2: The Wandering Nations
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By land and by sea, race after race has come to make the hills of
Wales its home. One race would be short, with dark eyes and black
hair; another would be tall, with blue eyes and fair hair. They came
from different countries and along different paths, but each race
brought some good with it. One brought skill in taming animals,
until it had at last tamed even the pig and the bee; another brought
iron tools to take the place of stone ones. Another brought the
energy of the chase and war, and another a delight in sailing a ship
or in building a fortress.
One thing they had in common—they wandered, and they wandered to the
west. From the cold wastes and the dark forests of the north and
east, they were ever pushing west to more sunny lands. As far back
as we can see, the great migration of nations to the west was going
on. The islands of Britain were the furthest point they could reach;
for beyond it, at that time, no man had dared to sail into the
unknown expanse of the ocean of the west. In the islands of Britain,
the mountains of Wales were among the most difficult to win, and it
was only the bravest and the hardiest that could make their home
among them.
The first races that came were short and dark. They came in tribes.
They had tribal marks, the picture of an animal as a rule; and they
had a strange fancy that this animal was their ancestor. It may be
that the local nicknames which are still remembered—such as "the
pigs of Anglesey," "the dogs of Denbigh," "the cats of Ruthin," "the
crows of Harlech," "the gadflies of Mawddwy"—were the proud tribe
titles of these early people. Their weapons and tools were polished
stone; their hammers and hatchets and adzes, their lance heads and
their arrow tips, were of the hardest igneous rock—chipped and
ground with patient labour.
The people who come first have the best chance of staying, if only
they are willing to learn; hardy plants will soon take the place of
tender plants if left alone. The short dark people are still the
main part, not only of the Welsh, but of the British people. It is
true that their language has disappeared, except a few place-names.
But languages are far more fleeting than races. The loss of its
language does not show that a race is dead; it only shows that it is
very anxious to change and learn. Some languages easily give place
to others, and we say that the people who speak these languages are
good linguists, like Danes and Slavs. Other languages persist, those
who speak them are unwilling to speak any new language, and this is
the reason why Spanish and English are so widespread.
After the short dark race came a tall fair-haired people. They came
in families as well as in tribes. They had iron weapons and tools,
and the short dark people could not keep them at bay with their bone-
tipped spears and flint-headed arrows. We know nothing about the
struggle between them. But it may be that the fairy stories we were
told when children come from those far-off times. If a fairy maiden
came from lake or mound to live among men, she vanished at once if
touched with iron. Is this, learned men have asked, a dim memory of
the victory of iron over stone?
The name given to the short dark man is usually Iberian; the name
given to the tall fair man who followed him is Celt. The two learnt
to live together in the same country. The conqueror probably looked
upon himself at first as the master of the conquered, then as simply
belonging to a superior race, but gradually the distinction vanished.
The language remained the language of the Celt; it is called an Aryan
language, a language as noble among languages as the Aran is among
its hills. It is still spoken in Wales, in Brittany, in Ireland, in
the Highlands of Scotland, and in the Isle of Man. It was also
spoken in Cornwall till the eighteenth century; and Yorkshire
dalesmen still count their sheep in Welsh. English is another Aryan
tongue.
The more mixed a nation is, the more rich its life and the greater
its future. Purity of blood is not a thing to boast of, and no great
and progressive nation comes from one breed of men. Some races have
more imagination than others, or a finer feeling for beauty; others
have more energy and practical wisdom. The best nations have both;
and they have both, probably, because many races have been blended in
their making. There is hardly a parish in Wales in which there are
not different types of faces and different kinds of character.
The wandering of nations has never really stopped. The Celt was
followed by his cousins—the Angle and the Saxon. These, again, were
followed by races still more closely related to them—the Normans and
the Danes and the Flemings. They have all left their mark on Wales
and on the Welsh character.
The migration is still going on. Trace the history of an upland
Welsh parish, and you will find that, in a surprisingly short time,
the old families, high and low, have given place to newcomers. Look
into the trains which carry emigrants from Hull or London to
Liverpool on their way west—they have the blue eyes and yellow hair
of those who came two thousand years ago. But this country is no
longer their goal, the great continent of America has been discovered
beyond. Fits of longing for wandering come over the Welsh
periodically, as they came over the Danes—caused by scarcity of food
and density of population, or by a sense of oppression and a yearning
for freedom. An empty stomach sometimes, and sometimes a fiery
imagination, sent a crowd of adventurers to new lands. And it is
thus that every living nation is ever renewing its youth.
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