For this service we hope that our
readers will confess we have laid them under no light obligation.
CHAPTER I
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.
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