Page:Northern Antiquities 1.djvu/23

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(iv)

many, Scandinavia, Britain, and Spain, who were all included by the ancients under the general name of Hyperboreans, Scythians, and Celts, being all originally of one race and nation, and having all the same common language, religion, laws, customs, and manners.

This is the position which these Writers have adopted and maintained, with an uncommon display of deep erudition, and a great variety of specious arguments. But that their position, so far as relates to the Celts, is erroneous, and the arguments that support it inconclusive, will appear, if it can be shown, That ancient Germany, Scandinavia, Gaul, and Britain were not inhabited by the descendants of one single race; but on the contrary, divided between two very different people; the one of whom we shall call, with most of the Roman authors, Celtic, who were the ancestors of the Gauls, Britons, and Irish; the other Gothic or Teutonic, from whom the Germans, Belgians, Saxons, and Scandinavians derived their origin; and that these were ab origine two distinct people, very unlike in their manners, customs, religion, and laws.


As to the Arguments by which Cluverius and Pelloutier support their hypothesis that the Gothic and Celtic nations were the same, they may all be reduced to Two Heads; viz. either to Quotations from the ancient Greek and Roman writers; or to Etymologies of the names of persons or places, &c.


With regard to the latter, (viz. Etymologies) these two writers lay it down that the present German or High Dutch is a genuine daughter of the ancient Celtic or Gaulish language[1]; because, from it they can explain the Etymology of innumerable names that were well known to be Gaulish or Celtic[2]; and this being admitted, it must follow that the Germans

  1. La langue Alemande est un reste de l’ancienne langue des Celtes. Pelloutier, vol. I. p. 165, &c.
  2. Vid. Cluv. lib. I. cap. vi, vii, viii, &c. Pellout. liv. I. chap. xv.