Macalister — Ternair Breg ; Remains and Traditions of Tara. 290 



an inscription of some considerable length. The word appears again as 

 aiddaurnnn 1 on the Newton stone. At Fordoun in Kincardineshire there 

 is an inscription that at one time was contained in at least two lines of 

 niinuscnlar letters : the upper line is now effaced, but the lower can be read 

 HDAHNOIN. The p is probably the last letter of a word begun in the previous 

 line, which leaves us with the same word in the form idaknoin. 



It is not probable that this word is to be taken as a personal name, 

 though as it forms the whole inscription on the Scoonie stone, that would 

 prima facie be the most natural interpretation. For, as it occurs on four 

 out of some twenty stones scattered all over Pictland, the inference would 

 then be inevitable that it was one of the commonest of Pictish names. We 

 should therefore look for it in such a document as the Pictish Chronicle, which 

 mentions a considerable number of Pictish individuals ; but we should look 

 in vain. On the other hand, it cannot be taken as a grave-formula ("here 

 lies " or the like) which is the interpretation at one time suggested by 

 Sir John Rhys 2 ; for in that case it would have been associated with a proper 

 name on the Scoonie stone, and would not have formed the entire inscription. 

 Remembering what we have said above, of the Pictish stones being apparently 

 the memorials of a syncretism, in which pagan faiths mingle strangely with 

 Christianity, we shall perhaps not greatly err if in eddaurnonn, as in the 

 otherwise incomprehensible symbols, we see the invocation of a pre-Christian 

 divinity ; and we may fairly ask ourselves if we are not to see this Pictish 

 divinity, thus recovered, in the lithcrunoi the poem before us. The spelling of 

 the Newton stone, aiddakknnn, without the vowel, is of some importance. 1 1 

 suggests that the last syllable of the name was a nasalised vowel, and that 

 the scribe was in difficulties as to how to express this sound in the exotic 

 Ogham character. 3 This, and the different spellings of the word in the inscrip- 

 tions, would lead us to infer that the pronunciation of tlu> name, in Pictish, 



j_ ^ 



was something like e * Q V O, which the Ethcrun of the Irish poem 



would very fairly represent. 



B. Tea. 



(v). So much, then, for Tephi and her associates. What are we to make 



of Tea ? 



1 This word has previously been read AIDDAIQNNN, owing to the uncertainty of the 

 rounded angle of the stone, and to a natural desire to establish a connexion between the 

 Ogham and the associated inscription in blundered Roman letters. But there can 1>p no 

 question that the real reading is that given above. 



- Piuc. Sue. of Ant, Scot., xxvi, 282. 



3 Much the same remark may be made about the v. in REIR.n<.. the letters with which 

 the Goldspie inscription terminates. !Sir John Rhys (l»>\ fit.) has. I see. made the Mine 



