upon British Ethnology. 191
part of our present population to be not only largely a
survival from Neolithic times, but to be akin to the Iberian
element of South-western France and North-western Spain.
One of the latest and ablest, however, Mr. Elton, considers
that the evidence for this view is insufficient, inasmuch as we
find no traces in this country of the exaltation of women
above men, and of the strange custom of the Couvade, which
still prevails among the Iberians. This custom of the
Couvade, however, is not specially Basque (or Iberian), but
is found among certain tribes of North and South America,
India, and other parts of the world, having apparently origi-
nated independently in various countries. And while its co-
existence in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees and among
Britons of the Silurian type would have gone far to establish
affinity of race, its absence from Britain is by no means
testimony equally strong against affinity. For the Basque
language is still spoken by a considerable number of persons
on both sides of the Pyrenees, but no pre-Celtic tongue has
been spoken in Britain for many centuries, though compara-
tive philologists tell us that the British Celtic languages show
undoubted signs of having been influenced by older forms of
speech now extinct. And it is but natural that the influences
which have wholly extinguished pre-Celtic languages should
also have swept away pre-Celtic customs, which are found
where the pre-Celtic tongue has been preserved. Besides, as
regards the Iberian reverence for woman, we must also
remember that to a race invading Britain at a later date we
owe the popular rhyme :—
"A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat them the better they be,"
which discloses a way of regarding woman very different from
that of the ancient Iberians.4
I have stated that the remains of British Neolithic man
are found in long barrows. These long barrows are con-
sidered by Canon Greenwell to be the earliest sepulchral
4 Mr. Metcalfe, in 'The Englishman and the Scandinavian,' remarks,
p. 147, "Singular to relate, woman's love is nowhere described in extant
Anglo-Saxon poetry."