22 



Sidonius A])ollinaris (^CaiKS Sollius) and Claudiu?, both of the 

 fifth century, and Avcntiniis of the sixteenth, consider the Scots, 

 Saxons and Picts, as kindred people •.'^''- — but the tacts stated by 

 Camden, p. 1 15. convince me that the Picts were of British origin. 

 And if Tacitus be supposed capable of identifying the language of 

 Gaul in Britain, we must suppose him to have been equally so of 

 ascertaininn- that of the Picts to be British : otherwise he would not 

 so uniformly have given the appellation of British to those Ca- 

 ledonians,^*- 



If the venerable Bede, mIio, in the eighth century, had in vain 

 sought authentic information from books respecting the Picts and 

 Scots, was reduced to the necessity of reporting fables on rumour, 

 it is matter of ciu'ious inquiry to know from what source those 

 authors, quoted by Ledwich, had acquired their information in the 

 fourth and fifth centuries. 



Ireland having at an early period, received the tribes of two 

 great nations ; the Celtae, Gauls or Britons, chiefly within its 



53. Aritiq. of Ir. p. 11. 



5i. Let the reader also consult Herodian, Dio and Tacitus, and attend to Agricola's speech 

 to his soldiers, who were opposed to Galgacus the Pictish captain. He will be convinced that 

 those Britons had not acquired the name of Picts, which probably signifies either painted men 

 or champions, until Christianity, in the year 296, became the prevalent religion of the empire 

 under Constantius Chlorus and Constantine, and when the Britons, who had tlien disused 

 painting, held those old countrymen in abhorrence, on account of their idolatry and pillage. 

 It is probable that those Romanized Britons, having then forgotten much of their ancient lan- 

 guage, regarded as foreigners, those naked painted barbarians, whom Herodian represents as 

 bog-trotters, adorned with rings of iron, and without helmets or breast-plates. The language 

 of the Picts must have undergone a great cliange before the 8th cent., when Bede speaks of 

 it as different from the British. ' Caledonia their country, according to Macpherson, is com- 

 pounded of ciiel, or, with an aspirated G, Ciiel, the generic name of the nation, and doch, a 

 district or region, the proper name by which the Scotch Highlanders call their country, Aldin 

 being rather a figurative form of speecli." Enq. into the Antiq. of Scotland by James 

 JNIacpherson, Esq. 



