United States or Benin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For early Europe was very largely Celtic Europe, and nowhere can we trace the continuous influence of Celtic culture and idealism, coming down to us from a remote past, save in Ireland only. To understand the intellect of pre-Roman Gaul, of Spain, of Portugal, and largely of Germany, and even of Italy, we must go to Ireland.
The tumuli and tombs of Ancient Scandinavia, of pre-Roman Britain, of Gaul, of Switzerland, reveal two types of skull a broad and a long of which, in Scandinavia, the broad seems to have belonged to the older stock, while the reverse was probably the case in Britain, and certainly in Switzerland.
The incident is not much in itself; but something. Not that the Celtic Church of David and Patrick was Pelagian; it was not. In the matter of doctrine it is impossible to distinguish it from the Church on the continent. But Pelagianism may suggest that there were in Britain relics of an elder light. Did some echo of ancient wisdom, Druidic, survive in Britain from Pre-roman days?
In literature and in art Roman influences were dominant and permanent, but, as Martin Hume says: "The centralizing governmental traditions which the Roman system had grafted upon the primitive town and village government of the Celtiberians had struck so little root in Spain during six centuries, that long before the last legionaries left the country the centralized government had fallen away, and the towns with their assembly of all free citizens survived with but little alteration from the pre-Roman period."
They were wrong, of course, and they have been widely and deservedly ridiculed for imagining that the greater part of our English boroughs grew up since the barbarian invasions upon waste places. On the contrary most of our towns grew up upon Roman and pre-Roman foundations, and are continuous with the pre-historic past. But Henley forms a very interesting exception.
Its cathedral, as well as the Pre-Roman, Roman, Gothic, and middle age remains, most of them covered over with heaps of dust and earth, are well worth a visit, being highly interesting both to artists and to archæological students. In short, Tuy on her hill beside the Miño, glaring across an iron bridge at Portugal, is a city rich in traditions and legends of faded hopes and past glories.
But though this piece of hydrography has its importance the chief meaning of Cricklade in history lay in the fact that it was the spot where this Ermine Street on its way from the south country to the Severn Valley got over the Thames, and the village connected with it was entrenched certainly in Roman and probably in pre-Roman times. This entrenchment may still be traced.
The influence of the pre-Roman Celts is almost imperceptible; while the number of words introduced by the Frankish conquerors amounts to no more than a few hundreds. Thus the French tongue presents a curious contrast to that of England.
In some few of the Swiss aquatic stations a mixture of bronze and iron implements has been observed, but no coins. At Tiefenau, near Berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field, coins and medals of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek manufacture, and iron swords, have been found, all belonging to the first and pre-Roman division of the age of iron.
The tumuli of Britain of pre-Roman date have yielded two extremely different forms of skull, the one broad and the other long; and the same variety has been observed in the skulls of the ancient Gauls . The suggestion is obvious that the one form of skull may have been associated with the fair, and the other with the dark, complexion.
Word Of The Day