ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITONS.*
A MORE provoking or more entertaining work than this two- volume melange of original theory and secondhand erudition has seldom, if ever, been given to the British public. Here we are reminded of Captain Grose, there of Dr. Charles Mackay, in a third place of the " Dimber-Dambers," "Knights of Malta," and all the rest of the "canting crew" of Mr. Harrison Ains- worth's Roolcwood. The book is a kind of labyrinth, filled with Gipsies, Picts, Scots, Euraskians, Ugrians, and various other ancestors and relatives of Meg Merrilees and Johnny Faa, from which and from whom there is no escape, since the anony- mous author has, by a brave neglect, or in a spirit of mischief, .provided no index. The writer of Ancient and Modern Britons has a theory, of which more anon ; or, at least, he seems to have, for he may be a practical joker after all. But his readers should not trouble themselves about his theory ; let them open his volumes at any chapter or at any page, and, so to speak, take a header into its queer eth- nology and archaeology. At the very least, they will take an interest in a certain "Billy Marshall," who turns up as fre- quently and as certainly as a too well-known head in a hack- neyed Memorial. No wonder the author loves "Billy," for he was one of the most remarkable characters in modern times. He seems to have been a compound of Alexander, Lord of the Isles, and Noah Claypole. King of the Gipsies, he was the terror of the South of Scotland, from Ayr to the Solway Firth, and fought pitched battles almost as bloody, if not as important, as Tel-el-Kebir. Yet his soul was not too proud for the " kinchin lay," when the opportunity of distinguishing himself in such a way offered itself. A murderer, a polygamist, an habitual drinker of whiskey to excess, he lived to the age of 120, pensioned by lords and lairds (they were, perhaps, his relatives), died in his bed, and is buried in as much of the odour of sanctity as a Galloway churchyard can give. Then our author has so much to say about the connection between the "Tories " and the 'Gipsies, that whoever reads him is sure to dream that Lord 'Salisbury is, like Admiral Paul Jones, a relative of "Billy Marshall" (we are gravely told that Charles I. and Prince Rupert were Melanochroi), and that the present action of the Peers towards the Franchise Bill is the last stand of "the gentle Romany" against Xauthocroid civilisation !
But, to be serious, or perhaps we should rather say, to be more fantastic still, the author of Ancient and Modern Britons has an ethnological theory which is, or seems to be (for one must be very cautions in dealing with him) a pushing to an extreme—or to a reductio ad absurdum—of an older and more familiar theory held by Professor Huxley and others. This fundamental doctrine is that there were originally both dark stocks, or Melanochroi, and white stocks, or Xan- thocroi, in these islands, and that the present inhabitants result from their intermixture. The author of Ancient and Modern Britons insists, as we understand him, that the original black stocks were extremely black indeed—were, in fact, Australioids ; and that the Gipsies are the relics or descendants of these Austra- lioids. One of the critics of our author is, indeed, not far amiss when he says that the real question propounded in these volumes is,—Are we Mulattoes P Now, we venture to think that, from the philological point of view, our author talks—whether mischie- vously or honestly does not much matter—great nonsense, and especially in support of his leading propositions. If the original English language was Gaelic, if the Danish Vikings were as black as Cetewayo, if the Gipsy language is not Indian, but Pictish, * Ancient and Modern Britons: a Retrospect. 2 vols. London : Regan Pao), french, and Co. Jan. then our philology and ethnology are not a whit more reliable than the old alchemy and astrology. Then the fancifulness and, therefore, the weakness of some of the arguments from com- parisons which are employed in these volumes, can hardly be disputed. Because there is a resemblance in sound between Maurus and Murray, the Australian equivalent for a black fellow, and because both Australian savages and ancient Britons tattooed, therefore we (or at least some of us) are of Australian descent ; because the Welsh used to mutilate persons they slew in battle, as the Zulus do now when they have a chance, there- fore Mr. Osborne Morgan must be a remote cousin of Dabula- manzi ! Such is the kind of reasoning which we are presented with. It will certainly not hold water, because, not to mention other reasons, it does not allow for the fact which the latest writers on Primitive Culture have made clear, if they have made anything clear, that all savage tribes are in customs, if not in cult, very much alike.
Yet, when the author of Ancient and Modern Britons is not only taken but well shaken, his readers will come to the conclu- sion that they have got some fresh light, though of a curious will-o'-the-wisp kind, on certain dark chapters in our ethno- logical history. This book seems to prove at the least, as Mr. Grant Allen appears willing to admit, that the inhabitants of the Scotch Border were, less than two hundred years ago, a good deal blacker than they are now. Perhaps, too, it would not be going too far to say, that with the Gipsies proper there intermingled, and at a quite historic period, the descendants of the original darker and more nomadic races of the country. Such epithets as "The Black Douglas" cannot have been applied entirely without reason. One or two of the statements made by the author may be worth quoting for their suggestive- ness, which is, perhaps, due to the imaginative element in thew. Here is his legend of "The Black Douglas :"- "In the diction of the past a black man was a Moor ;' so that when The Black Douglas' and his brothers, with others of their tribe, had retreated to the wilds of Annandale after tlo3 defection of • their allies, in the year 1455, they were virtually a band of maraud- ing Gipsies, or Moors, as the legend of the Maclellans testifies. They had been utterly discomfited ; their power and position in the country was gone for ever;, another had taken their bishopric ;' from that time forward they were outlaws and rebels, cut up into separate bands, and larking in mountain fastnesses and the intricacies of the Border 'mosses.' As a political power in the country, or as nobles under a semi-Norman monarchy, their days had come to an end ; and precisely at this point of time, when the last vestige of Pictish and Moorish power had crumbled away: and the latest representatives of Moorish nobility had sunk into the position of bunted bandits and outlaws, the Gipsies of Galloway make their appearance. From that date onwards a Black Douglas' was an equivalent for a Gipsy."
Better still, perhaps, as a specimen of the book, is this :— "The knight-errant is distinctly the progenitor of the knight of the road,' with whom he is connected by the ties of custom, of ideas, of language, and (inferentially) of blood. One cannot applaud the one without applauding the other. Sympathy with 'Lancelot of the Lake' (not the Lancelot of Malory and Tennyson, but the real man behind him) cannot be separated from sympathy with Dick Tarpin and Joseph Blake. If the earlier nomad robber was a hero, so were those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An examination of all their peculiarities shows that they belonged to the Gipsy' castes ; Tristram of Lyonesse was a vagabond minstrel and a sorner ; and Sir Gawain was Sir Tinker,' not only when regarded etymologi- cally, but in many other ways. One thing is evident, that men who were accustomed to ride about the country in quest of plunder and strife—like the knight-errant, the banditti ' described in Pyne's Microcosm, the 'Moss-troopers' of Scott, the Knights of the road,' and the modern Gipsies '—and who (like all of these, except the two last) are represented as wearing defensive armour made of metal, it is evident that such men must have thoroughly understood how to solder and tinker,' or otherwise they must have been over and over again at the mercy of the nearest foe. The identification of one division of the Gipsy castes with the knights-errant of romance, how- ever, implies a good deal that requires fuller consideration. For example, it may be erroneous to regard the Norman invasion as an inroad of Xantliocroi. The Northmen are remembered as 'white strangers' and 'gentiles of pure colour ;' but it may be more correct to regard the Normans as a comparatively dark race—' dark, but not disagreeably so,' as Barrow says of the Lovels, Bosvilles, Rolands, and others. It may be that the Normans were a cross between the white-skinned Northmen, and the Moors of Picardy—or some other dark-skinned race."
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