The writer next in chronological order from whom we derive any information of consequence concerning the Picts is Adamnan, a member of the early Irish Church, who was born in the county of Donegal about the year 625, elected abbot of Iona in 679, and who died in the year 704. Adamnan wrote a life of his great predecessor St. Columba, in which is contained much information concerning that great missionary’s labours among the Northern Picts; and although he narrates many stories which are palpably incredible, still the book contains much which may with confidence be accepted as fact. In connection with the questions under consideration, we learn that, in the time of Columba and Adamnan, there were--as formerly, in the time of the Roman writers--two divisions of the Picts, known in the 7th century and afterwards as the Northern and Southern Picts. Adamnan informs us that Columba’s mission was to the Northern Picts alone,--the southern division having been converted by St. Ninian in the 5th century. There has been much disputation as to the precise district inhabited by each of these two divisions of the Picts,--some maintaining that the southern division occupied the country to the south of the Forth and Clyde, while the Northern Picts occupied the whole district to the north of these estuaries. The best authorities, however, are of opinion that both divisions dwelt to the north of Antonine’s wall, and were divided from each other by the Grampians. What more immediately concerns our present purpose is a passage in Adamnan’s work in which he speaks of Columba preaching to the Picts through an interpreter. Now Columba was an Irish Scot, whose native tongue was Gaelic, and it is from this argued that the Picts to whom he preached must have spoken a different language, or at least dialect, and belonged to a different race or tribe from the saint himself. Mr. Skene,[44] who ably advocates the Gaelic origin of the Picts, perceiving this difficulty, endeavours to explain away the force of the passage by making it mean that Columba “interpreted or explained the word of God, that is, the Bible, which, being written in Latin, would doubtless require to be interpreted to them.” The passage as quoted by Skene is, “Verbo Dei per interpretorem recepto.” Garnett, however, one of the most competent and candid writers on this question in its philological aspect, and who maintains, with the greatest clearness and ability, the Cymric origin of the Picts, looks at the passage in a different light. The entire passage, he says,[45] as it stands in Colganus, is as follows:--“Alio in tempore quo sanctus Columba in Pictorum provincia per aliquot demorabatur dies, quidam cum tota plebeius familia, verbum _vitæ_ per interpretorem, _Sancto prædicante viro_, audiens credidit, credensque baptizatus est.”[46] “Here it will be observed,” continues Garnett, “Adamnan does not say, ‘verbum Dei,’ which might have been construed to mean