On the head-forms of the west of England

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ON THE HEAD-FORMS OF THE WEST OF
ENGLAND.

348

XXV.— Oh the Eead-Forms of the West of England. By
John Beddoe, B.A., M.D., F.A.S.L., F.E.S., Foreign

Associate of tlie Antliropological Society of Paris.

In anthropology, as in cliemistry, and other progressive
sciences, the disposal or modification of old theories, renders
ambiguous or misleading terms that once appeared to have a
definite and unequivocal meaning. Kelt and Keltic are words
which were useful in their day, but which have ceased to
convey a distinct idea to the minds of modern students of the
science. I ask the indulgence of those who on this ground
would object to the frequent use of these words in the present
paper. I could have employed no others in their place without
still greater risk of being misunderstood. The sense in which
I use them will, I think, become tolerably clear in the sequel,
and I apply them, in fact, to the common element of race in
ancient Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Noricum, and Keltiberia.

It is my principal object, in the present paper, to throw
some additional light on the vexed subject of the Keltic skull-
form, by adducing a series of unpublished facts. These facts are
derived for the most part from mensuration of the heads of
natives of the south-western counties, and of Wales and Ireland.
The people subjected to examination were mostly either inmates
of certain factories and workshops which I visited for the pur-
pose, or applicants at the Bristol Royal Infirmary; but, as a
certain number of persons belonging to the professional and
trading classes were added, it is probable that the general
population, except its purely rural section, was fairly repre-
sented.

It can hardly be said now, as it was, not many years ago, that
the question as to the true Keltic head-form is as far as ever
from being settled. The materials for its determination which
have been accumulated and utilised by Davis, Thurnam, and
Daniel Wilson, by Broca and Belloguet, and the acute obser-

HEAD-FORMS OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND. 349

vations of Pruner-Bey, have certainly placed us in a far better
position for its consideration than the one we occupied when
Professor Nilsson vainly demanded of British anthropologists a
t}^ical Keltic skull. Still the differences of opinion founded on
these materials continue to be great, and are complicated hy
the doubt whether any or many pre- Keltic races have left their
traces not only in riverbeds, caves, and kjokkenmoddings, but
in the contents of our barrows and the blood of our people ;
and, moreover, by the obscurity of the relations inter se of the
Kymric, Gaelic, Belgic, and Grallo-Keltic stocks.

The opinion formerly predominant "in this country, as in
France, that the Keltic skull was long, was somewhat rudely
shaken by the revelations of the Crania Britannica. Dr.
Barnard Davis, while claiming for the average Briton of the
barrows a moderate degree of brachykephalism, has never, so
far as I am aware, done the same for his supposed modern
representatives. His observations in Kerry {Or. Br., p. 200,)
equally with his extensive collection of modern and mediaeval
Irish skulls, indicate a tendency to length rather than to short-
ness. His colleague, however, in his recent valuable paper
in the Anthrop. Memoirs, vol. i, has gone further : — " In Eng-
land," he says (p. 127), " the prevailing form of skull is ovoid
or moderately dolichokephalic, combined with a more " than
medium stature, and generally with a fair skin, and light eyes
and hair. A much less common form of head is the brachy-
kephalic, usually found in connexion with a less stature, and
with a dark skin, eyes, and hair. The first of these two types
is Teutonic, and to be traced to an Anglo-Saxon and Scandi-
navian source, whilst it is almost equally certain that the second
is derived from our British or Keltic ancestors."

All this seems to be assumed as a postulate by Dr. Thurnam.
I find, however, on analysing my observations, that they
distinctly negative the most important part of the statement.
On the one hand, eighty-one heads, which by my method of
measurement, in which the glabella is assumed to mean the
prominent spot between the superciliary ridges, yield a modulus
of more than eighty per cent. ; heads, therefore, which are
ordinai'ily called brachykephalic, belonged for the most part to

350

ON THE HEAD-FORMS

individuals with light hair, and an average stature somewhere
about the mean. And, on the other hand, of twenty-five
Englishmen having black or brownish-black hair, the average
index of head-breadth is so small as 76'5, which is the lowest
I have met with in any set of men. Eight Welshman having
black hair, yielded the same modulus to a fraction as thirty-
eight who had hair of other colours, though I must concede
that eight black-haired Kerrymen had heads broader by | per
cent, than twenty-four others. The observations of my friend
Mr. Hector MacLean, on the islanders of Islay and Colousay,
bear me out on this point very strongly, his black-haired men,
twenty in number, yielding a modulus of seventy-six, or three
per cent, less than that of their lighter-haired neighbours.

We shall see the bearing of all this presently. In the mean-
time it is worthy of remark that the remaining part of my
friend's postulate is more correct. Mr. Maclean's measure-
ments, and my own, both indicate that a notable, though not
very great, inferiority in stature and bulk, does, on the average,
characterise the black-haired type.

I shall now proceed to state, from the narrowest to the
broadest, the moduli, or indices of relative breadth, which I
have found in the living heads of natives of the following dis-
tricts. I shall introduce seven Hanoverians from the neigh-
bourhood of Bremen, as representatives of one of the Teutonic

No. Ob-
sei-ved.

DISTRICT OE COUNTRY.

Modulus.

40

WUtshire, North and West

76-56

33

Munster (mostly CO. Cork)

76-75

53

West Somerset

76-9

20

Kerry

77-6

10

Belgium (Walloons)

77-6

50

South Wales and Monmouthshire

77-7

30

South Devon

77-9

50

Gloucestershire ... ...

77.9

50

Bristol

77-9

80

East Somerset

77-9

7

Cornwall

78-0

30

Sweden (coasts)

78-3

50

North Devon

78-3

29

South Somerset

78-6

20

North, South-east, and Centre of England

78-7

5

Norway

79-8

7

Near Bremen

79-9

8

Near Uleaborg, Finland

83-6

OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND. 351

tribes that took part in the conquest of England^* and thirty-
Swedes, partly for a similar reason, and partly to show that the
Swedes are not so universally and intensely dolichokephalous
as most people seem to believe. Also ten Walloons from the
province of Namur, as representatives of a race more or less
Keltic in blood, and eight Finns as an example of a truly
brachykephalous people.

The conclusions or inferences I should draw from this table
would be as follows : —

That, inasmuch as there is reason to suppose that the com-
parative breadth of a cranium, is less than that of a living head,
with its integuments, etc., there is ground for believing the
people of the West of England to be decidedly dolichokephalic.
That the same statement applies to South Wales, and to
Munster.

That the difference in this respect between Anglo-Saxons in
general, and Kelts in general, is immaterial, and that if any
such difference does exist, it is quite overshadowed by the tribal
or sectional differences, between Saxons and Kelts mter se.

That the table affords no support to the view that the Keltic
skull has been, or would be narrowed by an admixture of the
Iberian type. For there is more reason to suspect the pre-
sence of Iberian blood in Cornwall and South Wales, than in
West Somerset, and more in Kerry than in Cork.

That if the modern Gaehc skull differs from the Kymric or
Cambro-British in this respect, it is probably in the direction of
greater narrowness.

That the heads in North-western Wiltshire are remarkably
long. Lest this should be attributed wholly to the fact that
Wilts is more Teutonic than any county to the west of it, I
will remark that the twenty heads from the other Teutonic
districts of England occupy the other extremity of my scale,
and, moreover, that my Wiltshire list includes some specimens
whose other physical characteristics are distinctly Keltic, and

* I have liad no oxjportunity of measuring Frisian heads; judging by the
eye, I believe Dr. Lubach's opinion of the dolichocophaly of the Frisians to
be correct. Nor have I measured any Danes.

352 ON THE HEAD-FORMS

who yet have very long heads. Have we here the traces of Dr.
Thurnam^s dolichokephalous loug-barrow-men ?

The mention of these same long-barrow kymbekephali
transports one at once from the region of dry and repulsive
modern fact into the enticing and glorious uncertainty of pre-
historic theory. For my own part, neither Dr. Wilson nor Dr.
Thurnam has as yet quite convinced me that there was a dis-
tinct megalithic race, still less that that race was Iberian.

In forming my idea as to the existence of a common Keltic
type, I have been guided very much by the evidence of colour.
"■ Colour/' said Sir Henry Rawlinson, while presiding over
the Geographical Section of the British Association at Bath,
" is of no value in the consideration of types. '^ From this
statement of Sir Henry's I most emphatically differ. It has
never hitherto been proven that chromatic is more changeable
than cranial type, where there is no intermixture of blood ;
and to assert that it is so is at least premature.

Now, there is a certain chromatic character, the frequency
of which I have myself observed in all parts of Ireland, in
most parts of the Scottish Highlands and of Wales, in Corn-
wall, in the West of England to a gradually diminishing
extent as one travels eastward into Wessex, in Champagne,
and less markedly in the Walloon country, and in Piedmont,
and which, on the trustworthy evidence of M. de Belloquet,
I believe to be common also in Brittany. I mean that con-
junction of blue, cserulean or ashgrey eyes, with dark hair,
brows, and lashes, which Dr. Barnard Davis calls, for shortness
sake, "the Keltic eye.'' Having found this combination
frequent everywhere where Keltic blood may be supposed to
abound, and scarcely anywhere else, I believe it to furnish a
pretty good index of the presence of Kelts.

In the next place, is there any cranial form which abounds
wherever the " Keltic eye" abounds ? With the diffidence
which becomes one who has not made craniology a special
study, I incline to think that, there is. It is the one which
my friend Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his recent and important
paper on the characteristics of the ancient and modern Kelt,
designates as the pear-shaped or insular Keltic type, and

OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND. 353

which he describes as equally long with the Anglo- Saxon^ but
marked by a sudden tapering in front of the parietal pro-
tuberauceSj and a narrow prolonged frontal region. Most of
the other eminent anthropologists whose names 1 have cited^
from Retzius onwards, have more or less clearly, and with
some difference of opinion on the point of length, indicated a
somewhat similar view; but none of them, so far as I can
recollect, have so clearly and tersely expressed it. I myself,
working independently of Dr. Wilson, and in a different
manner, had educed the same conclusions, which have since
been confirmed by further investigations, including a few
upon Swedish, German, and Walloon heads ; and, moreover,
by a visit to Rheims, in Champagne, where, in the elaborate
sculptures of the monument of Jovinus, I had the satisfaction
of beholding the same marked features, square forehead,
prominent brows, and angular chin, which almost equally, to
the present day, characterise the Belgic Kelt of the continent
and the Firbolgian of Arran.

I do not think Wilson's term, " pear-shaped," very happy ;
that of " coffin-shaped" would perhaps be better, but would
be liable to convey the idea of great length, which is not
desirable. The heads to which I should apply it vary in
length, but are usually rather dolichous. A nearly straight
line extends from the outer angle of the forehead to the point
of greatest breadth, which is generally parietal, and placed
far back above and behind the meatus auditorius ; while in
Saxon skulls this point is generally temporal, and placed
above the meatus, at a rather low level. The forehead has
great squareness when viewed from above, and from behind
diagonally its angle and the malar bone are both seen to be
prominent, so that the eye can hardly be got to show in
profile : the zygomatic diameter may or may not be large, but it
is placed well forward, and oj^pears large in a front view ; and
this fact, with the flatness of the anterior and fronto-lateral
region, would cause the skull to be phgenozygous. In the
Saxon type, on the other hand, with which the Swedish
generally but not exactly agrees, the forehead is rounded
laterally, the eye prominent in profile, the greatest zygomatic

354 ON THE HEAD-FORMS

diameter lies far back, and the tendency of the skull to
ellipticity renders it aphtenozygous. The brows are, in the
Keltic type, prominent and low, either oblique, or, which is
very common in Ireland (see Davis, Cr.Brit., p. 201), " forming,
with the projecting superciliary ridges, a horizontal line above
the eyes." The forehead above the brows is rather flat, in
intelligent men often elevated and square (Edwards^ Kimric
type), but in the bulk of the population low, ''gaining," as has
been said, "in length what it wants in height/'' The upper pro-
file of the skull has generally a gentle and regular curve as far
as the upper occipital region ; this is generally protuberant,
and whether so or not, is oval in section : this point we owe to
Pruner-Bey, but I have confirmed it in a good many instances.
" Eeceptaculum cerebelli small," said Eetzius of a particular
skull, an Irish one. (Cr. Brit., Description of Ancient Hibernian
Skull, plate 55, p. 2). I think the remark applies to the best
examples of the type, but my method of measurement does
not allow me to test its correctness.

The facial features in several varieties or crosses of this
type have been well described by Dr. Barnard Davis. The most
constant are the rather deep-set eye, the sinuous long-nostriled
nose, prominent at the tip, and the always angular and often
narrow chin. A slight degree of prognathousuess, producing
a vertical furrowing of the cheek, is so common, that it may
perhaps be a race-character. Length of face varies like length
of head, but is generally considerable ; in the Firbolgs of Arran,
and in many Walloons, it is conspicuously great.

Such is the prevailing type in Ireland generally; and I
think it is more conspicuous than any other in the greater
part of Somerset, and perhaps in South Devon. It is common
in other parts of the west also, including certain tracts in the
valley of the Bristol Avon, which, according to Dr. Guest, long
remained Damnonian. The ovoid head, tending to elHpticity
when long, to roundness when short, seems to predominate in
all the upper part of Wiltshire and of Gloucestershire, and
occurs in more or less force elsewhere, notably about Bideford,
and along both coasts of the Bi-istol Channel. But in the
Vale of Thornbury and the Forest of Dean, as well as in

OP THE WEST OF ENGLAND, 355

Wales and North Devon and Cornwall, one or two other types
rise into importance. One of these I believe to be Iberian.
In this the form is distinctly ovoid, as in M. Broca^s Basque
skulls. It is conjoined with a dark, almond-shaped, and often
obliquely set eye, quite Turanian in character, with arched or
oblique eyebrows, and with other features much resembling
those I have seen in photographs from the Western Py-
renees. Another may be described as rounded-oblong in
horizontal section ; it is broader in the forehead and fuller in
the temples than the ordinary Keltic head, of which it may,
however, be only a variety or cross. It abounds in Wales
and North Devon. My friend Mr. David Davis, an acute
observer, considers it to be the special Kymric form, as does
also Mr. D. Mackintosh. Something like it reappears in the
north of England among the Kymro- Scandinavian breed. In
Devon and Cornwall some find Romans and Phoenicians ; I
cannot say whether they ai'e right or not.

Let us now see how these facts as to length, and these
views, partly based upon measurements, on the other parts of
the subject, can be reconciled with the contents of British and
Gaulish barrows. There are great difficulties in the way, to
which I will advert presently, but I do not think such a
reconciliation impossible. In the first place, so far as Ireland
is concerned, these difficulties are non-existent. The ancient
Irish skulls, as well as the mediaeval and modern ones, are
long; the four in the catalogue in the Crania Britannica
average 76'2, and the two in the museum at Kilkenny the
same modulus to a fraction. Moreover, the physiognomy and
proportions of these skulls agree with my description, and
are also, as may be seen in the two figured by Dr. Davis,
thoroughly Irish. I would treat with respect any opinion put
forward by Sir William Wilde ; but I am as yet unconvinced
of the existence of any race of globular-headed Irish, though I
by no means absolutely deny it.*

* Of ancient French skulls I know but little, but that little rather
strengthens my views ; for during a recent visit to M. Broca, I convinced
myself that some if not all of the "Bellovaque" skuUs agreed well with our
Keltic type, and those of the Merovingian Franks with our ovoid Anglo-

AA 2

OOt) ox THE HEAD-FORMS

In England we have to deal witli tlie duplicate theory of
Thurnam, and the triplicate theory of Daniel Wilson ; or, if
we adopt the single race theory of Barnard Davis, we have to
account for the disappearance of that tendency to brachyce-
phalism which he attributes to the majority of his Britons. I
find the pear- or coffin-shape which I have described, in a great
many of the skulls figured in the Crania Bniannlca, both long
and short, e. cj., those fi^om Parsley Hay, Ballidon Moor (bating
the prominence of the centre of the forehead,) Arras, End
Lowe, Codford, Juniper Green, Bincombe, and the long skull
from Uley, while the typical ovoid Saxon form is exhibited in
the example from Linton Heath, and less distinctly in others,
as those from "Wye Hill and Brighthampton. There are, how-
ever, cross exceptions. Thus the round skull from Tosson,
Northumberland, supposed to be late British, has a very German
look. The cofiBn-shaped " Saxon " from Harnham, if that
burying-ground belonged, as Thurnam thinks, to the churls
and thralls of the neighbourhood, may well have appertained to
a man of British lineage. If it be objected that the filling
out of the temporal region may arise in a race as a consequence
or concomitant of advancing civilisation, I can only reply that
the ancient Saxons and Merovingians certainly did not rank
very high in that respect, any more than some of our " bullet-
headed" boors of the present day ; and that the round-headed
barbarian of Tosson must in that case have been born long
before his time.

As for the supposed brachykephalism, or inclination towards
brachykephalism, of the ancient British Celt, two or three con-
siderations suggest themselves. The change, if any change
there was, took place very long ago. Daniel Wilson has shown
evidence in favour of the mediseval Keltic skull having been
long ; and we can hardly suppose that under somewhat similar
influences the Keltic skull was growing narrower, and the
German one wider. If there really was a megalithic race, it

Saxon one ; and moreover, that the form of M. Broca's Basque crania was
very ranch that of some modern Silurian heads. In the valley of the Meuse,
the long skull of Engis, and the shorter ones of M. Du2)ont's reindeer-men,
are certainly not adverse to my view in any way.

or THE WEST OP ENGLAND. 357

may have survived throiigli the bronze period in serfage, rarely
appearing in the barrows, and have ultimately fused with its
conquerors, modifying their skullform. But if the race was
substantially one, and the kymbekephali were merely abei'rant
specimens, we have to do with the familiar phenomenon of a
wide range of proportionate length and breadth, such as occurs
in most races.* Change in the mode of nursing infants may
account for one or two per cent, of additional length, and
different methods of measurement for something more. Dr.
Davis, for example, understands by the glabella the smooth
spot, or slight depression, generally found about an inch above
the fronto-nasal suture, while my glabella is the point of union
of the superciliary ridges. A frowning beetle-browed skull,
such as many of the ancient British ones, would therefore yield
in my hands a slightly longer antero-posterior diametei,' than in
his.

* Mv 30 Swedes varied from 72-4 to 85-5.

i