Was Balfour a Celt ?
To a suggestion that we have had five " Celtic " Prime Ministers in this century, one of them Lord Balfour, Mrs.
es. ei a l a nbdi o teasps ihhyl y, thha es ehissuropfrni Dugdale, who is writing rejoined by indicating , indignation '? with which he himself would have greeted the idea. it is true that his surname is Celtic—both halves of it—but it is a place-name, and not much index of his original ancestor's race. His English mother was Lord Salisbury's sister, and hiS cranial resemblance to that uncle was extremely marked----especially in old age, when but for the difference made by Lord Salisbury's beard - it would have struck everybody: His Scottish father was a _Lowlander ; and his home was in a part of Scotland which for long centuries formed a portion of the English kingdom of Northumbria, and in race and language has been English ever since. To treat. all Scots- men as Celts would be absurd, for not only is there that prevailing English element south of the Forth, but all the way up the East Coast, whence most of' Scotland's ablest stocks have hailed, there are very large Scandinavian elements as well. Really, the attempts to infer Celtic race from a Celtic surname, which were so fashionable at the end of last century, ought to have grown out of date. In the palmy days of the fashion it used to be asserted • —erroneously—that William Morris and George Meredith, • because of their surnames, were Welsh.
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