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CHAPTER VI

THE CONTINUATION OF RACES

THE Conclusions arrived at in the foregoing pages are, that survivals of non-Aryan faiths and usages are to be found in folklore, and that the conditions under which these survivals are found show that they date from a time prior to the arrival of the Celts in this country-from prehistoric times, in fact. No doubt such conclusions may seem a little hard to digest by those whose studies have not allowed them to dwell upon 'the amazing toughness of tradition,' and by those who have never wandered out of the paths laid down by the methods of chronological history. But they may also be questioned by students of comparative culture on the ground that traditional faiths and usages found in an Aryan country cannot be accepted as derived from a non-Aryan people, unless it can be proved that they have descended through the agency of the same people to whom they originally belonged.

If for the purposes of the present inquiry it does not seem necessary to discuss objections which are founded on diametrically opposite methods of research, it must be admitted that an objection founded on the same

method of research cannot be overlooked or set aside as nought, especially as two inquiries have recently been put before the public by Mr. F. B. Jevons and Dr. Winternitz, which discuss some of the Aryan survivals in folklore on the principles laid down by comparative philology. These inquiries proceed upon the plan of ascertaining the common factors among the Aryan peoples, and then discussing their presence among nonAryan peoples on the theory that the latter must have borrowed. It will be seen that the method I have adopted is opposed to this, in that it does not necessarily admit that even a custom or belief common to all Aryanspeaking countries is Aryan. It might conceivably be a common non-Aryan custom borrowed or allowed by the Aryans. Take stone worship, for instance. It is found in all Aryan-speaking countries; in India alone it is found as the special feature of non-Aryan tribes which exist to this day, and with this evidence from ethnography, coupled with the conclusions of comparative culture, we are able to suggest that stone worship is opposed to the general basis of Aryan culture. I should be inclined to argue on the same lines against Schrader's acceptance of human sacrifice as Aryan. It follows, therefore, that the question of the continuation of races after they have become nominally extinct is a matter of some importance to my theory. If the parentage of a given set of customs and beliefs can be reasonably established as non-Aryan, how is the descent to be traced except by means of non-Aryan people, who continued

the blood of their race, together with the usages and beliefs of their race? Clearly, if intrusted to the keeping only of Aryan converts, these non-Aryan usages and beliefs would have become so altered as not to be recognisable the arrest of their development by the overspread of Aryan culture would have meant their extinction.

I will, then, direct attention to the recent researches which go to prove the late, nay present, existence of descendants of prehistoric non-Aryan peoples in Britain. Naturally we turn, first of all, to the most difficult of all subjects, the evidence of philology. No one who has followed Professor Rhys in his researches into the Celtic languages can do otherwise than admit that he has made out a strong case for nonAryan influences of a distinct and definite nature upon the Celtic tongues of Britain, and it seems now to be certain that the Picts of Scotland and the Scots of Ireland were non-Aryan people. While the Brython,' he says, might go on speaking of the non-Aryan native of Ireland who paid unwelcome visits to this country as a Scot, that Scot by and by learned a Celtic language and insisted on being treated as a Celt, as a Goidel, in fact, that is, I take it, how Scottus became the word used to translate Goidel.'1

This introduces a considerable parent stock of nonAryan peoples almost at the dawn of history, and that they have never been exterminated as a race may be Rhind Lectures, p. 53.

proved by the researches of Dr. Beddoe and others, who point out that the features of the dark non-Aryan Silures of ancient Wales are still to be traced in the population of Glamorgan, Brecknock, Monmouth, Radnor and Hereford, while in some parts of Pembroke, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Gloucestershire, Wilts and Somerset, the same racial characteristics present themselves. 1

Thus, then, while philology takes us back to prehistoric non-Aryans, physiology takes us to their modern descendants. May we not then carry on the inquiry a little further, and endeavour to ascertain whether the condition of these modern descendants may not help us to grasp the fact that non-Aryan races are in Britain, as in India, a living factor to be reckoned with in discussing the problem of origins?

The senseless and imbecile destruction of ancient monuments has often been commented upon, but the preservation of these monuments has been the subject of but little remark. Who are the preservers-to whom are we students of the nineteenth century chiefly indebted for the preservation of prehistoric graves and tumuli, of stone circles and earthworks-of Stonehenge and the Maeshow? How is it that London Stone still stands an object of interest to Londoners, and the Coronation Stone an object of interest to the nation? The

1 See Beddoe's Races of Britain, p. 26, and consult Mr. Elton's admirable summary of the whole evidence in his Origins of English History, cap. iv.

answer is, that throughout the rough and turbulent times of the past, while abbeys and churches, and castles and halls, have been destroyed and desecrated, these prehistoric monuments have remained sacred in the eyes of the peasantry, have been guarded by unknown but revered beings of the spirit world, have been sanctified by the traditions of ages. Legends where stones have been removed and miraculously restored; beliefs which point to the barrows and tumuli as the residence of fairies and ghosts; facts which show the resentment of people at the disturbance of these unknown memorials of the past, are too well known to need illustration in these pages. But I want to point out that the objects of all this reverence are relics, principally, of the non-Aryan population, and to suggest that the continuance of the monumental remains by means of the traditional beliefs points back unmistakably to the living and continued influence of the people who constructed the monuments. The subject is a tempting one to linger over, and, when properly set forth, shows exactly how the material and immaterial remains of past ages serve as complementary agencies to establish the influence of the old races of people.

There is a less pleasing picture, however, than this to discuss. Non-Aryan races have brought down survivals of savage culture in our folklore, and this has not been accomplished without other marks of their savagery. Mr. Elton has drawn attention to the facts which tell in favour of a story of Giraldus Cambrensis

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