226 The Picts. 



• ] 

 builders of these mysterious erections must have allowed themselves 



in a "lusus naturce," or an animal with a body and head but with- 

 out a tail. They had not even the apology of the eccentric Lord 

 Monboddo who entertained a notion that mankind were originally 

 created with tails, but in course of ages, from their sedentary habits 

 like the Simia or monkey race, wore them away by sitting upon 

 them. 



I proceed now however to enquire how far Pinkerton and Barry 

 are correct in depriving the Phoenicians and their sacred and literary 

 order the Druids, of their claim to be the builders of the circles so 

 frequently found in Britain, or rather I should say to enquire who 

 were the authors of many similar structures elsewhere, who are 

 confessedly not of the Phoenician or Druidical race. 



From the laborious enquiries of Sir William Betham, the Ulster 

 King of Arms in Ireland, and many other modern writers, it has 

 been proved by the testimony of very ancient historians, as Gildas 

 and Nennius, &c, that the original inhabitants of the Central and 

 Northern divisions of Britain were Picts. "This" says Dr. M c 

 Pherson, minister of Slate in Skye, (Dissertation on Ancient Cale- 

 donians, section xii.) "was an established tradition a thousand years 

 ago, that the Picts were the original inhabitants of the Northern di- 

 vision of Britain." Bede says, in his Ecclesiastical History, " that 

 they came to Caledonia from Scythia, the European part of which, 

 according to Pliny, comprehends Germany." The authority of 

 this venerable writer was never questioned on this head ; and a be- 

 lief has ever since obtained that the Picts were a different race from 

 the Gauls who possessed the Southern parts of Britain. By the 

 Phoenicians on their arrival in Cornwall, these aborigines were cal- 

 led in their language Britons, or painted people, which is more 

 properly the derivation of the word than that of Tin, which is 

 commonly assigned to it. When the Romans subsequently inva- 

 ded Britain, they seem to have merely changed or translated this 

 term into Picti, a Latin word expressing the same meaning, 

 namely, the painted people. These two names however were not 

 the generic designation of the aboriginal inhabitants of this coun- 

 try, who were it has been satisfactorily shewn, either Cymbri 



