CHAPTER IV.

ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN.

[Sidenote: Inquiry into Ethnology of Britain proper at this stage.]

Having thus given the traditionary history of that dark interval which intervened between the departure of the Romans from the island of Britain in the beginning of the fifth century, and the period when we become once more acquainted with its history in the latter part of the sixth century, and find the barbarian tribes who had assailed the Roman province now settled in the form of kingdoms with definite limits; and having endeavoured to extricate from it a chronological narrative of events based on historic truth, we may pause here to make some inquiry into the ethnology of the races composing these kingdoms.

The traditionary writers describe the whole of these four nations—the Britons, Picts, Scots, and Saxons—as having been colonies of foreign races who came into Britain at different periods; and, in a sense, this is true of all of them, though the immigration of the first two took place at a very remote period, and long before we have any historical record connected with the inhabitants of the island. Archæology, however, enables us to trace the previous existence of a people of a different race, indications of which are to be found to a limited extent in the earlier notices of Britain and in its topography.

[Sidenote: An Iberian or Basque people preceded the Celtic race in Britain and Ireland.]

A distinguished writer on ethnology lays down certain propositions which he terms fixed points in British ethnology. His first proposition is this: ‘Eighteen hundred years ago the population of Britain comprised peoples of two types of complexion, the one fair, and the other dark. The dark people resembled the Aquitani and the Iberians; the fair people were like the Belgic Gauls.’ His second proposition is, ‘The people termed Gauls, and those called Germans, by the Romans, did not differ in any important physical character.’ These two propositions we may accept as well founded.[184] Certain it is that when the Romans entered Britain and became acquainted with its inhabitants in that part of the island nearest Gaul, they do not record any difference in their physical appearance. On the contrary, Tacitus remarks that they resembled each other in every respect. When the war with the Silures, who occupied territories in the south-west, brought them in contact with that people, Tacitus thus records the result of their observation. Their complexion was different and of a darker hue. Their hair was curly, and they resembled the Iberians: and when Agricola’s campaigns made them acquainted with the inhabitants of Caledonia, the only observation they made was that they were larger-limbed and had redder hair, and in this respect resembled the Germans more than the Gauls.

At an early period, the Greek writers, in whom we find the earliest notices of Britain, seem to have had a persuasion that the portion of the inhabitants of Britain who were more particularly connected with the working of tin, possessed peculiarities which distinguished them from the rest. At first they knew only of islands called the Cassiterides, so called from a word signifying tin, as the quarter from whence tin was brought. They then became aware that tin was wrought in Britain as well, and they came to view the Cassiterides as islands lying between Spain and Britain. Diodorus tells us that ‘they who dwell near the promontory of Britain which is called Belerion (Land’s End) are singularly fond of strangers, and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, civilised in their habits. These people obtain the tin by skilfully working the soil which produces it; this being rocky, has earthy interstices, in which, working the ore, and then fusing, they reduce it to metal; and when they have formed it into cubical shapes, they convey it to a certain island lying off Britain, named Ictis; for at the low tides the intervening space being laid dry, they carry thither in wagons the tin in great abundance.’ He also says, ‘Above the country of the Lusitanians, there are many mines of tin in the little islands called Cassiterides from this circumstance, lying off Iberia, in the ocean, and much of it also is carried across from the Bretannic Isle to the opposite coast of Gaul, and thence conveyed on horses by the merchants, through the intervening Celtic land, to the people of Massilia, and to the city called Narbonne.’ Though the name Ictis leads one to refer this description to the Isle of Wight, it is more probable that the present St. Michael’s Mount is meant. At ebb tide it is accessible from the mainland, and tin is found there in two ways, in streamlets and in mines. By the Cassiterides, the Scilly Islands seem to be intended.[185]

Strabo reports of Posidonius that he says that tin is not found upon the surface, as authors commonly relate, but that it is dug up; and that it is produced both in places among the Barbarians who dwell beyond the Lusitanians, and in the islands Cassiterides; and that from the Bretannic Isles it is carried to Massalia; and he adds, ‘The Cassiterides are ten in number, and lie near each other in the ocean, towards the north from the haven of the Artabri: one of them is desert, but the others are inhabited by men in black cloaks, clad in tunics reaching to the feet, and girt about the breast; walking with staves, and bearded like goats. They subsist by their cattle, leading for the most part a wandering life. And having metals of tin and lead, these and skins they barter with the merchants for earthenware and salt, and brazen vessels.’ He mentions that they were visited by Publius Crassus, apparently one of Caesar’s officers, ‘who perceived that the metals were dug out at a little depth, and that the men being at peace were already beginning, in consequence of their leisure, to busy themselves about the sea,’[186] The black cloaks and goats’ beards seem to be an exaggerated and distorted representation of the darkness of the complexion and the curled hair attributed to the Silures. Pomponius Mela and Pliny in the first century both allude to the Cassiterides, so called, say both, because they abound in tin, and so does Solinus in similar terms; but the latter also states that ‘a stormy channel separates the coast which the Damnonii occupy from the island Silura, whose inhabitants preserve the ancient manners, reject money, barter merchandise, value what they require by exchange rather than by price, worship the gods, and both men and women profess a knowledge of the future.’ His description resembles that of Diodorus, and he probably considered Cornwall as an island, and connects it by name with the Silures.[187]

In the following century we find that the name of Cassiterides has been dropped, and they are now called the Hesperides, while their inhabitants were believed to have been Iberians. Dionysius Periegeta says, in the end of this century—‘But near the sacred promontory, where they say is the end of Europe, the Hesperides Isles, whence tin proceeds, dwell the rich sons of the noble Iberians.’[188] In the fourth century, Rufus Festus Avienus calls these islands the Oestrymnides. He says that the northern promontory of Spain was called Oestrymnis, and adds, ‘Below the summit of this promontory the Oestrymnic bay spreads out before the inhabitants, in which the Oestrymnic Isles show themselves’—

Lying far off, and rich in metals Of tin and lead. Great the strength of this nation, Proud their mind, powerful their skill, Trading the constant care of all. The broad boisterous channel with boats and southerly wind, They cut the gulf of the monster-filled ocean; They know not to fit with pine Their keels, nor with fir, as use is, They shape their boats; but, strange to say, They fit their vessels with united skins, And often traverse the deep in a hide.

Then, after mentioning the sacred island of the Hiberni and the island of the Albiones, he adds, ‘It is customary for the people of Tartessus to trade in the bounds of the Oestrymnides;’[189] and Priscianus Periegeta, who flourished in the beginning of the sixth century, calls them the Hesperides, and says that over-against the sacred promontory which men call the end of Europe lie the Hesperides, full of tin, which the strong people of the Iberi occupy.[190]

If these notices show that a persuasion existed among many that the population of the Scilly Isles, Cornwall, and South Wales was Iberian, an examination of the ancient sepulchral remains in Britain gives us reason to suppose that a people possessing their physical characteristics had once spread over the whole of both of the British Isles. The latest writer on the subject thus sums up the result of the investigation into the character of these remains:—‘The materials for working out the craniology of Europe in prehistoric times do not justify any sweeping conclusions as to the distribution of the various races, but those which Dr. Thurnam has collected in Britain offer a firm basis for such an inquiry. In the numerous long barrows and chambered-gallery graves of our island, which, from the invariable absence of bronze and the frequent presence of polished stone implements, may be referred to the neolithic age, the crania belong, with scarcely an exception, to the first two of these divisions (the Dolichocephali or long skulls). In the round barrows, on the other hand, in which bronze articles are found, they belong mainly to the third division (Brachycephali or broad skulls), although some are Orthocephalous (having oval skulls). On evidence of this kind Dr. Thurnam concludes that Britain was inhabited in the neolithic age by a long-headed people, and that towards its close it was invaded by a bronze-using race, who were dominant during the bronze age. This important conclusion has been verified by nearly every discovery which has been made in this country since its publication. The long skulls graduate into the broad, the oval skulls being the intermediate forms, and this would naturally result from the intermingling of the blood of the two races.’[191] Ireland presents precisely the same phenomena.[192] The same writer thus sums up the result of the inquiry:—‘Dr. Thurnam was the first to recognise that the long skulls, out of the long barrows of Britain and Ireland, were of the Basque or Iberian type, and Professor Huxley holds that the river-bed skulls belong to the same race. We have therefore proofs that an Iberian or Basque population spread over the whole of Britain and Ireland in the neolithic age, inhabiting caves, and burying their dead in caves and chambered tombs, just as in the Iberian peninsula also in the neolithic age.’[193]

[Sidenote: Ethnologic traditions.]

Of the Celtic race, which succeeded the Iberians in the British Isles, and whose descendants still remain here, the Romans tell us nothing, save that those in the interior of the country were believed to be indigenous, and that those on the regions bordering upon the sea which divides Britain from Gaul had passed over from the latter country; but here we have the advantage of possessing an additional element of information in their traditions. These represent, in more or less of an archaic form, the popular notions prevailing among the people themselves of their ethnology, their supposed descent, and their mutual relation to each other. They usually appear in two different shapes—one in which the tribes inhabiting the same country, but distinguished from each other by national or ethnological differences, appear as successive colonies, arriving at different times in the country from distant regions, founded either upon genuine tradition or artificially upon some fancied resemblance in name or characteristic; the other, where each race is represented by an ‘eponymus’ from whom they are supposed to have been descended, and to have derived their name, and these supposed eponymic ancestors are connected together in an artificial family, in which the paternal ancestor represents the race, and the maternal the country or city they occupy. An analysis of these legends, then, is an almost indispensable preliminary to any attempt to ascertain their true place in the ethnology of the island.

[Sidenote: British traditions.]

For the oldest forms of the British traditions we must look to Nennius. According to him, the Britons were a colony of Trojans who came from Italy, and were the first inhabitants of the island. ‘Æneas the Trojan had by Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, king of Italy, besides his son from whom the Romans descended, a younger son, Brutus, who was expelled from Italy and came to the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea. From thence he went to Gaul and built the city of the “Turones,” called Turnis. At length he came to this island, named from him Britannia, dwelt there, and filled it with his descendants.’ His account of the colonies of Picts and Scots which followed has been noticed in the preceding chapter. He then says that he had learnt another account of these Britons from the ancient books of his ancestors. According to this form, ‘the first man who came to Europe of the race of Japhet was Alanus, with his three sons, Hessitio, Armenon, and Negue. Hessitio had four sons, Francus, Romanus, Britto, and Albanus. Armenon had five sons, Gothus, Ualagothus, Gebidus, Burgoandus, and Longobardus. Negue, however, had three sons, Wandalus, Saxo, and Boguarus. From Hessitio are sprung four nations, the Franci, the Latini, the Albani, and the Britti. From Armenon five, the Goths, Walagoths, Gebiddi, Burgunds, and Longobards; and from Neguius four, the Boguarii, Vandals, Saxons, and Turingi.’ This is a rude attempt to express in this form the ethnology of Europe. We have the Britons and the people of Albania or the north represented by two brothers, Brittus and Albanus; and we have the Saxons affiliated to another ancestor. There is no appearance either in this or the previous form of ethnologic tradition of these inhabitants of Britain having been preceded by the Iberi.[194]

[Sidenote: Irish traditions.]

The Irish ethnologic legends are found in a prose tract, termed the _Leabhar Gabhala_, or Book of Conquests.[195] The legends are supposed to have been preserved by Fintan, who was baptized by St. Patrick, and gave him an account of everything he remembered himself. It was reported that he had lived before the flood, and had been miraculously preserved in order that the memory of these events should not be lost.

The tale is this:—Forty days before the Deluge, Ceasar landed in Eirin, at Dunnamarc, with Fintan, Bioth, and Ladhra, and fifty maidens, but they all died before the Deluge happened. The first peopling of Ireland after the Flood was by Partholon and his colony, who came from Migdonia in Greece, and took his way through the “Muir Torrian,” or Mediterranean, by Sicily, and, leaving Spain on the right, arrived in Ireland, where he landed, with his three sons, Rughraidhe, Slainge, and Laighline, and a thousand soldiers, at Inversceine, in the west of Munster, on the 14th of May, but after three hundred years this colony was entirely swept off by a plague at the Hill of Howth.

Thirty years after Nemhidh landed with a colony in Ireland. He came from Scythia, through the Euxine Sea, past the Rhiphæan Mountains, to the North Sea, whence he sailed to Ireland with his four sons, Starn, Iarbhainel Faidh or the Prophet, Aininn, and Fergus Leithderg or Redside. After his death his followers were expelled by a people called the Fomhoruigh or sea robbers, and left Eirin in three bands. One, under Simon Breac, son of Starn, went to that part of Greece called Thrace. The second, under Iobaath, son of Beothuig, son of Iarbhainel, went to the regions of the north of Europe; and the third, under Briotan Maol, son of Fergus Leithderg, to Dobhar and Iardobhar, in the north of Alban, and dwelt there.

Nemhidh and his race were two hundred and sixteen years in Ireland, after which it remained a wilderness for two hundred years, when a people called the Firbolg arrived in Ireland from Thrace. They were the descendants of Simon Breac, and the Greeks had subjected them to slavery, obliging them to dig the earth and raise mould, and carry it in sacks or bags of leather, termed _bolgs_ in Irish. Whereupon they came to a resolution to shake off the yoke, and make boats out of the leathern sacks in which they carried the earth. They arrived under the five sons of Deala—Slainge, Rughruidhe, Gann, Geannan, and Seangann—who divided Ireland into five provinces. Their followers were divided into three septs: the Firbolg, or men of the bags, who under Gann and Seangann landed at Iorrus Domnann in Connaught; the Fir Domhnan, so called from the _domhin_ or pits they used to dig, landed under Geannan and Rughruidhe at Tracht Rughruidhe in Ulster; and the Fir Gaillian, or men of the spear, so called from the _gai_ or spears they used to protect the rest at work, under Slainge at Inverslainge in Leinster.

They founded the monarchy of Eirin, and held it thirty-six years; when under Eochaidh, son of Erc, their last king, a people called the Tuatha De Danaan arrived in Ireland. They were descended from Iobaath, son of Beothuig, son of Iarbhainel the Prophet, son of Nemhidh, who had taken refuge in the north of Europe. They lived in the land of Lochlin, where they had four cities—Falias, Gorias, Finias, and Murias. After they had continued a long time in these cities, they passed over to the north of Alban, and dwelt seven years in Dobhar and Iardobhar, taking with them four articles of value—the Lia Fal, or Stone of Destiny, from Falias; the sword of Lughaidh Lamhfhada from Gorias; his spear from Finias; and the caldron of the Dagda from Murias. After seven years they left Alban, and landed on Monday the 1st of May in the north of Ireland, and sent ambassadors to the king of the Firbolg, and demanded the sovereignty of Erin. Upon this a great battle was fought at Muigh Tuireadh, in which the Firbolg were defeated with the loss of ten thousand men, and the remainder fled to the islands of Arran, Isla, Rachlin, and Innsigall, where they remained till they were eventually driven out of the isles by the Cruithnigh or Picts.

The Tuatha De Danaan remained one hundred and ninety-seven years in Ireland, when the sons of Miledh arrived from Spain with the Scots, and wrested the kingdom from them. This Miledh was said to have originally borne the name of Golamh, and to be the son of Bile, son of Breogan, who took possession of Spain. He had eight sons—two, Donn and Aireach Feabhruadh, by Seang, daughter of Refloir, king of Scythia; and six, Eibherfionn and Amhergin, Ir and Colpa, Arannan and Eireamon, by Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. The Tuatha De Danaan were under the rule of three brothers—MacCuill, MacCeacht, and MacGreine—who had their seat at Oileach Neid in the north of Ulster, and from whose three wives—Eire, Fodla, and Banba—the island had these names given to it. The sons of Miledh arrived with their fleet at Inverslainge, now Wexford, but were driven from shore by the spells of the Tuatha De Danaan, and went round to Inbhersceine in the west of Munster. Three of the sons—Donn, Ir, and Arannan—were drowned in a storm, but Eimher and his followers landed at Inbhersceine, and encountered Eire with the Tuatha De Danaan at Slieve Mis in Ulster, and defeated them. In this battle, Scota, the wife of Miledh, fell. Eireamon, with another division of the fleet, landed at Inbhercolpe, now called Drogheda, and was joined by Eibhear there, when they met the rest of the Tuatha De Danaan at Taillten in Meath, and slew there three kings with their wives. Having thus entirely reduced the island, Eireamon became their first king. He divided Ireland into four provinces. He gave the province of Ulster to Emhear, son of Ir; Munster to the four sons of Emhear Finn; Connaught to Un and Eadan; and Leinster to Crimthan Sgiathbhel of the Fir Domnan.[196]

In the time of this Crimthan Sgiathbhel, king of Leinster, the Cruithnigh came from the land of Thrace. They were the children of Gleoin Mac Ercol, that is, of Gelonus, son of Hercules, and were called Agathirsi. They came away with nine ships and three hundred and nine persons, landed at Inverslainge under six brothers—Solan, Ulfa, Nechtan, Drostan, Aengus, and Leithenn—and had passed through France, where they built the city of Pictavis. The king of Leinster offered them a settlement, provided they would drive out a people called the Tuatha Fidhbhe. This they accomplished. Of the brothers, Leithenn died in France; and Drostan, Solan, Nechtan, and Ulfa in Ireland. Gub, and his son Cathluan, acquired great power in Erin, till Eireamon drove them out, and gave them the wives of the men who had been drowned with his brother Donn. Six of them remained in the plains of Bregia in Meath. Those that left Erin sailed to Inver Boinne to dwell in the country beyond Ile, and from thence they conquered Alban from Cath to Forchu.[197]

An older account of the settlement of the sons of Miledh, and that of the Cruithnigh in connection with it, is probably to be found in a poem contained in the Book of Leinster, and attributed to Maelmurra of Othain, who died in the year 884.[198] They are said in this poem ‘to have been Greeks in their origin, and descended from Fenius, who came from Scythia to Nembroth, where he built the great tower, and founded a school for languages. This Fenius Farsaid had a son Nel, who went to Egypt, and married Scota, daughter of Forann (Pharaoh), by whom he had a son, Gaedhel Glass, and his people were called Gaedhil from him, Feni from Fenius, and Scuith or Scots from Scota. After Forann was drowned in the Red Sea, they seized his ships, and passed by India and by Asia to Scythia; and then by the Caspian Sea to the Slieve Riffi or Rhiphæan Mountains. They settled in Golgutha, where they dwelt two hundred years. Brath, son of Deagath, then left Gaethligh for the islands of the Muir Torrian or Mediterranean, and by Crete and Sicily to Spain. His son, Breogan, conquered Spain, and founded Brigantia, or the tower of Breogan. His son, Ith, discovered Erin, and landed at Bentracht or Magh Ith in Leinster, and died at Slemnaibh (unknown). The six sons of Miledh—Donn, Colptha, Amergin, Ir, Eber, and Erimon, with Luguid, son of Ith, came to revenge his death with four-and-twenty plebeians to attend them—two on each chief. Cruithne, son of Cing, took their women from them, except Tea, the wife of Eireamon. They fought Banba with her hosts at Sliabh Mis, Fodhla at Ebhlinne, and Eire at Uisneach. The Tuatha Dea sent them forth, according to the laws of war, over nine waves. Eireamon went with one half of the host to Inbhercolphtha; Donn with the other half to Inbhersceine, but himself died at sea. They spread themselves through Erin to her coasts, and made alliance with the Firbolg and the clan of Nemid, their wives having been stolen from them. They made alliance with the Tuatha Dea, and half the land was given to them. Eireamon took the north as the inheritance of his race. Eber took the south. Lugaidh, son of Ith, possessed certain districts, and Erin is full of the race of Ir.’ Such is a short abstract of this curious poem. The Milesians are here represented not as driving out the previous inhabitants, but as making alliance with them, and obtaining wives from the Tuatha De Danaan, their own wives having been taken from them by the Cruithnigh.

Another version of this form of the legend of the Cruithnigh, is that ‘Cruithnechan, son of Cinge, son of Lochit, went from the sons of Miledh to the Britons of Fortrenn, to fight against the Saxons, and remained with them. But they had no wives, for the women of Alban had died. They then went back to the sons of Miledh, and swore by heaven and earth, and the sun and the moon, and by the dew and the elements, and by the sea and the land, that the regal succession should be on the mother’s side, and they took twelve of the women whose husbands had been drowned with Donn.’[199]

In the form which these legends of the colonisation of Ireland assume in the Book of Conquests there are five successive colonies, but the first two, those of Partholan and Nemhidh, are separated from each other and from the latter by long internals, while the last three, beginning with the Firbolg, are continuous, each succeeding the other without interval. The older form, as contained in Maelmurra’s poem, knows nothing of Partholan and his colony, names the Firbolg first, and appears to identify the Clanna Nemidh with the Tuatha Dea.[200] An unfortunate resemblance between the name of the Firbolg and Cæsar’s Belgæ has led most writers to assume that they were the same people, to the great confusion of the early history of Ireland. There is nothing in the legend—and what we are told of the Firbolg is simply legendary—to warrant this, and the interpretation there given to the names Firbolg and Firdomnan harmonises very singularly with the legendary accounts of the tin-workers of Cornwall and the tin islands. It is not difficult to recognise in the tradition that the Firbolg derived their name from the leathern sacks which they filled with soil, and with which they covered their boats, and the Firdomnan from the pits they dug, the people who worked the tin by digging in the soil and transporting it in bags in their hide-covered boats. The traditions too of the physical characteristics of these early colonists of Ireland lead to the same conclusion. It is thus quoted in the preface to M‘Firbis’s Book of Genealogies: ‘Every one who is white [of skin], brown [of hair], bold, honourable, daring, prosperous, bountiful in the bestowal of property, wealth, and rings, and who is not afraid of battle or combat, they are the descendants of the sons of Miledh in Erinn. Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large; and every plunderer; every musical person; the professor of musical and entertaining performances; who are adepts in all Druidical and magical arts; they are the descendants of the Tuatha De Danaan in Erinn. Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful, tale-telling, noisy, contemptible; every wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh, and inhospitable person; every slave, every mean thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and the promoters of discord among the people, these are the descendants of the Firbolg, the Fir Gailian of Liogairné, and of the Firdomnan in Erinn. But, however, the descendants of the Firbolgs are the most numerous of all these. This is taken from an old book.’[201]

That there were two distinct types of people in ancient Ireland—‘one a high-statured, golden-coloured or red-haired, fair-skinned, and blue or grey-blue-eyed race; the other a dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, small or medium statured, little-limbed race,’[202]—is very certain, and the traditionary account of the characteristics of the Firbolg identifies them with the latter, and with the lowest type of the Irish people. They belong to the same class with the Silures, and may be held to represent the Iberian race which preceded the Celtic. Of the fair-skinned race the Tuatha De Danaan correspond in character with Tacitus’s large-limbed and red-haired Caledonians, and the brown-haired Milesians or Scots present a less Germanic type.[203]

In this legend of the sons of Miledh, too, we can recognise the appearance of the second form in which such traditions usually embody themselves—that of the ethnologic family. Miledh was descended from Gaedhel Glass, the ‘eponymus’ of the Gaedhelic race. He was son of Scota, who was also wife of Miledh, and represented Ireland under its name of Scotia. His three sons, Heber, Heremon, and Ir, along with Ith, son of Breogan, from whom the population of Ireland which succeeded the Tuatha De Danaan is brought, represent the different races of which it was composed. Bede distinguishes the Scots as divided into northern and southern Scots.[204] The former are represented by Heremon, the latter by Heber, who divided Ireland between them.[205] The descendants of Ir, to whom Ulster was assigned, are the Cruithnigh, who were its inhabitants till confined by the Scots to Dalaradia. The small tribes of Ith, son of Breogan, who inhabited a district in the south-west of Ireland, are the people whom Ptolemy calls Brigantes and places there. The sons of Miledh are said, in the Annals of the Four Masters, to have arrived in Ireland in the age of the world 3500, which, according to their computation, corresponds with the year 1694 before Christ; and in the following year Eremhon and Emher, or Heremon and Heber, are said to have assumed the joint sovereignty of Ireland and divided it into two parts between them. Then follows an artificially-constructed history, in which the name of each successive king, with the length of his reign, the son of Miledh from whom he was descended, and the battles he fought, are given with the same minuteness of detail throughout, until we find ourselves at length within what may be termed the historic period of Irish history.[206]

It would be out of place here to enter into a critical analysis of these annals, or to discuss further the ethnology of Ireland, except in so far as it may tend to throw light upon that of Scotland; but it may so far elucidate the legends which follow if we notice shortly what they tell us regarding the descendants of Ir, to whom Ulster was assigned in the distribution of the provinces of Ireland. About four centuries after the arrival of the sons of Miledh the Annals place seven kings of the race of Ir in succession upon the throne of Ireland. These are Ollamh Fodhla, who is said to have established the Feis Teamhrach, or great annual feast, at Tara, and to have appointed a Toshech over every cantred, and a Brughaidh, or farmer, over every townland. He was called Ollamh Fodhla because he had been first a learned Ollamh, or chief poet, and afterwards king of Fodhla, or Ireland. He was followed by his son Finachta, so named because snow (Snechta) fell with the taste of wine (Fiona); and he by another son, Slanoll; and he by a third son, Gede Ollgothach; and he by Fiacha, son of Finnachta; and Fiacha by Bearnghal, son of Gede Ollgothach; and Bearnghal by Olioll, son of Slanoll, when the government of Tara was wrested from the Ultu or race of Ir. The oldest of the annalists, Tighernac, commences his annals in the year 305 before Christ, with Cimbaoch, son of Fintain, of this race, who reigned at Eaman or Eamania eighteen years; and adds this significant sentence, ‘All records of the Scots before Cimbaoch are uncertain.’[207] From Cimbaoch, Tighernac gives a succession of Irian kings reigning at Eamania down to Fiacha Araidhe, who was slain in battle in the year 248 by the Heremonian kings of Tara and Leinster. His people are called by Tighernac Cruithniu, and from him Dalaraidhe, or Dalaradia, takes its name. In 254 he mentions that some of the Ultonians were driven by the king of Ireland to Manann;[208] and in 332 he records the battle of Achadh Leithdearg, in Fernmuigh, in which Fergus Foga, the last king of Eamania, was slain by the three Collas of the line of Heremon, who, says Tighernac, ‘afterwards destroyed Eamhian Macha or Eamania, and the Ultonians did not dwell in it from thenceforth, and they took from them their kingdom from Loch Neagh westward,’ which became known as Airgialla, now Oriel. The Irians were from this time confined to the district of Dalaradia, and now appear under the name of Cruithnigh.

An old form of the Irish legend contained in the Acts of Saint Cadroë, compiled in the eleventh century, corroborates this account to some extent. According to this legend, the Scots were Greeks from the town of Chorischon upon the river Pactolus, which separates Choria from Lydia. Having obtained ships, they went by Pathmos, Abidos, and the islands of the Hellespont, to Upper Thrace, and being joined by the people of Pergamus, and the Lacedæmonians, they are driven by the north wind past Ephesus, the island of Melos, and the Cyclades, to Crete, and thence by the African sea they enter the Illyrian gulf. Then by the Balearic Isles they pass Spain, and through the Columns of Hercules to remote Tyle, and finally land at Cruachan Feli in Ireland. On landing and exploring the country, they discover the nation of the Picts.[209] They then attack and defeat the inhabitants of Cloin, an ancient city on the Shannon. The Chorischii then, seeing the land flowing with milk and honey, attack the islanders, and take possession of Arlmacha, their metropolis, and the whole land between Loch Erne and Ethioch. This is clearly the same event as the taking of Eamania by the three Collas, and their precursors in the country are here called the nation of the Picts. They then take Kildare and Cork, a city of Munster, besiege and enter Bangor, a city of Ulster. After many years, passing over the sea, they occupy the Euean island, now called Iona, and crossing the contiguous sea enter the region of Rossia by the river Rosis, and take possession of the towns Rigmonath and Bellethor,[210] situated at a distance from it, and thus the whole country, called after their own name Chorischia, they now called Scotia[211] after the wife of a certain son of Æneas the Lacedæmonian,[212] called Nelus or Niulus, who was their chief, and obtained an Egyptian wife, Scota, and in her language, having lost their own mother-tongue, and in course of years became converted to Christianity by St. Patrick. This legend, in a great measure, appears to refer to ecclesiastical foundations.

[Sidenote: Dalriadic legend.]

The only legend which we can connect directly with the Scots who settled in Britain, and formed the small kingdom of Dalriada in the West Highlands, is that contained in the poem of the eleventh century, usually termed the Albanic Duan. It records the successive possessors of Alban, and states that the first who possessed it was Albanus, son of Isacon, and brother of Briutus, and that from him Alban of Ships has its name. He was banished by his brother across the Muir n-Icht, or Straits of Dover, and Briutus possessed it as far as the promontory of Fotudain. Long after Briutus the Clanna Neimhidh or Nemedians possessed it. The Cruithnigh then came from Ireland and possessed it. Seventy kings, from Cathluan, the first king, to Constantine, the last, possessed the Cruithnian plain. They were followed by the three sons of Erc, son of Eochaidh, the children of Conaire, the chosen of the strong Gael, three who obtained the blessing of St. Patrick, who took Alban after great wars. The rest of this poem belongs to history.

This legend combines the British with the Irish forms. We have Briutus and Albanus, sons of Isacon, as in the ethnologic family given by Nennius, the ‘eponymi’ of the Britanni and Albani, and the latter representing the first inhabitants of the north. The Nemedian colony is obviously that part of the Irish legend in which one body of the descendants of Nemedius settled in Dobhar and Iardobhar in North Alban, out of which the Tuatha De Danaan emerge. The colony of the Cruithnigh belongs also to the Irish form of the legend, and the settlement of the sons of Erc is historic, except perhaps in so far as in this poem Loarn is made to precede Fergus as the first king of Dalriadic Alban.[213] There is no appearance here of the Firbolg, but they are made in the Irish legend to precede the Picts in the Western Isles.[214]

[Sidenote: Pictish Legends.]

Of the Pictish legends there are still three forms to be noticed. One which may be called the national legend of the Picts, and belongs especially to the whole nation which possessed the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde; a second, which is the legend of the Irish Picts of Dalaradia in Ulster; and a third, connected with the Picts of Galloway.

For the first and most important legend we must look to the Pictish Chronicle, a work of the tenth century. There are two editions of it. One in Latin, but obviously translated from a Gaelic original, and the other in the Irish Nennius; and the first contains a preface, mainly taken from the work of Isidore of Seville, in the sixth century, a work which formed the basis of Nennius’s compilation also. In this preface we have additional facts told us: first, that the Scots, who are now corruptly called Hibernienses, were so called, either as Scythians because they came from Scythia and derive their origin from it, or from Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who was, it is said, queen of the Scots. The second is that natives of Scythia were called from their fair hair Albani, and that from these Albani both Scots and Picts derive their origin.[215] It then proceeds to tell us that Cruidne, son of Cinge, was the father of the Picts inhabiting this island, and had seven sons—Fib, Fidach, Fodla, Fortrenn, Got, Ce, Circinn. The edition in the Irish Nennius adds to this, ‘And they divided the land into seven divisions as Columcille says,

Seven children of Cruithne, Divided Alban into seven divisions: Cait, Ce, Cirig, a warlike clan; Fib, Fidach, Fotla, Fortrenn,

and the name of each man is given to their territories.’ Five of these divisions can still be identified: Fib is Fife, Fotla is Athfoitle, now corrupted into Atholl; Fortrenn is the district between the rivers Forth and Tay; Circinn the district of Mearns, a name corrupted from Maghgirginn, now Kincardineshire; and Cait is Cathenesia, or Caithness. It is obvious, therefore, that this legend belongs to the Pictish inhabitants of these seven divisions. The seven sons are then followed by Gede Ollgothach, whose name is the same as one of the seven kings of the descendants of Ir, who in the first legend occupied the throne of Ireland. We then have Oenbecan and Olfinecta; and the Irish edition tells us that Onbecan, son of Caith, son of Cruthne, took the sovereignty of the seven divisions, and that Finach was lord of Erin at that time, and took hostages of the Cruithnigh. He also is one of the seven Irian kings. After three more names we have Brude bont, and are told that from him thirty Brudes reigned over Albania and Hibernia or Alban, and Erin, for a period of 150 years. These Brudes have each a name attached to them, and the Irish edition tells us that these names were also names of divisions of the country, and that the account is taken from the books of the Cruithnigh.[216] It is obvious that this legend views the Picts of Alban and of Erin as forming one people, and being in close connection with each other.

The legend of the Irish Picts of Dalaradia has a close bearing upon this one. It is called ‘Of the descent of the Dalaraidhe,’ and is this. ‘Twice eighteen soldiers of the tribes of Tracia went to the fleet of the sons of Miledh to Germany, and they took them away with them and kept them as soldiers. They had no wives, and afterwards took wives of the race of Miledh; and when they had cleared their swordland among the Britons, first Magh Fortrenn, and then Maghgirginn, the succession to the sovereignty was through females. They took with them from Erin thrice fifty maidens to become mothers of sons, whence Altnaninghean or the rock of the maidens in Dalaraidhe is called. There were thirty kings of the Cruithnigh over Erin and Alban, viz. of the Cruithnigh of Alban, and of Erin, that is the Dalaraidhe. They were from Ollamhan, from whence comes Mur Ollamhan at Tara, to Fiacha, son of Baedan, who fettered the hostages of Erin and Alban. Seven kings of the Cruithnigh of Alban governed Erin at Tara,’ Then follow the seven kings of the race of Ir, who are said in the Irish legend to have ruled at Tara.[217] The thirty kings of this legend who ruled over Erin and Alban are surely the thirty kings who bore the name of Brude in the previous legend, who also reigned over Erin and Alban during 150 years. In it Finach or Ollfinachta, who precedes them, is said to have taken hostages of the Cruithnigh. In this legend the thirty kings are said to have reigned over Erin and Alban, to Fiacha, son of Baedan, who fettered the hostages of Erin and Alban. Baedan was a king of Dalaradia, who died in 581, and Tighernac records in A.D. 602 the battle of Cuile Cail, in which Fiachaidh, son of Baedan, was victorious; and in 608 the death of Fiachach, son of Baedan, by the Cruithnigh.[218] These entries relate surely to the event above recorded, and give us a date between 602 and 608 for the termination of the reign of these thirty kings, and 452 or 458 for its commencement. This event no doubt marks the separation of the Irish Picts or Cruithnigh of Dalaradia from all connection with the kingdom of the Picts in Scotland, and their full incorporation into the Irish monarchy.

The last of the Pictish legends relates to the Picts of Galloway. It is inserted in the Irish Nennius, and follows the account of the final departure of the Romans, when the Picts took possession of the districts extending to the southern wall, and settled there as inhabitants. It is as follows:[219] ‘After this Sarran assumed the sovereignty of Britain, and established his power over the Saxons and the Cruithnigh. He married Erc, daughter of Loarn, king of Alban, but she eloped from him with Muredach, son of Eogan, son of Niall, to Erin, by whom she had a son called Murceartach MacErca, afterwards king of Ireland. Sarran then married her sister Babona, by whom he had four sons, Luirig and Cairnech and Dallan and Caemlach, and he died after victory and triumph in the House of Martain.’ By the House of Martain the monastery of Candida Casa, founded by St. Ninian, and dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, is evidently meant, which shows that Sarran’s Cruithnigh were the Picts of Galloway. ‘Luirig succeeded him, and built a fort within the precincts of the monastery of Cairnech his brother—that is, of Candida Casa—upon which Cairnech promises Murceartach MacErca, who was at that time with the king of Breatan, that is Luirig, learning military science, that he should be king of Erin and Britain for ever, if he could prevent Luirig from exercising his power against the church. Luirig refusing, Murceartach kills him, and he and Cairnech take hostages and power in that land (that is Galloway), and also the sovereignty of Britain and Cat (Caithness), and Orc (Orkney) and Saxan (Saxonia or Lothian). Murceartach then takes the wife of Luirig, and has by her four sons,—Constantine and Gaedel Ficht, from whom descend the lords[220] of Breatan and the kings of Breatan Cornd, or Cornwall; and Nellan, from whom the race of Nellan, and Scandal, from whom the race of Scandal. It is in Erin the descendants of the two last are.’ It is unnecessary to follow the legend further. The kings of Cornwall and the knights of Bretan are here said to be descended from Constantine and Gaedel Ficht. Constantine is no doubt the legendary king of Cornwall, who is said to have become a Christian missionary, and preached to the Scots and Picts, and the latter is obviously the ‘eponymus’ of the Picts of Galloway, from whom their lords, here called ‘Ruirig Bretan,’ are descended.

[Sidenote: Saxon legends.]

Such being the legendary matter connected with the Picts and Scots, which appears to contain their popular traditions as to their origin, it remains to add those which tell us of the original home of the Saxons who settled in Britain. Bede says that the nation of the Angles or Saxons who settled in Britain consisted of three peoples of Germany:—The Jutes, from whom sprang the people of Kent and the Isle of Wight; the Saxons, from whom came the East, Middle, and West Saxons—that is, those of Essex, Middlesex, and Wessex; and the Angles, from whom came the East and Mid Angles, the Mercians, and the whole race of the Northumbrians—that is, all those nations of the Angles which inhabited the country north of the Humber. He states that the original settlements of these three races were in the Cimbric Chersonese, that the Saxons came from Old Saxony, which seems to have been nearly modern Holstein; the Angles from that country called ‘Angulus,’ which in his day was nearly deserted, by which the present province of Angeln in Sleswick is probably meant; and the Jutes north of them, the Angles being between them and the Saxons. Whether in this Bede is reporting a tradition of the people themselves, or whether it is merely a speculation of his own, he does not tell us.[221] Nennius brings the Saxons from Germania generally;[222] but in the genealogies annexed to his work, which are not much later than the period when Bede wrote, he deduces the pedigrees of the kings of Kent, East Anglia, Mercia, Deira, and Bernicia from four brothers, sons of Woden; so that he seems to have considered these five nations, being Bede’s Jutes and Angles, as forming one people, whose successive arrivals he describes, under the name of Saxons,[223] while he omits Bede’s three nations of East, Middle, and West Saxons, who did not arrive in the island till the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century, thus confining his account to those who arrived in the early part of the fifth century. The description which Bede gives of the country from which the Saxons came does not correspond with what we learn of its early history from other sources. The first people whom we read of as inhabiting the Cimbric Chersonese were the Cimbri, the Teutones, and the Ambrones, who assailed the Roman Empire about a century before Christ. The name of Teutones appears to have passed through several forms into that of Juthæ or Jutæ, and the Ambrones seem to be the same people whom Ptolemy places in the southern part of the peninsula, now Holstein, and calls Saxones, and to whom he also gives three islands, now Northstrand, Busen, and Heligoland.[224] The Angles Ptolemy places on the west bank of the river Elbe, somewhat more to the south, in what is now the Duchy of Magdeburg.[225]

The name of Saxones, however, in the third century, no longer designated a single nation, but had a much wider signification, and was applied to a confederacy of the nations extending along the north coast from the Elbe to the Ems, if not the Rhine. These were the Cauci, Cherusci, and Angrivarii. Between the Ems and Rhine were the Frisii or Frisones. From the Ems to the Elbe were the Cauci; and south of them were the Cherusci and Angrivarii, about the Weser; and on the west bank of the Elbe the Teutones and the Angles. It is in this wider sense that the name of Saxons was applied to those people who harassed the coast of Britain in the concluding half-century of the Roman province. It is to the people inhabiting this country that the name of Old Saxons was applied, to distinguish them from the Saxons in Britain. Beyond the Elbe were the original Saxons, and mixed with both were Frisians—one body extending along the coast from the Ems to the Weser, and another beyond the Saxons in Sleswick, where Bede places his Jutes. The islands, too, which Ptolemy called the islands of the Saxons, and which lay off the west coast of the Cimbrian Chersonese, appear afterwards as Frisian Islands. Whether this was an actual mixture of Frisians with the Saxons, or a mere extension of the name to a part of the Saxons, it is difficult to determine;[226] but although a small district in the east of Sleswick, extending from the Schley to Flensburg, bore the name of Angeln, there is no record of any people called Angli having ever occupied it. They are placed on the west bank of the Elbe behind the Cauci, and their name too probably spread much beyond its original limits.[227] Of the Saxons who settled in Britain prior to the year 441, the colony which occupied the northern district about the Roman wall were probably Frisians, as the Firth of Forth is termed by Nennius the Frisian Sea, and a part of its northern shore was known as the Frisian Shore, but the great bulk of the immigrants were Angli. Bede gives us the expression of ‘the nation of the Angles’ for the whole Saxon people. Augustine’s mission to Kent was a mission to the Angles. The church he founded there was the church of the Angles. The name of Anglia was, however, unknown to Bede; and in his Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth he quotes a letter written by Huaetberctus, abbot of the monastery of Wearmouth, to Pope Gregory in 716, in which he says his monastery was in ‘Saxonia.’[228] The name of Saxons, applied in a general way to those who settled in Britain prior to 441, seems therefore to have been used in its geographical sense. Procopius was probably right in saying that they consisted of Frisians and Angles.[229] The tribes who arrived much later, and founded the petty kingdoms of the East, West, and South Saxons, probably alone belonged to the Saxons proper. The bulk of the natives consisted of the Angli, and their national name soon superseded the general appellation of Saxons, though the geographical term ‘Saxonia’ still remained attached to the most northern part of their territory.

[Sidenote: Languages of Britain.]

Having thus analysed the legends of the four races, it becomes necessary, before we attempt to draw any deductions from them, to inquire into the relation of their languages to each other. Bede gives us a list of the languages used in Britain in his day. He tells us that at that time in Britain the knowledge of the same divine truth and true sublimity was confessed and studied in the languages of five nations—viz., that of the Angles, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Latins, which latter language, from the study of the Scriptures, has become common to all.[230] None of these languages, of course, represent that of the Iberians. For it we must look to the south of France and Spain, where the Euskara, or Basque, appears to represent it. It is a peculiar language, and has no relation to any of the languages belonging to the Arian family. Putting it and the Latin aside, we have here the languages of the four nations, the Angles, Britons, Scots, and Picts, who succeeded the Iberians, and whose legends we have just analysed, distinguished from each other. There can be no doubt of the race and language to which the first three belonged. We have the remains of their languages still spoken among us, and each possesses a literature which enables us to trace the progress of the language from its older forms to the present day.

[Sidenote: Anglic language.]

The language of the Angles was a Low German dialect, resembling most nearly the Frisian; and in its earlier form consisted of three varieties, the southern, midland, and northern English.

[Sidenote: British language.]

The language of the Britons is still spoken in Wales, but not now in Cornwall, though it lingered there till the middle of last century. We possess, however, written remains of the Cornish language, sufficient to show that the Cornish and Welsh form two varieties of the British language in the island, differing but slightly from each other, and showing a dialectic difference somewhat resembling that between Low and High German.

[Sidenote: Language of the Scots.]

The language of the Scots was undoubtedly the Irish language still spoken there, and which is identic with the Gaelic of the Scotch Highlands and the Manx of the Isle of Man. They form indeed but one language, which may be called Gaelic, and show no greater variety among each other than those which characterise the vernacular speech of different provinces of the same nation.

These two languages—the British and Scottish—belong to the same family, and are usually, for convenience sake, classed together as forming the Celtic language of the British Isles; but the difference between them is marked and wide, and they must be viewed as two distinct branches of the Celtic language, possessing vital peculiarities of form and structure which distinguish them from each other, and the people by whom they were spoken, as forming two distinct races—cognate, indeed, as belonging to the same Celtic family, but clearly separated by national and linguistic differences. These two races are known in Irish as Breatan and Gaedheal, and in Welsh as Brython or Cymry and Gwyddyl. To the one belong the Welsh and the people of Cornwall and Bretagne, speaking three different dialectic varieties of the same language. To the other belong the Irish, the Scotch Highlanders, and the Manx, who all call their language Gaelic.

[Sidenote: The Pictish language.]

In the attempt we are about to make to assign to the Picts their proper place among these races, we shall, as the most convenient nomenclature, call the two great divisions of the Celtic language, British and Gadhelic; and the three varieties of the first, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton; and of the second, Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and Manx. Those Pictish words which obviously belong to either we shall class with them; but where they are peculiar to the Picts, and yet have the characteristics of Gadhelic, we shall term them Pictish Gaelic. The position of the Pictish language differs from that of the others in this respect, that we cannot point to any spoken language in the island which can be held to represent it as a distinctive dialect, unless we could suppose it to have merged in one or other of the spoken languages of the island.[231] But here we are met at once by a difficulty. If Bede, by calling these five distinct languages, meant to convey the fact that they were so different from each other as to constitute separate tongues, then the Pictish could not have belonged to the same family with any of the others. It could not have been a German dialect, because it is distinguished from the language of the Angles. It could not, on the same ground, have been British, nor could it have been Irish or Scotch Gaelic; but Bede’s language does not warrant so broad a conclusion as this. He does not say that the Divine truth was studied in five different languages, but in the languages of five nations. It implies that the nations were distinct from each other, in so far as they formed separate kingdoms, and that the Scriptures were studied in the language of each. The differences between them may have been great, or they may have been mere varieties of the same language, so far as any inference from Bede’s language is concerned. It might very well be said in a Bible Society report that the Scriptures were translated into French, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. Here French is as different from German as Latin from Anglic; but Dutch is a Low German dialect, and resembles the Low German more nearly than High German does; and Danish and Swedish are quite as near to each other. The question then to be solved is, Where are we to place the Pictish language? Is it a Celtic or a Teutonic dialect? and if either, was it the same with any of the known spoken dialects, or in what respect did it differ? The answer to these questions will in a great measure show to what race they belonged.

The argument for the Pictish being a Teutonic language is mainly historic, and is at first sight very plausible. It may be thus shortly stated:—Tacitus says that the Caledonians had a German origin. The Picts were the same people as the Caledonians. The Welsh Triads say that the Picts came from Llychlyn, which is Scandinavia. The Picts occupied the Lowlands of Scotland, and broad Scotch is the language of the Lowlands. It is a Teutonic dialect, and no other language can be traced as ever having been spoken in the same districts which the Picts had occupied.[232] Such an argument as this could only have been stated with any plausibility before the science of comparative philology existed. If the Picts were the same as the Caledonians of Tacitus, of which there is indeed no doubt, and if they were a Teutonic people, they must have left their original country and settled in Caledonia prior to the first century. A separation from the original stock for so many centuries must infallibly have led to a great divergence in the language, and their Teutonic speech must have presented marked dialectic differences from that of the rest of the race from which they sprang. The broad Scotch, however, of the Lowlands was absolutely identic with the northern English, a variety of the Saxon, or rather Anglic, which prevailed north of the Humber. Nor is it correct to say that this language was spoken in all the districts occupied by the Picts, for they included in their territories the North Highlands, where the spoken language has been, equally far back, the Scotch Gaelic. Further, Tacitus infers a German origin for the inhabitants of Caledonia, not from their language, but from their physical characteristics—the large limbs and the red hair; and it is now quite established that there was no essential diversity in this respect between the German and the Celtic races viewed as a whole. The Welsh Triads which contain the passage referred to may now be regarded as spurious.

Are there, then, any historic grounds which would lead us, irrespective of philological considerations, to consider the Picts as belonging either to the Welsh or to the Gaelic race? The only answer that can be made to this is, that there is almost a concurrent testimony of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain to the Picts having belonged to that branch of the race which the Welsh called Gwyddyl, and the Irish Gaedheal. Throughout the whole of the Welsh documents the Picts are usually denominated Gwyddyl Ffichti, while the Irish are simply termed Gwyddyl. Although this word Gwyddyl is generally used to designate a native of Ireland, and is so translated, this is its modern usage only; and it is impossible to examine the older Welsh documents without seeing that it was originally the designation of the Gadhelic race wherever situated, and the Picts are thus clearly assigned to it.[233] This is quite in accordance with what may be called the statement by the Picts themselves. The two races of Cymry or Brython and Gwyddyl are symbolised in the ethnologic family by the two brothers, Brittus and Albanus, from whom descend the Britanni and Albani; and the Pictish Chronicle, which may be viewed as their national record, states that the Scots and Picts were two branches of the Albani. The race of the Picts were not, however, confined to Britain. They originally extended over the whole of the north of Ireland, and though eventually confined to the territory on the east of Ulster called Dalnaraidhe, or Dalaradia, they remained there as a separate people under the name of Cruithnigh till a comparatively late period. Down to the beginning of the seventh century they formed, with the Picts of Scotland, one nation; but during the whole period of their separate existence the Irish Annals do not contain a hint that they spoke a language different from the rest of Ireland; and in the Irish ethnologic family they are made the descendants of Ir, one of the sons of Milesius, whose descent is derived from Gaethel Glas, the ‘eponymus’ of the Gaelic race.[234]

It is true that Adamnan tells us that St. Columba used an interpreter in his intercourse with the northern Picts, whom he converted in the sixth century, but this is usually stated much too broadly. Adamnan describes St. Columba as conversing freely with Brude, king of the Picts, with Broichan, his Magus or Druid, and with the king’s messengers, without the intervention of an interpreter.[235] On two occasions only does he mention that an interpreter was required; and on both occasions it is connected with his preaching the Word of Life.[236]

There is no point on which so much misconception exists as that of the precise amount of divergence between two languages necessary to prevent those speaking them from understanding each other. It is frequently asserted that a Welshman can understand an Irishman, and conversely; and it is invariably assumed that the three dialects of British—the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton—are mutually intelligible. But this is not the case, and, in point of fact, a very small difference is sufficient to affect the mutual intelligibility. A mere change in the vowel sounds, with a difference in the position of the accent, although the vocabulary might be absolutely the same, would be sufficient to render mutual intercourse difficult; and, although one might make a shift to follow a conversation, or a few sentences of simple import might be understood, no very great dialectic difference would be required to make a formal address unintelligible.[237] Saint Columba was an educated man, possessing all the learning of the age, and had to instruct a rude and unlettered people whose vernacular idiom would vary in different parts of the country from the cultivated language of a Christian ecclesiastic. He seems to have had no difficulty with the king and those about him; but of the two occasions when he is recorded to have used an interpreter, one was when an old Pictish chief called Artbrannan arrived by sea to meet him in the island of Skye, and therefore probably came from some remote island or place still farther north where the vernacular speech may have had a greater amount of difference from that which Saint Columba used; and it may be remarked that the island apparently furnished the interpreter, and its inhabitants undoubtedly spoke a Gaelic dialect, as they called the spring where Artbrannan was baptized ‘Dobur Artbrannan.’[238] The other case was when Saint Columba preached the Word of Life to a peasant somewhere in the province of the Picts;[239] and it may be added that when he preached the Word of Life to an old man in the Vale of Urquhart, who was apparently of a higher class, and lived not far from the headquarters of the Picts, no interpreter appears to have been required.[240] Giving, therefore, the fullest weight to this consideration, it amounts to no more than this, that the difference between Pictish and Irish may not have been greater than that between Breton or Cornish and Welsh.

Legend again comes in to help us here. The tale that the Picts or Cruithnigh were a colony of soldiers, who had no wives, and that they obtained wives from the Irish settlers by force or by agreement, has undoubtedly a linguistic meaning. All legends are, in fact, attempts to convey a popular explanation of some social or ethnologic peculiarity, the origin of which is lost while the form survives; and when the explanation of one feature has assumed the form that a part of the native population had been a foreign colony from a different country, then the fact of their speaking a native tongue was attempted to be explained by supposing that they had married wives of the native race. This idea is based upon the conception that children learn their language from their mothers, and is conveyed in the popular expression of ‘the mother tongue,’ Thus, in relating the legendary settlement of the Britons in Armorica, Nennius, in order to explain how the settlers retained their own language, has this addition in some copies—‘Having received the wives and daughters (of the Armoricans) in marriage, they cut out their tongues lest their children should learn the mother tongue’[241] In the older form of the Irish legend, the race of Miledh, who are brought from Scythia, are said on their settlement in Ireland to have married wives of the Tuatha De Danaan, whom they found in the country. In that contained in the Life of St. Cadroë the country is named by Nel or Niul, in the language of his wife Scota, his own having been corrupted. As soon, therefore, as the idea was formed that the Picts of Scotland and Ireland were not the old inhabitants of the country, but a foreign colony who settled among them, if their language was at all akin to that of the native population, the popular explanation must at once have arisen that they had married wives of the native race, from whom they learned their language; and in the case of the Picts of Scotland this would appear the more probable from a kind of female succession to the throne having prevailed among them. In the British form of the tradition they apply to the Britons for wives, and are refused, and recommended to apply to the Irish, from whom they obtain them; and this may imply that there was a British element in the language of a part of the natives, though that of the main body was Irish. In the Irish traditions they obtain their wives at once from the sons of Miledh, who give them the widows of those of the Milesian colony who were said to have been drowned in the attempt to land. In what may be viewed as the legend of the Picts themselves, it is confined to that of the Irish Cruithnigh, and does not appear in those of the Picts of Scotland. That it was, however, understood as implying that the language of the Picts was derived from these supposed ancestresses of the race, seems to be clear enough. The legend is undoubtedly given in Layamon’s Brut, in order to explain the language of the Picts, which adds—

Through the same women Who there long dwelt, The folk began to speak Ireland’s speech.[242]

And in the chronicle quoted in the Scala Chronica it is said that they obtained wives from Ireland ‘on condition that their issue should speak Irish, which language remains to this day in the Highlands among those who are called Scots.’[243]

The portion of the Pictish people which longest retained the name were the Picts of Galloway. Completely surrounded by the Britons of Strathclyde, and isolated from the rest of the Pictish nation, protected by a mountain barrier on the north, and the sea on the west and south, and remaining for centuries under the nominal dominion of the Angles of Northumbria, they maintained an isolated and semi-independent position in a corner of the island, and appear as a distinct people under the name of Picts as late as the twelfth century, when they formed one division of the Scottish army at the battle of the Standard.[244] If any part of the Pictish people might be expected to retain their peculiar language and characteristics, it would be the Picts of Galloway; and if that language had been a Cymric dialect, it must have merged in the speech of the British population around them. In one of the legends which seems peculiarly connected with them, Gaedel Ficht or the Gaelic Pict appears as the ‘eponymus’ of the race; and Buchanan tells us that in his day, that is, in the reign of Queen Mary, ‘a great part of this country still uses its ancient language.’[245] What that language was we learn from a contemporary of Buchanan, William Dunbar the poet, who, in the ‘Flyting’ between him and Kennedy, taunted his rival with his extraction from the natives of Galloway and Carrick, and styles him ‘Ersch Katheraine,’ ‘Ersch brybour baird,’ and his poetry as ‘sic eloquence as they in Erschery use.’ This word ‘Ersch’ was the term applied at the time to Scotch Gaelic, as when Sir David Lyndesay says—

Had Sanct Jerome bene borne intil Argyle, Into Irische toung his bukis had done compyle.

And Kennedy retorts upon Dunbar—

Thow luvis nane Erische, elf I understand, But it sowld be all trew Scottismennis leid; It wes the gud langage of this land.[246]

We find, therefore, that in this remote district, in which the Picts remained under their distinctive names as a separate people as late as the twelfth century, a language considered the ancient language of Galloway was still spoken as late as the sixteenth century, and that language was Gaelic.[247]

The question then remains, Are there any fragments of the Pictish language still preserved upon which we can base a proper philological inquiry into its place among the languages of Britain? For such an investigation the materials are slender, but they are not totally wanting. There are a few Pictish names and words preserved by Adamnan, Bede, and other writers, and there is the list of Pictish monarchs, both mythic and historical, preserved in the Pictish Chronicle. This list may be divided into two parts, the mythic and the historical; but a comparison of this list with other chronicles leaves little room for doubt that the proper names throughout the whole are here presented to us in their Pictish form, and the occasional occurrence of the addition of epithets to the names aids the inquiry.[248] It is obvious that the mere comparison of a very few words with the vocabulary of other languages can do little to help us in this matter, and a list of proper names still less; but the form of the words affords a very important means of ascertaining the character of a language. This has been shown in a very striking manner in the Teutonic dialects, by the operation of Grimm’s law, and between the Celtic dialects there are also phonetic differences equally available for such an inquiry. The interchange, for instance, between Welsh and Gaelic of the labial or dental with the guttural, and the digamma GW with F, and that between Welsh and Cornish of T with Z, supplies us with a clue which can be easily applied to the form of words, however few in number they may be; and, in this point of view, the proper names likewise afford us a test of the character of the language. A comparison of Pictish proper names with the Welsh and Irish shows us that they are all constructed on the same principle, by the combination of certain syllables as prefixes, with others as affixes, in different varieties of connection; and where these syllables show the phonetic differences of the dialects, they furnish as good a means of comparison as the few words of the language which have been preserved.[249] In examining these words and proper names, it will be necessary, however, to endeavour to connect them with that part of the Pictish nation to which they properly belong. It must not be assumed, at the outset, that the Picts were strictly and entirely homogeneous, and there may have been some dialectic differences in the language of different parts of the same nation. Of a twofold distinction of some kind, indeed, we find evident indication in their history. We have already traced this twofold division among the tribes described by Ptolemy as occupying the country north of the Forth and Clyde, and the forms of their names do certainly indicate something of the kind. Of the nine tribes who occupy the western district, the names of six begin with the guttural or hard C;[250] while of the three great tribes which extended on the east coast from the Moray Firth to the Firth of Forth, one name begins with a dental, and the other two with the Roman V, which represents Gw in Welsh and F in Gaelic.[251] In the third and fourth centuries we find these same people divided into two nations, which certainly implies a twofold distinction of some kind. The one appears as Caledones and Dicaledonæ with the guttural C, and the other, first Mæatæ and then Vecturiones with the Roman V. So far as we can judge from the forms of these names, the presumption is, that the western tribes, characterised by the guttural initial, belonged to the Gaelic race; but there is nothing in the form of the names beginning with the V to show to which race they belonged. When we proceed to analyse the list of proper names contained in the Pictish Chronicle, we find that they commence with Cruidne, son of Cinge, the ‘eponymus’ of the race. This is undoubtedly an Irish form from Cruith, form or colour. He has seven sons, who are said to have given their names to seven provinces. They are Caith, Ce, Circinn, Fib, Fidach, Fodla, Fortrenn, and we can identify five of the provinces—Caith representing Caithness, Circinn Kincardineshire, Fib Fife, Fodla Atholl, Fortrenn the district between the Forth and the Tay; but in these names we recognise the same distinction. Three have the initial guttural and four the initial F; the latter, however, belong equally to the Gaelic race, to which the initial F is peculiar, and represents the Welsh Gw. The names, too, are Irish in form. Fidach appears as an Irish name in the Annals of the Four Masters. Fodla was the epithet of a king of Ireland; it was also the name of a queen of the Tuatha De Danaan, and was one of the old names of Ireland; and Fortrenn means in Irish powerful.[252] These seven sons are followed by three kings, Gede Olgudach, Aenbecan, and Olfinecta. Two of these names, the first and the last, are the same with two of the seven Irian kings said to have reigned at Tara, and we are told in one of the legends that Ainbeccan was son of Caith and ‘Ardrigh’ or sovereign over the seven divisions while Finachta reigned in Ireland.[253] So far, then, we find nothing but Irish forms. The next name in the list is Guidid Gaedbrechach, and this is undoubtedly a Welsh form. In one of the Irish editions he has the epithet of Breathnach or the Briton.[254] He is followed by Gest Gwrtich and Wurgest, and these are Cornish forms. Here, then, we trace the first appearance of a British element. We then have the statement that thirty Brudes reigned over Hibernia, and Albania or Erin, and Alban, for 150 years. In the list of the names only twenty-eight are given, and they fall into two parts—one where each name of Brude is followed by a monosyllable, and the other where the same monosyllable has prefixed to it the syllable Wr; and one of the Irish editions adds that they were not only the names of men, but of divisions of land. It will be remarked that one half of these monosyllabic names have the initial guttural, three beginning with C and four with G, and of the other half, one begins with labial P, and two with F, which seems to point to a twofold distinction similar to what we have already noticed. The name Brude belongs to the northern Picts, as the first historic king of the name is called by Bede king of the provinces of the Northern Picts, and it may be viewed as an Irish form.[255] After these Brudes we have a list of twenty-one names, beginning with Gilgide and ending with Drust, son of Erb, which brings us to the end of the mythic division. Of these names some are obviously mythic, as appears from the length of their supposed reigns, and others appear to represent historic persons. The eighth name in this list is ‘Dectotreic frater Diu’ or ‘Tiu.’ The form of the name is Teutonic, and is the same name as Theodric. Nennius terms Theodric, son of Ida, Decdric, and there can be little doubt that he is the king meant. He is called, in the Welsh poems, Flamddwyn, or the Flame-bearer, and here the brother of Tiu, the Germanic god of war. This portion of the list would appear, therefore, to belong to that part of the Pictish people who occupied the eastern districts up to the southern wall in the year 410, and were subjected by the Angles of Bernicia, under Hussa and Theodric, the Flame-bearer, the sons of Ida. The four names which follow have as much a Teutonic as a Celtic appearance, and may also refer to these Bernician rulers. The last nine names are, however, certainly Celtic. Ru is one of the thirty Brudes. Of Gartnaith Loc it is said that four Gartnaidhs came from him; and we find just four Gartnaidhs in the historic period. One of these, who succeeded Brude Mac Mailchon, is said to have founded Abernethy, and the legend of Mazota locates him in Forfarshire,[256] and another bears the epithet ‘Duiperr,’ which is rendered in another list, ‘Dives’ or the rich. It is the Irish word ‘Saoibher,’ rich, with the interchange of D for S.[257] Of the names which follow Gartnaidh, Breth may be either British or Irish. Uip Oignamet is one of the thirty Brudes; Canatulachama is an Irish form, and is obviously the Catinolachan, said in one of the Irish legends to be one of the sons of Cathluan, who led the Picts to Alban, and one of their champions. Wradech Uecla is represented in Irish by the name Feradach, and appears to be a Cornish form, and this brings us to the historic names. We find the same names here occur repeatedly. These are Drest, Drust, or Drostan nine times, Talorcan six times, Brude six times, Gartnaidh four times, Nectan three times, and Cinoid, Galan, Alpin, Ungust, and Wrgust each twice. Of these names, Drest is an Irish form; the Welsh form being Gorwst or Grwst, showing the interchange of D and G.[258] Talorcen may be either, though more probably British. Brude, as we have seen, is an Irish form, and belongs to the northern Picts. Gartnaidh, Nectan, and Cineoch or Cinoid are Gaelic forms, and these names may be connected with the southern Picts. Galan may be either. Alpin is represented by Elffin in Welsh, and is a British name in a Gaelic form, showing the interchange of Ff and P,[259] and Ungust and Wrgust are Cornish forms, and belong to the province called ‘Fortrenn,’ or the districts of Stratherne and Menteith.[260]

The result then of this analysis is that the earliest part of the list of Pictish kings is purely Irish or Gaelic in its forms, and that this Gaelic part belongs to the northern Picts; that another part of the list shows Gaelic forms, but more removed from the Irish, with a considerable British element; that this part of the list is more connected with the southern Picts; that the British element is not Welsh but Cornish, and belongs to that part of the territories of the southern Picts which lay between the Tay and the Forth. The explanation probably is that this district formed part of the territory occupied by the Damnonii, who, as they bore the same name, were probably of the same race as the Damnonii of Cornwall; and when a part of this tribe was included in the Roman province, the northern part beyond the wall which formed the boundary of the province was incorporated into the Pictish kingdom. They were probably the ‘Breatnu Fortrein’ or Britons of Fortren of the Irish legends,[261] and gave kings of its race to the throne; while Scone, which was their capital during the latter period of the Pictish kingdom, was exactly on the frontier between the two populations.

Another part of the list, which shows a mixture of Welsh, Gaelic, and Teutonic names, belongs to the Picts who took the eastern districts between the walls from the British population, and were in turn subjected by the Angles. The only names in the list which can be attached to the Picts of Galloway are Drust and Cindaeladh, and these are Gaelic forms, the latter showing the Gaelic ‘Ceann,’ a head. Reginald of Durham, who wrote in the latter part of the twelfth century, reports one word of the Pictish language of Galloway. He tells us that certain clerics of Kirkcudbright were called in the language of the Picts, ‘Scollofthes,’ and in the title of the chapter he implies that the Latin equivalent was ‘Scolasticus.’ This word is in Welsh ‘Yscolheic,’ and in Irish ‘Sgolog.’ This word does not therefore give us the means of discriminating, though it approaches most nearly to the Irish form.[262]

[Sidenote: Evidence derived from topography.]

Such being the results which we obtain from an analysis of the lists of Pictish kings, and an examination of the few Pictish words preserved to us, the meaning of which we can ascertain, there remains one other source of information. The topography of the country furnishes us with a not unimportant element of evidence in endeavouring to ascertain the character of the languages of the tribes which have possessed it, and the linguistic family to which they belong, but this test has hitherto been much too loosely and carelessly applied. It can only be depended upon, if rightly used, under certain conditions, and controlled by definite rules of interpretation and comparison.

The oldest names in a country are those which mark its salient physical features,—the large rivers and mountains, the islands and promontories jutting into the sea. These usually resist longest the effect of changes in the population, and the introduction of different languages, and their primitive names remain attached to them through successive fluctuations in the speech of the people who surround them; while the names belonging to the inhabited part of the soil, and places, connected with the social life of the people, and their industrial occupation, give way more readily, and are less tenaciously attached to them. The names of rivers and islands are usually root-words, and sometimes so archaic that it is difficult to affix a meaning to them. Those of the mountains and valleys, the townships and homesteads, are more descriptive, and consist of two words in combination,—one which may be termed generic and common to the class to which the physical feature belongs; and the other specific, distinguishing one member of the same class from another by some peculiarity of form, colour, or situation. In countries where the topography obviously belongs to the same language with that spoken by the people who still possess it, though perhaps in an older stage of the language, it presents little difficulty. It is only necessary to ascertain the correct orthography of the names, and apply the key furnished by the language itself in that stage of its forms to which the words belong. This is the case with the greater part of Ireland and with the Highlands of Scotland, where the local names obviously belong to the same Gaelic language which is still the vernacular speech of its population. It is the case too with Wales, where the people still speak that form of British to which its topography belongs; and with Cornwall, where the language was spoken to the middle of last century; but in that part of the country where the Saxon, or rather the Anglic, has superseded the Celtic as the language of the people, the case is different, and great caution must be used in applying this test. This is the case in the north-eastern Lowlands of Scotland, and in the whole country south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, including Galloway, where the people speak what is usually called broad Scotch, and is the same with the old Northumbrian English.

There is no difficulty in distinguishing the names which have been imposed by the Angles themselves, and which have superseded the older Celtic names. There is one broad distinction between the Anglic and the Celtic forms. In the latter the generic term precedes the specific, and in the former it follows it. But in order to ascertain what Celtic races occupied these districts before they were superseded by the Angles, we must examine the older stratum of Celtic names which still remain, and compare them with those of the districts in which the language is still spoken by the people. The usual mode in which this has been done has been either to assume that wherever a Celtic name in the one district is also found in the other, it affords proof that the Celtic people who occupied the two districts belonged to the same branch of the Celtic race, or else to take the modern form of the word, and to interpret it by such words in the different Celtic dialects as appear to come nearest to it in sound.[263] There is, however, a great fallacy in both methods. In the first, because there is a very considerable number of words which are common to both branches of the Celtic language, and this number was greater formerly than it is now, and the words approached more closely to each other in form; but some words which were once common to both are now obsolete in one and preserved in the other, and the form of the same word has sometimes become differently modified in each so as to have less resemblance. When the name therefore belongs to this class it affords no test of difference or similarity of race. There is also in people belonging to the same race a capricious preference by one of one synonym, and by the other of another, which shows an apparent difference of nomenclature when none really exists.[264] The only true test, in a comparison of this kind, is to limit it to those words, in the form of which the phonetic differences between the different dialects must be apparent. The fallacy in the other mode is that when the population of a country speaks a different language from that to which its topography belongs, the names of places undergo a process of corruption and change till the modern form diverges very much from the original word, and in order to ascertain its true meaning, or to make it the means of affording a genuine comparison with the topography of those districts where the language still remains, it is necessary to trace back the word historically to its oldest form, and interpret it by the language in its then stage of progress.[265]

In examining, then, the Celtic topography of those districts in which the people and language have been superseded by the Anglic, we ought first to look to those names of places which have been preserved by writers contemporary with the existence of the four kingdoms as separate states; and before doing so we may remark that in the river and island names, which are the oldest, there are one or two archaic words which we may venture to recognise as Iberian or Basque. A common appellation of rivers is the Celtic word for water. Uisge in Gaelic and Wysg in Welsh furnish the Esks and Ouses which we find here and there; so do Dobhar in Gaelic and Dwfr or Dwr in Welsh, as well as Gwy, which signify water, and give us the Dours and the Wyes. The Basque word for water is Ur, and analogy would lead us to recognise it in the rivers called Oure, Urr, Ure, Urie, Orrin, and Ore. The syllable Il, too, enters largely into the topography of the Basque countries; and the old name for the island of Isla, which was Ile, and which legend tells us was occupied by Firbolg, is probably the same word, as are the rivers of that name in Banff and Forfar, and the Ulie in Sutherland, known to Ptolemy as the ‘Ila.’

Tacitus furnishes us with five names in this part of Britain—‘Caledonia,’ the ‘Tavaus’ estuary, the ‘Clota’ or Clyde, the ‘Bodotria’ or Firth of Forth, and the ‘Mons Granpius,’ Of these names two only are genuine survivals to the present day—the ‘Tavaus’ estuary and that of ‘Clota.’ There is little doubt that the former takes its name from the Gaelic word ‘Tamh,’ smooth. The Welsh equivalent is Taw, from which the name of the Welsh river the Tawi is formed.[266] Ptolemy, besides the ‘Tava,’ ‘Bodotria,’ or‘ ‘Boderia’ as he calls it, and the ‘Clota’ or Clyde, has of the islands the names of which still survive, ‘Maleus’ or Mull, and ‘Scetis’ or Skye; and of the rivers, the ‘Longus,’ which corresponds with the river in Argyllshire called the Add, and in Gaelic the ‘Abhainn Fhada,’ or long river, the ‘Deva’ or Dee in Aberdeenshire, the ‘Loxa’ or Lossie, the ‘Celnius’ or Cullen, the ‘Deva’ or Dee in Galloway, and the ‘Tinna’ or Eden in Fife. Of these the Deva comes more nearly to the Gaelic Dubh, black, than to the Welsh Du.

Gildas, in the sixth century, mentions only the ‘Mons Badonis,’ which, if it is rightly placed in the north, affords no criterion. In the following century the geographer of Ravenna gives us a large collection of local names, many of which are obviously corrupted forms of those in Ptolemy. Although the exact position of each name is not defined, yet they are obviously placed in geographical groups, three of which belong to the region with which we are dealing. One group, consisting of forty-eight names, is placed between the Roman wall extending from the Solway to the Tyne, and what the geographer describes as ‘where Britain is discerned to be most narrow from sea to sea,’[267] by which the narrow isthmus between the Firths of Forth and Clyde is obviously meant, and includes the stations on the wall; the second with ten names placed upon this isthmus; and the third with twenty-seven names beyond it. In the first group we can recognise two Welsh forms in the names placed together, and next to ‘Carbantium,’ which must be ‘Carbantorigum’ the town of the Selgovæ, of ‘Tadoriton’ and ‘Maporiton.’[268] In the second group, we have the sixth name, ‘Medio Nemeton,’ which latter word is surely the Irish Nemed, a sanctuary.[269] When we enter the third group, we come at once upon Gaelic forms. The fourth name, ‘Cindocellun,’ is obviously compounded of the Gaelic ‘Ceann,’ a head, and the name of the Ochil range. Besides these three groups we have a small group of eight names termed places, _loca_, by which districts seem to be meant, as the last four ‘Taba, Manavi, Segloes, and Daunoni’ are obviously the district about the Tay; Manau or Manann; the district occupied by the Selgovæ, or Dumfriesshire; and that occupied by the Damnonii, or the shires of Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark. There is then a list of rivers in Britain generally, and another of islands, which need not be adverted to.

Most of the names furnished by Adamnan in the seventh century belong to the Western Isles, among which he mentions Ilea, Malea, Egea, and Scia, and to the territory of the Scots, but a few belong to what he terms the province of the Picts, and some of these he gives only in their Latin equivalents.[270] There is the ‘Stagnum Aporicum’ or ‘Aporum,’ in which we recognise Lochaber. The river of ‘Nesa,’ the lake called ‘Lochdiæ,’ and the district of ‘Ardaibmurcol,’ and bay of ‘Arthcambus,’ are obviously Gaelic forms. He also mentions the ‘Petra Cloithe,’ or rock of Cluaith, by which Alcluith is meant. Eddi, who wrote about 720, in his _Life of Wilfrid_, gives us two names in the district of Lothian—Coludesburg, now Coldingham; and Dyunbaer, now Dunbar.[271] The former is Saxon, but the latter unmistakably Gaelic, and must belong to the Picts, who superseded the British Ottadeni, and formed the population of that district during the fifth and sixth centuries.

Bede, in the same century, gives us in one chapter of his work an important group of names. In describing the Firths of Forth and Clyde, he says that the former has in the middle of it the city of ‘Giudi;’ and the latter, on the right bank, the city Alcluith, which he says signifies the ‘petra’ or rock Cluith. Giudi belongs to the Welsh form, and Ail is the Welsh for a rock. Then, in describing the northern wall, he says it begins at a place two miles west of the monastery of ‘Aebbercurnig,’ in a place called, in the language of the Picts, ‘Peanfahel,’ but in the language of the Angles ‘Penneltun,’ and terminates near ‘Alcluith.’[272] The place meant can only be the village of Walton, which is exactly three English miles from Abercorn. Now these names belong to that district in which the territories of the four kingdoms met, and which we have termed the debateable land. Its original population consisted of a part of the tribes of the Damnonii. It was overrun by the Picts, and was occupied by Octa’s colony of Frisians or Angles. We learn from a passage added to Nennius, that the British name of this place was Penguaul; and, just as we might expect where there is a mixed population, the Picts adopt the name in the form of Peanfahel, retaining the Pen but altering the British Gu to the Gadhelic F, while the Angles, likewise retaining the Pen, omit the Gu and add the Anglic ‘tun,’ a town, at the end. It no more follows from this passage that the first syllable Pen was a Pictish form than that it was Anglic; and when in the same passage of Nennius it is said that the Scotch name was ‘Cenail,’ the writer seems to have mistakenly identified the place with Kinneil, which is three miles farther west and six miles from Abercorn. Aebbercurnig may be either British or Pictish Gaelic, and Alcluith is, as we have said, a British form. Bede gives us also a few names in Lothian. These are the city of Coludi, Mailros, Degsastan, and Incuneningum. These are all Anglic forms except Mailros, which seems to belong more to the Gaelic form. The name Incuneningum has been supposed to mean the district of Cuningham in Ayrshire; but Bede distinctly says that it was in the region of the Northumbrians, which is quite inapplicable to any part of Ayrshire, which was in the kingdom of Strathclyde, and though for a time subjected to the Northumbrians, had recovered its liberty in 686, while the king of Northumbria is recorded in 750 to have then only added Cyil and the adjacent regions to his kingdom. The place meant is more probably Tyninghame in East Lothian.[273]

The Irish Nennius gives us three words as the three old names of Ireland—Eire, Fodla, Banba—derived from three queens of the Tuatha De Danann. According to the legend, however, these Tuatha De Danann came to Ireland from Alban, or Scotland, where they inhabited a territory called Dohbar and Iardohbar, obviously of Gaelic form; and in the north-eastern Lowlands we find these three words entering into the topography. On the south shore of the Moray Firth we have the river Eren, now the Findhorn, and Banbh, now Banff. The word Fodla enters into the name of Atholl; and in Perthshire we have again Banbh, or Banff, and Ereann, now the river Earn.[274]

Having thus passed rapidly under review the local names reported to us by these early writers, we come now to deal with the topography of these districts, as it presents itself in the present day, and to consider what light we may derive from it as to the race and language of those who imposed these local names. Here, at the outset, we are met by the argument which is usually urged and popularly considered to be conclusive. It may be thus stated in the words of Mr. Isaac Taylor:—‘Inver and Aber are also useful test words in discriminating between the two branches of the Celts (the Cymric and the Gaelic).... If we draw a line across the map from a point a little south of Inveraray to one a little north of Aberdeen, we shall find that (with very few exceptions) the Invers lie to the north of the line, and the Abers to the south of it. This line nearly coincides with the present southern limit of the Gaelic tongue, and probably also with the ancient division between the Picts and the Scots.’[275] This would be a plausible view if it were true, but unfortunately there is no such line of demarcation between the two words; and though it may be true that it would nearly coincide with the present southern limit of the Gaelic, it is historically false that it was the ancient division between the Picts and the Scots. When we examine, however, the real distribution of these words, we find it very different from the representation of it given either by Mr. Kemble or by Mr. Taylor. South of Mr. Taylor’s line there are in Aberdeenshire thirteen Abers and twenty-six Invers; in Forfarshire eight Abers and eight Invers; in Perthshire nine Abers and eight Invers; and in Fifeshire four Abers and nine Invers. Again, on the north side of this supposed line there are twelve Abers extending across to the west coast, where they terminate with Abercrossan, now Applecross, in Rossshire. In Argyllshire alone, which was occupied by the Dalriadic Scots, there are no Abers. The true picture of the distribution of these two words north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde is this—in Argyllshire, Invers alone; in Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, Invers and Abers in the proportion of three to one and two to one; and on the south side of the supposed line, Abers and Invers in about equal proportions. But the distribution south of the Firths must not be overlooked. It has a material bearing on this question. If these words afford a test between British and Gadhelic, we might naturally expect to find as many Abers in what was the Strathclyde kingdom as in Wales; but there are no Abers in the counties of Selkirk, Peebles, Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark, Stirling, and Dumbarton, occupied by the Damnonii; four Abers in Dumfriesshire, and six in Lothian, occupied by the Selgovæ and Ottadeni, and none in Galloway occupied by the Picts; and when we proceed farther south we find nothing but Abers in Wales, and no appearance of them in Cornwall. These words, therefore, afford no test of dialectic difference, and do not possess those phonetic changes which would enable us to use them as a test. There were in fact three words used to express the position of rivers towards each other, or towards the sea—Aber, Inbher, and Cumber or Cymmer, which were originally common to both branches of the Celtic language. They obviously come from the same root, ‘Ber,’ and they do not show any phonetic differences. These words are severally retained in some dialects, and become obsolete in others.[276] Aber and Inver were both used by the southern Picts, though not quite in the same way, Inver being generally at the mouth of a river, Aber at the ford usually some distance from the mouth. Aber has become almost obsolete in Cornwall, part of Strathclyde, and among the northern Picts, where we can almost see the process by which it passes over into Apple, or Obair, in Scotland, and into Apple in Cornwall.[277] In Ireland Inver seems undergoing a similar process, being once very numerous, but now reduced to comparatively few names.

The same remarks apply to a group of generic terms which enter largely into the topography of these districts, and are popularly supposed to be peculiar to the Welsh, but are in reality common to both dialects, such as Caer, Llan, Strath, Tor, Glas, Eaglis, and others.

In order to afford a proper test, we must take words which contain the phonetic interchange of consonants, such as P and C in Pen and Ceann, Gw and F in Gwyn and Finn, or words that similarly show the dialectic differences. Mr. Taylor attempts to apply this test. He says, ‘In Argyllshire and the northern parts of Scotland the Cymric _pen_ is ordinarily replaced by the _ben_ or _cenn_, the Gaelic forms of the same word. The distinctive usage of _pen_ and _ben_ enables us to detect the line of demarcation between the Cymric and Gaelic branches of the Celtic race. The Gadheli _Cenn_, a head, is another form of the same word.’[278] Accepting this statement, when we examine the real distribution of these words it is fatal to the author’s argument. There is not a single Pen north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the districts occupied by the Picts abound with Bens and Cenns or Kins.[279] We find, however, in these districts four root-words that are peculiar to them, and are met with nowhere else. These, therefore, may be considered as Pictish. The first is Pit, the old form of which is Pette. It is not to be found in Wales. It appears to signify a portion of land, and is used synonymously with Both, a dwelling, and Baile, a town.[280] The other three are Auchter, For, and Fin. Auchter is obviously the Gaelic ‘Uachter,’ upper, and as such we have it in Ireland. It is not in Wales. The old forms of For and Fin are Fothuir and Fothen.[281] They do not occur in Wales, and are obviously Gaelic forms, from the initial consonant F.

In Galloway there are no Pens. The root Bar enters very largely into its topography. It is also very common in Argyllshire, and is also to be found in Ireland. It is the Gaelic Barr, the top or point of a thing. Ar and Arie also appear frequently in Galloway and Argyllshire. It is the Gaelic ‘Airidh,’ a hill pasture.

The Celtic topography of these districts thus resembles a palimpsest, in which an older form is found behind the more modern writing, and the result of an accurate examination of it leads us to lay down the following laws:—

1_st_, In order to draw a correct inference from the names of places, as to the etymological character of the people who imposed them, it is necessary to obtain the old form of the name before it became corrupted, and to analyse it according to the philological laws of the language to which it belongs.

2_d_, A comparison of the generic terms affords the best test for discriminating between the different dialects to which they belong; and for this comparison it is necessary to have a correct table of their geographical distribution.

3_d_, Difference between the generic terms in different parts of the country may arise from their belonging to a different stage of the same language, or from a capricious selection of different synonyms by separate tribes of the same race.

4_th_, In order to afford a genuine test for discriminating between dialects, the generic terms must contain within them those sounds which are differently affected by the phonetic laws of each dialect; and

5_th_, Applying these laws, the generic terms do not show the existence of a Cymric language in the districts occupied by the Picts.[282]

Footnote 184:

See _Critiques and Addresses_ by Thomas Henry Huxley, LL.D., 1873, p. 167. As the author substantially adopts Professor Huxley’s conclusions, he thinks it unnecessary to enter into the grounds on which they are based.

Footnote 185:

Diod. Sic., Lib. ii. cc. 21, 22, 38. The reasons for supposing the Cassiterides to be the Scilly Islands are thus stated in Camden’s _Britannia_: They are opposite to the Artabri in Spain; they bend directly to the north from them; they lie in the same clime with Britain; they look towards Celtiberia; the sea is much broader between them and Spain than between them and Britain; they lie just upon the Iberian sea; there are only ten of them of any note; and they have veins of tin which no other isle has in this tract.—Camd. _Brit._ p. 1112, ed. 1695.

Footnote 186:

Strabo, _Geog._ Lib. iii. 4.

Footnote 187:

In Celticis aliquot sunt (insulæ) quas quia plumbo abundant uno omnes nomine Cassiterides appellant.—_Pomp. Mela._

Ex adverso Celtiberiæ complures sunt insulæ Cassiterides dictæ Græcis a fertilitate plumbi.—_Plin._

Siluram quoque insulam ab ora, quam gens Britannia Dumnonii tenent, turbidum fretum distinguit: cujus homines etiamnum custodiunt morem vetustum: nummum refutant: dant res et accipiunt: mutationibus necessaria potius, quam pretiis parant: Deos percolunt: scientiam futurorum pariter viri ac feminæ ostentant.—_Solin. Poly._ c. 22. Cassiterides insulae spectant adversum Celtiberiæ latus: plumbi fertiles.—_Ib._ c. 23.

Footnote 188:

Αὐτὰρ ὑπ’ ἄκρην Ἰρὴν ἣν ἐνέπουσι κάρην ἔμεν Εὐρωπείης Νήσους θ’ Ἑσπερίδας τόθι κασσιτέροιο γενέθλη, Ἀφνειοὶ ναίουσιν ἀγαυῶν παῖδες Ἰβήρων.

Footnote 189:

Sub hujus autem prominentis vertice Sinus dehiscit incolis Oestrymnicus, In quo insulæ sese exserunt Oestrymnides Laxe jacentes, et metallo divites Stanni atque plumbi. Multa vis hic gentis est, Superbus animus, efficax sollertia, Negotiandi cura jugis omnibus: Notisque cymbis turbidum late fretum, Et belluosi gurgitem Oceani secant: Non hi carinas quippe pinu texere, Acereve norunt, non abiete, ut usus est, Curvant faselos; sed rei ad miraculum, Navigia junctis semper aptant pellibus Corioque vastum sæpe percurrunt salum. * * * * * Tartessiisque in terminos Oestrymnidem Negotiandi mos erat.

Footnote 190:

Sed summum contra sacram cognomine, dicunt quam Caput Europae, sunt Stanni pondere plenae Hesperides: populus tenuit quas fortes Iberi.—_Prisc. Per._

Footnote 191:

_Cave Hunting_, by W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., 1874, p. 191.

Footnote 192:

See _The Beauties of the Boyne_, by Sir William R. Wilde, 1850, p. 228, for an account of the Irish skulls.

Footnote 193:

_Cave Hunting_, p. 214. For the facts on which these conclusions are based, reference is made to this work and that of Sir William Wilde.

Footnote 194:

The author does not import anything from the Bards, as it is difficult to say how far they contain genuine tradition, or have been manipulated by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The author confines himself as much as possible to Welsh documents before his time, and the so-called Historical Triads he rejects as entirely spurious.

Footnote 195:

The Leabhar Gabhala, or Book of Conquests, is, strictly speaking, the work of Michael O’Clery, one of the compilers of the Annals of the Four Masters, but it is founded upon older documents, and upon a more ancient Book of Invasions, a fragment of which is contained in the Leabhar na Huidhri and the Book of Leinster, and complete editions in the Books of Ballimote and Leacan. A full account of it will be found in O’Curry’s _Lectures on the MS. Materials_, p. 168. It is much to be desired that this ancient tract should be published.

Footnote 196:

This account of these legendary colonies is abridged from Keating, who takes it from the _Book of Conquests_.

Footnote 197:

_Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p. 30.

Footnote 198:

See Irish Nennius, p. 221.

Footnote 199:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 45.

Footnote 200:

This seems clearly implied. Gillacaoman, in a poem quoted by Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 198, also identifies the Nemedians with the Tuatha de Danaan. Two of the three bands of the Nemedians who left Erin, according to the Book of Conquests, seem obviously the same—the one under Fergus Leth Derg settling in a district in Alban called Dobhar and Iardobhar, and the Tuatha De Danaan coming to Erin from the same district.

Footnote 201:

O’Curry, _Lectures on MS. Materials_, p. 223.

Footnote 202:

O’Curry’s _Lectures on Manners and Customs of Ancient Irish_. Introduction by Professor Sullivan, p. lxxii.

Footnote 203:

The colony of Partholan seems to have been the same with the Firbolg. Partolan has three sons—Slainge, Rudhraige, and Laighlinne—and two of these, Slainge and Rudhraige, are among the leaders of the Firbolg. If we may consider the following passage from the Welsh Bruts as containing genuine tradition, they seem to have considered them as Iberian or Basque: ‘Gwrgant, on his return, as he was passing through the isles of Orc, came up with thirty ships, which were full of men and women, and finding them there, he seized their chief, whose name was Partholym. Hereupon this chief prayed his protection, telling him that they were called Barclenses, had been driven from Spain, and were roving on the seas to find a place of settlement, and that he therefore entreated Gwrgant to grant them permission to abide in some part of the island, as they had then been at sea for a year and a half. Gwrgant having thus learned whence they were and what was their purpose, directed them with his goodwill to go to Ireland, which at that time lay waste and uninhabited. Thither therefore they went, and there they settled, and peopled the country, and their descendants are to this day in Ireland.’

Footnote 204:

B. iii. c. iii. where he distinguishes between ‘Septentrionalis Scottorum provincia,’ and the ‘Gentes Scottorum, quæ in australibus Hiberniæ insulæ partibus morabantur.’

Footnote 205:

Heber appears also to have in one view represented the old Iberians of Munster, with whom, indeed, the name seems connected. Partholan is said to have divided Ireland into four parts among his four sons, Er, Orba, Fearran, and Feargna; and Heremon, when he divides Ireland, gives Munster to Er, Orba, Fearran, and Feargna, the four sons of Heber. The southern Scottish royal race are brought, however, from Conmaol, son of Heber.

Footnote 206:

The turning-point appears to be the battle of Ocha, which was fought in the year 478 by Lughaidh, son of that Laogaire who appears as king of Ireland in the Acts of St. Patrick;—Murcertach MacErca, Fiachna, king of Dalaradia, and Crimthan, king of Leinster, against Olioll Molt, son of Dathi, king of Ireland. It is made an era by most of the annalists, and undoubtedly was viewed as accomplishing a revolution which secured the throne of Ireland to the Hy Neill, or descendants of Niall Mor of the nine hostages. There is also a marked difference in the annals that precede and follow it, as those incidents which evidently belong to a mythic period—such as the death of Dathi by a flash of lightning at the foot of the Alps, and that of Laogaire by the elements, because he had violated an oath he had sworn by them—here come to an end. Murcertach MacErca, too, who followed the short reign of Lugliaidh, was the first Christian monarch of Ireland. The author considers that the real chronological history of Ireland begins here, and that the previous annals are an artificially-constructed history, in which some fragments of genuine annals, and some historic tales founded on fact, are imbedded in a mass of tradition, legend, and fable.

Footnote 207:

‘In anno xviii. Ptolemæi, initiatus est regnare in Eamain Cimbaoch filius Fintain qui regnavit annis xviii. Omnia monumenta Scotorum usque Cimbaoch incerta erant.’ Eaman was the great capital of Ulster, now Navan, near Armagh.

Footnote 208:

A.D. 236. Fiacha Araidhe regnat an Eamain An. x. Bellum oc Fothaird Muirtheimne Mebuig re Cormuic hua Cuind agus re Fiachaig Muillitain Righ Mumhan fer Cruithniu agus for Fiacha Araidhe.

254 Indarba Ullad a h Erend a Manand re Cormac hua Cond.

Footnote 209:

Igitur ad terram egressi, ut moris est, situm locorum, mores et habitum hominum explorare, gentem Pictaneorum reperiunt.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 108. Colgan considers that by the Gens Pictaneorum the Tuatha De Danaan are meant.

Footnote 210:

They entered apparently by Loch Broom, and proceeded by the river which flows from Loch Droma near the head of Loch Broom, through the valley called the Dearymore, till it falls into the Conan near Dingwall. It is now called the Blackwater, but was formerly known as the Raasay. Rigmonath is St. Andrews.

Footnote 211:

Colgan considers that it was Ireland which was formerly called Chorischia and not Scotia; but as the sentence follows the settlements in Scotland, it seems more applicable to that country, and elsewhere in the Acts Scotia is used for Scotland. The word Chorischia is probably taken from what Tacitus says of the Horesti. The passage is this: ‘Nec satis, post pelagus Britanniæ contiguum perlegentes, per Rosim amnem, Rossiam regionem manserunt; Rigmonath quoque Bellethor urbes, a se procul positas, petentes, possessuri vicerunt; sicque totam terram suo nomine Chorischiam nominatam, post cujusdam Lacedemonii Aeneæ filium nomine Nelum seu Niulum, qui princeps eorum fuerat, et olim Ægyptiam conjugem bello meruerat, nomine Scottam, ex vocabulo conjugis, patrio sermone depravato, Scotiam vocaverunt.’

Footnote 212:

Æneas the Lacedæmonian is obviously the Fenius Farsadh of the other legend.

Footnote 213:

The Albanic Duan gives him a reign of ten years, and to Fergus twenty-seven in place of three. Taking A.D. 501 as the date of Fergus’s death, this would place the settlement of the Dalriads in 461.

Footnote 214:

There is a native fort in the island of St. Kilda called Dunfhirbolg.

Footnote 215:

Scotti qui nunc corrupte vocantur Hibernienses quasi Sciti, quia a Scithia regione venerunt et inde originem duxerunt; sive a Scotta filia Pharaonis regis Egypti, que fuit, ut fertur, regina Scottorum.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 3.

Albani de quibus originem duxerunt Scoti et Picti.—_Ib._

Footnote 216:

See _Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 4 and 24.

Footnote 217:

_Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p. 319.

Footnote 218:

602 Cath Cuile Cail in quo Fiachaidh mac Baedan victor erat.

608 Bass Fiachach chraich mic Baedan la Cruithnachu, p. 68.

Footnote 219:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 52.

Footnote 220:

The word is _Ruirig_, plural of _Ruire_, a champion, a knight; also Dominus, a lord.

Footnote 221:

Bede, _Ec. Hist._ B. i. c. xv.

Footnote 222:

Nennius implies in a part of his legend of Hengist and Guorthegirn that Hengist’s people came ‘de insula Oghgul,’ which is probably Heligoland.

Footnote 223:

There are two poems which preserve Saxon traditions connected with the mainland. These are the Battle of Finnesburgh, and Beowulf. Kemble considers that they were nearly contemporary with the events they relate, and not far removed from the coming of Hengist and Horsa into Britain. They describe a war between Hengist, an Eoten and vassal of the king of Denmark, and Finn, son of Folcwald, king of the Frisians. Nennius makes Finn, son of Folcgwald, grandfather of his Woden.

Footnote 224:

Zeuss, _Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme_, p. 141. Nennius has ‘Omne genus Ambronum, id est Aldsaxonum Saxonum;’ and again, ‘Et nunquam addiderunt Saxones Ambronem ut a Pictis vectigal exigerent.’

Footnote 225:

Mannert, _Geographie_, iii. 330.

Footnote 226:

Zeuss inclines to the latter view; see _Nachbarstamme_, p. 938.

Footnote 227:

Thus Angrivarii appear also under the form of Angrii, and in the Notitia as Anglevarii. They were probably the same people with the Angli.

Footnote 228:

Bede, _Vit. Sanct. Ab. Mon. im Uyramutha_, c. 14.

Footnote 229:

Adam of Bremen (i. 3) says that the Saxons first had their habitations on the Rhine, and thence passed over to Britain.

Footnote 230:

Hæc in praesenti, juxta numerum librorum quibus Lex Divina scripta est, quinque gentium linguis, unam eamdemque summæ veritatis et veræ sublimitatis scientiam scrutatur et confitetur, Anglorum, videlicet, Brettonum, Scottorum, Pictorum, et Latinorum, quæ meditatione Scripturarum cæteris omnibus est facta communis.—Bede, _H. E._ B. i. c. i.

Footnote 231:

Henry of Huntingdon, in repeating Bede’s statement as to the five languages, adds, ‘Quamvis Picti jam videantur deleti, et lingua eorum ita omnino destructa, ut jam fabula videatur, quod in veterum scriptis eorum mentio invenitur.’ This is true of the language if it was different from the others, but not if it resembled one of them so closely that one of the spoken languages might equally represent it; neither is it true of the people, as almost in the very year he makes this statement he mentions the Picts as forming an entire division in David the First’s army at the Battle of the Standard.

Footnote 232:

Pinkerton first urged the argument for the Picts being a Teutonic people, and, with the knowledge then possessed, with much force. Chalmers is equally clear that they spoke Welsh; but the philological arguments of both have little value, as the science of comparative philology was not then known or understood. Mr. Burton has discussed this question in the first volume of his _History of Scotland_, p. 183, but in a very unsatisfactory way. He has dealt with it as if the whole materials for deciding the question were contained in the discussion between Pinkerton and Chalmers, and writers of that period, and as if nothing remained for him to do but to estimate the value of their respective arguments. He contributes nothing additional to the solution of the question.

Footnote 233:

The author does not here adduce the superabundant evidence furnished by the old Welsh poems, which will be found in _The Four Ancient Books of Wales_. Neither does he refer to the so-called Historic Triads, because he considers them spurious; but among the genuine ‘Triads of Arthur and his Warriors’ (_ib._ vol. ii. p. 457) there is one to this effect:—‘Three oppressions came to this island, and did not go out of it. The nation of the Coranyeit, who came in the time of Llud, son of Beli, and did not go out of it; and the oppression of the Gwyddyl Ffichti, and they did not again go out of it. The third, the oppression of the Saxons, and they did not again go out of it.’ Here the term Gwyddyl Ffichti is clearly applied to the whole Pictish nation who settled in Britain. The same designation is given to them by one edition of the Chronicle called the Brut of Tywysogion, which records, in A.D. 750, ‘the action of Mygedawc, in which the Britons (Britanyat) conquered the Gwyddyl Ffichti, after a bloody battle’ (_Myv. Ar._ vol. ii. p. 472). This is the same battle which Tighernac thus gives: ‘A battle between the Pictones and the Britones, viz., Talorgan, the son of Fergus, and his brother, and the slaughter of the Piccardach with him.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 76.

Footnote 234:

The Irish Archæological Society have published (in 1842) the ancient Historical Tale called the Battle of Magh Rath. This was a battle fought in 637 between Congal Claen, king of Uladh, the head of the Cruithnigh of Ulster, with the assistance of the Scotch Dalriads and other allies from Britain, against the king of Ireland; but throughout this tale there is not the slightest hint of any diversity of language between the Cruithnigh and the Scots.

Footnote 235:

Reeves’s _Adamnan_ (ed. 1874), pp. 174-176.

Footnote 236:

Verbo Dei a Sancto per interpretem recepto (B. i. c. 27).

Verbum vitae per interpretatorem sancto praedicante viro (B. ii. c. 33).

Footnote 237:

The Rev. T. Price of Cwmdû, one of the best and soundest of the Welsh scholars, when he visited Brittany, remarks, ‘Notwithstanding the many assertions that have been made respecting the natives of Wales and Brittany being mutually intelligible through the medium of their respective languages, I do not hesitate to say that the thing is utterly impossible. Single words in either language will frequently be found to have corresponding terms of a similar sound in the other, and occasionally a short sentence deliberately pronounced may be partially intelligible; but as to holding a conversation, that is totally out of the question.’—_Price’s Remains_, vol. i. p. 35. And Mr. Norris, the highest Cornish authority, says, ‘In spite of statements to the contrary, the writer is of opinion that a Breton within the historical existence of the two dialects could not have understood a Cornishman speaking at any length, or on any but the most trivial subjects. He is himself unable to read a sentence in Armoric of more than half-a-dozen lines without the help of a dictionary.’—Norris, _Ancient Cornish Drama_, B. ii. p. 458. O’Donovan says: ‘An Irish scholar would find it difficult to understand a Manx book without studying the language as a distinct dialect.’—_Introd. to Irish Grammar_, p. lxxx. An English Greek scholar cannot follow a conversation in modern Greek, where the difference consists mainly in the vowel sounds and in the accent. This quite accords with the author’s own experience. Although familiar with German from boyhood, and acquainted with most of its provincial varieties, when he first entered the Bavarian Alps he could not understand what was said to him till he made out that the difficulty arose almost entirely from a difference in the vowel sounds, the _umlaut_ being applied almost universally; and at one period of his life, when a branch of the Irish Society employed Irishmen to read the Irish Scriptures to their poor countrymen in Edinburgh, and, as one of the Committee, he had to examine them as to their fitness, he found he could readily understand a Connaught man from the vowel sounds approaching most nearly to those of Scotch Gaelic; but he had great difficulty in following an Ulster man, the vowel sounds being very different, while the position of the accent, which in Irish is on the last syllable, and in Scotch Gaelic on the first, and the use of the eclipsis in the former, which the latter is without, added to the difficulty.

Footnote 238:

Fluviusque ejusdem loci in quo idem baptisma acceperat, ex nomine ejus, Dobur Artbranani usque in hodiernum nominatus diem, ab accolis vocitatur (B. i. c. 27). An old Irish Glossary, quoted by O’Reilly, under Aidhbheis, has

Bior, is An agas Dobhar Tri hanmann d’uisce an domhain. Bior and An and Dobar, Three names for water in the world.

Footnote 239:

Quidam cum tota plebeius familia (B. ii. c. 33).

Footnote 240:

Ibidemque quidam repertus senex, Emchatus nomine, audiens a Sancto verbum Dei prædicatum, et credens, baptizatus est (B. iii. c. 15).

Footnote 241:

Acceptisque eorum uxoribus et filiabus in conjugium, omnes earum linguas amputaverunt, ne eorum successio maternam linguam disceret.

Footnote 242:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 160.

Footnote 243:

Sure condicioun qe lour issu parlascent Irrays, quel patois demurt a iour de huy du haute pays entre lez uns, qest dit Escotoys.—_Ib._ p. 199.

Footnote 244:

Reginald of Durham, writing in the last half of the twelfth century, mentions, in 1164, Kirkcudbright as being ‘in terra Pictorum,’ and calls their language ‘sermo Pictorum.’—_Libellus_, c. lxxxiv.

Footnote 245:

Sequitur in eodem latere, et littore occidentali, Gallovidia.... Ea magna ex parte patrio sermone adhuc utitur.—Buchanan, _Rerum Scoticarum Hist._, Lib. ii. 27.

Footnote 246:

Laing’s _Poems of William Dunbar_. Chalmers’s _Poems of Sir David Lyndesay_, vol. ii. p. 350. Mr. Burton, in his chapter on ‘The Early Races’ (_Hist._ vol. i. p. 206), makes the assertion that the Gaelic of Scotland ‘was ever called by the Teutonic Scots, Irish, Ersch, or Erse.’ In this he is mistaken. It was not so called before the fifteenth century, but invariably ‘Lingua Scotica,’ or Scotch.

Footnote 247:

The inference as to the language of the Picts is the same, even though Chalmers’ imaginary colony of Irish Cruithne in the seventh century really took place.

Footnote 248:

The author has thrown these materials into the form of an alphabetical list, which will be found in the Appendix I., with a comparison with similar words and names in the other dialects.

Footnote 249:

The names of the primary colours which enter into the composition both of names, persons, and places will illustrate this:—

_Gaelic._ _Welsh._ Ban } white Cán } white Finn } Gwyn }

Breac } speckled Brych } speckled Brit } Brith }

Ciar } black Du black Dubh

Glas green Glas green, blue

Gorm blue Gwrm brown

Liath grey Llwyd gray

Dearg } red Coch } red Ruadh } Rhudd }

Here some are so alike as to afford no test, others again are different from each other; but those in which the phonetic differences occur—as Finn, Gwyn; Ban, Cán—afford at once a test of the dialect. Again, the features of the face and form enter both into epithets and names of places. We may take a few—

_Gaelic._ _Welsh._ Ceann head Pen head Claggan skull Clopen skull Cluas ear Cluit, Clyw ear Bronn breast Bron breast Falt hair Gwallt hair Sron nose Trwyn nose Drum } Cefn } Cul } back Trwm } back Cil } Lamh hand Llaw hand Troidh foot Troed foot

Here, also, some are so alike it would be impossible to distinguish the dialect, but Ceann and Pen, Claggan and Clopen, Falt and Gwallt, Sron and Trwyn, afford at once a criterion. So also in proper names, where the phonetic differences are equally apparent.

Footnote 250:

The tribes are Caledonii, Canteæ, Creones, Carnones, Curnaovii, Carini. The other three are Epidii, Lugi, Mertæ. The two latter occupied Sutherland. Ptolemy has the river Lugia in Ireland, and this can be identified with Belfast Lough. The Irish name was Loch Laogh, and Adamnan renders it by Stagnum Vituli. Laogh is a calf in Irish, and is probably the word meant by Lugia. If the same word enters into the name Lugi, it is rather remarkable that Mart should be the Irish word for a heifer. It would seem as if the two tribes of the Lugi and Mertæ took their names from these animals, which would indicate their belonging to the Gaelic race.

Footnote 251:

The tribes are Vacomagi, Vernicomes, Taexali.

Footnote 252:

Sluind Aed _fortren_ Ferna. Name Aed, the powerful of Ferna. Angus Culdee, _Feliré_ at 31st Jany.

Footnote 253:

The age of the world 3923. This was the first year of the reign of Finnachta, son of Ollamh Fodhla, over Ireland. The age of the world 3960, the first of the reign of Gede Ollgothach over Ireland.—_Annals of Four Masters._

Aen is a common prefix in Irish names, and Becan occurs repeatedly as an Irish name.—_Index An. IV. Masters._

Footnote 254:

Bede mentions that the ‘Sinus Orientalis (Firth of Forth) habet in medio sui urbem Giudi.’ It is not impossible that this town may have taken its name from this Guidid or Giudid Gaethbrechach, and if it was on Inchkeith, the island may have taken its name from Gaeth. He must therefore have belonged to the British people of the Ottadeni, whose frontier city this was.

Footnote 255:

The name Bruidhe appears among the kings of O’Faly in Leinster, and in the Annals of the Four Masters in the form of Bruaideadh. We find in Ireland analogous names to these of the thirty Brudes applied to districts. In Leinster we have Tola and Fortola (_An. IV. M._ 571). In Ulster in Tirconnell, Guill and Irguill (_ib._ 718). In Alban, Dobhar and Irdobhar. In this list Cal and Urcal, etc., and in one of the Welsh pedigrees Cein, son of Gwrcein, son of Doli, son of Gwrdoli, son of Dubhn, son of Gwrdubhn. In the Manumissions of Bodmin we have as Cornish forms Guest, Wurguest, Ceint, Wurceint. This will show the exact position of this form as between Irish and Cornish. The author is inclined to think that this legend of the thirty Brudes whose names were given to their portions of land is based upon the Irish system of land denominations, as that of the seven sons of Cruithne evidently was. There were thirty townships or _baile betaghs_ in a barony or _triocha ced_, and the Irish Annals tell us that the mythic King Ollamh Fodla ‘appointed a _Taoisech_ over every _triocha ced_ and a _Brughaidh_ over every _baile_.’—_An. Four Masters_, vol. i. p. 53.

Footnote 256:

_Brev. Ab., Pars Hyem._ f. xxii.

Footnote 257:

The following words may be cited as examples of the interchange of S and D in Gaelic:—Suil, Duil, _hope_; Seangan, Deangan, _an ant_; Seas, Deas, _stay_; Samh, Damh, _learning_; Seirc, Deirc, _almsgiving_; Sonnach, Tonnach, _a wall_.

Footnote 258:

Welsh G passes into D in Gel, W., Daoil, Ir., _a leech_; Gloin, W., Dealan, Ir., _coal_; Gwneyd, W., Deanadh, Ir., do.; Gobaith, W., Dobhchais, Ir., _hope_. St. Drostan was son of Cosgrich, and nephew of Saint Columba, and a Scot by descent.

Footnote 259:

F, or as it is written in Welsh Ff, passes into P in Irish, as in Kyf, _lame_, Ir. ceap, etc. Of the two Alpins in the list, the father of the first is not given, but, as we shall see afterwards, his father was a Dalriadic Scot. The father of the second was Wroid; this is near the Cornish form, which would be Uored. In this form the name appears in an inscription on one of the sculptured stones at St. Vigeans. Mr. Whitley Stokes thus reads it:—

Drosten: Ipe uoret Elt For Cus.

It is a good specimen of the mixture of forms we find in this part of the Pictish territory. Drosten is not a Welsh form but Gaelic; Ipe Uoret, Cornish; and Forcus unmistakably Irish. See _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 120, for Forcus. An Ogham inscription on a stone at Aboyne has been thus read:—

Neahhtla robbait ceanneff Maqqoi Talluorrh.

‘Neachtla or Neachtan immolated Kinneff to the sons of Talore.’ The word ‘robbait’ is the Irish word ‘robaith,’ used in the Book of Deer for a donation to the church.

Footnote 260:

The Manumissions in the Bodmin Gospels, from which the Cornish forms are taken, have Wurgustel and Ungust among the names.

Footnote 261:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 45, 319, 329.

Footnote 262:

‘Clerici illi, qui in ecclesia illa commorantur, qui Pictorum lingua Scollofthes cognominantur’ (cap. lxxxv.). Reginald of Durham was a Norman, and it probably merely represents his attempt to pronounce a word ending with a guttural. He would soften Sgolog to Sgolofth, just as the Normans softened Bannockburn to Banoffburn.

Footnote 263:

This is the process which George Chalmers has gone through in endeavouring to show that the Cymric language originally pervaded the whole of Scotland. He has, in vol. i. p. 33, an elaborate comparison between the names in north and south Britain, which in reality proves nothing; and in applying his Welsh etymologies to the names of places, he proceeds entirely upon the mere resemblance of sounds in the modern form of the word. This mode, which the author has elsewhere termed phonetic etymology, taints almost all the attempts which have been made to attach the local names in Scotland to one or other of the Celtic dialects.

Footnote 264:

We have an instance of this in two Gaelic synonyms for a mountain, Sliabh and Beann, the one being mainly used in Ireland and the other in Scotland.

Footnote 265:

This may be well illustrated by showing the various forms which the word Traver has assumed, and the false etymologies it has given rise to. The word is properly Treabhar, and in John O’Dugan’s Forus Focail, quoted by O’Reilly, it is glossed by Taobhnocht, a naked side. It does not occur in Wales.

Travernent, now Tranent (Had.). Traverquair, now Traquair (Peebles). Traverbrun, now Trabroun (Rox.). Travereglys, now Terregles (Dumfries). Travertrold, now Trailtrow (do.). Traverflat, now Trailflat (do.). Traverlen, now Crailing (Roxburgh).

Footnote 266:

In the Welsh poems the name Tawi is also applied to the Tay.

Footnote 267:

Ubi et ipsa Britannia plus angustissima de oceano in oceano esse dinoscitur.—Ravennatis Anonymi _Cosmographia_.

Footnote 268:

In Welsh Tad is father, Map son.

Footnote 269:

In Latin ‘sacellum’ (see Zeuss, _Grammatica Celtica_, p. 10). Can this refer to the building called Arthur’s O’on?

Footnote 270:

For the names in Adamnan, the reader is referred to Reeves’s edition of Adamnan’s _Life of St. Columba_, in the series of Historians of Scotland for 1874.

Footnote 271:

Eddi, _Vita S. Wilfridi_ apud Gale, pp. 70, 71.

Footnote 272:

The passages regarding the wall are as follows:—

A mari Scotiæ usque ad mare Hiberniæ id est, a Cair Eden civitate antiquissima duorum ferme millium spatio a monasterio Abercurnig, quod nunc vocatur Abercorn, ad occidentem tendens, contra occidentem juxta urbem Alcluith.—Gildas, _Capitula libri_.

Incipit autem duorum ferme milium spatio a monasterio Aebbercurnig ad occidentem, in loco qui sermone Pictorum Peanfahel, lingua autem Anglorum Penneltun appellatur; et tendens contra occidentem terminatur juxta urbem Alcluith.—Beda, _Hist. Ec._ B. i. c. xii.

Per vero miliaria, passum unum a Penguaul, quæ villa Scottice Cenail, Anglice vero Peneltun dicitur, usque ad ostium fluminis Cluth et Cairpentaloch.—Ad. to Nennius.

Footnote 273:

Simeon of Durham calls it ‘Tiningaham,’ and says it was in the diocese of Lindisfarne, and belonged to the Angles.—See Surtees ed., pp. 20, 65, 68. C has probably been read by the scribe for T.

Footnote 274:

The old form of the name Atholl is Athfhotla; and in the Prophecy of St. Berchan, one of the kings, who represents Kenneth M‘Alpin, is said to have died _for bruinnibh Eirenn_, on the banks of Erin. He died at Forteviot, on the river Earn.

Footnote 275:

_Words and Places_, by the Rev. Isaac Taylor, p. 258. This argument appears to have been first used by Mr. Kemble in his _Saxons in England_, vol. ii. p. 4, but his line of demarcation is quite different from Mr. Taylor’s. He says—‘The distinctive names of water in the two principal languages appear to be Aber and Inver.’ He then gives a list of seven Abers in Wales, and in Scotland eleven Abers on the south-east side of his line, and twelve Invers on the north-west; but the contrast is produced by simply omitting the Invers which are on the same side with the Abers, and the Abers which are to be found among the Invers. Mr. Taylor adds—‘The process of change is shown by an old charter, in which king David grants to the monks of May “Inverin qui fuit Aberin.” So Abernethy became Invernethy, although the old name is now restored.’ This is quoted without acknowledgment from George Chalmers, with the usual result of second-hand quotation, that of perpetuating error. The true reading in the charter is ‘Petnaweem et Inverin que fuit Averin;’ and it means in the ordinary charter Latin that these places formerly belonged to a person called Averin. Abernethy never became Invernethy. The two places are distinct from each other: Invernethy at the junction of the Nethy with the Earn, and Abernethy a mile farther up the river.

Footnote 276:

Diefenbach, in his _Celtica_, vol. i. p. 23, is of this opinion. He says, ‘Aber gehört völlig beiden Sprachaesten an.’

Footnote 277:

Mr. Bannister, in his _Glossary of Cornish Names_, has no Abers, but an Appledor.

Footnote 278:

Taylor, _Words and Places_, p. 232. With what success he attempts to make this out his list of Pens will show. Leaving out those in Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, and Haddington, where there was originally a Welsh-speaking people, ‘we find,’ he says, ‘the Cymric form of the word in the Gram_pians_,’ which is utter nonsense, ‘the Pentland Hills,’ which is a corruption of Petland Hills, as the Pentland Firth is of the Petland Firth, ‘the Pennguaul Hills,’ which have no existence, and ‘Pendrich in Perth,’ which is a corruption of Pittindriech. The whole of this part of Mr. Taylor’s work is tainted with phonetic etymology; _e.g._, he says, ‘From _llevn_, smooth, or from _linn_, a deep still pool, we obtain the names of Loch Leven, and three rivers called Leven in Scotland.’ The old form of this name Leven is ‘Leamhan,’ which means in Irish an elm-tree. The Welsh equivalent is Llwyfan.

Footnote 279:

Perhaps Pennan, the modern name of a headland at the Moray Firth, may be an exception, but we have not its old form.

Footnote 280:

Pette is the form of this word in the Book of Deer, and it appears to mean a portion of land, as it is conjoined with proper names, as Pette MacGarnait, Pette Malduib. It also appears connected with Gaelic specific terms, as Pette _an Muilenn_, ‘of the mill.’ With the article it forms Petten, or Pitten, as in Petten-taggart, termed in a charter of the church of Migvie (St. Andrews Chartulary, preface, p. 21) ‘terra ecclesiæ.’ It is Pettan t-saguirt, the priest’s land. In the same Chartulary (114) the ‘villula quæ dicitur Pettemokane’ is afterwards apparently called ‘domus cujusdam viri nomine Mochan.’ It is synonymous with Both, a dwelling, as we find Bothgouanan, near Elgin, has become Pitgownie, and Badfodullis, near Aberdeen, Pitfoddles. Dr. Stuart points out, in his introduction to the Book of Deer, p. lxxxiv., that Pit and Bal are frequently used indiscriminately.

Footnote 281:

As in Fothuirtabhaicht now Forteviot, Fothurdun now Fordun, Fothenaven now Finhaven.

Footnote 282:

These laws are taken from _The Four Ancient Books of Wales_, where the subject of the race and language of the Picts is fully discussed in Chapters VII., VIII., and IX. This has, of course, led to some repetition, and in one respect the author has been led to modify the views there stated. An examination of the old forms of the Cornish names in the Manumissions in the Bodmin Gospels, printed in the _Revue Celtique_, vol. i. p. 332, has led him to see that there is a British element in the proper names in the list of Pictish kings, and that that element is not Welsh, but Cornish.