Myths & Legends of the Celtic RaceRolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race
Rolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Celts -- Religion; Mythology, Celtic
5 The ancients were not very close observers of physical
characteristics. They describe the Celts in almost exactly the same
terms as those which they apply to the Germanic races. Dr. Rice
Holmes is of opinion that the real difference, physically, lay in
the fact that the fairness of the Germans was blond, and that of the
Celts red. In an interesting passage of the work already quoted (p.
315) he observes that, “Making every allowance for the admixture of
other blood, which must have considerably modified the type of the
original Celtic or Gallic invaders of these islands, we are struck
by the fact that among all our Celtic-speaking fellow subjects there
are to be found numerous specimens of a type which also exists in
those parts of Brittany which were colonised by British invaders,
and in those parts of Gaul in which the Gallic invaders appear to
have settled most thickly, as well as in Northern Italy, where the
Celtic invaders were once dominant; and also by the fact that this
type, _even among the more blond representatives of it, is
strikingly different, to the casual as well as to the scientific
observer, from that of the purest representatives of the ancient
Germans_. The well-known picture of Sir David Wilkie, ‘Reading of
the Waterloo Gazette,’ illustrates, as Daniel Wilson remarked, the
difference between the two types. Put a Perthshire Highlander side
by side with a Sussex farmer. Both will be fair; but the red hair
and beard of the Scot will be in marked contrast with the fair hair
of the Englishman, and their features will differ still more
markedly. I remember teeing two gamekeepers in a railway carriage
running from Inverness to Lairey. They were tall, athletic, fair
men, evidently belonging to the Scandinavian type, which, as Dr.
Beddoe says, is so common in the extreme north of Scotland; but both
in colouring and in general aspect they were utterly different from
the tall, fair Highlanders whom I had seen in Perthshire. There was
not a trace of red in their hair, their long beards being absolutely
yellow. The prevalence of red among the Celtic-speaking people is,
it seems to me, a most striking characteristic. Not only do we find
eleven men in every hundred whose hair is absolutely red, but
underlying the blacks and the dark browns the lame tint is to be
discovered.”
6 See the map of comparative nigrescence given in Ripley’s “Races of
Europe,” p. 318. In France, however, the Bretons are not a dark race
relatively to the rest of the population. They are composed partly
of the ancient Gallic peoples and partly of settlers from Wales who
were driven out by the Saxon invasion.
7 See for these names Holder’s “Altceltischer Sprachschatz.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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