The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

AND NOTES] OF SCOTLAND 391
portion of them had relapsed into paganism. The Gall-Gaidheil
afterwards formed the Kingdom of Man and the Isles, without,
however, any portion of the mainland being included ; and the
name Gall-Gaidheil became latterly restricted to Galloway. The
early history of Galloway can only be guessed at. The Brittonic
people certainly had possession of it, and Dr. Beddoe regards the
tall hillmen of Galloway and upper Strathclyde as the best
representatives of the Brittonic race, Wales itself being very
much mixed in blood. It formed part of the Kingdom of
Strathclyde, no doubt ; but it must have received a Gaelic
population from Ireland before its conquest by
the Norse. Its
place-names show traces of Brittonic, Norse, and Gaelic names ;
but Gaelic names are predominant. Gaelic was spoken in
Galloway and Ayr till the seventeenth century ; but the Gaels
of Ayr, Lanark, and Renfrew were invaders from the north, who
in the tenth and eleventh centuries imposed their language and
rule on the British Kingdom of Strathclyde. It is clear, from
the above considerations, that the Galwegians of the twelfth
century were anything but Ficts, and that their language was
the same as the Manx. Richard of Hexham and Reginald of
Durham, finding the Galwegians a race apart, called them Picts ;
and so Dr. Skene founds one of his strongest arguments that
Pictish was Gaelic on the fact that the Gaelic-speaking Gal-
wegians were Picts according to two bungling English ecclesiastics
of the twelfth century.
The Irish Picts have always the name of Cruithnig, both in
Gaelic and in Latin, whereas the Picts of Scotland are variously
called Cruithnig, Picts, Piccardai, Pictones, and Pictores. In
Ireland there were Picts in Dal-araidhe (Down and part of
Antrim), in Meath and in Roscommon. The last two were
doubtless some mercenaries introduced by some King or Kinglet
returning victoriously from exile. Nothing is known of them
save in a wild legend about the arrival of the Picts first in
Ireland and their departure to Scotland, leaving a remnant in
Meath. But the Cruithnig of Dal-araidhe figure prominently in
Irish history in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Irish
histories relate that they were the attendants or descendants of
the Princess Loucetna, daughter of Eochaidh Echbel, King of
Alba ; she married Conall Cernach, the great Ulster hero of the