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APPELLATIVES.

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(B. G. 5.22). If we suppose the first element of the name to be the Welsh tasg, that which is agreed to be done, a task, Taximagalus may possibly indicate a vassal chief, one bound to render military or other service.

The Welsh gwas, a young man, enters freely into composition:-ysgwyd-was, a shield-bearer, from ysgwyd, a shield; march-was, a horseman, from march, a horse; teyrn-was, a royal youth, from teyrn, a king; tywas, a domestic, from ty, a house; is-was, an under servant, from is, inferiority, &c. The formation was also used for proper names, thus we find one Melguas officiating as a witness to a Welsh charter (Lib. Land. 174). The name Melguas had the same meaning as teyrnwas. I do not know whether any examples are to be found in the ancient Celtic.

CHAPTER XII.

The Belgae; the districts they occupied in the time of Caesar; the same people as the Volcae of southern Gaul, and as the Irish Fir-bolg; ancestors of the Manxmen, and a Gaelic people. The distinguishing peculiarities of the Welsh and Irish languages may be traced in the ancient dialects of the Galli and the Belgae; interchange of p and k; of s and h; rejection in the Belgic of the w and ll; the Belgic use of the augmentative prefix ard and of the diminutive suffix oc. The notion common among continental scholars that the Galli were Gaels, and the Belgae a Cymric or Welsh people, a mistake, that has led to a singular perversion of history; the notion that the Belgae were Teutons also a mistake. The name Germani first applied to certain marauding Celtic tribes, then to the rude Teutons beyond the Rhine; its Celtic etymology. The name of Franks common to Celts and Teutons; its etymology; probably the same name as Phruges. — Line of demarcation between the Teutons and the Belgae in the north of Gaul, as tested by the topography of the district.

The name Belgae originally an appellative signifying the Herdsmen ; given to the men who drove the cattle from their winter-retreats to pasture on the Steppe in southern Russia. The name carried westward by the Kimmerioi when they fled before the Skuthai; given by the neighbouring tribes to the Skuthai who succeeded the Kimmerioi. The name Tectosages widely adopted by the Belgic tribes; suggestive of the rough heavy overcoat which sheltered the herdsmen on the Steppe; the term Aigosages not a corruption but a synonym of Tectosages. - The migration from Gaul under Bellovesus and Segovesus; the emigrants led by Segovesus settled in Pannonia and Illyricum; brought into contact with Alexander 335 B.C.; invaded Greece 281 B.C.; were accompanied in this invasion by Belgic tribes. The name of Galatai borne by a tribe settled west of the Dniester; borne also by the Belgae who passed over from Greece and ravaged Asia Minor; adopted by the Greeks as a general name for the Celtic race; probably the same as the term Galeddin, which is given to certain Belgic tribes in the Welsh Triads.

Repulse of the invading Gauls at Delphi; their settlements in Thrace, on the Danube, and elsewhere; certain of them pass over into Asia and found Galatia; allied tribes Trocmi, Tolisti-boioi, &c. - Other bands penetrated westward; founded the Volcae Tectosages and Arecomici; the Belgae of northern Gaul later immigrants; retained their independence till the time of Cæsar; established themselves in Britain before the close of the second century B.C.

FROM their first appearance in Gaul we find the Belgae represented as a powerful and an aggressive people,

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THE BELGAE.

377

but from what quarter they intruded themselves into the seats where we find them settled is a question difficult to answer. In the early part of the third century B.C. they seem to have been unknown to the inhabitants of Gaul-at least I can find no clear trace of them in that country, and in the course of that century they must have overrun and peopled the districts in which Caesar locates them. Perhaps our best course will be first to ascertain with precision the district in Gaul which the Belgae occupied when they first came under the notice of the Latin historians, and then endeavour to trace their ethnology and origin. Their ethnology I shall endeavour to make out partly by analyzing such Belgic terms as have come down to us, and partly by collecting such notices of these Belgic tribes as are furnished by our medieval writers. These sources of information are not altogether satisfactory, but their united testimony may fairly claim some weight in an inquiry like the present one.

Caesar, as we have seen,1 represents the country which he calls Gallia as parcelled out among three great tribes, the Belgae, the Celtae, and the Aquitani; and he makes the line of the Marne and the Seine the southern boundary of the Belgae. His Gallia however was only a portion of the country to which we now give the name of Gaul, and consisted for the most part of the great plain which shelves to the north-west, and is drained by the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne. The basin of the Rhone, south of its junction with the Saône, and a large portion of the Highlands in which the three rivers before mentioned take their rise, was looked upon as forming a distinct district, and was called the Province. It may be well to investigate the ethnology of the tribes there settled before we take a wider survey of the races which formed the population of this great country.

The district lying south-west of the Rhone was in the time of Caesar occupied by the Volcae. One section of

See p. 40 above.

this people, the Volcae Tectosages had Tolosa (Toulouse) for their capital, and east of them were the Volcae Arecomici. The latter must have reached eastward to the neighbourhood of Marseilles, for Pliny tells us (3. 23) that in the great Gaulish movement towards Italy some of the Cenomani settled down nigh Marseilles in the country of the Volcae (in Volcis1); and Livy, in describing Hannibal's march through the country of the Volcae, distinctly states (21. 26) that the people dwelt on both sides of the Rhone, whence it has been conjectured that the Cavares who were settled east of the river were a tribe of Volcae. broges who dwelt south of the Rhone from Geneva to Lyons, and other small neighbouring tribes, were no doubt Galli, and on the coast east of the river were Ligures, but the larger and more important part of 'the Province' was occupied by the Volcae.

The Allo

The near relationship of this people to the northern Belgae has been shown by arguments so cogent that we might reasonably have considered the question as now settled. But a writer in a recent popular work will not entertain the notion, and Niebuhr argues as if he either forgot or rejected it. There can be little doubt that Volcae and Belgae are mere variations of the same word. In all the Celtic dialects v is the regular permutation of b, and therefore the change of the initial need give us little concern. The broad vowel is found in the Irish name for this people, Fir-Bolg, and the hard guttural in Buile, the form which the name assumes in Nennius. MSS. of good repute give us the forms Volgae and Vulgae instead of Belgae, the reading generally adopted in Cicero's Oratio pro Fonteio (8. 16.); and Ausonius, himself a Gaul, tells us the Tectosagi were called, according to their primitive name, Bolcae, or, according to some MSS., Belcae (Clar. Urb. Narbo 13). But the great argument in favour of the identity of the two races rests on the testimony of Jerome. Jerome was a man whose early life, spent in the basin of the

Mr. G. Long in Smith's Geogr. Dict.-Volcae.

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FIR-BOLG.

379

Danube, was likely to make him attentive to peculiarities of dialect; he had dwelt at Treves, and must have often passed through Ancyra on his way to and from Palestine; and he tells us, in his preface to the Epistle to the Galatians, that the people of Ancyra spoke the same language as the men of Treves. All are agreed that the Tectosagi of Ancyra were the same people as the Tectosagi of Gaul, and therefore we must infer that the latter people spoke the same language as the men of Treves, or in other words as the northern Belgae. Identity of language in this case must mean identity of race, and the testimony of Jerome is to my mind decisive of the question.

In attempting to assign to the Belgae their proper place in the Celtic family, we shall follow a course somewhat different from that we have pursued with respect to the Ligures and Cimmerii, and begin with a reference to this people, which is found in a medieval writer. A fragment preserved by Nennius (c. 8) informs us that There is no certain history of the origin of the Scots. In Britain Historeth, son of Istorinus, with his people, got possession of Dalrieta; and Buile, with his people, got possession of the island Eubonia, and of others in that neighbourhood,' &c. From this passage we learn that Eubonia, which was the mediaeval name of the Isle of Man, was conquered by the Builc-for Buile is evidently a mere eponym of the conquering people. Now the Manxmen speak a dialect of the Gaelic, and we may therefore infer on the strength of this passage in Nennius that the Builc were a Gaelic people.

The usual name of this people in Irish is Firbolg, and it has been remarked with surprise that it is only the first part of this compound which undergoes the changes required by Irish syntax. The explanation is a simple one. The name Firbolg consists of two words. Fir is the plural of Fear, a man, and Firbolg really means the men of the Bolg-Bolg being an indeclinable name indicating the tribe. Consequently, when the laws of Syntax requires a change of case, it is only the first syllable for that can