A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
chest and drooping shoulders, utterly unlike the muscular and vigorous
Gaelic women who were true consorts to their men when they came over to
conquer the island of Britain.
After a lapse of time the long-head began to reassert itself, and the
infusion of its blood into the veins of the dominant race led to great
modification of its harshness of feature. When iron was introduced into
Britain, whether by peaceable means or whether by the second Aryan
invasion, that of the Cymri or Britons, we do not know, but when Cæsar
landed in Britain, B.C. 55, he found that iron was in general use.
The second Aryan invasion alluded to was that of the true Britons. They
also came from the Alps, where they had lived on platforms constructed
on the lakes. They occupied the whole of Britain proper, but not
Scotland, and made but attempts to effect a landing in Ireland.
They were entirely out of sympathy with the original race and its
ideas, and did not assimilate their religion and adopt their practices
as had the Gaels.
The distinction between the two branches of the great Celtic family
is mainly linguistic. Where the British employed the letter _p_, the
Gael used the hard _c_, pronounced like _k_. For instance, _Pen_, a
head, in British, is _Cen_ in Gaelic; and we can roughly tell where
the population was British by noticing the place names, such as those
beginning with Pen. When these were Gaels, the same headlands would
begin with Cen.
"By Tre, Pol, and Pen
You know the names of Cornishmen,"
and this at once decides that the inhabitants of the western peninsula
were not Gaels.
From the lakes of Switzerland the Britons had brought with them their
great aptitude for wattle-work. They built their houses and halls, not
of stone, but of woven withies. Cæsar says that they were wont to erect
enormous basket-work figures, fill them with human victims, and burn
the whole as sacrifices to their gods. It is a curious coincidence that
on some of the old Celtic crosses are found carved imitations of men
made of wicker-work. These represent saints made of the same material
and in the same manner by the same people, after they had embraced
Christianity and abandoned human sacrifices.[6]
Let us try to imagine what was the mode of life of those people who
raised their monuments on Dartmoor. They were pastoral, but they also
certainly had some knowledge of tillage. In certain lights, hillsides
on the moor show indications of having been cultivated in ridges, and
this not with the plough, but with the spade. We cannot say that
these belong to the early population, but as they are found near
their settlements it is possible that they may be traces of original
cultivation. But we know from the remains of grain found in the
habitations and tombs of the same people in limestone districts that
they were acquainted with cereals, and their grindstones have been
found on Dartmoor in their huts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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