The Scotish Gaël, or, Celtic manners : as preserved among the Highlanders, being an historical and descriptive account of the inhabitants, antiquities, and national peculiarities of Scotland, more particularly of the northern, or gaëlic parts of the country, where the singular habits of the aboriginal Celts are most tenaciously retained / by James Logan.

  • James Logan
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Scotish Gaël, or, Celtic manners : as preserved among the Highlanders, being an historical and descriptive account of the inhabitants, antiquities, and national peculiarities of Scotland, more particularly of the northern, or gaëlic parts of the country, where the singular habits of the aboriginal Celts are most tenaciously retained / by James Logan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    tion when Caesar commenced the Gallic war, fifty-seven years before that era. At this time they appeared in three great divisions: the Cel- tae, the Belgae, and the Aquitani; distinct from each other, and sepa- rated from the Germans by the river Rhine. * We have here a proof of the gradual formation of several nations, from one numerous and wide-spread race; for the more ancient historians were ignorant of these divisions, and the terms, even at the above period, seem to have been applied more as local distinctions of the same race, than indications of different people. Diodorus relates, what he tells us few knew any thing about, that the Celtae inhabited the inland parts about the Alps, and on this side the Pyrennean mountains, called Celtica; and those who were below this part, southward to the ocean, and the mountain Hyrcinus, and all as far as Scythia, were called Gauls; but the Romans called all the in- habitants by one and the same name of Gauls.f Caesar, who describes the three nations as differing from each other in customs, language, and laws, at the same time says, that the whole people continued to denomi- nate themselves Celtae, which term was also sometimes used by the Ro- mans with the more familiar appellation of Galli, as other writers also notice.J Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived 438 years later than Caesar, thinks it rather a matter of conjecture than of fact, that Gaul was inhabited by three sorts of people, and he as a soldier, had often come in contact with their troops, and had served in Gaul and Germany, along with numer- ous bodies of Celtic auxiliaries. An examination of the ancient historians and geographers, will show the positions of the three nations, and wherein they differed from each other, and from the people who dwelt around them. From the Garonne to the Seine and Marne was the possession of the Celt\e, who retained their ancient and appropriate name, as they did also that of their country, which was called Celtica. From the Seine to the Rhine were the territories of the Belgte, who were the most celebrated nation of Gaul. This people believed themselves descended of the Ger- manni, from whom they were only separated by the Rhine; but in those ancient times, when the Germans are said to have sent this colony across the river to settle in Belgica, were they not themselves Celtae, with whom they retained the common tradition of being indigenous?^ Dio Nicaeus says, that, in the most ancient times, the inhabitants of both sides of the Rhine called themselves by the same name, Celts; and he himself calls the Belgians, Celtics. || Josephus calls the German legion, * Cffisar de Bello Gallico, i. f Lib. v. c. 2. t De Bello Gallico. Pliny, iv. § Tacitus de Moribus Germanorum. Like the Celts, they also affected a celestial origin. In their old poems they celebrated Tuisto, a god sprung from the earth, and his son, Mannus, as their first parents. |] Quoted in Ritson's Memoirs of the Celts.