114 Vestiges of the Earliest Inhabitants of Wiltshire. 



hence too the name of " Picts," which clung to, till it finally super- 

 seded, the original name of a whole people. 1 The herb they used 

 chiefly for this purpose was the glastum or woad 2 a deep dark blue, 

 which long continued to be the favourite colour of the nation. And 

 sometimes they punctured the skin with sharp needles, till it imbibed 

 the paint, after the manner of the modern tattoo : 3 while those who 

 would make the most elaborate toilet performed their body painting 

 in a more artificial manner, describing a variety of figures of beasts, 

 birds, trees, or herbs. 4 Afterwards, as with other nations, their 

 first garments were of skins, and it was not till at a comparatively 



enamelling marks, " Britannorum stigmata" [Camden's Britannia, p. 31.] 

 Compare Herodotus' account of the permanent dye used by the tribes of the Cas- 

 pian, (book i., chap. 203,) and the red paint wherewith a certain Libyan tribe 

 bedaubed themselves, (book iv., chap. 194,) also the practice of the Ethiopians 

 to paint their bodies, when they went into battle, partly with chalk and partly 

 with vermilion (book vii., chap 69), and that of the Mosynoeci to tattoo, and dye 

 their bodies with colours- [Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iv.. p. 226.] 



Csesar Comment : de Bell : Gall : v., 14. 



Pliny, xxii., 1. 



Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. ii., 118. 

 Hume's History of England, chap. i. 

 Rapin's History of England, vol. i., p. 5, 

 Rollin's Ancient History, vol. ii., p. 239. 

 Priehard's Celtic Nations, p. 151 — 158. 



2 In like manner some of the islanders of the Pacific Ocean who had the practice 

 of tattooing their skins, and marking their bodies with various colours, were 

 termed by the Spaniards " Pintados." [Priehard's Physical History of Mankind, 

 vol. i., p. 465.] 



2 Speed's Historie of Great Britaine, p. 8, 21. 

 Milton's History of England, vol. i., p. 13. 

 Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. ii., chap. 5. 

 Sharon Turner's History of England, vol. i., p. 67. 

 Cartes' History of England, p. 74, 



Rapin's History of England, vol. i., p. 5. 



3 For an account of the modern practice of tattooing, and that too with blue 

 colouring matter, amongst the inhabitants of the islands of the South Pacific, 

 see the narrative of the circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian frigate 

 No vara, by Karl Scherzer, vol. ii., pp. 573 — 602. Also Priehard's Physical 

 History of Mankind, vol. i., p. 423. 



4 Pomponius Mela speaks of dying the body with woad, as a mark of rude and 

 unpolished manners (iii., 6), but Herodotus in describing the customs of the 

 Thracians says, " tattooing amongst them marks noble birth, aud the want of it 

 low birth (book v., chap. 6). 



Tyrrell's History of England, vol. i., p. 21. 



