148 CRANIA BRITANNICA. [CHAP. V. CHAP. V. ] HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN. 149
I
•m
North Britain, the Britannia Barbara of the Romans, is sometimes regarded as beginning at
the wall of Hadrian, sometimes at that of Antoninus. The latter is the proper geographical
boundary, as implied by Tacitus, when he describes the country north of the Forth and Clyde as
forming as it were another island*. The district between the two walls was, in the time of
Ptolemy, occupied by four tribes ; the Novantes, the Selgovas, whose name survives in the Solway,
the Gadeni, Otadeni, and by part of the Damnii or Damnonii. To the north of the friths, were the
remainder of the Damnii and thirteen other tribes, many of whose names are the same as those
of South Britain, and like them significant in the Cymric dialect, The Damnonii, like the Dumnonii
of the south, derive their name from the British dwfii, a vaUey. The Cornabii of Caithness
have the same name as the Cornavii of Cheshire, with its horn-like promontory of the WirraU.
The name is identical with that of Cornwall—Cornubia—and derived from the British cernyw,
a horn t- The name of the Cant®, occupying the promontory of East Boss, is clearly the same
as that of the Cantii, the etymon of whose name is traced in that of other Celtic tribes occupying
headlands, as the Cangani, and in the promontory of Cantire, derived from the Irish ceann, head
or end, and tir, land J. The Caledonii appear in Ptolemy simply as one of the northern tribes,
but their importance is marked by the extent of their territory, stretching diagonally through the
highlands, from shore to shore, and bounded to the north by the " Caledonian wood," from which
their name is derived; cehjdcl in British signifying a wood §. Then- designation is also found in the
Deucalidonian ocean, the name of their western shore. In Tacitus, Caledonia means the whole
comtry north of the Eorth, a generic use of the name which may have originated with Agricola ||.
To the people he everywhere gives the name of Britons If. and there is nothing in his description,
or in the later ones of Dion and Herodian, to show that they differed in langtiage or otherwise
from the inhabitants of the interior of South Britain. At the beginniog of the third century, the
various names of the northern tribes had merged in two, the Majatfe, who dwelt close to the wall
which divided Roman from Northern Britain, and the Caledonii beyond them: they inhabited
mountains and marshy plains, and went almost naked, punctm-ing their bodies with the forms
of animals. The Caledonii must be the Highlanders, and the Misataj the Lowlanders of this
description * * ; the name of the latter iinding an etymon in the British mai, a field t t .
It must have been the same people, who at the beginning of the fourth century, were subdued
by Constantius, and are described as the " Caledonians and other Picts " 11 i ^eing the first mention
^ lb. c. 2.5-27, 29, 34-38. Tacitus affords no support to
the opinion that the ancient Caledonians were Gael. This ia
Skene's view, and is ingeniously supported by Mr. A. H. Hhind,
in his paper, " How far the Cymric encroached on the Gaelic
population of North Britain." Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. vol. i.
1853, p. 182.
* * Dion.a;).Xiph.lib.lxxvi.§12.A.D.209. Ilerodian. lib. iii.
c. 47. A.D. 209. It is probably the vallum of Antouine which
is here intended ; some think the southern wall, making the
MseatEe intramural.
t t Herbert, Irish Nenn. p. xxxii. The name of Mieatse njipears
last at the close of the sixth century, in the "bellum
Miathorum." Vit. Col. lib. i. c.8, 9 ; with note by Dr. Reeves.
i i Eumenius. Pan. Constantin. c. 7. " Non dico Caledonum
aliornmque Pictorum silvas et palndes." This refers
to A.D. 305 I the following to 300. " Postvictoriam Pictorum
Constantius Eboraci mortuus est."—Auct. ignot. M. H. 15.
p. Ixxv. Eumenius had previously named the Picts, but as
would appear, proleptically. "Pictis et llibernis hostibus."
Pan. Constantio, c. 11. See also Sidon. Apoll. Carm. vii. 1. 90.
* Vit. Agric. c. xxiii.
t Gram. Celt. pp. 150, 799, 1107. "Cernyw, Cornubia,
rectius Cornivia." The Cornish people are the Cornwealas
of the Anglo-Saxons.
t Camden, vol. i. p. 307 ; iv. pp. 127,183. Comp. Nennius
(c. xxxvii.), " Britanniee Ghent." Adamnan understands by
Cantire "Caputregionis." Vit. Columb. lib. i. e. 28. Reeves,
p. 57. C<;®m<2>, Gaelic,=Land'send. CyK, cyni, W s h , =
foremost, or chief; comp. " Forelands" of Kent. Zeuss's derivation
of Cantium (Gram. Celt. p. 187) from the British cann,
white, is the less probable, as the coast of the northern CantEe
is not chalk, but red sandstone.
§ Ptol. lib. ii. c. 3. 0 KaXriSorios Spviias. Pliny, lib. xv.
§ 30. The name was applied to other wooded districts by
the Britons, as the " Caledonias sylvas," in the present Hertfordshire
(B. G. hb. V. c. 19 ; Floras, lib. iii. c. 11), and the
" silva Calidonis, i. e. coit Celidon" (Nenn. c. Ixiv), which
Herbert (Irish Nenn. p. 110) and others place in Yorkshire.
II Vit. Agric.C.25. " Civitates trans Bodotriam sitas * * Britannos*
* Caledoniam incolentes populi." Comp. c. 10,27, 31.
I
of this celebrated name in Britain. Eifty years later they are repeatedly referred to by Ammianus,
and henceforth the generic name of the populations of North Britain is that of Pict. When conquered
by the general Theodosius, A.D. 368, the Picts are described as forming two nations, the
Dicaledonians and Vecturiones * ; from which the identity of the former with the Caledonian
Britons is seen. Their inroads were contemporary with others of the Attacots and Scots, tribes
equaUy savage. Towards the close of the same centiuy, in consequence of the withdrawal of the
Roman soldiers by Maximus, Britain was again exposed to their dreadful ravages t , which were
checked by the legion sent by Stüicho, about 396, when the barrier of Antonine was repaired i.
The recall of this legion, in about six years §, was the signal for fresh incm-sions of these barbarians.
The intramural district of Valentia was abandoned, and the Britons of the province
retired within the wall of Hadrian. Claudian's notices clearly show the Latin name of the Picti
to be derived from their custom of painting their bodies, by a process of acupuncture or
tattooing II. He nowhere impUes that they came by sea; and the Thüle mth which he poetically
coLects them must have been the north of Britain and its islands If. Bede says he calls
the Picts of tliis period transmarine, not because they were out of Britain, but in the part separated
from the Roman province by the two great friths. He describes the Picts as consisting of
two nations, the northern and southern, who were sepai-ated from each other by the great
range of the Grampians **. The northern Picts were in all probabiUty a people foreign to
Britain, the semi-fabulous story of whose advent is preserved by Bede, and Whose language must
have been Gaelic; whilst the southern Picts were a native race, the descendants of the Caledonian
Britons, driven southward by their new neighbours t+. It is to the language of these
southern Picts that a word preserved by Bede and liy him called Pictish, belongs, as well
as those names of local topography which are peculiar to the eastern Pictish district of
Scotland. These are in a British dialect, whUst those in the Highlands are as clearly to be
traced to the Irish. Bede says that where the Antonine vallum began, there was a place
called in the Pictish language Peanfahel i t : this is British, pen gwal, and means " head of the
wall." Later, this spot was called Cenail {ceannßmü), a name having the same signification in
Irish §§, and evidently imposed by the Gael, as their influence extended to the south. Throughout
this district, from the frith of Moray to the Clyde, are many names of places compounded of aber,
Amm. Marc. lib. xx. c. 1 ; xxvi. e. 4 ; xxvii. c. S. " Eo corpore, quod minutissimis opifex acupunctis et expresso natempore
Picti in duas gentes divisi, Diealidonas et Vecturiones,
itidemque Attaeotti, bellicosa hominum natio, et Scotti per
diversa vagantes multa populabantur." The di and dm in Diand
Deu-calidonian are traced to the British du, black, referring
to the dark, woad-stained skins of the people. Herbert,
Irish Nenn. p. xlii.
t The history of the successive invasions of the Picts and
Scots is in Gildas, Hist. c. 11 - 1 9 ; copied by Bede, lib. i. c. 12-14,
Nennius, c. 19,23, 27. The chronology of these native
historians is confused and doubtful ; but see Mon. Hist. Brit,
pp. 106, 141 - 4 ; and Haigh, " Conquest of Britain by Saxons,"
pp. 18, 176-202.
X Claudian, Laud. Stilich. ii. 250.
" Me quoque vieinis pereuntem gentibus inquit (Britannia),
Munivit Stilichon."—Comp. in Eutrop. i. 393.
^ Id., Bell. Get. (A.D.402) V. 416.
"Venit et extremis legio prsetenta Britnnnis."
II See the passages, ante, p. 76, note t - Isidore's words
(xix. 23, 7) are clear:—"Non abest genti Pictorum uomen a
tivi graminis succu illudit, ut has ad sui specimen cicatrices
ferat, pictis artnbus maculosa nobilitas." The name of Pict
probably arose among the Romanized Britons, when they themselves
had long abandoned the custom implied in the word.
If As in Statius (Sylv. hb. iv. v. 61), and Silius Italicus
(lib. xvii. V. 417).
Bede (lib. iii. e. 4) here describes the conversion of the
Southern Picts by St. Ninian the Briton, I.D. 412, and that
of the Northern Picts by the Irish Scot, St. Columba, A.D. 563
(comp. lib. V. c. 9). "The interval of loO years between the
conversion of contiguous states, with the distinct sources of
conversion, strongly argues diversity of speech and blood."
Irish Nenn. p. xxxiii.
t t Herbert,IrishNenn.pp.29,64. Brit, afterRon!ans,p.60.
t t Bede, lib. i. c. 12. This name has become famous, from
the well-known discussion in Scott's "Antiquary."
Nennius, c. xix. " Pengaaul, quEe villa Seotice Cenail,
Anglice vero Peneltun dicitur." The place still retains the name
of Kinneil. Garnett, Essays, p. 198. Arch. vol. xsx. p. 2 15.