Chapter XII
WHO WERE THE "CELTS" PROPERLY
SO-CALLED?
Disclosing
identity of Early British "Celts" or Kelts
and
"Culdees" with the "Khaldis" of Van
and the Picts.
"The so-called Celtic
Question, than which no greater stumbling block in the way of clear
thinking exists . . . there is practically to-day a complete unanimity of
opinion among physical anthropologists that the term Celt, if used at
all, belongs to the brachycephalic [round-headed] darkish population of the
Alpine [Swiss] highlands . . . totally lacking in the British Isles."
--W. Z. RIPLEY, Races of Europe, 124, 126, 305.
RIGHTLY
to elicit the real racial agency by which uncivilized Ancient Britain
became Aryanized in Language, High Culture and Civilized Institutions in the
pre-Roman period, it is still necessary us to re-examine and strive to solve
the vexed question of "The Celts"; for the existing confusion in the
use of this term forms one of the greatest obstacles to clear thinking on the
subject, as cited in the heading. And this gross confusion has been a chief
cause of the delay hitherto in solving the Origin of the Britons and the Aryan
Question in Britain.
At the outset we are confronted
by the paradox that, while philologists and popular writers generally in this
country assume that the "Celts" were Aryans in race as well as in
language, and were the parents of the Brythons or Britons, and the Scots and
Irish--notwithstanding that the "Early Britons" are also called
non-Aryan pre-Celtic aborigines--on the other hand, scientific anthropologists
and classic historians have proved that the "Celts" of history were
the
127
p.128: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
non-Aryan, round-headed, darkish,
small-statured race of south Germany
and Switzerland,
and that "Celts" properly so-called are "totally lacking in
the British Isles." {But see later.} Thus, to speak, as is so commonly done, of "Celtic
ancestry," the "Celtic temperament" and "Celtic fire"
amongst any section of the natives of these islands, is, according to anthropologists,
merely imaginary!
The term "Celt" or
"Kelt" is entirely unknown as the designation of any race or racial
element or language in the British Isles, until
arbitrarily introduced there a few generations ago. Nor does the name even
exist in the so-called "Celtic" languages, the Gaelic, Welsh and
Irish. It is, on the contrary, the classic Greek and Latin title of a totally
different race of a totally different physical type from that of the British
Isles, and that word was only introduced there by unscientific
philologists and ethnologists some decades ago.
The "Celts" or
"Kelts" first appear in history, under that name, in the pages of
Herodotus (480-408 B.C.). He
calls them "Kelt-oi" and locates them on the continent of Western
Europe.
He says: "For the Ister [Danube],
beginning from the Kelt-oi . . . divides Europe
in its course; but the Kelt-oi [of Gaul?] are
beyond the pillars of Hercules, and border on the territories of the Kunesi-oi
or Kunet-oi [supposed to be Finnistere] who live the furthest to the west of
all the peoples of Europe." {Herodotus ii, 33; iv, 49; also Xenophon (d. 359 B.C.) Hellenica,
vii, 1, 20.}
Strabo, writing a few decades
after Caesar's epoch, gives further details regarding the ancient Greek
information on the Celts, whom he calls "Kelt-ai":
He says: "The ancient Greeks
. . . afterwards becoming acquainted with those natives towards the west,
styled them 'Kelt-ai.' [Kelts] and 'Iberi-en' [Iberians],
sometimes compounding the names into 'Kelti-Iberien' or 'Kelto-Scythian'--thus
ignorantly uniting various distinct nations." {S. i, 2, 27.}
p.129: NO TRUE
"CELTS" IN BRITISH ISLES
Strabo habitually uses the term
"Keltica" or "Land of the Kelts" for Gaul,
which corresponded generally to modern France
including Switzerland,
and defines it thus:--
"Keltica" is bounded on
the [south-] west by the mountains of the Pyrenees, which extend to either sea,
both the Mediterranean and the ocean; on the east by the Rhine; on the north by
the ocean from the north[west]ern extremity of the Pyrenees to the mouth of the
Rhine; on the south by the sea of Marseilles and by the Alps from Liguria
[Genoa] to the sources of the Rhine." {S. iv, 1, 1; and compare ii, 1, 17, etc.}
He excludes Iberia
or Spain-Portugal from Keltica, noting, "The Pyrenees chain . . . divides
Keltica from Iberia";
but he adds "Ephorus extends the size of Keltica too far, including within
it what we now designate as 'Iberia'
as far as Gades [Cadiz]. {Ib. iii, 1, 3 and iv, 4, 6.} He
includes Liguria [Genoa
and Piedmont on the Italian side of the Alps]
whose people he says were named by the Greeks "Kelto-Ligues," or
Kelto-Ligurian. {Ib. iv, 4, 3.}
It is also noteworthy that he calls the inhabitants of "Keltica" or Gaul
not only "Kelt-āi" but also them and their land repeatedly
"Galatic," {Ib. iii, 1, 3; iv, 4, 2.} (i.e., a
variant of Galatia
and Kelt) and he includes the Belgae as Kelts. {Ib. iv, 4, 1.}
But Strabo, like Caesar and all
other Greco-Roman writers without exception, expressly excludes Britain
from Keltica or "The Land of the Celts." Thus he writes:
"its (Britain's)
longest side lies parallel to Keltica [Gaul]." {Ib. iv, 5, 1.} And he
emphasizes the difference between the physical appearance of the inhabitants of
Britain and the
Kelts or Celts of Gaul, describing the latter, the Celts, as a
short-statured race with light -yellow hair. {Ib. iv, 5, 2.}
Caesar also, in the well-known
opening paragraph in his Commentaries, whilst affirming the identity of the Celtae
or "Celts" with the Galli or "Gauls," restricts
the title "Celt" to Mid-Gaul west of the Seine,
that is to Old Brittany, with Armorica, the Loire
Valley, and Switzerland.
He says:
"All Gaul
(Gallia) is divided into three parts, one
of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who, in their own
language, are called 'Celts' (Celtae), in ours 'Gauls' (Galli), the third."
{D.B.G. i, 1.}
p.130: PHOENICIAN
ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
And neither Caesar, nor Tacitus, nor any other of the Greek or Roman
historians or writers ever refer to the Celts or Kelts as inhabitants of Britain
or of Hibernia.
In British history and literature
the first mention of Celts appears to be in 1607 in an incidental reference to
the Celts not in Britain but in France; {Topsell, Fourfold Beast, 251.} and again, in 1656, in
Blount's Glossography which defines "Celt, one born in Gaul," {For these and subsequent references to early
English occurrence of the name "Celt," see Dr. Murray's Oxford
English Dictionary, "Celt."} and again, in 1782,
contrasting the British with the Celts in Gaul in the sentence: "the
obstinate war between the insular Britons and the continental Celts." {Warton, Hist. Kiddington, 67.}
But all of these references are unequivocally to the Celts in France,
and not in Britain.
The manner in which the notion of
a "Celtic" ancestry for the British, Scots and Irish was insidiously
introduced into British literature now becomes evident, and affords a striking
example of the inception and growth of a false theory.
The credit for the first introduction of this notion into Britain--a
notion which by frequent repetitions and accretions grew to be "the
greatest stumbling-block to clear thinking" on the Celtic Question--now
appears to be due to a Mr. Jones. In 1706 he published an English translation
of Abbe Pezron's book issued in 1703 on "Antiquite de la Nation et de la
Langue des Celtes," under the title of "Antiquities of Nations, more
particularly of the Celts or Gauls, taken to be originally the same people as
our Ancient Britains," {Murray, English
Dict., re "Celt."} in which he gave currency to that
theory of M. Pezron. The seed thus thrown into receptive British soil seems to
have taken root and grown into a sturdy tree, which now is popularly believed to
be indigenous. Thus, in 1757, Tindal, in translating Rapin's History of
England, says in his introduction (p. 7) "Great
Britain was peopled by the Celtae or
Gauls." And, in 1773, the theory that the Celts were ancestors of the
Gaels had become current in Skye, for Mr. McQueen, in a discussion there with
Samuel Johnson, says: "As they [the Scythians] were the
ancestors of the
p.131:
"CELT" NAME TRANSPLANTED TO BRITAIN
Celts [in sense of
British] the same religion might be in Asia Minor and
Skye." {Boswell, Life of
Johnson, III. Hebrides Tour, Sept. 18th.} And, by 1831, the
seedling Celtic tree had become established in Britain
as a mighty monarch of the forest which sheltered the Aryan theory of the Celts
under its branches with the Celts as full-blooded Aryans in race. In that year
Dr. Prichard, the ethnologist and philologist, in his "Eastern Origin of
the Celtic Nations," describes the supposititious "British
Celts" as Aryans in race, and ascribes to them the introduction of the
various Aryan dialects current, before the Anglo-Saxon period, in the British
Isles. And, in 1851, Sir Daniel Wilson, the antiquary, calls the British
Isles "the insular home of the Keltai." {W.P.G., 472.} The transformation of
the people of the British Isles into "Celt" was
then complete.
The older philologists were thus
mainly responsible for this arbitrary extension of the name "Celtic"
in a racial sense to the earlier inhabitants of the British Isles.
The confusion arose through the popular misconception
that because a people spoke a dialect of the same group of languages they were
necessarily of the same race. The confusion began with the observation
by the Drench philologists that the language of the Celts in Brittany
or Mid-Gaul, or "Celtic" speech, as it was naturally called by them,
was essentially similar in structure to that of the Brythonic or Cymri speech
of the Welsh and the Breton of Brittany in Gaul. This
Brythonic language was then presumed to be a branch of the Celtic of Gaul, and
the term "Celtic" applied to it, and then extended in a racial sense
to the Welsh people who spoke it. Similarly, the Gaelic or Gadhelic {Irish Gaedhlig, Scottish Gaelic Gaidhlig,
from Irish-Scot Gaodhal and Welsh Gwyddel, a Gael or inhabitant
of Ireland and Northern Scotland.} speech of the Irish and the Scottish
Highlanders was also found to have affinity with the Gallic and Welsh
"Celtic," and all the people speaking those languages were also
dubbed "Celts." The linguistic affinities on which this racial kinship
was assumed, were tabulated in two groups by Dr. Latham in 1841, {R. G. Latham, M.D., English Language,
1841.} based on the classification by Prichard and C. Meyer; and this
still
p.132: PHOENICIAN
ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
remains the recognized
classification of the "Celtic" dialects, of which the Gaelic is
considered to be the more primitive and older.
CELTIC
GROUP OF LANGUAGES.
I. Gallic or Cymric. II. Gaelic or
Erse.
1. Cymric or Welsh 1. Fenic or Erse or
Irish
2. Cornish (now extinct) 2.
Gaelic or Highland Scottish
3. Armorican or Breton 3. Manx
["Celtic"
proper]
Still further had the Celtic
theory grown apace. This so-called "Celtic Race" was also called
"Aryan" in race, when it was observed that their
language was akin to the languages which had latterly been classed as "Aryan."
This essentially racial title of "Aryan" had been introduced into
English and other European languages by the discovery, in 1794, by the erudite
Sir William Jones, the Chief Justice of Calcutta, that the Sanskrit language of
the ancient Hindoos, who called themselves "Arya," was
radically and structurally of the same type as the Old Persian, Greek, Latin,
Celtic, English, and German (or "Teutonic") languages of Europe, {This fact was fully established by F. Bopp,
of Berlin, in 1820, in his Analytical Comparison of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin
and Germanic Languages, and by subsequent
writers.} and that the culture and mythology of the ancient Hindoos were
essentially analogous to that of Ancient Greece and Rome and of the Goths. The
physical appearance also of the purer Hindoos, claiming to be the descendants
of the highly civilized ancient Aryas, resembled generally that of the North
European peoples of Britain
and Scandinavia. It was then assumed that the ancient
"Aryas" who civilized India and Persia or Iran, and gave them their
"Aryan" speech were presumably of the same common racial stock as the
ancestors of the civilizers of Greece and Rome and Northern Europe, who had in
prehistoric time civilized Europe and imposed on it their "Aryan"
speech. This Indo-European stock of people was thus called "The Aryan Race";
and the name "Aryan" was extended also to their several languages and
dialects, which were classed as "Aryan" or "Indo-European,"
or by usurping German writers "Indo-Germanic." Thus
p.133: NO TRUE
"CELTS" IN BRITISH ISLES
the so-called "Celtic"
languages were called a branch of Aryan Speech and the "Celts"
themselves called "Aryans" in race; and to these "Celts"
the philologists and ethnologists arbitrarily assigned the credit for first
introducing the Aryan language and Aryan culture into Alban or Britain
and Ireland.
Disillusionment, however, came in
the year 1864, when scientific anthropologists, following Anders Retzius, the
Swede, had begun to apply exact measurement to the skulls and physical types of
the various so-called branches of the Aryan race, as it had been found that the
shape of the skull or head-form afforded the best of all criterions of race. In
that year M. Paul Broca, who had begun four years earlier a systematic
measurement of the head-forms of the people of France,
{P. Broca, "Sur l'ethnologie de la France" in Memoir. Soc. d'anthropol. Paris. 1860. I, 1-56.} published his famous
monograph on the head-forms of the Celts of Brittany {Broca, "Sur les Celtes" in Bullet. Soc. d'Anthropol.
1864, 457 f.; and "La Race Celtique Ancienne et Moderne Auvergnes et Amoricains, etc.," Revue
d'Anthrop., 1864, 11, 577 f.} --the descendants of the original
"Celts" of Caesar and the classic writers. He found that so far from
these "Celts" being of the Aryan physical type, namely tall, fair,
and long-headed they were, on the contrary, a short,
darkish-complexioned, and round-headed race. The next year, 1865,
appeared the celebrated collection of measurements of the ethnic types in the British
Isles by Davis and Thurnam in their "Crania Britannica,"
{J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, 1865.} on
which they had been engaged since 1860, and Dr. Beddoe's papers. {J. Beddoe, "On the head-forms of the
West of England," in Mem. Anthrop. Soc., London, 1864, ii, 37 f., and 348 f.} This
disclosed conclusively that the "Celtic"-speaking people of the
British Isles, and more particularly the Welsh, were also short and
dark-complexioned, but with long-heads or medium long-heads and thus
were of a markedly different racial type to the "Celts" of Gaul;
whilst their skull-form and complexion excluded the greater portion of them
from the Aryan racial type and affiliated them to the Iberians.
p.134: PHOENICIAN
ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
Those startling discoveries by
scientific methods excited great commotion amongst the ethnologists and
philologist, as it disproved their accepted theory that the "Celts"
of Gaul were of the same kindred as the "Celts" of the British Isles,
and that both were Aryans; whereas it was now disclosed on the contrary that they were of different races and that neither were of the
Aryan Race, although both spoke an Aryan language in different dialects.
These scientific results were
fully confirmed by further measurements, which were also extended over the
greater part of Europe. As these measurements
disentangle the British "Celts" from the continental, and also
sharply differentiate the Aryan type from both, it is necessary to glance at
their leading results which are here displayed in the accompanying Table;
{This Table is based generally on that of Dr. Ripley (R.R.E., 121); but
I have used Dr. Deniker's "Nordic" for No. I, with "Aryan"
as its synonym, as Aryans are admittedly "Nordic," and I have
rejected the ambiguous and misleading "Teutonic" which is ordinarily
synonymous with "Germanic," which is a totally different type, namely
No. II.}
and illustrated in Fig. 22. This
{2 "Cephalic Index" is the ratio of the extreme
length of the head to its extreme breadth expressed in percentage. Under 80 the
head is "Long," and 80 and upwards it is "Round" or
"Broad" ("Germanic."). It is the surest criterion of race
along with colour. The writer, of fair complexion, has a cephalic index of
76.1.}
{3 See note 1.}
{4 On general prevalence of
"Alpine" type of head in Germany see Ripley, (R.R.E. map
opp. p. 53); also Prof. Parsons, cited later.}
p.135: RACIAL
HEAD-TYPES IN EUROPE
shows three main racial types in
the population of modern Europe, all three of which we shall find represented
in Britain, namely: (I) The Aryan {See
note 1 on p. 134.} or Nordic (or Northern), tall, fair,
broad-browed, long or longish heads, (II) Alpine or "Celtic"
(continental) or Germanic, short-statured, fair or darkish,
broad-browed, round or broad heads; and (III)
Iberian or "Mediterranean," shortish-statured, dark,
narrow-browed, long-faced, long-heads, and including the prehistoric
"river-bed" type of the Picts. The best of the distinguishing
criterions of race is the Head Index in second column of table, in conjunction
with colour.
FIG. 22.--Three main Racial Head-Types in Europe.
(The head is
viewed from above.)
A. Aryan or Nordic.
C. Alpine, or "Celtic," or Germanic (Teutonic).
B. Iberian or Mediterranean and "River-bed" type.
The first of these racial types
of Europe, the Nordic or "Northern,"
which is the Aryan type, is now mostly restricted to north-western Europe.
It included most of the classic Greeks and Romans, as evidenced by their
sculptures and paintings and skeletal remains. It comprises a considerable
element in the present-day population in the British Isles,
the Scandinavians or Horsemen (including Swedes and many Danes), and a small
proportion of the people of France
and of the Rhine Valley,
where, however, the skulls of the older burials show that the civilizers of Germany,
like the Jutes and Anglo-Saxons, were of this type. And I shall
p.136: PHOENICIAN
ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
show that the Early Britons and
"Scots," properly so-called, as well as the Goths, belonged to this
Aryan type, which was also the type of the eastern or Indo-Persian branch of
the Aryans--the Barat-Khattiya,--and the Khatti or Hittites and Phoenicians.
The second, the
"Celtic" or so-called "Alpine" [Swiss], extending from
Brittany to Switzerland, also comprises the major type in the Rhine Valley, the
Slav or Serb people of Mid-Europe, including the Prussians, Poles and a large
proportion of the Russians, and an appreciable element amongst the people on
the East Coast of Britain derived from the "Bronze Age" Hun invaders
of prehistoric Alban in the later Stone Age who were essentially of this
round-headed type.
{This important fact of the persistence of round-heads in the
modern population of Great Britain, which is not referred to by Ripley, has
been noted by many anthropologists, especially by Sir Arthur Keith in regard to
both England and Scotland. Regarding the latter, Sir A. Keith has recently
stated that, while the West Coast of Scotland as in the Glasgow district, contains only about 2 per cent. of
round-heads in its population which is mainly long-headed like the rest of the British Isles, Edinburgh, on the East Coast, contains about 25 per
cent. of round-heads in its population.}
The third type is of especial
interest in regard to the "British Celtic" question, and the dark
racial element by which the "Celtic" language is chiefly spoken in
the British Isles. This type is generally known as
"Iberian," from one of its old seats, Iberia
or Spain, and
it was given the wider synonym of "Pelasgic"; but it is now generally
called "Mediterranean," after Sergi's
nomenclature, as it is found in modern Europe, mainly
along that sea-basin from Spain
to Greece and
its Archipelago to Asia Minor. It is essentially of the
same type as the prehistoric Stone Age inhabitants of the British
Isles, the "river-bed" type of Huxley, and is also
substantially the same type which is found in many of the long
"barrows" or long grave mounds alongside the Aryan type there.
{Dr. Thurnam's well-known axiom still holds good: "long barrow,
long skull; round barrow, round head." From the South Coast and the Severn Valley--Glastonbury, Gloucester and Wilts--and northward over Britain, in the long barrows associated with the
Aryan type (implying intermarriage) are found the remains of small-statured
people with often long-headed and often narrow-browed skulls along with
their polished stone-weapons and no bronze. See D.E.M., 318 f. On broad-browed,
long-heads in long barrows, see later.}
And it still forms the substratum
of the modern
p.137:
"CELT" TITLE CONFUSED BY PHILOLOGISTS
head-form in the British
Isles. It thus appears that the titles "Hibernia"
for Ireland,
and "Hebrides" for the Western Isles, are
probably survivals of the "Iberia"
title for the primitive stock, which first peopled the British Isles
in the Stone Age. Indeed, the Irish Gaels or Gaedhels or "Fene" claim
origin from "the sons of Milead or Miledh," {Book of Lecain, detailed references in Skene, op. cit.,
47.} which is said to be Milesia in Spain, {Ib. 319.} i.e., Iberia; and, in describing the
later colonization of Erin, they say that a leading chief of the later Gaedhel
Miledh immigrants was called "Eber" which appears to
preserve this "Iberia" title:
"They
spread themselves through Erin, to her coasts . . .
Eber (the
Gaedhel) took the South of Erenn (Erin)." {Ib. 50, 51.}
In consequence of these
discoveries by anthropologists that the "Celts" belonged to the
non-Aryan round-headed race, and the resulting paradox that the so-called
"British and Irish Celts" were not Celts, and that there were no
"Celts" in Britain, {But, see
below.} the leading anthropologists, recognizing the logic of facts,
gave up the use of the misleading terms "Celt" and "Celtic"
in a racial sense in regard to the British Isles, and restricted these terms to
the round-headed Celts of Gaul, according to the designation of these people in
the classics. And even the term "Aryan" tended to drop out of use in
a racial sense, when no historical trace of the Early Aryans in Europe could be
discovered, and when it was found by M. de Quatrefages {La race prussienne, 1871.} and others that the physical
type not only of the Prussians but also the prevailing type of the Germans--who
had posed as being the leading "Aryan" civilizers of Europe--was
Slavic and thus Non-Aryan. They now recognized more clearly than before the
fact that mere language is by itself no criterion of Race, and that kinship in
language does not necessarily imply kinship in race, as so many conquered races
are observed to have adopted, or to have imposed on them the language of their
overlords of a totally different race. As Huxley observed, no one could call a
Negro of America either English or Aryan
p.138: PHOENICIAN
ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
in race, merely because he spoke
the Aryan English speech. And, as has been well said: "There is no such
thing as 'a French race,' but rather many races speaking French; no Italian
race, but rather many races speaking Italian; no Germanic race, but rather many
races speaking German;" {A. Hovelacque, Science of Language,
1877, 243.} and we may add there is no such thing as "The
English race," but rather many races and mixed races living in the
same political unity under the same laws and speaking the English Language.
The philologists, on the other
hand, for whom the Celtic Theory seems to have possessed a fatal fascination,
still clung, and do cling, to the title "Celtic" for the language
spoken in the British Isles by the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland and by the
Cymri of Wales. And the "die-hard" Celtists still give it a racial
sense, and speak of the British "Celtic" speakers as "The Black
Celts," {Compare Encyclop.
Britannica, 11th ed., 1910, 5, 611.} and of the "Celtic
temperament," and of the kilt as "the garb of Old Gaul," and of
the "Celtic origin" of the Aryan Language in Britain.
They thus keep alive the old mental confusion and mislead the public and
popular writers. Thus we have the latest writer on history, Mr. Wells, misled
into writing the jargon that: the Keltic invasion of Britain
was by "tall and fair" people, and "Nordic Kelts," and that
"it is even doubtful if the north of England
is more Aryan than pre-Keltic in blood." {H. G. Wells, Outlines of History, 1920, 83.} (!) With
such conflicting uses of the term "Celtic" in circulation, even some
anthropologists occasionally lapse into references to "the Celts of the
British Isles," and to Celts as "a branch of the Aryan Race."
Who then are the race in Britain
called "Celts" by our latter day writers?
No traditional or historical
reference or record whatever exists of the migration of any people called
"Celts" into Early Britain.
{Caesar mentions that
some Belgians had migrated to the south coast of Britain during and shortly before his day. These have
been arbitrarily called "Celts" by some latter-day writers; but
Caesar expressly excludes the Belgae from the Celtae (D.B.G. i, 1.).}
p.139: THE "BRITISH
CELTS" WERE PICTS
Anthropologists from their exact
measurements of the people in Britain,
tell us that "the darkest population forms the nucleus of each
of the Celtic Language areas which now remain." {R.R.E., 321.} And this dark "Celtic-" speaking element is
especially found in "the Grampian Hills in Scotland,
the wild and mountainous Wales
(and Cornwall) and the hills of Connemara
and Kerry and Western Ireland." {Ib., 319.} And their average
stature is relatively short, culminating in Britain,
in South Wales, the Severn
Valley and Cornwall. {Ib., 327-9 and map.} It will
thus be noticed that this "Celtic" area corresponds generally in
Scotland with the area in which the later "Picts" suddenly
disappeared, and in whose place have suddenly appeared the people called
"Celts." In Ireland
also the "Celtic" area generally corresponds with that part of the
country specially associated with the Bans, Vans or Early Feins, who, we have
found, were Picts. Cornwall, with
its old tin-port of Ictis (or Victis ?), was a chief "Celtic" centre
on the old "Sea of Icht (or of the Picts.)" {On this "Icht" as "Pict,"
see later.} And the Picts appear to have called themselves "Khaldis"
or "Khaltis."
This new line of evidence leads
us to the conclusion that the early "Celts" or "Kelts" were
presumably the early Picts calling themselves "Khaldis" or "Khaltis,"
a primitive people who, I find from a mass of evidence, were the early
"Chaldees" or Galat(i) and "Gal(li) " of Van and Eastern
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia in the Stone Age. {Details in Aryan Origins.} Their western hordes would
seem to have retained their title of "Khaltis " or "Galati"
or "Gal," when in the Old Stone Age they penetrated westward into
Gaul on the Atlantic and formed there the primitive Kelts or Celtae of Gaul and
of Pictavia on the border of Iberia, and the Gauls and Gaul are actually called
"Galatae" and "Galat" by Strabo {S. i, 3, 21, etc.; iv, 2, 1, etc.} And
at a later period when the round-headed Sarmatian Alpines invaded Gaul from the
Rhine and Switzerland and drove out the Picts, they seem to have retained the
old aboriginal name for that land and its people:--"Gaul" and
p.140: PHOENICIAN
ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
"Khaltis,"
"Kelt" or "Celt." Yet, although in Britain
the name "Kelt" or "Celt" does not appear in the
fragmentary surviving history of Ancient Britain under that exact spelling, it,
nevertheless, is represented in its dialectic variant of "Caled"
in "Caled-on"; and in "Culdees," the title of the Pictish
mission of Columba. It may possibly survive also in "Gadhel," the
common Gaelic spelling of "Gael," by transposition of the letters in
spelling--a recognized dialectic change called paronomasia--of an earlier
"Galdhi," representing "Khaldi" or "Kaldi." And
its shortened form "Gal" possibly survives in "Gael," and
in "Gwalia " for Wales.
So, after all, perhaps the British "Celts" are more entitled to use
the "Celt" title than the round-headed "Celts" of Gaul,
who, according to classic historians and anthropologists, are the only true
"Celts."
This identity of the ancestors of
the "British Celts" or "Kelts" with the "Khaldis"
or "Caleds" or Picts is in keeping with the physical traits and
head-form of the latter. The people of the "Celtic-" speaking areas
are preponderatingly of the dark, long, narrow-headed, narrow-faced,
smaller-statured Iberian type of the Khaldis or Picts; and this is also the
prevailing type of the substratum of the people throughout the British
Isles.
{Thus Dr. Beddoe describes the "Celtic area" race in Scotland: "The head and face are long, and rather
narrow, the skull base rather narrow, the brow and occiput prominent."
Hair mostly "dark brown" to "brownish black" and even
"coal-black" (B.R.B., 245). Hector Maclean records, "the
head is high, long and often narrow, the face frequently long . . . . the lips
are usually full, often thick, and more or less projecting " (A.R.,
iv, 129). Ripley, on the commonest type in the British Isles generally, says: "The prevailing type is
that of a long, narrow cranium, accompanied by an oval rather than a
broad or round, face " (R.R.E., 303). And Wilson, on the British "Celts," notes
"the remarkable narrowness of forehead which characterizes the
Celtic Race [in the British
Isles]." (W.P.A.,
181). And he also says: "We begin to discover that the Northern
and Southern
Picts were no
other than the aboriginal Celtae," (Ib. 15); although he confounds the issues by supposing
that the dark Picts were Aryans.}
The modern "British
Celts," however, as well as the bulk of their kindred still forming the
main substratum in the population of the British Isles generally, have become a
somewhat heterogeneous race, through more or less intermixture with the other
two races of later invaders and civilizers. Thus their original dark aboriginal
Pictish or
p.141: "BRITISH
CELTS" ARE NON-ARYAN PICTS
Iberian stock has been mixed more
or less on the East Coast and Midlands with the
non-Aryan round-headed and broad-browed, fair "Alpine" or Slav or
"Hun" invaders from the time of the beaker-using men of the Late
Stone Age, about 2000 B.C.
onwards;
{These round-head "beaker" men, as found in Aberdeen stone cists, were of small stature, averaging
5 feet 4 inches, with broad, short faces and widish noses and muscular build, T.B.B.
69. But in the South, on the East Coast of England, they averaged 5
feet 8-9 inches, with cranial index of 80 to 84, with broad brows and
roundish faces. A. Keith, J.R.A.I., 1915.}
and later over all the British Isles,
they have been mixed more or less with their Aryan rulers and civilizers, the
tall, long-headed, broad-browed, fair "Northern" invaders, the
Britons and Scots, properly so-called, with their later kindred Anglo-Saxons,
Norse and Normans. As a result of this partial intermixing during many
centuries (which is discussed in a later chapter on the mixing of the races)
there have arisen several intermediate composite types. Many of the
"British Celts" thus now possess a considerable strain of Aryan
blood, manifesting itself in physical traits and especially in a lighter colour
of the hair and eyes, whilst fondly idealizing their Celtic ancestry into a
sentimental cult. But the major portion of the population, not only in the
modern "Celtic" areas, but all over the British Isles
generally retains appreciably a preponderating Pictish type.
Thus, in regard to the
civilization of the British Isles, we find that the
modern theory that it was the "British Celts" who first introduced
the Aryan language and civilization into Britain
is merely a survival of an unfounded assumption by later philologists, which
assumption rested on the further unfounded assumption that the "British
Celts" were originally Aryans in Race.
We are now in a position to take
up, on much clearer ground than has hitherto been possible for previous
enquirers, the great and hitherto unsolved question as to how and when the
Aryan language and civilization were first introduced into Britain,
and by what racial agency.
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