Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/313

CELTIC LITERATURE 301 Ethnic dis tribution of British population known in Ireland as Cruitne, that is Picts, and only differed from the Gwyddd or Picts of Alba, in having come into Galloway from Ireland. The three invading tribes were the Coraniaid, the Gwyddd Fjkhti, and the Saeson or Saxons. The Coraniaid are said to have come from " the land of Pwyl, and they could not be driven out,"^ but dwelt about the River Humber and the shore of the North Sea. If these be the same as the people known to the Romans as the Coritani, they were probably Picts of the same tribe as the Irish Picts, for there can be no doubt that Cruitne and Coritani :ire the same word. The GwydJel Fn<:hti or Irish Picts who came to Alba by the Sea of LlycUyn (Norway), that is the North Sea, were doubtless a branch of the same Picts who settled about the Humber, in Galloway, and in Ireland. The three treacherous tribes were the Gwyddd Coch or Red Guidil, or Gael from Ireland, the men of LlycUyn or Norsemen, and the Saeson or Saxons. The Triads expressly tell us that the Cymry, the Lloegnvys, and the Brython were of the same stock. The different tribes of the Givyddd or Gad, including the Coraniaid, were simply part of the same people who inhabited Ireland. We therefore assume with Mr W. F. Skene that the Picts and Gad were the same people. It thus appears that all the Celtic inhabitants of the British Islands consisted of two branches, which though originally the same people had branched off from each other in language and in other ways, producing the two classes of Celtic dialects, the Goidelic or Irish and the British, as we have above, pointed out. But while we agree with M. do Belloguet that the Gauls were one in race and language, and, moreover, believe that the people who inhabited the British Islands were the same as those of Gaul, and that the divergence which we now observe between the Goidelic and British dialects first took place after their arrival, there seems no reason to doubt that the Celtic population flowed into these islands in two streams, one from the neighbouring Gaul, and one from some country east of Gaul by way of the North Sea, the Coretani, the Gwyddel Fjichti from about the Forth, the Irish Cruitne, and the Scots forming part of the latter stream, and, if our conjecture be correct, the latest comers, a view in harmony with ethnic traditions, but differing from the ordinary opinion that the so-called Cymry came long after the Goidil, and drove them westward, they themselves being in turn pushed in the same direction by the incoming Saxons. It would be interesting to pursue the subject of the ethnology of the early races of the British Islands through the conflicts and displacements of races which took place between the landing of Caesar and the final retirement of the Romans in the 5th century. But as this is not absolutely necessary for the illustration of a literature which only dates from the latter event, we shall content ourselves with giving a sketch of the ethnic distribution of the people of Britain resulting from the conflicts and displacements referred to as it existed in the beginning of the 6th century, when we are on sure ground in the history and literature of Ireland at least. Without such a preliminary sketch much that we shall have to say of great importance in the history of Celtic literature would be unintelligible. In the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th centuries external invasions had ceased, and the different races had gathered into separate states, and commenced a struggle for mastery, In England the Saxons (using that term as a collective name for Saxons proper, Frisians, Angles, and Jutes) held possession of the southern and eastern coast from Dorsetshire to the Humber the Angles chiefly occupy ing what is now Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincoln and were gradually making themselves masters of Central England towards the Severn, and were even penetrating northwards between the vale of the Ouse and the Pennine Chain, into what is now the West Riding of Yorkshire. With the exception, perhaps, of the immediate neighbourhood of the south-eastern coast, where the continuous arrival of fresh bands of Saxons had driven away the British inhabitants, and of the district about the Humber where in like manner the fresh bands of Angles continually coming must have done the same, we are not to assume, as is usually done, that the former British inhabitants, called by the Welsh Lloegnvys or Loegrians, had all been exterminated, or driven away. On the contrary as the Saxons advanced inwards and the external invasion practically ceased, an increasing proportion of Britons must have been left. The new comers merely dispossessed the British ruling families, as the Norsemen did in Normandy, and as happened afterwards in Ireland, and left the bulk of the peasants. This was unquestionably the case in Central and Western England, and in Deira and Bernicia, the present counties of York, Northumberland, Durham, and the eastern Lowlands of Scotland. Cornwall and Devon were independent British kingdoms. What the Saxons had done on the southern and eastern coast the Irish did on the west. We cannot enter here into the question of when the Irish occupation of Western England commenced, or how long it lasted ; there is no doubt, however, now that iii the 5th century they occupied a considerable part of Gwynned, or that part of North Wales now forming Anglesea, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Denbigh, and Flintshire ; and Demetia, or that part of South Wales now forming Cardigan, Pembroke, and Carmarthen, or in other words, the north and west coast of Wales. But while the Saxons were gradually displacing the British rule in the east, the Britons were gradually dispossessing the Irish in the west. The leaders of these Britons were the descendants of a certain Cnnedda, reputed to have been a Gwyddd or Pict of the east of Scotland. Another Gwyddd, but probably one from Ireland, who like Cunedda was said to have married a British wife, Brychan, has given his name to Brecon or Brecknockshire. Brychan may, however, have been only the eponymous ancestor of the Goidelic families of Brecon. The west of Britain from the Dee to the Clyde, with the exception of Galloway, was occupied by independent British tribes, apparently confederated for purposes of war. On the eastern side between the Humber and the Tyne was Dyfer or Deira, also British at this period ; and north of Deira, was Bnjneich or Bernicia, which extended to the Forth. These two states probably formed in the beginning of the 6th century part of a confederation of Cumbrian states. But in the course of that century they seem to have been gradually converted into Anglian states without any serious displacement of population, or even of ruling families. On the shore of the Firth of Forth was a district called in Welsh Guotodin, the eastern part of which about the Pentland Hills was called Manau Guotodin, and was occupied by a tribe of Goidelic or Irish Picts, who, there is reason to believe, had also settlements in other parts of Bryneich along the east coast. It was from this tribe that Cunedda, if, as is probable, he was not an eponymous ancestor, had sprung. The remainder of Guotodin, between the Lamrnennoor Hills and the sea, seems to have been also at least partially occupied by another foreign people, most probably Frisians. On the western side, in what is now Argyllshire, north of the Clyde, a settlement of Scots, who had gradually leaked in there from the opposite coast of Ireland, had been formed, and had become organized into a distinct state which was ultimately destined to absorb the whole of Scotland, and give it its present name. The remainder of the country

north of the Forth and Clyde was occupied by the Pict?,.