How little the triumph of the
conqueror's laws, manners, and language, proves the extinction of the
old race, we may see by looking at France; Gaul was Latinised in
language, manners, and laws, and yet her people remained essentially
Celtic. The Germanisation of Britain went far deeper than the
Latinisation of France, and not only laws, manners, and language, but
the main current of the blood became Germanic; but how, without some
process of radica extirpation, of which, as I say, there is no
evidence, can there have failed to subsist in Britain, as in Gaul, a
Celtic current too? The indications of this in our language have
never yet been thoroughly searched out; the Celtic names of places
prove nothing, of course, as to the point here in question; they come
from the pre-historic times, the times before the nations, Germanic
or Celtic, had crystallised, and they are everywhere, as the
impetuous Celt was formerly everywhere,--in the Alps, the Apennines,
the Cevennes, the Rhine, the Po, as well as in the Thames, the
Humber, Cumberland, London. But it is said that the words of Celtic
origin for things having to do with every-day peaceful life,--the
life of a settled nation,--words like basket (to take an instance
which all the world knows) form a much larger body in our language
than is commonly supposed; it is said that a number of our raciest,
most idiomatic, popular words--for example, bam, kick, whop, twaddle,
fudge, hitch, muggy,--are Celtic.
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