Blair Collection > Kelt or Gael

The Kelt or Gael. 15
Of the European Aryans, the Greeks and
Latins are the earliest known in general history.
The Greeks introduce us to the other inhabi- Greeks
tants of Europe. For them mankind consisted Keiiui.
only of Greeks and Barbaroi or barbarians.
When they condescended to specialise, they called
those inhabitants of South-Western Europe with
whom they first came into contact Keltoi or
Kelts. The contact took place at Massilia, about
B.C. 600, the present Marseilles, the earliest Greek
colony in the Mediterranean. The inhabitants of
the adjoining coast of Spain they called Keltoi
Iberys, translated Kelt Iberians. From this
expression a deduction was made that the Spanish
peninsula had two names, Keltiky and Ibery, and
that it was inhabited by two races, Kelts and
Iberians. I have looked carefully into the
evidence, and I find no eround for the conclusion.
One name came from the Keltic river, which the
Greeks called Ibery, the Latins after them called The iberian.
Iberus, the present Ebro. What the original
Keltic name was we have no means of determin-
ing exactly, as the records of pre- Roman Spain,
if they ever existed, are lost. The word Ebro,
however, is the same as the Latin Tiber, the
Scotch and Irish Tobur, anglicised in Tipperary,
and the Welsh Dyfr, anglicised in Dover, and
means sometimes a river and sometimes a well.
Kelt-Iberian, then, meant the Kelts dwellino- on
the Ebro ; and the tribe inhabiting the valley
of that river was alone correctly called Iberian.