"OwenMEdwards-AShortHistoryOfWales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edwards Owen M)

touched with iron. Is this, learned men have asked, a dim memory of
the victory of iron over stone?

The name given to the short dark man is usually Iberian; the name
given to the tall fair man who followed him is Celt. The two learnt
to live together in the same country. The conqueror probably looked
upon himself at first as the master of the conquered, then as simply
belonging to a superior race, but gradually the distinction vanished.
The language remained the language of the Celt; it is called an Aryan
language, a language as noble among languages as the Aran is among
its hills. It is still spoken in Wales, in Brittany, in Ireland, in
the Highlands of Scotland, and in the Isle of Man. It was also
spoken in Cornwall till the eighteenth century; and Yorkshire
dalesmen still count their sheep in Welsh. English is another Aryan
tongue.

The more mixed a nation is, the more rich its life and the greater
its future. Purity of blood is not a thing to boast of, and no great
and progressive nation comes from one breed of men. Some races have
more imagination than others, or a finer feeling for beauty; others
have more energy and practical wisdom. The best nations have both;
and they have both, probably, because many races have been blended in
their making. There is hardly a parish in Wales in which there are
not different types of faces and different kinds of character.

The wandering of nations has never really stopped. The Celt was
followed by his cousins--the Angle and the Saxon. These, again, were
followed by races still more closely related to them--the Normans and
the Danes and the Flemings. They have all left their mark on Wales
and on the Welsh character.

The migration is still going on. Trace the history of an upland
Welsh parish, and you will find that, in a surprisingly short time,
the old families, high and low, have given place to newcomers. Look
into the trains which carry emigrants from Hull or London to
Liverpool on their way west--they have the blue eyes and yellow hair
of those who came two thousand years ago. But this country is no
longer their goal, the great continent of America has been discovered
beyond. Fits of longing for wandering come over the Welsh
periodically, as they came over the Danes--caused by scarcity of food
and density of population, or by a sense of oppression and a yearning
for freedom. An empty stomach sometimes, and sometimes a fiery
imagination, sent a crowd of adventurers to new lands. And it is
thus that every living nation is ever renewing its youth.



CHAPTER III--ROME