The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE WANDERINGS OF THE WIROS 165
evidence has appeared, so far as I know, there is reason for beheving that many of these
Gaelic wanderers found refuge in south Brittany and La Vendue, and persisted in their
lake-dwelling culture. No pile-dwellings have been found in these parts, so far as I am
aware, yet I suspect their existence ; but perhaps the numerous islets in the Bay of
Morbihan were a sufficiently safe refuge for these poor folk.
The Kimric invasion of Gaul reached at first neither to the extreme west nor to
the north, for its main advance was down the Rhone valley to the Midi. But there
is evidence that small bands moved towards the north-east, down the valleys of the Meuse
and Moselle, and we can pick up their traces again in Belgium.'® So far direct
archaeological evidence still further north fails us, at least in HaUstatt times, though
perhaps the Kimri did not cross the mouth of the Rhine until they had adopted La Tene
culture ; but if, as I have suggested, we are to consider the name Cimbri as a variant
of Kimri, they must have reached the peninsula of Jutland, to which they gave the
name of the Cimbric Chersonese. That they came within sight of the Baltic sea is clear,
for an old name for that sea, Morimarusam,^^ is Celtic. If, however, Rhys is correct
in considering the word Goidelic,'^ it must have been given to the sea by the GaeUc refugees.
In Jutland the Kimri came into contact with the Teutones, descendants of the Wiros
who had carried northwards the Type B swords. Whether they fought them at first
is uncertain, but by the second century they had made an unholy aUiance with them to
ravage the lands to the south, and they would again have carried fire and sword
throughout Europe had not their operations been cut short in 102 B.C. at Aquae Sextiae
by the Roman army under Marius.
It was apparently in the fourth century, or a few years earlier, that certain tribes
of these Kimri, whether a southern branch of the Cimbri or tribes living to the
south-west of the chersonese in Frisia, HoUand or Belgium, is uncertain, began to move
southwards and westwards. These were the Galati, Galli and Belgae. They began in
various waves to disturb southern Europe, and to harry the settled communities as far
as Asia Minor, where they survived for several centuries as Galatians.
»6 D6chelette (1908-14) ii. 615, 616.
»7 Pliny iv. 95 ; Solinus xix. 2 ; quoted by Rhys and Brynmor-Jones (1900) 80.
'8 Rhys and Brynmor-Jones (1900) 80.