In the towns and among the upper class in the country Romanization was substantially complete--as complete as in northern Gaul, and possibly indeed even more complete.

But both the lack of definite evidence and the probabilities of the case require us to admit that the peasantry may have been less thoroughly Romanized.

It was covered with a superimposed layer of Roman civilization.

But beneath this layer the native element may have remained potentially, if not actually, Celtic, and in the remoter districts the native speech may have lingered on, like Erse or Manx to-day, as a rival to the more fashionable Latin.

How far this happened actually within the civilized lowland area we cannot tell.