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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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—

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—

And Kennedy retorts upon Dunbar—

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]

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:—

1st, 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.

2d, 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.

3d, 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.

4th, 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

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