“This island at present, following the number of the books in which the Divine law was written, contains five nations, the English, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own peculiar dialect cultivating the sublime study of Divine truth. The Latin tongue is, by the study of the Scriptures, become common to all the rest. At first this island had no other inhabitants but the Britons, from whom it derived its name, and who coming over into Britain, as is reported, from Armorica, possessed themselves of the southern parts thereof. When they, beginning at the south, had made themselves master of the greatest part of the island, it happened, that the nation of the Picts coming into the ocean from Scythia, as is reported, in a few tall ships, were driven by the winds beyond the shores of Britain and arrived off Ireland, on the northern coasts, where, finding the nation of the Scots, they requested to be allowed to settle among them, but could not succeed in obtaining their request. The Scots answered, that the island could not contain them both; but ‘we can give you good advice,’ said they, ‘what to do; we know there is another island, not far from ours, to the eastward, which we often see at a distance, when the days are clear. If you will repair thither, you may be able to obtain settlements; or if they should oppose you, you may make use of us as auxiliaries.’ The Picts accordingly sailing over into Britain, began to inhabit the northern parts thereof, for the Britons were possessed of the southern. Now the Picts having no wives, and asking them of the Scots, they would not consent to grant them upon any other terms, than that when any difficulty should arise, they should rather choose themselves a king from the female royal race than from the male; which custom, as is well known, has been observed among the Picts to this day. In process of time, Britain, besides the Britons and the Picts, received a third nation, the Scots, who, departing out of Ireland under their leader Reuda, either by fair means, or by force of arms, secured to themselves those settlements among the Picts which they still possess. From the name of their commander, they are to this day called Dalreudins; for in their language Dal signifies a part.... It is properly the country of the Scots, who, migrating from thence, as has been said, added a third nation in Britain to the Britons and the Picts. There is a very large gulf of the sea, which formerly divided the nation of the Picts from the Britons; which gulf runs from the west very far into the land, where, to this day, stands the strong city of the Britons, called Alcluith. The Scots arriving on the north side of this bay, settled themselves there.”[48]
Here then Bede informs us that in his time the common report was that the Picts came into Scotland from Scythia, which, like the Germania of Tacitus, may be taken to mean the northern countries of Europe generally. This is substantially the same statement as that of the author of the Historia Britonum, commonly called Nennius, who lived in the 9th century, and who informs us that the Picts coming to Scotland about 300 B.C., occupied the Orkney Islands, whence issuing, they laid waste many regions, and seized those on the left-hand side, i.e. the north of Britain, where they still remained in the writer’s time, keeping possession of a third part of Britain.[49]
Supposing that Bede’s report was quite in accordance with truth, still it gives us but small help in coming to a conclusion as to the place of these Picts among the families of men. It is certain that by far the greater part of Europe had at one time a Celtic population who preceded, but ultimately gave way to another wave of emigrants from the east. Now, if we knew the date at which this so-called migration of the Picts took place it might be of considerable assistance to us; but as we cannot now find out whether these emigrants proceeded from a Celtic or a Teutonic stock, the statement of Bede, even if reliable, helps us not at all towards a solution of the question as to the race of the Picts. Innes[50] remarks very justly on this point—“Now, supposing that there were any good ground for the opinion of these two writers, which they themselves give only as a conjecture or hearsay, and that we had any certainty of the Caledonians, or Picts, having had their origin from the more northern parts of the European continent, it were an useless, as well as an endless discussion, to examine in particular from which of all the northern nations of the continent the first colony came to Caledonia; because that these nations of the north were almost in perpetual motion, and changing habitations, as Strabo remarks; and he assigns for it two reasons: the one, because of the barrenness of the soil, they tilled not the ground, and built habitations only for a day; the other, because being often overpowered by their neighbours, they were forced to remove. Another reason why it is impossible to know from which of those nations the northern parts of Britain, (supposing they came from thence) were at first peopled, is because we have but very lame accounts of these northern nations from the Greek or Roman writers, (from whom alone we can look for any thing certain in those early times) especially of those of Scandia, to the north of the Baltic sea, as the same Strabo observes. Besides, it appears that Caledonia was peopled long before the inhabitants of these northern parts of the continent were mentioned, or even known by the most ancient writers we have; and perhaps before the first nations mentioned by them were settled in those parts.”
There is, however, another statement made by Bede in the passage quoted, upon which, as it refers to his own time, much more reliance can be placed; it is, that in his time Britain contained five nations, each having its own peculiar dialect, viz., the English, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins. We know that the English spoke in the main Saxon; the Britons, i.e., the inhabitants of Wales, Cumbria, &c., Welsh; the Scots, Gaelic; the Latins, we suppose, being the Romanized Britons and ecclesiastics. What language then did the Picts speak? As we know that Bede never travelled, he must have got his information from an informant or by hearsay, which circumstance rather detracts from its value. But supposing we take the passage literally as it stands, we learn that in Bede’s time there were five distinct peoples or nations, whose names he gives, sharing among them the island. He does not say there were five distinct tongues, which would have been quite a different statement; he speaks of them not so much in respect of their language as in respect of their being the separate items which composed the inhabitants of Britain. In his time they were all quite distinct, in a measure independent of and at enmity with each other. He does not classify them in respect of the race to which they belonged, but with reference to the particular districts which they inhabited, and perhaps with regard to the time and means of their conversion to Christianity, each having been converted at a different time and by a different saint. The substance then of what he says appears to be, that there were in his time five distinct tribes or congregations of people in Britain, each converted to Christianity, and each having the gospel preached in its own tongue. Supposing that the Picts and Scots, or Picts and Britons, or Picts and English did speak exactly the same tongue, it is not at all likely that Bede, in the present case, would have classed them together as both being one nation. Moreover, suppose we allow that Bede did mean that each of these nations spoke a language quite distinct from all the others, then his statement cuts equally at the Gothic and Celtic theory. The conclusion we are forced to is, that from this passage nothing can be gained to help us out of our difficulty.
There is a statement at the end of the passage quoted to which we would draw the reader’s attention, as being Bede’s way, and no doubt the universal way in his time, of accounting for a peculiar law which appears to have regulated the succession to the Pictish throne, and which ultimately, according to some, was the means of placing on that throne a Scottish monarch; thus accounting to some extent for the sudden disappearance and apparent destruction of the Pictish people and language.
We shall here refer to one other passage in the same historian, which has perhaps given rise to greater and more acrimonious contention than any other point in connection with this wordy discussion. The only word that has come down to us, which, with the exception of the names of the Pictish kings, we can be sure is a remnant of the Pictish language, is the name said by Bede to have been given to the eastern termination of the wall of Antonine. Bede,[51] in speaking of the turf wall built by the Britons of Valentia in the beginning of the 5th century, says, “it begins at about two miles distance from the monastery of Abercorn on the west, at a place called in the Pictish language Peanfahel, but in the English tongue Penneltum.” This statement of Bede’s is straightforward and clear enough, and has never been disputed by any writer on any one of the three sides of the question. Nevertheless it has been used by the advocates respectively of the Gothic, Gaelic, and Cymric origin of the Picts, as an undoubted proof of the correctness of each of these theories. Pinkerton, whose dishonesty and acrimoniousness are well known, and must detract considerably from the force of his arguments, claims it as being entirely Gothic or Teutonic. “The Pictish word,” he says,[52] “is broad Gothic; Paena ‘to extend,’ Ihre; and Vahel, a broad sound of veal, the Gothic for ‘wall,’ or of the Latin vallum, contracted val; hence it means ‘the extent or end of the wall.’” This statement of Pinkerton’s may be dismissed as too far-fetched and awkward to merit much consideration, and we may safely regard the word as capable of satisfactory explanation only in Celtic. Innes, who upholds the British, i.e. the Cymric, origin of the Picts, says,[53] “we nowhere find a clearer proof of the Pictish language being the same as the British [Welsh], than in Bede, where he tells us that Penuahel in Pictish signifies the head of the wall, which is just the signification that the same two words Pen and Uahel have in the British.” In this opinion Chalmers and other advocates of the Cymric theory coincide. Mr. Garnett, who essentially agrees with Innes and Chalmers as to the Cymric origin of the Picts, lays little stress upon this word as furnishing an argument in support of his theory. “Almost the only Pictish word given us by an ancient writer is the well-known Pen val (or as it appears in the oldest MSS. of Bede (Peann fahel)), the name given by the Picts to the Wall’s End, or eastern termination of the Vallum of Antoninus. It is scarcely necessary to say the first part of the word is decidedly Cymric; pen, head, being contrary to all Gaelic analogy. The latter half might be plausibly claimed as the Gaelic fal; gwall being the more common termination in Welsh for a wall or rampart. Fal, however, does occur in Welsh in the sense of inclosure, a signification not very remote.”[54]
The two most recent and able supporters[55] of the Gaelic theory are of much the same mind as Garnett, and appear to regard this tantalizing word as affording no support to either side. Burton[56] cannot admit that anything has been made out of this leading to a historical conclusion.
We may safely conclude, then, that this so called Pictish word, or, indeed, any information which we find in Bede, affords us no key to the perplexing question of the origin and race of the Picts.
We learn, however, one fact from Bede[57] which is so far satisfactory, viz., that in his time there were two divisions of the Picts, known as the Northern and Southern Picts, which were separated from each other by steep and rugged mountains. On reading the passage in Bede, one very naturally supposes that the steep and rugged mountains must be the Grampians, to which the expression applies more aptly than to any other mountain-chain in Scotland. Even this, however, has been made matter of dispute, it being contended by some that the locality of the Southern Picts was in the south-west and south of Scotland, where some writers set up a powerful Pictish kingdom. Mr. Grub,[58] however, has clearly shown that the locality of the Southern Picts was to the north of the Forth and Clyde, and to the south of the Grampians. “The mistake formerly so common in regard to the country of the Southern Picts converted by St. Ninian, was in part owing to the situation of Candida Casa. It was supposed that his see must have been in the country of those whom he converted.” He clearly proves that it was not so in reality, and that there was nothing so unusual in the situation as to justify the conclusion which was drawn from it. “It was, no doubt, the case that the teachers by whom the chief Celtic and Teutonic nations were converted generally fixed their seat among those whom they instructed in the faith. But there was no necessity for this, especially when the residence of the teacher was in the neighbourhood of his converts. St. Columba was primate of all the churches of the Northern Picts, but he did not permanently reside among that nation. St. Ninian had ready access to his Pictish converts, and could govern them as easily from his White Church on the Solway, as Columba could instruct and rule the Northern Picts from his monastery in Iona.”[59]
Other authorities appealed to by the upholders of each of the Celtic theories are the Welsh traditions, the Irish Annals, the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, and various legendary documents of more or less value and authenticity. As these are of no greater authority than the writers with whom we have been dealing, and as the partisans of each theory claim the various passages as either confirming, or, at any rate, not contradicting their views, we shall not further trouble the reader with specimens of the manner in which they are dealt with. There is one passage, however, in the Welsh Triads, which the advocates of the Gaelic hypothesis claim as strongly confirmatory of their theory. After referring to the coming in of the Cymry, the Britons, etc., the Triads[60] go on to say, “Three tribes came, under protection, into the Island of Britain, and by the consent and permission of the nation of the Cymry, without weapon, without assault. The first was the tribe of the Caledonians in the north. The second was the Gwyddelian Race, which are now in Alban (Scotland). The third were the men of Galedin, who came into the Isle of Wight. Three usurping tribes came into the Island of Britain and never departed out of it. The first were the Coranied, who came from the land of Pwyl. The second were the Gwyddelian Ffichti, who came into Alban over the sea of Llychlyn (Denmark). The third were the Saxons.” “The Triads,” says Skene[61] in connection with this, “appear distinctly to have been written previous to the Scottish conquest in the ninth century, and they mention among the three usurping tribes of Britain the ‘Gwyddyl Ffichti,’ and add immediately afterwards, ‘and these Gwyddyl Ffichti are in Alban, along the shore of the sea of Llychlyn.’ In another place, among the treacherous tribes of Britain, the same Triads mention the ‘Gwyddyl coch o’r Werddon a ddaethant in Alban,’ that is ‘the Red Gwyddyl from Ireland, who came into Alban,’ plainly alluding to the Dalriads, who were an Irish colony, and who have been acknowledged by all to have been a Gaelic race. It will be observed from these passages that the Welsh Triads, certainly the oldest and most unexceptionable authority on the subject, apply the same term of Gwyddyl to the Picts and to the Dalriads, and consequently they must have been of the same race, and the Picts a Gaelic people. Farther, the Welsh word ‘Gwyddyl,’ by which they distinguish that race, has been declared by all the best authorities to be exactly synonymous with the word Gael, the name by which the Highlanders have at all times been distinguished, and the Welsh words ‘Gwyddyl Ffichti’ cannot be interpreted to mean any thing else than ‘The Gaelic Picts,’ or ‘Pictish Gael.’”