152 CRANIA BEITANKICA. [CUAI>. V.
of the Irish annals * ; but whether this chief himself laid the foundations of the Scotic settlement
in Britain is doubtful. It is certain that such a colony was established by his descendants,
Fergus and Loarn, the sons of Ere; who at the beginning of the sixth century t , when the Irish
liad abandoned paganism, left their native Dabiada in the north of Ulster, aoid occupied Cantire,
Lorn, and other parts of Argyle {Airer-GaedUl, territory of the Gael), so called from these
settlers J. In the seventh centmy, their country is described by Adamnan as separated from
that of the Picts, by the mountam range which divides Aa-gylefrom Perthshii-e, the Drum-Alhan
or back-bone of Scotland§. The history of the Dali-iad Scots is now weU known. Their chief
J\ddan was solemnly inaugurated as king, by St. Oolumba, A.D. 574 ||. "With the surrounding
Picts they waged war with varying success; but in 843, under the celebrated Kenneth Mac Alpin,
they defeated the Pictish king, the last Bruide, and annexed his territory; by which revolution,
the names of Scot and Scotland were graduaUy extended over the whole of Britain north of the
Porth If. AH agree that the language of the DaMad Scots was Irish, and many derive the
Scottish Gaelic entii-ely from them **. The limited area of theu- original territory, however,
affords a reason for questioning this conclusion ; and we are thus led to mquire whether other
tribes had not previously migrated fr-om Ireland, which may accoimt for the existing diffusion of
the Gaelic in Britain. Before domg this we must allude to the Attacots.
"With the Picts and Scots are named the Attacots, a warlike tribe addicted to anthropophagism
and to the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. They axe ftrst named in A.D. 364, and
were among the enemies of the provmce, subdued by Theodosius, in 368 f t . They are last named
imder Honorius, who had two bands of them, the Atecotti Komriani Seniores and Jmiiores; the
former of whom were stationed in Gaul, the latter in Italy tt- These may have been organized
after the successes under Stilicho (A.D. 396); but two other divisions of the Palatine Auxiliaries,
one sunply designateclAtecotti, serving in Illyria, anothev Atecotti Jmiiores Gallioani, in Gaul, may
have been enrolled after theu- conquest by Theodosius, and have been those seen by Jerome in
Gaul. Orosius says the Honoriani employed in Spain in 408, were barbarians with whom a treaty
of Four Masters," TOI. i. p. 161. Reeves, St. Columta, " Origines
Dalriadicse," p. 433.
t Irish Nenn. p. 151. Reeves, loc. cit. pp. 395, 463.
jected to his etymology, that dal is not Celtic, but a Norse
word. (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography,
vol. i. p. 438.) It is however clearly the former, being found
in the name of many Irish septs, as Dal-Selli, Dal-Mogha, &c.
(Irish Nenn. p. 260, 268. Reeves, St. Columba, pp. 22-29.)
" Dal properly signifies posterity or descent by blood; in a
figurative sense it signifies a district, i. e. the part allotted to
such posterity. * * Bede's interpretation is, doubtless, in the
second sense admissible." O'Connor, " Ogygia Vindicated,"
p. 157. O'Donovan, "Book of Rights," p. 160.
* Cairbre Righfada, son of the monarch Conaire II. (A.D.
212), flourished about the beginning of the 3rd century. He was
of a southern Irish sept; but, in consequence of a great famine
in Munster, settled with his followers in Antrim, in the district
called from him Dalriada ; and, as some think, in part of
Argyle and the Isles Ukewise. O'Donovan, " Book of Rights,"
p. 160; Kelly, Camb. Evers. vol. i.p.473; Irish Nenn. p. 153;
Reeves, Eccles. Antiq. of Down, &c. 1847, "Dalriada," p. 318.
Herbert (Irish Nenn. p. xliii) confounds Cairbre Righfada with
a later Cairbre,—Cairbre Lifeachair, son of Cormac Mac
Art.
"Feargus Mor Mac Earca cum gente Dal-Riada partem
Britanniie tenuit, et ibi mortuns est." Annals of Tighernach.
This migration is now placed at A.D. 506. O'Donovan, "Annals
§ Tit. Columb. lib. ii. c. 46. " Pictorum plehe et Scotorum
Britannise inter quos utrosque Dorsi montes Britannici disterminant."
See Dr. Reeves's notes on the Britannise Dorsum,
Drum-Bretain, Drum-Alban, or Southern Grampians, pp. 64,
184; and Skene, "Highlanders of Scotland," 1837, vol. i. p. 26.
II Reeves, St. Columba, lib. i. c. 49 ; lib. iii. c. 5. Notes,
pp. 92, 198, 436. This is the TEdan of Bede, Uh. i. c. 34.
^ Irish Nenn. p. 151. For the Scottish conquest see Skene,
vol. i. p. 21. Skene should be read in connexion with the criticisms
of the Hon. A. Herbert, Irish Nennius, p. Ixi.
** Prichard, Phys. Hist. Mankind, vol. iii. p. 166. Garnett,
Philol. Trans. 1843, No. 2, vol. i. p. 119; Essay "On
the Probable Relations of the Picts and Gael," p. 202.
t t Amm. Marc. lib. sxvi. c. 4 ; xxvii. c. 8, supra, p. 149,
note Hieron. adv. Jovin. lib. ii. " Vidi Atticotos gentem
Britannicam." This was in Gaul, whilst Jerome was still young,
and before the first mention of this people by Ammianus. Ep.
ad Ocean. Issxii. "Scottorum et Atticotorum ritu promiscuos
uxores habent."
i t Notitia Utriusque Imperii, §§ 8, 38, 40. Comp. Gibbon,
c. 25, 30; A.D. 3C3, 408.
CHAP. V.] HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN. 153
was formerly made, and who had been incorporated with the Roman troops. These must have been
Attacots, or at least included them *. It seems most probable that they were an Irish people,
and that their name is the latinized form of Aitheach Tuatha, a servile class of rent-payers, who
from the fii-st to the tenth centm-y figure in the annals of Ireland, and sometimes as successful
rebels against the dominant chiefs t . Jerome caUs the Attacots a British people ; and tins may
warrant a conjecture that those who attacked the Roman province had previously acquired a
settlement in North Britain, either in what became the province of Valentia, or somewhere to the
north of the Clyde t .-r, •
I n his first chapter, Bede gives an account of the origin of the different peoples of Britain,
in which he foUows in part the Irish traditions. That of the Picts is obviously mixed with
fabulous particulars. The Picts, he says, came from Scythia to Ireland, where the Scots did not
permit them to settle, but advised them to seek a home in Britain, and gave them wives under
the condition that the succession of their kings, when in doubt, should be in the female line;
and this, Bede says, was the custom among the Picts to his time. In the Irish chronicles, the Picts
or Cruitlme, as they are called in equivalent Irish§, are represented as of Thracian origm,
descended from Gelon and Agathyrsis, sons of Hercules ; as passing through Gaul, and founding
the city of the Piotavi ; thence crossing to Ireland, and, after various adventures, subduing and
colonizing Alba or North Britain. The fii'st part of the story is clearly an invention, to connect
the Irish Picta with the nations to whom the epithet ijicii is applied in classical writers H. The
whole indeed is fabulous, with the exception of the existence of tribes in Ireland who painted or
tattooed their bodies, and who, prior to their conversion from paganism, passed over to North
Britain, where they maintained a peculiar system of regal succession which favoured the female
l i n e i . There are notices of Cruithne in Ireland in the earliest historical documents, and their
migration to North Britain rests on authorities hardly to be rejected In the third century,
part of Ulster (Down and the south of Antrim) was known as the country of the Irish Picts,
and from theu- chief, Piacha Araidhe (A.D. 232), was called Bal-Araidhe, Dalaradia t t • The Irish
monarch, Cormac, was siu-named Ulfada, from expelling part of the Ultonian Cruithne, who were
driven, about A.D. 254, into Man and the Hebrides ; from which as appears, they spread over the
isles and highlands, and established their kingdom in Britain i J. It has been shown from
If Skene, pp. 39, l.')8. Herbert explains the prosapia feminea
(Bede, lib. i. c. 1), or, as he terms it, the uterine tanistry
of the Picts, as flowing from the promiscuous intercourse of the
sexes which then existed (Irish Nenn. pp. liv-lvii). Palgrave
(English Commonwealth, 1832, pp. 320, 422, 467) takes the
same view. In the Pictish kingdom, until the close of the 8th
century, more than two hundred years after its conversion, no
son is recorded to have succeeded his father.
** Books of the Cruthnians, Duan Albanach, &e., in Irish
Nennius, pp. 120, 126, 270. Notes, pp. Ixv, xci.
f t Reeves, Eccles. Antiquities of Down, &c. " Dalriada,"
p. 318 ; " Dalaradia," p. 334 ; Life St. Columba, pp. 33, 67,
94. Irish Nenn. p. 265, xlviii. Dalaradia must he carefully
distinguished from Dalriada. See Reeves, op. cit.. Map of
ancient Hibernia.
t t Reeves, loc. cit. pp. 94, 134, 167, 220. Origin of the
Cruithnians, Irish Nenn. pp. 146, xlvii ; comp. p. xliii, xlix.
Camb. Evers. vol. i. pp. 159, 481 : Tighern, A.D. 254. From
a computation of the reigns of the Pictish kings, Herbert
places the first migrations from Ireland to Alba as early as the
Oros. Hist. lib. vii. c. 40 ; " cum barharis quibusdam, qui
quondam in foedus recepti atque in mihtiam adlecti, Honoriani
vocabantur."
t O'Connor, Rer. Hib. prol. I. pp.lxxi, Ixxiv; II. p. xxvii.
O'Donovan, " Four Masters," vol. i. A.D. 10,379; p. 128, &c.;
"Book of Rights," pp.104,174; "Fragmentsof Irish Annals,"
1860, p. 236. O'Curry, "MS. Materials," pp. 230, 262.
J Piukerton (Enquiry, vol. ii. 1789, pp. 60, 70) conjectured
that they were the same as the earlier Dalriads of Argyle,—an
opinion mifortunately embodied in the map in the " Monumenta
Histórica Britannica." Herbert, " Britannia after Romans,"
pp. Ixi, bdv, 177, concluded that they were a Cymric
people, and the ancestors of the Strathclyde Britons :—" The
Attacotti were, I suppose, the Brithon at y coed, bordering
on the woodlands."
§ Cruithneac may be derived from cruth, Irish, figure or
shape, and be synonymous with the Latin pictus. Irish Nenn.
pp. v, vi, xlv. Garuett, Philological Essays, p. 201.
II Herod, lib. iv.c. 8 -10; v.c.C. Virgil, iEn. lib. iv. v. 146,
"pictiqueAgathyrsi."Georg.lib.ii.T. 115,"pictos(jueGelonos."