Ethnology of the Western Folk--The earliest men--The Ivernian race--The arrival of the Britons--Mixture of races in Ireland--The Attacottic revolt--The Dumnonii--The Scottic invasion of Dumnonia--The story of the Slave of the Haft--Athelstan drives the Britons across the Tamar--Growth of towns--The yeomen represent the Saxon element--The peasantry the earlier races--The Devonshire dialect--Courtesy--Use of Christian names--Love of funerals--Good looks among the girls--Dislike of "Foreigners"--The Cornish people--Mr. Havelock Ellis on them--The types--A Cornish girl--Religion--The unpardonable sin--Folk-music--Difference between that of Devon and Cornwall and that of Somersetshire. It is commonly supposed that the bulk of the Devonshire people are Saxons, and that the Cornish are almost pure Celts. In my opinion neither supposition is correct. Let us see who were the primitive occupants of the Dumnonian peninsula. In the first place there were the men who left their rude flint tools in the Brixham and Kent's caverns, the same people who have deposited such vast accumulations in the lime and chalk caves and shelters of the Vézère and Dordogne. Their remains are not so abundant with us as there, because our conditions are not as favourable for their preservation; and yet in the Drift we do find an enormous number of their tools, though not _in situ_, with their hearths, as in France; yet sufficient to show that either they were very numerous, or what is more probable, that the time during which they existed was long. This people did not melt off the face of the earth like snow. They remained on it. We know that they were tall, that they had gentle faces--the structure of their skulls shows this; and from the sketches they have left of themselves, we conclude that they had straight hair, and from their skeletons we learn that they were tall. M. Massenat, the most experienced hunter after their remains, was sitting talking with me one evening at Brives about their relics. He had just received a volume of the transactions of the Smithsonian Institute that contained photographs of Esquimaux implements. He indicated one, and asked me to translate to him the passage relative to its use. "Wonderful!" said he. "I have found this tool repeatedly in our rock-shelters, and have never known its purport. It is a remarkable fact, that to understand our reindeer hunters of the Vézère we must question the Esquimaux of the Polar region. I firmly hold that they were the same race." A gentle, intelligent, artistic, unwarlike people got pressed into corners by more energetic, military, and aggressive races. And, accustomed to the reindeer, some doubtless migrated North with their favourite beasts, and in a severer climate became somewhat stunted.