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Show Are We Anglo-Saxons or Celto-Saxons?j When It Is Found that the English Themselves Can Hardly Lay Claim to Be Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, How Much Less Can Americans Claim to Be of That Race? What City Directories Disclose. The question that forms the heading I of this article is not' easy to answer, j The existence of such a race as the j Anglo-Saxon has been denied by some, j but its existence is generally believed I in by a majority of those who speak i the English language. In trying to find out the extent of the j Anglo-Saxon element among us. it will be necessary first to turn our attention to the British isles; and it is here, at the very beginning, that almost insuperable in-superable difficulties meet us. The difficulties dif-ficulties arose from the almost impenetrable impen-etrable darkness of early English history. his-tory. We know that the first inhabitants inhab-itants of Britain were Celts; that they were conquered by the Romans; that the Romans abandoned Britain toward the end of the fourth century, and that the Saxons, or some Germanic tribes, became masters of England and of a small part of Scotland about the yar 500 of our era or shortly after. This is about all we really know of early Eng lish history, if such meager records 1 can be called by that name. We know nothing about the population of England Eng-land at the time it was abandoned by the Romans, and if we would know the extent of the Saxon element or the Celtic element in England when it was possessed by the Saxons, we must find out these things from sources other than history. The great difficulty that meets us at the outset is to account for the seemingly seem-ingly total disappearance of the Celtic nation that existed in England under the Romans; it could not have been extirpated by the Saxons. There may have been vast numbers of English Celts slain in battle by the Saxons, and in some parts of the east of England the Britons may have-' been all killed; but their total extirpation was an impossibility: im-possibility: the wars between the Britons Brit-ons and Saxons did not last long enough for that. The fact seems to be that the Britons made a very poor stand against their invaders; and that instead of having been exterminated by them, they were absorbed by them. In less than a century after the first invaders in-vaders from Ihe shores of the Baltic appeared on English soil we .find them masters of all E n gland ""pi Qper;'. with the "exception of Cornwall. Britain enjoyed nearly three centuries centu-ries of profound peace -under the Romans. Ro-mans. Its population must have greatly great-ly increased during "those tfirep centuries, centu-ries, and at the time of the first Saxon invasion crmld hardly have been .less than 2.000.000 or" 3.000.000. It is impossible impos-sible to believe that the invading Saxons Sax-ons could have been one-twentieth part as numerous as the Britons: and we are driven to the conclusion that the Britons, from whatever caused made a very bad fight for their liberty, submitted sub-mitted easily to their coiqiierors. became be-came almost completely absorbed by them, and lost their language almost as quickly as they lost their liberty. We need not wonder at the sudden disappearance disap-pearance of the British language in England; an almost similar disappearance disappear-ance of a Celtic language has taken, place nearly in otir own times. A hundred-years ago there were about 4,000.-000 4,000.-000 of people in Ireland who spoke Irsh; today there is not over half a million. mil-lion. The English-speaking Irishman of today is as Celtic in blood ss were his exclusively . CeltioTspeaking ances-1 tors. Language is not always a test of I race. - ' " - ' We know, not only from hirtory, but from the names of rivers, towns, mountains, moun-tains, etc., in England, that its first inhabitants, in-habitants, in historic time? were Celts. But place-names are not- of great weight in questions of , ethnology; for they often survive when the race that bestowed them has disappeared. When, however, we examine the names of the English people and find so many of them translatable" only through the medium of Celtic, our belief in the exclusively ex-clusively Saxon origin of that people receives a staggering blow. A full list of English names that are popularly believed to be Saxon, but which are purely Celtic, would take up the greater great-er part of this article. A few only will be mentioned. It will appear strange to many to state that the following common English, surnames are Celtic: Jones. Evans, Powell, Pritchard, Car-lyle, Car-lyle, Irving, Scott, Burns, Oakley, Moreley, Morton, Begley, Bolger, Das-cont, Das-cont, Douglas, Gibbons. Darwin, Sprague, Lanfeatv Cromwell. Ingersoll, Fearon. Grant, Earley, Carna.igie, Dal-j Dal-j zell, Dalrymple. Not one of these names seems translatable except through Gaelic or Welsh. This proves that at least a large proportion of the English people are not Saxons, but Celtic, in origin, and that the ancient Britons were not so much exterminated as absorbed by their Saxon conquerors. conquer-ors. '. The most prejudiced writers in favor fa-vor of Anglo-Saxonism now acknowledge acknowl-edge that the. army with which William the Conqueror conquered England were in the main Frenchmen, and consequently conse-quently not Anglo-Saxons. Mr. Freeman Free-man who has . written the . greatest work on the Norman conquest that has ever appeared, never, calls William's soldiers anything but Frenchmen. The Norman element Jh them was so small 5f n-Qo nhm-irhed in the . French. The infusion of French blood into England at the time of the Norman Conquest must have been very great. We do not know how many, men were in the army with which William conquered con-quered England. There must, how,-ever. how,-ever. have been a' large migration from France to England for more than aj century after the battle of Hastings, for at least 25 per cent of the names j of the English people today are of , French origin'. 'This can be proved by the directories of English cities. If 25 per cent of the names of the English people are of French origin, fully 25 per cent more are of Celtic origin; that would leave the English only one-half. Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian in race. Anyone competent to pass an opinion on the subject could, on examining the .names in the directories of English cities and towns, come to no other conclusion than that not over 85 per I cent of them can bo traced to an Anglo-Saxon origin, fully 65 per cent of them being French, Celtic and Scandinavian. Scan-dinavian. " '' I freely admit that tracing ethnology ! by names is not always to be relied on, ! and may sometimes lead to erroneous conclusions; but it is, after all, the surest way we have. Men smetimcs change their names, and names often become distorted and corrupted in astonishing as-tonishing ways; but as a rule names of people do not change except under the strongest sort of :. political- or social pressure of a vastly more numerous and more civilized conquered population popula-tion that was the cause of the change. Social and political causes combined have made vast numbers of the Celtic. Irish change their names, not only in America, but in Ireland; and we may be sure that just as the weak-kneed Celt of Ireland has often changed his name to please his political' masters, ; so the still weaker-kneed British Celt j of the Saxon period changed his still more frequently to assuage the fierce- i ness of his conquerors. .... If, then, we find that the English themselves can hardly lay claim to be Anglo-Saxons, how much , less can Americans claim to be of that race? If the directories of England show only a small percentage of Anglo-Saxon names, the percentage of such names must be, and is, still less in American directories. In the directories of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston,. Bos-ton,. Anglo-Saxon names hardly form a fourth. Vast as is the number rf Celtic names that appear in the directories of our cities, they are considerably less than.j they wpuld be, were it not for the: moral Cowardice and want of respect. for his race which have ever been the ' curses of the Celt. No man is braver in battle than he, and no man will more quickly resent a personal; insult; but when it comes to standing up for his race and its ' attributes, no one -is more cowardly. This moral cowardice has led to the disappearance of hundreds hun-dreds of Gaelic-Celtic names in America. Amer-ica. The McLaughlins become- Laflins and Clafiins, the Hoolaghans become Holly-hands, the . Mullveehus become Melvilles, the Caseys hcc.ome. Cases, the -MaeRories become ; ftogersesi. - and tso i on almost ad infinitum. Hundreds of ' Irish names have been " "changed in ! America by being translated. Even in Ireland the practice has been common. The Celtic Irish living within the English Eng-lish pale in Ireland were for' a long time compelled by law to bear only English names. If their own Celtic, names were translatabto, they generally general-ly made the required change by. translation. trans-lation. One change .or partial translation., trans-lation., of a Celtic-Trish name is so curious curi-ous arid so well authenticated that it is worthy of particular notice. ; My informant in-formant was a Mr. Early, a 'well known lawyer 'of Tcrre Haute. Tnd. He died in lSSi. but his son. who lives, or did live very recently in Terre Haute, will vouch for the accuracy of the follovr iiig particulars told me by his father: Mr. Early had documetns to prove that his real name was O'Maohnoeheir-ghe. O'Maohnoeheir-ghe. The family of that name from from whom he was descended landed in Philadelphia from Ireland in the early part of the eighteenth century. The name means the "early-rising chief." This would have been an awkward awk-ward phrase to form an English sounding sound-ing name from, or to translate in full, so only one word of it, moch, meaning early, was translated, and hence the name Early. -Mr. Early told me that General Ju'oal Early of the confederate army, and most of the Earlys of the south, are descended from that family. No other branch of the Aryan or In-do-Germanic race has made so bad a stand for its independence and identity as the Celtic branch has. The Celt seems to have been created to be ab- t--or bed. No other race has produced such illustrious traitors to itself; among 1 these O'Connell, Carlyle and Macauley ! hold first places. O'Connell did more j to Anglicize the Irish than any other man that ever lived; yet so utterly blind are the Irish to this fact that they raise colossal statues and sky-piercing sky-piercing monuments to his memory. In his whole career he never uttered a word in favor of the preservation of the language, literature or music of the nice to which he belonged. Whenever Carlyle or Macaulay spoke of the Celt it "was with contempt; they despised him as much as the veriest Saxon could if we can judge of their ideas by the little, they have said about him. In spite of the immensity of the Celtic element among English-speaking ; peoples, and in spite of the vast number num-ber of eminent men it has produced, it seems destined to be completely absorbed ab-sorbed by other races. Whether the Celt will ever reassert himself, or whether the characteristics that have clung to him for more than 2.000 yeais will ever be changed, no one can say. it has. however, to be admitted that the Cymric, or Welsh, branch of the Celtic race has phown a most laudable desire to prose :. its language, music and every natioi. I attribute to which it can lay claim. . But the Welsh never haJ the misfortune (to themselves) of i producing an O'Connell, a Carlyle or a.;jyja.rau!ay. Thos men belonged to the Gaelic, or Scoto-Irish branch of the Celts. From, what has been said, it will appear ap-pear .that pure Anglo-Saxons form only a. small part of the American people, peo-ple, and also of those who speak the English language. It may be said that the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are substantially the same race. -That can hardly be: for it is now well known that the Germans of today are a composite com-posite people, made up of many different differ-ent races. It would appear that, whether for good or for evil, we have more Celtic blood in us than is ffenerally supposed. I would, therefore, suggest that the term Celto-Saxon rather than Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon be. used in speaking not only of the inhabitants of the British isles but of America, as it would more correctly indicate the stock from which a majority ma-jority of them have sprung. T. O. Rus-' Rus-' sell, in the New York Independent. In this article. I shall not treat of the |