that the language of the Picts and other Caledonians of the southern and eastern districts was British, not Gaelic. But the foundation of the argument has been assumed, and is easily disproved. It is true that of large towns and places that appear in gazetteers names commencing with Bal and Ard are not numerous. But in fact such names are extremely common. In the lowlands of Aberdeenshire-that is, in the portion of one county, and in the part of Caledonia farthest removed from the settlements of the intrusive Gaels, viz., the Scots from Ireland-registers of land show upwards of fifty places the names of which commence with Bal, and forty which commence with Ard. In the Pictish territory, from the Moray Firth to the Forth, I soon collected upwards of four hundred names of places beginning with Bal, and upwards of one hundred with Ard; and the number might easily be doubled.

VII." The Picts were Gaels, but being pressed on by British Celts, and afterwards augmented by British emigrants, became eventually, particularly in the eastern and southern parts of Caledonia, not less Celtic but to some extent British."

There seems sufficient reason for believing that the Picts were the ancient Celtic inhabitants of the southern, northern, and eastern districts of Caledonia, who received from others, about the commencement of the fourth century, the name of Picts in place of Caledonians ;'-neither of these names, it is

Many of the arguments on this point will be found in Thomas Innes's

SCOTS, PICTS, AND ATTACOTTS.

33

probable, being acknowledged by themselves; but that point is immaterial.

1

Bede informs us that two savage foreign nations-the Scots from the north-west and the Picts from the north, who attacked the inhabitants of South Britain-were not called foreign from being inhabitants of countries out of Britain, but because they were from that part of Britain which extended beyond two inlets of the sea-viz., the Firths of Forth and Clyde. It cannot be doubted, from the constitution of Celtic society, that there were various subdivisions in the Scots as well as in the Picts. ticularly to have attracted attention-viz., the Attacotti, who by one ancient author are called a warlike race; while St. Jerome vouches for their being fastidious cannibals.3

One of these tribes seems par

Bede cannot, in his account of the languages of Britain, be asserted as giving authority, direct or implied, to any greater affinity between the language of the Picts and the Britons. than between that of the Scots and the Picts. He merely states the four languages of Great Britain as being those of the Britons, Picts, Scots, and English.

Valuable as any information acquired from Bede un

Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, pp. 20-22, Spalding Club, 1853. See also Mr. W. F. Skene's Highlands of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 12-20, and a whole array of authors and authorities in Chalmers's Caledonia, vol. i. pp. 191-230.

1 Hist. Eccl. Angl. lib. i. cap. xii. Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 117.

2 Ammianus Marcellinus, Mon. Hist. Brit. p. lxxiii.

VOL. I.

3 St. Jerome, Mon. Hist. Brit. p. xcix. It has been suggested that the name given by classic authors to this tribe, viz., the Attacotti, may have been derived from an epithet applied to them by other tribes or communities that suffered from their ferocity. The Gaelic words, Athaich-Coillteach, are not very different in sound-Athaich signifying "giants," and Coillteach " a woody country."

D

2

doubtedly is in regard to the Picts and Scots, there is a work equally trustworthy, of earlier date, and from its peculiar scope naturally affording much more detailed information on the subjects now under consideration. I allude to Adamnan's Life of St. Columba.1 From this history it would not appear that there was any great difference between the language spoken by the saint and the dialect of the Picts. There is indeed one passage that directly, and one which doubtfully refers to St. Columba, as employing some one to interpret for him when addressing the Picts and while explaining the Scriptures. But in reasoning with the Pictish King Brudeus, and with the king's tutor, Broichan the Druid, the saint does not seem to have required an interpreter, nor when he explained true religion and converted Emchatus and his household. These circumstances admit of easy explanation, if we acknowledge as authority the lives of St. Cainich and St. Comgall, who are said to have accompanied St. Columba when he visited the Pictish king at his fortress near the Ness river, and to have taken part in his conversion; for these friends of St. Columba were of the race of the Irish Picts. From the ancient names of places, rivers, and mountains in Caledonia, there cannot have been any great difference between the dialects of the Scots and Picts, whether of Ireland or of Caledonia.

4

1 Edited in 1857 by Dr. Reeves, with an immense amount of valuable information in the editor's notes.

2 Dr. Reeves's Adamnan, pp. 62 and 145.

3

3 Believed to be Craig-Phadric. Dr. Reeves's Adamnan, pp. 93, 220, 221; and Mr. Skene, in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. iv. pp. 301, 302.

PICTISH LANGUAGE.

1

35

The only four words that there are authorities for fixing as Pictish are now to be considered. On two of them, or rather one compound word, great stress has been laid as a principal argument for the opinion that the Picts were of the British and not of the Gaelic race of Celts. These words are Peann-Fahel. The other two words are Scollofthes and Cartoit. Of the last word, I have only seen "cartoit, a pin, in the Pictish language." It may here be premised that in the following remarks, speaking of the Pictish language, the original language of the Picts in Caledonia is meant, and not any dialect in use by the mixed race established between the Roman walls; nor a British dialect, partly intruded on the Gaelic in the south and south-eastern districts of Caledonia, and which, judging by the names of places, decreased towards the northern provinces, and entirely ceased before it approached that part of Caledonia in which the northern Pictish capital was situated-viz., near the river Ness.

With regard to Peann-Fahel, which is so written in the oldest manuscripts of Bede, and fixed as the name of the place where the Roman wall of Antoninus terminated on the east coast, the place, although on the border, is not in Caledonia, the country of the Picts proper. Bede says it is called Peann-Fahel in the Pictish language. From this various writers have assumed that peann is to be considered identical with Pen." This must not be taken for granted. Pen is a British Celtic word, which enters into the formation

2

1 Dr. Reeves's Adamnan, quoting "Corinac Gloss." p. 63.

2 Being called "Pennultun in the

English tongue" is no sufficient proof in opposition to the general absence of Pen in the nomenclature of Caledonia.

of very many names of places in all parts of Britain except in Caledonia, the country of the Picts in Britain. From north to south; from the Lothians and Dumfriesshire to the counties of Dorset and Sussex; from the shores of Kent, Norfolk, Durham, and Haddington on the east, to those of Cornwall, Pembroke, Caernarvon, Lancaster, and Wigton on the west, Pen is a common prefix to names of places; whilst it is all but unknown in the proper names of Caledonia and Ireland.

The word "Scollofthes" is declared by an author of the twelfth century to be the Pictish name for the "clerks of the church." Attention was first called to this passage by Mr. Joseph Robertson in his Treatise on the Scholastic Offices of the Scottish Church in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century.2 The place where the incident occurred in which the word Scollofthes came to be used was at Kirkcudbright, which the writer, Reginald of Durham, calls in Pictland, although it is so far removed from Caledonia, the country of the true Picts. An examination of these words, therefore, affords no proof that the original Picts were Celts of the British branch.

To prove that the constitution of society among the Picts was to a certain extent peculiar, and that the symbols graven on the sculptured stones of Caledonia are different. from those of any other country, cannot materially influence the decision as to which of the two great divisions of the Celtic race-viz., the Gaelic or British-the Picts should be

This being an office of the Christian Church, cannot be considered as an original Celtic expression.

* Mr. Joseph Robertson, in Miscel· lany of the Spalding Club, vol. v. p. 56.