A history of the Highlands and of the Highland clans : with an ...

xy\nn preliminahy dissektatios.
Japhet, the son of Noah ;
that Gomer settled in the province of Phry-
Ria in A>ia Minor, whilst his sons, Ashkenaz and Togarnuili, occuiued
Armpnia, and Ilephath took possession of Cappadocia ; that when they
found it necessary to spread themselves wider, they moved regularly in
columns, without disturbing or interfering with their neighbours ; that
the descendants of Gomer, or the Cello:, took the left hand, and gra-
dually spread themselves westward to Poland, Hungary, Gennanj-,
France, and Spain ;
and that the descendants of Magog, the brother of
Gomer, moved to the eastward, peopling Tartary, and spreading themselves
as far as India and China. Speculative fancies like these, how-
ever, are too absurd and extravagant to be even amusing. The real
question is, whether the same arguments which prove most of the other
nations of the world to be of eastern origin and descent, may not also
be applied to that great stock, the branches of which, anterior to the
commencement of history, had overspread Gaul and Britain, and occu-
pied a considerable part of Spain.
But here it is proper to observe, that writers on the history of lan-
guages and the antiquity of nations, are divided in opinion with respect
to this question. Adelung and Murray have considered the Celts as a
branch of the Indo-European stock ; but the latter has left that part of
his work which relates to the Celtic dialects in a most incomplete state ;
and Adelung has committed the error of supposing the Welsh or Cynib-
ric to be derived from the language of the Belgae, and not from that of
file Celts, who inhabited tlie central parts of Gaul and Britain. From
want of information respecting the Celtic dialects, many of the conti-
nental writers, amongst whom may be mentioned Frederick Schlegel and
Malte-Brun, have been led to believe the Celtic to be a language of a
class wholly unconnected with the other idioms of Europe ; and in Bri-
tain the same opinion has, from the same cause, been expressed In-
several well known authors. Mr Pinkerton, for instance, has declared,
in his usual dogmatical manner, that the Celtse were a people entirely
distinct from the rest of mankind ; and that their language, the real
Celtic, is as remote from the Greek as the Hottentot is from the Lapponic.
And Colonel Kennedy, at the conclusion of the chapter in which he
successfully refutes some of the opinions of Pelloutier and Bullet, re-
specting the Celtas and their language, concludes, that " the Celtic,
when divested of all words which have been introduced into it by con-
quest and religion, is a perfectly original language ;" and that " this
originality incontrovertibly proves that neitlier Greek, Latin, or the
Teutonic dialects, nor Arabic, Persian, or Sanskrit, were derived from
the Celtic, since tlicse languages have not any affinity whatever with
tliat tongue."* Davis, however, in the preface to his dictionsry, has
"aid, " Ausim afHrmare linguam Britannicam (Celticam), turn vocibus,
tisni p!irasibws et orationis contextu, tum literarum pronunciatioue,
. Kiiincilj's Ri-scarclips, p. 85. Piirhani, pp. 20—22.