NA TURE
514
THE FOREFATHERS OF* THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
[March
17,
1870
and the dark types. Not only do the dark Celtic-speakers of the Scotch Highlands lie five or six degrees farther north than the fair Black-foresters of Germany but, to the north of all the fair inhabitants of Europe, in Lapland, there lives a race of people very different in their characters from the dark stock of Britain, but still having black hair, black eyes, and swarthy yellowish complexions. Thus, having regard only to physical characters, the population of Europe falls into three broad bands, which run in a rough way from west to east. In the north is the zone of the blackhaiied, black-eyed Mongoloid Lapps. In the south is the zone of the people who resemble the dark type of the British Islands, and who have been called Meloncicliroi ; between them lies the broad belt of fair people, who liave been termed Xanthochroi. And if this were a mere natural history question, the facts I have mentioned would allow us to draw but one conclusion as namely, that to the origin of the population of these islands the dark type has been furnished by immigrants from the Continental Ahlaiiocliroi ; the fair type by immigrants from the ConBut history and philology have every tinental Xmilliochroi. and I must now try right to be heard in such a matter as this as well as I can (for I am neither historian nor philologer) to put before you what they have to say. What history tells us, so far as it goes, is quite in accordance with the suggestions of biology. It is certain that, from the fifth century to the tenth a vast number of people from North Germany and Scandinavia poured into the British Islands on all sitles, but, as might be expected, most persistently and numeThey brought with rously into the eastern moiety of Britain. them languages which may properly and conveniently be termed dialects of Teutonic, in contradistinction to the indigenous Out of the North German dialects the dialects of Celtic. language usually known as Anglo-Saxon was developed, and from it, by subsequent modification and aljsorption of, for the most part, Scandinavian, Celtic, and French elements, has grown English. The invasion which thus changed the language of Britain introduced no new element into the physical conformatile people, so far as stature and complexion are contion of cerned, though it m.ay have done so in the matter of cranial Saxons, Danes, and conformation. It is unquestioned that Norsemen were alike a tall, fair- haired jjeople ; and their immigration strengthened the Xanthochroic element of our population, but added nothing new, unless it were a longer form of head. It is a very remarkable circumstance that the skulls of the existing Scandinavians and of the Allemanni and Saxons, if not of the whole of the ancient Germans are long, while those of the South Germans and Swiss of the present day, and those which Thus, very probably belonged to the ancient Belga:, are round. to put the matter in another way, tall stature, fair hair, and blue eyes, in a native of Britain, are no evidence of his descent rather from the primitive Celtic-siieaking, than from the immigr.int Teutonic-speaking, element of our population, or the reverse. He is as likely to be a "Celt " as a "Teuton;" a "Teuton" as a "Celt." But history teaches us more than this. There is the clearest evidence that the Gauls the Celtic-speaking people who burnt Rome nearly four centuries before our era belonged to the fair type, and neither by their stature, their complexions, the colour of their eyes or their hair, were distinguishable from such Teutonic-speaking people as the Goths, who sacked Rome four centuries after it and that, for these eight centuries at any rate, North-western, Central, Eastern Europe, and the -Hestern part of Central Asia were occupied by a tall, fair, blue-eyed people* who were known by the names of Celta.', Belgx, Germani, Vencdi or Wends, and Alani, according to the districts which they occupied and the languages which they spoke.t Thus, w hen history first makes known the Celtic language to us, it is in the mouths of a people extremely similar in their outward ajjpearance to the Gcrnians and the .Slavoni.ms ; and when the affinities of the Celtic, the Teutonic, and Slavonic languages are worked out by the philologer, they are all found to belong lo the same great group of Aryan languages. The arginnent to be drawn Irom tfie physical affinity of the Celtic-speaking v.'ith the fair
English people of the present day present THEphysical which are extremely
two types of
different in their
structure,
most marked forms, though they pass into one another by every The one type is tall, fair-complexioned, shade of gradation. yellow or red haired, and blue-eyed the other, short, darkThe two types complexioned, black-haired, and black-eyed. and their intermediate gradations are, at present, to be found side by side in most parts of the liritish Islands Ijut there is a marked predominance of the fair ty])e in the eastern half of Britain. Tire languages spoken by the English people have, at the present English speakers time, no relation to these two physical types and Celtic speakers belonging no less to the one type than to the other. Nor are the two Celtic dialects, Cymric and Gaelic, confined to people of the one ur the other physical type, as both the types described are exhibited in their extreme forms among Welshmen, Higlilanders, and Irishmen.
The earliest historical records of the nature of the population of Britain, furnished hy C«sar, Stralio, and Tacitus, take us back nineteen hundred years, and sliow that, at that time, the physical characters of the population might be described in the same language as at present. The people of South-eastern England and of Caledonia were certainly tall, fair, and blue-eyed, with hair varyinf^ from yellow to red in hue ; while, in South Wales, they had dark hair and complexions, resembling the Spaniards of that day. But there was a wonderful difference in language between the ancient and the modern inhabitants of these islands, inasmuch as all these people of Britain, so far as we know, spoke the Cymric dialect of the Celtic tongue ; while it is probable, though we have no absolute knowledge on this jioint, that in Ireland they spoke Gaelic. Thus, at the time of the Roman invasion, the outward physical characters of the population of these islands were mucli what they are now, though the language spoken was, probably, altogether Celtic. And there was no parity between the distribution of the Cymric and Gaelic dialects of the Celtic and that of the two physical types, any more than there is now between English and Celtic and the fair and dark stocks by which those languages are spoken. If we confine our attention to the British Islantis, therefore, we have absolutely no means of ascribing any special pliysical characters to the Celtic-speaking people. British, or Irisli, " Celt " might be tall or short, dark or fair, rounded-headed or long-headed; and the remark of Professor Max Miillcr that it is as rational to speak of a dolichocephalic language as of a Celtic skull is, for the " Celts " of Britain, per-
A
fectly justified.
two con-
'hence was this Celtic-speaking people, vith dark and fair forms, which inhabited Britain nineteen hundred years ago, derived? The position of the British Islands is sufficient to suggest the extreme probability that it migrated from Europe, the eastern and the southern faces of these islands being ^vitllin easy reach of the .shores of those countries which are now Norway, Denmark, North Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Erance. And the jjrobability suggested by tlic facts of geography becomes converted into a certainty by those of ethnology and of histoiy. its
trasted
In the first place, if we turn to the existing population of the continent of Europe and Asia, we shall at once recognise our two physical types the fair and the dark. From Norway to North-eastern France the predominant constituents of the riverain ]")opulation of the North Sea and of the British Ciiannel are tall, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. In North-western France the proportion of short and dark people increases, until, in Southern and South-western France, they are the chief constituents of the the population. traveller who should set out from Orkney Islands and call at every port in the North Sea, and who then should make a land journey from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the Don, ^vould liiid the people with wliom he met to be gener.ally, an<l in many regions exclusively, of the fair type. On the other hand, if he set out from Galway and cruised along the western coasts of these islands, and of France and of Spain and the north shore of the Mediterranean, he would find as marked a predominance of the dark type. In fact, the population of the southern and western parts of France, of Spain, of the Ligurian shore, and of Western and Southern Italy, is as generally dark as that of North Germany is fair. There is no reason to think that climatal conditions have had an5thing whatever to do with this singular distribution of the
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The
st-ry told
by Suetonius, that Caligula
A Lecmre
by Piot Huxley, by ihc autlior.
delivered
13, ai:d revised
in Si.
Ceo-gc's
H.ill,
on Sunday,
tried to pass olT
some
tall
Clauls for Gerniaiis. by iiuiiiing them redden their liair, is often quoted to prove that the hair of the Gauls diflered Irom that of the Germans. liut as tile Germans themseKes were in the habit of reddening their hair artificially, the force of the argument does not appear. f Those who have any doubts upon this subject had better consult the great work of Kaspar Zeuss, "Die Dcutschen und die Naclibarstumme," published thirty years ago or the excellent discussion, mainly based II] on Zcuss, or the instructive essays of Brandes and De in Pritchard
Marcli
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Delloguet.
