170 Gaelic Language of the South of Scotland. 



the south of Scotland. The type of building is so entirely 

 Pictish, that, standing as it does in the line of fortifications, 

 which seem to be those of the eastern frontier of Cumbria 

 in continuation of the Catrail, Professor Veitch suggests it 

 may be a relic of a temporary Pictish conquest of the 

 country. Of course the Picts did harass the Britons very 

 severely after the Romans left ; but it is not very likely that 

 they constructed these great places of refuge then. 



But a circumstance, of some importance to early history, 

 is that King Loth, Llew son of Cynmarch, seems to have 

 been King of Lothian because he had married one of the 

 unending series of Pictish heiresses. I observe in Mr Nutt's 

 Studies of the Legends of the Holy Grail, that the same incident 

 happens in one version to Gwalchmai, son of Llew, that is, 

 Gawaine ; and in another to Gwalchmai, son of Gwiar. Here 

 he is evidently distinguished by his mother's name. Gwiar 

 is a Welsh form, but it would represent the Gaelic Fior, 

 meaning True, not an unlikely Christian name. Llew's 

 alliance with the Picts is much dwelt on (and deplored) by 

 the Welsh bards ; and as there seems to be no building of the 

 true broch type south of the Forth, except Edin's Ha' and 

 the two lately discovered on Gala Water, it seems possible 

 that Llew had had builders sent him by the northern Picts ; 

 especially considering that Plenploth, on the same line, seems 

 to be the Place of the son of Loth, and that the old form 

 of Lugate is Ludgate. I infer from the poems about Llew, 

 that the Pictish secret of the heather-ale was really the not 

 very obvious process of distillation. 



An interesting late Pictish name is Pitliver, on the south 

 coast of Fife, which seems to be book-land or charter-land, 

 like Bookham and Buckton, etc. Pitferrane would mean 

 cultivated land, and the Em and Iron of Galloway names 

 seems to be fearran, with the Gaelic digamma dropped. 



An interesting point about Maelruba, abbot of Applecross, I 

 only came upon after the above was written. This very well- 

 known saint did not die till well on for sixty years after the 

 Council of Whitby, and the best part of a century after the time 

 of Edwin. The only explanation of finding such a decidedly 

 West Highland saint in the south of Scotland at such a period, 

 would seem to be, that he must have been a Eomanising saint, 

 like his older contemporary Adamnan, who not only kept the 



