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us. It may be asked, "If such a resemblance might be brought about between the language of nations parted by the British channel, how are we to account for the essential difference in language existing among the Britons themselves ?"-This point can only be cleared up by supposing that the CUMBRI, or CYMRY, from whom the present race of Cambrians or Welsh appear to have descended, were in their origin, as well as in their language, entirely distinct from the rest of the Britons,—that while the rest were of Hammonian extraction, they were descendants of Gomer or Javan, the sons of Japhet; and perhaps according to their own assertions in the "Tryads of the Cymry" were in strict truth the earliest inhabitants of the Isle.

The manner and customs of the people at the time of Cæsar's invasion (especially those of a religious kind) we shall have to reconsider in a future paper. At the present stage of the enquiry, it is but just to let their resemblance to those of their Gallic neighbours possess all the weight which they can claim; and abstractedly considered that weight is considerable. Indeed, so strong is that evidence in favour of the Celtic theory, that were there no opposite evidence, resting on the fact, both known and acknowledged, that Britain was the chief seat of Druidism, from which it had apparently extended over Western Europe, I should willingly fall in with that most natural conclusion; and give up, as entirely unfounded inventions, the chronicles of Geoffry, and the theories of Annius, Walter de Mapes, the Welsh Tysilio, or our English Sammes. Such evidence, however, stronger perhaps than my readers anticipate, I have to bring forward; and in my next paper, in which I shall institute a comparison between the deities and religious observances of the British, and those of the early inhabitants of Palestine and Asia Minor, that evidence will be fully entered into. But, first, before we bid farewell to Western Europe, it remains to give due consideration to the "Tryads of the Cymry," which will, if fully admitted, explode not only the Trojan and Phoenician, but also the Celtic theory, and derive the aborigines of the Isle from the Sclavonic, or Scandinavian tribes.

"Three names," says the first Triad, "have been given to the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it was inhabited, it was called Clas Merddin (the country with sea cliffs,) and afterwards, Fel Ynis (the Island of Honey.) When government had been imposed upon it by Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great, it was called Ynis Prydain, (the Island of Prydain ;) and there was no tribute to any but to the race of the Cymry, because they first obtained it; and before them were no more men alive in it, nor anything else but bears, wolves, beavers, and the oxen with the high prominence."*

Another of these Triads states these early Britons to have been originally conducted over the German Ocean by Hu Cadarn, (i. e. Hugh the Mighty,) though the Hazy or German Ocean to Britain, and to Llydaw Turner's Anglo Saxons, i, 33.

(i. e. Armorica or Bretagne.) Thus it would appear the original inhabitants were Scandinavians. Yet even these Triads give some countenance to Eastern theorists, for it is subsequently asserted that the people under Hu Cadarn “came originally from the country of Summer, which is called Defrobani, where Constantinople is." And though this "originally" might apply to the general migration of mankind, it might also apply to the refugees from ruined Troy, so near as that city was to the present capital of Turkey. It must nevertheless be confessed that if the latter was intended, the Bardic composers of the Triads must have led Brut or Brutus by a strange route from Greece, which obliged him on his way to Albion to cross the German Ocean.

The later Triads speak of other people who afterwards settled in Britain; but the places from which they are said to have come, and the names they bore, would lead to the conclusion that they were nearly all of them of Gothic or Teutonic race.

The next people who came to Britain, we are told, were the Lloegrwys, who came from the land of Guasgwyn (Gascony,) and were of the same race with the Cymry; as were also the next colonists, the Brython, from the land of Llydaw (Bretagne.) These were called the three peaceful nations, because they came to one another speaking peace and tranquillity. Afterwards other nations came to the country with more or less violence, the Gwyddyl Fficti (Picts) to Alban or Scotland, on the part which lies nearest to the Baltic; the Celyddon (Caledonians) to the North parts of the Island; the Gwyddyl to other parts of Scotland; the Corraniaid (probably Coritani) from Pwyll, to the Humber; the men of Galedin. (Flanders) to Wyth; the Romans, the Saxons; and the Llychlynians, or Northmen.*

The numerous races thus brought by these Welsh poems into Britain, will certainly account for the different nations which existed in the Island at the time of Cæsar's invasion, in a clear and satisfactory manner. Yet here, as in every other direction to which we turn, objections thicken upon us. Nearly all these people, according to the places they are said to have come from, must certainly have been of Gomerian (Cimmerian) original, whereas every thing of greatest antiquity that survives among us (save in some parts of Cumberland and Wales) is Celtic. Indeed, to quote the words of Bp. Parker, “Although the names of our towns and villages (in South Britain) are almost universally of Anglo Saxon derivation, yet the hills, forests, rivers, &c. have generally retained their old Celtic names."

The only question that remains to be considered in my present paper is whether some compromise might not be made between these two European theories, and whether both may not originally be true. On this point there is something to be said. It is very natural to suppose that the Bards of a certain tribe would in their oral records exalt that

* See Turner's Anglo Saxons, and Pictorial History of England.

tribe into more importance than really attached to it. And thus the Cymry may in their songs have exaggerated the strength of their own Cimmerian race, as though they continued masters of the isle, even after the Celtic Gauls had possessed themselves of the chief portion of the land. This is a natural conclusion; and but for customs essentially oriental, which will be noticed in my next paper, we might easily suppose that this was the case: and that the aboriginal Britons were emigrants both from Cimmerian and Celtic nations,—which nations it would be most natural to conclude, were the progeny of Gomer and Javan, the two sons of Japhet.

We might pursue this point still farther, and ask whether another compromise would not also be tenable. The palpable distinctness between the present Welsh and the Caledonian Highlanders is so strongly marked, and the entire difference in the whole construction of their languages, which can hardly be conceived to be different dialects from the same root-may well lead us to the conclusion that they are the progeny of different sons of Noah; the Celts being Hammonians, the Cimmerians of the race of Japhet. Thus by supposing that the whole of the Celtic race emigrated from the east at a period subsequent to the general division of the earth, and that the Britons were a portion of those Celts,-opposing theories might be reconciled. Those who believe that the early Britons came direct from the east, and those who consider them as a tribe of the Gauls or Celta, would here have ground on which they might stand in common; and the Welsh might be allowed in connection with both theories to claim for their Gomerian ancestors the first possession of the Isle.

But I may probably enter more fully into this matter hereafter. First, in the order of our enquiry, it is incumbent upon me to prove the eastern origin of the Britons by their manners and customs, or religious observances; and this I trust I shall be fully able to accomplish in an early number of the Miscellany.

THE LEAFLESS TREE.

BESIDE the road an aged oak,

When others were all fresh and fair, Though touch'd not by the woodman's stroke, Stood desolate and bare.

And yet not useless, some relief
It gave to many a mind,—
For even more than joy, loves grief
Companionship to find.

A little boy there kept his sheep,
From dawn to set of sun:-

He dared not leave them, dared not sleep,
And wished the day were done.

He with a sad and serious face

Looked up, and with a wistful eye, And wished that he had power to chase The sun down from the sky.

He thought the village clock again
Would never, never strike-
Then looking on that tree with pain,
He felt how they were like.

For if there could be aught on earth,
So sad, so lost as he,

"Twas the sadness and the dearth,
Of that old lifeless tree.

Along the road with creeping pace,

Then came an aged man, and grey,

Who gazing on that tree a space
Thus to himself did say:

"Old tree, how I resemble thee,
Fair creatures had I seven,—
Now hangs no verdant leaf on me-
My children are in heaven."

An aged woman too there came,

Who walked had many a mile,

And gazing with a glance the same,

Sat down upon the stile.

She thought how up her girls had grown,

And out at service were,

And how her sons to sea were gone,

Not one of them with her.

The tear was in her old dim eye-
She felt so like that tree, and said-
"So far they scattered round me lie-
They might as well be dead."

The fatherless and motherless-
The widowed-all who came-
And gazed upon that lonely tree-
A feeling had the same.

Thus Nature moves, and gives relief
Unto the saddened mind,

For, even more than joy, loves grief
Companionship to find.

RICHARD HOWITT.

SONNET TO THE TRENT.

Snenton.

O HOW I love to watch thy gentle flow:
Alone on these green sloping banks to lie,
And see in thy clear depths the deep blue sky
Pictured in colours, art can never show:
My mind's eye sees thy stream where'er I go;
Whether through cities or through fields I roam,
Thy gentle gliding and thy snow-white foam,
Are still before me; and calm thoughts bestow.
Oh, I am thankful thus to find in thee,

The joy I once sought in a world of guile;
Man's word I trust not now, nor woman's smile,
But only Nature; and the wild, the free,
The bounding, joyous river, most of all
Keeps with affections bands, my heart in thrall.

S. GILES.

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