mric_; while the Irish with its
varieties, as developed in Scotland and the Isle of Man, forms another
class, which is called the _Gaelic_ or _Gadhelic_. It may also be more or
less generally known that Celtic, with all its dialects, is an Aryan or
Indo-European language, closely allied to Latin, Greek, German, Slavonic,
and Sanskrit, and that the Celts, therefore, were not mere barbarians, or
people to be classed together with Finns and Lapps, but heralds of true
civilization wherever they settled in their worldwide migrations, the
equals of Saxons and Romans and Greeks, whether in physical beauty or in
intellectual vigor. And yet there is a strange want of historical reality
in the current conceptions about the Celtic inhabitants of the British
Isles; and while the heroes and statesmen and poets of Greece and Rome,
though belonging to a much earlier age, stand out in bold and sharp relief
on the table of a boy's memory, his notions of the ancient Britons may
generally be summed up "in houses made of wicker-work, Druids with long
white beards, white linen robes, and golden sickles, and warriors painted
blue." Nay, strange to say, we can hardly blame a boy for banishing the
ancient bards and Druids from the scene of real history, and assigning to
them that dark and shadowy corner where the gods and heroes of Greece live
peacefully together with the ghosts and fairies from the dreamland of our
own Saxon forefathers. For even the little that is told in "Little
Arthur's History of England" about the ancient Britons and the Druids is
extremely doubtful. Druids are never mentioned before Caesar. Few writers,
if any, before him were able to distinguish between Celts and Germans, but
spoke of the barbarians of Gaul and Germany as the Greeks spoke of
Scythians, or as we ourselves speak of the negroes of Africa, without
distinguishing between races so different from each other as Hottentots
and Kaffirs. Caesar was one of the first writers who knew of an
ethnological distinction between Celtic and Teutonic barbarians, and we
may therefore trust him when he says that the Celts had Druids, and the
Germans had none. But his further statements about these Celtic priests
and sages are hardly more trustworthy than the account which an ordinary
Indian officer at the present day might give us of the Buddhist priests
and the Buddhist religion of Ceylon. Caesar's statement that the Druids
worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva