[45] Garnett’s _Philological Essays_, p. 199. [46] Adam. _ap. Colganum_, 1. ii. c. 32. [47] On the subject in question the recently published _Book of Deer_ cannot be said to afford us any information. It gives a short account of the landing of Columba and a companion at Aberdour in the north of Aberdeenshire, and the founding of a monastery at Deer. But although the entries are in Gaelic, they do not tell us what language Columba spoke, nor whether ‘Bede the Pict,’ the mormaer of Buchan, understood him without an interpreter. The name of the saint--Drostan--whom Columba left behind him to prosecute the work, is Pictish, at any rate not Irish, so that nothing can be inferred from this. Since much of the first part of this book was written, Mr. Skene has advanced the theory, founded partly on four new Pictish words he has managed to discover, that the language of the Picts was neither pure Gaelic nor Cymric, ‘but a sort of low Gaelic dialect partaking largely of Welsh forms.’ This theory is not new, but was distinctly put forth by Dr. Maclauchlan some years ago in his able and learned work, _The Early Scottish Church_, p. 29: if true, it would certainly satisfy a great many of the demands which any hypothesis on the subject must do. [48] Bede’s _Eccles. Hist._, Book 1. c. i. [49] Nennius 12, Vatican MS. [50] _Critical Essay on Scotland_, vol. i. p. 68. [51] Book i., c. 12. [52] _Inquiry into the Hist. of Scot._, vol. i. p. 357, ed. 1814. [53] _Crit. Essay_, vol. i. p. 75. [54] Garnett’s _Phil. Essays_, p. 198. [55] Robertson’s _Scotland under her Early Kings_, vol. ii. p. 380. Forbes-Leslie’s _Early Races of Scotland_, vol. i. p 35. [56] _Hist. of Scot._, vol. i. p. 187. [57] Book iii. ch. 4. [58] _Eccl. Hist. of Scot._, vol. i. p. 15, &c. [59] _Eccl. Hist. of Scot._, vol. i. p. 17. [60] Davies’ _Celtic Researches_, p. 155. [61] _Highlanders of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 69. [62] We are indebted for most of the following account to Connellan’s _Annals of the Four Masters_, p. 367 (note). [63] See Taylor’s _Words and Places_, ch. ix. [64] Pike’s _English and their Origin_, ch. ii., which contains some shrewd and valuable remarks on the subject of language. [65] Burton, vol. i. p. 192.