Note 1847 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

Those who are familiar with Professor Rhys’s writings will not be surprised to find that his notion of the meaning of these words is unstable. In 1884 he wrote (Celtic Britain, p. 240), ‘These words Cruithni and Prydyn are derived from cruth and pryd respectively, which mean form’; and he added that ‘Duald MacFirbis, quoted by Todd in a note on the Irish version of Nennius, p. vi,’ ‘has rightly explained the former [Cruithni] as meaning a people who painted the forms (crotha) of beasts, birds, and fishes on their faces, and ... on the whole of the body. This,’ he observed, ‘agrees well enough with Claudian’s vivid description of Stilicho’s soldiery, scanning the figures punctured with iron on the body of the fallen Pict,’ &c. In 1891 he threw both MacFirbis and Claudian overboard: ‘We are not warranted,’ he said (Scottish Review, xviii, 1891, p. 124), ‘in supposing that he [Claudian] drew his inspiration from any deeper source than the popular etymology of the name Pictus, interpreted as a Latin word.’ He went on to say (p. 131) that the silence of Gildas, who hated the Picts, ‘is proof positive that neither Picts nor Scots were in the habit of discolouring their skins to any greater extent than his own people’; and he insisted that there was a grave objection to the explanation given by MacFirbis, ‘namely, that it accounts for too few of the elements of the word Cruithne.’ In 1900 (Report of ... the Brit. Association, p. 895) he brushed aside the ‘proof positive’, and proclaimed his conviction that, after all, the Picts really had tattooed themselves. In 1902 (The Welsh People, pp. 79-80, n. 2) he observed that if Cruithni and Prydyn had been really derived from cruth and pryd, ‘one could scarcely avoid treating Cruithni and Prydyn as translations ... of the word Pict regarded as the Latin pictus, ‘painted’’; and that ‘the supposition here suggested as to Pretani being merely a sort of translation of ... pictus would compel us to regard the first use of Pretani as dating no earlier than Caesar’s time’, which, as he truly remarks, chronology will hardly allow us to do. In the 3rd edition of Celtic Britain, 1904, p. 242, he reverts to his view of 1884.

Candour is a virtue; but how are we to follow a guide who is for ever changing his mind?