The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

390 THE HIGHLANDERS [excursus
peasant, and once to a chief.
" On two occasions only," says
Skene, does he require an interpreter, and it is at once inferred
that King Brude and his court spoke to Columba without inter-
preters—and in Gaelic !
Cormac, King-bishop of Cashel (circ. 900), records a word of
the berla cruithnecJi or Pictish language {cartit, pin).
The next contemporary references occur in the twelfth century,
and they concern the so-called Picts of Galloway. These
will best be considered under the next heading.
H.—The so-called Picts of Galloway and the Irish Cruithnig.
The Picts of Galloway are mentioned as being present at the
Battle of the Standard (i 138) by Richard of Hexham, a contemporary
writer, who informs us that King David's army was
composed inter alios of" Pictis, qui vulgo Gallweienses dicuntur."
The learned cleric calls them Picts ; their usual name was
Gallwegians. From Reginald of Durham, writing at the end of
the twelfth century, we get a word belonging to these Picts, for,
speaking of certain clerics of Kirkcudbright, he calls them
"
clerici illi qui Pictorum lingua Scollofthes cognominantur."
Unfortunately, the word Scollofthes proves nothing, for like the
W e\sh. ysgolkaig divxd old Irish scoloe, scholar, student—
latterly, in
Gaelic, servant— it is derived from Latin scholasticus ; but the
reference to the Pictish language implies its existence in Gallo-
way at the time. Of course we can pit against these two references,
another from the same Anglic source. Henry of Huntingdon,
who writes before 1 1 :
54, says
" The Picts seem now destroyed
and their language altogether wiped out, so that what old writers
say about them appears now fabulous." We have further an
enumeration of the inhabitants of the Glasgow diocese in the
charters of Malcolm and William the Lyon, which are addressed
"
thus : Francis et Anglis, Scotis
bus
et Galwejensibus et Walensi-
"—Franks (Norman French), English (of the south eastern
counties), Scots (Gaels possibly), Galwegians and Welsh (remains
of the old Britons of Strathclyde). Here there is no
mention of Picts.
Galloway is so named from Gall-Gaidheil or " Foreign Gaels."
This was the name given to the mixed Norse and Gaels who
inhabited the Isles of Scotland, Man, Galloway, Kintyre, and the
Western coast of Scotland. Dr. Stokes thinks that the Gaelic