the language of the Cymry, or British, means a covert, a place covered over. The word occurs in the ancient Welsh poetry, as in the "Afallenau of Merddhin :"— A dyf yn argel yn argoedydd. Will come in the covert in the lofty woods. This mode of habitation seems to have been the primitive state of barbaric life. Tacitus describes some of the ruder German tribes as dwelling underground. Euphorus added, that they had an oracle deep under ground. The Kimbri swore by a brazen bull, which they carried with them. In battle they appeared with helmets representing fierce beasts gaping, or some strange figures; and added a high floating crest to make them look taller, as we now dress our Foot Guards. They used white shining shields, and iron mail, and either the battle-axe or long and heavy swords. They thought it base to die of a disease, and exulted in a military death as a glorious and happy end. (Plut. in Mario Val. Max. lib. ii. c. 6.) Callimachus called the Kimbri "horse-milkers." (Callim. Hym. in Dian, v. 252.) Most rude and poor nations drink the milk of the animals they ride, as the Bedouins of the desert use that of the camel. The religious rites of the Cymry included occasionally human sacrifices; one of the most ancient and universal superstitions. Strabo states that their wives accompanied them in war, that many hoary priestesses of their oracle. followed, clothed in white linen garments bound with a brazen girdle, and with naked feet. These women, with swords in their hands, sought the captives throughout the army, and threw them into a brass vessel of the size of twenty amphora. Then one of the prophetesses, ascending an elevation, stabbed them singly, as suspended above the cauldron, and made her divinations from the manner in which the blood flowed into it. Other assistants opened the bodies, and predicted victory from the inspection of the bowels. In their battles they used a species of immense drum; for they struck upon skins stretched over their war chariots, which emitted a very powerful sound. (Strabo, lib. vii. p. 451.) Plutarch describes the women to have been placed on their wagons in the conflict with Marius; and, when the men gave way in battle, to have killed those who fled, whether parents or brothers. They strangled their infants at the same time, and threw them under the wheels while fighting the Romans, and at last destroyed themselves rather than survive the calamity. Such was also the Jewish law. Tacitus writes concerning the CymryBritons at the period of the Roman invasion: Women with firebrands in their hands, running like furies among the army of the Britons in Angle-sey; and adds, that they stained their altars with the blood of their captives, and consulted their gods by the fibres of men. The Jews murdered one another in Clifford's Tower (time Richard I.) on the Jewish law above alluded to.-See "Records of York Castle," 1880. Strabo remarks of the Kelta (the Gaul) that it was common to them and the Iberians to lie on the ground; that they used waxen vessels; were addicted to human sacrifices, from which the Romans reclaimed them; and that they were accustomed to bring home the heads of their enemies and fix them on the gates of their towns. He says that Posidonius saw several of their heads so exhibited; a custom Strabo thought barbarian, but which reminds us of our legal practice with executed political traitors. The Keltæ, or Gauls, were more easily conquered than the Iberians (Spaniards), as the former fought in masses. Cæsar expressly mentions that one of the Keltic (Gaul) kings, Divitiacus, who governed the Suessiones, had subjected a part of Britain (lib. ii. c. 4); that the Kelts or Gauls of Amorica called upon some of the British tribes to aid them against his attacks (lib. iii. c. 9); and one of his reasons for attacking Britain was to punish them for so doing (c. 18). He speaks also of the island being visited by the Keltic merchants; and that before his invasion he sent one of the Keltic princes of Gaul, whom he had made a king, to persuade the Britons to be friendly to the Roman state. Thus Cæsar affords sufficient evidence of the military and commercial intercourse between the two peoples in his time to justify an opinion of the affinity between some parts of their respective populations. But though the Kimmerii, and their kindred the Kelts, may have peopled Britain, the Phoenicians also established intercourse with islands which the Greeks called "the Islands of Tin," or Cassiterides. A descriptive name, the translation of the Phoenician appellation κασσιτιρού, is the word used by the Greeks for tin, derived from the Phoenicians. Aristotle talks of Keltic tin, and Strabo places the situation in the latitude of England. According to the Welsh triads, while the country was only inhabited by wild beasts, it had the name of Clas Merddhin. (Trioedd i.) In this state Hu Gadarn led the first colony of the Cymry to it, of whom some went to Bretagne. It then acquired the name of Honey Island. In the course of time, Prydain, son of Aedd the Great, reigned in it, and from him it was called Ynys Prydain-the Isle of Prydain. (Trioedd i.) Isodorus says that Britain derived its name from a word of its inhabitants, which is its present denomination in Welsh, and which the Greeks and Romans may have extended into Britannia. On Bochart's derivation of Brettanike from Baratanac the Land of Tin, it may be remarked that these terms are rather conjectural as to the Hebrew; though "barat" signifies a field in Syriac, and is twice used in that sense in the Chaldee of Daniel. But the two component words, actually existing in the Arabic tongue, and to be found in the Arabic Lexicon, show "bahrat" to mean "a country," and "anuk" to signify "tin and lead;" so that in Arabic “bahratanuk” expresses "the country of tin," which is the meaning of the Greek word Cassiterides; and it is just as probable that England should have been called the Country of Tin, as a part of Africa should be called by us, in 1883, "the Gold Coast," "the Slave Coast;" seamen and merchants not unnaturally naming the distant land from the article for which they frequent it. (Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. ii. c. 67.) When Britain was invaded by the Romans its inhabitants were divided into many tribes, of which about forty-five may be found recorded in Turner's Hist. Eng., re-pub. 1828. All the Britons stained their bodies of a blue colour, with woad, which gave them a more horrible appearance in battle. It is remarkable that these fair-skinned people coloured themselves to be as black people, so as to become more terrible to their enemies. Cæsar distinguishes the Cantii, of Kent, as more advanced than the rest in civilisa tion, and not differing much from the people of Gaul. But most of the-interior-tribes lived on milk and flesh, and clothed themselves with skins. Herodian speaks of those in the northern districts, with whom Severus fought, as usually naked, with an iron ring round their neck or stomach. (Cæsar, lib. iii. p. 83; Comment., lib. v. c. 10.) They seem to have had the habit of colouring their bodies from infancy, as Pliny says the British wives and nurses did it. (Lib. xxii. c. 2.) Herodian remarks of the Britons who resisted Severus, that they painted the figures of all kinds of animals on their bodies (lib. iii. p. 83); and as Claudian mentions "the fading figures on the dying Pict," it seems to have pervaded the island, and to have been continued to his time. (Claud., De Bell.) These Kimri Britons wore long hair on their heads, but shaved it from the other parts of the body excepting the upper lip. Cæsar said the population was numerous-30,000 in 1080-but chiefly Danes. The Zulu appears to be as civilized as the Briton was, previous to the time the Roman met him, or as the Maori in 1848; while it is not proved that the two first ever were cannibals, yet may it not have been so with tribes having many other points in common? They all dressed much alike. The Maori said of his enemy, "When I have killed him I may as well eat him ;" and the sage of 1883 says, The worst use you can put a man to is to (kill) hang him. Yet the Maori thought he could hardly make a better use of his enemy than to kill and eat him. As various modes of killing or sacrificing others are related as having been in use among all tribes in the infancy of their manhood, whether dating from Adam and Eve, from monkeys (see Darwin), or |