who differ in manners and dialect from all
their neighbours. Mr. Sullivan, for reasons
that he gives, identifies them with the tribe led
by Brennus against Rome. When the language
of the west of Ireland is compared with the
oldest names belonging to the history of
eastern Britain, it appears that the same tribe
of Hiberno-Celts first occupied both coasts.
The five great headlands of Britain, on which
are the modern counties of Kent, Lincolnshire,
Haddingtonshire, Aberdeenshire, and
Caithness, were originally called Kent,—in
modern Irish, cean, the head. At a very
early period, the Cambro-Celts changed the
word Kent into Pen, applying it to hills,
never to promontories. The Cambro-Celtic
term for capes was corn, a horn, as in Cornwall.
Pembroke was originally called Kentbroke,
the Pentland were originally Kentland
hills; change of name following on the
arrival of the Cambro-Celts. It is still a
tradition in some parts of Wales, that the
original inhabitants were Irish, and
unaccountable antiquity is ascribed to them
under the name of Irish cots. Foxes and
polecats were their domestic dogs and cats.

The last of the Hiberno-Celtic colonists
were those to whose tribes Boadicea (meaning,
in modern Irish, beau duci, the woman-
leader), Vortigern (in Irish, fear tigherna, the
ruling man), and Vortimer (fear timthire,
his minister or lieutenant), belonged. The
Cambro-Celts landed on the south and west
of Britain, whence they spread. They colonised
all North Wales, and possessed, as Picts, a
part of Scotland.

Of the old distinction between the two
races of Celts, the spirit is not yet extinct.
In Cumberland, Mr. Sullivan tells us, the
same object may be found to have two names,
one Hiberno-Celtic, and the other Cambro-
Celtic. In South Wales, he adds, I have been
told by a native, who certainly had no theory
whatever upon the subject, that he could
take up with an Irishman, but not with a
North Welshman. With only a river between
them, inborn antipathies are still displayed
by the men of Athlone against the men of
Connaught.

Passing over the suggestion of a slight
dash of the native race of Spain, the Iberian,
which some few of the Celts seem to have
brought with them, we find, then, that our
country was occupied at the outset by three
sets of men: the mysterious stone people, who
have left us nothing but their graves: and the
two Celtic nations represented in our day by
the Irishman and Welshman, whose ancestors
have left, not graves only, but also fragments
of a literature. To them we look for the
first tricklings of the spring to which we may
trace back the broad river of English.

The strangers came in fleets of boats laden
with fighting men whose deeds the bards
were celebrating while the sails were spread
and the oars plied. Old Irish history speaks
of a people called the Tuads of the Dan
country (Teutons of Denmark; though they
gave a name to Germans, they must have
been Celts), a famous tribe of enchanters.
Some of that people settled on a part of
Scotland, and their name clings to the River
Tweed. There they could arrive only from
South Denmark wafted by a south-west
wind. The people from North Denmark
would, in the same way, reach Aberdeenshire,
where they found hills, and called the land
by the name still given to Scotland in the
Irish language, but once given to all Britain,
Albion, and Alban, the hill country. The
name of Albion came from the north southward.
Some reason can be shown for asserting
that these settlers reached our shores
about five centuries before the Christian era,
and that they sailed away from their own
marshy coasts to find a home secure from
flood and pestilence.

For what songs did the Lur, the bronze
trumpet of these people, that has lain for a
thousand years silent within their tombs, for
what songs did the Lur or the harp furnish
music? A few hymns and legends that once
lived on the lips of the Erse and Cambrian
bards remain to is yet, now and then the
old trumpet still yields an uncertain sound.
The Erse or Gaelic bards were those not only
of Ireland, but of Scotland also, which
received its name, and much of its old
colonisation from the Irish Celts. The Scotch
Gaelic and Irish Gaelic were as brother
tongues, to which the language of the
Cymrians was but a cousin. Erse yields the
oldest songs and—though that is comparatively
recent—also the oldest of the written
records, probably, indeed, the most ancient
relics of a written literature extant in a
modern European tongue. Irish tradition tells
us doubtful stories of a poet named Amirgin
who was chief bard to his princely brothers
nearly three thousand years ago; of Cir Mac
Cis, his contemporary, and of the dignified
bards, or Ollamhs, who, soon afterwards, under
Tighermnas, were permitted to wear six
colours in their garments, being only one
colour less than the number worn by kings
themselves. Women, too, harped before the
armies of returning heroes. Moriat was a
king's daughter—daughter to the king of
South Munster in the fourth century before
our era. At her father's court, Maon, the
heir of an usurped throne, took refuge.
Maon loved Moriat, but Moriat concealed
her answering affection. Maon went to the
French court, and became a mighty warrior.
Moriat in South Munster heard of the fame
of his deeds, love made her a poetess, and she
extolled them in an ode, which also urged
the prince to wrest his father's throne from
the usurper. The chief harper at her father's
court, carried the ode to France, and sang it
before Maon. Maon avenged his father's
death, and made a queen of Moriat.

In the first years of the Christian era lived
Connor, a king of Ulster, whose reign