64 A Pict's House. 



their bodies or of painting them with a dye extracted from wood. 

 But in proportion as the Roman occupation led to the disuse of 

 this practice in Southern Britain and in the southern portions of 

 Scotland which came under its influence, it came to be applied 

 more specially to the inhabitants beyond tlie northern wall which 

 were never thoroughly conquered by the Romans. It may be 

 questioned whether the northern tribes called themselves by this 

 name. Indeed it does not seem the least likely that they would 

 call themselves painted people. But it is constantly used by 

 Latin writers in subsequent times to describe them, and in this 

 way came to be the cognomen by which they were known. 

 There is another explanation, however, which is not without 

 probability. There is a book in our library — piesented two or 

 three years ago by the author, Mr D. Macritchie — culled the 

 " Testimony of Tradition," in which he maintains that the proper 

 name of these people is Pechts or Pchts, which means dwarfs or 

 little men. And he traces the name of the Pentland Hills south 

 of Edinburgh, and of the Pentland Firth, wliich divides the 

 mainland from the Orkney Islands, to these people, Pentland 

 being simply a corruption of Pecht or Pchtland. And Professor 

 Rhys, in his book on Celtic Britain, expresses the same opinion. 

 This suggests a diiferent explanation of the origin of the name 

 given to these tribes by the Romans. It may have been only a 

 Latinised form of the name they gave themselves — Pechti or 

 Picti. Dr Anderson, in liis book on " Scotland in Pagan Times," 

 does not acquiesce in the propriety of the name of Picts' houses 

 being given to the kind of buildings we are considering on the 

 ground that there is nothing about them to connect them witli 

 any particular race ; but that they ought to be called " earth 

 houses," as descriptive of their peculiarity as buildings under the 

 surface of the ground. But there is perhaps something to be 

 said in favour of the name they have commonly received when it 

 is remembered that they are chiefly, if not exclusively, found in 

 tlie region which was known to have been occupied by the Picts. 

 Passing from this point, I shall now refer to the kind of 

 remains that have been found in other buildings of the kind 

 which have been discovered and explored, and here I take my 

 information from Dr Anderson's book on " Scotland in Pagan 

 Times," in which a good many of them are figured and described. 

 In almost all of them there were relics of occupation in the form 

 of calcined ashes and fragments of the bones of animals, chiefly 



