In the attempt we are about to make to assign to the Picts their proper place among these races, we shall, as the most convenient nomenclature, call the two great divisions of the Celtic language, British and Gadhelic; and the three varieties of the first, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton; and of the second, Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and Manx. Those Pictish words which obviously belong to either we shall class with them; but where they are peculiar to the Picts, and yet have the characteristics of Gadhelic, we shall term them Pictish Gaelic. The position of the Pictish language differs from that of the others in this respect, that we cannot point to any spoken language in the island which can be held to represent it as a distinctive dialect, unless we could suppose it to have merged in one or other of the spoken languages of the island.[[231]] But here we are met at once by a difficulty. If Bede, by calling these five distinct languages, meant to convey the fact that they were so different from each other as to constitute separate tongues, then the Pictish could not have belonged to the same family with any of the others. It could not have been a German dialect, because it is distinguished from the language of the Angles. It could not, on the same ground, have been British, nor could it have been Irish or Scotch Gaelic; but Bede’s language does not warrant so broad a conclusion as this. He does not say that the Divine truth was studied in five different languages, but in the languages of five nations. It implies that the nations were distinct from each other, in so far as they formed separate kingdoms, and that the Scriptures were studied in the language of each. The differences between them may have been great, or they may have been mere varieties of the same language, so far as any inference from Bede’s language is concerned. It might very well be said in a Bible Society report that the Scriptures were translated into French, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. Here French is as different from German as Latin from Anglic; but Dutch is a Low German dialect, and resembles the Low German more nearly than High German does; and Danish and Swedish are quite as near to each other. The question then to be solved is, Where are we to place the Pictish language? Is it a Celtic or a Teutonic dialect? and if either, was it the same with any of the known spoken dialects, or in what respect did it differ? The answer to these questions will in a great measure show to what race they belonged.
The argument for the Pictish being a Teutonic language is mainly historic, and is at first sight very plausible. It may be thus shortly stated:—Tacitus says that the Caledonians had a German origin. The Picts were the same people as the Caledonians. The Welsh Triads say that the Picts came from Llychlyn, which is Scandinavia. The Picts occupied the Lowlands of Scotland, and broad Scotch is the language of the Lowlands. It is a Teutonic dialect, and no other language can be traced as ever having been spoken in the same districts which the Picts had occupied.[[232]] Such an argument as this could only have been stated with any plausibility before the science of comparative philology existed. If the Picts were the same as the Caledonians of Tacitus, of which there is indeed no doubt, and if they were a Teutonic people, they must have left their original country and settled in Caledonia prior to the first century. A separation from the original stock for so many centuries must infallibly have led to a great divergence in the language, and their Teutonic speech must have presented marked dialectic differences from that of the rest of the race from which they sprang. The broad Scotch, however, of the Lowlands was absolutely identic with the northern English, a variety of the Saxon, or rather Anglic, which prevailed north of the Humber. Nor is it correct to say that this language was spoken in all the districts occupied by the Picts, for they included in their territories the North Highlands, where the spoken language has been, equally far back, the Scotch Gaelic. Further, Tacitus infers a German origin for the inhabitants of Caledonia, not from their language, but from their physical characteristics—the large limbs and the red hair; and it is now quite established that there was no essential diversity in this respect between the German and the Celtic races viewed as a whole. The Welsh Triads which contain the passage referred to may now be regarded as spurious.
Are there, then, any historic grounds which would lead us, irrespective of philological considerations, to consider the Picts as belonging either to the Welsh or to the Gaelic race? The only answer that can be made to this is, that there is almost a concurrent testimony of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain to the Picts having belonged to that branch of the race which the Welsh called Gwyddyl, and the Irish Gaedheal. Throughout the whole of the Welsh documents the Picts are usually denominated Gwyddyl Ffichti, while the Irish are simply termed Gwyddyl. Although this word Gwyddyl is generally used to designate a native of Ireland, and is so translated, this is its modern usage only; and it is impossible to examine the older Welsh documents without seeing that it was originally the designation of the Gadhelic race wherever situated, and the Picts are thus clearly assigned to it.[[233]] This is quite in accordance with what may be called the statement by the Picts themselves. The two races of Cymry or Brython and Gwyddyl are symbolised in the ethnologic family by the two brothers, Brittus and Albanus, from whom descend the Britanni and Albani; and the Pictish Chronicle, which may be viewed as their national record, states that the Scots and Picts were two branches of the Albani. The race of the Picts were not, however, confined to Britain. They originally extended over the whole of the north of Ireland, and though eventually confined to the territory on the east of Ulster called Dalnaraidhe, or Dalaradia, they remained there as a separate people under the name of Cruithnigh till a comparatively late period. Down to the beginning of the seventh century they formed, with the Picts of Scotland, one nation; but during the whole period of their separate existence the Irish Annals do not contain a hint that they spoke a language different from the rest of Ireland; and in the Irish ethnologic family they are made the descendants of Ir, one of the sons of Milesius, whose descent is derived from Gaethel Glas, the ‘eponymus’ of the Gaelic race.[[234]]
It is true that Adamnan tells us that St. Columba used an interpreter in his intercourse with the northern Picts, whom he converted in the sixth century, but this is usually stated much too broadly. Adamnan describes St. Columba as conversing freely with Brude, king of the Picts, with Broichan, his Magus or Druid, and with the king’s messengers, without the intervention of an interpreter.[[235]] On two occasions only does he mention that an interpreter was required; and on both occasions it is connected with his preaching the Word of Life.[[236]]
There is no point on which so much misconception exists as that of the precise amount of divergence between two languages necessary to prevent those speaking them from understanding each other. It is frequently asserted that a Welshman can understand an Irishman, and conversely; and it is invariably assumed that the three dialects of British—the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton—are mutually intelligible. But this is not the case, and, in point of fact, a very small difference is sufficient to affect the mutual intelligibility. A mere change in the vowel sounds, with a difference in the position of the accent, although the vocabulary might be absolutely the same, would be sufficient to render mutual intercourse difficult; and, although one might make a shift to follow a conversation, or a few sentences of simple import might be understood, no very great dialectic difference would be required to make a formal address unintelligible.[[237]] Saint Columba was an educated man, possessing all the learning of the age, and had to instruct a rude and unlettered people whose vernacular idiom would vary in different parts of the country from the cultivated language of a Christian ecclesiastic. He seems to have had no difficulty with the king and those about him; but of the two occasions when he is recorded to have used an interpreter, one was when an old Pictish chief called Artbrannan arrived by sea to meet him in the island of Skye, and therefore probably came from some remote island or place still farther north where the vernacular speech may have had a greater amount of difference from that which Saint Columba used; and it may be remarked that the island apparently furnished the interpreter, and its inhabitants undoubtedly spoke a Gaelic dialect, as they called the spring where Artbrannan was baptized ‘Dobur Artbrannan.’[[238]] The other case was when Saint Columba preached the Word of Life to a peasant somewhere in the province of the Picts;[[239]] and it may be added that when he preached the Word of Life to an old man in the Vale of Urquhart, who was apparently of a higher class, and lived not far from the headquarters of the Picts, no interpreter appears to have been required.[[240]] Giving, therefore, the fullest weight to this consideration, it amounts to no more than this, that the difference between Pictish and Irish may not have been greater than that between Breton or Cornish and Welsh.
Legend again comes in to help us here. The tale that the Picts or Cruithnigh were a colony of soldiers, who had no wives, and that they obtained wives from the Irish settlers by force or by agreement, has undoubtedly a linguistic meaning. All legends are, in fact, attempts to convey a popular explanation of some social or ethnologic peculiarity, the origin of which is lost while the form survives; and when the explanation of one feature has assumed the form that a part of the native population had been a foreign colony from a different country, then the fact of their speaking a native tongue was attempted to be explained by supposing that they had married wives of the native race. This idea is based upon the conception that children learn their language from their mothers, and is conveyed in the popular expression of ‘the mother tongue,’ Thus, in relating the legendary settlement of the Britons in Armorica, Nennius, in order to explain how the settlers retained their own language, has this addition in some copies—‘Having received the wives and daughters (of the Armoricans) in marriage, they cut out their tongues lest their children should learn the mother tongue’[[241]] In the older form of the Irish legend, the race of Miledh, who are brought from Scythia, are said on their settlement in Ireland to have married wives of the Tuatha De Danaan, whom they found in the country. In that contained in the Life of St. Cadroë the country is named by Nel or Niul, in the language of his wife Scota, his own having been corrupted. As soon, therefore, as the idea was formed that the Picts of Scotland and Ireland were not the old inhabitants of the country, but a foreign colony who settled among them, if their language was at all akin to that of the native population, the popular explanation must at once have arisen that they had married wives of the native race, from whom they learned their language; and in the case of the Picts of Scotland this would appear the more probable from a kind of female succession to the throne having prevailed among them. In the British form of the tradition they apply to the Britons for wives, and are refused, and recommended to apply to the Irish, from whom they obtain them; and this may imply that there was a British element in the language of a part of the natives, though that of the main body was Irish. In the Irish traditions they obtain their wives at once from the sons of Miledh, who give them the widows of those of the Milesian colony who were said to have been drowned in the attempt to land. In what may be viewed as the legend of the Picts themselves, it is confined to that of the Irish Cruithnigh, and does not appear in those of the Picts of Scotland. That it was, however, understood as implying that the language of the Picts was derived from these supposed ancestresses of the race, seems to be clear enough. The legend is undoubtedly given in Layamon’s Brut, in order to explain the language of the Picts, which adds—
Through the same women
Who there long dwelt,
The folk began to speak
Ireland’s speech.[[242]]