Blair Collection > Celtic gleanings, or, Notices of the history and literature of the Scottish Gael

LECTURE II. 39
ous others handed down to us unchanged for
centuries.
From all this it would appear that, in their
progress westward, the Celtic races followed the
shores of the Mediterranean, and that they never
extended northward beyond the Danube and
the Khine. They peopled Greece, Italy. Swit-
zerland, France, and Spain. It would appear,
also, that as the Celtic races followed the shores
of the Mediterranean, the Teutonic followed
those of the Baltic. The probability is, that the
progress of the two races was contemporaneous,
and the probability is further, that they are eth-
nologically more of one blood, and separated at a
period much more recent in the history of the
human race than is generally supposed. Accu-
rate observation, with regard both to Celtic and
Saxon philology, brings out a much closer resem-
blance between the two classes of languages,
than a mere superficial inquiry would warrant
us in believing. Let us, for example, take
some of the words used to signify the members
of the human body, or to describe their use in
both languages, and compare them. For in-
stance, the head. — The hair of the head is in
Gaelic " Fait," a very different word from the
English ; but we have the same word in the
English "felt," which is also applied to "hair.'