The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

AND NOTES] OF SCOTLAND 401
promiscuous marriage ; Dion tells us that the wife of Argentocoxos,
a Caledonian, acknowledged promiscuity among the
high-born ; and
Bede explains the system of his day— that the
Picts got their wives from the Scots on condition of the succes-
sion to the throne being through the females.
Here we have a custom palpably belonging to a non-Aryan
race, not to speak of a non-Celtic race. It must therefore be
due to the customs of the previous inhabitants still surviving
among the Celts ;
the vanquished here took captive their victors.
Whether the Pictish language was also influenced by the
previous one it is hard to say ; but the influence could not be
much, because Celtic civilisation was much higher than the
native one, and borrowing would be unnecessary.
To sum up the argument we cannot do better than quote
Prof Mackinnon's criticism on Dr. Skene's position :— " The
question cannot, however, be settled on such narrow lines as
these [Pictish if non-Gaelic would have left remains, and an
interpreter was only wanted twice.] The questions of blood
and language must always be kept distinct. Anthropology and
archaeology may hereafter yield concrete evidence which will be
decisive of this matter. As things are, the following facts must
be kept in the forefront. Among the Picts, succession was
through the female. This custom is unknown among the Celts ;
it is, so far as we know, non-Aryan. Again, Bede regarded
Pictish as a separate language. The Gael of Ireland looked
upon the Picts or Cruithnig, to use the native term, as a people
different from themselves. Cormac, the first Gaelic lexico-
grapher, gives one or two Pictish words, quoting them as foreign
words, at a time when presumably Pictish was still a living
language. The Norsemen called the Pentland Firth Pettland,
i.e., Pictland Fjord, while the Minch was Skottland Fjord. Mr.
Whitley Stokes, after examining all the words in the old records
presumably Pictish, says: 'The foregoing
list of names and
words contains much that is still obscure ; but on the whole it
shows that Pictish, so far as regards its vocabulary, is an Indo-
European and especially Celtic speech. Its phonetics, so far as we
can ascertain them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish.' "
Celtic scholars of the first rank who have pronounced on the
matter are all agreed that Pictish was not Gaelic, as Skene held.
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