y to the cruel Druidic religion of his
subjects. To these Iberians, and to the Celtic dread of them, we
probably owe all the stories of dwarfs, goblins, elves, and
earth-gnomes which fill our fairy-tale books; and if we examine
carefully the descriptions of the abodes of these beings we shall find
them not inconsistent with the earth-dwellings, caves, circle huts, or
even with the burial mounds, of the Iberian race.

The race that followed the Iberians, and drove them out or subdued
them, so that they served as slaves where they had once ruled as
lords, was the proud Aryan Celtic race. Of different tribes, Gaels,
Brythons, and Belgae, they were all one in spirit, and one in physical
feature.

Tall, blue-eyed, with fair or red hair, they overpowered in every way
the diminutive Iberians, and their tattooing, while it gave them a
name which has often been mistaken for a national designation (Picts,
or painted men), made them dreadful to their enemies in battle, and
ferocious-looking even in time of peace. Their civilisation was of a
much higher type than that of the Iberians; their weapons, their
war-chariots, their mode of life and their treatment of women, are all
so closely similar to that of the Greeks of Homer that a theory has
been advanced and ably defended, that the Homeric Greeks were really
invading Celts--Gaelic or Gaulish tribes from the north of Europe. If
it indeed be so, we owe to the Celts a debt of imperishable culture
and civilisation. To them belongs more especially, in our national
amalgam, the passion for the past, the ardent patriotism, the longing
for spiritual beauty, which raises and relieves the Saxon materialism.

"Though fallen the state of Erin and changed the Scottish land,
Though small the power of Mona, though unwaked Llewellyn's band,
Though Ambrose Merlin's prophecies are held as idle tales,
Though Iona's ruined cloisters are swept by northern gales,
One in name and in fame
Are the sea-divided Gaels.

"In Northern Spain and Italy our brethren also dwell,
And brave are the traditions of their fathers that they tell;
The Eagle or the Crescent in the dawn of history pales
Before the advancing banners of the great Rome-conquering Gaels:
One in name and in fame
Are the sea-divided Gaels."[8]

It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of the Celtic
contribution to our na