those early times between a Dane and an Englishman,
as there was between two Englishmen in
different parts of the country.” The Saxons
were in fact only an earlier swarm of northern
adventurers of the same race who were afterwards
known in history as Danes and Northmen.
Still Professor Freeman thinks the Scandinavian
element was but an infusion into the already
existing English mass. Hardly I should think if
the existing English mass, and the invading
Northmen had a common origin! The name of
England’s principal city, it may be remarked,
the great metropolis of the Empire is Scandinavian.
Neither are there wanting persons
who believe that such also is the name England
itself. In a communication to Notes and
Queries by Mr. Henry Rowan in 1868, he
suggests a derivation of this name from the
Danish Eng. “While travelling in Denmark,”
he says, “I met with a word which seems to me
to afford a derivation of our name of England,
as probable, at least as the ordinary one of
Angle land. The word I mean is Eng, an old
Danish name applied even yet to the level
marshy pasture lands adjoining rivers. I believe
the Saxons and Angles, from the time of whose
invasion the name is supposed to date, first
landed and possessed the Isle of Thanet, which
in parts, especially those about Minster, and
the river Stour, would answer very well to the
description of Danish Eng lands. It is from
this word I think the name may have sprung,
instead of from the Angles, whom we have no
reason for supposing to have been so superior to
the Saxons as to leave the remembrance of their
name to the entire exclusion of the latter.”
M. Worsaae, in the first words of his history
unwittingly confirms what Mr. Rowan here
points out. “The greater part of England,” he
says, “consists of flat and fertile lowland, particularly
towards the southern and eastern
coasts, where large open plains extend themselves.”
There is a low-lying district of
Aberdeenshire called the Enzie, a name of the
same character, evidently imposed by the Northmen.
This is pronounced by the natives aingie,
the sound of the first portion of the name being
as the aing in the Scotch surname of Laing.
The derivation just cited, coupled with my conjecture
that the name Scotland is the ancient
gothic Skot-land, land laid under tribute,
Icelandic Skat, a tax (Skat-land) goes to confirm
M. du Chaillu’s contention that the British
people, and tongue (by tongue, I mean the
present speech of the British nation) are of
northern origin.
The contention that the Danish influx into
England was in any sense a mere infusion must in
the nature of things be pure fiction. It was a full
rolling tide of conquest and colonization swelling
a population already essentially Scandinavian.
The first authentic particulars relating to the
ancient Britons are derived from Cæsar who
made his descent in the year 55 before Christ.
The original inhabitants appear to have been
Celts from France and Spain. We learn from
the Roman historian that they had been driven
into the interior and western portion of the
island by the Belgae who settled on the east
and south-eastern shores of England, and were
now known as Britons. He tells us in language,
about which there can be no misconception, that
the Belgae were descended from the Germans.
These were the Britons with whom Cæsar
had to do, and these the Romanized Britons
who, in their dire extremity, sent forth their despairing
cry to the gates of Imperial Rome, “The
barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea to
the barbarians.” Prichard demonstrated, at
least to his own satisfaction, that “the ancient
Belgae were of Celtic, and not of Teutonic race,
as had previously been supposed,” and ethnologists
are agreed in setting aside the testimony of
Cæsar! What amount of hypothetical evidence
is sufficient to overturn an historic fact? It
might be difficult to say who is an authority on
language, but anyone reasonably endowed with
judgment may be an authority on matters of fact
and practical sense. The science of language is
not an exact science, and leaves a good deal of
room for the imagination to play. I would rather
doubt the conclusions of philologers than believe
that the Roman historian wrote without
knowledge of his subject, or deliberately stated
what he had no means of knowing to be true.
The weight of evidence is certainly on the side
of Cæsar. Not all the ingenuity of all the Bopps
and Grimms and Potts and Zeusses who ever
applied themselves to the elucidation of this most
obscure of all unintelligible subjects can ever be
sufficient to overturn an outside historical fact.
“In the history of all nations,” Pinkerton says,
“it is indispensable to admit the most ancient
authorities as the sole foundation of any
knowledge we can acquire. If we reject them
or pretend to refute them no science can remain,
and any dreamer may build up an infinite series
of romances from his own imagination. When,
therefore, a modern pretends to refute Cæsar
and Tacitus in their accounts of the inhabitants
of ancient Britain, any man of science would
disdain to enter the field.” It does not by any
means follow that every scholar who is familiar
with the structural peculiarities of language has
necessarily any aptitude for perceiving the exact
relations of things. Many distinguished men
eminent in literature have been singularly deficient
in ordinary reasoning power. The late
Charles Kingsley, it is well known, “could not
discern truth from falsehood.” Though occupying
“an historical chair, he lacked every
qualification of an historian.”
M. Worsaae, the Danish antiquary, after a
good deal of hesitation and circumlocution in
regard to several matters of disputed origin, in
particular the Ruthwell cross which he casts out
of the category of Scandinavian remains, and
contradicts himself in the following sentences:
“Ornaments with similar so-called Anglo-Saxon
runic inscriptions are not altogether uncommon
in England, particularly in the North. But as
not a few ornaments, as well as runic stones
with inscriptions in the self-same character, are
also found in the countries of Scandinavia both
in Denmark and Norway, and particularly the
latter, and the west and south-west of Sweden
(and there mostly in Bleking), it may be a question
whether this runic writing was not originally
brought over to England by Scandinavian
emigrants. It would otherwise be inexplicable
that they should have used entirely foreign runic
characters in Scandinavia, whilst they possessed
a peculiar runic writing of their own.” I do
not think there can be any question in the
matter. No stronger evidence could be given
in proof of the fact that the so-called Anglo-Saxons
and Scandinavians were radically one
and the same people. M. Worsaae has done
much to illustrate the Scandinavian antiquities
of the British islands, and I am unwilling to cast
reflection on the memory of one so eminent and
so well-intentioned, but it is evident throughout
his book, that he has accepted at second-hand,
on a variety of subjects, the conclusions of
English and Scotch antiquaries, which as a
foreigner he was incapable of dealing with by
independent investigation. The Hunterston
brooch, which in every lineament is distinctively
Scandinavian, he has been told to call Celtic.
He deals with this most interesting monument
of art in the ambiguous manner for which he is
always remarkable where his judgment seems to
contradict his conclusion. “An excellent silver
gilt brooch,” he says, “found near Hunterston,
about three miles from Largs, was once said to
have been lost by some Norwegian who fled from
the field of battle [nothing more probable].
There is a short Scandinavian runic inscription
scratched on the back of it, but from what has
hitherto been deciphered, it would rather seem
to denote the name of a Scotchman than of a
Norwegian. Professor Munch reads ‘Malbritha
a dalk thana—Melbridg owns this brooch.’”
M. Worsaae here obviously means Celt, as
opposed to Scandinavian, but uses the term
Scotchman to allow himself, if need be, a door
of escape. “Scotchman” would apply equally
to anyone born in Scotland, whether Celt by
extraction, Scandinavian, Fleming or Norman.
This seems to me an undignified way of getting
out of a difficult position. The runic writing of
the Hunterston brooch, which is in the Norse
tongue, has been accurately explained by Professor
George Stephens, of Copenhagen. M.
Worsaae, we know, accepted the attentions of
eminent British antiquaries, and could not gracefully
seem to doubt their conclusions on special
subjects submitted to his decision. He is first
told what to say, and then cited by his instructors,
as an authority for statements which
they themselves have put into his mouth.
Perhaps, under the circumstances, this may not be
an exceptional manner of dealing with matters of
disputed history, but it is certainly not the way
to reach the truth that reveals itself to intelligence.
“In workmanship,” M. Worsaae says,
“the Hunterston brooch resembles the contemporary
Irish and Scotch more than Scandinavian
ornaments.” Now, it certainly does no such
thing. It does not appear to me that as regards
the Scandinavian remains of Great Britain, one
like M. Worsaae groping his way darkly with
the help of such lights as he can find is at all
competent to pronounce dogmatic judgments.
Ireland and Scotland were invaded, and subdued,
and peopled by the Northmen, and
brooches of the self-same character are found in
the Viking interments of Scandinavia. The
contemporary Irish and Scotch brooches may
reasonably be presumed to be Scandinavian.
The resemblance of the Hunterston brooch to
that found at Tara, and to others of like
character found in Scotland is certainly not
greater than to the brooch in the Bergen
Museum exhumed from a Viking mound at
Vambheim, or to that dug up at North Trondheim
in another grave of the Viking period.
The inscription contained on the Hunterston
brooch proves to demonstration, not only that
its art, and that of all others of kindred type is
Scandinavian, but that the name “Melbridg” is
Norwegian. Whatever be the origin of the art
exhibited on the brooches, it is plain that this cannot
be Celtic, inasmuch as that no one has ever
shewn that the Celts possessed any knowledge of
art. It is all very well to talk in an off-handed
way about Celtic art, but something more than
this is necessary to carry conviction. To my perceptions
a Celtic statement is much improved
by some form of evidence. Dr. Soderberg of
Lund doubts if I will find many adherents
among Scandinavian scholars. “We are all of
us,” he says, “more or less imbued with Celticism.”
So much the worse for Scandinavia,
that her sons deny her legitimate claims to her
own historic and archaic remains. It is not
however, as I think, so much a question of
scholarship as of practical sense, the capacity to
deal with facts which may be weighed by
anyone possessed of ordinary reasoning power
or capable of speech and thought in their
simplest forms. One can understand a Scotch
antiquary of the Celtic type placing himself in
an attitude of antagonism, just as we might
imagine Professor Freeman gliding like a shark
along the Saxon line ready to do battle on behalf
of his cherished delusion, because that to both of
these the Northman theory is total extinction. But
that the Scandinavian antiquary, who as regards
his national remains has no reason to falsify the
facts of history, should in the interest of an
exotic fable, waste his ingenuity in disclaiming
the art that especially belongs to his country
surpasses my comprehension. Let us hear what
the Saturday Review has to say on the subject
of Celtic art. Taking exception to many of my
positions, it says: “He [Mr. Roger] is on much
firmer ground when he declines to believe in any
art or culture that can fairly be called Celtic.
The very patterns which are usually spoken of
as Celtic are common to all the gold work of the
Mycenæan graves, which few people, we think,
will now place much later than 1500 B.C.”
“Dr. Schliemann’s Mycenæan discoveries deprive
the Celts of any credit for originality
in their system of spiral ornament.” Again
“‘Celtic’ patterns certainly existed on the
shores of the Ægean fifteen hundred years
before our era.” “Mr. Roger is probably right
when he claims a Scandinavian origin for the
ancient claymores (two handed), for the Tara
brooch and other brooches, for stone crosses,
dirk handles, and what so else is too commonly
attributed to Celtic art.” “‘What is Celtic art?’
cries Mr. Roger, triumphantly. What, indeed?
‘The Celts, Pinkerton tells us, had no monuments,
any more than the Finns or savage
Africans, or Americans.’ As to Americans,
Mr. Roger can see their bas-reliefs at the South
Kensington Museum;[4] but for Celtic art not
derived from the Scandinavians or Romans, we
know not where to bid him look.” I am content
to rest the matter here. There is no art known
as distinctively Celtic, and in this aspect of the
question I am confirmed by the Saturday Review.
But to return to Professor Freeman. In a
number of the publication called The Antiquary,
issued on November 16th, 1872, the writer of a
paper on The Landing of the Saxons in Kent,
tells us that “after pillaging for ‘a hundred and
fifty years’ the British shores,” the Jutes, or
Saxons, landed under Hengist and Horsa, “and
here,” the writer says, “we must halt for a few
moments till we have disposed of Mr. E. A.
Freeman’s astounding statement that Horsa
meant mare. Hors, our misspelt horse,” the
writer says, “is like its German equivalent Ross,
a neuter word. The Saxon hero is sometimes
called simply Hors, but more frequently by the
addition of a masculine termination—a, as in
‘Ida Ælla,’ and some thousands more, he
becomes Horsa, masculine and male. Mare is
Myre, feminine. * * * * If Mr. Freeman
will be good enough to tell us how he came
to fall into this preposterous error, we may
possibly clear up the cause of his mistake; for
the most part, when he makes a bad blunder, we
can form a notion what better authority has
misled him; but in this case no English dictionary,
grammar, or history can have been consulted
by him. Can it have been a Latin
grammar? Mr. Freeman is extensively known
as blowing weekly a shrill trumpet, ‘asper,
acerba, sonans,’ in reviews of literary and
illiterate performances, but then he is in hiding;
we hear the obstreperous whirr, but the midge
is behind the screen; when he appears in
human body, he makes lapses, trips and stumbles,
and lays himself bare to stings,” &c. This is in
Professor Freeman’s early days, but men carry
their idiosyncrasies into their riper years. It
gives us an insight into this critic’s mind
according to the estimation in which he was
then held by his fellow-scribblers. To the
article in question, which occupies nearly two
columns of The Antiquary, the editor appends
the following note:—“The story of Hengist and
Horsa (including the so-called Anglo-Saxon
invasion) is an exploded fable. The Anglo-Saxons
of England, like the Picts or Caledonians
of Scotland, were only the earlier Northmen or
Scandinavians.”
This is pre-eminently an age of platitudes and
Professor Freeman is great in such. “There is,”
he says, “an English folk, and there is a British
Crown.” There is also, it might be affirmed, a
Scotch folk, and a British Crown, and until Mr.
Gladstone shall accomplish his visionary project
of Irish Home Rule, there is, and will be
an Irish folk and a British Crown. “But the
homes of the English folk,” we are to note,
“and the dominions of the British Crown do
not always mean the same thing.” Does any
one suppose they do? “Here by the border
stream of the Angle and the Saxon” we are in
“the dominions of the British Crown,” &c. If
by the “border stream” be meant the Tweed, it
is more than doubtful if the Angles and Saxons
ever saw that stream. In Professor Freeman’s
“youth,” the “Anglo-Saxon race was unheard of,”
and by some strange delusion, for which it is
difficult to account, the “British race” dates, he
believes, from some speech delivered a week
before the time at which he writes. It is evident
Professor Freeman has not been a reader of
Good Words, at least of its early numbers published
more than thirty years ago. In one of
these he will find “The British race has been
called Anglo-Saxon,” &c., and a good deal more
which it might be inconvenient for him to learn.
Professor Freeman “shows how some writers,
sometimes more famous writers, now and then
get at their facts.” “One received way,” he
tells us, “is to glance at a page of an original
writer, to have the eye caught by a word, to
write down another word, that looks a little like
it, and to invent facts that suit the words
written down. To roll two independent words
into a compound word with a hyphen is perhaps
a little stronger; but only a little.” Are we to
suppose that Professor Freeman is recounting
his individual experience in dealing with the
facts of English history?
The gifted Edmund Spenser, who charmed the
world with his Faery Queen died forsaken and
in want. Milton sold his copyright of Paradise
Lost for fifteen pounds, and Goldsmith’s Vicar
of Wakefield was disposed of for a trifle to save
him from the grip of the law. Tempora mutantur!
Third rate contributions by high class
writers command their market value. If men
can obtain payment for writing such articles as
that of Professor Freeman’s criticism of The
Viking Age that appeared in the January number
of the Contemporary Review it shows that
there is something in a name, that the conductors
of such periodicals pay more regard to the
reputation of the writer, than to the quality of
the writing. Professor Freeman is no doubt a
very able writer, but this is not the conclusion
that would be reached in reading his captious
and illogical criticism of M. du Chaillu’s book.
I have evidently wounded the susceptibilities
of some extreme churchman or irascible Celt, in
the person of a reviewer in the Literary World,
whose hostility is hardly explainable on the
ground of mere difference of opinion. According
to this disposer of events, I fall wofully short
in the qualifications of one who is entitled to
speak on the subject of archæology. I might,
however, plead in extenuation, and in mitigation
of punishment the reason given by Mr. Gladstone
for upholding the verity of Old Testament
Scripture, that “there is a very large portion of
the community whose opportunities of judgment
have been materially smaller than my own,”
and that, “in all studies light may be thrown
inwards from without.” I profess not to unravel
the hidden mysteries of prehistoric antiquity,
but simply to deal with the historical
aspect of outside facts, though, as the Saturday
reviewer justly remarks, I must get into prehistory
somewhere. Among the numerous disqualifications
manifested in my treatise, I show
“a very indifferent acquaintance” with
“Language;” and its “twin sister, Ethnology,”
of which, however, I may reasonably be presumed
to know as much as my censor. Most
persons who write on any subject do something
to keep in touch with current facts and common
knowledge. If the critic of the Literary World
had taken the trouble to read my book attentively,
he would have found many references to
what has been done by philologers and Ethnologists
on whose labours he sets so much store.
“As the book is in a second edition,” he condescends
to inform us, he has “occupied more
space than he should otherwise have done in
estimating its claims to authority.” The conclusion
he has reached is that I go as far astray
in one direction as the Celticists do in another,
an opinion which is quite within the limit of
legitimate criticism. When, however, from his
lofty tribune he looks down and imputes to me
ignorance of what has been done by the great
masters of “Language,” the Joneses, and Colebrookeses,
and Bopps, and Potts, and Grimms,
and Steinthals, and suggests that I do not know
what has been said by such writers as Camper,
Jacquart, Blumenbach, Cuvier, Prichard,
Latham and Morton, not to mention the pernicious
nonsense of Darwin, and the vagaries of
Professor Huxley, I must be permitted to take
exception. It is one thing to know what they
have written, and quite another to accept their
conclusions as absolute and final, considering
how often we hear the most arrant nonsense
solemnly propounded as the deductions of scientific
investigation. It has been pointed out by
a late minister of the Crown that “Newton’s
projectile theory of Light” which had apparently
been firmly established has given place to
“the theory of undulation,” which, citing from
the Virginian philosopher Dr. Smith, he says,
“has now for fifty years reigned in its stead.”
On this he grounds the suggestion that we
should not “receive with impatience the assertion
of contradictions.” On the subject
of specialists we have the opinion of the
same eminent individual, notable among the
great intellects of the age, one who like
Brougham, “has the languages of Greece
and Rome strung like a bunch of keys at
his girdle.” No less a personage in fact, than
the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, with whom,
while admiring the versatility of his genius, I
differ politically, toto cœlo. To none of the
sciences, rightly or wrongly so named, do his
remarks more aptly apply than to the “Science
of Language,” and its twin sister, “Ethnology.”
“I have had the opportunity,” he says, “of perceiving
how, among specialists as with other
men, there may be fashions of the time and
school, which Lord Bacon called idols of the
market-place, and currents of prejudice below
the surface, which may detract somewhat from
the authority which each enquirer may justly
claim in his own field, and from their title to
impose their conclusions upon mankind.” In
proof of the fluctuating and uncertain character
of this so-called science Dr. Morton in regard to
“certain points of primary importance found
himself compelled to differ in opinion from the
majority of scholars.” I believe with Bishop
Percy, Dr. R. Angus Smith, and others, that
the Celts and Teutons even remotely had not a
common origin, but were ab origine distinct
races of mankind. As to authority I hold that
“no man is an authority for any statement
which he cannot prove,” and although according
to the critic of the Literary World, I deliver
my opinions in a manner “more forcible than
elegant”[5] my pretensions are exceedingly humble.
“I venture to draw attention to the subject, in
the hope that the matter may be taken up by
some one with more time and better appliances at
his disposal than I can command.” Without pretending
to be “exhaustive or specially erudite”
I have done the best I can to extinguish a
national delusion, and I hope cannot finally, and
altogether fail. If I be deficient in language,
in whatever acceptation, I am in no worse
position than the statesman already referred to,
who maintains the truth of ancient Scripture
avowedly without any knowledge of the Hebrew
tongue. Language, as Lord Southesk most
accurately, and pertinently points out, “is a
thing that seems like a boomerang, so queer are
the twists it takes, and so uncertain its returns.”
Ethnology, or Anthropology—whichever its
votaries choose to call it—is not, as I think, a
science. It consists of the conceits and assumptions
of men learned and unlearned who have
reached certain conclusions, and who profess to
bring back from the depths of prehistoric antiquity
facts which may not be facts, or which at least we
have no means of knowing to be true. The
whole subject is “feeble, perplexed, and to all
appearance, confused.” Many years since Mr.
Hyde Clarke, at a meeting of the Ethnological
Society, remarking on the utterances of Professor
Huxley, suggested that, although the
latter “had laid down his statements as established
by men of science, there was little capable
of proof.” What then is the value of a study, the
results of which are as unstable as the passing
vapour? It was a conception of the late Sir
David Brewster, that science is the only earthly
treasure we can carry with us to a better state.
Let us hope that if Language, and its twin sister
be among the number destined thither, they will
be freed from their mundane misconceptions and
uncertainties.
The Reviewer of the Literary World thinks
I “make a sorry jumble of races and languages.
All sorts of people, and tribes, dialects, and remains,
related and unrelated, are said to be
Goths or Gothic,” though in dealing with my
shortcomings, real or supposed, he does not always
keep faith with facts. The ancient Scythians,
he makes me to say, were Goths, for which the only
foundation is that I cite Dr. Macculloch and Mr.
Planché from each a paragraph in which the name
Scythian is mentioned. “The occupiers of prehistoric
lake dwellings Goths.” Precisely what
I do not say. I mention the facts that “a
species of combat called holmgang, peculiar to
the old Northmen, was usually fought in a small
island or holm in a lake,” and that islands in
lakes were places resorted to by the Scandinavian
“foude,” or magistrate, with his law
officers, &c. In Iceland, the men on whom
sentence of death had been passed, were beheaded
upon an islet in a lake or river. I
submit these facts to the candid consideration
of those who are capable of judging, because if
my conjecture be correct, palisaded islands were
neither inhabited nor are they prehistoric. “The
Caledonians, Goths; the Picts, Goths.” I was
taught to believe that Pict and Caledonian are
convertible terms. “The Icelanders and others
were Goths.” I do not, of course, know which
“others” the reviewer may have had in his
mind, but the Icelanders are certainly Goths.
“Sometimes,” the critic says, “Gothic appears
as the equivalent of Scandinavian.” Certainly
as opposed to Celtic. “And the sum of the whole
matter is that ‘the Scandinavians are our true
progenitors,’” which, he points out, is “the same
blunder that M. du Chaillu has been dashing his
head against.” All wise beyond conception!
By a figure of speech a writer might be said to
dash his head against a rock, but hardly I should
think, against a blunder! It is rather odd that
this captious censor should be ignorant of the
fact that the quotation which he cites from my
preface contains the ipsissima verba of the
writer of an article that appeared in Good
Words nearly forty years ago, by whom M. du
Chaillu was anticipated, and that the same views
and opinions were advocated by myself nineteen
years since in the pages of Notes and Queries.
The languages or dialects to be dealt with as
regards the British islands, are few in number,
and we can judge of them in an outside fashion,
without the aid of Bopp, or Grimm, or Zeuss, or
Steinthal. These are the Welsh of the Principality,
which, roughly speaking, includes the
extinct dialect of Cornwall. The Erse or Gaelic
of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. The
Teutonic of the Belgae, which Prichard calls
Celtic, but which we gather from Cæsar was
German. At least it is a fair inference from his
statement, Belgas esse ortos a Germanis, that
they spoke some dialect of Teutonic speech.[6]
The language of the Picts or Caledonians, which
Skene affirms is neither Welsh nor Gaelic, but a
Gaelic dialect partaking largely of Welsh forms.
This, however, on the faith of Tacitus, I believe
to have been Scandinavian, rutilæ Caledoniam
habitantium comæ magni artus Germanicam
asseverant. The Saxon, or earlier Scandinavian
of South Britain, and the confessedly Scandinavian
dialects of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Norfolk,
Suffolk, Northumberland and North Britain.
In point of fact only two languages, the Gothic
or Teutonic, and the Celtic, or whatever else
may be the structure, foundation or admixture
of the dialects so named. I have elsewhere
stated that “The several dialects of what has
been called Celtic might be compared to so many
dust heaps to which has been swept the refuse
of all other languages from time immemorial,”
and I see no reason to change my opinion. It
will thus be seen that there is not much room to
jumble either races or language. The jumble, if
such there be, arises out of the confusion and
obscurity of the critic’s own mind. He ridicules
the idea of identifying the “Gothic Magus”
with what he calls the “Celtic Mac or Maqui.”
I deny that Mac is Celtic, and I identify it with
the Maqui of the Ogham inscriptions, because I
think there are good grounds for believing that
Oghams and runes were equally the work of the
Northmen, although Lord Southesk, who has
made these remains a special study, differs from
me in opinion. There is certainly an uncommon
outside resemblance between the two words. It
is however, satisfactory to know that his Lordship
is in substantial agreement with me on the
main subject of my contention, the preponderance
of the Scandinavian element in the British Isles.
Coming to the essence of the controversy, he
says, “Where I agree with you thoroughly is
in the belief that the prevalence and influence of
the Scandinavian races in Britain and Ireland
have been largely underrated, and that much
due to them has been ascribed to the various
peoples commonly classed as Celts.” “One
has only to look at the people inhabiting
Aberdeenshire, Angus, &c., to convince one’s-self
that Norse blood predominates.” I regard
the questions of races, art, and culture
entirely from an outside or historic view. In
the face of such facts as I have adduced to
continue to call Mac Celtic is simply persistent
dogmatism—a perverse determination to adhere
per fas et nefas to a foregone conclusion. The
prefix Mac though found in Scotch Gaelic and
other dialects of the Erse, has obviously been
imported thither only as a foreign term, in
the same manner that the Norse word jarl,
an earl, found its way into the Welsh. Mac,
as I have elsewhere pointed out, occurs in
the Anglo-Norse dialect of Craven, West Riding
of York. It was used in the sense of
son by the Danes and Northmen. It occurs
as a prefix to an interminable number of personal
names distinctively Scandinavian, and in
one form or other is found in every dialect of
the Teutonic. We must “deal with the evidence
before us according to a rational appreciation of
its force.” “Plaid,” the critic, affirms, “does
not exist in Moeso-Gothic.” Thomson in Observations
prefixed to his Lexicon, says, “Plaid, a
cloke in Moeso-Gothic, was the Icelandic palt.”
I would rather believe that the critic of the
Literary World does not know where to look
for the word, than that the erudite private secretary
to the Marquis of Hastings in India, presuming
on their ignorance, sought to impose on
his readers a word which he knew did not exist.
Again this critic says, “Denying to another
(Anglo-Saxon) a word that does (foster).” The
expression is confused, but he evidently means
that “foster” is found in Anglo-Saxon. In the
text of my treatise I say, “Neither can there
be any doubt as to the Northern derivation of
the word foster.” To this I append a footnote
taken from the Quarterly Review, vol. 139 (1875),
p. 449. “The word foster is not found in
Anglo-Saxon, Moeso-Gothic, or German,” and
at the same time indicate the source whence my
information is derived. I accepted the statement
on the faith of the writer. If it does occur, it
only shows how little dependence can be placed
on facts adduced by literary critics even in
connection with such responsible publications as
the Quarterly Review. Another evidence of
disqualification as “a writer on Archæological
matters,” is that the word Celte cited from the
Vulgate was shown long ago by Mr. Knight
Watson to be a misprint for Certe. The critic
must indeed have been much at a loss for a peg
on which to hang his hypercriticism. I hardly
know why it is incumbent on me before delivering
my views on the Celtic myth to know all
that has been explained on collateral subjects by
Mr. Knight Watson. I found neither note nor
marginal reference declaratory of this gentleman’s
critical acumen, or of the great service he
had rendered to archæology in resolving this
enigma, nor if I had should I have introduced it
into my treatise. My remark in regard to the
Vulgate is an incidental reference of the vaguest
description on which nothing depends. To
borrow the expression of an eminent individual,
Would the critic of the Literary World “be
surprised to learn” that by a defect of information,
quite as glaring as that which
he imputes to me, he has entirely missed
the point of my stricture which is directed
against the executive of the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland. At page 11 of its
Catalogue of Antiquities, printed in 1876, it is
stated as the heading of a section, “Stone
Celts or Axe Heads.” Behind the word
“Celts,” an asterisk, and underneath, a footnote
corresponding thereto the explanation “Celtis, a
chisel,” of all which the critic shows himself to
be entirely ignorant. He mentions the Gothic
word afar. Thomson calls it hafar. I can
only conjecture that the critic may have first
seen the light within the vibrations of certain
well-known sounds, and that he habitually drops
the letter h. In the course of my “polemic,”
he thinks, I “undoubtedly score a point here
and there in matters of detail.” “Thus,” he
says, “he maintains what ought to be obvious
enough [but which to the Celtic expositor it
never is] that remains inscribed in Northern
runes must be attributed to the Scandinavians.”
I give, he says, “and this appears to be my
chef d’œuvre, a very probable reading (Grimkitil
thane raist, Grimkitil engraved this) to
a fragmentary inscription ( ... KITIL TH ...)
on what is known as the bronze plate of Laws.
And inasmuch as” that this critic “formed a
similar opinion many years ago, he is bound to
approve my suggestion that the old Greek and
runic alphabets were derived from some common
source, and not either from the other.” He is
“bound to approve.” How very condescending!
It is evident he does not perceive the
effect of his own conclusion. If my reading of
the inscription on the Laws plate be correct it
involves something more than a mere matter of
detail. It is the solution of a problem which
has perplexed and bewildered most antiquaries
of the present century, because it demonstrates
the symbols of the Laws crescent plate, and
those of the Scotch sculptured stones to be the
work of the Scandinavians. This has long
been my individual opinion, though I doubt if
the critic of the Literary World will make
many converts among antiquaries on the other
side of the Tweed. When I attempt to establish
“my own peculiar views,” he says, I seem to
“break down.” Are not the points on which—to
borrow his elegant diction—I “score” as
much my “peculiar views” as those on which
he alleges I fail? “Of the Teutonic tribes,
whose settlements grew into our old Heptarchy,
or Octarchy, none, and no discoverable part of
any, were Scandinavian proper. [This is mere
arbitrary statement.] There was subsequently,
of course, in certain districts, a large infusion
of Scandinavian forms, proper names, &c.
[What does he mean by forms? The Scandinavians
brought their names when they brought
their bodies] in consequence of the invasions
and settlements of the ‘Danes,’ but in spite of
this, and of much more serious disturbance
afterwards, our language from the Channel to
the Forth, owing to its power of absorption, and
assimilation, remained, and remains substantially
‘English.’” “Remained and remains
substantially English.” These remarks are
unanswerable, which it is said, is the happy
property of all remarks sufficiently wide of the
purpose. Is the language of the British nation
less “English” because derived from the Scandinavian
rather than from the Saxon, two
dialects of the same speech in their essential
elements hardly distinguishable? If this be
true—as beyond all question it is true—it
demolishes utterly the bugbear which the suggestion
he advocates sets up.
While accepting with becoming humility the
disparaging estimate of my performance, it is
not desirable that a reviewer of this character
should have his say uncontradicted, though in
setting myself right with those whom his strictures
might have influenced, I have perhaps
honoured him with too much notice. It is not a
very formidable matter to cope with such an
adversary.
“While these are censors, ’twould be sin to spare;
While such are critics, why should I forbear?”—Byron.
THE END.