The result then of this analysis is that the earliest part of the list of Pictish kings is purely Irish or Gaelic in its forms, and that this Gaelic part belongs to the northern Picts; that another part of the list shows Gaelic forms, but more removed from the Irish, with a considerable British element; that this part of the list is more connected with the southern Picts; that the British element is not Welsh but Cornish, and belongs to that part of the territories of the southern Picts which lay between the Tay and the Forth. The explanation probably is that this district formed part of the territory occupied by the Damnonii, who, as they bore the same name, were probably of the same race as the Damnonii of Cornwall; and when a part of this tribe was included in the Roman province, the northern part beyond the wall which formed the boundary of the province was incorporated into the Pictish kingdom. They were probably the ‘Breatnu Fortrein’ or Britons of Fortren of the Irish legends,[[261]] and gave kings of its race to the throne; while Scone, which was their capital during the latter period of the Pictish kingdom, was exactly on the frontier between the two populations.
Another part of the list, which shows a mixture of Welsh, Gaelic, and Teutonic names, belongs to the Picts who took the eastern districts between the walls from the British population, and were in turn subjected by the Angles. The only names in the list which can be attached to the Picts of Galloway are Drust and Cindaeladh, and these are Gaelic forms, the latter showing the Gaelic ‘Ceann,’ a head. Reginald of Durham, who wrote in the latter part of the twelfth century, reports one word of the Pictish language of Galloway. He tells us that certain clerics of Kirkcudbright were called in the language of the Picts, ‘Scollofthes,’ and in the title of the chapter he implies that the Latin equivalent was ‘Scolasticus.’ This word is in Welsh ‘Yscolheic,’ and in Irish ‘Sgolog.’ This word does not therefore give us the means of discriminating, though it approaches most nearly to the Irish form.[[262]]
Evidence derived from topography.
Such being the results which we obtain from an analysis of the lists of Pictish kings, and an examination of the few Pictish words preserved to us, the meaning of which we can ascertain, there remains one other source of information. The topography of the country furnishes us with a not unimportant element of evidence in endeavouring to ascertain the character of the languages of the tribes which have possessed it, and the linguistic family to which they belong, but this test has hitherto been much too loosely and carelessly applied. It can only be depended upon, if rightly used, under certain conditions, and controlled by definite rules of interpretation and comparison.
The oldest names in a country are those which mark its salient physical features,—the large rivers and mountains, the islands and promontories jutting into the sea. These usually resist longest the effect of changes in the population, and the introduction of different languages, and their primitive names remain attached to them through successive fluctuations in the speech of the people who surround them; while the names belonging to the inhabited part of the soil, and places, connected with the social life of the people, and their industrial occupation, give way more readily, and are less tenaciously attached to them. The names of rivers and islands are usually root-words, and sometimes so archaic that it is difficult to affix a meaning to them. Those of the mountains and valleys, the townships and homesteads, are more descriptive, and consist of two words in combination,—one which may be termed generic and common to the class to which the physical feature belongs; and the other specific, distinguishing one member of the same class from another by some peculiarity of form, colour, or situation. In countries where the topography obviously belongs to the same language with that spoken by the people who still possess it, though perhaps in an older stage of the language, it presents little difficulty. It is only necessary to ascertain the correct orthography of the names, and apply the key furnished by the language itself in that stage of its forms to which the words belong. This is the case with the greater part of Ireland and with the Highlands of Scotland, where the local names obviously belong to the same Gaelic language which is still the vernacular speech of its population. It is the case too with Wales, where the people still speak that form of British to which its topography belongs; and with Cornwall, where the language was spoken to the middle of last century; but in that part of the country where the Saxon, or rather the Anglic, has superseded the Celtic as the language of the people, the case is different, and great caution must be used in applying this test. This is the case in the north-eastern Lowlands of Scotland, and in the whole country south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, including Galloway, where the people speak what is usually called broad Scotch, and is the same with the old Northumbrian English.
There is no difficulty in distinguishing the names which have been imposed by the Angles themselves, and which have superseded the older Celtic names. There is one broad distinction between the Anglic and the Celtic forms. In the latter the generic term precedes the specific, and in the former it follows it. But in order to ascertain what Celtic races occupied these districts before they were superseded by the Angles, we must examine the older stratum of Celtic names which still remain, and compare them with those of the districts in which the language is still spoken by the people. The usual mode in which this has been done has been either to assume that wherever a Celtic name in the one district is also found in the other, it affords proof that the Celtic people who occupied the two districts belonged to the same branch of the Celtic race, or else to take the modern form of the word, and to interpret it by such words in the different Celtic dialects as appear to come nearest to it in sound.[[263]] There is, however, a great fallacy in both methods. In the first, because there is a very considerable number of words which are common to both branches of the Celtic language, and this number was greater formerly than it is now, and the words approached more closely to each other in form; but some words which were once common to both are now obsolete in one and preserved in the other, and the form of the same word has sometimes become differently modified in each so as to have less resemblance. When the name therefore belongs to this class it affords no test of difference or similarity of race. There is also in people belonging to the same race a capricious preference by one of one synonym, and by the other of another, which shows an apparent difference of nomenclature when none really exists.[[264]] The only true test, in a comparison of this kind, is to limit it to those words, in the form of which the phonetic differences between the different dialects must be apparent. The fallacy in the other mode is that when the population of a country speaks a different language from that to which its topography belongs, the names of places undergo a process of corruption and change till the modern form diverges very much from the original word, and in order to ascertain its true meaning, or to make it the means of affording a genuine comparison with the topography of those districts where the language still remains, it is necessary to trace back the word historically to its oldest form, and interpret it by the language in its then stage of progress.[[265]]
In examining, then, the Celtic topography of those districts in which the people and language have been superseded by the Anglic, we ought first to look to those names of places which have been preserved by writers contemporary with the existence of the four kingdoms as separate states; and before doing so we may remark that in the river and island names, which are the oldest, there are one or two archaic words which we may venture to recognise as Iberian or Basque. A common appellation of rivers is the Celtic word for water. Uisge in Gaelic and Wysg in Welsh furnish the Esks and Ouses which we find here and there; so do Dobhar in Gaelic and Dwfr or Dwr in Welsh, as well as Gwy, which signify water, and give us the Dours and the Wyes. The Basque word for water is Ur, and analogy would lead us to recognise it in the rivers called Oure, Urr, Ure, Urie, Orrin, and Ore. The syllable Il, too, enters largely into the topography of the Basque countries; and the old name for the island of Isla, which was Ile, and which legend tells us was occupied by Firbolg, is probably the same word, as are the rivers of that name in Banff and Forfar, and the Ulie in Sutherland, known to Ptolemy as the ‘Ila.’
Tacitus furnishes us with five names in this part of Britain—‘Caledonia,’ the ‘Tavaus’ estuary, the ‘Clota’ or Clyde, the ‘Bodotria’ or Firth of Forth, and the ‘Mons Granpius,’ Of these names two only are genuine survivals to the present day—the ‘Tavaus’ estuary and that of ‘Clota.’ There is little doubt that the former takes its name from the Gaelic word ‘Tamh,’ smooth. The Welsh equivalent is Taw, from which the name of the Welsh river the Tawi is formed.[[266]] Ptolemy, besides the ‘Tava,’ ‘Bodotria,’ or‘ ‘Boderia’ as he calls it, and the ‘Clota’ or Clyde, has of the islands the names of which still survive, ‘Maleus’ or Mull, and ‘Scetis’ or Skye; and of the rivers, the ‘Longus,’ which corresponds with the river in Argyllshire called the Add, and in Gaelic the ‘Abhainn Fhada,’ or long river, the ‘Deva’ or Dee in Aberdeenshire, the ‘Loxa’ or Lossie, the ‘Celnius’ or Cullen, the ‘Deva’ or Dee in Galloway, and the ‘Tinna’ or Eden in Fife. Of these the Deva comes more nearly to the Gaelic Dubh, black, than to the Welsh Du.
Gildas, in the sixth century, mentions only the ‘Mons Badonis,’ which, if it is rightly placed in the north, affords no criterion. In the following century the geographer of Ravenna gives us a large collection of local names, many of which are obviously corrupted forms of those in Ptolemy. Although the exact position of each name is not defined, yet they are obviously placed in geographical groups, three of which belong to the region with which we are dealing. One group, consisting of forty-eight names, is placed between the Roman wall extending from the Solway to the Tyne, and what the geographer describes as ‘where Britain is discerned to be most narrow from sea to sea,’[[267]] by which the narrow isthmus between the Firths of Forth and Clyde is obviously meant, and includes the stations on the wall; the second with ten names placed upon this isthmus; and the third with twenty-seven names beyond it. In the first group we can recognise two Welsh forms in the names placed together, and next to ‘Carbantium,’ which must be ‘Carbantorigum’ the town of the Selgovæ, of ‘Tadoriton’ and ‘Maporiton.’[[268]] In the second group, we have the sixth name, ‘Medio Nemeton,’ which latter word is surely the Irish Nemed, a sanctuary.[[269]] When we enter the third group, we come at once upon Gaelic forms. The fourth name, ‘Cindocellun,’ is obviously compounded of the Gaelic ‘Ceann,’ a head, and the name of the Ochil range. Besides these three groups we have a small group of eight names termed places, loca, by which districts seem to be meant, as the last four ‘Taba, Manavi, Segloes, and Daunoni’ are obviously the district about the Tay; Manau or Manann; the district occupied by the Selgovæ, or Dumfriesshire; and that occupied by the Damnonii, or the shires of Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark. There is then a list of rivers in Britain generally, and another of islands, which need not be adverted to.
Most of the names furnished by Adamnan in the seventh century belong to the Western Isles, among which he mentions Ilea, Malea, Egea, and Scia, and to the territory of the Scots, but a few belong to what he terms the province of the Picts, and some of these he gives only in their Latin equivalents.[[270]] There is the ‘Stagnum Aporicum’ or ‘Aporum,’ in which we recognise Lochaber. The river of ‘Nesa,’ the lake called ‘Lochdiæ,’ and the district of ‘Ardaibmurcol,’ and bay of ‘Arthcambus,’ are obviously Gaelic forms. He also mentions the ‘Petra Cloithe,’ or rock of Cluaith, by which Alcluith is meant. Eddi, who wrote about 720, in his Life of Wilfrid, gives us two names in the district of Lothian—Coludesburg, now Coldingham; and Dyunbaer, now Dunbar.[[271]] The former is Saxon, but the latter unmistakably Gaelic, and must belong to the Picts, who superseded the British Ottadeni, and formed the population of that district during the fifth and sixth centuries.