Chapter 19

PART II.
THE MABINOGEON. CHAPTER XIX.
THE BRITONS. THE earliest inhabitants of Britain are supposed to have been a
branch of that great family known in history by the designation of
Celts. Cambria, which is a frequent name for Wales, is thought to be
derived from Cymri, the name which the Welsh traditions apply to an
immigrant people who entered the island from the adjacent continent.
This name is thought to be identical with those of Cimmerians and
Cimbri, under which the Greek and Roman historians describe a
barbarous people, who spread themselves from the north of the Euxine
over the whole of Northwestern Europe.
The origin of the names Wales and Welsh has been much canvassed.
Some writers make them a derivation from Gael or Gaul, which names are
said to signify "woodlanders"; others observe that Walsh, in the
Northern languages, signifies a stranger, and that the aboriginal
Britons were so called by those who at a later era invaded the
island and possessed the greater part of it, the Saxons and Angles.
The Romans held Britain from the invasion of Julius Caesar till
their voluntary withdrawal from the island, A.D. 420,- that is,
about five hundred years. In that time there must have been a wide
diffusion of their arts and institutions among the natives. The
remains of roads, cities, and fortifications show that they did much
to develop and improve the country, while those of their villas and
castles prove that many of the settlers possessed wealth and taste for
the ornamental arts. Yet the Roman sway was sustained chiefly by
force, and never extended over the entire island. The northern
portion, now Scotland, remained independent, and the western
portion, constituting Wales and Cornwall, was only nominally
subjected.
Neither did the later invading hordes succeed in subduing the
remoter sections of the island. For ages after the arrival of the
Saxons under Hengist and Horsa, A.D. 449, the whole western coast of
Britain was possessed by the aboriginal inhabitants, engaged in
constant warfare with the invaders.
It has, therefore, been a favorite boast of the people of Wales
and Cornwall, that the original British stock flourishes in its
unmixed purity only among them. We see this notion flashing out in
poetry occasionally, as when Gray, in "The Bard," prophetically
describing Queen Elizabeth, who was of the Tudor, a Welsh race, says: "Her eye proclaims her of the Briton line"; and, contrasting the princes of the Tudor with those of the Norman
race, he exclaims: "All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail!" THE WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The Welsh language is one of the oldest in Europe. It possesses
poems the origin of which is referred with probability to the sixth
century. The