Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

ORIGIN OK Tin: ARCH. 133
Picts. That they also occur in the Northern Islands, or
generally in the districts occupied by the Scandinavian
nation, does not contravene this opinion ; as the same
Gothic source is the origin of both these classes of in-
vaders. In this case, however, the name Pictish can
then no longer be applied to them with propriety. The
Irish specimens may fairly be traced to the same Scandi-
navian source, or to the Firbolgs, as these people are well
known to have occupied the sea coasts of Ireland from a
very early period. That such buildings were known
to the nations who were the common parents of the Pictish
and Scandinavian colonies, confirms this opinion. Thus
the Uaighs, like the Conical towers, seem to have belonged
to a people once widely diffused over the north of Scot-
land, and who, if architectural remains are as capable of
proving a negative as of establishing a connexion or filia-
tion among nations, were, in this also, distinguished from
their Celtic neighbours.
But as an antiquarian discussion would be out of cha-
racter without an hypothesis, here is one on which you
may exercise your wit or your bile, as either may chance
to prevail; being at full liberty to treat it with as little
ceremony as Pinkerton or as Carter might have done, if
age had not blunted the teeth of one old Lion, and sent
the other to contemplate the works of the Great Architect
of all things.
Whether the art of constructing an arch was known
or not before the time of Alexander the Great, does not
at present concern me ; the question here, is about the
how, not the when. I take it for granted that the origin
of European Gothic architecture, or of the sharp arch,
was in the East. Here I am backed by Sir Christopher
Wren, who did not care much about Gothic architecture,
and by Lord Aberdeen, who cares a great deal, as well