Note 2029 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN (continued 2)

Professor Rhys (Celtic Britain, 1904, pp. 214-5) denies that Brittany was colonized ‘by Brythons from here’: but one of his arguments is simply that the Dumnonii were not Brythons, which I deal with in the text; and the other is equally unsatisfactory. Remarking that Procopius ‘gives a very fabulous account of an island called Brittia’, he says that ‘Brittia must have been a real name, as it is exactly the form which would result in that which is the actual Breton name of Brittany—namely Breiz: this last,’ he continues, ‘cannot be derived from any known form of the kindred name of our country and its people, and thus tells not a little against the tradition that Brittany was first colonised by Brythons from here,’ &c. But who ever heard of ‘the tradition that Brittany was first colonised by Brythons from here’? And what if Brittany received the name which would have resulted in ‘Breiz’ before the British immigration? See my Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, 1899, p. 416, and J. Loth, L’Émigration bretonne en Armorique, 1883, pp. 21, 50-1, 75-82.