Names, as the experience of the world amply shows, live after
the people who bestowed them have long disappeared, and that through
successive races of occupants.”[65]
The materials which have been wrought up into a linguistic argument
by the upholders of each of the three Pictish theories, Gothic,
Gaelic, and Cymric, are chiefly a list of Pictish kings which, we
believe, may be depended on as authentic, and the topography of the
country to the east and south-east of the Grampians, together with
the single so-called Pictish word _Peanfahel_, which we have already
considered. The theorists differ as much in their interpretation
of the significance of what remains of the Pictish language, as we
have seen they do in their interpretation of any references to the
subject in dispute in ancient chronicles. The names of the kings, and
the names of places have been traced by the disputants to Gothic,
Gaelic and Cymric roots. As an amusing specimen of the ingenuity
displayed in this hunt after roots, we give below a small table from
Burton, comparing the different etymologies of names of kings given
by Pinkerton, Chalmers, and Jamieson.[66]
It is, however, generally admitted at the present day, that so far
as language is concerned, the Gothic theory has not the remotest
chance; that names of places and of kings are most satisfactorily
and straightforwardly explained by Cymric roots. As the Gothic or
Teutonic theory cannot stand the test of modern criticism, we shall
content ourselves with giving specimens of the manner in which the
linguistic, or, more strictly, topographical argument is used by the
advocates of the Cymric and Gaelic hypotheses respectively.
The Cymric argument is clearly, ably, and succinctly stated by Mr.
Garnett in his essay on “The Relation of the Pict and Gael;” he,
however, it must be remembered, looked at the whole question mainly
in its philological aspect. In stating the argument we shall use
chiefly his own words.[67] “That the Picts were actually Celts,
and not of Teutonic race, is proved to a demonstration by the names
of their kings; of whom a list, undoubtedly genuine from the fifth
century downwards, was published by Innes, from a manuscript in the
Colbertine library. Some of those appellations are, as far as we
know at present, confined to the Pictish sovereigns; but others are
well-known Welsh and Gaelic names. They differ, however, slightly in
their forms, from their Cymric equivalents; and more decidedly so
from the Gaelic ones; and, as far as they go, lead to the supposition
that those who bore them spoke a language bearing a remote analogy to
the Irish with its cognates, but a pretty close one to the Welsh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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