t and marshy, having
neither walls nor cities, nor tilth, but living by pasturage, by the
chase, and on certain berries; for of their fish, though abundant and
inexhaustible, they never taste. They live in tents, naked and
barefooted, having wives in common, and rearing the whole of their
progeny. Their state is chiefly democratical, and they are above all
things delighted by pillage; they fight from chariots, having small
swift horses; they fight also on foot, are very fleet when running, and
most resolute when compelled to stand; their arms consist of a shield
and a short spear, having a brazen knob at the extremity of a shaft,
that when shaken it may terrify the enemy by its noise; they use daggers
also; and are capable of enduring hunger, thirst, and hardships of every
description; for when plunged in the marshes they abide there many days,
with their heads only out of water; and in the woods they subsist on
bark and roots; they prepare, for all emergencies, a certain kind of
food, of which, if they eat only so much as the size of a bean, they
neither hunger nor thirst. Such, then, is the Island Britannia, and such
the inhabitants of that part of it which is hostile to us."

Of Ireland, we have no definite accounts till much later, so that, with
the exception of a few details, the characteristics of the social
condition of that island must be inferred from the analogy of Great
Britain, and from the subsequent history of the Irish. Now a rough view
of even the British characteristics is all that has been attempted in
the present chapter. No historic events have been narrated, except so
far as they elucidate some national or local habit; and no such habits
and customs have been noted unless they could be referred to some
particular branch of our populations; for the object has been
specification rather than generalization, the indication of certain
_Cornubian_, _Kentish_, or _Caledonian_ peculiarities rather than of
_British_ ones. At the same time, the fact that all the occupants of the
British Islands are referrible to the great Keltic stock, implies the
likelihood of these differences lying within a comparatively small
compass.

The step that comes next is the history of the stock itself.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The translations of this and all the following Greek extracts are
from the "_Monumenta Historica Britannica_."

[4] _See_ the papers of Mr. Beale Post in the "Archaeological Journal."

CHAPTER III.