|
|
| & etc |
FEEDBACK
(C)1998-2012
All Rights Reserved.
Site last updated
13 January, 2012
|
|
|
|
Early Britain--Roman Britain
Pre-Roman Britain
by Conybeare, Edward
|
SECTION A.
Palaeolithic Age—Extinct fauna—River-bed men—Flint implements—Burnt stones—Worked
bones—Glacial climate.
A. 1.—All history, as Professor Freeman so well
points out, centres round the great name of Rome.
For, of all the great divisions of the human race, it
is the Aryan family which has come to the front.
Assimilating, developing, and giving vastly wider
scope to the highest forms of thought and religion
originated by other families, notably the Semitic, the
various Aryan nationalities form, and have formed for
ages, the vanguard of civilization. These nationalities
are now practically co-extensive with Christendom;
and on them has been laid by Divine Providence
"the white man's burden"—the task of raising the
rest of mankind along with themselves to an ever
higher level—social, material, intellectual, and spiritual.
A. 2.—Aryan history is thus, for all practical purposes,
the history of mankind. And a mere glance at
Aryan history shows how entirely its great central
feature is the period during which all the leading
forces of Aryanism were grouped and fused together
under the world-wide Empire of Rome. In that
Empire all the streams of our Ancient History find
their end, and from that Empire all those of Modern
History take their beginning. "All roads," says the
proverb, "lead to Rome;" and this is emphatically
true of the lines of historical research; for as we tread
them we are conscious at every step of the Romani
Nominis umbra, the all-pervading influence of "the
mighty name of Rome."
A. 3.—And above all is this true of the history of
Western Europe in general and of our own island in
particular. For Britain, History (meaning thereby
the more or less trustworthy record of political and
social development) does not even begin till its
destinies were drawn within the sphere of Roman
influence. It is with Julius Caesar, that great writer
(and yet greater maker) of History, that, for us, this
record commences.
A. 4.—But before dealing with "Britain's tale" as
connected with "Caesar's fate," it will be well to note
briefly what earlier information ancient documents
and remains can afford us with regard to our island
and its inhabitants. With the earliest dwellers upon
its soil of whom traces remain we are, indeed, scarcely
concerned. For in the far-off days of the "River-bed"
men (five thousand or five hundred thousand years
ago, according as we accept the physicist's or the
geologist's estimate of the age of our planet) Britain
was not yet an island. Neither the Channel nor the
North Sea as yet cut it off from the Continent when
those primaeval savages herded beside the banks of its
streams, along with elephant and hippopotamus, bison
and elk, bear and hyaena; amid whose remains we
find their roughly-chipped flint axes and arrow-heads,
the fire-marked stones which they used in boiling their
water, and the sawn or broken bases of the antlers
which for some unknown purpose6 they were in the
habit of cutting up—perhaps, like the Lapps of to-day,
to anchor their sledges withal in the snow. For
the great Glacial Epoch, which had covered half the
Northern Hemisphere with its mighty ice-sheet, was
still, in their day, lingering on, and their environment
was probably that of Northern Siberia to-day. Some
archaeologists, indeed, hold that they are to this day
represented by the Esquimaux races; but this theory
cannot be considered in any way proved.
A. 5.—Whether, indeed, they were "men" at all, in
any real sense of the word, may well be questioned.
For of the many attempts which philosophers in all
ages have made to define the word "man," the only
one which is truly defensible is that which differentiates
him from other animals, not by his physical or
intellectual, but by his spiritual superiority. Many
other creatures are as well adapted in bodily conformation
for their environment, and the lowest savages
are intellectually at a far lower level of development
than the highest insects; but none stand in the same
relation to the Unseen. "Man," as has been well
said, "is the one animal that can pray." And there
is nothing amongst the remains of these "river-bed
men" to show us that they either did pray, or could.
Intelligence, such as is now found only in human
beings, they undoubtedly had. But whether they had
the capacity for Religion must be left an unsolved
problem. In this connection, however, it may be noted
that Tacitus, in describing the lowest savages of his
Germania [c. 46], "with no horses, no homes, no
weapons, skin-clad, nesting on the bare ground, men
and women alike, barely kept alive by herbs and such
flesh as their bone-tipped arrows can win them,"
makes it his climax that they are "beneath the need
of prayer;"—adding that this spiritual condition is,
"beyond all others, that least attainable by man."
SECTION B.
Neolithic Age—"Ugrians"—Polished flints—Jadite—Gold ornaments—Cromlechs—Forts—Bronze
Age—Copper and tin—Stonehenge.
B. 1.—Whatever they were, they vanish from our
ken utterly, these Palaeolithic savages, and are followed,
after what lapse of time we know not, by the users of
polished flint weapons, the tribes of the Neolithic
period. And with them we find ourselves in touch
with the existing development of our island. For an
island it already was, and with substantially the same
area and shores and physical features as we have them
still. Our rivers ran in the same valleys, our hills rose
with the same contour, in those far-off days as now.
And while the place of flint in the armoury of Britain
was taken first by bronze and then by iron, these
changes were made by no sudden breaks, but so
gradually that it is impossible to say when one period
ended and the next began.
B.2.—It is almost certain, however, that the
Neolithic men were not of Aryan blood. They are
commonly spoken of by the name of Ugrians,7 the
"ogres"8 of our folk-lore; which has also handed
down, in the spiteful Brownie of the wood and the
crafty Pixie of the cavern, dimly-remembered traditions
of their physical and mental characteristics. Indeed
it is not impossible that their blood may still be found
in the remoter corners of our land, whither they were
pushed back by the higher civilization of the Aryan
invaders, before whom they disappeared by a process
in which "miscegenation" may well have played no
small part. But disappear they did, leaving behind
them no more traces than their flint arrow-heads and
axes (a few of these being of jadite, which must have
come from China or thereabouts), together with their
oblong sepulchral barrows, from some of which the
earth has weathered away, so that the massive stones
imbedded in it as the last home of the deceased stand
exposed as a "dolmen" or "cromlech." But an
appreciable number of the earthworks which stud our
hill-tops, and are popularly called "Roman" or
"British" camps, really belong to this older race.
Such are "Cony Castle" in Dorset, and the fortifications
along the Axe in Devon.
B. 3.—During the neolithic stage of their development
the Ugrians were acquainted with but one metal,
gold, and some of their stone weapons and implements
are thus ornamented. For gold, being at once the
most beautiful, the most incorruptible, the most easily
recognizable, and the most easily worked of metals, is
everywhere found as used by man long before any
other. But before the Ugrian races vanish they had
learnt to use bronze, which shows them to have discovered
the properties not only of gold, but of both tin
and copper. All three metals were doubtless obtained
from the streams of the West. They had also become
proficients, as their sepulchral urns show, in the
manufacture of pottery. They could weave, moreover,
both linen and woollen being known, and had passed
far beyond the mere savage.
B. 4.—The race, indeed, which could erect Avebury
and Stonehenge, as we may safely say was done by
this people,9 must have possessed engineering skill of
a very high order, and no little accuracy of astronomical
observation. For the mighty "Sarsen" stones have
all been brought from a distance,10 and the whole vast
circles are built on a definite astronomical plan; while
so careful is the orientation that, at the summer solstice,
the disc of the rising sun, as seen from the "altar"
of Stonehenge, appears to be poised exactly on the
summit of one of the chief megaliths (now known as
"The Friar's Heel"). From this it would seem that
the builders were Sun-worshippers; and amongst the
earliest reports of Britain current in the Greek world we
find the fame of the "great round temple" dedicated to
Apollo. But no Latin author mentions it; so that it
is doubtful whether it was ever used by the Aryan, or
at least by the Brythonic, immigrants. These brought
their own worship and their own civilization with
them, and all that was highest in Ugrian civilization
and worship faded before them, such Ugrians as remained
having degenerated to a far lower level when
first we meet with them in history.
SECTION C.
Aryan immigrants—Gael and Briton—Earliest classical nomenclature—British Isles—Albion—Ierne
—Cassiterides—Phoenician tin trade viâ Cadiz.
C. 1.—How or when the first swarms of the Aryan
migration reached Britain is quite unknown.11 But they
undoubtedly belonged to the Celtic branch of that
family, and to the Gaelic (Gadhelic or Goidelic) section
of the branch, which still holds the Highlands of
Scotland and forms the bulk of the population of
Ireland. By the 4th century B.C. this section was
already beginning to be pressed northwards and
westwards by the kindred Britons (or Brythons) who
followed on their heels; for Aristotle (or a disciple
of his) knows our islands as "the Britannic12 Isles."
That the Britons were in his day but new comers may
be argued from the fact that he speaks of Great Britain
by the name of Albion, a Gaelic designation
subsequently driven northwards along with those who used
it. In its later form Albyn it long remained as loosely
equivalent to North Britain, and as Albany it still
survives in a like connection. Ireland Aristotle calls
Ierne, the later Ivernia or Hibernia; a word also
found in the Argonautic poems ascribed to the mythical
Orpheus, and composed probably by Onomacritus about
350 B.C., wherein the Argo is warned against approaching
"the Iernian islands, the home of dark and noisome mischief."
This is the passage familiar to the readers of Kingsley's
'Heroes.'13
C. 2.—Aristotle's work does no more than mention
our islands, as being, like Ceylon, not pelagic, but
oceanic. To early classical antiquity, it must be
remembered, the Ocean was no mere sea, but a vast and
mysterious river encircling the whole land surface of
the earth. Its mighty waves, its tides, its furious
currents, all made it an object of superstitious horror.
To embark upon it was the height of presumption;
and even so late as the time of Claudius we shall find
the Roman soldiers feeling that to do so, even for the
passage of the Channel, was "to leave the habitable
world."
C. 3.—But while the ancients dreaded the Ocean,
they knew also that its islands alone were the source of
one of the most precious and rarest of their metals.
Before iron came into general use (and the difficulty of
smelting it has everywhere made it the last metal to
do so), tin had a value all its own. It was the only
known substance capable of making, along with copper,
an alloy hard enough for cutting purposes—the
"bronze" which has given its name to one entire Age
of human development. It was thus all but a necessary
of life, and was eagerly sought for as amongst
the choicest objects of traffic.
C. 4.—The Phoenicians, the merchant princes of
the dawn of history, succeeded, with true mercantile
instinct, in securing a monopoly of this trade, by being
the first to make their way to the only spots in the
world where tin is found native, the Malay region in
the East, Northern Spain and Cornwall in the West.
That tin was known amongst the Greeks by its Sanscrit
name Kastira14 [kassiteros], shows that the Eastern
source was the earliest to be tapped. But the Western
was that whence the supply flowed throughout the
whole of the classical ages; and, as the stream-tin of
the Asturian mountains seems to have been early
exhausted, the name Cassiterides, the Tin Lands, came
to signify exclusively the western peninsula of Britain.
Herodotus, in the 5th century B.C., knew this name,
but, as he frankly confesses, nothing but the name.15
For the whereabouts of this El Dorado, and the
way to it, was a trade secret most carefully kept by
the Phoenician merchants of Cadiz, who alone held
the clue. So jealous were they of it that long afterwards,
when the alternative route through Gaul had already drawn
away much of its profitableness, we read of a Phoenician
captain purposely wrecking his ship lest a Roman vessel
in sight should follow to the port, and being indemnified
by the state for his loss.
SECTION D.
Discoveries of Pytheas—Greek tin trade viâ Marseilles—Trade routes—Ingots—Coracles
—Earliest British coins—Lead-mining.
D. 1.—But contemporary with Aristotle lived the
great geographer Pytheas; whose works, unfortunately,
we know only by the fragmentary references to them
in later, and frequently hostile, authors, such as
Strabo, who dwell largely on his mistakes, and charge
him with misrepresentation. In fact, however, he
seems to have been both an accurate and truthful
observer, and a discoverer of the very first order.
Starting from his native city Massilia (Marseilles), he
passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and traced the
coast-line of Europe to Denmark (visiting Britain on his
way), and perhaps even on into the Baltic.16 The shore
of Norway (which he called, as the natives still call
it, Norgé) he followed till within the Arctic Circle, as
his mention of the midnight sun shows, and then struck
across to Scotland; returning, apparently by the Irish
Sea, to Bordeaux and so home overland. This truly
wonderful voyage he made at the public charge, with
a view to opening new trade routes, and it seems
to have thoroughly answered its purpose. Henceforward
the Phoenician monopoly was broken, and a
constant stream of traffic in the precious tin passed
between Britain and Marseilles.17
D. 2.—The route was kept as secret as possible;
Polybius tells us that the Massiliots, when interrogated
by one of the Scipios, professed entire ignorance of
Britain; but Pytheas (as quoted by his contemporary
Timaeus, as well as by later writers) states that the metal
was brought by coasters to a tidal island, Ictis, whence
it was shipped for Gaul. This island was six days' sail
from the tin diggings, and can scarcely be any but
Thanet. St. Michael's Mount, now the only tidal
island on the south coast, was anciently part of the
mainland; a fact testified to by the forest remains still
seen around it. Nor could it be six days' sail from
the tin mines. The Isle of Wight, again, to which
the name Ictis or Vectis would seem to point, can
never have been tidal at this date. But Thanet
undoubtedly was so in mediaeval times, and may
well have been so for ages, while its nearness to the
Continent would recommend it to the Gallic merchants.
Indeed Pytheas himself probably selected it
on this account for his new emporium.
D. 3.—In his day, as we have seen, the tin reached
this destination by sea; but in the time of the later
traveller Posidonius18 it came in wagons, probably
by that track along the North Downs now known as
the "Pilgrims' Way." The chalk furnished a dry and
open road, much easier than the swamps and forests
of the lower ground. Further west the route seems
to have been viâ Launceston, Exeter, Honiton, Ilchester,
Salisbury, Winchester, and Alton; an ancient
track often traceable, and to be seen almost in its
original condition near "Alfred's Tower," in Somerset,
where it is known as "The Hardway." And this
long land transit argues a considerable degree of
political solidarity throughout the south of the island.
The tale of Posidonius is confirmed by Caesar's statement
that tin reached Kent "from the interior," i.e.
by land. It was obtained at first from the streams of
Dartmoor and Cornwall, where abundant traces of
ancient washings are visible, and afterwards by mining,
as now. And when smelted it was made up into
those peculiar ingots which still meet the eye in
Cornwall, and whose shape seems never to have
varied from the earliest times. Posidonius, who
visited Cornwall, compares them to knuckle-bones19[astrhagaloi]
D. 4.—The vessels which thus coasted from the
Land's End to the South Foreland are described as on
the pattern of coracles, a very light frame-work covered
with hides. It seems almost incredible that sea-going
craft could have been thus constructed; yet not only
is there overwhelming testimony to the fact throughout
the whole history of Roman Britain, but such
boats are still in use on the wild rollers which beat
upon the west coast of Ireland, and are found able
to live in seas which would be fatal to anything more
rigidly built. For the surf boats in use at Madras a
similar principle is adopted, not a nail entering into
their construction. They can thus face breakers
which would crush an ordinary boat to pieces. This
method of ship-building was common all along the
northern coast of Europe for ages.20 Nor were these
coracles only used for coasting. As time went on,
the Britons boldly struck straight across from Cornwall
to the Continent, and both the Seine and the
Loire became inlets for tin into Gaul, thus lessening
the long land journey—not less than thirty days—which
was required, as Polybius tells us, to convey it
from the Straits of Dover to the Rhone. (This journey,
it may be noted, was made not in wagons, as through
Britain, but on pack-horses.)
D. 5.—Thus it reached Marseilles; and that the
trade was founded by the Massiliot Pytheas is borne
testimony to by the early British coins, which are
all modelled on the classical currency of his age.
The medium in universal circulation then, current
everywhere, like the English sovereign now, was the
Macedonian stater, newly introduced by Philip, a
gold coin weighing 133 grains, bearing on the one
side the laureated head of Apollo, on the other a
figure of Victory in a chariot. Of this all known
Gallic and British coins (before the Roman era) are
more or less accurate copies. The earliest as yet
found in Britain do not date, according to Sir John
Evans, our great authority on this subject,21 from
before the 2nd century B.C. They are all dished
coins, rudely struck, and rapidly growing ruder as
time goes on. The head early becomes a mere
congeries of dots and lines, but one horse of the
chariot team remains recognizable to quite the end of
the series.
D. 6.—These coins have been found in very large
numbers, and of various types, according to the
locality in which they were struck. They occur as
far north as Edinburgh; but all seem to have been
issued by one or other of the tribes in the south and
east of the island, who learnt the idea of minting
from the Gauls. Whence the gold of which the coins
are made came from is a question not yet wholly
solved: surface gold was very probably still obtainable
at that date from the streams of Wales and Cornwall.
But it was long before any other metal was
used in the British mints. Not till after the invasion
of Julius Caesar do we find any coins of silver or
bronze issued, though he testifies to their existence.
The use of silver shows a marked advance in metallurgy,
and is probably connected with the simultaneous
development of the lead-mining in the Mendip Hills,
of which about this time we first begin to find traces.
SECTION E.
Pytheas trustworthy—His notes on Britain—Agricultural tribes—Barns—Manures—Dene
Holes—Mead—Beer—Parched corn—Pottery—Mill-stones—Villages—Cattle—Pastoral tribes
—Savage tribes—Cannibalism—Polyandry—Beasts of chase—Forest trees—British clothing
and arms—Sussex iron.
E. 1.—The trustworthiness of Pytheas is further
confirmed by the astronomical observations which he
records. He notices, for example, that the longest
day in Britain contains "nineteen equinoctial hours."
Amongst the ancients, it must be remembered, an
"hour," in common parlance, signified merely the
twelfth part, on any given day, of the time between
sunrise and sunset, and thus varied according to the
season. But the standard hour for astronomical
purposes was the twelfth part of the equinoctial
day, when the sun rises 6 a.m. and sets 6 p.m., and
therefore corresponded with our own. Now the longest
day at Greenwich is actually not quite seventeen
hours, but in the north of Britain it comes near
enough to the assertion of Pytheas to bear out his
tale. We are therefore justified in giving credence to
his account of what he saw in our country, the earliest
that we possess. He tells us that, in some parts at
least, the inhabitants were far from being mere savages.
They were corn-growers (wheat, barley, and millet
being amongst their crops), and also cultivated
"roots," fruit trees, and other vegetables. What
specially struck him was that, "for lack of clear
sunshine22," they threshed out their corn, not in open
threshing-floors, as in Mediterranean lands, but in
barns.
E. 2.—From other sources we know that these old
British farmers were sufficiently scientific agriculturalists
to have invented wheeled ploughs,23 and to use a
variety of manures; various kinds of mast, loam, and
chalk in particular. This treatment of the soil was,
according to Pliny, a British invention24 (though the
Greeks of Megara had also tried it), and he thinks it
worth his while to give a long description of the
different clays in use and the methods of their application.
That most generally employed was chalk dug out from pits
some hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but
widening towards the bottom. [Petitur ex alto, in
centenos pedes actis plerumque puteis, ore angustatis;
intus spatiante vena.]
E. 3.—Here we have an exact picture of those
mysterious excavations some of which still survive to
puzzle antiquaries under the name of Dene Holes.
They are found in various localities; Kent, Surrey,
and Essex being the richest. In Hangman's Wood,
near Grays, in Essex, a small copse some four acres
in extent, there are no fewer than seventy-two Dene
Holes, as close together as possible, their entrance
shafts being not above twenty yards apart. These
shafts run vertically downwards, till the floor of the
pit is from eighty to a hundred feet below the surface
of the ground. At the bottom the shaft widens out
into a vaulted chamber some thirty feet across, from
which radiate four, five, or even six lateral crypts,
whose dimensions are usually about thirty feet in
length, by twelve in width and height. When the
shafts are closely clustered, the lateral crypts of
one will extend to within a few feet of those
belonging to its neighbours, but in no case do they
communicate with them (though the recent excavations
of archaeologists have thus connected whole groups of Dene
Holes). Many theories have been elaborated to account
for their existence, but the data are conclusive
against their having been either habitations, tombs,
store-rooms, or hiding-places; and, in 1898, Mr.
Charles Dawson, F.S.A., pointed out that, in Sussex,
chalk and limestone are still quarried by means of
identically such pits. The chalk so procured is found
a far more efficacious dressing for the soil than that
which occurs on the surface, and moreover is more
cheaply got than by carting from even a mile's
distance. At the present day, as soon as a pit is
exhausted (that is as soon as the diggers dare make
their chambers no larger for fear of a downfall),
another is sunk hard by, and the first filled up with
the débris from the second. In the case of the
Dene Holes, this débris must have been required
for some other purpose; and to this fact alone we
owe their preservation. It is probable that the celebrated
cave at Royston in Hertfordshire was originally
dug for this purpose, though afterwards used as a
hermitage.
E. 4.—Pytheas is also our authority for saying that
bee-keeping was known to the Britons of his day;25 a
drink made of wheat and honey being one of their
intoxicants. This method of preparing mead (or
metheglin) is current to this day among our peasantry.
Another drink was made from barley, and this, he
tells us, they called [kourmi], the word still used in Erse
for beer, under the form cuirm. Dioscorides the
physician, who records this (and who may perhaps
have tried our national beverage, as he lived shortly
after the Claudian conquest of Britain), pronounces it
"head-achy, unwholesome, and injurious to the
nerves":
[kephalalges esti kai kakhochymon, kai tou neurou].
E. 5.—Not all the tribes of Britain, however, were
at this level of civilization. Threshing in barns was
only practised by those highest in development, the
true Britons of the south and east. The Gaelic tribes
beyond them, so far as they were agricultural at all,
stored the newly-plucked ears of corn in their underground
dwellings, day by day taking out and dressing
[katergazomenous] what was needed for each meal. The
method here referred to is doubtless that described
as still in use at the end of the 17th century in
the Hebrides.26 "A woman, sitting down, takes a
handful of corn, holding it by the stalks in her left
hand, and then sets fire to the ears, which are presently
in a flame. She has a stick in her right hand, which
she manages very dexterously, beating off the grains
at the very instant when the husk is quite burnt....
The corn may be thus dressed, winnowed, ground,
and baked, within an hour of reaping."
When kept, it may usually have been stored, like
that of Robinson Crusoe, in baskets;27 for
basket-making was a peculiarly British industry, and
Posidonius found "British baskets" in use on the
Continent. But probably it was also hoarded—again
in Crusoe fashion—in the large jars of coarse pottery
which are occasionally found on British sites. These,
and the smaller British vessels, are sometimes elaborately
ornamented with devices of no small artistic
merit. But all are hand-made, the potter's wheel being
unknown in pre-Roman days.
E. 6.—Nor does the grinding of corn, even in hand-mills,
seem to have been universal till the Roman era,
the earlier British method being to bruise the grain
in a mortar.28 Without the resources of civilization
it is not easy to deal with stones hard enough for
satisfactory millstones. We find that the Romans,
when they came, mostly selected for this use the
Hertfordshire "pudding-stone," a conglomerate of the
Eocene period crammed with rolled flint pebbles,
sometimes also bringing over Niederendig lava from
the Rhine valley, and burr-stone from the Paris basin
for their querns.
E. 7.—These tribes are described as living in cheap
[euteleis], dwellings, constructed of reeds or logs, yet
spoken of as subterranean.29 Light has been thrown
on this apparent contradiction by the excavation in
1889 of the site of a British village at Barrington in
Cambridgeshire. Within a space of about sixty yards
each way, bounded by a fosse some six feet wide and
four deep, were a collection of roughly circular pits,
distributed in no recognizable system, from twelve to
twenty feet in diameter and from two to four in depth.
They were excavated in the chalky soil, and from each
a small drainage channel ran for a yard or two down
the gentle slope on which the settlement stood.
Obviously a superstructure of thatch and wattle would
convert these pits into quite passable wigwams,
corresponding to the description of Pytheas. This
whole village was covered by several feet of top-soil
in which were found numerous interments of Anglo-Saxon
date. It had seemingly perished by fire, a layer
of incinerated matter lying at the bottom of each pit.
E. 8.—The domestic cattle of the Britons were a
diminutive breed, smaller than the existing Alderney,
with abnormally developed foreheads (whence their
scientific name Bos Longifrons). Their remains, the
skulls especially, are found in every part of the land,
with no trace, in pre-Roman times, of any other breed.
The gigantic wild ox of the British forests (Bos
Primigenius) seems never to have been tamed by the
Celtic tribes, who, very possibly, like the Romans after
them, may have brought their own cattle with them
into the island. According to Professor Rolleston
the small size of the breed is due to the large
consumption of milk by the breeders. (He notes that
the cattle of Burmah and Hindostan are identically
the same stock, and that in Burmah, where comparatively
little milk is used, they are of large size. In
Hindostan, on the contrary, where milk forms the
staple food of the population, the whole breed is
stunted, no calf having, for ages, been allowed its due
supply of nutriment.) The Professor also holds that
these small oxen, together with the goat, sheep, horse,
dog, and swine (of the Asiatic breed), were introduced
into Britain by the Ugrian races in the Neolithic Age;
and that the pre-Roman Britons had no domestic
fowls except geese.30
E. 9.—If these considerations are of weight they
would point to an excessive dependence on milk even
amongst the agricultural tribes of Britain. And there
were others, as we know, who had not got beyond the
pastoral stage of human development. These, as
Strabo declares, had no idea of husbandry, "nor even
sense enough to make cheese, though milk they have
in plenty."31 And some of the non-Aryan hordes
seem to have been mere brutal savages, practising
cannibalism and having wives in common. Both
practices are mentioned by the latest as well as the
earliest of our classical authorities. Jerome says that
in Gaul he himself saw Attacotti (the primitive inhabitants
of Galloway) devouring human flesh, and refers
to their sexual relations, which more probably imply
some system of polyandry, such as still prevails in
Thibet, than mere promiscuous intercourse. Traces
of this system long remained in the rule of "Mutter-recht,"
which amongst several of the more remote septs
traced inheritance invariably through the mother and
not the father.
E. 10.—These savages knew neither corn nor cattle.
Like the "Children of the Mist" in the pages of
Walter Scott,32 their boast was "to own no lord, receive
no land, take no hire, give no stipend, build no hut,
enclose no pasture, sow no grain; to take the deer
of the forest for their flocks and herds," and to eke
out this source of supply by preying upon their less
barbarous neighbours "who value flocks and herds
above honour and freedom." Lack of game, however,
can seldom have driven them to this; for the forests
of ancient Britain seem to have swarmed with animal
life. Red deer, roebuck, wild oxen, and wild swine
were in every brake, beaver and waterfowl in every
stream; while wolf, bear, and wild-cat shared with man
in taking toll of their lives. The trees of these forests,
it may be mentioned, were (as in some portions of
Epping Forest now) almost wholly oak, ash, holly,
and yew; the beech, chestnut, elm, and even the
fir, being probably introduced in later ages.
E. 11.—Of the British tribes, however, almost none,
even amongst these wild woodlanders, were the naked
savages, clothed only in blue paint, that they are
commonly imagined to have been. On the contrary, they
could both weave and spin; and the tartan, with its
variegated colours, is described by Caesar's contemporary,
Diodorus Siculus, as their distinctive dress,
just as one might speak of Highlanders at the present
day.33 Pliny mentions that all the colours used were
obtained from native herbs and lichens,34 as is still the
case in the Hebrides, where sea-weed dyes are mostly
used. Woad was used for tattooing the flesh with blue
patterns, and a decoction of beechen ashes for dyeing
the hair red if necessary, whenever that colour was
fashionable.35 The upper classes wore collars and
bracelets of gold, and necklaces of glass and amber
beads.
E. 12.—This last item suggests an interesting question
as to whence came the vast quantities of amber
thus used. None is now found upon our shores,
except a very occasional fragment on the East
Anglian beaches. But the British barrows bear abundant
testimony to its having been in prehistoric times
the commonest of all materials for ornamental
purposes—far commoner than in any other country.
Beads are found by the myriad—a single Wiltshire
grave furnished a thousand—mostly of a discoid
shape, and about an inch in diameter. Larger plates
occasionally appear, and in one case (in Sussex) a cup
formed from a solid block of exceptional size. If all
this came from the Baltic, the main existing source of
our amber,36 it argues a considerable trade, of which
we find no mention in any extant authority. Pytheas
witnesses to the amber of the Baltic, and says nothing,
so far as we know, of British amber. But, according
to Pliny,[37] his contemporary Solinus speaks of it as a
British product; and at the Christian era it was apparently
a British export.38 The supply of amber as a
jetsom is easily exhausted in any given district; miles
of Baltic coast rich in it within mediaeval times are
now quite barren; and the same thing has probably
taken place in Britain. The rapid wearing away of
our amber-bearing Norfolk shore is not unlikely to
have been the cause of this change; the submarine
fir-groves of the ancient littoral, with their resinous
exudations, having become silted over far out at sea.39
The old British amber sometimes contained flies.
Dioscorides40 applies to it the epithet [pterugophoron]
["fly-bearing"].
E. 13.—The chiefs were armed with large brightly-painted
shields,41 plumed (and sometimes crested) helmets,
and cuirasses of leather, bronze, or chain-mail.
The national weapons of offence were darts, pikes
(sometimes with prongs—the origin of Britannia's
trident), and broadswords; bows and arrows being
more rarely used. Both Diodorus Siculus [v. 30] and
Strabo [iv. 197] describe this equipment, and specimens
of all the articles have, at one place or another,
been found in British interments.42 The arms are
often richly worked and ornamented, sometimes inlaid
with enamel, sometimes decorated with studs of red
coral from the Mediterranean.43 The shields, being of
wood, have perished, but their circular bosses of iron
still remain. The chariots, which formed so special
a feature of British militarism, were also of wood,
painted, like the shields, and occasionally ironclad.44
The iron may have been from the Sussex fields. We
know that in Caesar's day rings of this metal were one
of the forms of British currency, so that before his
time the Britons must have attained to the smelting
of this most intractable of metals.
SECTION F.
Celtic types—"Roy" and "Dhu"—Gael—Silurians—Loegrians—Basque peoples—Shifting of
clans—Constitutional
disturbances—Monarchy—Oligarchy—Demagogues—First inscribed
coins.
F. 1.—Our earliest records point to the existence
among the Celtic tribes in Britain of the two physical
types still to be found amongst them; the tall,
fair, red-haired, blue-eyed Gael, whom his clansmen
denominate "Roy" (the Red), and the dark complexion,
hair and eyes, usually associated with shorter stature,
which go with the designation "Dhu" (the Black).
Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu are familiar illustrations
of this nomenclature. In classical times these types
were much less intermingled than now, and were
characteristic of separate races. The former prevailed
almost exclusively amongst the true Britons of the
south and east, and the Gaelic septs of the north,
while the latter was found throughout the west, in
Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. The Silurians, of Glamorgan,
are specially noted as examples of this "black"
physique, and a connection has been imagined between
them and the Basques of Iberia, an idea originating
with Strabo.
F. 2.—That a good deal of non-Aryan blood was,
and is, to be found in both regions is fairly certain;
but any closer correlation must be held at any rate not
proven. For though Strabo asserts that the Silurians
differ not only in looks but in language from the
Britons, while in both resembling the Iberians, it is
probable that he derives his information from Pytheas
four centuries earlier. At that date non-Aryan speech
may very possibly still have lingered on in the West,
but there is no trace whatever to be found of anything
of the sort in the nomenclature of the district during
or since the Roman occupation. All is unmitigated
Celtic. We may, however, possibly find a confirmation
of Strabo's view in the word Logris applied to
Southern Britain by the Celtic bards of the Arturian
cycle. The word is said to be akin to Liger (Loire),
and tradition traced the origin of the Loegrians to the
southern banks of that river, which were undoubtedly
held by Iberian (Basque) peoples at least to the date
when Pytheas visited those parts. The name, indeed,
seems to be connected with that of the Ligurians, a
kindred non-Aryan community, surviving, in historical
times, only amongst the Maritime Alps.
F. 3.—It is probable that the status of each clan
was continually shifting; and what little we know of
their names and locations, their rise and their fall,
presents an even more kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria
than the mediaeval history of the Scotch Highlands,
or the principalities of Wales, or the ever-changing
septs of ancient Ireland. Tribes absorbed or destroyed
by conquering tribes, tribes confederating with others
under a fresh name, this or that chief becoming a
new eponymous hero,—such is the ceaseless spectacle
of unrest of which the history of ancient Britain gives
us glimpses.
F. 4.—By the time that these glimpses become anything
like continuous, things were further complicated
by two additional elements of disturbance. One of
these was the continuous influx of new settlers from
Gaul, which was going on throughout the 1st century
B.C. Caesar tells us that the tribes of Kent, Sussex, and
Essex were all of the Belgic stock, and we shall see
that the higher politics of his day were much influenced
by the fact that one and the same tribal chief claimed
territorial rights in Gaul and Britain at once; just
like so many of our mediaeval barons. The other
was the coincidence that just at this period the
British tribes began to be affected by the turbulent
stage of constitutional development connected, in
Greece and Rome, with the abolition of royalty.
F. 5.—The primitive Aryan community (so far, at
least, as the western branch of the race is concerned)
everywhere presents to us the threefold element of
King, Lords, and Commons. The King is supreme,
he reigns by right of birth (though not according to
strict primogeniture), and he not only reigns but
governs. Theoretically he is absolute, but practically
can do little without taking counsel with his Lords,
the aristocracy of the tribe, originally an aristocracy
of birth, but constantly tending to become one of
wealth. The Commons gather to ratify the decrees
of their betters, with a theoretical right to dissent
(though not to discuss), a right which they seldom or
never at once care and dare to exercise.
F. 6.—In course of time we see that everywhere
the supremacy of the Kings became more and more
distasteful to the Aristocracy, and was everywhere
set aside, sometimes by a process of quiet depletion
of the Royal prerogative, sometimes by a revolution;
the change being, in the former case, often informal,
with the name, and sometimes even the succession,
of the eviscerated office still lingering on. The executive
then passed to the Lords, and the state became
an oligarchical Republic, such as we see in Rome
after the expulsion of the Tarquins. Next came the
rise of the Lower Orders, who insisted with ever-increasing
urgency on claiming a share in the direction
of politics, and in every case with ultimate success.
Almost invariably the leaders who headed this uprising
of the masses grasped for themselves in the end
the supreme power, and as irresponsible "Dictators,"
"Tyrants," or "Emperors" took the place of the old
constitutional Kings.
F. 7.—Such was the cycle of events both in Rome
and in the Greek commonwealths; though in the
latter it ran its course within a few generations, whilst
amongst the law-abiding Romans it was a matter of
centuries. And the pages of Caesar bear abundant
testimony to the fact that in his day the Gallic tribes
were all in the state of turmoil which mostly attended
the "Regifugium" period of development. Some
were still under their old Kings; some, like the Nervii,
had developed a Senatorial government; in some the
Commons had set up "Tyrants" of their own. It
was this general unrest which contributed in no small
degree to the Roman conquest of Gaul. And the
same state of things seems to have been begun in
Britain also. The earliest inscribed British coins
bear, some of them the names of Kings and Princes,
others those of peoples, others again designations
which seem to point to Tyrants. To the first class
belong those of Commius, Tincommius, Tasciovan,
Cunobelin, etc.; to the second those of the Iceni
and the Cassi; to the last the northern mintage of
Volisius, a potentate of the Parisii, who calls himself
Domnoverus, which, according to Professor Rhys,[45]
literally signifies "Demagogue."
SECTION G.
Clans at Julian invasion—Permanent natural boundaries—Population—Celtic settlements—"Duns"
—Maiden Castle.
G. 1.—The earliest of these inscribed coins, however,
take us no further back than the Julian invasion;
and it is to Caesar's Commentaries that we are indebted
for the first recorded names of any British tribes. It
is no part of his design to give any regular list of the
clans or their territories; he merely makes incidental
mention of such as he had to do with. Thus we
learn of the four nameless clans who occupied Kent
(a region which has kept its territorial name unchanged
from the days of Pytheas), and also of the
Atrebates, Cateuchlani, Trinobantes, Cenimagni,
Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi.
G. 2.—To the localities held by these tribes Caesar
bears no direct evidence; but from his narrative, as
well as from local remains and later references, we
know that the Trinobantes possessed Essex, and the
Cenimagni (i.e. "the Great Iceni" as they were still
called,46 though their power was on the wane), East
Anglia; while the Cateuchlani, already beginning to
be known as the Cassivellauni (or Cattivellauni),
presumably from their heroic chieftain Caswallon (or
Cadwallon),47 corresponded roughly to the later South
Mercians, between the Thames and the Nene. The
Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi were less
considerable, and must evidently have been situated
on the marches between their larger neighbours. The
name of the Cassi may still, perhaps, cling to their
old home, in the Cashio Hundred and Cassiobury,
near Watford; while conjecture finds traces of the
Ancalites in Henley, and of the Bibroci in Bray, on
either side of the Thames.
G. 3.—The Atrebates, who play a not unimportant
part (as will be seen in the next chapter) in Caesar's
connection with Britain, were apparently in possession
of the whole southern bank of the Thames, from its
source right down to London—the river then, as in
Anglo-Saxon times, being a tribal boundary throughout
its entire length. This would make the Bibroci a
sub-tribe of the Atrebatian Name, and also the
Segontiaci, if Henry of Huntingdon (writing in the
12th century with access to various sources of information
now lost) is right in identifying Silchester,
the Roman Calleva, with their local stronghold Caer
Segent.
G. 4.—But the whole attempt to locate accurately any
but the chiefest tribes found by the Romans in Britain
is too conjectural to be worth the infinite labour that
has been expended upon the subject by antiquaries.
All we can say with certainty is that forest and fen
must have cut up the land into a limited number of
fairly recognizable districts, each so far naturally
separated from the rest as to have been probably a
separate or quasi-separate political entity also. Thus,
not only was the Thames a line of demarcation, only
passable at a few points, from its estuary nearly to the
Severn Sea, but the southern regions cut off by it were
parted by Nature into five main districts. Sussex was
hemmed in by the great forest of Anderida, and that
of Selwood continued the line from Southampton to
Bristol. Kent was isolated by the Romney marshes
and the wild country about Tunbridge, while the
western peninsula was a peninsula indeed when the
sea ran up to beyond Glastonbury. In this region,
then, the later Wessex, we find five main tribes; the
men of Kent, the Regni south of the Weald, the
Atrebates along the Thames, the Belgae on the
Wiltshire Avon, and the Damnonii of Devon and
Cornwall, with (perhaps) a sub-tribe of their Name,
the Durotriges, in Dorsetshire.
G. 5.—Like the south, the eastern, western, and
northern districts of England were cut off from the
centre by natural barriers. The Fens of Cambridgeshire
and the marshes of the Lea valley, together with
the dense forest along the "East Anglian" range,
enclosed the east in a ring fence; within which yet
another belt of woodland divided the Trinobantes of
Essex from the Iceni of Norfolk and Suffolk. The
Severn and the Dee isolated what is now Wales, a
region falling naturally into two sub-divisions; South
Wales being held by the Silurians and their Demetian
subjects, North Wales by the Ordovices. The lands
north of the Humber, again, were barred off from the
south by barriers stretching from sea to sea; the
Humber itself on the one hand, the Mersey estuary
on the other, thrusting up marshes to the very foot of
the wild Pennine moorlands between. And the whole
of this vast region seems to have been under the
Brigantes, who held the great plain of York, and
exercised more or less of a hegemony over the
Parisians of the East Riding, the Segontii of
Lancashire, and the Otadini, Damnonii, and Selgovae
between the Tyne and the Forth. Finally, the Midlands,
parcelled up by the forests of Sherwood, Needwood,
Charnwood, and Arden, into quarters, found
space for the Dobuni in the Severn valley (to the
west of the Cateuchlani), for the Coritani east of the
Trent, and for their westward neighbours the Cornavii.48
G. 6.—All these tribes are given in Ptolemy's
geography, but only a few, such as the Iceni, the
Silurians, and the Brigantes, meet us in actual history;
whilst, of them all, the Damnonian name alone reappears
after the fall of the Roman dominion. Thus
the accepted allotment of tribal territory is largely conjectural.
North of the Forth all is conjecture pure and
simple, so far as the location of the various Caledonian
sub-clans is concerned. We only know that there
were about a dozen of them; the Cornavii, Carini,
Carnonacae, Cerones, Decantae, Epidii, Horestae, Lugi,
Novantae, Smertae, Taexali, Vacomagi, and Vernicomes.
Some of these may be alternative names.
G. 7.—The practical importance of the above-mentioned
natural divisions of the island is testified
to by the abiding character of the corresponding
political divisions. The resemblance which at once
strikes the eye between the map of Roman and Saxon
Britain is no mere coincidence. Physical considerations
brought about the boundaries between the Roman
"provinces" and the Anglo-Saxon principalities
alike. Thus a glance will show that Britannia Prima,
Britannia Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia
Caesariensis correspond to the later Wessex, Wales,
Northumbria, and Mercia (with its dependency East
Anglia).49 And even the sub-divisions remained approximately
the same. In Anglo-Saxon times, for example,
the Midlands were still divided into the same four tribal
territories; the North Mercians holding that of the
British Cornavii, the South Mercians that of the
Dobuni, the Middle Angles that of the Coritani, and
the South Angles that of the Cateuchlani. So also
the Icenian kingdom, with its old boundaries, became
that of the East Angles, and the Trinobantian that of
the East Saxons.
G. 8.—What the entire population of Britain may
have numbered at the Roman Conquest is, again,
purely a matter of guess-work. But it may well have
been not very different in amount from what it was at
the Norman Conquest, when the entries in Domesday
roughly show that the whole of England (south of the
Humber) was inhabited about as thickly as the Lake
District at the present day, and contained some two
million souls. The primary hills, and the secondary
plateaux, where now we find the richest corn lands of
the whole country, were in pre-Roman times covered
with virgin forest. But in the river valleys above the
level of the floods were to be found stretches of good
open plough land, and the chalk downs supplied
excellent grazing. Where both were combined, as in
the valleys of the Avon and Wily near Salisbury, and
that of the Frome near Dorchester, we have the ideal
site for a Celtic settlement. In such places we
accordingly find the most conspicuous traces of the
prehistoric Briton; the round barrows which mark
the burial-places of his chiefs, and the vast earthworks
with which he crowned the most defensible dun, or
height, in his territory.
G. 9.—These fortified British duns are to be seen all
over England. Sometimes they have become Roman
or mediaeval towns, as at Old Sarum; sometimes they
are still centres of population, as at London, Lincoln,
and Exeter; and sometimes, as at Bath and Dorchester,
they remain still as left by their original
constructors. For they were designed to be usually
untenanted; not places to dwell in, but camps of
refuge, whither the neighbouring farmers and their
cattle might flee when in danger from a hostile raid.
The lack of water in many of them shows that they
could never have been permanently occupied either
in war or peace.50 Perhaps the best remaining
example is Maiden51 Castle, which dominates Dorchester,
being at once the largest and the most untouched
by later ages. Here three huge concentric
ramparts, nearly three miles in circuit, gird in a space
of about fifty acres on a gentle swell of the chalk
ridge above the modern town by the river. A single
tortuous entrance, defended by an outwork, gives
access to the levelled interior. All, save the oaken
palisades which once topped each round of the
barrier, remains as it was when first constructed,
looking down, now as then, on the spot where the
population for whose benefit it was made dwelt in
time of peace. For English Dorchester is the British
town whose name the Romans, when they raised the
square ramparts which still encircle it, transliterated
into Durnovaria. Durnovaria in turn became, on
Anglo-Saxon lips, Dornwara-ceaster, Dorn-ceaster,
and finally Dorchester.
G. 10.—We have already, on physical grounds,
assigned these Durotriges to the Damnonian Name.
There were certainly fewer natural obstacles between
them and the men of Devon to the west than between
them and the Belgae to the northward. Caesar, however,
distinctly states that the Belgic power extended
to the coast line, so the Britons of the Frome valley
may have been conquered by them. Or the Durotriges
may be a Belgic tribe after all. For, as we
have pointed out, our evidence is of the scantiest, and
there is every reason to suppose that the era of the
Roman invasion was one of incessant political confusion
in the land.
SECTION H.
Religious state of Britain—Illustrated by Hindooism—Totemists—Polytheists—Druids—Bards —
—Seers—Druidic Deities—Mistletoe—Sacred herbs—"Ovum Anguinum"—Suppression of
Druidism—Druidism and Christianity.
H. 1.—The religious state of the country seems to
have been in no less confusion than its political condition.
The surviving "Ugrian" inhabitants appear to
have sunk into mere totemists and fetish worshippers,
like the aboriginal races of India; while the Celtic
tribes were at a loose and early stage of polytheism,
with a Pantheon filled by every possible device, by
the adoration of every kind of natural phenomenon,
the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds and
clouds, the earth and sea, rivers, wells, sacred trees,
by the creation of tribal divinities, gods and goddesses
of war, commerce, healing, and all the congeries of
mutually tolerant devotions which we see in the
Brahmanism of to-day. And, as in Brahmanism, all
these devotions were under the shadow of a sacerdotal
and prophetic caste, wielding vast influence, and
teaching, esoterically at least, a far more spiritual
religion.
H. 2.—These were the Druids, whose practices and
tenets fortunately excited such attention at Rome that
we know more about them by far than we could
collect concerning either Jews or Christians from
classical authors. And though most of our authorities
refer to Druidism as practised in Gaul, yet we have
the authority of Caesar for Britain being the special
home and sanctuary of the faith, to which the Gallic
Druids referred as the standard for their practices.52
We may safely, therefore, take the pictures given us
by him and others, as supplying a representation of
what took place in our land ere the Romans entered it.
H. 3.—The earliest testimony is that of Julius
Caesar himself, in his well-known sketch of contemporary
Druidism ('De Bello Gallico,' vi. 14-20).
He tells us that the Druids were the ministers of
religion, the sacrificial priesthood of the nation, the
authorized expounders of the Divine will. All education
and jurisprudence was in their hands, and their
sentences of excommunication were universally enforced.
The Gallic Druids were under the dominion
of a Primate, who presided at the annual Chapter of
the Order, and was chosen by it; a disputed election
occasionally ending in an appeal to arms. As a rule,
however, Druids were supposed not to shed blood,
they were free from all obligation to military service,
and from all taxation of every kind. These privileges
enabled them to recruit their ranks—for they were
not an hereditary caste—from the pick of the national
youth, in spite of the severe discipline of the Druidical
novitiate. So great was the mass of sacred literature
required to be committed to memory that a training
of twenty years was sometimes needed. All had to
be learnt orally, for the matter was too sacred to be
written down, though the Druids were well acquainted
with writing, and used the Greek alphabet,53 if not the
Greek language,54 for secular purposes. Caesar's own
view is that this refusal to allow the inditing of their
sacred books was due to two causes: first, the fear
lest the secrets of the Order should thus leak out, and,
secondly, the dread lest reading should weaken
memory, "as, in fact, it generally does." Even so,
amongst the Brahmans there are, to this day, many
who can not only repeat from end to end the gigantic
mass of Vedic literature, but who know by heart also
with absolute accuracy the huge and complicated
works of the Sanscrit grammarians.
H. 4.—Caesar further tells us that the Druids taught
the doctrine of transmigration of souls, and that their
course of education included astronomy, geography,
physics, and theology. The attributes of their chief
God corresponded, in his view, with those of the
Roman Mercury. Of the minor divinities, one, like
Apollo, was the patron of healing; a second, like
Minerva, presided over craft-work; a third, like
Jupiter, was King of Heaven, and a fourth, like Mars,
was the War-god.55 Their calendar was constructed on
the principle that each night belongs to the day before
it (not to that after it, as was the theory amongst the
Mediterranean nations), and they reckoned all periods
of time by nights, not days, as we still do in the
word "fortnight." For this practice they gave the
mystical reason that the Celtic races were the Children
of Darkness. At periods of national or private distress,
human sacrifices were in vogue amongst them,
sometimes on a vast scale. "They have images
[simulacra] of huge size, whose limbs when enclosed
[contexta] with wattles, they fill with living men.
The wattles are fired and the men perish amid the
hedge of flame [circumventi flamma exanimantur
homines]." It is usually supposed that these simulacra
were hollow idols of basket-work. But such would
require to be constructed on an incredible scale for
their limbs to be filled with men; and it is much
more probable that they were spaces traced out upon
the ground (like the Giant on the hill above Cerne
Abbas in Dorset), and hedged in with the wattles to
be fired.
H. 5.—From the historian Diodorus Siculus, whose
life overlapped Caesar's, we learn that Druid was a
native British name. "There are certain philosophers
and theologians held in great honour whom
they call Druids."56 Whether this designation is
actually of Celtic derivation is, however, uncertain.
Pliny thought it was from the Greek affected by the
Druids and connected with their oak-tree worship.
Professor Rhys mentions that the earliest use of the
word in extant Welsh literature is in the Book of
Taliesin, under the form Derwyddon,57 and that in
Irish is to be found the cognate form Drui. But
these are as likely to be derived from the Greek
[drouides], as this from them. Diodorus adds that they
have mighty influence, and preside at all sacred rites,
"as possessing special knowledge of the Gods, yea,
and being of one speech [homophônôn] with them."
This points to some archaic or foreign language,
possibly Greek, being used in the Druidical ritual.
Their influence, he goes on to say, always makes for
peace: "Oft-times, when hosts be arrayed, and
either side charging the one against the other, yea,
when swords are out and spears couched for the
onset, will these men rush between and stay the
warriors, charming them to rest [katepasantes], like so
many wild beasts."
H. 6.—With the Druids Diodorus associates two
other religiously influential classes amongst the
Britons, the Bards [bardoi] and the Seers [manteis].
The former present the familiar features of the cosmopolitan
minstrel. They sing to harps [organôn tais
lurais homoiôn], both fame and disfame. The latter
seem to have corresponded with the witch-doctors of
the Kaffir tribes, deriving auguries from the dying
struggles of their victims (frequently human), just as
the Basuto medicine-men tortured oxen to death to
prognosticate the issue of the war between Great
Britain and the Boers in South Africa. Strabo, in
the next generation, also mentions together these
three classes, Bards, Seers, [Ouateis] = Vates and Druids.
The latter study natural science and ethics [pros tê
phusiologia kai tên êthikên philosophian askousin]. They
teach the immortality of the soul, and believe the
Universe to be eternal, "yet, at the last, fire and
water shall prevail."
H. 7.—Pomponius Mela, who wrote shortly before
the Claudian conquest of Britain, says that the Druids
profess to know the shape and size of the world, the
movements of the stars, and the will of the Gods.
They teach many secrets in caves and woods, but
only to the nobles of the land. Of this esoteric
instruction one doctrine alone has been permitted to
leak out to the common people—that of the immortality
of the soul—and this only because that
doctrine was calculated to make them the braver in
battle. In accordance with it, food and the like was
buried with the dead, for the use of the soul. Even a
man's debts were supposed to pass with him to the
shades.
H. 8.—Our picture of the Druids is completed
by Pliny,58 writing shortly after the Claudian conquest.
Approaching the subject as a naturalist he
does not mention their psychological tenets, but gives
various highly interesting pieces of information as to
their superstitions with regard to natural objects,
especially plants. "The Druids," he says, "(so they
call their Magi) hold nothing so sacred as the mistletoe
and that tree whereon it groweth, if only this be an
oak. Oak-groves, indeed, they choose for their own
sake, neither do they celebrate any sacred rite without
oak-leaves, so that they appear to be called Druids
from the Greek word for this tree. Whatsoever
mistletoe, then, groweth on such a tree they hold it
for a heaven-sent sign, and count that tree as chosen by
their God himself. Yet but very rarely is it so found,
and, when found, is sought with no small observance;
above all on the sixth day of the moon (which to
this folk is the beginning of months and years alike),59
and after the thirtieth year of its age, because it is by
then in full vigour of strength, nor has its half-tide
yet come. Hailing it, in their own tongue, as
'Heal-all,' they make ready beneath the tree, with all
due rites, feast and sacrifice. Then are brought up
two bulls of spotless white, whose horns have never
ere this known the yoke. The priest, in white vestments,
climbeth the tree, and with a golden sickle reapeth the
sacred bough, which is caught as it falls in a white
robe [sagum]. Then, and not till then, slay they
the victims, praying that their God will prosper this
his gift to those on whom he hath bestowed the
same."
H. 9.—A drink made from mistletoe, or possibly the
mere insertion of the branch into drinking water, was
held by the Druids, Pliny adds, as an antidote to every
kind of poison. Other herbs had like remedial properties
in their eyes. The fumes of burning "selago"60
were thus held good for affections of the eyesight,
only, however, when the plant was plucked with
due ceremonies. The gatherer must be all in white,
with bare and washen feet, and must hallow himself,
ere starting on his quest, with a devotional partaking
of bread and wine [sacro facto ... pane vinoque].
He must by no means cut the sacred stem with a
knife, but pluck it, and that not with bare fingers, but
through the folds of his tunic, his right hand being
protruded for this purpose beneath his left, "in
thievish wise" [velut a furante]. Another herb,
"samolum," which grew in marshy places, was of
avail in all diseases both of man and beast. It had
to be gathered with the left hand, and fasting, nor
might the gatherer on any account look back till he
reached some runlet [canali] in which he crushed his
prize and drank.
H. 10.—Pliny's picture has the interest of having
been drawn almost at the final disappearance of Druidism
from the Roman world. For some reason it was
supposed to be, like Christianity, peculiarly opposed
to the genius of Roman civilization, and never came
to be numbered amongst the religiones licitae of the
Empire. Augustus forbade the practice of it to
Roman citizens,61 Tiberius wholly suppressed it in
Gaul,62 and, in conquering Britain, Claudius crushed
it with a hand of iron. Few pictures in the early
history of Britain are more familiar than the final
extirpation of the last of the Druids, when their
sacred island of Mona (Anglesey) was stormed by the
Roman legionaries, and priests and priestesses perished
en masse in the flames of their own altars.63 Their
desperate resistance was doubtless due to the fact
that Rome was the declared and mortal enemy of
their faith. So baneful, indeed, did Druidism come
to be considered, that to hold even with the least of
its superstitions was treated at Rome as a capital
offence. Pliny tells us of a Roman knight, of Gallic
birth, who was put to death by Claudius for no other
reason than that of being in possession of a certain
stone called by the Druids a "snake's egg," and
supposed to bring good luck in law-suits.64
H. 11.—This stone Pliny himself had seen, and
describes it (in his chapter on the use of eggs)
as being like a medium-sized apple, having a
cartilaginous shell covered with small processes like
the discs on the arms of an octopus. This can
scarcely have been, as most commentators suppose,
the shell of an echinus (with which Pliny was
well acquainted), even if fossil. His description
rather seems to point to some fossil covered with
ostrea sigillina, such as are common in British
green-sands. He adds an account of the Druidical view of
its production, how it is the solidified poison of a
number of serpents who put their heads together to
eject it, and how, even when set in gold, it will float,
and that against a stream. This "egg," it will be seen,
was from Gaul. The British variant of the superstition
was that the snakes thus formed a ring of
poison matter, larger or smaller according to the
number engaged, which solidified into a gem known
as Glain naidr, "Adder's glass."65 The small rings of
green or blue glass, too thick for wear, which are not
uncommonly found in British burial-places, are
supposed to represent this gem. So also, possibly,
are the much larger rings of roughly-baked clay which
occur throughout the Roman period. For superstitions
die hard, and Gough assures us that even in
1789 such "adder-beads" or "snake-stones" were
considered "lucky" in Wales and Cornwall, and were
still ascribed to the same source as by the Druids
of old.
H. 12.—After its suppression by Claudius, Druidism
still lingered on in Britain beyond the Roman pale,
and amid the outlaws of the Armorican forests in
Gaul, but in a much lower form. The least worthy
representatives of the Brahmanic caste in India are those
found in the least civilized regions, whose tendency is
to become little better than sorcerers.66 And in like
manner it is as sorcerers that the later Druids of
Scotland and Ireland meet us in their legendary
encounters with St. Patrick and St. Columba. They
are called "The School of Simon the Druid" (i.e.
Simon Magus), and a 9th-century commentary designates
Jannes and Jambres as "Druids." But the
word did not wholly lose its higher associations. It
is applied to the Wise Men in an early Welsh hymn
on the Epiphany; and in another, ascribed to
Columba himself, the saint goes so far as to say,
"Christ, the Son of God, is my Druid."67
Footnotes
[6]In the British (?) village near Glastonbury the
bases of shed antlers are found hafted for mallets.
[7] This name is simply given for archaeological
convenience, to indicate that these aborigines were non-Aryan,
and perhaps of Turanian affinity.
[8] Skeat, however, traces "ogre" (the Spanish "ogro") to
the Latin Orcus.
[9]The latest excavations (1902) prove Stonehenge to be a
Neolithic erection. No metal was found, but quantities of flint
implements, broken in the arduous task of dressing the great
Sarsen monoliths. The process seems to have been that still
used for granite, viz. to cut parallel channels on the rough surface,
and then break and rub down the ridges between. This was
done by the use of conical lumps of Sarsen stone, weighing from
20 to 60 lbs., several of which were discovered bearing traces of
usage, both in pounding and rubbing. The monoliths examined
were found to be thus tooled accurately down to the very bottom,
8 or 9 feet below ground. At Avebury the stones are not dressed.
[10] Sarsen is the same word as Saracen,
which in mediaeval English simply means foreign (though
originally derived from the Arabic sharq = Eastern). Whence
the stones came is still disputed. They may have been
boulders deposited in the district by the ice-drift of the
Glacial Epoch.
[11] Professor Rhys assigns 600 B.C. as the approximate date
of the first Gadhelic arrivals, and 200 B.C. as that of the first
Brythonic.
[12] Whether or no this word is (as some authorities hold)
derived from the Welsh Prutinach (=Picts) rather than from
the Brythons, it must have reached Aristotle through Brythonic
channels, for the Gadhelic form is Cruitanach.
[13] A certain amount of British folk-lore was brought back to
Greece, according to Plutarch ('De defect. orac.' 2), by the
geographer Demetrias of Tarsus about this time. He refers to
the cavern of sleeping heroes, so familiar in our mediaeval legends.
[14] The word is said to be derived from the root
kâsh, "shine." Some authorities, however, maintain
that it came into Sanscrit from the Greek.
[15] 'Hist.' III. 112.
[16] See p. 48.
[17] For a full notice of Pytheas see Elton, 'Origins of English
History,' pp. 13-75. See also Tozer's 'Ancient Geography,'
chap. viii.
[18] Posidonius of Rhodes, the tutor of Cicero, visited
Britain about 100 B.C., and wrote a History of his travels in
fifty volumes, only known to us by extracts in Strabo (iii. 217,
iv. 287, vii. 293), Diodorus Siculus (v. 28, 30), Athenaeus, and
others. See Bake's 'Posidonius' (Leyden, 1810).
[19] The ingots of bronze found in the recent [1900]
excavations at Gnossus, in Crete, which date approximately from 2000
B.C., are of this shape. Presumably the Britons learnt it from
Phoenician sources.
[20] Saxon coracles are spoken of even in
the 5th century A.D. See p. 245.
[21] 'Coins of the Ancient Britons,' p. 24.
[22] This familiar feature of our climate is often touched
on by classical authors. Minucius Felix (A.D. 210) is observant
enough to connect it with our warm seas, "its compensation,"
due to the Gulf Stream.
[23] 'Nat. Hist.' xviii. 18.
[24] Ibid. xvii. 4.
[25] Solinus (A.D. 80) adds that bees, like snakes, were unknown
in Ireland, and states that bees will even desert a hive if Irish
earth be brought near it!
[26] Matthew Martin, 'Western Isles,' published 1673. Quoted
by Elton ('Origins of English Hist.,' p. 16), who gives Martin's
date as 1703.
[27] Strabo, iv. 277. The word basket is itself of
Celtic origin, and passed into Latin as it has passed into English.
Martial ('Epig.' xiv. 299) says: "Barbara de pictis veni
bascauda Britannis." Strabo wrote shortly before, Martial
shortly after, the Roman Conquest of Britain.
[28] One of these primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed
block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was
found near Cambridge in 1885.
[29] Diod. Siculus, 'Hist.' v. 21.
[30] 'British Barrows,' p. 750.
[31] 'Geog.' IV.
[32] 'Legend of Montrose,' ch. xxii.
[33] Diod. Sic. v. 30: "Saga crebris tessellis florum instar
distincta." This sagum was obviously a tartan plaid such as are
now in use. The kilt, however, was not worn. It is indeed
a comparatively quite modern adaptation of the belted plaid.
Ancient Britons wore trousers, drawn tight above the ankles,
after the fashion still current amongst agricultural labourers.
They were already called "breeches." Martial (Ep. x. 22)
satirizes a life "as loose as the old breeches of a British pauper."
[34] Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' viii. 48.
[35] Id. xxviii. 2. Fashions about hair seem to
have changed as rapidly amongst Britons (throughout the whole
period of this work) as in later times. The hair was sometimes
worn short, sometimes long, sometimes strained back from the
forehead; sometimes moustaches were in vogue, sometimes a
clean shave, more rarely a full beard; but whiskers were quite
unknown.
[36] Tozer ('Ancient Geog.' p. 164) states that amber is also
exported from the islands fringing the west coast of Schleswig,
and considers that these rather than the Baltic shores were the
"Amber Islands" of Pytheas.
[37] 'Nat. Hist.' xxxvii. 1.
[38] See p. 128.
[39] A lump weighing nearly 12 lbs. was dredged up off
Lowestoft in 1902.
[40] A.D. 50.
[41] Seneca speaks of the blue shields of the Yorkshire
Brigantes.
[42] See Elton, 'Origins of English History,' p. 116.
[43] Thurnam, 'British Barrows' (Archaeol. xliii. 474).
[44] Propertius, iv. 3, 7.
[45] 'Celtic Britain,' p. 40.
[46] This seems the least difficult explanation of this strange
name. An alternative theory is that it = Cenomanni (a Gallic
tribe-name also found in Lombardy). But with this name
(which must have been well known to Caesar) we never again
meet in Britain. And it is hard to believe that he would not
mention a clan so important and so near the sphere of his
campaign as the Iceni.
[47] See p. 109.
[48] These tribes are described by Vitruvius, at the
Christian era, as of huge stature, fair, and red-haired. Skeletons
of this race, over six feet in height, have been discovered in
Yorkshire buried in "monoxylic" coffins; i.e. each formed of the
hollowed trunk of an oak tree. See Elton's 'Origins,' p. 168.
[49] This correspondence, however, is wholly an antiquarian
guess, and rests on no evidence. It is first found in the forged
chronicle of "Richard of Cirencester." The names are genuine,
being found in the 'Notitia,' though dating only from the time of
Diocletian (A.D. 296). But, on our theory, the same administrative
divisions must have existed all along. See p. 225.
[50] General Pitt Rivers, however, in his 'Excavations
in Cranborne Chase' (vol. ii. p. 237), proves that the ancient
water level in the chalk was fifty feet higher than at present,
presumably owing to the greater forest area. "Dew ponds" may also
have existed in these camps. But these can scarcely have provided
any large supply of water.
[51] The word is commonly supposed to represent a
Celtic form Mai-dun. But this is not unquestionable.
[52] 'De Bello Gall.' vi. 13.
[53] 'De Bell. Gall.' vi. 14.
[54] Jerome ('Quaest. in Gen.' ii.) says that Varro,
Phlegon, and all learned authors testify to the spread of
Greek [at the Christian era] "from Taurus to Britain." And
Solinus (A.D. 80) tells of a Greek inscription in Caledonia,
"ara Graecis literis scripta"—as a proof that Ulysses (!) had
wandered thither (Solinus, 'Polyhistoria,' c. 22). See p. 248.
[55] 'De Bell, Gall.' vi. 16.
[56] 'Hist.' v. 31.
[57] 'Celtic Britain,' p. 69.
[58] 'Nat. Hist.' xvi. 95.
[59] So Caesar, 'De Bell. Gall.' vi. 17.
[60] Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' xxiv. 62. Linnaeus has taken
selago as his name for club-moss, but Pliny here compares
the herb to savin, which grows to the height of several feet.
Samolum is water-pimpernel in the Linnaean classification.
Others identify it with the pasch-flower, which, however, is
far from being a marsh plant.
[61] Suetonius (A.D. 110), 'De xii. Caes.' v. 25.
[62] Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' xxx. 3.
[63] Tacitus, 'Annals,' xiv. 30. See p. 154.
[64] Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.' xxix. 12.
[65] See Brand, 'Popular Antiquities,' under
Ovum Anguinum. He adds that Glune is the
Irish for glass.
[66] Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus,
tells us of a "Druid" sorceress who warned the Emperor of
his approaching doom. Another such "Druidess" is said to
have foretold Diocletian's rise. See Coulanges, 'Comme
le Druidisme a disparu,' in the Revue Celtique,
iv. 37.
[67] See Professor Rhys, 'Celtic Britain,' p. 70.
The Professor's view that the "schismatical" tonsure of the
Celtic clergy, which caused such a stir during the evangelization
of England, was a Druidical survival, does not, however, seem
probable in face of the very pronounced antagonism between those
clergy and the Druids. That tonsure was indeed ascribed by its
Roman denouncers to Simon Magus [see above], but this is scarcely a
sufficient foundation for the theory.
|
|
| |
