Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

operation and the points of attack. Preliminaries of future action would, no doubt, be strictly canvassed in their general assemblies, to avenge former discomfitures, or the loss and suppression of their commerce in tin and bronze, by rising naval powers, whether of Phoenicia, Etruria, Greece, Syracuse. Carthage, or Rome. On no other principle of sound policy can the presence of invading British expeditions, or auxiliary forces, be satisfactorily accounted for, in the very centre and extremity of Mediterranean Europe, as well as in the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries, as in succeeding pre-Christian æras.

[ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

All this might be very good in its way, methinks I hear a caviller, besmeared with paint,' and 'robed in skins,' as ornaments unique of Britain's Druid soil, cry out, amazed at my audacity; but what proof have you for such unsustained assertions? what! mere naked, painted, skin-clad hunters of our historic school-boy days, to go so far! The idea is incredulous, preposterous beyond compare! Friend, I tell thee thy historical Scaligerian education, the tottering base of Anglo-Saxon records, has been rotten from the very core of a corrupted text. Why not be a man of thought, a man of search thyself! Why not compare a Cæsar with a Cæsar's own, and Cæsar with his Roman predecessors, and these again with Greeks and Triads ; so that the 'tug of war' and element of wrong may lapse in air of peace and truth.

"Paciferæque manu ramum prætendit olivæ.

Let us dive un petit peu' beyond the frightened gaze of Volusenus, alleged to represent new-fangled legend thoughts to Cæsar, with whom, by and bye, I shall have a separate tournament. In Dionysius, lib. VII., 3, we find, as cited by Arnold :

"That the Etruscans, according to the interpretation of Muller, who had dwelt on the shores of the Ionian Gulf, and who had been in the course of time driven from their country by the Gauls, &c."

Niebuhr, however, thinks that the passage signifies:

"Those Etruscans who were then dwelling on the Ionian Gulf, who, in the course of time, were afterwards driven from thence by the Gauls, &c."

Be the reading or the version what it may, one fact, and it is the bearing of that fact that we have to deal with, cannot but be patent to the docti indoctique' of the schools, that the Cimbro

[ocr errors]

Celts drove one of the early Italian states out of Campania about the 64th Olymplad, i. e., 524 B. c., according to the one version, and somewhat later according to the other. And, in connection with this evidence another truth bursts forth, that the aboriginal Umbri, being of Cimbro-Celtic blood were left unmolested. Arnold seemed to be aware of this general fact, but not of the consanguinity of the Umbri with the invaders as a probable, or possible solution to the 'statu quo' maintained.

Niebuhr, also, in referring to two passages in Livy, makes him say, when speaking of the Cimbro-Celts, or Gauls, anterior, I presume to the 64th Olympiad, that they were "a new enemy" (as far as his own knowledge was concerned, no doubt), "to the Etruscans and Romans, and that they had come upon them from the shores of the ocean, and the extremities of the earth.”

[ocr errors]

Again, the Cimbro-Celts, according to the testimony of Polybius, lib. II., 18, captured Rome, and "totally routed the Romans and those who were drawn up in battle array beside them at the famous battle of the Alia. The number of these picked and experienced Roman soldiers amounted, according to the statements of Dionysius and Plutarch, to the gross sum of 40,000

[merged small][ocr errors]

"Hic anser Gallos in limine adesse canebat

"Galli per dumos aderant Arcemque tenebant
"Defensi tenebris, et dono noctis opaca
"Aurea Cæsaries ollis, atque aurea vestis ;

66 'Virgatis lucent sagulis; tum lactea colla

"Auro innectuntur; duo quisque Alpina coruscant
"Gæsa manu, scutis protecti corpora longis."

Does this statement verify, or does it annul the historical references of the 14th triad? and Cæsar's statement respecting the Briton's interference, and the auxilia subministrata Cimbrorum (or Britanorum), in fere omnibus Gallicis bellis ?" Do you want another Credat Jadæus? How long will ye halt between two opinions?

66

Hail! then, fourteenth! our Triad true!

"That was a form of life and light,

'That, seen, became a part of light,

"And rose, where'er I turned mine eyes,

"The morning-star of memory."

In this victory I see something beyond mere success-beyond the bravery and the military ardour of the scandalously-libelled islanders, and their continental fratres et consanguinei. I appreciate the able management of the commissariat department of these, forsooth, untutored, un-disciplined, un-travelled, un-military, un-naval Britishers! Now is the time for the skin-clad school to sneer at commissariat departments of antiquity, their

want of arms, of paper and of tape, and other paraphernalia of imputed civilization, which of course the Greeks and Romans had; a fine scope for an elegantly penned tirade is here, for nameless men of fictious worth!!

A century or two has passed into eternity: I suppose by this the bardic warriors of the past must have dwindled into a state of ineffable barbarity and indifference with regard to the state of European affairs. This Audax Japeti genus, this maligned race of Cimbro-Celts, was not, believe me- —(if not, you shall hear of Arnold, Thierry, and Michelet, and then, perhaps, you will, or shall, believe them): this people, then, I add, was not so exclusively absorbed at home, their island home, so incarcerated within the barriers of the ocean wall, as not to be cognizant of, and have an interest in, European politics, as the legendary historic world in its incurable hallucinations, in its morbid repetition of problematical unbelief, or obtusity of classic vision, would assign to them.

Again, according to Michelet, who seems to have honestly based his opinions on the agreement of Appian, Diodorus, and Plutarch, respecting the unmistakeable identity of the Kelts with the Cymry, Cimerii, or Cimbri, and these with each other, I find a superabundant confirmation of this, and other more important international verities, pregnant with results, though Macaulay, and other fact-perverting, truth-suppressing schemers of Cimbric history, will not condescend, in their lordly, but impotent, hauteur, or petitesse d'ame,' to note down. Is it an oversight, or is it worse? Is it a fraudulent suppressio veri? Is the dignity of a Cimmerian, forsooth, not deemed a quality worthy of civilised attention? Shall titled, or untitled names, dictate at will their crude fantastic whims as base of truth eternal in their schools.

[ocr errors]

Some inconsistent quibblers, and intellectual costermongers, through national vanity, prejudice, or otherwise, have strived, vi et armis, to refer the Cimbric exclusively to the Germanic race, without any other plausibility of excuse than that a late and fortuitous portion of the grand Cimmerian family under the sectional names of Helvii and Boii, had formed settlements, malgrè eux, in Germania. Or, possibly, plerique,' may fancy that, as an indirect Germanic origin had been un-ethnologically ascribed, by an un-Celtic, incompetent witness, to a fractional colonial portion of the Belgæ, either from alleged border intermarriages, during, or after the conjoint expeditions, or from an immemorial occupation of what was, afterwards, by the change of dynasties, a segment of Germania, they had a sort of claim, a 'jumping' claim, upon the 'plerosque' passage of Cæsar, "Plerosque à Germanis ortos." Whereas Strabo, when writing of these very Belgæ, on evidence unknown to Cæsar, insinuates that they must

have had (as we know their descendants have at this day), a sprinkling of solitary Cimbric words in their language, if they did not speak it a little; as inferred from the following remark :

[blocks in formation]

Centuries of ages prior to these events, the principal branches had dwelt in Prydain and Gaul under various cognate terms, as, for instance, of the continental Atrebates of Artois, and the insular Atrebatii of Stonehenge and Abury. True it is, that on some occasions I find the Teutones sometimes foes, sometimes coalesced as allies with the Cimbri, Ambrons, or Umbrians, Gauls, and Ligures, to repel the common enemy, on many memorable battlefields, and notably at the coup final at Aqua Sextiæ, or Aix, under Marius, the Roman general.

Still truer is it, that the pre-historic Kymry, Cimbri, or Cimmerii, gave an un-Teutonic name to the Baltic of antiquity, under the names of Llychlyn and Mormarwisa, as corroborated by the distinct evidences of the triads, Brut y Brenhinoedd, and the Roman naturalist.

The argument to be advanced against this theory of Teutonic exclusiveness requires, however, a correlative proof by a slight intercommunication between the "Isle of the West" and the Aquilonic coast of Norway. Now, the sea between Prydain and Celyddon on the east, as well as that armlet of the sea between "Gorynys Cimbraidd "peninsula Cimbrorum, and Llychlyn, or Llwchlan, in the western and southern extremity of Scandinavia, was called by the pre-historic Cimbric mariners, Môr Llychlyn; and Lochlan by the Gwyddelaeg; and is corroborated by the following passage from the "Brut Cymraeg," and Latinised by Gryffydd ap Arthur.

Or:

"Eudaf en y longeu, a aeth hyd yn Llychlyn.”

"Octav-ius navigio Norwegian Adivit."

The maritime district of Llychlyn, or Llochlan, abutting on Sinus Codanus, was afterwards corrupted, about the year 1200, A. D., into its corresponding acoustic form of Heilligoland= Helgoland Heligoland, if credence be attached to the version of the "Chronicon Manniæ."

The "Brut," or Cimbric Chronicle, however, makes a distinction betweeen Scandinavia and the Chersonesus, or Norway and Denmark, in these words :

"E dynevassant eylweyth er racdywededygyon ar Escotyeyt ar Flychtyeyt ar Llychlynwyr, a gwyr Denmarc y gyt ac wynt.'

[ocr errors]

Emergunt iterum prædicti duces, cum cæterius cuneis Scotorum, et Pictorum et cum Norwegensibus, Dacis, et cæteris quos conduxerant." G., ap. A.

Hence it is evident that Cimbro-Celtic navigators, and not landsmen, in pre-historic ages of the world, first discovered the Sinus Codanus of the geographers, the Morimarusa of Pliny, and gave it the name of Mormarwisa, from Môr, a sea, marw, dead, and isa, lower, by sailing across the Llychlyn, or German Ocean, through the "Ffrwt Cimbraidd," or Categat, into the Baltic, and making an aboriginal settlement on the Chersonesus that bears their name, sub silentio aliorum annalium.

From the Cimbric terms above cited, it is not improbable that some other part of the Baltic, possibly the Gulf of Bothnia, though unnamed on classic maps, may have been called Mormarw-uchaf, or the Upper-dead-sea, by these early marine rovers.

I feel, therefore, somewhat apprehensive lest these un-Teutonic dead, yet living, roots should prove three stumbling-blocks to Pinkertonian amateurs, when knapsacking their forced marches, and pencilling their way to Jutland, in order to examine and controvert, if possible, an old manuscript copy of Pliny (said to have been deposited in the archives of the country by a Teuton Pinkertonian prince), respecting the authenticity of a passage found therein derogatory to their views of the past; as when Pliny, speaking of the Baltic, and citing Philemon, inauspiciously remarks, "Morimarusam a Cimbris Vocari, hoc est Mortuum Mare;""namely, that it (the Baltic) was called 'Mormarwisa' by the Cimbro-Celts, i. e., the Dead Sea," where, for the present, I shall leave the Teutonic theorists, and their endorsers, immersed in the waters of forgetfulness.'

[ocr errors]

"Der hehler ist so arg wie der stehler."

Or:

"The receiver of unfledged Teutonism is as bad as the concocter."

It is gratifying, however, to be able, in all this mystification of rival races, and contradictory evidence, to squeeze out a fact now and then, here and there.

66

"Whilst Greece," says the learned Professor Michèlet, was beginning the civilization of the southern shores, Northern Gaul was receiving her civilization from the Celts (ah! but these Celts were probably some of the Germanic confederation, methinks I hear a Pinkertonian critic lisp); a new Celtic tribe, that of the Kymry (Cimmerii), joined that of the Gauls. The new-comers, who settled principally in the heart of France, upon the Seine

« ПредишнаНапред »