The Cymri, progenitors of the Welsh, Cornish, and Armoricans."-" In the west of Gaul, and in Britain, there is evidence to presume that the greater part of the population consisted of that division of the Celtic race whose posterity now possesses the name of Cymri ;* but in Ireland the population was wholly Celtic, of that original stem which had penetrated in the earliest ages into Gaul, Spain, and the British isles.""The ancestors of the Cymri were of Celtic origin, but they had remained nearer to the east, in the heart of Europe, while their kindred reached the Atlantic ocean. Savage war and emigration at length drove the Cymri before the Teutones into the west, whence they expelled the Celta, and took possession of Gaul and Britain."-Again he says,-" The allies of the German Cimbri and Teutones were not Celts of the Irish division. That primitive race had been expelled from the continent, a few tribes only excepted, before the dawn of history." The primitive populations of Europe have, for several generations, formed a standing subject of controversy, to which, unquestionably, the confounding of generic with confederative terms, and the want of accurate acquaintance with the languages spoken, have contributed. At least it is surprising to see the confidence which has been maintained by some who had not thought it to be essential that they should first thoroughly investigate the colloquial dialects. If languages are admitted to a certain extent to be the pedigree of nations, the forlorn hope of greater unanimity seems to rest on such investigations, provided they are conducted with due patience and candour. Some languages, it is true, have undergone great changes, and words remaining have entirely changed their meaning; though, after all, language is one of the most enduring and unchangeable things with which we are acquainted, both with regard to its terms and even its very tones or accent. The productions of the soil may, in many instances, be torn up and exported, or the manners and customs of a people may so change, that the relics which remain shall baffle the severest scrutiny; but not so their language: this remains and * This title, borne by the present Welsh, is not very ancient; nor was it given to their ancestors in Gaul or Britain in the time of Cæsar.-Murray, vol. II. p. 315, descends like their family-features, and whether neglected or proscribed, long survives all such treatment. If, in addition to this quality of endurance, the changes to which any language has been exposed, should be found in general to have in fact only obeyed a law, then the investigation becomes, not only more interesting and precise, but the access to the antiquity of nations by this line is less affected by the lapse of time than that of any other with which we are acquainted. A different opinion indeed has been entertained by some, and we do not forget the idea of Horace : As when the forest with the bending year Others in present credit soon shall die, Words, and the forms of language, must obey. But a simile, however beautiful, is no argument, and better philologists have entertained a very different opinion from the poet in this instance. "I am now convinced," said the late Dr Murray, "that the wildest and most irregular operations of change in every language obey an analogy which, when it is discovered, explains the anomaly; and that, as is common in the study of all progressive knowledge, a view of the gradual (and progressive) history of human speech, in any considerable portion of the world, leads directly to a scientific acquaintance with its principles, which may be of the highest use in illustrating obsolete dialects, in preserving the purity of our own, in facilitating the intercourse of any one nation with all others, and in completing the moral topography of the globe."* * As an illustration of the necessity of attention to the languages spoken, as far as this is practicable, I may notice a degree of discordance between the assertions of two authors, which this attention alone is likely to remove. In referring to the progress of emigration westward,-" There can be little doubt," observes Dr Murray, "that it proceeded in this order; first, the Celta, by the way of the Euxine, and along the Danube into Gaul; next, the Cymri in the rear of them, and originally part of them, though changed in point of language by long separation. At length the Cymri occupied Gaul and the adjoining countries; but they were soon followed by the Teutonic nations, whom they for a time resisted ably, and even invaded in their territories beyond the Danube. The Cymraig Gauls But whatever may be the opinions formed of these ancient tribes, whether the Irish and the Scots Highlanders are to be denominated Cynesian, Iberian, or ancient Celtic; and the Welsh, Cornish, and Armorican are to be distinguished as Cymri or Cymraic Gauls; and the inhabitants of Bearn and the lower Pyrenees, who speak the Basque, are to be associated with either, or, more anciently, with both,-or whether the whole continue to fall under the general denomination of Celtic, describing the difference between them by a more accurate analysis of their several dialects; still there is so much of affinity, that the whole must be regarded as the children of one common parent stock. A few remarks with regard to the languages spoken by each will conclude this Appendix. Two of these are generally said to be extinct, the Cornish, and a dialect sometimes styled the Waldensian. The living languages are the Basque the Bas Bretagne, the Welsh, the Manks, the Gaelic, and the Irish, which we shall place last, as desirous of leaving it to the reader's consideration, in connexion with the general subject and design of these pages. Cornish. This language, which has sometimes been denominated the Lloegrian, is supposed to have been spoken by a people who once dwelt on the banks of the Loire, but who fled to Britain before some of the Teutonic tribes. It had at one period been much more extensively spoken, the people having occupied not only the south-western but the interior parts of England. This dialect is now extinct in this country, having died away in a great degree by emigration to the Continent, after having been driven into the narrow compass of Cornwall. In this carried their arms along the Danube into Illyricum and Dalmatia; they took possession of the Alps, and colonized the whole north of Italy."-Vol. II. pp. 40, 41. Dr Pritchard, on the other hand, says," It is remarkable that it is with the Irish dialect of the Celtic that the barbarous portion of the Latin coincides. The Celtic people, therefore, who inhabited Italy in early times, were akin to the Irish Celts, and not to the Britons or Celtic Gauls."-Vol. II. p. 130. At the same time, it may be observed, that when Dr Murray speaks of the Irish having left the continent, he, as already quoted, says, " a few tribes only excepted." county, during the reign of Henry VIII., Cornish was the universal language. In 1602, Carew, in his survey, speaks of it as declining. In 1610, Norden, in his History of Cornwall, says it was chiefly used in the western hundreds. About the middle of that century, however, several parishes discovered strong attachment to their native tongue, and in 1640 Mr William Jackson, Vicar of Pheoke, found himself under the necessity of administering divine ordinances in this dialect, as his parishioners understood no other. About the beginning of the eighteenth century, 1701, Cornish is said to have been confined to five or six villages. But, even so late as 1746, Captain Barrington, sailing on a cruise to the French coast, took with him from Mount's Bay a seaman who spoke Cornish, and he was understood on the coast of Bretagne. The last individual who continued to speak no other language than Cornish was a female, who lived till she was about if not above one hundred years old. Emigration must in a great degree account for the extinction of this language in England, as it still greatly survives in the colloquial dialect of some parts of Brittany; but, at the same time, it was, of all the other Celtic dialects, the most exposed to inroad. A singular confirmation of its extensive use at one period may be mentioned. "Let any one," says Mr Greatheed, "consult the Archæologia Britannica of Dr Lhuyd, and he will find the differences of its sounds from the Welsh minutely described. Now, in all these, the Cornish so remarkably agrees with the English pronunciation, that there is scarcely a sound in our language in which we vary from other European nations that may not be traced to the Cornish or ancient Lloegrian.' The Waldensian. In the time of the Protectorate, Sir Samuel Morland was sent by Cromwell to intercede with the Duke of Savoy, at Turin, on behalf of the Waldenses; and to relieve their distress, as far as money could do so. Above L.38,000 sterling was raised (a large sum indeed at that period,) and he resided for some * Archæologia, vol. XVI. p. 113. time, chiefly in Geneva, dispensing this bounty. Secretary Thurlow and Archbishop Ussher had suggested to Sir Samuel, that he might employ his leisure time to good purpose, in collecting documents respecting the history and religious principles of this ancient people. Sir S. succeeded in procuring a number of manuscripts and other pieces, the greatest proportion of which were written by the inhabitants of the Valleys, and many of them in their own language. These papers, consisting altogether of twenty-one volumes, numbered A, B, C, &c., were presented by this gentleman to the public library of the University of Cambridge, and lodged there in the month of August, 1658. "In the volume F are collected and written on parchment, in that which is called the Waldensian language, of a very ancient, but fair and distinct character, the gospel of Matthew; the first chapter of Luke; the gospel of John, the Acts, 1st Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians, 2d Timothy, Titus, the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, with 1st and 2d Peter, the two last imperfect." Whether this manuscript be written in the ancient and genuine Waldensian, I cannot at present affirm with certainty, especially as one or two of those which are said to be in the language of the inhabitants of the Valleys, are written, in fact, in the colloquial dialect of the age, which, of course, underwent considerable changes, according as the French or Italian influence prevailed. Parts of the manuscripts which are quoted by Morland have been considered to be specimens of the Catalonian, or a language nearly allied to it. 99 The distance of the Waldensian from the other dialects mentioned, in point of local situation, would render the most distant resemblance between it and them a matter of considerable curiosity; but the resemblance between the Waldensian and the Irish or Gaelic seems to be by no means distant. "The Irish," says Davis, appears to be, on the whole, better preserved than either the Erse or the Waldensic: it contains abundantly more of written document; but as the difference between them all is trifling, I shall speak of them in general as Irish." Chamberlayn, in his Oratio Dominica, has not informed us from whence he procured his specimen of the Walden * Morland's History of the Churches of Piedmont, p. 98. |