CHAPTERVI.DRUIDICAL CIRCLES NEAR TANGIER.—CONNEXION OF THE CELTS WITH THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF MAURITANIA AND SPAIN.By taking the sea-road, I missed the Druidical circle, and although I stayed some time at Tangier, I was too constantly engaged to make an excursion so far. Mr. Davidson has mentioned them in his journal as follows:—“Coming round the side of a hill, you perceive several stones forming a circle, of which one, called the Peg, is much higher than the rest: there is likewise a second circle. The whole neighbourhood is full of similar circles of stones, but smaller: many of the latter have been worked artificially. The entrance to the circle, which is fifteen feet wide, faces the west; on the north and south of the Peg are two openings at equal distances. At about the distance of two hundred feet, there is a stone placed at an angle of 45°, intending, it is said, to mark the opening; it is six feet high, and by lying on the back, one can see directly through the circle.”Discoveries of a similar kind have been made in the regency of Tunis,[254]and cinerary vases have been dug up at Tangier, in sinking a well at the Danish consulate, at the depth of twenty feet, being eight feet deeper than Roman tombs. These have been sent to Copenhagen, and it is said, identified with pottery found in the North of Europe. A cromlech has also been discovered on the banks of the Jordan,[255]and in the vicinity of Tyre.[256]I was not aware of the existence of this monument, when it first occurred to me that the clans must have visited Barbary. It has therefore, at present, all the greater weight as testimony; so much so, indeed, as to induce me to advance a new theory as to the derivation of the Scots, who, towards the period of the Roman conquest, reached Ireland, and finally settled in Scotland. In tracing that people to Barbary, a new field of peregrinations is opened, and in pursuing it either up to that point, or subsequently from that point, we must be satisfied of their presence and sojourn here. This monument would give that assurance, were it not for two explanations that have been offered, either of which would deprive it of value as an historic record.Rude stones, it is said, are the first beginnings of architecture: those called Druidical, need not be referred to any particular people, and cannot, when found, be adduced to prove the presence of the Celts.[257]The simple answer is, that Druidical remains have as decided a character as Egyptian; and as to the argument[258]that they are found in Asia and Africa, where the Celts never have been, history teems with evidence of their presence in those very places. Had the cromlechs and Druidical circles belonged to the original races of Africa, they would surely be found in more than two parts of its surface.The other explanation is not so easily disposed of, as it involves no less intricate a question than the ancient peopling of the peninsula. It is, that Spain and the West were inhabited by Celts.Three theories have been advanced respecting the early races of Spain. First, that it was colonized from Judæa. This was founded on the names of men and places,—the Hebrew roots in the Spanish, and tradition,—and is sustained by Mariana, Florez, Capmany, Alderete, &c., also by Scaliger and Bochart, Selden and Gesenius. It has been exploded by modern criticism; or it has been admitted, byidentifying the Hebrew and Celtic.[259]The theory which now seems to prevail is, that the Iberi were Celts.[260]The third is a jumble rather than a theory, resulting from the ethnographical generalization at present in vogue. It seems to point to the Basques as being the same people as the ancient Iberians.[261]Ethnography, that very hypothetical science and suspicious word, deals chiefly, if not exclusively, with language—not its metaphysical, but its mechanical part—and as the end and means of science are order, the human race is methodized into genera, and distributed into species, as if minerals or plants were dealt with, so that out of the very speech of man proceeds this classification, which disposes of him as of the dumb beasts of the field, and fishes of the sea. The feat of reducing the populations of Europe, Celts, Slavs, Basques, and Goths, to one denomination, has been accomplished just at the time that a hitherto unheard-of hatred and repulsion has been engendered between races, threatening society with convulsions as lamentable in their results as in their causes. They are fantastic and absurd, and the age most versed in the knowledge of the events of other times, exhibits itself as the least capable of any that has ever existed, for managing the affairs of its own.In all other investigations of a similar description, the point of departure isa known language; here it is anassumedone, just as if, at a future time, out of some remnants of English, preserved in Yorkshire, and some Celtic names in Wales, a British language were to be constructed.The same fallacy has equally pervaded the three theories. The assertors of the several origins have each commenced by assumingone people. Each has indubitable proofs in hand, as to the existence of his people, but each will extirpate the others, and so present vulnerable points to his antagonist.Larramendi sees nothing in Spain that is not Basque; Risco nothing that is not Celtic; Mariana nothing that is not Hebrew; and each is justly ridiculous in the eyes of his opponent.In the opening of any field, whether of modern discovery or of ancient research, we commence by assuming as many people as we find names, and only on proof do we admit that two or more belong to one tribe or race. Proceeding by this simple method, and applying to Spain the rule undeviatingly adopted everywhere else, the ancient population will present no difficulty. We hear ofHispani, ofIberi, ofKeltoi; unquestionably, then, there were three races distinct in their tongue, time, and habitation. Each of the theories would annihilate two of these to establish the third. As soon as we accept thenames handed down, the theories fall to the ground.I commence, therefore, by denying the authority in this case of “Philology,” “Sprachenkunde,” “Glottology,”[262]or whatever other name the science may rejoice in; and notwithstanding the contempt to which I may thereby be exposed,[263]I cannot put aside Herodotus and Strabo, Cæsar and Pliny. Persisting in the old notions, I cannot see, in the Iberi, Asiatic-Europeans, or Indo-Germans. I must hold theGaulsto be Gauls and theBasquesBasques, as I should if there never had been a Babel of bricks or a Babel of philologists—if there were still but one tongue for man, as but one bark and one bray for the dog and the ass, and Iberian, Celt, and Basque, preserved in common the tongue of Edom as they do the limbs of Adam.The conclusions which I hope to be able to establish are, that the original inhabitants of Spain were the Hispani, that the next in date were the Iberi, who entering not as an irruption but peaceably, came from the south, and by sea, and spread themselves through the western and southern region; finally, that the Celts made their appearance there, also, and that, like their predecessors, they were neither invaders nor conquerors: that as the Iberi won their way by commerce and cultivation, so did the Celts by arms and discipline—not used against the Iberi and Hispani—but for their protection against the dreaded encroachments of the Carthaginians, Romans, and Gauls, beyond the Pyrenees: that these tribes were sojourners only, entering Spain by the south and departing from the north: that the Hispani are preserved in the existing Basques; that the Iberi belonged to the colonising races of Canaan, and that the Celts were the forefathers of the clans who at present dwell in the Highlands of Scotland.Ancient as are the people which inhabit Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands, they are modern when compared with those settled in the north of Spain. Whence the former came we know—the course they followed we can trace. But the Basques are like a plant found on some single hill—its solitariness gives to it its interest, and we call it indigenous. Such are the pretensions of this people. They are the only people in Europe who claim to be autochthonic.That a people not settled on a remote island or in a far oasis, but in the midst of us—in the country which has ever been the battle-field of Europe—should preserve a tradition which belongs to times anterior to history, is a fact calculated to instruct as well as to astonish. The Basques have lived through the mythology of Greece, the wars of Carthage, the dominion of Rome, the devastations of the Vandals, the sway of the Goths, the arms of the Moors, the usurpations of Madrid, and the opinions of Europe, keeping themselves all the while distinct, and recollecting themselves alone. It is impossible to present stronger titles to priority of occupancy.Nor is this retentiveness of tradition exceptional in their character: they have preserved their laws, nay, more, they have maintained their rights.[264]While the other people of Europe clamour for change and untried experiment, or, at best, seek to recover a lost or abandoned privilege, they alone hold to what they possess; and who can say that what they have got they did not already possess while the pyramids were building, and before the laws of Tages were proclaimed or the Vedas composed, and what they possess is what they have kept immutable from the beginning? Why should not a Basque peasant tell us what happened in the olden time, before Homer or Orpheus sang, when they exhibit to us in their daily life how primeval communities lived?Nor has their gratitude been less long-lived than their freedom, or their memory shorter for favours than pretensions. They acknowledge to-day as benefactors the descendants of strangers, whose fathers two thousand years ago aided them in their struggle with Rome.But traditions and rights do not stand alone. They have a language—one which has defied every attempt to classify it, and which persists in utterly denying all acquaintance with Indo-Celtic or Syro-Phœnician. It has nothing in common with the languages which, migrating westward, have passed to the north of the Caucasus, nor with the Semitic and Japhetic tongues, that have spread through the maritime regions of Europe and over the Western districts of Africa. It is no mosaic work, made out of the wreck of former tongues; and, Titanic-like, it disdains Greece and her gods, Phœnicia and her myths.The Basque language bears intrinsic evidence of having passed through the Greek and Roman period wholly uninfluenced by them either in structure or in terms. And by its structure, its terms, its numeration and calendar, it ascends as high as it is possible for any language to ascend: it is as primitive as any of the tongues of the Indian Archipelago; it expresses the same astronomical conclusions as Sabæism; and while in richness of vocables it has not to fear a comparison with any of those languages which have not borrowed from others in constructiveness, in the causal power of the verb it excels in their various excellences the Hebrew, Russian, and Turkish. The Basques say that Adam spoke Basque in Paradise; from which it appears that they imagine that the excellence of a language is a proof of its antiquity.[265]That there existed an aboriginal population prior to the emigrations from Canaan, both in Spain and along the coasts of Africa, is to be inferred from what we know of Italy, which the Etruscans found well-peopled. The most remarkable feature of their first colonization was the drainage of lands, and other works and arts, which would appear to belong to old states and periods of redundant population.The traditions which antiquity itself listened to and recorded, are everywhere of an anterior and abundant population, occupying the Peninsulas and Islands of the Mediterranean. Whether Umbri and Itali, Spani and Siculi, Osca and Escara,[266]be from one source or not, it was never doubted that Sicily, Italy, and Spain had received their original population the one from the other,[267]before the arrival of Pelasgi, Etruscans, or Phœnicians. This was believed two thousand years ago, and was equally reported by the colonists and by the remnants of the original people. Nor were these people rude and savage: witness the Latian polity, the Samnite state, the two thousand towers of Sardinia, the still existing Fueros of the Basque. The Noraghi, and the “Sepulchres of the Giants,” in Sardinia, are no less distinct from any known architecture than is the Biscayan from any known tongue.That the Basques were a great people is proved by their names being spread all over the Peninsula, even to the sea-board or limit, which in the Basque furnishes the etymon of the word,Spain.[268]That they inherited the southern shores and were a seafaring people, is proved by theassertedcolonization of Sicily: that they retroceded—that they abandoned the Southern country and the coasts; that they withdrew in the direction of the strong and remote country, is indubitable—and such is the case with every original population encroached upon. It has happened to the Britons, the Welsh, and the Highlanders. This second wave of population did not burst over the Alps; it was not a horde or a conquest; it came from the sea and the south; it could only be Phœnician or Aramean; its name was Iber—Hebrew. It gave to thesouth countrythe name of Iberia,[269]which name long afterwards was made general for Spain by the Romans. Along the two great rivers they strewed the arts of irrigation and canalization, originally derived from the plains of Mesopotamia, and equally practised by the Etruscans[270]in Italy. These rivers they named, the oneIber—in Italy there was theTiber[271]—to the other they gave the name of the law-giver of the Etruscans,Tages, who might be the common and Eastern ancestor of both people.[272]We have in Spain the Volsci, the Cæretani, Cære, Suessa, Ausa, Urgel (Virgil), Roma, Alba, &c. We have the proper names, Andubal, Tagus, Hamilce, Isbal, Caras, Indebal, Lucius, Baal, Telongus, &c. These identify not merely the tongue of the Iberians with that of the maritime colonists of the Mediterranean, but the colonies themselves, with those of Etruria, and separate them entirely from the Northern people, whose language subsists, and affords us the opportunity of comparison.The Iberi had so identified themselves with the Romans, that the Latin became the common tongue. Already in Cæsar’s time he addressed them in Latin—that is, without interpreters—as he mentions when speaking of Gaul. They called the Latin “Lingua Paterna.” A Spaniard, Antony-Julian, first opened a school of rhetoric in Rome: he was a rustic who had tilled the glebe; he never changed his costume or manners, and disdained to discourse in a walled apartment. His successor was Quinctilian, also a Spaniard. Possibly, “had it not been for the invasion of the Goths and Moors, Latin would now be the speech of the Spaniards (Iberians), as it was of the Romans in the time of Tully.” In the Arab times the struggle was not between the Gothic, but the Latin and the Arabic. “Eheu!” exclaims the Gothic Alvarus, or Alaric of Cordova, “Latini linguam propriam ignorant.”Sicilians, Africans, Greeks, and the whole people of the East, preserved their own tongue; the Spaniards, who made resistance above all others, alone adopted that of Rome. Does not this confirm the inference, which is inevitable from the names of Etruscan colonies in Spain, that the Iberi and the people of Latium were of the same race? Thus also do we find the Latian rights conferred on cities in Spain, while no such favour was accorded to Sicily or Greece, to Macedon or Britain. It may be traced wherever the Etruscan colonies extended.If, then, the Basque has survived, it is because there were two languages in Spain, and spoken by people whose character was as different as their tongues.The Basques still retain a method of culture which is neither the plough nor the spade. An instrument like a prong is used, each of the labourers having two: they work in gangs, and turn over the soil with one-half the labour that is requisite for spade culture. These prongs are calledlaias;—they are as peculiar to the people as their tongue.I have elsewhere pointed out the distinction between the two races in respect to the use of butter, and the names connected with the dairy; the use of tapia for building, and the ancient armour. In these matters of the first importance—agriculture, food, building, and warfare—there is a clear line drawn between the Hispani and Iberi.The Greeks and the Romans were not philologists, neither were they ethnographists. In no classical writer is the consanguinity of the Iberians and Numidians asserted. We have to come down to the Fathers of the Church to learn,by statement, that the Hebrew and Phœnician, that these and the Arabic were sister-tongues. When the Romans became acquainted with Spain, a period of time had elapsed from the first settlement of the Iberians, equal to that from Alfred to our days, and the Basques or Eskora had been cooped up in the north-east. It is the least likely of all things that they should have been noticed by the Romans as a distinct, or have been suspected to be an original people. Nor can we wonder at such an oversight at that time, when the same thing has occurred in modern Spain. Learned men have been writing profound disquisitions on the origin of the Spanish language, and compiling lexicons and etymologies without the slightest reference to the existing people of Biscay.The same thing may be said of St. Isidore, Antonio De Nabrissa, P. Guadix, Diego de Urrea, &c. A stranger a century ago would have found in the philologists of modern Spain no more notice of the existence of the Basque, than of the Chinese language, although at the same time the Basque writers were enumerating nearly two thousand Basque words in the Spanish dictionary.The strangeness of Iberian words to Roman ears confirms this view. Volsci, Suessa, Cere, Roma could not be strange to them. It could only besomeof the names that were so—that is, the names of places[273]that had remained from the early occupation of the Basques.To us, Hispani and Iberi, Hispania and Iberia, mean the same thing. They belong to two people, and are terms of a different order: the one is the name of a country applied to a people, the other the patronymic of a tribe applied to a country. You have in Africa the name Garb in general use for the country, and for the people Moslemin. No other words are known there, and our terms for their country would be as unintelligible to them as theirs are to us. Now suppose that a conqueror occupied Morocco, ignorant and contemptuous of foreign tongues: hearing “Garb,” and “Moslemin,” he would, adding his own termination, take these words as the general names for the country, and we should have Morocco called “Garbia” or “Mosleminia” (to make the analogy complete we must suppose Moslemin to apply to a tribe, not to a faith). If then, after fifteen centuries, and when the people had undergone great vicissitudes, philosophers should arise to investigate, they might be nonplused by these two fictitious terms, and could not possibly see their way until they had discovered that Garb was a geographical, and Moslemin a tribe name, and that the ignorant conquerors had not only mistaken the value of these terms, but had made each general, and had simultaneously employed both. One nation may govern another as well under a wrong as a right name, and, perhaps, much better; but it does not follow that a philologist will indifferently well theorize under the like mistake. Now, what I have supposed is exactly what has happened. A sentence of Strabo tells the whole story:—“TheSpaniardsrestrict the name ofIberiato the part within the Iber; the Romans call the whole countryIberia, dividing it into hither and thitherSpain,” which is equivalent to calling Great Britain “Scotland,” and then dividing it into “England on this and on that side the Tweed.”[274]Having thus ascertained the existence of Hispani and Iberi, the Celts present no difficulty,—they are neither the one nor the other; and if it were requisite to establish still more distinctly the originality of the Iberians, we might do so by citing the contrast between them and the Gauls, which ancient writers have left us. Yet, in the present times, the opinion prevails that the ancient Spaniards were Celts. Of the two people, contemporaneous portraits have been sketched by different hands at various periods. They represent two people wholly different;—there is not one line of the picture of the one applicable to the other.The Iberi were a quiet inoffensive race; the Gauls a warlike and a restless people. The Iberi began to feel their strength “only after they were subjugated;” the Gauls were subjugated in consequence of their overweening confidence in their own strength. The Iberi gave weapons to the Romans; the Gauls learned from the Romans the art of war. The Iberi had short, well-tempered swords which they used with remarkable agility; the Gauls, long, unwieldy swords, which turned and bent with their own blow.The Gauls had their Druids. The Iberian temples—those of Hercules—were venerable structures when the Carthaginians approached the walls of Saguntum, the Romans those of Numantia. The Gauls and Iberians acknowledged no kindred with each other. The Gauls claimed no blood-relationship, like the Iberians, with Rome or Carthage. The Gauls were never called Iberians, nor the Iberians Gauls; and the Romans, familiar as they were with the Gauls in Italy, when they first invaded Spain, would certainly have called its inhabitants by that name had they belonged to that race. If the Iberians had been Celts, there would be Druidical remains, and some record of the last stand of the Druids, as in England and Gaul.At the period of the foundation of Rome, the word Gaul might be considered synonymous with European. The Gauls had flowed from the eastward like an inundation; the middle regions of Europe, which they filled, became insufficient for them; they passed into Britain; they descended upon Greece; and they crossed the Bosphorus. Their adventurous spirit was not arrested by the Alps, nor their courage daunted by the martial bearing and concentrated power of the lordly people who then flourished in the peninsula. They were not, however, able to overrun Italy, though they colonized many parts, remaining a distinct people. They never crossed the Pyrenees; the Vascones and Aquitani spread even in advance of that barrier far into Gaul.[275]The Gallic emigration was arrested there by those already in possession, whether Hispani or Iberi, who were able, by the confession of the Romans, to contend with them after the fall of Carthage for the mastery of the world.But the name of the Gauls is found in the Peninsula. Is not this conclusive as to the community of the races? By no means; it only proves that there were Celts in Spain. The word is Celt-Iberi—the Celts and the Iberi.[276]The compound term markstwo people, just as Medo-Persian, Tyrreno-Pelasgi. Besides, the people mixed with the Iberi wereCelts(Κελτοὶ) not Galli,[277]as they would have been called had they crossed the Pyrenees as they did the Alps. The Celts of Spain must, then, have come across the sea.The two southern peninsulas of Europe were anciently known by the same name. They are the only regions of the south that resemble each other. They both have the same form, stretch in the same direction, adjoin the same continent, lie on the same internal sea, spread in the same latitude. Both are shut to the north by a barrier of rocks, and lined on the Mediterranean shore by a chain of harbours. They bear the same fruits and grow the same grain. They have been within the range of the same migrations and subject to the like vicissitudes. Their mythology and traditions are interwoven; they had the same gods, the same founders, the same heroes.In Italy, we have three distinct waves of early population—the first the Itali, the second the Tyrseni, the third the Galli. Shall we not look for them in Spain? We have them there, Hispani, Iberi, and Celts, and thus will be accounted for the threefold affinities which connect Spain, not with Italy only, but with the whole of the coasts of the Mediterranean, and even the shores of the Propontis and the Euxine—the Hispani with Siculi, Itali, Osci, and, perhaps, with the people of Thrace; the Iberi with Etruscans, Lydians, Phrygians, Brebers, and Jews; the Celts with the Gauls of Gaul and Italy, and the roving Galatai and Keltoi of Asia-Minor, Syria, and Africa. This difference, however, must be borne in mind. The Gauls in Italy were invaders; in Spain they were not, but on the contrary, allies of the natives against the foreign invasion which always threatened them from the first irruption of the Gauls to the final pacification under Augustus.These affinities have, in modern works, been generalized and applied to one people or another according to the theory of philologist or ethnographist. The confusion arising out of the habit of observing facts through the medium of systems has been then transferred back to ancient writers, who, without being analytical, are correct, and, without being systematic, intelligible.Having now proved that Spain was not Celtic, the Druidical circle at Tangier becomes an evidence of the presence there of a body of Celts of considerable importance, and while indicating the point of entrance of those Celts who had not crossed the Pyrenees, will serve, also, as a landmark to trace the wandering of the Highland clans.NOTE ON W. VON HUMBOLDT’S WORK ON THE BASQUES.The preceding pages were written before I had an opportunity of consulting W. Von Humboldt’s work. The title is, “Test of the Inquiries respecting the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Spain, by means of the Basque Tongue.” The points which, judging by the references to it in other writers, are assumed or established by it, are, that the present Basques are the ancient inhabitants of Spain, and that these ancient inhabitants were the Iberi. I consequently opened it with extreme curiosity, to find by what arrangement of data, or what sophistry of argument, he could arrive at such a conclusion. Great was my surprise to find no conclusion whatever arrived at, and extreme care taken to avoid appearing to express an opinion. He has not perceived the distinction between Hispani and Iberi; and had it been pointed out to him, he would necessarily have hailed it as a light which cleared all doubts away:—he has not seen it himself, because he has started from the assumption that the Iberians weretheancient people, and, consequently, every reference to, or mention of, Hispani was taken as applying to them; and the only question, as regards distinction of race, arises with the Celts, viz., whether they were the same as the Gauls, and in what they differed from or resembled the IberiorHispani? All he says is interesting; there is nothing which controverts the view opened out in the foregoing pages, and much that adds strength to it.Starting from the point above-mentioned, he proceeds to find, for every name recorded in ancient writers, a word in Basque by which to explain it. When the name is nearly Celtic, Roman, or Carthaginian, or quite so, he drops it. By such a process the names of any and every country may be made to belong to any and every other.M. Von Humboldt having expressed his own inability to decide, earnestly invites the investigation of the learned, and he suggests to them a thread by which they may advance securely through the imagined labyrinth;—this is no other than the study of coins. As well might he have suggested the investigation of Assyrian antiquities by the books printed at Babylon and Nineveh.[278][254]Possibly the termMogadorerecalls another Celtic monument. It has no Arabic or Breber etymon. In O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary, the wordMagh-adhairis given and explained as, “a circle of pillars or stones.”[255]Irby and Mangles,vol. i. p.99.[256]Described by Maundrell.[257]Mr. Dennis, after attempting to identify the tombs of Saturnia with Celtic cromlechs, says, “they (cromlechs) are also to be found in Sardinia, (?) the Balearic Islands, (?) on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Spain, in the Regency of Tunis, on the banks of the Jordan, and other places, and therefore it is impossible they should be restricted to the Celtic race.”—Etruria,vol. ii. p.321.[258]King’s Munimenta Antiqua.[259]“The original language of Spain was the old Celtic; a language which bears so vast an affinity to the ancient Hebrew, that to those who are masters of both, they plainly appear to be dialects of thesametongue; or to speak perhaps more properly, the Celtic is a dialect of the Hebrew, or language of Noah.”—Univ. Hist., vol. xviii. p.363.[260]“Celtic Spain.”—Moore’sHistory of Ireland,vol. i. p. l.“The Celts covered with their settlements, and perhaps even simultaneously possessed a space of country extendingfrom the Pillars of Herculesto Asia Minor, and beyond the Caucasus, and from the banks of the Tiber to theUltima Thuleof Scotland and Greenland.”—Dr. Meyer,Report of British Association, 1847,p.303.“The Celts were known to the Greeks only by name, and they included under it, all the people between the Oder and the Tagus. Even the Romans * * included theIberians, &c.”—Brown’sHistory of the Highland Clans.Prichard says, “Of the Asiatic European stock, thefirstgreat family is the Celts, once spread over Asia Minor (Galatia),Spain, France, Belgium, Helvetia, a great part of Germany, and throughout the British Isles.” He includes under this one head, Thracians, Armenians, Asiatic Iranians, Greeks, Romans, Slavonians, Lithuanians, and Germans.[261]“The Basque, or Iberian,” Bunsen.[262]Suggested by Prichard.[263]“These propositions no one will doubt, who has a right to speak.”—Bunsen.[264]At the convention of Bergara, these were recognised. They indeed passedsub silentiothe claims of Don Carlos; but with these, they had nothing to do, thede factosovereign of Spain being Lord of Biscay.[265]“There are two kinds of richness; the one of form, the other of material. The former consists in the variety of precepts, the certainty of rules, the harmony of syntax; the other in attributes which belong to the invention of a tongue. In these attributes, there is not one foreign tongue which may not be esteemed poor when compared with the Basque.”—Larramendi,Intro,ix.[266]Humboldt, (pp.55, 58), considers Osca the same as Basque, and holds it to have been a generic name of the whole people. Pliny speaks of sums brought by the Roman Generals asArgentum Oscense(xxxiv.10, 46,xl.43).[267]Thucyd. l. viii.;Dion. Halic., l. i.Timæus, as quoted by Diodorus Siculus,l. vi. ch.2.; Strabo,l. vi.Ausonius, Lucan, and Silvius Italicus, all concur in deducing the population, or a population of Sicily, from Spain.Seneca (de Consolatione) calls these colonists notIbeributHispani, and says their descendants were like the Cantabrians, who had a distinct costume and language—distinct of course from the Iberi—and inhabited in his time the north-eastern part of the Peninsula.“Transierunt etHispani, quod ex similitudine ritus apparet; eadem enim tegumenta capitum, idemque genus calciamenti, quodCantabrisest, et verba quæedam.”[268]“Españais the name by which the Spaniards have known their country from the earliest times, down to the present day. This word is Basque, without dropping or adding a letter, and signifies border or extremity. The analogy is beautiful, and gave rise to thene plus ultraof the columns of Hercules. The letternis moreover wanting in Celtic, Hebrew, and Arabic.”—Astorloa,p.194.[269]The Iberia of Herodotus was only the coast,l. i. c.163. In the time of Polybius, the name Iberia didnotextend to the part lying on the ocean.—L. iii. c.37,§.10.[270]“The Romans stand in close connexion with the Basques, the intermediaries being the Etruscans. The languages show a similarity in agriculture, and in political institutions. Nevertheless I am far from asserting that the Etruscans were the parent stem of the Iberians, or the contrary.”—W. Humboldt,Prüfung,p.117.[271]Tis the article in the Breber.[272]Aristides (Orat. in Bacch.), compares the Etruscans in the west, to what the Indians were in the east, which must be understood of space and limit, as well as numbers. He therefore included the Iberians.[273]Nos Celtis genitos et ex Iberis,Gratos non pudeat referre versu,Nostræ nomina durioraterræ.Mart.l. i. Ep.135.Not knowing Celtic or Iberian, he made a mistake, which the following lines explain:—Rides nomina? Rideas licebitHæc tam rustica, delicate lector,Hæc tam rustica malo,quam Britannos.“Cantabrorum aliquot populi amnesque sunt, quorum nomina nostro ore concipi nequeant.”Pomp. Mela,l. iii. c.2.[274]L. iii. c.2.[275]“The Aquitani differ not merely in their tongue, but in their bodies, and resemble the Hispani rather than the Galli.”—Strabo,lib. iv.“Rousillon isSpanish, Gascony isBasque, rather than Castilian. The Bretons are more Celtic than the Gascons are Basque.”—Ethnological Outlines of France, by M. deVericourt.[276]“Profugisque a gente vetusta Gallorum, celte miscente nomen Iberi.”—Lucan,l. iii.[277]Humboldt (“Prüfung,”&c., sections 41, 43, 44), admits a great contrast between the Celts and the Gauls, and not that difference between them and the tribes of the Peninsula, which might be expected from people of different origin. The union he supposes must have been of great antiquity, and could not have taken place by violence. He is not clear that we can call the Celts Gauls at all, and yet he imagines that there must have been emigrations from Gaul; then he supposes them mixed autochthonically with the Iberi, and afterwards pressed together by foreigners occupying the coasts.Astorloa (p.199), denies this mixture of Celts and Iberians, and explains away the word: if Celts had crossed into the Peninsula, they would have been settled, he imagines, close to the Pyrenees, and would have left traces in the present people.Neither of these writers suspects the possibility of their having come from Africa, and having again quitted the Peninsula.[278]Coins, as other monuments, have supplied a few names of cities, but are of far posterior date to the migrations of even the Phœnicians, and are of no service in the investigation of events anterior to history.From the coins of Spain several alphabets have been made out; but of course they belong to the Iberian times and races.
By taking the sea-road, I missed the Druidical circle, and although I stayed some time at Tangier, I was too constantly engaged to make an excursion so far. Mr. Davidson has mentioned them in his journal as follows:—
“Coming round the side of a hill, you perceive several stones forming a circle, of which one, called the Peg, is much higher than the rest: there is likewise a second circle. The whole neighbourhood is full of similar circles of stones, but smaller: many of the latter have been worked artificially. The entrance to the circle, which is fifteen feet wide, faces the west; on the north and south of the Peg are two openings at equal distances. At about the distance of two hundred feet, there is a stone placed at an angle of 45°, intending, it is said, to mark the opening; it is six feet high, and by lying on the back, one can see directly through the circle.”
Discoveries of a similar kind have been made in the regency of Tunis,[254]and cinerary vases have been dug up at Tangier, in sinking a well at the Danish consulate, at the depth of twenty feet, being eight feet deeper than Roman tombs. These have been sent to Copenhagen, and it is said, identified with pottery found in the North of Europe. A cromlech has also been discovered on the banks of the Jordan,[255]and in the vicinity of Tyre.[256]
I was not aware of the existence of this monument, when it first occurred to me that the clans must have visited Barbary. It has therefore, at present, all the greater weight as testimony; so much so, indeed, as to induce me to advance a new theory as to the derivation of the Scots, who, towards the period of the Roman conquest, reached Ireland, and finally settled in Scotland. In tracing that people to Barbary, a new field of peregrinations is opened, and in pursuing it either up to that point, or subsequently from that point, we must be satisfied of their presence and sojourn here. This monument would give that assurance, were it not for two explanations that have been offered, either of which would deprive it of value as an historic record.
Rude stones, it is said, are the first beginnings of architecture: those called Druidical, need not be referred to any particular people, and cannot, when found, be adduced to prove the presence of the Celts.[257]
The simple answer is, that Druidical remains have as decided a character as Egyptian; and as to the argument[258]that they are found in Asia and Africa, where the Celts never have been, history teems with evidence of their presence in those very places. Had the cromlechs and Druidical circles belonged to the original races of Africa, they would surely be found in more than two parts of its surface.
The other explanation is not so easily disposed of, as it involves no less intricate a question than the ancient peopling of the peninsula. It is, that Spain and the West were inhabited by Celts.
Three theories have been advanced respecting the early races of Spain. First, that it was colonized from Judæa. This was founded on the names of men and places,—the Hebrew roots in the Spanish, and tradition,—and is sustained by Mariana, Florez, Capmany, Alderete, &c., also by Scaliger and Bochart, Selden and Gesenius. It has been exploded by modern criticism; or it has been admitted, byidentifying the Hebrew and Celtic.[259]
The theory which now seems to prevail is, that the Iberi were Celts.[260]
The third is a jumble rather than a theory, resulting from the ethnographical generalization at present in vogue. It seems to point to the Basques as being the same people as the ancient Iberians.[261]
Ethnography, that very hypothetical science and suspicious word, deals chiefly, if not exclusively, with language—not its metaphysical, but its mechanical part—and as the end and means of science are order, the human race is methodized into genera, and distributed into species, as if minerals or plants were dealt with, so that out of the very speech of man proceeds this classification, which disposes of him as of the dumb beasts of the field, and fishes of the sea. The feat of reducing the populations of Europe, Celts, Slavs, Basques, and Goths, to one denomination, has been accomplished just at the time that a hitherto unheard-of hatred and repulsion has been engendered between races, threatening society with convulsions as lamentable in their results as in their causes. They are fantastic and absurd, and the age most versed in the knowledge of the events of other times, exhibits itself as the least capable of any that has ever existed, for managing the affairs of its own.
In all other investigations of a similar description, the point of departure isa known language; here it is anassumedone, just as if, at a future time, out of some remnants of English, preserved in Yorkshire, and some Celtic names in Wales, a British language were to be constructed.
The same fallacy has equally pervaded the three theories. The assertors of the several origins have each commenced by assumingone people. Each has indubitable proofs in hand, as to the existence of his people, but each will extirpate the others, and so present vulnerable points to his antagonist.
Larramendi sees nothing in Spain that is not Basque; Risco nothing that is not Celtic; Mariana nothing that is not Hebrew; and each is justly ridiculous in the eyes of his opponent.
In the opening of any field, whether of modern discovery or of ancient research, we commence by assuming as many people as we find names, and only on proof do we admit that two or more belong to one tribe or race. Proceeding by this simple method, and applying to Spain the rule undeviatingly adopted everywhere else, the ancient population will present no difficulty. We hear ofHispani, ofIberi, ofKeltoi; unquestionably, then, there were three races distinct in their tongue, time, and habitation. Each of the theories would annihilate two of these to establish the third. As soon as we accept thenames handed down, the theories fall to the ground.
I commence, therefore, by denying the authority in this case of “Philology,” “Sprachenkunde,” “Glottology,”[262]or whatever other name the science may rejoice in; and notwithstanding the contempt to which I may thereby be exposed,[263]I cannot put aside Herodotus and Strabo, Cæsar and Pliny. Persisting in the old notions, I cannot see, in the Iberi, Asiatic-Europeans, or Indo-Germans. I must hold theGaulsto be Gauls and theBasquesBasques, as I should if there never had been a Babel of bricks or a Babel of philologists—if there were still but one tongue for man, as but one bark and one bray for the dog and the ass, and Iberian, Celt, and Basque, preserved in common the tongue of Edom as they do the limbs of Adam.
The conclusions which I hope to be able to establish are, that the original inhabitants of Spain were the Hispani, that the next in date were the Iberi, who entering not as an irruption but peaceably, came from the south, and by sea, and spread themselves through the western and southern region; finally, that the Celts made their appearance there, also, and that, like their predecessors, they were neither invaders nor conquerors: that as the Iberi won their way by commerce and cultivation, so did the Celts by arms and discipline—not used against the Iberi and Hispani—but for their protection against the dreaded encroachments of the Carthaginians, Romans, and Gauls, beyond the Pyrenees: that these tribes were sojourners only, entering Spain by the south and departing from the north: that the Hispani are preserved in the existing Basques; that the Iberi belonged to the colonising races of Canaan, and that the Celts were the forefathers of the clans who at present dwell in the Highlands of Scotland.
Ancient as are the people which inhabit Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands, they are modern when compared with those settled in the north of Spain. Whence the former came we know—the course they followed we can trace. But the Basques are like a plant found on some single hill—its solitariness gives to it its interest, and we call it indigenous. Such are the pretensions of this people. They are the only people in Europe who claim to be autochthonic.
That a people not settled on a remote island or in a far oasis, but in the midst of us—in the country which has ever been the battle-field of Europe—should preserve a tradition which belongs to times anterior to history, is a fact calculated to instruct as well as to astonish. The Basques have lived through the mythology of Greece, the wars of Carthage, the dominion of Rome, the devastations of the Vandals, the sway of the Goths, the arms of the Moors, the usurpations of Madrid, and the opinions of Europe, keeping themselves all the while distinct, and recollecting themselves alone. It is impossible to present stronger titles to priority of occupancy.
Nor is this retentiveness of tradition exceptional in their character: they have preserved their laws, nay, more, they have maintained their rights.[264]While the other people of Europe clamour for change and untried experiment, or, at best, seek to recover a lost or abandoned privilege, they alone hold to what they possess; and who can say that what they have got they did not already possess while the pyramids were building, and before the laws of Tages were proclaimed or the Vedas composed, and what they possess is what they have kept immutable from the beginning? Why should not a Basque peasant tell us what happened in the olden time, before Homer or Orpheus sang, when they exhibit to us in their daily life how primeval communities lived?
Nor has their gratitude been less long-lived than their freedom, or their memory shorter for favours than pretensions. They acknowledge to-day as benefactors the descendants of strangers, whose fathers two thousand years ago aided them in their struggle with Rome.
But traditions and rights do not stand alone. They have a language—one which has defied every attempt to classify it, and which persists in utterly denying all acquaintance with Indo-Celtic or Syro-Phœnician. It has nothing in common with the languages which, migrating westward, have passed to the north of the Caucasus, nor with the Semitic and Japhetic tongues, that have spread through the maritime regions of Europe and over the Western districts of Africa. It is no mosaic work, made out of the wreck of former tongues; and, Titanic-like, it disdains Greece and her gods, Phœnicia and her myths.
The Basque language bears intrinsic evidence of having passed through the Greek and Roman period wholly uninfluenced by them either in structure or in terms. And by its structure, its terms, its numeration and calendar, it ascends as high as it is possible for any language to ascend: it is as primitive as any of the tongues of the Indian Archipelago; it expresses the same astronomical conclusions as Sabæism; and while in richness of vocables it has not to fear a comparison with any of those languages which have not borrowed from others in constructiveness, in the causal power of the verb it excels in their various excellences the Hebrew, Russian, and Turkish. The Basques say that Adam spoke Basque in Paradise; from which it appears that they imagine that the excellence of a language is a proof of its antiquity.[265]
That there existed an aboriginal population prior to the emigrations from Canaan, both in Spain and along the coasts of Africa, is to be inferred from what we know of Italy, which the Etruscans found well-peopled. The most remarkable feature of their first colonization was the drainage of lands, and other works and arts, which would appear to belong to old states and periods of redundant population.
The traditions which antiquity itself listened to and recorded, are everywhere of an anterior and abundant population, occupying the Peninsulas and Islands of the Mediterranean. Whether Umbri and Itali, Spani and Siculi, Osca and Escara,[266]be from one source or not, it was never doubted that Sicily, Italy, and Spain had received their original population the one from the other,[267]before the arrival of Pelasgi, Etruscans, or Phœnicians. This was believed two thousand years ago, and was equally reported by the colonists and by the remnants of the original people. Nor were these people rude and savage: witness the Latian polity, the Samnite state, the two thousand towers of Sardinia, the still existing Fueros of the Basque. The Noraghi, and the “Sepulchres of the Giants,” in Sardinia, are no less distinct from any known architecture than is the Biscayan from any known tongue.
That the Basques were a great people is proved by their names being spread all over the Peninsula, even to the sea-board or limit, which in the Basque furnishes the etymon of the word,Spain.[268]That they inherited the southern shores and were a seafaring people, is proved by theassertedcolonization of Sicily: that they retroceded—that they abandoned the Southern country and the coasts; that they withdrew in the direction of the strong and remote country, is indubitable—and such is the case with every original population encroached upon. It has happened to the Britons, the Welsh, and the Highlanders. This second wave of population did not burst over the Alps; it was not a horde or a conquest; it came from the sea and the south; it could only be Phœnician or Aramean; its name was Iber—Hebrew. It gave to thesouth countrythe name of Iberia,[269]which name long afterwards was made general for Spain by the Romans. Along the two great rivers they strewed the arts of irrigation and canalization, originally derived from the plains of Mesopotamia, and equally practised by the Etruscans[270]in Italy. These rivers they named, the oneIber—in Italy there was theTiber[271]—to the other they gave the name of the law-giver of the Etruscans,Tages, who might be the common and Eastern ancestor of both people.[272]
We have in Spain the Volsci, the Cæretani, Cære, Suessa, Ausa, Urgel (Virgil), Roma, Alba, &c. We have the proper names, Andubal, Tagus, Hamilce, Isbal, Caras, Indebal, Lucius, Baal, Telongus, &c. These identify not merely the tongue of the Iberians with that of the maritime colonists of the Mediterranean, but the colonies themselves, with those of Etruria, and separate them entirely from the Northern people, whose language subsists, and affords us the opportunity of comparison.
The Iberi had so identified themselves with the Romans, that the Latin became the common tongue. Already in Cæsar’s time he addressed them in Latin—that is, without interpreters—as he mentions when speaking of Gaul. They called the Latin “Lingua Paterna.” A Spaniard, Antony-Julian, first opened a school of rhetoric in Rome: he was a rustic who had tilled the glebe; he never changed his costume or manners, and disdained to discourse in a walled apartment. His successor was Quinctilian, also a Spaniard. Possibly, “had it not been for the invasion of the Goths and Moors, Latin would now be the speech of the Spaniards (Iberians), as it was of the Romans in the time of Tully.” In the Arab times the struggle was not between the Gothic, but the Latin and the Arabic. “Eheu!” exclaims the Gothic Alvarus, or Alaric of Cordova, “Latini linguam propriam ignorant.”
Sicilians, Africans, Greeks, and the whole people of the East, preserved their own tongue; the Spaniards, who made resistance above all others, alone adopted that of Rome. Does not this confirm the inference, which is inevitable from the names of Etruscan colonies in Spain, that the Iberi and the people of Latium were of the same race? Thus also do we find the Latian rights conferred on cities in Spain, while no such favour was accorded to Sicily or Greece, to Macedon or Britain. It may be traced wherever the Etruscan colonies extended.
If, then, the Basque has survived, it is because there were two languages in Spain, and spoken by people whose character was as different as their tongues.
The Basques still retain a method of culture which is neither the plough nor the spade. An instrument like a prong is used, each of the labourers having two: they work in gangs, and turn over the soil with one-half the labour that is requisite for spade culture. These prongs are calledlaias;—they are as peculiar to the people as their tongue.
I have elsewhere pointed out the distinction between the two races in respect to the use of butter, and the names connected with the dairy; the use of tapia for building, and the ancient armour. In these matters of the first importance—agriculture, food, building, and warfare—there is a clear line drawn between the Hispani and Iberi.
The Greeks and the Romans were not philologists, neither were they ethnographists. In no classical writer is the consanguinity of the Iberians and Numidians asserted. We have to come down to the Fathers of the Church to learn,by statement, that the Hebrew and Phœnician, that these and the Arabic were sister-tongues. When the Romans became acquainted with Spain, a period of time had elapsed from the first settlement of the Iberians, equal to that from Alfred to our days, and the Basques or Eskora had been cooped up in the north-east. It is the least likely of all things that they should have been noticed by the Romans as a distinct, or have been suspected to be an original people. Nor can we wonder at such an oversight at that time, when the same thing has occurred in modern Spain. Learned men have been writing profound disquisitions on the origin of the Spanish language, and compiling lexicons and etymologies without the slightest reference to the existing people of Biscay.
The same thing may be said of St. Isidore, Antonio De Nabrissa, P. Guadix, Diego de Urrea, &c. A stranger a century ago would have found in the philologists of modern Spain no more notice of the existence of the Basque, than of the Chinese language, although at the same time the Basque writers were enumerating nearly two thousand Basque words in the Spanish dictionary.
The strangeness of Iberian words to Roman ears confirms this view. Volsci, Suessa, Cere, Roma could not be strange to them. It could only besomeof the names that were so—that is, the names of places[273]that had remained from the early occupation of the Basques.
To us, Hispani and Iberi, Hispania and Iberia, mean the same thing. They belong to two people, and are terms of a different order: the one is the name of a country applied to a people, the other the patronymic of a tribe applied to a country. You have in Africa the name Garb in general use for the country, and for the people Moslemin. No other words are known there, and our terms for their country would be as unintelligible to them as theirs are to us. Now suppose that a conqueror occupied Morocco, ignorant and contemptuous of foreign tongues: hearing “Garb,” and “Moslemin,” he would, adding his own termination, take these words as the general names for the country, and we should have Morocco called “Garbia” or “Mosleminia” (to make the analogy complete we must suppose Moslemin to apply to a tribe, not to a faith). If then, after fifteen centuries, and when the people had undergone great vicissitudes, philosophers should arise to investigate, they might be nonplused by these two fictitious terms, and could not possibly see their way until they had discovered that Garb was a geographical, and Moslemin a tribe name, and that the ignorant conquerors had not only mistaken the value of these terms, but had made each general, and had simultaneously employed both. One nation may govern another as well under a wrong as a right name, and, perhaps, much better; but it does not follow that a philologist will indifferently well theorize under the like mistake. Now, what I have supposed is exactly what has happened. A sentence of Strabo tells the whole story:—
“TheSpaniardsrestrict the name ofIberiato the part within the Iber; the Romans call the whole countryIberia, dividing it into hither and thitherSpain,” which is equivalent to calling Great Britain “Scotland,” and then dividing it into “England on this and on that side the Tweed.”[274]
Having thus ascertained the existence of Hispani and Iberi, the Celts present no difficulty,—they are neither the one nor the other; and if it were requisite to establish still more distinctly the originality of the Iberians, we might do so by citing the contrast between them and the Gauls, which ancient writers have left us. Yet, in the present times, the opinion prevails that the ancient Spaniards were Celts. Of the two people, contemporaneous portraits have been sketched by different hands at various periods. They represent two people wholly different;—there is not one line of the picture of the one applicable to the other.
The Iberi were a quiet inoffensive race; the Gauls a warlike and a restless people. The Iberi began to feel their strength “only after they were subjugated;” the Gauls were subjugated in consequence of their overweening confidence in their own strength. The Iberi gave weapons to the Romans; the Gauls learned from the Romans the art of war. The Iberi had short, well-tempered swords which they used with remarkable agility; the Gauls, long, unwieldy swords, which turned and bent with their own blow.
The Gauls had their Druids. The Iberian temples—those of Hercules—were venerable structures when the Carthaginians approached the walls of Saguntum, the Romans those of Numantia. The Gauls and Iberians acknowledged no kindred with each other. The Gauls claimed no blood-relationship, like the Iberians, with Rome or Carthage. The Gauls were never called Iberians, nor the Iberians Gauls; and the Romans, familiar as they were with the Gauls in Italy, when they first invaded Spain, would certainly have called its inhabitants by that name had they belonged to that race. If the Iberians had been Celts, there would be Druidical remains, and some record of the last stand of the Druids, as in England and Gaul.
At the period of the foundation of Rome, the word Gaul might be considered synonymous with European. The Gauls had flowed from the eastward like an inundation; the middle regions of Europe, which they filled, became insufficient for them; they passed into Britain; they descended upon Greece; and they crossed the Bosphorus. Their adventurous spirit was not arrested by the Alps, nor their courage daunted by the martial bearing and concentrated power of the lordly people who then flourished in the peninsula. They were not, however, able to overrun Italy, though they colonized many parts, remaining a distinct people. They never crossed the Pyrenees; the Vascones and Aquitani spread even in advance of that barrier far into Gaul.[275]The Gallic emigration was arrested there by those already in possession, whether Hispani or Iberi, who were able, by the confession of the Romans, to contend with them after the fall of Carthage for the mastery of the world.
But the name of the Gauls is found in the Peninsula. Is not this conclusive as to the community of the races? By no means; it only proves that there were Celts in Spain. The word is Celt-Iberi—the Celts and the Iberi.[276]The compound term markstwo people, just as Medo-Persian, Tyrreno-Pelasgi. Besides, the people mixed with the Iberi wereCelts(Κελτοὶ) not Galli,[277]as they would have been called had they crossed the Pyrenees as they did the Alps. The Celts of Spain must, then, have come across the sea.
The two southern peninsulas of Europe were anciently known by the same name. They are the only regions of the south that resemble each other. They both have the same form, stretch in the same direction, adjoin the same continent, lie on the same internal sea, spread in the same latitude. Both are shut to the north by a barrier of rocks, and lined on the Mediterranean shore by a chain of harbours. They bear the same fruits and grow the same grain. They have been within the range of the same migrations and subject to the like vicissitudes. Their mythology and traditions are interwoven; they had the same gods, the same founders, the same heroes.
In Italy, we have three distinct waves of early population—the first the Itali, the second the Tyrseni, the third the Galli. Shall we not look for them in Spain? We have them there, Hispani, Iberi, and Celts, and thus will be accounted for the threefold affinities which connect Spain, not with Italy only, but with the whole of the coasts of the Mediterranean, and even the shores of the Propontis and the Euxine—the Hispani with Siculi, Itali, Osci, and, perhaps, with the people of Thrace; the Iberi with Etruscans, Lydians, Phrygians, Brebers, and Jews; the Celts with the Gauls of Gaul and Italy, and the roving Galatai and Keltoi of Asia-Minor, Syria, and Africa. This difference, however, must be borne in mind. The Gauls in Italy were invaders; in Spain they were not, but on the contrary, allies of the natives against the foreign invasion which always threatened them from the first irruption of the Gauls to the final pacification under Augustus.
These affinities have, in modern works, been generalized and applied to one people or another according to the theory of philologist or ethnographist. The confusion arising out of the habit of observing facts through the medium of systems has been then transferred back to ancient writers, who, without being analytical, are correct, and, without being systematic, intelligible.
Having now proved that Spain was not Celtic, the Druidical circle at Tangier becomes an evidence of the presence there of a body of Celts of considerable importance, and while indicating the point of entrance of those Celts who had not crossed the Pyrenees, will serve, also, as a landmark to trace the wandering of the Highland clans.
NOTE ON W. VON HUMBOLDT’S WORK ON THE BASQUES.
The preceding pages were written before I had an opportunity of consulting W. Von Humboldt’s work. The title is, “Test of the Inquiries respecting the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Spain, by means of the Basque Tongue.” The points which, judging by the references to it in other writers, are assumed or established by it, are, that the present Basques are the ancient inhabitants of Spain, and that these ancient inhabitants were the Iberi. I consequently opened it with extreme curiosity, to find by what arrangement of data, or what sophistry of argument, he could arrive at such a conclusion. Great was my surprise to find no conclusion whatever arrived at, and extreme care taken to avoid appearing to express an opinion. He has not perceived the distinction between Hispani and Iberi; and had it been pointed out to him, he would necessarily have hailed it as a light which cleared all doubts away:—he has not seen it himself, because he has started from the assumption that the Iberians weretheancient people, and, consequently, every reference to, or mention of, Hispani was taken as applying to them; and the only question, as regards distinction of race, arises with the Celts, viz., whether they were the same as the Gauls, and in what they differed from or resembled the IberiorHispani? All he says is interesting; there is nothing which controverts the view opened out in the foregoing pages, and much that adds strength to it.
Starting from the point above-mentioned, he proceeds to find, for every name recorded in ancient writers, a word in Basque by which to explain it. When the name is nearly Celtic, Roman, or Carthaginian, or quite so, he drops it. By such a process the names of any and every country may be made to belong to any and every other.
M. Von Humboldt having expressed his own inability to decide, earnestly invites the investigation of the learned, and he suggests to them a thread by which they may advance securely through the imagined labyrinth;—this is no other than the study of coins. As well might he have suggested the investigation of Assyrian antiquities by the books printed at Babylon and Nineveh.[278]
[254]Possibly the termMogadorerecalls another Celtic monument. It has no Arabic or Breber etymon. In O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary, the wordMagh-adhairis given and explained as, “a circle of pillars or stones.”
[255]Irby and Mangles,vol. i. p.99.
[256]Described by Maundrell.
[257]Mr. Dennis, after attempting to identify the tombs of Saturnia with Celtic cromlechs, says, “they (cromlechs) are also to be found in Sardinia, (?) the Balearic Islands, (?) on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Spain, in the Regency of Tunis, on the banks of the Jordan, and other places, and therefore it is impossible they should be restricted to the Celtic race.”—Etruria,vol. ii. p.321.
[258]King’s Munimenta Antiqua.
[259]“The original language of Spain was the old Celtic; a language which bears so vast an affinity to the ancient Hebrew, that to those who are masters of both, they plainly appear to be dialects of thesametongue; or to speak perhaps more properly, the Celtic is a dialect of the Hebrew, or language of Noah.”—Univ. Hist., vol. xviii. p.363.
[260]“Celtic Spain.”—Moore’sHistory of Ireland,vol. i. p. l.
“The Celts covered with their settlements, and perhaps even simultaneously possessed a space of country extendingfrom the Pillars of Herculesto Asia Minor, and beyond the Caucasus, and from the banks of the Tiber to theUltima Thuleof Scotland and Greenland.”—Dr. Meyer,Report of British Association, 1847,p.303.
“The Celts were known to the Greeks only by name, and they included under it, all the people between the Oder and the Tagus. Even the Romans * * included theIberians, &c.”—Brown’sHistory of the Highland Clans.
Prichard says, “Of the Asiatic European stock, thefirstgreat family is the Celts, once spread over Asia Minor (Galatia),Spain, France, Belgium, Helvetia, a great part of Germany, and throughout the British Isles.” He includes under this one head, Thracians, Armenians, Asiatic Iranians, Greeks, Romans, Slavonians, Lithuanians, and Germans.
[261]“The Basque, or Iberian,” Bunsen.
[262]Suggested by Prichard.
[263]“These propositions no one will doubt, who has a right to speak.”—Bunsen.
[264]At the convention of Bergara, these were recognised. They indeed passedsub silentiothe claims of Don Carlos; but with these, they had nothing to do, thede factosovereign of Spain being Lord of Biscay.
[265]“There are two kinds of richness; the one of form, the other of material. The former consists in the variety of precepts, the certainty of rules, the harmony of syntax; the other in attributes which belong to the invention of a tongue. In these attributes, there is not one foreign tongue which may not be esteemed poor when compared with the Basque.”—Larramendi,Intro,ix.
[266]Humboldt, (pp.55, 58), considers Osca the same as Basque, and holds it to have been a generic name of the whole people. Pliny speaks of sums brought by the Roman Generals asArgentum Oscense(xxxiv.10, 46,xl.43).
[267]Thucyd. l. viii.;Dion. Halic., l. i.Timæus, as quoted by Diodorus Siculus,l. vi. ch.2.; Strabo,l. vi.Ausonius, Lucan, and Silvius Italicus, all concur in deducing the population, or a population of Sicily, from Spain.
Seneca (de Consolatione) calls these colonists notIbeributHispani, and says their descendants were like the Cantabrians, who had a distinct costume and language—distinct of course from the Iberi—and inhabited in his time the north-eastern part of the Peninsula.
“Transierunt etHispani, quod ex similitudine ritus apparet; eadem enim tegumenta capitum, idemque genus calciamenti, quodCantabrisest, et verba quæedam.”
[268]“Españais the name by which the Spaniards have known their country from the earliest times, down to the present day. This word is Basque, without dropping or adding a letter, and signifies border or extremity. The analogy is beautiful, and gave rise to thene plus ultraof the columns of Hercules. The letternis moreover wanting in Celtic, Hebrew, and Arabic.”—Astorloa,p.194.
[269]The Iberia of Herodotus was only the coast,l. i. c.163. In the time of Polybius, the name Iberia didnotextend to the part lying on the ocean.—L. iii. c.37,§.10.
[270]“The Romans stand in close connexion with the Basques, the intermediaries being the Etruscans. The languages show a similarity in agriculture, and in political institutions. Nevertheless I am far from asserting that the Etruscans were the parent stem of the Iberians, or the contrary.”—W. Humboldt,Prüfung,p.117.
[271]Tis the article in the Breber.
[272]Aristides (Orat. in Bacch.), compares the Etruscans in the west, to what the Indians were in the east, which must be understood of space and limit, as well as numbers. He therefore included the Iberians.
[273]
Nos Celtis genitos et ex Iberis,Gratos non pudeat referre versu,Nostræ nomina durioraterræ.Mart.l. i. Ep.135.
Nos Celtis genitos et ex Iberis,
Gratos non pudeat referre versu,
Nostræ nomina durioraterræ.
Mart.l. i. Ep.135.
Not knowing Celtic or Iberian, he made a mistake, which the following lines explain:—
Rides nomina? Rideas licebitHæc tam rustica, delicate lector,Hæc tam rustica malo,quam Britannos.
Rides nomina? Rideas licebit
Hæc tam rustica, delicate lector,
Hæc tam rustica malo,quam Britannos.
“Cantabrorum aliquot populi amnesque sunt, quorum nomina nostro ore concipi nequeant.”
Pomp. Mela,l. iii. c.2.
[274]L. iii. c.2.
[275]“The Aquitani differ not merely in their tongue, but in their bodies, and resemble the Hispani rather than the Galli.”—Strabo,lib. iv.
“Rousillon isSpanish, Gascony isBasque, rather than Castilian. The Bretons are more Celtic than the Gascons are Basque.”—Ethnological Outlines of France, by M. deVericourt.
[276]“Profugisque a gente vetusta Gallorum, celte miscente nomen Iberi.”—Lucan,l. iii.
[277]Humboldt (“Prüfung,”&c., sections 41, 43, 44), admits a great contrast between the Celts and the Gauls, and not that difference between them and the tribes of the Peninsula, which might be expected from people of different origin. The union he supposes must have been of great antiquity, and could not have taken place by violence. He is not clear that we can call the Celts Gauls at all, and yet he imagines that there must have been emigrations from Gaul; then he supposes them mixed autochthonically with the Iberi, and afterwards pressed together by foreigners occupying the coasts.
Astorloa (p.199), denies this mixture of Celts and Iberians, and explains away the word: if Celts had crossed into the Peninsula, they would have been settled, he imagines, close to the Pyrenees, and would have left traces in the present people.
Neither of these writers suspects the possibility of their having come from Africa, and having again quitted the Peninsula.
[278]Coins, as other monuments, have supplied a few names of cities, but are of far posterior date to the migrations of even the Phœnicians, and are of no service in the investigation of events anterior to history.
From the coins of Spain several alphabets have been made out; but of course they belong to the Iberian times and races.