They
came from a French nursery-maid, with some children. Profoundly
ignorant of her relationship, this Gaulish Celt moved among her
British cousins, speaking her polite neo-Latin tongue, and full of
compassionate contempt, probably, for the Welsh barbarians and their
jargon. What a revolution was here! How had the star of this
daughter of Gomer waxed, while the star of these Cymry, his sons, had
waned! What a difference of fortune in the two, since the days when,
speaking the same language, they left their common dwelling-place in
the heart of Asia; since the Cimmerians of the Euxine came in upon
their western kinsmen, the sons of the giant Galates; since the
sisters, Gaul and Britain, cut the mistletoe in their forests, and
saw the coming of Caesar! Blanc, rouge, rocher champ, eglise,
seigneur,--these words, by which the Gallo-Roman Celt now names
white, and red, and rock, and field, and church, and lord, are no
part of the speech of his true ancestors, they are words he has
learnt; but since he learned them they have had a worldwide success,
and we all teach them to our children, and armies speaking them have
domineered in every city of that Germany by which the British Celt
was broken, and in the train of these armies, Saxon auxiliaries, a
humbled contingent, have been fain to follow; the poor Welshman still
says, in the genuine tongue of his ancestors, {4} gwyn, goch, craig,
maes, llan, arglwydd; but his land is a province, and his history
petty, and his Saxon subduers scout his speech as an obstacle to
civilisation; and the echo of all its kindred in other lands is
growing every day fainter and more feeble; gone in Cornwall, going in
Brittany and the Scotch Highlands, going, too, in Ireland; and there,
above all, the badge of the beaten race, the property of the
vanquished.
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