Chapter IX: Part 9

“Cornish,” he says, “is not to be gutturally pronounced, as the
Welsh for the most part is, nor mutteringly, as the Armorick, nor
whiningly as the Irish (which two latter qualities seem to have
been contracted from their servitude), but must be lively and
manly spoken, like other primitive tongues.”

Although Cornish must now be classed with the extinct languages, it has certainly shown a marvelous vitality. More than four hundred years of Roman occupation, more than six hundred years of Saxon and Danish sway, a Norman conquest, a Saxon Reformation, and civil wars, have all passed over the land; but, like a tree that may bend before a storm but is not to be rooted up, the language of the Celts of Cornwall has lived on in an unbroken continuity for at least two thousand years. What does this mean? It means that through the whole of English history to the accession of the House of Hanover, the inhabitants of Cornwall and the western portion of Devonshire, in spite of intermarriages with Romans, Saxons, and Normans, were Celts, and remained Celts. People speak indeed of blood, and intermingling of blood, as determining the nationality of a people; but what is meant by blood? It is one of those scientific idols, that crumble to dust as soon as we try to define or grasp them; it is a vague, hollow, treacherous term, which, for the present at least, ought to be banished from the dictionary of every true man of science. We can give a scientific definition of a Celtic language; but no one has yet given a definition of Celtic blood, or a Celtic skull. It is quite possible that hereafter chemical differences may be discovered in the blood of those who speak a Celtic, and of those who speak a Teutonic language. It is possible, also, that patient measurements, like those lately published by Professor Huxley, in the “Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,” may lead in time to a really scientific classification of skulls, and that physiologists may succeed in the end in carrying out a classification of the human race, according to tangible and unvarying physiological criteria. But their definitions and their classifications will hardly ever square with the definitions or classifications of the student of language, and the use of common terms can only be a source of constant misunderstandings. We know what we mean by a Celtic language, and in the grammar of each language we are able to produce a most perfect scientific definition of its real character. If, therefore, we transfer the term Celtic to people, we can, if we use our words accurately, mean nothing but people who speak a Celtic language, the true exponent, aye, the very life of Celtic nationality. Whatever people, whether Romans, or Saxons, or Normans, or, as some think, even Phœnicians and Jews, settled in Cornwall, if they ceased to speak their own language and exchanged it for Cornish, they are, before the tribunal of the science of language, Celts, and nothing but Celts; while, whenever Cornishmen, like Sir Humphrey Davy or Bishop Colenso, have ceased to speak Cornish, and speak nothing but English, they are no longer Celts, but true Teutons or Saxons, in the only scientifically legitimate sense of that word. Strange stories, indeed, would be revealed, if blood could cry out and tell of its repeated mixtures since the beginning of the world. If we think of the early migrations of mankind; of the battles fought before there were hieroglyphics to record them; of conquests, leadings into captivity, piracy, slavery, and colonization, all without a sacred poet to hand them down to posterity,—we shall hesitate, indeed, to speak of pure races, or unmixed blood, even at the very dawn of real history. Little as we know of the early history of Greece, we know enough to warn us against looking upon the Greeks of Asia or Europe as an unmixed race. Ægyptus, with his Arabian, Ethiopian, and Tyrian wives; Cadmus, the son of Libya; Phœnix, the father of Europa,—all point to an intercourse of Greece with foreign countries, whatever else their mythological meaning may be. As soon as we know anything of the history of the world, we know of wars and alliances between Greeks and Lydians and Persians, of Phœnician settlements all over the world, of Carthaginians trading in Spain and encamped in Italy, of Romans conquering and colonizing Gaul, Spain, Britain, the Danubian Principalities and Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa. Then again, at a later time, follow the great ethnic convulsions of Eastern Europe, and the devastation and re-population of the ancient seats of civilization by Goths, and Lombards, and Vandals, and Saxons; while at the same time, and for many centuries to come, the few strongholds of civilization in the East were again and again overwhelmed by the irresistible waves of Hunnish, Mongolic, and Tartaric invaders. And, with all this, people at the latter end of the nineteenth century venture to speak, for instance, of pure Norman blood as something definite or definable, forgetting how the ancient Norsemen carried their wives away from the coasts of Germany or Russia, from Sicily or from the very Piræus; while others married whatever wives they could find in the North of France, whether of Gallic, Roman, or German extraction, and then settled in England, where they again contracted marriages with Teutonic, Celtic, or Roman damsels. In our own days, if we see the daughter of an English officer and an Indian Ranee married to the son of a Russian nobleman, how are we to class the offspring of that marriage? The Indian Ranee may have had Mongol blood, so may the Russian nobleman; but there are other possible ingredients of pure Hindu and pure Slavonic, of Norman, German, and Roman blood,—and who is the chemist bold enough to disengage them all? There is, perhaps, no nation which has been exposed to more frequent admixture of foreign blood, during the Middle Ages, than the Greeks. Professor Fallmerayer maintained that the Hellenic population was entirely exterminated, and that the people who at the present day call themselves Greeks are really Slavonians. It would be difficult to refute him by arguments drawn either from the physical or the moral characteristics of the modern Greeks as compared with the many varieties of the Slavonic stock. But the following extract from “Felton’s Lectures on Greece, Ancient and Modern,” contains the only answer that can be given to such charges, without point or purpose: “In one of the courses of lectures,” he says, “which I attended in the University of Athens, the Professor of History, a very eloquent man as well as a somewhat fiery Greek, took this subject up. His audience consisted of about two hundred young men from every part of Greece. His indignant comments on the learned German, that notorious Μισέλλην or Greek-hater, as he stigmatized him, were received by his hearers with a profound sensation. They sat with expanded nostrils and flashing eyes—a splendid illustration of the old Hellenic spirit, roused to fury by the charge of barbarian descent. ‘It is true,’ said the eloquent professor, ‘that the tide of barbaric invaders poured down like a deluge upon Hellas, filling with its surging floods our beautiful plains, our fertile valleys. The Greeks fled to their walled towns and mountain fastnesses. By and by the water subsided and the soil of Hellas reappeared. The former inhabitants descended from the mountains as the tide receded, resumed their ancient lands and rebuilt their ruined habitations, and, the reign of the barbarians over, Hellas was herself again.’ Three or four rounds of applause followed the close of the lectures of Professor Manouses, in which I heartily joined. I could not help thinking afterwards what a singular comment on the German anti-Hellenic theory was presented by this scene,—a Greek professor in a Greek university, lecturing to two hundred Greeks in the Greek language, to prove that the Greeks were Greeks, and not Slavonians.”(46)

And yet we hear the same arguments used over and over again, not only with regard to the Greeks, but with regard to many other modern nations; and even men whose minds have been trained in the school of exact science, use the term “bloods,” in this vague and thoughtless manner. The adjective Greek may connote many things, but what it denotes is language. People who speak Greek as their mother tongue are Greeks, and if a Turkish-speaking inhabitant of Constantinople could trace his pedigree straight to Pericles, he would still be a Turk, whatever his name, his faith, his hair, features, and stature—whatever his blood might be. We can classify languages, and as languages presuppose people that speak them, we can so far classify mankind, according to their grammars and dictionaries; while all who possess scientific honesty must confess and will confess that, as yet, it has been impossible to devise any truly scientific classification of skulls, to say nothing of blood, or bones, or hair. The label on one of the skulls in the Munich Collection, “Etruscan-Tyrol, or Inca-Peruvian,” characterizes not too unfairly the present state of ethnological craniology. Let those who imagine that the great outlines, at least, of a classification of skulls have been firmly established, consult Mr. Brace’s useful manual of “The Races of the World,” where he has collected the opinions of some of the best judges on the subject. We quote a few passages:(47)—

“Dr. Bachmann concludes, from the measurements of Dr. Tiedemann
and Dr. Morton, that the negro skull, though less than the
European, is within one inch as large as the Persian and the
Armenian, and three square inches larger than the Hindu and
Egyptian. The scale is thus given by Dr. Morton: European skull,
87 cubic inches; Malay, 85; Negro 83; Mongol, 82; Ancient
Egyptian, 80; American, 79. The ancient Peruvians and Mexicans,
who constructed so elaborate a civilization, show a capacity only
of from 75 to 79 inches.... Other observations by Huschke make the
average capacity of the skull of Europeans 40.88 oz.; of
Americans, 39.13; of Mongols, 38.39; of Negroes, 37.57; of Malays,
36.41.”

“Of the shape of the skull, as distinctive of different origin,
Professor M. J. Weber has said there is no proper mark of a
definite race from the cranium so firmly attached that it may not
be found in some other race. Tiedemann has met with Germans whose
skulls bore all the characters of the negro race; and an
inhabitant of Nukahiwa, according to Silesius and Blumenbach,
agreed exactly in his proportions with the Apollo Belvedere.”

Professor Huxley, in his “Observations on the Human Skulls of Engis and Neanderthal,” printed in Sir Charles Lyell’s “Antiquity of Man,” p. 81, remarks that “the most capacious European skull yet measured had a capacity of 114 cubic inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of brain) about 55 cubic inches; while, according to Professor Schaaffhausen, some Hindu skulls have as small a capacity as 46 cubic inches (27 oz. of water);” and he sums up by stating that “cranial measurements alone afford no safe indication of race.”

And even if a scientific classification of skulls were to be carried out, if, instead of merely being able to guess that this may be an Australian and this a Malay skull, we were able positively to place each individual skull under its own definite category, what should we gain in the classification of mankind? Where is the bridge from skull to man in the full sense of that word? Where is the connecting link between the cranial proportions and only one other of man’s characteristic properties, such as language? And what applies to skulls applies to color and all the rest. Even a black skin and curly hair are mere outward accidents as compared with language. We do not classify parrots and magpies by the color of their plumage, still less by the cages in which they live; and what is the black skin or the white skin but the mere outward covering, not to say the mere cage, in which that being which we call man lives, moves, and has his being? A man like Bishop Crowther, though a negro in blood, is, in thought and speech, an Aryan. He speaks English, he thinks English, he acts English; and, unless we take English in a purely historical, and not in its truly scientific, _i.e._ linguistic sense, he is English. No doubt there are many influences at work—old proverbs, old songs and traditions, religious convictions, social institutions, political prejudices, besides the soil, the food, and the air of a country—that may keep up, even among people who have lost their national language, that kind of vague similarity which is spoken of as national character.(48) This is a subject on which many volumes have been written, and yet the result has only been to supply newspapers with materials for international insults or international courtesies, as the case may be. Nothing sound or definite has been gained by such speculations, and in an age that prides itself on the careful observance of the rules of inductive reasoning, nothing is more surprising than the sweeping assertions with regard to national character, and the reckless way in which casual observations that may be true of one, two, three, or it may be ten or even a hundred individuals, are extended to millions. However, if there is one safe exponent of national character, it is language. Take away the language of a people, and you destroy at once that powerful chain of tradition in thought and sentiment which holds all the generations of the same race together, if we may use an unpleasant simile, like the chain of a gang of galley-slaves. These slaves, we are told, very soon fall into the same pace, without being aware that their movements depend altogether on the movements of those who walk before them. It is nearly the same with us. We imagine we are altogether free in our thoughts, original and independent, and we are not aware that our thoughts are manacled and fettered by language, and that, without knowing and without perceiving it, we have to keep pace with those who walked before us thousands and thousands of years ago. Language alone binds people together, and keeps them distinct from others who speak different tongues. In ancient times particularly, “languages and nations” meant the same thing; and even with us our real ancestors are those whose language we speak, the fathers of our thoughts, the mothers of our hopes and fears. Blood, bones, hair, and color, are mere accidents, utterly unfit to serve as principles of scientific classification for that great family of living beings, the essential characteristics of which are thought and speech, not fibrine, serum, coloring matter, or whatever else enters into the composition of blood.

If this be true, the inhabitants of Cornwall, whatever the number of Roman, Saxon, Danish, or Norman settlers within the boundaries of that county may have been, continued to be Celts as long as they spoke Cornish. They ceased to be Celts when they ceased to speak the language of their forefathers. Those who can appreciate the charms of genuine antiquity will not, therefore, find fault with the enthusiasm of Daines Barrington or Sir Joseph Banks in listening to the strange utterances of Dolly Pentreath; for her language, if genuine, carried them back and brought them, as it were, into immediate contact with people who, long before the Christian era, acted an important part on the stage of history, supplying the world with two of the most precious metals, more precious then than gold or silver, with copper and tin, the very materials, it may be, of the finest works of art in Greece, aye, of the armor wrought for the heroes of the Trojan War, as described so minutely by the poets of the “Iliad.” There is a continuity in language which nothing equals, and there is an historical genuineness in ancient words, if but rightly interpreted, which cannot be rivaled by manuscripts, or coins, or monumental inscriptions.

But though it is right to be enthusiastic about what is really ancient in Cornwall,—and there is nothing so ancient as language,—it is equally right to be discriminating. The fresh breezes of antiquity have intoxicated many an antiquarian. Words, purely Latin or English, though somewhat changed after being admitted into the Cornish dictionary, have been quoted as the originals from which the Roman or English were in turn derived. The Latin _liber_, book, was supposed to be derived from the Welsh _llyvyr; litera_, letter, from Welsh _llythyr; persona_, person, from Welsh _person_, and many more of the same kind. Walls built within the memory of men have been admitted as relics of British architecture; nay, Latin inscriptions of the simplest character have but lately been interpreted by means of Cornish, as containing strains of a mysterious wisdom. Here, too, a study of the language gives some useful hints as to the proper method of disentangling the truly ancient from the more modern elements. Whatever in the Cornish dictionary cannot be traced back to any other source, whether Latin, Saxon, Norman, or German, may safely be considered as Cornish, and therefore as ancient Celtic. Whatever in the antiquities of Cornwall cannot be claimed by Romans, Saxons, Danes, or Normans, may fairly be considered as genuine remains of the earliest civilization of this island, as the work of the Celtic discoverers of Britain.

The Cornish language is by no means a pure or unmixed language,—at least we do not know it in its pure state. It is, in fact, a mere accident that any literary remains have been preserved, and three or four small volumes would contain all that is left to us of Cornish literature. “There is a poem,” to quote Mr. Norris, “which we may by courtesy call epic, entitled ‘Mount Calvary.’ ” It contains 259 stanzas of eight lines each, in heptasyllabic metre, with alternate rhyme. It is ascribed to the fifteenth century, and was published for the first time by Mr. Davies Gilbert in 1826.(49) There is, besides, a series of dramas, or mystery-plays, first published by Mr. Norris for the University Press of Oxford, in 1858. The first is called “The Beginning of the World,” the second “The Passion of our Lord,” the third “The Resurrection.” The last is interrupted by another play, “The Death of Pilate.” The oldest MS. in the Bodleian Library belongs to the fifteenth century, and Mr. Norris is not inclined to refer the composition of these plays to a much earlier date. Another MS., likewise in the Bodleian Library, contains both the text and a translation by Keigwyn (1695). Lastly, there is another sacred drama, called “The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood.” It is in many places copied from the dramas, and, according to the MS., it was written by William Jordan in 1611. The oldest MS. belongs again to the Bodleian Library, which likewise possesses a MS. of the translation by Keigwyn in 1691.(50)

These mystery-plays, as we may learn from a passage in Carew’s “Survey of Cornwall” (p. 71), were still performed in Cornish in his time, _i.e._ at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He says:—

“Pastimes to delight the minde, the Cornish men have Guary
miracles and three mens songs; and, for the exercise of the body,
hunting, hawking, shooting, wrastling, hurling, and such other
games.

“The Guary miracle—in English, a miracle-play—is a kind of
enterlude, compiled in Cornish out of some Scripture history, with
that grossenes which accompanied the Romanes _vetus Comedia_. For
representing it, they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open
field, having the diameter of his enclosed playne some forty or
fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides, many miles
off, to heare and see it, for they have therein devils and
devices, to delight as well the eye as the eare; the players conne
not their parts without booke, but are prompted by one called the
Ordinary, who followeth at their back with the booke in his hand,
and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud. Which
manner once gave occasion to a pleasant conceyted gentleman, of
practising a mery pranke; for he undertaking (perhaps of set
purpose) an actor’s roome, was accordingly lessoned (beforehand)
by the Ordinary, that he must say after him. His turn came. Quoth
the Ordinary, Goe forth man and shew thy selfe. The gentleman
steps out upon the stage, and like a bad Clarke in Scripture
matters, cleaving more to the letter than the sense, pronounced
those words aloud. Oh! (sayes the fellowe softly in his eare) you
marre all the play. And with this his passion the actor makes the
audience in like sort acquainted. Hereon the prompter falls to
flat rayling and cursing in the bitterest termes he could devise:
which the gentleman, with a set gesture and countenance, still
soberly related, untill the Ordinary, driven at last into a madde
rage, was faine to give all over. Which trousse, though it brake
off the enterlude, yet defrauded not the beholders, but dismissed
them with a great deale more sport and laughter than such Guaries
could have afforded.”(51)

Scawen, at the end of the seventeenth century, speaks of these miracle-plays, and considers the suppression of the _Guirrimears_,(52) or Great Plays or Speeches,(53) as one of the chief causes of the decay of the Cornish language.

“These _Guirrimears_,” he says, “which were used at the great
conventions of the people, at which they had famous interludes
celebrated with great preparations, and not without shows of
devotion in them, solemnized in great and spacious downs of great
capacity, encompassed about with earthen banks, and some in part
stone-work, of largeness to contain thousands, the shapes of which
remain in many places at this day, though the use of them long
since gone.... This was a great means to keep in use the tongue
with delight and admiration. They had recitations in them,
poetical and divine, one of which I may suppose this small relique
of antiquity to be, in which the passion of our Saviour, and his
resurrection, is described.”

If to these mystery-plays and poems we add some versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the Commandments, and the Creed, a protestation of the bishops in Britain to Augustine the monk, the Pope’s legate, in the year 600 after Christ (MS. Gough, 4), the first chapter of Genesis, and some songs, proverbs, riddles, a tale and a glossary, we have an almost complete catalogue of what a Cornish library would be at the present day.

Now if we examine the language as preserved to us in these fragments, we find that it is full of Norman, Saxon, and Latin words. No one can doubt, for instance, that the following Cornish words are all taken from Latin, that is, from the Latin of the Church:—

_Abat_, an abbot; Lat. _abbas_. _Alter_, altar; Lat. _altare_. _Apostol_, apostle; Lat. _apostolus_. _Clauster_, cloister; Lat. _claustrum_. _Colom_, dove; Lat. _columba_. _Gwespar_, vespers; Lat. _vesper_. _Cantuil_, candle; Lat. _candela_. _Cantuilbren_, candlestick; Lat. _candelabrum_. _Ail_, angel; Lat. _angelus_. _Archail_, archangel; Lat. _archangelus_.

Other words, though not immediately connected with the service and the doctrine of the Church, may nevertheless have passed from Latin into Cornish, either directly from the daily conversation of monks, priests, and schoolmasters, or indirectly from English or Norman, in both of which the same Latin words had naturally been adopted, though slightly modified according to the phonetic peculiarities of each. Thus:—

_Ancar_, anchor; the Latin, _ancora_. This might have come
indirectly through English or Norman-French.

_Aradar_, plough; the Latin, _aratrum_. This must have come direct
from Latin, as it does not exist in Norman or English.

_Arghans_, silver; _argentum_.

_Keghin_, kitchen; _coquina_. This is taken from the same Latin
word from which the Romance languages formed _cuisine, cucina_;
not from the classical Latin, _culina_.

_Liver_, book; _liber_, originally the bark of trees on which
books were written.

_Dinair_, coin; _denarius. Seth_, arrow; _sagitta. Caus_, cheese;
_caseus_. _Caul_, cabbage; _caulis_.

These words are certainly foreign words in Cornish and the other Celtic languages in which they occur, and to attempt to supply for some of them a purely Celtic etymology shows a complete want of appreciation both of the history of words and of the phonetic laws that govern each family of the Indo-European languages. Sometimes, no doubt, the Latin words have been considerably changed and modified, according to the phonetic peculiarities of the dialects into which they were received. Thus, _gwespar_ for _vesper_, _seth_ for _sagitta_, _caus_ for _caseus_, hardly look like Latin words. Yet no real Celtic scholar would claim them as Celtic; and the Rev. Robert Williams, the author of the “Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum,” in speaking of a list of words borrowed from Latin by the Welsh during the stay of the Romans in Britain, is no doubt right in stating “that it will be found much more extensive than is generally imagined.”

Latin words which have reached the Cornish after they had assumed a French or Norman disguise, are, for instance,—

_Emperur_, instead of Latin _imperator_ (Welsh, _ymherawdwr_).

_Laian_, the French _loyal_, but not the Latin _legalis_.
Likewise, _dislaian_, disloyal.

_Fruit_, fruit; Lat. _fructus_; French, _fruit_.

_Funten_, fountain, commonly pronounced _fenton_; Lat. _fontana_;
French, _fontaine_.

_Gromersy_, _i.e._ grand mercy, thanks.

_Hoyz, hoyz, hoyz!_ hear, hear! The Norman-French, _Oyez_.

The town-crier of Aberconwy may still be heard prefacing his notices with the shout of “Hoyz, hoyz, hoyz!” which in other places has been corrupted to “O yes.”

The following words, adopted into Cornish and other Celtic dialects, clearly show their Saxon origin:—

_Cafor_, a chafer; Germ, _käfer_. _Craft_, art, craft. _Redior_, a
reader. _Storc_, a stork. _Let_, hindrance, let; preserved in the
German, _verletzen_.(54)

Considering that Cornish and other Celtic dialects are members of the same family to which Latin and German belong, it is sometimes difficult to tell at once whether a Celtic word was really borrowed, or whether it belongs to that ancient stock of words which all the Aryan languages share in common. This is a point which can be determined by scholars only, and by means of phonetic tests. Thus the Cornish _huir_, or _hoer_, is clearly the same word as the Latin _soror_, sister. But the change of _s_ into _h_ would not have taken place if the word had been simply borrowed from Latin, while many words beginning with _s_ in Sanskrit, Latin, and German, change the _s_ into _h_ in Cornish as well as in Greek and Persian. The Cornish _hoer_, sister, is indeed curiously like the Persian _kháher_, the regular representative of the Sanskrit _svasar_, the Latin _soror_. The same applies to _braud_, brother, _dedh_, day, _dri_, three, and many more words which form the primitive stock of Cornish, and were common to all the Aryan languages before their earliest dispersion.

What applies to the language of Cornwall, applies with equal force to the other relics of antiquity of that curious county. It has been truly said that Cornwall is poor in antiquities, but it is equally true that it is rich in antiquity. The difficulty is to discriminate, and to distinguish what is really Cornish or Celtic from what may be later additions, of Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman origin. Now here, as we said before, the safest rule is clearly the same as that which we followed in our analysis of language. Let everything be claimed for English, Norman, Danish, and Roman sources that can clearly be proved to come from thence; but let what remains unclaimed be considered as Cornish or Celtic. Thus, if we do not find in countries exclusively inhabited by Romans or Saxons anything like a cromlech, surely we have a right to look upon these strange structures as remnants of Celtic times. It makes no difference if it can be shown that below these cromlechs coins have occasionally been found of the Roman Emperors. This only proves that even during the days of Roman supremacy the Cornish style of public monuments, whether sepulchral or otherwise, remained. Nay, why should not even a Roman settled in Cornwall have adopted the monumental style of his adopted country? Roman and Saxon hands may have helped to erect some of the cromlechs which are still to be seen in Cornwall, but the original idea of such monuments, and hence their name, is purely Celtic.

_Cromlêh_ in Cornish, or _cromlech_ in Welsh, means a bent slab, from the Cornish _crom_, bent, curved, rounded, and _lêh_, a slab. Though many of these cromlechs have been destroyed, Cornwall still possesses some fine specimens of these ancient stone tripods. Most of them are large granite slabs, supported by three stones fixed in the ground. These supporters are likewise huge flat stones, but the capstone is always the largest, and its weight inclining towards one point, imparts strength to the whole structure. At Lanyon, however, where the top-stone of a cromlech was thrown down in 1816 by a violent storm, the supporters remained standing, and the capstone was replaced in 1824, though not, it would seem, at its original height. Dr. Borlase relates that in his time the monument was high enough for a man to sit on horseback under it. At present such a feat would be impossible, the cover-stone being only about five feet from the ground. These cromlechs, though very surprising when seen for the first time, represent in reality one of the simplest achievements of primitive architecture. It is far easier to balance a heavy weight on three uneven props than to rest it level on two or four even supporters. There are, however, cromlechs resting on four or more stones, these stones forming a kind of chamber, or a _kist-vaen_, which is supposed to have served originally as a sepulchre. These structures presuppose a larger amount of architectural skill; still more so the gigantic portals of Stonehenge, which are formed by two pillars of equal height, joined by a superincumbent stone. Here weight alone was no longer considered sufficient for imparting strength and safety, but holes were worked in the upper stones, and the pointed tops of the pillars were fitted into them. In the slabs that form the cromlechs we find no such traces of careful workmanship; and this, as well as other considerations, would support the opinion, that in Stonehenge we have one of the latest specimens of Celtic architecture. Marvelous as are the remains of that primitive style of architectural art, the only real problem they offer is, how such large stones could have been brought together from a distance, and how such enormous weights could have been lifted up. The first question is answered by ropes and rollers; and the mural sculptures of Nineveh show us what can be done by such simple machinery. We there see the whole picture of how these colossal blocks of stone were moved from the quarry on to the place where they were wanted. Given plenty of time, and plenty of men and oxen, and there is no block that could not be brought to its right place by means of ropes and rollers. And that our forefathers did not stint themselves either in time, or in men, or other cattle, when engaged in erecting such monuments, we know even from comparatively modern times. Under Harold Harfagr, two kings spent three whole years in erecting one single tumulus; and Harold Blatand is said to have employed the whole of his army and a vast number of oxen in transporting a large stone which he wished to place on his mother’s tomb. As to the second question, we can readily understand how, after the supporters had once been fixed in the ground, an artificial mound might be raised, which, when the heavy slab had been rolled up on an inclined plane, might be removed again, and thus leave the heavy stone poised in its startling elevation.

As skeletons have been found under some of the cromlechs, there can be little doubt that the chambers inclosed by them, the so-called _kist-vaens_, were intended to receive the remains of the dead, and to perpetuate their memory. And as these sepulchral monuments are most frequent in those parts of the British Isles which from the earliest to the latest times were inhabited by Celtic people, they may be considered as representative of the Celtic style of public sepulture. _Kist-vaen_, or _cist-vaen_, means a stone-chamber, from _cista_, a chest, and _vaen_, the modified form of _maen_ or _mên_, stone. Their size is, with few exceptions, not less than the size of a human body. But although these monuments were originally sepulchral, we may well understand that the burying-places of great men, of kings, or priests, or generals, were likewise used for the celebration of other religious rites. Thus we read in the Book of Lecan, “that Amhalgaith built a cairn, for the purpose of holding a meeting of the Hy-Amhalgaith every year, and to view his ships and fleet going and coming, and as a place of interment for himself.”(55) Nor does it follow, as some antiquarians maintain, that every structure in the style of a cromlech, even in England, is exclusively Celtic. We imitate pyramids and obelisks: why should not the Saxons have built the Kitts Cotty House, which is found in a thoroughly Saxon neighborhood, after Celtic models and with the aid of Celtic captives? This cromlech stands in Kent, on the brow of a hill about a mile and a half from Aylesford, to the right of the great road from Rochester to Maidstone. Near it, across the Medway, are the stone circles of Addington. The stone on the south side is 8 ft. high by 7-½ broad, and 2 ft. thick; weight, about 8 tons. That on the north is 8 ft. by 8, and 2 thick; weight, 8 tons 10 cwt. The end stone, 5 ft. 6 in. high by 5 ft. broad; thickness, 14 in.; weight, 2 tons 8-¼ cwt. The impost is 11 ft. long by 8 ft. broad, and 2 ft. thick; weight, 10 tons 7 cwt. It is higher, therefore, than the Cornish cromlechs, but in other respects it is a true specimen of that class of Celtic monuments. The cover-stone of the cromlech at Molfra is 9 ft. 8 in. by 14 ft. 3 in.; its supporters are 5 ft. high. The cover-stone of the Chûn cromlech measures 12-½ ft. in length and 11 ft. in width. The largest slab is that at Lanyon, which measures 18-½ ft. in length and 9 ft. at the broadest part.

The cromlechs are no doubt the most characteristic and most striking among the monuments of Cornwall. Though historians have differed as to their exact purpose, not even the most careless traveller could pass them by without seeing that they do not stand there without a purpose. They speak for themselves, and they certainly speak in a language that is neither Roman, Saxon, Danish, nor Norman. Hence in England they may, by a kind of exhaustive process of reasoning, be claimed as relics of Celtic civilization. The same argument applies to the cromlechs and stone avenues of Carnac, in Brittany. Here, too, language and history attest the former presence of Celtic people; nor could any other race, that influenced the historical destinies of the North of Gaul, claim such structures as their own. Even in still more distant places, in the South of France, in Scandinavia, or Germany, where similar monuments have been discovered, they may, though more hesitatingly, be classed as Celtic, particularly if they are found near the natural high roads on which we know that the Celts in their westward migrations preceded the Teutonic and Slavonic Aryans. But the case is totally different when we hear of cromlechs, cairns, and kist-vaens in the North of Africa, in Upper Egypt, on the Lebanon, near the Jordan, in Circassia, or in the South of India. Here, and more particularly in the South of India, we have no indications whatever of Celtic Aryans; on the contrary, if that name is taken in its strict scientific meaning, it would be impossible to account for the presence of Celtic Aryans in those southern latitudes at any time after the original dispersion of the Aryan family. It is very natural that English officers living in India should be surprised at monuments which cannot but remind them of what they had seen at home, whether in Cornwall, Ireland, or Scotland. A description of some of these monuments, the so-called Pandoo Coolies in Malabar, was given by Mr. J. Babington, in 1820, and published in the third volume of the “Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay,” in 1823. Captain Congreve called attention to what he considered Scythic Druidical remains in the Nilghiri hills, in a paper published in 1847, in the “Madras Journal of Literature and Science,” and the same subject was treated in the same journal by the Rev. W. Taylor. A most careful and interesting description of similar monuments has lately been published in the “Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,” by Captain Meadows Taylor, under the title of “Description of Cairns, Cromlechs, Kist-vaens, and other Celtic, Druidical, or Scythian Monuments in the Dekhan.” Captain Taylor found these monuments near the village of Rajunkolloor, in the principality of Shorapoor, an independent native state, situated between the Bheema and Krishna rivers, immediately above their junction. Others were discovered near Huggeritgi, others on the hill of Yemmee Gooda, others again near Shapoor, Hyderabad, and other places. All these monuments in the South of India are no doubt extremely interesting; but to call them Celtic, Druidical, or Scythic, is unscientific, or, at all events, exceedingly premature. There is in all architectural monuments a natural or rational, and a conventional, or, it may be, irrational element. A striking agreement in purely conventional features may justify the assumption that monuments so far distant from each others as the cromlechs of Anglesea and the “Mori-Munni” of Shorapoor owe their origin to the same architects, or to the same races. But an agreement in purely natural contrivances goes for nothing, or, at least, for very little. Now there is very little that can be called conventional in a mere stone pillar, or in a cairn, that is, an artificial heap of stones. Even the erection of a cromlech can hardly be claimed as a separate style of architecture. Children, all over the world, if building houses with cards, will build cromlechs; and people, all over the world, if the neighborhood supplies large slabs of stone, will put three stones together to keep out the sun or the wind, and put a fourth stone on the top to keep out the rain. Before monuments like those described by Captain Meadows Taylor can be classed as Celtic or Druidical, a possibility, at all events, must be shown that Celts, in the true sense of the word, could ever have inhabited the Dekhan. Till that is done, it is better to leave them anonymous, or to call them by their native names, than to give to them a name which is apt to mislead the public at large, and to encourage theories which exceed the limits of legitimate speculation.

Returning to Cornwall, we find there, besides the cromlechs, pillars, holed stones, and stone circles, all of which may be classed as public monuments. They all bear witness to a kind of public spirit, and to a certain advance in social and political life, at the time of their erection. They were meant for people living at the time, who understood their meaning, if not as messages to posterity, and, if so, as truly historical monuments; for history begins when the living begin to care about a good opinion of those who come after them. Some of the single Cornish pillars tell us little indeed; nothing, in reality, beyond the fact that they were erected by human skill, and with some human purpose. Some of these monoliths seem to have been of a considerable size. In a village called Mên Perhen, in Constantine parish, there stood, “about five years ago,”—so Dr. Borlase relates in the year 1769,—a large pyramidal stone, twenty feet above the ground, and four feet in the ground; it made above twenty stone posts for gates when it was clove up by the farmer who gave the account to the Doctor.(56) Other stones, like the Mên Scrifa, have inscriptions, but these inscriptions are Roman, and of comparatively late date. There are some pillars, like the Pipers at Bolleit, which are clearly connected with the stone circles close by, remnants, it may be, of old stone avenues, or beacons, from which signals might be sent to other distant settlements. The holed stones, too, are generally found in close proximity to other large stone monuments. They are called _mên-an-tol_, hole-stones, in Cornwall; and the name of _tol-men_, or _dol-men_, which is somewhat promiscuously used by Celtic antiquarians, should be restricted to monuments of this class, _toll_ being the Cornish word for _hole_, _mên_ for _stone_, and _an_ the article. French antiquarians, taking _dol_ or _tôl_ as a corruption of _tabula_, use _dolman_ in the sense of table-stones, and as synonymous with _cromlech_, while they frequently use _cromlech_ in the sense of stone circles. This can hardly be justified, and leads at all events to much confusion.

The stone circles, whether used for religious or judicial purposes,—and there was in ancient times very little difference between the two,—were clearly intended for solemn meetings. There is a very perfect circle at Boscawen-ûn, which consisted originally of nineteen stones. Dr. Borlase, whose work on the Antiquities of the County of Cornwall contains the most trustworthy information as to the state of Cornish antiquities about a hundred years ago, mentions three other circles which had the same number of stones, while others vary from twelve to seventy-two.

“The figure of these monuments,” he says, “is either simple, or
compounded. Of the first kind are exact circles; elliptical or
semicircular. The construction of these is not always the same,
some having their circumference marked with large separate stones
only; others having ridges of small stones intermixed, and
sometimes walls and seats, serving to render the inclosure more
complete. Other circular monuments have their figure more complex
and varied, consisting, not only of a circle, but of some other
distinguishing properties. In or near the centre of some stands a
stone taller than the rest, as at Boscawen-ûn; in the middle of
others, a kist-vaen. A cromlêh distinguishes the centre of some
circles, and one remarkable rock that of others; some have only
one line of stones in their circumference, and some have two; some
circles are adjacent, some contiguous, and some include, and some
intersect each other. Sometimes urns are found in or near them.
Some are curiously erected on geometrical plans, the chief
entrance facing the cardinal points of the heavens; some have
avenues leading to them, placed exactly north and south, with
detached stones, sometimes in straight lines to the east and west,
sometimes triangular. These monuments are found in many foreign
countries, in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, as well as in
all the isles dependent upon Britain (the Orkneys, Western Isles,
Jersey, Ireland, and the Isle of Man), and in most parts of
Britain itself.”

Modern traditions have everywhere clustered round these curious stone circles. Being placed in a circular order, so as to make an area for dancing, they were naturally called _Dawns-mên_, _i.e._ dancing stones. This name was soon corrupted into dancemen, and a legend sprang up at once to account for the name, namely, that these men had danced on a Sunday and been changed into stones. Another corruption of the same name into _Danis-mên_ led to the tradition that these circles were built by the Danes. A still more curious name for these circles is that of “_Nine Maidens_,” which occurs at Boscawen-ûn, and in several other places in Cornwall. Now the Boscawen-ûn circle consists of nineteen stones, and there are very few “Nine Maidens” that consist of nine stones only. Yet the name prevails, and is likewise supported by local legends of nine maidens having been changed into stones for dancing on a Sunday, or some other misdeed. One part of the legend may perhaps be explained by the fact that _mêdn_ would be a common corruption in modern Cornish for _mên_, stone, as _pen_ becomes _pedn_, and _gwyn_, _gwydn_, etc., and that the Saxons mistook Cornish _mêdn_ for their own _maiden_. But even without this, legends of a similar character would spring up wherever the popular mind is startled by strange monuments, the history and purpose of which has been forgotten. Thus Captain Meadows Taylor tells us that at Vibat-Hullie the people told him “that the stones were men who, as they stood marking out the places for the elephants of the king of the dwarfs, were turned into stone by him, because they would not keep quiet.” And M. de Cambry, as quoted by him, says in regard to Carnac, “that the rocks were believed to be an army turned into stone, or the work of the Croins,—men or demons, two or three feet high, who carried these rocks in their hands, and placed them there.”

A second class of Cornish antiquities comprises private buildings, whether castles or huts or caves. What are called castles in Cornwall are simple intrenchments, consisting of large and small stones piled up about ten or twelve feet high, and held together by their own weight, without any cement. There are everywhere traces of a ditch, then of a wall; sometimes, as at Chûn Castle, of another ditch and another wall; and there is generally some contrivance for protecting the principal entrance by walls overlapping the ditches. Near these castles barrows are found, and in several cases there are clear traces of a communication between them and some ancient Celtic villages and caves, which seem to have been placed under the protection of these primitive strongholds. Many of the cliffs in Cornwall are fortified towards the land by walls and ditches, thus cutting off these extreme promontories from communication with the land, as they are by nature inaccessible from the sea. Some antiquarians ascribed these castles to the Danes, the very last people, one would think, to shut themselves up in such hopeless retreats. Here, too, as in other cases, a popular etymology may have taken the place of an historical authority, and the Cornish word for castle being _Dinas_ as in _Castle-an-Dinas_, _Pendennis_, etc., the later Saxon-speaking population may have been reminded by _Dinas_ of the Danes, and on the strength of this vague similarity have ascribed to these pirates the erection of the Cornish castles.

It is indeed difficult, with regard to these castles, to be positive as to the people by whom they were constructed. Tradition and history point to Romans and Saxons, as well as to Celts; nor is it at all unlikely that many of these half-natural, half-artificial strongholds, though originally planned by the Celtic inhabitants, were afterwards taken possession of and strengthened by Romans or Saxons.

But no such doubts are allowed with regard to Cornish huts, of which some striking remains have been preserved in Cornwall and other parts of England, particularly in those which, to the very last, remained the true home of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain. The houses and huts of the Romans were rectangular, nor is there any evidence to show that the Saxon ever approved of the circular style in domestic architecture.

If, then, we find these so-called bee-hive huts in places peculiarly Celtic, and if we remember that so early a writer as Strabo(57) was struck with the same strange style of Celtic architecture, we can hardly be suspected of Celtomania, if we claim them as Celtic workmanship, and dwell with a more than ordinary interest on these ancient chambers, now long deserted and nearly smothered with ferns and weeds, but in their general planning, as well as in their masonry, clearly exhibiting before us something of the arts and the life of the earliest inhabitants of these isles. Let anybody who has a sense of antiquity, and who can feel the spark which is sent on to us through an unbroken chain of history, when we stand on the Acropolis or on the Capitol, or when we read a ballad of Homer or a hymn of the Veda,—nay, if we but read in a proper spirit a chapter of the Old Testament too,—let such a man look at the Celtic huts at Bosprennis or Chysauster, and discover for himself, through the ferns and brambles, the old gray walls, slightly sloping inward, and arranged according to a design that cannot be mistaken; and miserable as these shapeless clumps may appear to the thoughtless traveller, they will convey to the true historian a lesson which he could hardly learn anywhere else. The ancient Britons will no longer be a mere name to him, no mere Pelasgians or Tyrrhenians. He has seen their homes and their handiwork; he has stood behind the walls which protected their lives and property; he has touched the stones which their hands piled up rudely, yet thoughtfully. And if that small spark of sympathy for those who gave the honored name of Britain to these islands has once been kindled among a few who have the power of influencing public opinion in England, we feel certain that something will be done to preserve what can still be preserved of Celtic remains from further destruction. It does honor to the British Parliament that large sums are granted, when it is necessary, to bring to these safe shores whatever can still be rescued from the ruins of Greece and Italy, of Lycia, Pergamos, Palestine, Egypt, Babylon, or Nineveh. But while explorers and excavators are sent to those distant countries, and the statues of Greece, the coffins of Egypt, and the winged monsters of Nineveh, are brought home in triumph to the portals of the British Museum, it is painful to see the splendid granite slabs of British cromlechs thrown down and carted away, stone circles destroyed to make way for farming improvements, and ancient huts and caves broken up to build new houses and stables, with the stones thus ready to hand. It is high time, indeed, that something should be done; and nothing will avail but to place every truly historical monument under national protection. Individual efforts may answer here and there, and a right spirit may be awakened from time to time by local societies; but during intervals of apathy mischief is done that can never be mended; and unless the damaging of national monuments, even though they should stand on private ground, is made a misdemeanor, we doubt whether, two hundred years hence, any enterprising explorer would be as fortunate as Mr. Layard and Sir H. Rawlinson have been in Babylon and Nineveh, and whether one single cromlech would be left for him to carry away to the National Museum of the Maoris. It is curious that the willful damage done to Logan Stones, once in the time of Cromwell by Shrubsall, and more recently by Lieutenant Goldsmith, should have raised such indignation, while acts of Vandalism, committed against real antiquities, are allowed to pass unnoticed. Mr. Scawen, in speaking of the mischief done by strangers in Cornwall, says:—

“Here, too, we may add, what wrong another sort of strangers has
done to us, especially in the civil wars, and in particular by
destroying of Mincamber, a famous monument, being a rock of
infinite weight, which, as a burden, was laid upon other great
stones, and yet so equally thereon poised up by Nature only, as a
little child could instantly move it, but no one man or many
remove it. This natural monument all travellers that came that way
desired to behold; but in the time of Oliver’s usurpation, when
all monumental things became despicable, one Shrubsall, one of
Oliver’s heroes, then Governor of Pendennis, by labor and much
ado, caused to be undermined and thrown down, to the great grief
of the country; but to his own great glory, as he thought, doing
it, as he said, with a small cane in his hand. I myself have heard
him to boast of this act, being a prisoner then under him.”

Mr. Scawen, however, does not tell us that this Shrubsall, in throwing down the Mincamber, _i.e._ the Mênamber, acted very like the old missionaries in felling the sacred oaks in Germany. Merlin, it was believed, had proclaimed that this stone should stand until England had no king; and as Cornwall was a stronghold of the Stuarts, the destruction of this loyal stone may have seemed a matter of wise policy.

Even the foolish exploit of Lieutenant Goldsmith, in 1824, would seem to have had some kind of excuse. Dr. Borlase had asserted “that it was _morally_ impossible that any lever, or indeed force, however applied in a mechanical way, could remove the famous Logan rock at Trereen Dinas from its present position.” Ptolemy, the son of Hephæstion, had made a similar remark about the Gigoman rock,(58) stating that it might be stirred with the stalk of an asphodel, but could not be removed by any force. Lieutenant Goldsmith, living in an age of experimental philosophy, undertook the experiment, in order to show that it was _physically_ possible to overthrow the Logan; and he did it. He was, however, very properly punished for this unscientific experiment, and he had to replace the stone at his own expense.