The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

AND NOTES] OF SCOTLAND 389
in regard to marriage, hold the next place. The present writer
thinks that the topography of Pictland is one of the most cogent
factors in the solution of the problem, but, unfortunately, Celtic
scholars " furth of Scotland " cannot appreciate this aspect of the
question except to a limited extent. If Prof Rhys
studied the
topography of Pictland instead of the so-called Pictish inscriptions,
it is certain that he would not distract either Celtic
scholars or outsiders like Mr. Lang with his theories as to the
Pictish being a non-Aryan, pre-Celtic tongue. The ingenuity
wasted on this theory and on its ethnologic consequences makes
the outsider yet distrust philologic ways. And here, again, the
study of Scottish ethnology is retarded, though not to the same
extent as it is by Dr. Skene's theories.
We can here only summarise the arguments that go to prove
that the Picts were a Celtic-speaking people, whose language
differed both from Brittonic and Gadelic, but, at the same time,
only differed dialectically from the Gaulish and Brittonic tongues.
The language was of the P class. The arguments are these :—
I.—
Contemporary writers speak of the Pictish as a separate
language from both Brittonic and Gadelic.
Bede (731) twice refers to the matter:—"The nations and
provinces of Britain, which are divided into four languages, viz.,
those of the Britons, the Picts, the Scots, and the English "
(III. cap. 6). There may have been thus many provinces in
Britain, but only four languages. In his first
"
Latin as a fifth language— Britain contains
chapter he adds
five nations, the
English, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own
peculiar dialect cultivating the sublime study of divine truth."
These statements, surely, are definite enough :
guage
Pictish is a lan-
different from either Brittonic or Gadelic. This Skene
acknowledges in the present volume, but confines it to the
southern Picts ; in Celtic Scotland he does like the Scottish
theologian—he looks the diffiiculty boldly in the face and passes
on !
Adamnan (died 704), writing for people who knew that
Pictish was a very different tongue from Irish, did not require
to mention that interpreters were needed any more than modern
travel-books do, but he does incidentally mention that Columba
preached the Word twice through an interpreter, once to a