d not consider the complementary
position which history bears to tradition. This may best be done by
reference to the period before that occupied by contemporary native
record. The history here alluded to is, properly speaking, only
derived from one source, namely, the works of foreign or outside
authorities. It is written by observers from a civilised country,
travelling among the more primitive peoples of another land, and the
Greek and Latin authors who relate particulars of early Britain were
of this class. Their narratives have to be compared with the
traditions written down as history by professed historians, who lived
long after the events happened to which the traditions are said to
relate, but who recorded the traditions of the people preserved in the
monasteries by devotees who were of the people, or by the songs and
rhymes which, as Henry of Huntingdon states explicitly, were used for
the purpose.

Both the observations of the foreign historians and travellers and the
recorded traditions from native sources have been treated with scant
courtesy whenever they cannot be explained according to the views of
each particular inquirer into the period to which they refer. They
have been alternatively the subject of dispute or neglect by students
for a long series of years. They consist of items which do not fit in
with Celtic or Teutonic institutions as we know them from other and
more detailed sources. They offend against the national pride because
they tell of a condition of savagery. They do not appeal to the
historian, because the historian knows little and cares nothing at all
about the condition of savagery. If, therefore, they are not rejected
as true history, they are purposely neglected. They are in any event
never taken into consideration by the right method, and they stand
over for examination by any one who will take the trouble to deal with
them by the light and test of modern research.

It is not my purpose to deal with these matters now, but it is
advisable that we should try to understand two things--first, how they
have been dealt with by the historian; secondly, their true place in
history.

The Greek and Latin authors who have stated of peoples living in
Britain many characteristics which do not belong to civilisation or
even to the borders of civilisation, range from Pytheas the Greek in
the middle of the fourth century before our era down to the Latin
poets of the early fifth century anno Dom