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 g