SACRED HOARDS-GOLD TORQUES.

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With regard to the many valuable offerings in the temple of Apollo, which, to some persons, may appear the most apocryphal part of the statement of Hecatæus, there are sufficient reasons for admitting the accuracy of what he had heard and recorded in regard to the riches of the place, supposing it to have been Avebury. Cæsar, in describing the customs of the Celts, says that the valuables they acquired in successful warfare might be seen heaped in consecrated places, and that the terrors of superstition, and the dread of cruel punishments, were sufficient to protect these hoards from theft or violence.1 The variety and value of the torques and other ornaments possessed by the Celts is undoubted; for it is proved by the records of history, confirmed by the number of massive articles formed of gold, which at different times have been discovered and preserved. Yet the many specimens to be seen in public and private museums bear but a small proportion to those which have been found and secretly disposed of by fortunate and generally illiterate discoverers. Could a list and valuation be formed of gold ornaments that have been discovered in the United Kingdom, the manufacture of which must be referred to a very early or pre-historic period, it would surprise those who have not hitherto paid attention to the subject. It has raised the question, Whence came the supplies of the precious metal? Did the Celtic race possess these treasures before they reached Britain? If not, where were the gold-fields in the island that furnished mate

2

1 C. Jul. Cæs. Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 34. * On this subject see Dr. Dan. Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scot

land, and Dr. Todd's Address in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy for 1856.

rial to the artificers who shaped the torques and girdles that have been found in secret hoards or sepulchral mounds? Strabo mentions gold and silver among the articles exported from Britain, and Tacitus says that both these metals were found in the island; probably in superficial deposits, which if not exhausted will not now repay the expense of collection. It would appear that gold digging in the Scottish Borders, in Clydesdale, in Nithsdale, and in Crawfordmuir, was carried on with some success as late as the sixteenth century; that in 1567-68 Cornelius de Vois, from that district, sent eight pounds weight of gold to Edinburgh, the produce of thirty days' work of the persons he had employed; and that the Regent Morton presented to the French king a gold basin filled with gold pieces-all the produce of Scotland.2

In the fourth century B.C. Manlius conquered a Gaul of gigantic stature, and took from his neck the golden torque." Torques were amongst the spoil taken from the Gauls by Marcellus B.C. 196, and by Scipio Nasica B.C. 191. In the second century B.C. Polybius mentions torques as a mark of distinction worn by Celts and Persians. The Druids wore torques. Strabo mentions that they were worn by the Britons; and their Queen Boadicea is described by Dion Cassius as wearing one of large size. The Gauls, both men and women, wore

1 Mon. Hist. Brit. pp. 6, 43.

* See Chambers's Annals of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 17, 18, 50, 51, 108.

3 In the Assyrian sculptures in the British Museum the Assyrian figures, whether plain or winged, wear armlets, some of which are joined; in

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others the ends of these bangles pass each other.

Torques can be distinguished in the sculptures of Persepolis, and torques were deposited 530 years B.C. in the tomb of Cyrus.-Archeological Journal, 1845, vol. ii. p. 370.

DRUIDS OF GAUL AND BRITAIN.

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bracelets of gold-massive chains of gold about their necks, with weighty rings on their fingers, and crosslets of gold on their breasts. Torques have also been found in Etruscan tombs, which is an interesting fact, from the evidences that appear of a Celtic element in the original population of Italy. Thus we see that, from the earliest periods in which Celts and Druids are known in history, they were accustomed to wear gold ornaments, and considerable deposits of such valuables have been found in the neighbourhood, and within the primitive Cyclopean monuments of Armorica.

3

2

It is also to be remarked, that in the island mentioned by Hecatæus, although inscriptions in the Greek character were to be found, the inhabitants had a language of their own. This was the case with the Gauls in the time of Cæsar, from whom we learn that they used the Greek characters, but did not understand the Greek language. To give due force to this circumstance, however, it becomes necessary here to bring to notice, that at the commencement of the historic period the population both of Gaul and Britain was Celtic, and had a common religion and a common language. Cæsar says that the Druid institution is supposed to have been devised in Britain, and to have been brought thence into Gaul. To this it has been objected that the assertion is not authoritatively from Cæsar himself. But the argument is of no weight as against the identity of the Druidical religion of the two

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2

countries, for Cæsar says distinctly that those persons in Gaul who desire to obtain a more perfect knowledge of the Druid system generally proceed for the purpose of studying it to the island of Britain.' Tacitus says that in Gaul and Britain you will find the same religious rites and the same superstition ; that the languages of the two nations differed but little, and the free and unconquered part of the British nation retained the ferocity of the ancient Gauls. After having inquired into the customs and examined the antiquarian remains in the parts of the united kingdom where the Celtic race and language have kept the firmest hold, let any one proceed to Armorica— read its legends-visit its Cyclopean monuments-hear the Celtic language and the music of the baniou or bagpipes-and he will be convinced of the accuracy of the remarks made by the Roman authors, that the ancient inhabitants of Gaul and Britain were not only a cognate race, but had similar institutions.

Antiquarian writers who have treated of the county of Cornwall, from Norden and Carew up to those of the present century, all mention the submerged country of Lionnesse, which, according to tradition, they say extended from the Scilly Isles to the present Land's End. Some of these writers even retail statements of buildings seen there beneath the water, and others improve on this by the tales of doors or windows brought up by fishermen from the spot where the

Even to Murray's Handbook for Cornwall, 1850, p. 137.

SUBMERGED CITY OF YS.

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submerged houses had been seen; the details being completed by the account of an ancestor of the Trevelyans and Vivyans who was saved by his horse, which brought him safe to the mainland through the flood by which the country of Lionnesse was overwhelmed, all which is attested by the armorial bearings of these families. One country of Leonais, and probably the one believed to be lost, still exists in France. It comprehended the divisions of Morlaix and Brest, and its limits nearly corresponded to those of the modern department of Finisterre. As Cæsar destroyed the fleet of the Veneti and their Celtic allies, with which, he says, they traded to Britain from these coasts, the sudden cessation of a continued intercourse with a kindred race may be the cause of the tradition of the lost country of Lionnesse.

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It is, however, a singular fact, that a somewhat similar tradition-viz., of a part of the extreme west portion of the ancient Celtic division of Cornouaille, adjoining that of the Leonais in Armorica, having been submerged-is still preserved in that district. Between Guilvenec and Penmarch the pilots on that coast still endeavour to point out, at a depth of twenty feet beneath the surface of the ocean, Druidical altars, the remains of the submerged city of Ys. Even until the commencement of the present century the priests and all the people of that part of the coast annually assembled to embark in their boats, and proceed to where the priest offered Christian sacri

The shipwrecks in this dangerous locality will sufficiently explain whence the doors and windows were derived.

2 Gibson's Camden, vol. i. p. 148, 1772, fol.; and Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p. 7, 1811, 4to.

3 Cornwall in Brittany.