208 Notes on the Evidence bearing
people think themselves more thoroughly English than the
inhabitants of English counties on the Welsh border ; though
the difference of race is almost imperceptible, the distinction
of language decides the feeling of nationality.
The evidence of place-names also, though most interesting
and valuable, is necessarily equally inconclusive as testimony
to the relative proportions of the different races inhabiting a
country. For example, the pre-Teutonic place-names in
Britain south of the Forth are almost all of the Cymric or
Brythonic family. Yet, as we have seen, there is evidence
of the existence of two pre-Celtic peoples and of the Celtic
Gaels in the same district prior to the advent of the Brythons,
and there is conclusive evidence against the extermination of
the earlier races by the Brythons. But the Cymry, Lloegrians
and Brythons, known collectively by the latter name, doubt-
less spoke a tongue intelligible to each other, and their lan-
guage naturally acquired the same advantage over the Celtic
and pre Celtic dialects, spoken when they arrived here, that
the tongue of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes obtained over the
Latin and British dialects spoken here in the fifth century.
Thus neither the supremacy of the Brythonic tongue in
Britain on the coming of the Romans, nor that of the Angles
and Saxons some centuries after their departure, necessarily
imply any considerable slaughter of the pre-existing races.
On this point, as we have seen, our histories can tell us
nothing. It has often occurred to me that we are too apt to
forget that the period between the Anglo-Saxon invasion and
the reign of Alfred (871-901) was as long as that between the
Wars of the Roses and the present day, in other words a period
of more than 400 years. Yet even in Alfred's time not only
Cornwall and Devon, but Somerset and even parts of Wiltshire
were still regarded as Welsh, the term implying not only that
their inhabitants were of British race, but that a British tongue
was still spoken there. Many centuries have elapsed since
English became the language of Wiltshire and Somerset, and
since it predominated in Devonshire and Cornwall. Yet though
these counties have entirely changed their language we have
no reason to suppose them to be less British in blood than