The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

AND NOTES] O F S C O T L A N D 387
points out, still show German, or rather Walloon, characteristics.
Norse features are predominant in Lewis and the northern Isles
generally, though Iberian and other (such as Spanish) elements
are strong. The East Coast is largely Teutonic. The old
burghs were planted by the Canmore dynasty in the northern
districts to keep the ordinary population in order, and towns
like Inverness were from the first in the hands of Flemish and
other Teutonic traders.
The Pictish Problem.
Till criticism began with Father Innes's Essay on the
Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland in 1729, the Scottish historians
taught that the Picts and Scots were two separate nations living
side by side, each speaking a language of its own. These
historians gave their attention nearly altogether to the story
and genealogy of the Scots, representing Kenneth Mac Alpin
in 843 as overthrowing and even extirpating the Picts, insomuch
that their language and their name were lost. Father Innes's
Essay, among other things, holds that though Kenneth Mac
Alpin, the Scot, had to fight for his Pictish throne, yet he was
rightful heir, but he proves that there was no extirpation
of the Picts. Their language, as a dialect of Celtic, like British
(Welsh) and Gaelic, naturally gave way to the Court and Church
language of Kenneth and his dynasty, which was Gaelic—such
is his easy-going method of getting rid of a national language.
the Picts
Later on Pinkerton, who had an anti-Celtic craze, put
in the foreground of his historic picture of Scotland before 843 ;
he regarded them as Gothic or Teutonic—ancestors of the
Lowland Scots, who wiped out the Dalriadic Kingdom
about 740. The king of the straggling remnant of Dalriads,
one hundred years later, became, in the person of Kenneth
Mac Alpin, also King of Picts. George Chalmers (1807), sanest
critic of them all, regarded the Picts as Cymric or British by
race and language, and of course accepted the usual story of
the Scottish Chronicles. Mr. Skene, in the first edition of the
present work, in 1837, adopted Pinkerton's revolutionary ideas
about the Picts and the Scottish Conquest, but with the great
difference that he regarded the Picts as Gaelic-speaking, using
the same language as the Scots. In fact, he held that there