14 Donald A. Mackenzie — Scottish Pork Taboo 



(33) that the Picts were divided into two clans called the Ores 

 (Young Boars) and the Cats. He quotes the followino- 

 significant statement from the Gaelic *' Book of Ballymote " : 



" Cairnech was for seven years in the sovereignty of 

 Britons, and Cats, and Ores and Saxons." 



'' Inse Catt " (Islands of the Cats) was Shetland, and " Inse 

 Orcc " (Islands of the Boars) was Orkney. Prof. Watson 

 writes : — 



'' Though Ptolemy does not mention by name the tribe 

 who inhabited Orkney, their name mav be inferred with 

 fair certainty from the names Orcas, Orcades. The adjec- 

 tive Orcas is formed from a noun Orcos, which, as has been 

 pointed out by Macbain and others, is a Celtic word repre- 

 sented in Irish by ore, a young boar, and cognate with Latin 

 porcus, a pig. From this again comes Orcades, the Boar 

 Isles, formed like Cyclades, Sporades, Echinades and other 

 Greek names for island groups " (33, 23). 



The '' Cats " gave their name to Caithness, and to the 

 inhabitants of that county and of the county of Sutherland. 

 The Duke of Sutherland is still referred to in Gaelic as '' Duke 

 of the Cats." Clan Chattan is the '' Cat clan," 



Another Scottish pig locality is Banff. This place-name 

 is derived from the Gaelic hanb (pig), Welsh banw. The pig- 

 had several Celtic names. 



We have found that the pig-god might assume a bird form 

 and cause seed-corn to multiply. The Ore (Young boar) had 

 similarly a number of transformations. In old Irish Ore is a 

 name for the salmon, while Oircne, the diminutive form of 

 Ore, w^as applied to a particular kind of lap dog. Ore also 

 signified an egg. As Hathor was " House of Horus," the egg' 

 may have been regarded as the " house " of the boar god. 

 Another pig-name was '^ cribuis " and the "' cribus mara " 

 was the porpoise. The whale remains to be added to the Old 

 Celtic mythological museum. One of its Celtic names is ore. 

 It was known to Milton who has a line in '' Paradise Lost " 

 (Book xi, line 835) referring to 



'' The haunt of seals, and ores, and sea-mews' clang." 



The common people, in their everyday superstitions, and 

 children in their games, perpetuate beliefs and customs of 

 great antiquity, and even the memory of beliefs and customs 



