Celtic Scotland : $b A history of ancient Alban. Volume 1 (of 3), History and ethnologySkene, W. F. (William Forbes)
History
Celtic Scotland : $b A history of ancient Alban. Volume 1 (of 3), History and ethnology
Skene, W. F. (William Forbes)
Celts -- Scotland; Civilization, Celtic; Scotland -- Antiquities, Celtic; Scotland -- History -- To 1603
This appears from many circumstances. Pausanias implies it when he
says that Antoninus, who advanced the frontier of the province from
Hadrian’s wall to the Firths of Forth and Clyde, took land from the
Brigantes (Paus. viii. 43). Tacitus mentions Venusius, King of the
Brigantes, hostile to Rome, and that his frontiers were to the north
of the province appears from the geographer of Ravenna placing the
town of Venusio north of the stations at the wall. The early Latin
editions of Ptolemy omit the Gadeni, and call the tribe north of the
wall Otalini; but the edition of 1525, and the later editions, have
‘Gadeni, the more northern (western); Otadeni, the more southern
(eastern);’ and the name Gadeni occurs in inscriptions. If this is the
correct reading, however, it is obvious that Ptolemy considered them
as substantially the same people, as he places the towns of Bremenium
and Curia among them generally, without distinguishing to which tribe
each belonged, and the terminations are the same. Inscriptions
mentioning the god of the Gadeni have been found at Reesingham and at
Old Penrith, within the territory of the Brigantes. On the other hand,
an inscription to the goddess Brigantia has been found at Middlebie,
within the territory of the Selgovæ.
Footnote 64:
This seems to be the town mentioned by Bede, _Ec. Hist._ B. i. c. 12,
‘Orientalis (sinus) habet in medio sui urbem Giudi.’
Footnote 65:
Trimontium has been identified with the Eildon hills in Roxburghshire,
owing simply to the resemblance of the form of the hill with a station
supposed to be called the Three Mountains; but it is more probable
that the syllable Tri represents the Welsh Tre or Tref, and that it is
a rendering of Trefmynydd, or the Town on the Mountain. To place it at
the Eildon hills is to do great violence to Ptolemy’s text.
Footnote 66:
The first of our historians to make use of Ptolemy was Hector Boece,
but he placed his names too far north. He puts the Brigantes in
Galloway, and the Novantes in Kintyre, and hence their towns are
placed in Argyll instead of Wigtown. The Ulm edition of 1486, which is
a very inaccurate one, was apparently the edition used by Boece, and
in it the name Rerigonium is misprinted Beregonium. Boece applied the
name to the vitrified remains, the correct name of which was
Dunmhicuisneachan, the fort of the sons of Uisneach, now corrupted
into Dunmacsniochan, and thus arose one of the spurious traditions
created by Boece’s History.
Footnote 67:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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