1896-97-] THE PICTS. 301 



importance, of these officials who are mentioned under the appellation of 

 Mormaor or grand steward and toiseach or chieftain. No valid reason 

 is available to dispute the accuracy and consequent reliability of the 

 tradition that St. Columba and Drostan founded the monastery of Deer 

 in the manner which is detailed in the book. The language, though 

 partaking of the peculiarities which attach to all the oldest specimens 

 of Gaelic that are extant, is purely Gaelic, and, as the book purports to 

 giv^e and reproduce the very words of Columba, e.g., " Rolaboir Colum- 

 cille bedear ainm o huun imace," the inference is plausible enough that 

 Gaelic was the language which Bede, the Pict, and the Picts spoke who 

 resided in that part of Scotland, and with whom, in virtue of his position 

 as Marmaor, he had intimate relationship. Cruithne, the ordinary term 

 which was applied to the Picts in the sixth and subsequent centuries, 

 is in the Book of Deer applied to Bede, the Mormaor, who made a 

 present of the town to Columba. The fact that certain proper names 

 occur in the Gaelic portions of the book, which are not known otherwise 

 in Gaelic nomenclature, does not invalidate the argument which can be 

 deduced in favour of the contention, that the language of the northern 

 Picts, who were contemporary with St. Columba, was Gaelic, identical 

 with the language which the Gaels of Scotland have always spoken. 

 Than Skene, the talented and painstaking author of Celtic Scotland, no 

 one can speak with greater authority in connection with all questions 

 affecting the Picts and Scots. His emphatic language is : " We cannot 

 point to any spoken language in the island which can be held to repre- 

 sent Pictish as a distinctive dialect. The Cruithnigh to the beginning 

 of the seventh century, formed with the Picts of Scotland, one nation. 

 During the whole of their separate existence, the Irish annals do not 

 contain a hint that they sp^ke a language different from the rest of 

 Ireland." 



It is unnecessary to follow the political fortunes of the Dalriads and 

 the Picts, until they were united to form one kingdom under Kenneth 

 MacAlpine in 844. It has been reasonably held, that the union of the 

 Picts and Scots under one sovereign formed an important era in the 

 history of Scotland. The whole of Scotland, north of the Firths of Forth 

 and Clyde, was welded into one kingdom which was never afterwards 

 broken up into separate principalities. The life of the Scottish court 

 flowed on amid many diversities of fortune, and Gaelic continued to be 

 the language of the court until the reign of Malcolm Canmore, who mar- 

 ried the Anglo-Saxon Princess Margaret in 1070, and transferred the 

 court and capital from Scone to Dunfermline, thereby terminating the 

 honourable position which the Gaelic language hitherto possessed as the 



