XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 525 



in reference to the remote times when they first reached Britain 

 from Upper Gaul and there dwelt on the frontiers of their Pictish 

 forerunners from Lower Gaul. 



There is no longer much doubt as to the identity of these 

 Picts with the Continental Pictones, Pictavi, whose 



_ . , . , . r r> 



name survives in Poitou, and its chief town Poitiers. 

 The classical references show that in Roman times the Pictones 

 were of Gaulish speech, but there is good reason to believe that 

 their original language was Iberian, which, as above seen, was 

 radically connected with the Berber (Hamitic) of North Africa. 

 They may therefore be taken as Aryanised Mediterraneans, and 

 the question will then arise, Were they Aryanised before or after 

 the migration to Britain? If before, then the emigrants of Iberian 

 speech must have been Aryanised in their new insular homes at 

 an early date. It is remarkable that by the Irish the Picts 

 were commonly called Cmithne, which answers etymologically 

 to Pry dain ( Ynys Prydairi) a Welsh name for the " Island of 

 Britain 1 ." They were therefore, apparently, not distinguished by 

 the Irish from the Kymry and other Britons, which could scarcely 

 be the case had they, within the memory of man, spoken an 

 Iberian or any other non-British tongue. 



Thus may, perhaps, be explained the faint (if any) traces of 

 Iberian speech in Britain, where the Picts were, at least at first, 

 more closely connected with the Kymry than with the Scots, that 

 is, the Gaels from Ireland 2 . Their association with these Scots, 



Lat. mar go, Goth, marka, Eng. mark, as in Denmark and Marcomanni, the 

 "Men of the Marches," i.e. the southern Germans dwelling about the Kelto- 

 Slav borderlands. The general equation is due to J. Kaspar Zeuss, whose 

 great work, Grammaiica Celtica, 1853, introduced order into Keltic philology 

 and ethnology. 



1 This troublesome name, originally Brettdna, is connected by Rhys with 

 Welsh brethyn, "cloth," so that Brettdni=\hz "cloth-clad," and is to be 

 distinguished from Prydyn, the native name both for the Picts and for Scotland. 



2 That the Scots were Gaels might perhaps be questioned ; but that they 

 came over from the north of Ireland in comparatively recent times is beyond 

 all doubt. In the very old, if not quite authentic, Confcssio of St Patrick 

 occurs the expression "una benedicta Scota," and Ireland itself was called 

 Scotia, later Scotia Major, to distinguish it from Scotia Minor, i.e. North 

 Britain, to which the name was extended after the Scots had reduced the Picts. 



