Of these races two only were indigenous, and the rest were intruders. To the indigenous races belonged the Cumbrians or Britons south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the Picts, who originally inhabited the whole country north of these estuaries, as well as Galloway and a considerable part of Ireland. Both belonged to the Celtic race, the former to that branch of it, the dialect of which is represented by the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, and perhaps in the main most nearly approached the Cornish in the form of their speech. But whether the Picts were altogether a homogeneous people may perhaps be a question. From the time when they first became known to the Romans, they appear throughout as divided into two branches; but whether the expression of the Roman historian, when he terms these two divisions of the Pictish people two nations, indicates any diversity of race, or whether, as the language of Bede rather implies, the distinction was simply geographical, certainly in one important respect they for a time showed a material difference, for the southern Picts adopted Christianity at a much earlier period than the northern Picts, and they were so far disunited that the conversion of the former did not imply that of the whole nation, and for a century and a half, while the southern portion were nominally Christian, the northern half remained Pagan. Every circumstance, however, connected with them, tends to show that the Picts who inhabited the northern and western regions of Scotland, as well as Galloway and the districts in Ireland, belonged to the Gaelic race and spoke a Gaelic dialect, while the southern Picts, placed between them and a British people, present features which appear to assimilate them to both; and the conclusion we came to was that they were probably originally of the same Gaelic race, while a British element had entered into their language, either from mixture with that people, or from some other influence arising from their contact. [Sidenote: Colonising races of Scots and Angles.] The sixth century brought in both an additional Gaelic and a Teutonic element into the population of this part of Britain, for in the beginning of that century a colony of Scots from Ireland, who were undoubtedly a Gaelic people, settled on the barren coasts on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, and the same century saw the eastern seaboard, extending from the Tweed to the Firth of Forth, in possession of the Angles of Northumberland; while there is reason to believe that some parts of the country between these limits had been previously partially settled by Frisian tribes belonging to the great Saxon confederation. [Sidenote: Intruding races of Danes, Norwegians, and Normans.]