Origins of English history Author:Charles Isaac Elton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. Recapitulation.— Later Greek travellers.—Artemidorus.—Posidonius the Stoic—His travels in Western Europe.—Condition of the Celts in Britain.—Diffi... more »culty ol framing general rules.—Division of population into three stocks.—British Gauls.— Insular Britons.—Prae-Celtic tribes.—Methods of finding their ancient settlements. —Antiquarian research.—Philological method.—Division of the Celtic languages.— Living forms in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Man, Brittany.—Dead forms: Welsh of Strathclyde, Pictish, Cornish, Gaulish, Celtic of Thrace and Galatia, Celtiberian. -—Originals from which the groups are derived.—Lingua Britannica.—Affinities of Old Welsh—Whether more related to the Irish or the Gaulish.—Theory of the division of the Celtic stock, Gael and Cymry.—Origin of the Theory.—Similarity of Welsh and Gaulish languages.—The likeness explained.—Arose from independent causes.—The languages not similar at the same time.—Likeness between old forms of Welsh and Irish.—Welsh and Irish at one time united.—Occupation of Britain by one Celtic horde.—Separation of Welsh and Irish languages.—British language distinct from Gaulish.—Practical result of accepting the theory. WE have dealt, as best we might, with a subject that must always remain obscure. We have seen how Pytheas revealed a new world to the Greeks, and how the story became confused with legend until it seemed no better than an idle fancy, "as if a name and a tale were invented about a country which never had been."1 By the aid of the ancient criticisms we are able to guess very near to what the traveller said, even where his personal authority cannot now be cited, and wherever his actual words remain we may, of course, feel confidence in the reconstructed history. It is possible, however, that an incident here or there...« less