Olituary Notices. 
XIX 
were so far consolidated under Kenneth MacAlpin, a Dalriad, whose 
line, amid many vicissitudes, held the throne of Scotland till the 
close of the Celtic period. In his chapters on ethnology Skene 
discusses the language and race relationship of the Piets, and comes 
to the conclusion that they were Celts of the Gaelic rather than of 
the British type. The view advanced by Pinkerton, and upheld by 
Oldbuck of Monkbarns, that these people were Teutons who spoke 
a Gothic dialect, is now exploded. It does not follow that Mr 
Skene’s must be accepted. Within the last few years Professor 
Ehys, with great learning and no small ingenuity, has argued that 
the Piets were of Turanian stock, whose speech was largely overlaid 
by loans borrowed from their Gaelic and Brythonic neighbours. 
Mr Skene’s proof is mainly linguistic, and is two-fold. If the 
ancestors of the Northern Highlanders spoke a language other than 
Gaelic, some remains of it would have survived. Again, only on 
two occasions is Columba spoken of as using an interpreter when 
preaching to the Piets, the inference being that, as a rule, the saint’s 
Gaelic speech must have been understood by these people. 
The problem cannot, however, be solved on such narrow issues 
as these. The questions of blood and language must always be kept 
distinct. Anthropology and archaeology may hereafter yield con- 
crete evidence which will be decisive of the matter. As things 
are, the following facts must be kept in the fore-front. Among the 
Piets, succession was through the female. This custom is unknown 
among Celts ; it is indeed, so far as we know, non- Aryan. Again, 
Bede regarded Pictish as a separate language. The Gael of Ireland 
and Scotland looked upon the Piets or Cruithnig, to use the native 
term, as a people different from themselves. Cormac, the first 
Gaelic lexicographer, gives one or two Pictish words, quoting them 
as foreign words, at a time when, presumably, Pictish was still a 
living language. The Norsemen called the Pentland Pirth Pett- 
land, i.e.^ Pictland Fjord, while the Minch was Skottland Fjord. 
Mr Whitley Stokes, after examining all the words in the old records 
presumably Pictish, says: “The foregoing list of names and words 
contains much that is still obscure ; but on the whole it shows that 
Pictish, so far as regards its vocabulary, is an Indo-European and 
especially Celtic speech. Its phonetics, so far as we can ascertain 
them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish.” 
