A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 1Guizot, François
History
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 1
Guizot, François
France -- History
Little by little this name is observed to become more restricted and more
precise. The Iberians of Spain are the first to be detached; then the
Germans. In the century preceding the Christian era, the Gauls, that is,
the peoples inhabiting Gaul, are alone called Celts. We begin even to
recognize amongst them diversities of race, and to distinguish the
Iberians of Gaul, alias Aquitanians, and the Kymrians or Belgians from
the Gauls, to whom the name of Celts is confined. Sometimes even it is
to a confederation of certain Gallic tribes that the name Specially
applies. However it be, the Gauls appear to have been the first
inhabitants of western Europe. In the most ancient historical memorials
they are found there, and not only in Gaul, but in Great Britain, in
Ireland, and in the neighboring islets. In Gaul, after a long
predominance, they commingled with other races to form the French nation.
But, in this commingling numerous traces of their language, monuments,
manners, and names of persons and places, survived and still exist,
especially to the east and south--cast, in local customs and vernacular
dialects. In Ireland, in the highlands of Scotland, in the Hebrides and
the Isle of Man, Gauls (Gaels) still live under their primitive name.
There we still have the Gaelic race and tongue, free, if not from any
change, at least from absorbent fusion.
From the seventh to the fourth century B.C., a new population spread over
Gaul, not at once, but by a series of invasions, of which the two
principal took place at the two extremes of that epoch. They called
themselves Kymrians or Kimrians, whence the Romans made Cimbrians, which
recalls Cimmerii or Cimmerians, the name of a people whom the Greeks
placed on the western bank of the Black Sea and in the Cimmerian
peninsula, called to this day Crimea. During these irregular and
successively repeated movements of wandering populations, it often
happened that tribes of different races met, made terms, united, and
finished by amalgamation under one name. All the peoples that
successively invaded Europe, Gauls, Kymrians, Germans, belonged at first,
in Asia, whence they came, to a common stern; the diversity of their
languages, traditions, and manners, great as it already was at the time
of their appearance in the West, was the work of time and of the diverse
circumstances in the midst of which they had lived; but there always
remained amongst them traces of a primitive affinity which allowed of
sudden and frequent comings, amidst their tumultuous dispersion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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