James Cruikshank Roger

“ Assuming that it was Celts among whom the Norwegians settled, is it possible to conceive that men of such force of character as the Northmen made no lasting impression on the speech of the wretched Celtic inhabitants whom they trampled under foot? Despite the researches of philologers is it rational to conclude that what is now called Celtic can on any intelligible hypothesis be the primeval speech of the unlettered savages who before the advent of the Romans had been driven into the western portion of the Island by the Belgae? ”

“ I regard the questions of races, art, and culture entirely from an outside or historic view. In the face of such facts as I have adduced to continue to call Mac Celtic is simply persistent dogmatism—a perverse determination to adhere per fas et nefas to a foregone conclusion. The prefix Mac though found in Scotch Gaelic and other dialects of the Erse, has obviously been imported thither only as a foreign term, in the same manner that the Norse word jarl, an earl, found its way into the Welsh. ”

“ Whether is it more reasonable to believe that the Suiones or Swedes referred to by Tacitus, not to mention the Danes and Norwegians, did not continue to make their descent on the shores of Britain so readily accessible to their fleets, or that the so-named Saxon invader was one and the same with the Scandinavian? “There is nothing very strange,” the Quarterly thinks, “in supposing that some of the ‘Angles’ or ‘Saxons’ may have descended from the Suiones of Tacitus.” ”

“ It might be difficult to say who is an authority on language, but anyone reasonably endowed with judgment may be an authority on matters of fact and practical sense. The science of language is not an exact science, and leaves a good deal of room for the imagination to play. I would rather doubt the conclusions of philologers than believe that the Roman historian wrote without knowledge of his subject, or deliberately stated what he had no means of knowing to be true. [Pg 30] The weight of evidence is certainly on the side of Cæsar. ”

“ Professor Freeman thinks it odd that the so-called Saxons were led into such strange mistakes as to their own name and origin. Is it an exceptional thing for a nation to be mistaken as to its remote history? ”

“ It was a conception of the late Sir David Brewster, that science is the only earthly treasure we can carry with us to a better state. Let us hope that if Language, and its twin sister be among the number destined thither, they will be freed from their mundane misconceptions and uncertainties.
The Reviewer of the Literary World thinks I “make a sorry jumble of races and languages. All sorts of people, and tribes, dialects, and remains, related and unrelated, are said to be Goths or Gothic,” though in dealing with my shortcomings, real or supposed, he does not always keep faith with facts. ”

“ The ordinary average Englishman has no independent [Pg 20] belief on the subject. He is told in his youth the story about Hengist and Horsa, and if he remembers it at all it gives him no particular concern. The bulk of Englishmen and Scotchmen too, are profoundly ignorant as to their history and origin. The Englishman has some vague conception that he is an “Anglo-Saxon,” while the Scot takes it for granted that all Scotchmen are Celts, and that all art found in Scotland is Celtic. ”

“ The Saxons were in fact only an earlier swarm of northern adventurers of the same race who were afterwards known in history as Danes and Northmen. Still Professor Freeman thinks the Scandinavian element was but an infusion into the already existing English mass. Hardly I should think if the existing English mass, and the invading Northmen had a common origin! The name of England’s principal city, it may be remarked, the great metropolis of the Empire is Scandinavian. Neither are there wanting persons [Pg 27] who believe that such also is the name England itself. ”

“ But that the Scandinavian antiquary, who as regards his national remains has no reason to falsify the facts of history, should in the interest of an exotic fable, waste his ingenuity in disclaiming the art that especially belongs to his country surpasses my comprehension. Let us hear what the Saturday Review has to say on the subject of Celtic art. Taking exception to many of my positions, it says: “He [Mr. Roger] is on much [Pg 36] firmer ground when he declines to believe in any art or culture that can fairly be called Celtic. ”

“ These remarks are unanswerable, which it is said, is the happy property of all remarks sufficiently wide of the purpose. Is the language of the British nation less “English” because derived from the Scandinavian rather than from the Saxon, two dialects of the same speech in their essential elements hardly distinguishable? If this be true—as beyond all question it is true—it demolishes utterly the bugbear which the suggestion he advocates sets up. ”

“ I deny that Mac is Celtic, and I identify it with the Maqui of the Ogham inscriptions, because I think there are good grounds for believing that Oghams and runes were equally the work of the Northmen, although Lord Southesk, who has made these remains a special study, differs from me in opinion. There is certainly an uncommon [Pg 50] outside resemblance between the two words. It is however, satisfactory to know that his Lordship is in substantial agreement with me on the main subject of my contention, the preponderance of the Scandinavian element in the British Isles. ”

“ Third rate contributions by high class writers command their market value. If men can obtain payment for writing such articles as that of Professor Freeman’s criticism of The Viking Age that appeared in the January number of the Contemporary Review it shows that there is something in a name, that the conductors of such periodicals pay more regard to the reputation of the writer, than to the quality of the writing. ”

“ Ethnology, or Anthropology—whichever its votaries choose to call it—is not, as I think, a science. It consists of the conceits and assumptions of men learned and unlearned who have reached certain conclusions, and who profess to bring back from the depths of prehistoric antiquity facts which may not be facts, or which at least we have no means of knowing to be true. ”

“ Pinkerton says, “it is indispensable to admit the most ancient authorities as the sole foundation of any knowledge we can acquire. If we reject them or pretend to refute them no science can remain, and any dreamer may build up an infinite series of romances from his own imagination. ”

“ When, therefore, a modern pretends to refute Cæsar and Tacitus in their accounts of the inhabitants of ancient Britain, any man of science would disdain to enter the field.” It does not by any means follow that every scholar who is familiar with the structural peculiarities of language has necessarily any aptitude for perceiving the exact relations of things. Many distinguished men eminent in literature have been singularly deficient in ordinary reasoning power. ”

“ The languages or dialects to be dealt with as regards the British islands, are few in number, and we can judge of them in an outside fashion, without the aid of Bopp, or Grimm, or Zeuss, or Steinthal. These are the Welsh of the Principality, which, roughly speaking, includes the extinct dialect of Cornwall. The Erse or Gaelic of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. The Teutonic of the Belgae, which Prichard calls Celtic, but which we gather from Cæsar was German. ”

“ Danish writers, we are told, have often greatly exaggerated the amount of Scandinavian influence in England, a remark that applies with equal force to the advocates of the Saxon and Celtic theories. Things, it is said, have been set down as signs of direct Scandinavian influence, which “are part of the common heritage of the Teutonic race.” ”

“ Such is the historian Hume’s estimate of the Macpherson fraud as stated by the Edinburgh Review, and such the beggarly array of evidence on which, according to the abettors of Macpherson, the honour and glory of Scotland, must rest in all time to come. The Scotch are a stubborn race on which to operate, especially in matters that concern their nationality. They have conceived the idea that in [Pg 9] the dark ages—dark to all but them—their countrymen, a Celtic race, were skilled in the sciences and acquainted with art. ”

“ It is simply the arbitrary conclusion of a man looking into a mill stone, and giving a deliverance in regard to which he is in no more commanding position than the most illiterate specimen of humanity to be found in the slums of the Northern Metropolis. On the other side of the question it is open to me to state that the Pictish words which Mr. Skene persuades himself he has discovered, and which on his own shewing are neither Welsh nor Gaelic but, [Pg 12] belonging to a Low dialect of the latter may after all be only the obsolete remains of an early Gothic speech. ”

“ Not all the ingenuity of all the Bopps and Grimms and Potts and Zeusses who ever applied themselves to the elucidation of this most obscure of all unintelligible subjects can ever be sufficient to overturn an outside historical fact. ”

“ Most of them, however, he adds, will be found in “various Scandinavian books,” but he does not suggest that the “various Scandinavian books” are not readily accessible to the English reader.
Professor Freeman indulges in that species of raillery to which men usually resort when they are driven into a corner. “We are really not ourselves,” he says, “but somebody else.” “The belief as to their own origin which the English of Britain have held ever since there have been Englishmen,” and such incoherent trifling. ”

“ If I be deficient in language, in whatever acceptation, I am in no worse position than the statesman already referred to, who maintains the truth of ancient Scripture avowedly without any knowledge of the Hebrew tongue. ”

“ That a [Pg 7] nation so rude in other arts, and even unacquainted with the use of letters, should yet have carried the most elegant of all arts to so high a degree of perfection, would not only be sufficient to overturn every established theory, but would exceed all the possibilities of rational assent. ”

“ Schliemann’s Mycenæan discoveries deprive the Celts of any credit for originality in their system of spiral ornament.” Again “‘Celtic’ patterns certainly existed on the shores of the Ægean fifteen hundred years before our era.” “Mr. Roger is probably right when he claims a Scandinavian origin for the ancient claymores (two handed) , for the Tara brooch and other brooches, for stone crosses, dirk handles, and what so else is too commonly attributed to Celtic art.” “‘What is Celtic art?’ cries Mr. Roger, triumphantly. ”

“ There are unfortunately now no Doctor Johnsons, or Pinkertons or John Hill Burtons to deal with these possible inventions or forgeries of a later age, the perhaps “other evidences” of what the great lexicographer characterised as “Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood.” Ample time and opportunity has been afforded since 1762—the date when Macpherson first gave to the world his Ossian the Son of Fingal—to fabricate missing documents or supply others of more startling character. ”

“ R. Angus Smith, and others, that the Celts and Teutons even remotely had not a common origin, but were ab origine distinct races of mankind. As to authority I hold that “no man is an authority for any statement which he cannot prove,” and although according to the critic of the Literary World, I deliver my opinions in a manner “more forcible than elegant” [5] my pretensions are exceedingly humble. ”

“ Most persons who write on any subject do something to keep in touch with current facts and common knowledge. If the critic of the Literary World had taken the trouble to read my book attentively, he would have found many references to what has been done by philologers and Ethnologists on whose labours he sets so much store. ”

“ It is my experience that to persons of this class it comes more natural to state a falsehood than to speak the truth. We all remember Charles Surface’s exculpatory witness in The School for Scandal, “Oh yes, I swear.” Mr. Mackinnon states that “The Gaelic text of Ossian which James Macpherson handed over to Mr. Mackenzie, and which was given to the editor of the edition of 1807, has disappeared.” How very odd that manuscripts on which the human eye never rested should thus so strangely disappear! Can that be said to disappear which was never visible? Of the poems of Ossian, Dr. ”

“ To the article in question, which occupies nearly two columns of The Antiquary, the editor appends the following note:—“The story of Hengist and Horsa (including the so-called Anglo-Saxon invasion) is an exploded fable. The Anglo-Saxons of England, like the Picts or Caledonians of Scotland, were only the earlier Northmen or Scandinavians.”
This is pre-eminently an age of platitudes and Professor Freeman is great in such. “There is,” he says, “an English folk, and there is a British Crown.” There is also, it might be affirmed, a [Pg 39] Scotch folk, and a British Crown, and until Mr. ”