(‘This gift has been dedicated at his own expense by Lossio Veda, the son of the sister [?] of Vepogen, a Caledonian’), and remarks that when Lossio calls himself a Caledonian, that ‘is for our purpose much the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, and that, moreover, both Veda and Vepogeni ‘may be said to occur in the list of Pictish kings’, where the latter is ‘written Vipoig’. Vepogeni, indeed, is a Celtic word, borrowed, the professor assures us, in accordance with Pictish custom; but ‘the reduction of Vepogen to Vepog, which is what underlies Vipoig, is impossible on Celtic ground ... while Pictish offers a simple and natural explanation’.[1831]
Professor Morris Jones remarks, in support of Professor Rhys’s argument, that ‘the Pictish succession’ has ‘come down to our own times among the Berbers’[1832] (or rather Kabyles), who, he says, have been shown, on craniological grounds, to be akin to our neolithic race.
Apparently Professor Rhys does not regard the custom of reckoning descent ‘by birth alone’ as confined in these islands to the Picts, or to the pre-Aryan aborigines: if, as he is inclined, like Professor Zimmer, to believe, it was non-Aryan, ‘it must,’ he says, ‘have been accepted by the Goidelic Celts from the aborigines.’[1833]
Now, in regard to this last observation, the comment suggests itself that what Professor Rhys has not yet proved is that those aborigines were Picts. The Picts, as we shall presently see, were, according to some Celtic scholars, themselves Goidelic Celts (mixed of course with aborigines whom they had subdued and Celticized); according to others, their speech was akin to Brythonic.[1834] And if, as Professor Rhys insists, matriarchy may have been accepted by the Celts from the aborigines, it is perhaps not incredible that, as Mr. Sidney Hartland suggests, the Celts themselves, in prehistoric times, may have passed through the matriarchal stage,[1835] and that the survival of matriarchy among the Picts is not necessarily attributable to pre-Aryan ancestry.[1836] But, be that as it may, the survival of matriarchy among the Picts proves nothing more than that among the Picts, as among every other British people, the substratum of the population was pre-Aryan: it does not prove that the dominant element among them was pre-Aryan, or that they spoke a non-Aryan language.
As for Professor Morris Jones’s argument, it may perhaps raise a probability that the ‘Pictish succession’ prevailed among the neolithic race, although, if the argument is worth anything, the professor ought to be able to show that the same institution belonged to the ‘Iberians’ of Spain, of Gaul, and of other countries who have also been shown ‘on craniological grounds’ to be akin to the Kabyles: but at all events it lends no support to the theory that the Picts were, in any special sense, descendants of the neolithic aborigines; for, assuming that they were Celts, they might have accepted the Pictish succession from them. There remains Professor Rhys’s statement that ‘the reduction of Vepogen to Vepog, which is what underlies Vipoig, is impossible on Celtic ground’. Is the professor quite sure? A few years ago he would certainly have said that the retention of ‘Indo-European p’ was ‘impossible on Celtic ground’; but in 1900 he announced that the ‘Celtican language’ which was spoken in the country of the Sequani ‘preserves intact the Aryan consonant p’.[1837] He has himself assured us that both the Celtic dialects spoken in the British Isles were greatly modified by a pre-Aryan language.[1838] Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Pictish language was Celtic, is he prepared to deny that it could have been so far modified by a non-Aryan tongue that ‘the reduction of Vepogen to Vepog’ would still have been ‘impossible on Celtic ground’?[1839] Finally, when he tells us that Lossio’s description of himself as a Caledonian ‘is for our purpose much the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, we cannot help recalling his own statement[1840] that ‘the Caledonians were, as we understand their history, Goidels’; though, to be sure, in the latest edition of Celtic Britain[1841] he expunges this compromising sentence, and substitutes for it ‘the Caledonians were Picts’.
For my part I accept the professor’s emendation unreservedly. Picts the Caledonians certainly were; for does not the author of the panegyric addressed to Constantine speak of ‘the Caledonians and other Picts’?[1842] But for me the Picts were a mixed people, comprising descendants of the neolithic aborigines, of the Round Barrow race, and of the Celtic invaders,—a mixed people who spoke a Celtic dialect. And what puzzles me is that the professor should not have been struck by the anthropological facts that are fatal to the theory that the Caledonians were Picts in the sense which he attaches to the word,—that is, pure survivors of the neolithic aborigines, who spoke a non-Aryan language. For the neolithic aborigines, as we have seen, were, speaking generally, small dark men of the ‘Iberian’ type: the Caledonians were big fair or red-haired men. Doubtless there were, as I have said, ‘Iberian’ survivors among them; but who will deny that the powerful race whom Tacitus describes were predominant, or that their Aryan tongue had prevailed?[1843]
4. It is usually inferred from statements in Claudian[1844] and Herodian[1845] that the Picts tattooed themselves; and their testimony is supposed to be strengthened by the etymology of the names by which the Picts were known to the Irish and Welsh respectively,—Cruthni and Prydain. The former is said to be derived from cruth,[1846] the Gaelic word for ‘form’ or ‘shape’; and the latter from its Welsh equivalent, pryd.[1847] Thus Cruthni and Prydain would mean ‘the people whose bodies were decorated with figures’; and, as we have seen, Zimmer has no doubt that the Roman name for the Picts—Picti, or ‘painted men’—was simply a translation of Prydain or its older equivalent. Professor Rhys, who, in one of his many and diverse utterances on the subject, affirmed that pictos was a Celtican word,[1848] drew this conclusion from the fact, pointed out by Mr. Nicholson,[1849] that a coin of the Gallic tribe of the Pictones[1850] bears on the obverse a tattooed face; and he supposes that the reason why the Celticans applied this word to the Picts was that the latter tattooed themselves. ‘The Picts of Britain and Ireland,’ he remarks, ‘are found also called Pictones’; and ‘ancient Egyptian monuments represent the Libyans of North Africa with their bodies tattooed’.[1851]
Now what does this community of custom prove about the ethnology of the Picts? The inhabitants of the Tonga and Society Islands and of New Guinea tattoo themselves: so do the Burmese, the Shans, the Maoris, and the people of British East Africa;[1852] so do very many Englishmen. All the available evidence tends to show that among the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles tattooing was not confined to the Picts. Herodian does not mention the Picts at all: he merely says that the Britons tattooed themselves. Professor Rhys admits, or rather strenuously maintains, that in the territory inhabited by the Picts in Scotland there were also numerous Celts;[1853] and he would hardly deny that they were included among the people whom Herodian describes. He himself remarks that ‘the Scotti (that is to say the Goidels)’[1854] practised tattooing.[1855] Mr. Nicholson, to whom he appeals, argues from the evidence of coins that tattooing was customary not only among the Pictones, but also among several other tribes of Gaul,—the Ambiani, the Baiocasses, the Caletes, the Coriosopites, the Osismi, the Sequani, and the Unelli. All these peoples were undoubtedly Celtic; that is to say, they were Celtic-speaking tribes among whom the Celtic element, ethnologically speaking, was, I do not say numerically, but politically predominant. Professor Rhys would certainly not argue that they were Picts: yet if he admits, as he does, that they were Celtic, the argument which he bases on the practice of tattooing collapses.
5. Some years ago Professor Rhys attempted to prove that the Pictish language was related to Basque;[1856] ‘but,’ he says, ‘whether it is related or not, my attempt to prove that it is has been pronounced, and doubtless justly pronounced, a failure.’[1857] At the same time, however, pointing to a famous ogam inscription, he wrote, ‘my challenge still remains, that if Pictish resembled Gaelic or Welsh, or in fact any Aryan language, those who think so should make good their opinion by giving us a translation of such an inscription, for instance, as the following from Lunasting, in Shetland:—Xttocuhetts : ahehhttmnnn : hccvvevv : nehhtonn.’[1858]
The lay reader will perhaps mentally endorse the comment of another Celtic scholar, Dr. Alexander Macbain, who disposes of the cacophonous puzzle by observing that ‘it is neither Welsh nor any other language’.[1859] For the present, at all events, it is safe to say that Dr. Macbain is as likely to be right as Mr. Nicholson, who, having boldly accepted Professor Rhys’s challenge, first judiciously reconstructed the text of the inscription, and then made an heroic attempt to translate his own version. It is Goidelic, so he assures us; and it means