REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. The Gael, or Cymbri; or an Inquiry into the Origin and History of the Irish, Scoti, Britons, and Gauls: and of the Caledonians, Picts, Welsh, Cornish, and Britons. By Sir Wm. Betham, Ulster King of Arms, &c. &c.-8vo. p. 443. THIS is a deep and learned inquiry, conducted upon the unerring principle of logical deduction from existing evidence. The author's investigation first tends to establish the fact, that the Celta, Gael, or Gauls, of Cæsar's day, and the Scoti* or Irish Britons, were branches of the same people, and that they all derived their origin from the Phoenicians. Carthage was founded, according to the tradition of antiquity, adopted by the poets, by that people. The old Roman Comedian Plautus has left us a play, his Pœnulus or Carthaginian, taken from a Greek drama called Kapxedovios, the same appellation. The plot, that a Carthaginian youth was stolen by pirates, and carried into Etolia, and that the two daughters of Hanno, a noble Carthaginian, had also been taken from him in the same way, that he repaired to Greece in search of them, &c., need not be more particularly described. In the course of this composition, Hanno is frequently made (like Catherine of France, in Shakspeare's Henry the Fifth) to speak in his own language. This language was of course the Punic; and singular and conclusive is the fact, that the speeches are almost word for word Gaelic or Irish. A short example or two will suffice: "Hanno. Laech la chanaim limini chot-(the same in Irish) Luach le cheannaghim liom miocht, i. e. at any price would I purchase my children. Hanno. Palum erga dectha.-(Irish. Ba lion earga deacta). I will submit to the dictates of Heaven. Hanno.-Gan ebel Balsameni ar a san. (Irish.-Guna bil Bal-samen ar a san). O that the good Balt-samhan may favour them." *Scuitæ is affirmed to be the derivative of this term, which in Irish means a ship, also a wanderer by sea as well as by land. † Beal, Baal, the sun. The author has made very effective use of the above circumstance in the course of his proofs, identifying the Gael with the Phoenicians. See page 113 et seq. That the Carthaginians were of Phoenician origin, the following passage of Herodotus appears conclusively to show: "Cambyses, King of Persia, commanded his fleet to attack Carthage; but the Phoenicians refused to obey him, because they were attached to the Carthaginians by their oaths, and the strongest of ties, and considered that, if they were to fight against their own children, they would violate the rights of blood and religion." The same author shows that the Phoenicians had so far advanced in the science of navigation, 600 years before the Christian era, as to sail round Africa, or double the Promontory which, 2000 years after, received from the Portuguese the name of the Cape of Good Hope; and when an exploit like this is taken into consideration, we shall cease to doubt that they could reach and colonise the British Islands -a voyage not half so difficult or dangerous (vide p. 48). The gods of the Phoenicians, and the gods of the Gael or Celta, were the same; and their names and attributes explicable by Irish etymons; Baal, called also Grian, Apollo; the second appellation corresponding with the Greek 'AKEрσekoμns or long-haired, expressive of the sun's rays. The Romans followed the Celtic term, and erected altars to Apollo Grannus.§ Taramis or Taran, the God of thunder, the king of Gods, called also Moloch by the Phoenicians, and by the Irish Molt, i. e. fire. The Phoenicians forced their children to pass through fire. To him human sacrifices were offered. Teutates, the Mercurius Teutates of Livy, in Irish Dia-talt, the God of trade. Hesus, Phoenicè et Celticè Hizzus, the God of war; he was called also Camolus-a lord, a governor: in the Gaelic Cam is mighty, all, arms. Herodotus in Thalia, xix. § Greannac, in Gaelic "long-haired." Camalodunum implies therefore the On the well or fountain worship of the Gael, the author's notices are replete with amusement and information. They were greatly addicted to this kind of superstition, which still lingers among them to this very hour, under the form of springs consecrated to the Virgin or certain saints. They had a deity called Divona or the river god. Divona Celtarum lingua fons addite Divii. "Dia, God, Aban, river-pronounced Divaun, or the river god."-p. 235. The God of the Avon will afford a familiar explanation at once of the term. A History of St. Patrick appended to a MS. of the New Testament of the 7th century, called the Book of Armagh, has the following passage: "St. Patrick came to Finamaige which is called Slane, because it was intimated to him that the magi honoured this fountain, and made donations to it as gifts to a god; for they sacrificed gifts to the fountain, and worshipped it like a god. The Rev. Charles O'Connor, in his third letter of Columbanus, describes this wellworship among the Irish, and says, that he pressed a very old man to state what advantage he expected from the singular custom of frequenting such wells as were contiguous to an old blasted oak, or an upright unhewn stone; and what the meaning was of the yet more singular custom of sticking rags on the branches of such trees and spitting upon them. His answer, and the answer of the oldest men was, that their ancestors always did it; that it was a preservative against geasa draiodecht, the sorceries of druids; that their cattle were preserved by it from infectious disorders; that daoini maithe, i. e. the fairies, were kept in good humour by it; and so thoroughly were they convinced of the sanctity of these Pagan practices, that they would travel bareheaded and bare-footed from ten to twenty miles for the purpose of crawling on their knees round these wells, and upright stones and oak trees, westward, as the sun travels, some three times, some six, some nine, and so on in uneven numbers, until their voluntary penances were completely fulfilled. The waters of Hoghlon were deemed so sacred from ancient usage, that they would throw into the lake whole rolls of butter as a preservative for the milk of their cows against geasa draiodeact." We wish our limits would allow us to follow the author in his most interesting description of the wellworship on the Irish sceligs or sacred promontories. Many of these places in the primitive ages, celebrated for human sacrifices and other druid rites, have, under the Christian era, been dedicated to St. Michael. The account of St. Michael's well, near Ballynascellig, on the coast of Kerry, and of the largest of the Scelig Islands, off that coast, which Sir William quotes from Smith's Kerry, p. 103, 113, affords most striking and interesting information on these superstitions. Of the pilgrimage to the Leac an docra, the stone of pain, we must give some brief idea. "The druidic pilgrim having made his votive offering at the sacred well, proceeds to adore the sacred stone, at the summit of the most lofty precipice in the island. At the height of 150 feet above the level of the sea, he squeezed through a hollow chasm resembling the funnel of a chimney, named the Needle's Eye, an ascent extremely difficult even to persons who proceed barefoot, though there are holes cut in the rock for the purpose of facilitating the attempt. When this obstacle is surmounted, a new one occursfor the only track to the summit is by a horizontal flat, not above a yard wide, which projects over the sea." This is the Leac an docra, the stone of pain. The difficulty of clinging to this stone in calm weather is described as great, but when there is wind, as there generally is, it is still greater; yet two more stations of tremendous danger await the pilgrim-the eagle's nest, where the monks of St. Michael substituted a stone cross for the unhewn druid idol or altar; but the most dangerous point that druid superstition ever suggested, yet remains to be surmounted. "It consists of a narrow ledge of rock, which projects from the pinnacle already mentioned, so as to form with it the figure of an inverted letter L, projecting from the very apex of the pinnacle several feet, itself not being above two feet broad; this ledge projects so far as to enable him who would venture on it to see the billows at the distance of 460 feet in perpendicular height; and the sea here is 90 feet deep, so that the largest man of war may ride in safety at anchor underneath; and yet to this extreme end the pilgrim proceeded astride upon this ledge, until, quite at its utmost verge, he kissed a cross, which some bold adventurer dared to cut into it as an antidote to the superstitious practices of pagan times!" p. 250. So much for Scelig worship; and the same authority adds : "Every promontory named Scylla or Scylleum, in Greece and Italy, in the British and the Irish, &c. is distinguished by temples, religious traditions, primæval religious names, and sacred fountains of the remotest antiquity.” The next head of dissertation to which the author passes, is the important proof, in some degree revolutionary of received ideas, that the Gael and Cymbri were a distinct people, in other words, that the Welsh were not Celts. The following is the pedigree of the Cymry, with which this proposition sets out. From the Cimbri of Jutland, the Cimbric Chersonesus, came the Cimbri who invaded Gaul, and were destroyed by Marius, a. u. c. 103; and the Caledonian Cymbri, who first peopled the British islands, afterwards called Picts, from these came the Welsh (Cymry*), the Cornish, and Armorican Britons. "The Welsh call themselves Cymbri, as a name attached to their descent, not to the country they inhabit, and the generic denomination of their race. Cumberland, one of their first conquests from the Roman province, after passing the Wall, was so called by the Saxons as the land of the Cymbri, the Welsh y having the same powers as the English u in Cumberland. The perfect identity of the name with that of the Cymbri of the Roman writers, indicates at least the probability that they were the ancestors of the Cymbry."-p. 388. One important fact which cannot be too much, we conceive, insisted upon to shew the nonidentity of the Cymry with the Gael, is the alleged radical difference between the Irish and the Welsh languages. At the time of the Roman invasion, three distinct nations were established in Britain, "the Gael, the Cymbri, and the Belgæ; the former were those who inhabited Britain, and fought with Cæsar; the second were the Caledonians, found in North Britain by Agricola; and the third were the people from Belgic Gaul, who had formed trifling settlements on the *Cimbri or Cimber is resolvable into a German word, which signifies warrior, or warlike. Kempffer, Kemper, Kimber, et Kamper. Sheringham says, 'Kimber sive Kempe, et Kemper, non bellatorem tantum sed proprie gigantem notat.' 382, and note. 6 See page coasts, but were neither numerous nor powerful."-p. 398. The Caledonians may be considered as the aboriginal inhabitants of the British islands; they were displaced from much of their territory by the Phoenician Gaelic colonists, and these called them Brit-daoine, i. e. the painted people. They were, from the same custom, in aftertimes by the Romans called Picts. Bede says, in his Ecclesiastical History, that they came from Scythia into Caledonia; they were that people, in short, who, on the retiring of the Roman legions from Britain, so annoyed the Romano-Britons, that they were fain to call in foreign aid, that of the Saxons, against them; they were the warlike nation, who had the renowned Arthur for their chief, whose name is equally to be found attached to places in the North as in Wales; they possessed themselves of, rather than were driven into Wales and Cornwall, both of which had been under Roman domination, and occupied by the Romanized Britons. In Wales, the names of places are principally Irish; in the country of the Picts they are principally Welsh. Bede declares, that the languages of the Britons and the Picts were different. Bede speaks of the Gaelic Britons under the first title, and on his authority the Picts are believed to be a different race from the Celtæ or Gauls, who possessed the southern parts of Britain. The author of the introduction to Fordun's Chronicle, says, 66 Equidem Pictorum gloria haud parva fuit multa que illi egregia patrarunt cum Scotis; per plura secula amicissimè vixerunt, et junctis viribus hostes quoscunque sive Romanos, sive Britones, vel propulsare vel etiam invadere semper parati erant."+ Here the distinction between the Gaul or Scuites, the Phoenician people, is marked, and also between the Picts, the Romans, and the RomanoBritons, or Romanized Celtæ. The Picts were finally extirpated and expelled from Scotland in the ninth century, according to Fordun, by Kenneth M'Alpin, Primus in Albania fertur regnâsse Kenedus Filius Alpini, prælia multa gerens Expulsis Pictis, &c.‡ Introduct. ad Hist. Scot. Fordun, vol. I. p. 33. Ibid. lib. 4, p. 179. And a little before, the same author alludes to the tradition which assigned to the Scots* an Egyptian origin, from Gaithelus and his wife Scota, which was not without foundation, as far as proximity of intercourse between the Phoenicians and that people connected them. The author, in assigning to the Cymri or Welsh their alleged true position in history, and we are fully disposed to concur in the force of his proofs, consoles them in elegant language for the loss of ancient claims which they might conceive they sustained by being made a colony of Picts conquering Wales after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain. He recalls to their memory their aboriginal pretensions, and tells them, that though at an early period they might have been driven northward by the intruding Phoenician Gael, who in their turn were subdued and amalgamated with the conquering Romans, "when the time of retribution arrived, their descendants rushed on the Roman province, extended the bounds of Pictavia beyond the Wall, reconquered a part of their ancient possessions, Cumberland, the northern part of England, the beautiful and romantic Cambria and Cornwall, and even secured a part of the province of Gaul, which their descendants have kept to this day from them, called Britanny." We have never risen from any volume on the subject of the ancient Irish with half the delight and information which this of Sir William The capital of Scotland, it is remarked, has a Pictish or Welsh name. Eden signifies in Welsh a wing. Ptolemy calls Edinburgh Πτερωτόν στρατόπεδον, Alata Castra. There are numerous other instances of Welsh derivations in the names of Scottish places. + The Welsh called the Gael, Gwyddel; and this helps the author to a very plausible etymology for the much-disputed derivation of the name applied to that celebrated ancient way, the Watlingstreet; not, he says, according to Whitaker, the Guetheling street, or way that led to the Gatheli or Guetheli of Ireland, but the Gwydhell street, the street made by the Gael. GENT. MAG. VOL. II. He has Betham has afforded us. proved his position that the Irish were a part of the great colonists of Spain, Gaul, and Britain, the Phonician Gael. He has established to a degree of the strongest presumption, that the Cymry or Welsh were quite a distinct people, and has thus by laborious production of evidence, collation of ancient and modern authorities, and by judicious inferences, exhibited a light on a dark period of history which gratuitous speculators had thrown into a confusion of chaotic obscurity, and often it may be added absurdity. This volume will go down the stream of time an useful and instructive manual for the student in that portion of the history of the British dominions, of which the lone unhewn pillar, the massy air-poised cromlech, the golden torques, the tomahawk-like celt, and the brazen target, are the only tangible remaining testimonies. : Europe during the Middle Ages. (Lardner's Cyclopedia.) 2 vols. A WORK of great research, considerable ability, with an excellent and judicious selection of subjects; and a narrative written in a style forcible and elegant. There is in it various learncriticism without undue severity. The ing without ostentation, and judicious biographical sketches of the founders of religious societies, or of philosophical schools, are exceedingly well executed; and in no instance do we think the writer partial or unjust, except in respect to the Protestant Church of England in his prognostications of her speedy decay and downfall, we do not agree; but consider, that with certain improvements in her system, not difficult to introduce, she would be the purest, soundest, and most apostolic church in the Christian world. Many yond her own power to introduce; and of these improvements are totally becan only be carried into effect by those who acknowledge her value, and wish to perpetuate her system. When she fails, it is generally from the weak. ness of her means, and the interruption introduced in consequence of some violence and spoliation: of this the nation, not the church-the spo H liators, not those who suffer for the robbery-must bear the blame. We will extract, as a specimen of his style, the author's summary of the character of Charlemagne, vol. II. p. 33: "Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, though not the wisest or the most learned, was beyond doubt the most splendid prince of the middle ages. Though his conquests alone have conferred immortality on his name, he was not without elevated qualities. His clemency was extraordinary; for, if he was cruel with the Saxons, we must remember that he had received incessant provocations from them; that they were uniformly apostate to the religion which they consented to embrace, and faithless to their engagements. This indeed is a poor apology for his severities; but it may show that they were not wholly unprovoked. In fact, his history, had we limits to detail it, proves, in regard to the worst criminals, that he generally commuted death into seclusion within the walls of a monastery. His love of letters will appear from the princely rewards which he bestowed on those who cultivated them; not on Franks only, or indeed chiefly, but on Italians, English, and Spaniards. Over the schools and monasteries which he had founded or enlarged, he placed the best scholars of his age, and he was often present to reward the successful student. He is known to have reproved with some severity the ecclesiastics, who, whether secular or monastic, expressed themselves with negligence. He thought ignorance disgraceful in a layman, in a churchman intolerable. He caused manuscripts to be greatly multiplied; in fact, a good and laborious penman was sure to be rewarded by him. It is some gratification to find that his most intimate friend, and the most learned man of his age, one who gave an impress to him and his people, was our countryman Alcuin. Of his religious zeal, his numerous foundations, as well of bishoprics as of monasteries, bear witness. He was scrupulous too in his observance of the rights of the church. He fasted and prayed with great sincerity; but though he was free from many vices, he was subject to one,-that of incontinence. He divorced his wives, and chose one mistress after another, with as little hesitation as the worst of his Merovingian predecessors. On the whole, however, though he had little claim to the honour of canonization, he was one of the best princes of the middle ages. Comprehensive in his views, persevering in his designs, indefatigable in his duties, anxious for the welfare of his people, sincere in his character, just in his decisions, paternal in all his actions, his memory religion, literature, and good government may well be dear to France. To him, were more indebted than all the princes of that nation who preceded or followed him. His name was repeated with equal reverence by the Arab of the Desert and Kings of his time, from the Caliphs of the Norman pirate of the deep. The Bagdad to the Anglo-Saxon Reguli, and from the Sovereigns of Cordova to those of Scandinavia, were eager to obtain his notice, to be honoured by his friendship and alliance. He was singularly unfortunate in his successors." We cannot close the volume without extracting the substance of a note from page 86, which will undoubtedly give great satisfaction to Mr. Petrie, Sir H. Nicolas, Mr. Sharpe, and other of our antiquarian illuminati; and we shall leave them to ruminate over it, and digest it at leisure. "Such collections (as Buchon's Chroniques Nationales, 4 vols. and the Memoires relatifs à l'Histoire de France, by Petitot and Momerquè,) do as much honour to France as they ought to shame England. We have indeed been deceived for a time by the promise of the Scriptores Rerum Anglicanarum from the Record Commission, but we shall never see such a collection, unless, what is not very probable, some private individual attempts that which officially appointed men are at once too incompetent and too indifferent to perform. Every thing in this country, from the nomination of a prime minister to that of a parish beadle, is under the same influence of corruption, and in nine cases out of ten the nominee is unequal to the task. Let us hope that the nation may soon open its eyes to its dishonour, and leave neither to Kings, nor the ministers of Kings, either its literary or its ecclesiastical interests." Cleone. By Mrs. Leman Grimstone. 2 vols. MRS. LEMAN GRIMSTONE is an awful woman, and such as ought to have a hero for her husband. We must give some of her tremendous demands on domestic life. "He that would have a home, not a harem,-a home where his heart may rest in rich security, to which in age, infirmity, disappointment, and distress, he may come, and still find the Hesperian fruit hanging in golden clusters,-must bring to that home a being free as him |