Early Britain (eBook)

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Sometime in the fourth century B.C. Pytheas, a native of Massilia (Marseilles) visited the island of Britain. He traveled over a considerable part of it and found that it consisted, for the most part, of forest or marsh. But there were open spaces in the woods in which sheep and cattle were kept, and there was a strip of land along the coast, or, at least, part of the coast, in which the traveler saw wheat growing, “This wheat,” the traveler says, “the natives threshed, not on open floors, but in barns, because they had so little sunshine and so much rain.” As he went further north he found that corn could not be grown. The natives made intoxicating drinks, he tells us, out of corn and honey.

The island was inhabited, probably at this time, and certainly afterwards when we reach the historical period, by two races of men. Tacitus, writing about the end of the first century of our era, says that the physical character of the inhabitants of Britain differs much. One part of them he speaks of these under the name of Silures had dark complexions, and, for the most part, curly hair. These he identified with the Iberians, or inhabitants of Spain. The other part, he says, resembled the Gauls. They had red hair, and were tall of stature.

Caesar, of whom we shall hear more in the following chapters, writing about a century and a half before Tacitus, gives testimony to much the same effect that the interior of Britain was inhabited by a race which considered itself to be indigenous, the sea-coast by another people which, in search of adventure or booty, had crossed over from Belgic Gaul. This people, he tells us, still retained the names by which its various tribes were known on the mainland.

So far we may consider ourselves to be on firm ground. When we attempt to advance further we find ourselves at a loss. Who were these Iberians and Gauls?

Some would identify the Iberians with the race still found in the extreme north of Europe, and known by the names of Lapps and Finns, This theory may with little or no hesitation, be set aside. It is more reasonable to see their kindred in the Bretons, occupying the extreme north-west of France, and the Basques of Northern Spain, two populations which still represent the Aquitani, the third of three races into which Caesar divides the inhabitants of ancient Gaul. The Gauls of Britain, on the other hand, are identified beyond all doubt with the Gauls of the Continent, and with the Belgic stock of this people.

It is a well known fact that in the ancient British burial-places burial places dating from before the time of the Roman invasion two very distinct types of skull are found, one being broad and the other long. The same observation has been made of remains of the same date in France. It has been further inferred from the character of the weapons and articles of domestic use found in these graves that the long-headed men were the ruder race. And it has been suggested that the short-headed men, with their superior weapons, drove out the earlier occupants, this dispossession being the movement spoken of by Caesar when he says that the Belgian Gauls crossed over from the mainland and occupied the maritime parts of the island. There is a tempting neatness in the hypothesis that the long headed Britons were Iberians, the short-headed Belgian Celts. But facts do not exactly harmonize with this theory. As Professor Huxley remarks, “the extremes of long and short-headedness are to be met with among the fair inhabitants of Germany and of Scandinavia at the present day the South-western Germans and the Swiss being markedly broad-headed, while the Scandinavians are as predominantly long-headed.” Happily the subject may be left with this statement. It does not fall within the province of one who writes the story of a country to deal with the prehistoric.

We may pass on to other information that Caesar has to give us about the inhabitants of Britain. After giving his view of their origin, he goes on, “The population is numerous beyond all counting, and very numerous also the houses. These closely resemble the houses of the Gauls. They have great numbers of cattle. They use copper or copper coin or bars of iron, carefully made to a certain weight, as money. Tin is found in the inland parts; iron near the coast, but the quantity of this is but small. They have timber of all the kinds found in Gaul except the fire and the beech. They hold it unlawful to eat hare, chicken, or goose. Still they rear these animals for the sake of amusement. Of all the Britons those that inhabit Kent are by far the most civilized (Kent is a wholly maritime region). These, indeed, differ but little from the Gauls in habits of life. Many of the inland Britons do not grow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clothed in skins. All the Britons stain their persons with a dye that produces a blue color. This gives them a more terrible aspect in battle. They wear their hair long, shaving all the body except the head and upper lip. Ten or twelve men have their wives in common; brothers very commonly with brothers and parents with children. The offspring of each wife is reckoned to belong to the husband who first married her.”

The iron found “near the sea-coast” probably came from the iron fields of Sussex, which were worked down to the end of the seventeenth century, when they ceased to be profitable, owing to the greater facilities for smelting afforded by the coal fields of the midland and northern counties. The tin had long been worked in Cornwall, and exported thence to the Continent. The Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, is probably a name given by people unacquainted with the true geography of Britain to this region. Tin was exported from it as early as the fifth century B.C., for Herodotus (484-407) speaks of the “Cassiterides from which tin comes to us,” though he disclaims all knowledge of them.

That the Britons were governed by kings, one or other of which from time to time, acquired more or less authority over the others, we may learn from Caesar. The same writer tells that they had a powerful priesthood, which bore the name of the Druids. His account of this class is as follows:

“They are concerned with religious matters, perform sacrifices offered by the State and by private individuals, and interpret omens. Many of the youth resort to them for education and they are held in high honor by the Gauls, They have the decision in nearly all the disputes that arise between States and individuals; if any crime has been committed, if any person has been killed, if there is any dispute about an inheritance or a boundary, it is the Druids who give judgment; it is they who settle the rewards and punishments. Any private person or any tribe refusing to abide by their decision is excluded from the sacrifice. This is the heaviest punishment that can be inflicted; for those so excluded are reckoned to belong to the godless and wicked. All persons leave their company avoid their presence and speech, lest they should be involved in some of the ill-consequences of their situation. They can get no redress for injury and they are ineligible to any post of honor. The Druids have a president, who exercises supreme authority among them. On his death the next highest to him in rank succeeds. If there are several who are equal, one is chosen by a general vote. Sometimes there is a conflict about the succession. The system of the Druids is supposed to have been invented in Britain, and to have been introduced from that country into Gaul. To this day those who are anxious to make themselves more completely acquainted with it frequently visit the island for the purpose of study. The Druids do not serve in a campaign, and do not pay taxes along with their fellow countrymen. They are exempted from all civil duties as well as from military service. Privileges so great induce many to submit themselves voluntarily to this education; many others are sent by their parents and kinsfolk. These pupils are said to learn by heart a vast number of verses. Some, in consequence, remain under teaching for as many as twenty years. The Druids think it unlawful to commit this knowledge of theirs to writing (in secular matters and in public and private business they use Greek characters). This is a practice which they have, I think, adopted for two reasons. They do not wish that their system should become commonly known, or that their pupils, trusting in written documents, should less carefully cultivate their memory; and, indeed, it does generally happen that those who rely on written documents are less industrious in learning by heart, and have a weaker memory. The Druids’ chief doctrine is that the soul of man does not perish, but passes after “death from one person to another. They hold that this is the best of all incitements to courage as banishing the fear of death. They have much also to say about the stars” and their motions, about the magnitude of the heavens and the earth, about the constitution of nature, about the power and authority of the immortal gods. Arid this they communicate to their pupils.”

If does not seem likely that the Druidical system really came from Britain into Gaul, if it is the fact that the Celtic inhabitants of the island came from the mainland. It has been suggested that in Caesar’s time the Druid power had become weakened in Gaul, where the system of civil government was superseding that of the priests, but that in Britain, as being a...