The Literature of the Highlanders: A History of Gaelic Literature from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
9781465675576
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Celts and the Teuton started westward from the cradle of the human race, spreading themselves over Europe; while other members of the same stock went eastward, extending themselves over wide tracts of Asia. From the Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons have sprung the chief nations in whose possession Europe still remains. It is interesting to think that the brothers who parted thousands of years ago, somewhere in teeming Asia, the one going east and the other west, are now meeting again on the plains of Hindostan. Their movements during those thousands of years have encircled the whole earth. Fiercely have they fought and disputed over every inch of the ground which one or other of their tribes at one time or other occupied. Theirs has always been the chief ruling power in the world. They begin to know one another again. From the extreme west of Europe, across the New World, the Anglo-Celt arrives in India and recognises the Hindoo as his brother. The Aryans migrated into Europe in a somewhat advanced state of civilisation. According to Sayce their advent was from the north, a theory which subverts nearly all previously accepted opinions on the subject. Some of them, however, such as the Greeks first and the Romans afterwards, favoured by the maritime countries in which they settled, made more rapid progress than the others. It was largely their self-conceit that led the Greeks and Romans to describe all the nations beyond their bounds as “barbarian.” Our ancestors in these islands, whether Celtic or Teutonic, were never mere savages. They had a religion, if not radically the same, fully as enobling in its tendency as that of Greece and Rome. They evidently made some progress in the useful arts, while in the days of Rome’s greatest splendour they were in possession of military weapons which were not much inferior to her own. The form of government among the Celts was patriarchal, and this continued for a long time among the Gaels of Scotland. There was the king or chief, who was regarded as the father of the clan, tribe, or nation. With him was associated a council of chieftains or elders, and in important matters the mot of the whole people. But with all this political organisation they could not make such progress in civilisation as the Greeks and Romans, who mostly dwelt in cities. The Gaels who along with the Germans acted the part of pioneers on the plains of Europe, and living a rural life, could not compete successfully in the race for higher civilisation with the brother races who inhabited the maritime cities of Greece and Italy, and who, besides, obtained much of an earlier civilisation from Phœnicia and Egypt. The early migrations of the Gael are involved in much obscurity. By the study of topography, however, we can follow many of his footsteps westward. This study, however, is rendered very difficult, and at times very uncertain, because the discoverable traces of the presence of the Celt lie embedded in the soil of the life of the powerful pre-Celtic races. The Celt and the Teuton have always been close neighbours. The progress of the two westward appears to have been somewhat simultaneous, at least on the Continent. The geographical positions of France and Germany at the present day represent not inaccurately the attitude of the Gaelic and Teutonic races towards one another in their earlier movements from the east. It has been said that the Celts came too soon into Europe, just as the Slaves came too late. It would be difficult to verify this remark in the light of history and in the face of existing facts.
