October 5, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



509 



time before the term Picti appears in litera- 

 ture. For Herodian, after saying tliat they 

 went naked, writes about them to the fol- 

 lowing effect : " They puncture their bod- 

 ies with colored designs and the figures of 

 animals of all kinds, and it is for this rea- 

 son that they do not wear clothes, lest one 

 should not behold the designs on their bod- 

 ies." This is borne out by the names by 

 which the Picts have been known to the 

 Celts. That of Pict is itself in point, and I 

 shall have something to say of it presently ; 

 but one of the other names was in Irish, 

 Cndthni, and in Welsh we have its etymo- 

 logical equivalent in Prydyn or Prydain. 

 These vocables are derived respectively 

 from Irish cruth and Welsh pryd, both mean- 

 ing shape, form or figure, and it is an old 

 surmise that the Picts were called by those 

 names in allusion to the animal forms 

 pricked on their bodies as described by 

 Herodian and others. The earlier attested 

 of these two names may be said to be Pry- 

 dyn or Prydain, which the Welsh used to 

 give in the Middle Ages to the Picts and the 

 Pictland of the North, while the term Ynys 

 Prydain was retained for Great Britain as a 

 whole, the literal meaning being the Island 

 of the Picts ; that is the only name which 

 we have in Welsh to this daj^ for this isl- 

 and in which we live — Ynys Prydain, ' The 

 Picts' Island.' Now one detects this word 

 Prydain in effect in the Greek Tlpsrw^uai Nfisoi 

 given collectively to all the British Isles by 

 ancient authors, such as Strabo and Dio- 

 dorus. It may be rendered the Pictish Is- 

 lands, but a confusion seems to have set in 

 pretty early with the name of the Brittanni 

 or Brittones of South Britain ; that is to 

 say, Pr'etanie, ' Pictish,' became Brittannic or 

 British ; and this is, historically speaking 

 the only known justification we have for 

 including Ireland in the comprehensive 

 term ' The British Isles,' to which Irishmen 

 are sometimes found jocularly to object. 

 In the next place may be mentioned the 



Tuatha De Danann of Irish legend, who 

 cannot always be distinguished from the 

 Picts, as pointed out by Mr. MacEitchie. 

 The tradition about them is that, when 

 they were overcome in war by Mil and his 

 Milesians, they gave up their life above- 

 ground and retired into the hills like the 

 fairies, a story of little more value than that 

 of the extermination of the Picts of Scotland. 

 In both countries doubtless the more ancient 

 race survived to amalgamate with its con- 

 querors. There was probably some amount 

 of amalgamation between the TuathaDe Dan- 

 ann, or the Picts, and the Little Mounds- 

 men ; but it is necessary not to confound 

 them. The Tuatha shared with the Little 

 People a great reputation for magic ; but 

 they differed from them in not being dwarfs 

 or of a swarthy complexion ; they are usu- 

 ally represented as fair. In the case of 

 Mider the fairy king, who comes in some 

 respects near the description of the heroes 

 of the Tuatha D6 Danann, it is to be noticed 

 that he was a wizard, not a warrior. 



Guided by the kinship of the name of the 

 Tuatha De Danann on the Irish side of the 

 sea and that of the Sons of Don on this side, 

 I may mention that the Mabinogion place 

 the Sons of Don on the seaboard of North 

 Wales, in what is now Carnarvonshire ; 

 more precisely their country was the region 

 extending from the mountains to the sea, 

 especially opposite Anglesey. In that dis- 

 trict we have at least three great prehistoric 

 sites, all on the coast. First comes the great 

 stronghold on the top of PenmaenMawr ; 

 then we have the huge mound of Dinas 

 Dinlle, eaten into at present by the sea 

 southwest of the western mouth of the 

 Menai Straits ; and lastly there is the ex- 

 tensive fortification of Tre'r Ceiri, overlook- 

 ing Dinlle from the heights of the Eifl. By 

 its position Tre'r Ceiri belonged to the Sons 

 of Don, and by its name it seems to me 

 to belong to the Picts, which comes, I be- 

 lieve, to the same thing. Now the name 



