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It may be that in a few of these cases, and of those next quoted, a word has come out of English into Celtic, or has passed into English and into Celtic from a separate and common source. A large number of words have, no doubt, by Mr. Garnett and others, been derived from Celtic where there is no more than identity of origin, or there may be even a later Celtic word taken from English. But some of the words have a rational etymology in Celtic and in Celtic only; and as to others, there is the liveliest appearance of the passage of a Celtic word into vernacular English by an old familiarity of intercourse between the Celtic and Germanic tribes settled in England. In the familiarly expressive but undignified vernacular, the Celtic element is strongly marked. Thus, "bother" is good Celtic, and stands in all seriousness for tribulation in the Irish Scripture. The following analogies are among those drawn promiscuously by Mr. Garnett from the Cymric only :

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Such Celtic words as clan, tartan, plaid, kilt, and reel are clearly among those of later introduction; and some others not only those formally recorded, as Druid and bard, but those incorporated in other Western languages as in our own-may have found their way to us from Latin or from Norman French in secondary form. There remains, however, certainly, when large allowance has been made for questionable etymologies, a Celtic element in English that indicates long habit of familiar contact in ancient time. There are more words than would have been taken in the course of conflict; and the sort of words do not belong to the language that men learn from enemies

Faint traces of the Roman occupation. Latin of the First Period.

Thus for about four hundred years from the surrender of Caractacus, A.D. 51, the Romans maintained military possession of England, and in all that time they set no mark of theirs upon the language of its people. For we can hardly account as a mark on language the inevitable attachment to the soil of four or five military words indicative of their camps

L

(castra, in Chester, Manchester); their colonies (as in Lincoln); their military roads, levelled and strewn ways, strata, streets; their harbours or ports; and perhaps their ramparts, since from the Roman vallum, a rampart, some derive the Celtic baile, whence we get the modern English bail or bailey, and the Irish bally prefixed to some names of towns. Of a really civilising intercourse evidence would have passed into the language, but there was none.

The few words of Latin origin just named are said technically to belong in English to the Latin of the First Period; those introduced afterwards, chiefly by Augustine and his successors, among the English whom Rome Christianised, being accounted Latin of the Second; those that were brought by the Normans, Latin of the Third; and lastly, those introduced for technical and scientific use, since what is called the Revival of Letters, Latin of the Fourth Period. Of these Periods, the first, second, and third contributed the first, as we have seen, in almost no degree; the second, appreciably; and the third much, to the formation of the language.

Twilight before the Dawn of

English Literature. Druids.

Of

We turn now from these earliest traces of our language to the first beginnings of our literature. the wisdom and splendour of the Druids wonderful things have been fabled by the later descendants of the Cymry, but in the single trust. worthy account left us by Cæsar we find only the familiar sketch of a priestly class that in a rude age rises to influence by sharing, multiplying, and using to its own gain that reverent instinctive sense of unseen powers which belongs to the crude manhood of the heathen. The commonalty of Gaul, we learn from Julius Cæsar, was almost in the condition of slaves, power being in the hands of priests and warrior-chiefs. The priests, called Druids, judged and punished crimes, excommunicating those by whom their sentences were disregarded, and this excommunication was

The priests

There was a

much dreaded by the superstitious people. also controlled the education of the young. fixed place for an annual assembly, to which quarrels were brought for settlement. There was a Chief Druid, who held office for life by election; sometimes, however, in case of vacancy, the priestly candidates fought one another for supremacy. But they were militant only as a Church, and were exempt from all military service and from all payment of tribute. They had, in fact, says Cæsar, "a dispensation in all matters." This institution was supposed to have been devised in Britain, because many of those young men who were tempted by its privileges to join the priestly class went into Britain for a more accurate study of its system. Their study consisted in the learning by rote of a great number of verses, which were handed down by oral tradition, and which it was not permitted to commit to writing. What they did write on public or private matters they wrote in Greek letters for the sake of mystery. There were said to be so many verses that a man might spend, and sometimes did spend, twenty years of his life in learning them. Their traditional verse taught a cosmogony, and that there was a future life for man by transmigration of his soul out of one body into another. The gods worshipped by this priesthood Cæsar identifies with his own as Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. But he tells us that their worshippers propitiated these gods with human sacrifices, using innocent persons when there were no thieves or other criminals on hand. Some of the Gauls, it is added, had "figures of vast size; the limbs of which, formed of osiers, they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish in the flames." But Cæsar does not say that they had these in Britain. The Druids, he tells us, all agreed that these people were descended from the God of Hell. "For that reason they compute the division of every season, not by the number of days, but by nights; and they keep birthdays

and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night." And so, indeed, we still speak of a se'nnight or a fortnight. Of the producers of our earliest literature, what else is to be learnt we gather only from the student of the ancient records of the Gael. The dawn of thought was represented by a search for God; but in a remote age there was in this country a lettered class, apparently distinct from that of the priests, producing a rude history and poetry for a quick-witted and imaginative people.

E Pluribus
Unum.

We are of sundry races, but one people, within bounds of what the world calls England. A fair sketch of our literature must needs tell how there were from the beginning wits at work in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as in England east of the Severn and south of the Tweed. The genius of a great nation is our theme, and it is no theme to be discussed in a provincial spirit. The name of "English" was derived from one of many Teutonic tribes that united to become one people and then bore a single name. In the fusion of the Teuton with the Celt, a fusion that has brought quickening of power to the nation; in all fusions before and since; and in all putting forth of branches that have spread over the world an English-speaking people with its centre of life in these islands of Great Britain; let that old tribe of Angli still furnish the name that represents us all. Let the tribe that was barely named by Tacitus, and from which not a tithe of the First English were descended, still furnish the name for our great brotherhood now spread over the world, one in affection, one in power, one in aim.

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