Note 28 — Chapter I

Although Celtic has so long disappeared out of France with the exception of Armorica, it has left its traces deeply behind it upon the French language. This is also true even of linguistic sounds. "Tous les sons simples du français se retrouvent dans le breton, et tous ceux du breton à l'exception d'un seul (le ch ou le χ) sont aussi dans notre langue: l'u et l'e très-ouvert, l'e muet si rare partout ailleurs, le j pur inconnu à toute l'Europe, les deux sons mouillés du n et du l (comme dans les mots bataille et dignité) sont communs à la langue française et aux idiomes celtiques," says Demogeot. Even in French customary law there are "distinct and numerous traces" of old Gaulish habits and legislation, as Laferrière has pointed out in his history of the civil law of Rome and France. Nor is this to be in the least wondered at, when we remember that nineteen-twentieths of the modern French blood is computed to be that of the aboriginal races—Aquitanians, Celts, and Belgæ; whilst out of the remaining twentieth "the descendants of the Teutonic invaders—Franks, Burgundians, Goths, and Normans doubtless contributed a more numerous element to the population than the Romans, who, though fewer in number than any of the others, imposed their language on the whole country" (see Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," p. 204). The bulk of the French nation is probably pre-Celtic. The modern Frenchman does not at all resemble the Gallic type as described by the Greek and Roman writers.