The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

382 THE HIGHLANDERS [excursus
most— ethnologists regard these men as the first wave of the
Celts ; some say of Gadelic, or perhaps Gadelic and Pictish. They
are allied by physique to several past and present races on the
Continent—the modern Walloons, for instance, and the old
Helvetii. The view maintained by the Editor is that the
Gadels or ancient Gaels and the Picts both belonged to the
great Aryan Race, and originally possessed the tall stature,
blond hair, and long heads which are postulated for the pure
Aryan. The Aryan Race, or rather the Aryan-speaking Race,
is a discovery of modern or scientific philology. It was dis-
covered some sixty years ago that the languages of the various
nations— barring a very few— dwelling from Ireland to Ceylon,
spoke languages that ultimately came from one original tongue.
In short, the chief Indian languages, Persian, Slavonic, Lettic,
Teutonic, Greek, Latin, and Celtic, are descended from one
mother-tongue. For a long time it has been a matter of
had its habitat. It is now
dispute where this original language
agreed that southern Russia and ancient Poland formed the
home of the Aryan tongue. The dispersion of the Aryanspeaking
people began some four thousand years ago. The
Celts lay on the upper reaches of the Danube until the dawn
of history begins ; the Latins and they were nearest of kin of
any of the other leading branches. The Celts spread over
Germany to the shores of the North Sea, and then, about
600 B.C., or indeed earlier, they entered Gaul and pushed on
their conquests into Spain, and later into northern Italy. They
were at the height of their power in the fourth century',
spreading from the west of Ireland to the mouth of the
Danube, and in 279 they overran Asia Minor, settling down to
the limits of Galatia about 250 B.C. Such an "empire" might
satisfy Rome itself But it had no centre, and soon crumbled,
after two hundred years' domination.
The Celts all unite on one philologic peculiarity : every
Aryan initial/ has been lost. In the course of their dispersion
over Europe they divided into two dialects over the Aryan
sound qv (as in Lat. quod, Eng. quantity). The one dialect
made it k or q purely, the other made it / ; and we speak of
P and Q Celts for brevity's sake. The Belgic Gauls, the Britons
and Welsh, and the Picts, were P Celts ; the Gadels or Gaels