Hew Morrison Collection > Leabhar Nan Gleann

39
patriarchy. Let tis suppose that the politics-
of Imperial Eome had uot led to a conquest
of Britain; that Britain, lyin^ over against
Gaul, had been left untrodden by Eoman
legions, as was actually the case with Ireland,
lying over against the Romans of Britain —
what would have happened then? Britain and
Ireland, probably like the Germanic North
(Denmark, Scandinavia), would have emerged
from the seventh-eighth century onwards for
the first time more and more into the light of
history; on its southern coast, on the east
coast far northwards as well as far inland,
Germanic tribes — Angles, Jut«s, Saxons —
would have settled, just as in Caesar's time
Celts possessed those parts. Behind these
Germanic peoples, alone the west coast, there
would have been settled a people speaking a
Celtic idiom (Cymric), and in Ireland, as well
as in the Caledonian Highlands, a closely-
related Celtic idiom would have been spoken
by the inhabitants. To judee according to
language, one would accordingly have found
before one in the British Isles Germanic and
Celtic Aryans, just as in the first century b.c.
Celtic and Germanic Aryans settled in France
and Germany. Inasmuch as without the
Roman superiority in Britain Christianity
would have taken firm root on British and
Irish soil 200-300 years later, a powerful
helping factor in the more speedy assimilation
of the social order of tue subjugated non-
Aryan papulation to the quite differently
organized society of the conquering Aryan
Celts would have fallen away. In the social
polity, in the juridical conditions among tho
supposed Celtic-Aryan poijulation in West
and North Britain, as well as in Ireland, it
were not only merely possible, but very pro-
bable, that many more evident remnants of
a former matiiarchal system would have beea
found than one — falsely, as I believe — credits
the Germans with. One would, perhapS;,.