Chapter VIII: The Results of Caesar’s Invasions of Britain (3)

1. In 296, when the panegyric addressed to Constantius was written, the Picts to whom the writer referred were confined to the part of Scotland which extends northward from the firths of Forth and Clyde; but Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer maintain that the habitat of the Pictish people was once much more extensive. ‘Irish literature,’ says Professor Rhys,[1793] ‘alludes to Picts here and there in Ireland ... in such a way as to favour the belief that they were survivals of a race holding possession at one time of the whole country.’ That the Picts once inhabited the whole of Britain is proved, in the opinion not only of the two professors but also of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, who differs from them on the question of Pictish ethnology, by the following linguistic facts.[1794] The Irish name of the Picts was _Cruthni_.[1795] Britain has, since the Middle Ages, been called in Welsh _ynys Prydein_: _Prydein_ is the Welsh equivalent of _Cruthni_; and _ynys Prydein_ means ‘the island of the Picts’. Now, as Professor Rhys remarks,[1796] _Prydein_, with its cognate forms, _Prydain_, _Prydyn_, and _Pryden_, represents an old Welsh word _Priten_; and accordingly, the Brythonic or the Gaulish name of the Picts, when it reached the ears of the Greeks, would have been written by them Πρετανοί. It must of course be borne in mind that _Cruthni_, _Prydain_, and _Priten_ did not appear in literature until long after Caesar’s time; but the etymology which connects Πρετανοί and Πρεταν(ν)ικαὶ (νῆσοι)--the name by which Ptolemy and other Greek writers call the British Isles[1797]--with _Priten_ is accepted by Celtic scholars who, on the question of the ethnology of the Picts, differ widely among themselves. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1798] concludes that in the time of Pytheas the masters of Britain were the Picts; while Professor Rhys holds that when, shortly before that epoch, the Brythons first landed in Britain,[1799] not the Picts but the Goidelic Celts were the dominant race. In other words, he believes that the Goidelic Celts called the island which they conquered by ‘some such a Goidelic name as Inis Chruithni, “Island of the Picts”’.[1800] M. d’Arbois identifies the Picts of the time of Pytheas with the ancestors of the Goidelic Celts: like Professor Rhys he regards the word _Pretani_ as simply the Brythonic, or Gaulish form of a Goidelic word _Qrtanoi_, of which _Cruthni_ was the later Irish equivalent;[1801] but he holds that no Brythons had set foot in Britain until after the time of Pytheas, and that the word _Pretani_ was learned by Pytheas not in Britain but in Gaul.

Both the views that have just been stated seem to involve difficulties. If Professor Rhys is right in believing that the pre-Roman Goidelic invaders of Britain (whose very existence, as we shall afterwards see, is not universally admitted) called the people whom they found in possession by some such name as Chruithni or Cruthni, the name which, transformed by Brythons into _Pretanoi_, was applied by Pytheas to the inhabitants of Britain generally, it would appear either that the Goidelic invaders had no name of their own or that it was suppressed.[1802] Moreover, Professor Rhys does not explain how it happened that Pytheas never learned the name by which, as he tells us, the Brythons called themselves, namely, Brittones. On the other hand, M. d’Arbois’s view would compel us either to assign the first Brythonic invasion to a date a century later than that which is now generally accepted,[1803] or to assume that Pytheas, although he visited Britain, learned nothing there of the name of its inhabitants. I confess that I cannot suggest any satisfactory solution.

It remains to be inquired whether the Picts of history did really, in a special sense, represent the neolithic population, and whether they spoke a non-Aryan language.

2. Was the word _Pict_, in its original form, pre-Aryan or Celtic? The answers that have been given to this question only serve to amuse the ignorant scoffer, and to illustrate the truth that even if the labours of Zeuss placed the study of the ancient Celtic languages upon a scientific basis, Celtic scholars still know very little about them. When we inquire of Professor Rhys, we are perplexed by the quick changes of front to which his most devoted disciples have by this time become accustomed. In the second edition of his _Celtic Britain_[1804] he said that ‘neither the Picts nor the Scotti probably owned these names, the former of which is to be traced to Roman authors’; and he described the theory which ‘connected the Pict with the Gaulish Pictones’ as a ‘clumsy invention’.[1805] In his Rhind Lectures he assured us that ‘the principal non-Aryan name of the inhabitants of both islands [Great Britain and Ireland] was some prototype of the word Pict’,[1806] and gave reasons, which are now generally accepted, for believing that that name was not connected with the Latin _pictus_.[1807] At the same time he definitely committed himself to the view which he had previously derided as a ‘clumsy invention’, and affirmed that ‘the word Pict ... is hardly to be severed from the Pictones of ancient Gaul’. In _The Welsh People_, which first appeared in 1900, and in a later edition of the same work, dated 1902,[1808] he argued that ‘_Ictis_ [the name of an island mentioned by Diodorus Siculus[1809]] and _Icht_ [the old Irish name of the English Channel] represent possibly a Celtic pronunciation of the same Aboriginal word which the Romans made into _Pictus_ ... we must’, he added, ‘suppose it an early name which the Aborigines adopted, while the Celts ... applied another name _Qṷrtani_, _Pretani_, _Cruithni_,’ &c. But in the same year in which the first edition of _The Welsh People_ appeared he told the members of the British Association that ‘_pictos_ was a Celtican word of the same etymology, and approximately, doubtless, of the same meaning as the Latin _pictus_; that the Celticans had applied it at an early date to the Picts on account of their ... tattooing themselves; and that the Picts had accepted it’.[1810] It is not absolutely clear whether by ‘the Celticans’ he means only those people of Gaul who spoke a language akin to Goidelic or the first Celtic invaders of Britain. As, however, we are told that the Picts accepted their name from ‘the Celticans’, it would seem that those ‘Celticans’ were, or at all events included, the British Goidels; and we ask ourselves in bewilderment why, if the ‘Celticans’ applied the name _pictos_ to the Picts, they also applied the name _Qṷrtani_.[1811] But when we open the latest edition of _Celtic Britain_,[1812] we find that the professor’s views are still in process of development, or of flux. He now reverts to the theory that ‘the native name which suggested the Latin [_Pictus_] was not of Celtic origin either, though only found treated as Celtic’. He adds that ‘the term Pictones, as occurring in Gaul in Caesar’s time, makes it probable that it was also a name of long standing in Britain’; and finally he avows with characteristic candour that ‘we know not from what language it comes’. Turning to our other authorities, we learn from Zimmer that _Picti_ is obviously a Latin translation of the name [the ancestor of _Prydain_] which the Romans learned from the Britons.[1813] In other words, the German _savant_ holds that the word Pictos [if it ever existed except as a Latin accusative plural] was neither aboriginal in Britain, nor Celtican. It has been suggested[1814] that _Picti_ is connected with the old Irish word _cicht_,[1815] a carver or engraver, and is the Cymric form of a Goidelic word _Qicti_;[1816] while Mr. Nicholson, who insists that _Picti_ is not Cymric but Goidelic, claims to have ‘fully shown that this name is ... from the root _peik-_ “tattoo”, with Ind.-Eur. _p_ preserved’.[1817]

The one absolutely certain conclusion to which the student of ethnology can come is that the name of the Picts has not been proved to be of pre-Aryan origin.

3. Still, Professors Rhys and Zimmer will have it that the Picts must have been a non-Aryan people. Caesar,[1818] in a well-known passage, states that among the Britons groups of ten or twelve men had wives in common; in other words, that one of the British customs was polyandry. It has generally been assumed that he meant to say that the custom was prevalent among the Britons generally; but Zimmer, after reviewing the whole chapter in which the passage occurs, concludes that it refers only to _interiores_--the Britons of the interior[1819]--whom Caesar contrasts with _maritimi_,--the descendants of the Belgic invaders. The latter, he argues, according to Caesar’s express statement, differed but slightly in their customs from the Gauls:[1820] therefore the words in which Caesar describes the British custom of polyandry cannot refer to them, but must refer to _interiores_.[1821] The two professors agree in thinking that Caesar, owing to his ‘inability to realize a state of society exclusively based on birth’,[1822] misunderstood the institution which he tried to describe; in other words, that that institution was not polyandry but matriarchy,--the rule of succession by which rank and property are transmitted in the female line; a king, for example, being succeeded not by his own son but by the son of one of his sisters.[1823] Zimmer, referring to Schrader’s _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_,[1824] remarks that among all Aryan-speaking peoples and among the primitive Aryans the custom by which a father is succeeded by his own son (_das Vaterrecht_) was the foundation of social ordinance.[1825] Professor Rhys,[1826] indeed, thinks that this generalization cannot be proved, and refers to a well-known passage in the 20th chapter of the _Germania_ of Tacitus,--‘Sisters’ sons are held in as much esteem by their uncles as by their fathers: indeed, some regard the relation as even more sacred and binding’,[1827] &c. (_Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum qui apud patrem honor: quidam sanctiorem artioremque hunc nexum sanguinis arbitrantur_); but he suggests that the tribe of which Tacitus speaks may have been mixed with some ‘aboriginal race practising the same institution as the aborigines of the British Isles’. And I suggest that the Picts were Celts mixed with aborigines who practised this same institution, and consequently that if it prevailed among the Picts, its prevalence does not prove that they were in any special sense representatives of the aborigines, or that they spoke a non-Aryan language.[1828]

Having corrected Caesar’s narrative to his own satisfaction, Professor Rhys sets himself to prove that matriarchy was a Pictish institution. He observes[1829] that ‘a Pictish king [during the later period of the Roman occupation and afterwards] could not be succeeded by a son of his own, but usually by a sister’s son. The succession,’ he continues, ‘was through the mother, and it points back to a state of society which, previous to the conversion of the Picts to Christianity, was probably based on matriarchy as distinguished from marriage and marital custom.’ To show that matriarchy had formerly prevailed in Britain outside the territory within which the Picts of history were confined, he adds[1830] that ‘the ancient literature of Ireland abounds in allusions to heroes who are usually described with the aid of the mother’s name’, and that ‘this kind of nomenclature implies the Pictish succession as its origin’. Again, he quotes an inscription found at Colchester, which ends with the words

DONVM. LOSSIO. VEDA. DE SVO
POSVIT. NEPOS. VEPOGENI. CALEDO.

(‘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

‘Place of O’ Cuhetts
his place within:
CUAIBH of Nehton’.[1860]

On the other hand, the translation which Professor Rhys ‘provisionally’ offers of _his_ text runs

‘“Kin--Ahehhtmnnn King Nechtan”.

That is to say, King Nechtan of the kin of Ahehhtmnnn’.[1861]

Perhaps it shows a slight lack of humour to attempt, even ‘provisionally’, to translate an inscription assumed to be written in a language the very existence of which is doubtful. Still it is conceivable that Professor Rhys’s text means what he says. But, supposing that it resembles neither Gaelic, nor Welsh, nor any Aryan language, what does it prove? Not that the Picts represented the neolithic aborigines, but simply that in the remotest of the British isles there still survived the non-Aryan language which, as every scholar admits, was once spoken in Britain.

But the truth is that the so-called Pictish inscriptions, even in the hands of the philologist, are so intractable that for ethnology they are practically useless. ‘I can hardly do more,’ says Professor Rhys,[1862] ‘than pick from previous attempts by others and by myself what seems to me the most probable reading.’ This is only one of numerous instances in his well-known article on the inscriptions which show how impossible it is to construct the text with any approach towards certainty.

Professor Rhys remarks, further,[1863] that ‘we have indications in Adamnan’s Life of Columba that [in the sixth century of our era] the language of the aborigines was still a living tongue’. The indications are that when Columba, who spoke Goidelic, visited the province of the Picts, he preached ‘to peasants or plebeians by interpreter’. To those who hold, with Dr. Whitley Stokes and Dr. Macbain, that the Pictish dialect was akin to Brythonic, the fact on which Professor Rhys lays stress presents of course no difficulty. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, however, while he agrees with Dr. Macbain,[1864] makes a reply to Professor Rhys which might be used by those who hold, with Mr. Nicholson, that Pictish was akin to Goidelic. He tells a story of a Breton priest of the diocese of Quimper who assured him that he himself could not understand the Breton dialect of a woman who belonged to the diocese of Vannes.[1865]

Mr. Nicholson[1866] says that ‘we have abundant materials for deciding whether Pictish was or was not (1) Aryan, (2) Keltic, (3) Goidelic, in (_a_) the place-names recorded by ancient geographers and one or two mediaeval documents, (_b_) the person-names given by one or two ancient historians and in mediaeval chronicles, (_c_) the inscriptions’. From these materials Mr. Nicholson undertakes to demonstrate that Pictish was Goidelic, and that ‘it stands to Highland Gaelic in exactly the same relation in which Anglo-Saxon stands to modern English’;[1867] while Dr. Whitley Stokes[1868] and Dr. Macbain[1869] undertake with equal confidence to demonstrate that it was related to Brythonic. According to Bede,[1870] the place which marked the western termination of the wall of Severus was called in Pictish _Peanfahel_. _Pean_ is commonly identified with the Welsh word _penn_, ‘a head’; and accordingly it has been inferred that Pictish was ‘a Kymric or semi-Kymric dialect’.[1871] Mr. Nicholson, on the other hand, claims to have shown that _Pean_ is ‘a Goidelic borrowing from the Latin _penna_ or _pinna_’. Professor Rhys[1872] formerly clung to the view that _Peanfahel_ was a Brythonic name, but was not in the least disconcerted thereby; for, he explained, ‘the Picts must have learnt it ... from the Verturian Brythons.’ On the question of etymology he has now become a convert to Mr. Nicholson’s view:[1873] but on the question of ethnology he retains his own opinion; for, he explains, ‘The non-Celtic Picts, when we find them coming southwards, seem to have been fast adopting the idioms of their neighbours.’[1874] Mr. Nicholson[1875] analyses with laborious ingenuity a large number of names in Adamnan’s _Life of Columba_, of place-names in the _Pictish Chronicle_, of Pictish historical names, and of words which occur in the ‘Pictish inscriptions’, and insists that they are Goidelic: Dr. Whitley Stokes[1876] and Dr. Macbain[1877] produce words from the same sources, from Ptolemy’s Geography, and from Dion Cassius, and insist that they are Brythonic. Dr. Stokes’s authority is so great that his verdict is worth quoting:--‘The foregoing list of names and other words contains much that is still obscure; but on the whole it shows that Pictish, so far as regards its vocabulary, is an Indo-European and especially Celtic speech. Its phonetics, so far as we can ascertain them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish.’[1878]

But the arguments for Brythonic, on the one hand, and for Goidelic, on the other, leave Professor Rhys unmoved. Prove as many Pictish words as you please to have been Goidelic, as many as you please to have been Brythonic: he will regard them with serene indifference.[1879] For, he tells you,[1880] ‘the Pictish language would seem to have been rapidly becoming overloaded with loan-words from Goidelic or Brythonic when we first hear anything about it. So, failing to recognize this borrowing of words by the Picts, some have been led to regard Pictish as a kind of Gaelic, and some as a dialect akin to Welsh. The point to have been decided, however, was not whether Gaelic or Welsh explains certain words said to have been in use among the Picts, but whether there does not remain a residue to which neither Gaelic nor Welsh, nor, indeed, any Aryan tongue whatever can supply any sort of key.’ The professor is still thinking of that outlandish inscription which, according to Mr. Nicholson, is Goidelic, and the professor’s reading of which, according to Dr. Macbain, is no language at all. But, admitting provisionally the existence of ‘a residue’ to which no Aryan language ‘can supply any sort of key’, we should, I must repeat, only have to conclude that in certain remote parts of the extensive territory occupied by the Picts a non-Aryan language survived into the Christian era, just as in a remote part of France a non-Aryan language survives at this day: we should not have to conclude that that language was spoken by the Picts in general. ‘La question,’ says M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, in a notice of Professor Rhys’s article on the Pictish inscriptions,[1881] ‘la question est de savoir si cette population [the pre-Aryan population] est restée dominante. Les noms de peuples tels que _Smertae_ ... des noms d’hommes tels que celui du Calédonien _Argentocoxos_ ... me semblent décisifs.’ It is absolutely certain, and is insisted upon by Professor Rhys himself, that in Roman times many of the tribes which were included under the general designation of Picts bore Celtic names, and that many of the geographical names in the country which they inhabited were Celtic also. On the other hand, not a single Pictish name, tribal, or geographical, or personal, not a single Pictish word which has been preserved by Ptolemy or by our other authorities, has been proved to be non-Celtic; and if, as Professor Rhys maintains, Pictish was a non-Aryan language overlain by loan-words from the two Celtic dialects, it was so buried beneath them as to be no longer discernible. Argentocoxos,[1882] as the professor says, was a Pict, and one of the many Picts whose names were Celtic: if the Picts had spoken a non-Celtic language, however much overloaded with Celtic loan-words, would not their own names have been non-Aryan? As their names were Celtic, it is reasonable to infer that their language was Celtic also. The professor, it is true, points out that ‘in Wales many a man has the English name John Jones, though he cannot speak English’.[1883] Yes, but the Welsh are a conquered or, let us say, absorbed people, whereas the professor himself assures us[1884] that before the time of Ptolemy ‘the Goidels and the Picto-Brythons [of the North] had come under the power of the more purely non-Celtic tribes beyond them’.[1885] But this is of course a pure assertion. The professor fails to prove that any Celtic people in Britain came under the power of non-Celtic tribes. Many centuries before the time of Pytheas the neolithic population had for the most part been reduced to subjection; and, although remote clans may possibly have retained their individuality, in many parts of the island the descendants of the aborigines had become intermingled, first with the ‘Round Barrow’ invaders, the earlier of whom at all events, as I shall presently show,[1886] were not Celts, and secondly with the Celts themselves. Professor Rhys[1887] himself admits that the name of the Picts ‘was never, perhaps, distinctive of race, as Brythons and Goidels seem to have been sometimes included under it’; and, although he goes on to say that ‘the term probably applied most strictly at all times’ to ‘the non-Celtic natives’, it is not likely that the name of non-Celtic natives should have prevailed over that of the Celts.

For all these reasons it appears to me infinitely more probable that in Pictland as, according to Professor Rhys himself, in the rest of Britain,[1888] the non-Aryan language should have been absorbed by Celtic than that Celtic should have been absorbed by the non-Aryan language.

There is probably this grain of truth in Professor Rhys’s theory, that the non-Celtic natives continued to exist in greater purity in the country which was occupied by a group of tribes who, during the latter part of the Roman occupation and afterwards, were called Picts, than in any other part of Britain. But I doubt whether this eminent scholar could have spent his time less profitably than in striving to demonstrate, first, that the language of the Picts was related to Basque, and, when he was forced to abandon this attempt, in clinging to the theory that it was a non-Aryan tongue.

VIII. THE ROUND-HEADS

There is, as we have already seen,[1889] sufficient evidence that round-headed immigrants had begun to appear in Britain towards the end of the Neolithic Age; but the majority of the prehistoric skulls of this kind undoubtedly belong to the Age of Bronze. Men of the same type were living in England at the time of the Saxon invasion;[1890] and their descendants may be recognized here and there at the present day.[1891] The prehistoric skeletons have been found not only in the round barrows of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Denbighshire, Man, and Orkney, and in secondary interments in long barrows, but also in Welsh caverns and graves and in the short cists of Scotland.[1892] The range of this people in Britain was, however, it need hardly be said, far wider than that which the discovery of a few skeletons has indicated.

The round-headed invaders are commonly described as physically finer men than the neolithic population whom in most parts of Britain they subdued;[1893] but the truth is that, both in respect of stature and of cranial form, they belonged to two utterly different groups, though, as might be expected, some exhibit characteristics of both.[1894] The average height of 17 brachycephalic men whose skeletons had been found in round barrows before 1865 would have been, according to Dr. Beddoe’s estimate, 5 feet 9 inches, or almost 1 metre 753; while the average height of 27 men of various cephalic indices, including the 17 just mentioned, whose skeletons (described in _Crania Britannica_) have been found in round barrows, would, according to the same authority, have reached 5 feet 9⅖ inches,[1895] or approximately 1 metre 763. Measurements of skeletons which have been discovered since the publication of _Crania Britannica_ have yielded results virtually the same.[1896] On the other hand two groups of skeletons have recently been described which belonged to a much shorter race. Four, taken from round barrows in Glamorganshire, showed, according to Dr. Beddoe’s method, an average height of about 5 feet 5¾ inches;[1897] while 7 male skeletons, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire, ranged, according to Mr. Alexander Low, between 5 feet and 5 feet 7 inches, the average being only 5 feet 3 inches.[1898] The skulls of these skeletons will be presently described.

The cephalic indices of 103 male skulls, found before the year 1894 in round barrows or in other interments of the Bronze Age,[1899] ranged from 70 to 88, 55 of them exceeding 80; while those of 19 skeletons from round barrows in which no bronze was found ranged from 68 to 88, six of them exceeding 80.[1900] In both series a large proportion of the skulls whose indices fell short of 80 belonged, wholly or in part, to the Long Barrow race. Other skulls, however, which have since been described and of the characteristics of which Dr. Beddoe, the compiler of this list, may have been ignorant, yielded indices higher still.[1901]

But it is not enough to describe the invaders of the Bronze Age as brachycephalic: they shared that characteristic with peoples who were otherwise markedly different from them. Let us first consider those which belong to the so-called characteristic type, which, until a recent date, received more than its share of attention,--that which is seen only in the taller skeletons. Their foreheads, says Rolleston, were ‘sometimes ... especially in cases where the whole skull and skeleton are marked by great strength and even ruggedness, markedly sloping’.[1902] Their supraciliary ridges were often extraordinarily prominent. ‘The eyebrows,’ says the same authority, ‘must have given a beetling and probably even formidable appearance to the upper part of the face, whilst the boldly outstanding and heavy cheek bones must have produced an impression of raw and rough strength.... Overhung at its root, the nose must have projected boldly forward.’[1903] These men were, in some instances, extremely prognathous:[1904] their teeth were often extraordinarily large;[1905] and, to quote Thurnam, ‘the prominence of the large incisor and canine teeth is so great as to give an almost bestial expression to the skull.’[1906] The reader who scans the illustrations in _Crania Britannica_ and in Canon Greenwell’s _British Barrows_ will, however, see that the brachycephalic skulls even of the taller skeletons are not all of the same type. Moreover, some few of the Round Barrow skulls combine the contour of the characteristic brachycephalic skull of the British Bronze Age with dolichocephaly;[1907] and this is one of the facts which tend to prove that in certain parts of England the brachycephalic invaders intermarried with the people whom they found in possession. In the East Riding of Yorkshire, indeed, it would seem that the old race and the new were as completely intermingled as the modern population. Dr. William Wright tells us that in a collection of 80 skulls, taken from round barrows and preserved in the Mortimer Museum at Driffield, ‘almost all the varieties of cranial shape met with in Europe are represented.’ Their cephalic indices ranged from 69 to 92; and, says Dr. Wright, ‘it is doubtful if it is possible to find a materially more mixed series of skulls in a community of to-day.’[1908] Dr. Wright, however, does not believe that the skulls of apparently hybrid form prove intermarriage between the invaders and the old neolithic population, or that the former were purely brachycephalic. ‘To grant this,’ he argues, ‘one must believe that a pure round-headed race could have made its tardy progress across Europe unmixed,--an assumption which to my mind is incredible.’[1909] Has the doctor forgotten that ten male skulls, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire and evidently assignable to the end of the Neolithic or the beginning of the Bronze Age,[1910] were all brachycephalic, and that nine of them belonged to the same pure type.[1911] Has he forgotten that the round barrow skulls of Wiltshire were mainly brachycephalic? Has he ever walked over the mountains of Auvergne? Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness. Very likely when it reached Britain it included a few long-heads; but the contrast between the uniformity in Wiltshire and the diversity in East Yorkshire suffices to disprove the doctor’s theory.

Some of Dr. Wright’s brachycephalic specimens belonged to a type which is quite different from the ‘characteristic’ Round Barrow type, and is also common to almost all the short Welsh and Scottish skeletons mentioned above.[1912] These skulls are generally broader than those of the other kind. The ten found in Aberdeenshire and its neighbourhood ranged between 80·8 and 92·3, their average index being 85·39;[1913] while those of Glamorganshire ranged between 81·7 and 86, and yielded an average of 84·2.[1914] Not one of these skulls is prognathous:[1915] all are high as well as round and broad: the supraciliary ridges are only slightly developed: the cheek bones are not prominent: the face is both broad and short; and the lower jaw is small.[1916]

Who were the brachycephalic people of the round barrows and the short cists, and whence did they come? Those who have attempted to solve these problems have generally had in mind only the tall round-heads, whether their skulls belonged to the characteristic type or showed signs of crossing with the other. Wherever the short people came from, their ethnical affinities are certain: they belonged to the so-called Alpine type of Central Europe, of which the French Grenelle race were a branch. Let us for the present confine our attention to the others. To the questions which I have asked at least six different answers have been given:--that they were Goidelic Celts; that they were Belgae; that they were Finns; that they came from Denmark or the Scandinavian peninsula; that their original home was Dalmatia; and, lastly, that they may be traced back to the valley of the Rhine.[1917] But the view which has been repeated by almost every recent writer is that they were Goidels.[1918]

1-2. The Goidelic theory and the Belgic (which I ought perhaps to apologize for noticing) may be considered together; for if any argument tells in favour of the latter, it tells as much or more in favour of the former.

Thurnam, who does not trouble himself about the distinction between Goidelic and Brythonic Celts, points out that ‘extremely brachycephalic skulls have been exhumed from many of the French chambered tumuli’;[1919] that seven skulls with cephalic indices of 80 and upwards from a dolmen near Senlis, which is in the territory that was occupied by the Belgae, ‘have much resemblance to those from the round barrows’;[1920] and that three skulls with indices of 80, 80, and 85 respectively from a sepulchral grotto in the Belgic department of the Oise are ‘very similar in general character to the short skulls from the round barrows’.[1921] He argues that of the cranial types represented by the peoples of the long barrows and the round barrows respectively ‘one at least must be Celtic’:[1922] he points out that in the cremation interments which have been discovered in round barrows ‘the appearances are consistent with what we are told of the funerals of the Gauls ... by Caesar and Pomponius Mela’;[1923] and his general conclusion is that the Round Barrow people were ‘an offshoot through the Belgic Gauls from the great brachycephalic stock of Central and North-Eastern Europe’.[1924] Finally, Professor Rhys maintained in 1890[1925] (it would be rash to assume that his opinion is unchanged) that the Round Barrow race belonged to the Brythonic group, who, he asserted, being comparatively broad-headed, were less pure than the Goidels.

According to Professor Boyd Dawkins, the Round Barrow race must have been Goidels, and not Wends, Finns, or Slaves, because the latter would not have subsequently retreated eastward ‘against the current of the Celtic, Belgian, and German invasions’;[1926] while the late Canon Isaac Taylor[1927] affirmed that the skulls of the well-known ‘Sion type’, which by some anthropologists are believed to have belonged to the Celtic Helvetii, resembled those of the round barrows.

Now the view that the tall brachycephalic people of the round barrows were the Belgae is so utterly absurd that it is difficult to conceive how writers who posed as authorities on ethnology could ever have entertained it.[1928] If some benighted classical scholar had ascribed the Copernican system to Ptolemy, one may imagine how he would have been derided by scientists; yet such a blunder would not have been different in degree from that which Thurnam committed and Huxley approved. For the Belgic invasion began, at the earliest, in the third, and, as Professor Rhys himself maintains,[1929] in the second century before the Christian era; and the first invaders of the Round Barrow race landed in Britain, at the latest, about 1400 B.C.,[1930] and probably several centuries earlier. The argument which Thurnam bases upon the alleged similarity between Round Barrow skulls and some which have been exhumed from French dolmens has no weight. To begin with, the theory that any Celtic-speaking people invaded Gaul in the Neolithic Age is contrary to historical and archaeological evidence;[1931] and, assuming that they did, the resemblance between the skulls to which Thurnam refers and most of those of the tall Round Barrow skeletons is purely superficial. Any one may convince himself of this who will take the trouble to compare the illustrations of Round Barrow skulls in _Crania Britannica_ with those in _Crania Ethnica_; and Thurnam himself in more than one passage[1932] admits, indeed emphasizes, the distinction. Even Broca[1933] denied that there was any physical affinity between the tall brachycephali of the round barrows and the [so-called] ‘real Celts of Gaul’; and, as we shall see presently, by the latter he simply meant the brachycephalic people, descended from neolithic ancestors, that formed the substratum of the population whom Caesar called Celtae. Similarly Dr. Beddoe truly says that the [characteristic] Round Barrow skulls resemble those of Borreby in the Danish island of Falster, rather than those of Broca’s Celtae.[1934] It is true indeed, as we have seen, that some of the Round Barrow skulls resemble some of the neolithic French skulls; but, speaking generally, the former are far more rugged and in every way more strongly marked than the latter.[1935]

More striking, however, than the contrast between the skulls of the characteristic Round Barrow skeletons and those of the French brachycephalic neolithic race is the discrepancy in stature. The average height of the former was, as we have seen, on the lowest computation, 5 feet 8⅖ inches; that of the latter was very little over 5 feet.[1936] Moreover, while the brachycephalic Finns and Danes and the few modern brachycephalic inhabitants of England are generally tall or moderately tall and fair, those of France and Central Europe are generally not only short but dark.[1937]

The argument that since the Long Barrow skulls were pre-Aryan, those of the round barrows must have been Celtic, begs the question. As we shall see presently, there are other skulls in museums, which belong to neither type, and which undoubtedly are Celtic. What reason is there to deny that the earlier brachycephalic invaders who were buried in round barrows may, as Mr. C. H. Read[1938] reasonably suggests, have been pre-Aryan? The British Celts of the later Bronze Age were doubtless cremated; and therefore their skulls are not forthcoming. And if the resemblance between the cremation interments of the round barrows and those described by Caesar proved that the former were all Celtic, it would also prove that they were Greek![1939]

In answer to Professor Boyd Dawkins it may be said that if the tall Round Barrow race were not Finns or Slaves, it does not follow that they were Goidels. And supposing that they were Finns or Slaves, why should it be necessary to assume that they ‘subsequently retreated eastward against the current of the Celtic, Belgian, and German invasions’? Or that they retreated eastward at all? The ‘Iberian’ immigrants certainly did not retreat ‘against the current’ of the Round Barrow invaders: they retreated, if at all, to the remoter parts of Britain. The argument that the Round Barrow skulls resemble those of the Sion type is disposed of by merely comparing the measurements and the illustrations of the two series. The Sion type, as Rolleston[1940] says, ‘corresponds to many of our long-barrow skulls,’ and is not brachycephalic but dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic:[1941] there is no proof that it was that of the Helvetii;[1942] and, as I have pointed out elsewhere,[1943] there is strong reason to believe that the Helvetii did not appear in Switzerland before the Iron Age.

So much for the arguments which have been adduced in favour of the popular theory. There are facts which absolutely disprove it. First, there is no evidence that the brachycephalic people who built round barrows ever reached Ireland, at least in appreciable numbers; for not a single skull of the characteristic Round Barrow type has ever been found there, and only four brachycephalic skulls which can be referred to prehistoric times.[1944] Yet it is needless to say that since a time long anterior to the Roman invasion of Britain Ireland has been one of the principal abodes of the Goidelic stock. Secondly, it is, as we have seen, in the highest degree probable, if not certain, that the Round Barrow race first invaded Britain in the Neolithic Age. Let us, however, for the sake of argument, accept Professor Boyd Dawkins’s assumption that their advent synchronized with the beginning of the British Bronze Age. Now, according to Professor Montelius, the Bronze Age in this country began about 2000 B.C.; according to Sir John Evans,[1945] six centuries later. It is impossible to fix with certainty the date of the earliest Celtic invasion of Britain; but such historical evidence as we possess points to the conclusion that it was not earlier than the seventh century before the Christian era.[1946] M. Salomon Reinach has argued that a Celtic-speaking people appeared in North-Western Gaul in the ninth century,--the earliest date which has ever been proposed by any scholar; but his view is based on the mere conjecture that κασσίτερος, the Greek word for tin, which occurs in Homer, is of Celtic derivation.[1947] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, indeed, who adopts this conjecture,[1948] supposes that the Celts actually landed in Britain as early as the ninth century before Christ; but even if we accept his chronology, we are confronted with the fact that the very earliest date that has been assigned on historical or linguistic grounds for the first Celtic invasion[1949] is four or five centuries later than the latest, ten or eleven centuries later than the earliest date which has been assigned by archaeologists for the commencement of the Bronze Age in Britain. Yet anthropologists and antiquaries will go on repeating the dogma that the builders of the round barrows, who, at the latest, began to arrive in Britain at the commencement of the Bronze Age, were Goidelic Celts. The moral is that anthropologists and antiquaries would not be worse equipped if they enlarged the sphere of their studies.

Again, the view that a Celtic-speaking people invaded Britain at the close of the Neolithic or the beginning of the Bronze Age implies that Celtic and Latin, the nearest of kin in the Aryan family of languages, had become differentiated long before the Neolithic Age came to its end. Would any philologist who knew the rudiments of archaeology sanction a theory so preposterous?[1950]

The foregoing arguments apply equally to the short men whose remains have been found in the greatest purity in North-Eastern Scotland. The race to which they belonged began to arrive in Gaul very early in the Neolithic Age:[1951] they themselves landed in Britain before its close. Whoever they may have been, they were neither Goidels nor Belgae nor Brythons of any tribe.

Finally, although I am aware that I am about to tread upon thorny ground, I affirm that there is not the slightest reason to doubt that the Celtic invaders of Britain, in so far as they were descended from the Celtic-speaking people who conquered Gaul, were not a brachycephalic but a dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic people. I have already argued in favour of this thesis in a dissertation on ‘the Ethnology of Gaul’,[1952] and I will now adduce fresh evidence in its favour. But first let me make my meaning perfectly clear. I do not mean that the Celtic invaders of Britain were all of the same type. On the contrary, I assume that the dominant race had intermixed and intermarried, before they embarked from the Continent, with descendants of the neolithic stocks. I do not mean that even the invaders who introduced the Celtic language into Gaul, even those who beat the Romans on the Allia, were homogeneous. Dr. Beddoe, as I have remarked elsewhere,[1953] warns us not to believe that there was ever a period when, for example, all the Caledonians were red-haired. I only mean that among the Celtic-speaking conquerors of Britain dolichocephaly, as well as tallness and fairness, was a prevailing characteristic.

Thurnam[1954] asserted that ‘we may ask in vain for a series of ancient dolichocephalic skulls which, on satisfactory archaeological grounds, can be assigned to the immediately pre-Roman, and therefore to the Celtic period, either in England or in France’. Let us consider England first. Now it happens that the skulls of the ‘Late Celtic’ period, or Early Iron Age, which have been found in this country are almost all either dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic.[1955] Canon Greenwell,[1956] it is true, explains this fact by the assumption that ‘the intruding round-headed people ... were gradually absorbed by the earlier and more numerous [Long Barrow] race’. ‘In this way,’ he says, ‘it appears to me that we may account for the skull type of the Early Iron Age without the necessity of requiring any immigration into Britain or its conquest after the time of the presumed occupation by the bronze-using round-headed people,’ &c. But that necessity is imperative. Had Canon Greenwell momentarily forgotten his Caesar? The immigration of the Belgae took place, at the earliest, in the third century B.C., many centuries after the ‘occupation by the bronze-using round-headed people’. It is true that some of the British skulls which belong to the Late Celtic period are of the same type as those of the Long Barrow race:[1957] but this only proves that the Long Barrow race survived; and others are of a type which, as Rolleston says, is ‘entirely wanting ... in the series from the long barrows’.[1958] Unfortunately, however, the Late Celtic skulls which have been found in Britain are comparatively few;[1959] and hardly any of them can be assigned with certainty to the Brythonic invaders.

In France, on the other hand, the skulls of the corresponding period are very numerous; but few of them have been measured. Those few, however, confirm my argument. They belonged with very few exceptions to tall mesaticephalic or dolichocephalic men; and two of them may be seen in Salles IX and X of the Musée de St. Germain, near Paris, the former having been buried with his war-chariot, iron helmet, and long iron sword. The mean index of twenty-seven adult male skulls of this type, found in _tumuli_ of the Early Iron Age in the department of the Marne, was 78·49; but Broca, who has described them, maintains that the index of skulls of the purest ‘Kymric’ (or, to use the term which is now in vogue, ‘Galatic’) type would be considerably lower; for, he argues, as the Gauls of the Marne lived very near the frontier of the Celtae, they must have intermarried with the brachycephalic people who formed the great majority of that group of tribes.[1960]

Again, in a recent article on _tumuli_ of the Early Iron Age in the department of the Côte-d’Or, Dr. Hamy points to the noteworthy fact that two brachycephalic skulls, belonging to descendants of an earlier race, were found ‘among the dolichocephali who predominated in that population’;[1961] and in a paper which he has just published on the earliest Gallic invaders of the Iron Age he shows that the cephalic indices of the available skulls from the Châtillonnais and the arrondissement of Beaune range between 73·1 and 76·59, while the average stature was 1 metre 75·7, or just over 5 feet 9⅛ inches.[1962]