Note 1963 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN (continued 2)

The Races of Europe, p. 126. ‘The philologers,’ says Professor Ripley, ‘properly insist upon calling all those who speak the Celtic language, Celts ... while the physical anthropologists, finding the Celtic language spoken by people of divers physical types, with equal propriety hold that the term Celt, if used at all, should be applied to that physical group or type of men which includes the greatest number of those who use the Celtic language.’ I, on the contrary, hold that in an ethnological inquiry the term should be applied to ‘that physical group’ (if we can discover it) among whom the Celtic language came into being and who imposed it upon those whom they subdued; and I would remind the philologers that if all who speak the Celtic language are Celts, all who speak the English language, including the inhabitants of the United States and the negroes of Jamaica, are Englishmen.