Note 635 — NOTE VIII. THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CELTIC AND SLAVONIC HEROIC AGES.

The rise of the Cumbrian kingdoms presents a difficulty which historians do not seem to me to have sufficiently realised. During the fourth and fifth centuries the northern parts of the province were repeatedly menaced and ravaged by Pictish invaders. Yet after the fifth century we hear practically nothing more of Picts in the south of Scotland (except in Galloway). On the other hand it was in this region that the Britons offered the most determined resistance to the English. In the latter part of the sixth century Urien is said (Hist. Br., § 63) to have besieged them on one occasion in Lindisfarne (Metcaud); and in Strathclyde the Britons maintained their independence, except for one or two brief intervals, until long after the disappearance of the Northumbrian kingdom. It is often assumed, though on somewhat slender grounds, that the Britons held only the south-west of Scotland and that the south-east (Lothian, etc.) was Pictish before the English conquest. But this hypothesis does not get rid of the difficulties; for it is from Manau Guotodin, a district always regarded as Pictish, that Cunedda is said to have come (ib., § 62). I suspect that the distinction between Picts and Britons was not so rigid as is commonly supposed. Unfortunately Celtic scholars have not yet been able to come to any agreement as to the character of the Pictish language. Some hold that it was British (Brythonic), others Gaelic (Goidelic), others again non-Celtic. Possibly all these views may contain a certain amount of truth. At all events it seems to me quite incredible that Gaelic was not introduced into Scotland before the sixth century. All indications appear to me to favour the view that this language belonged to a wave of Celtic invasion earlier than the British. Yet I see no objection to supposing that in pre-Roman times the true (Gaelic) Picts—who probably included a non-Celtic substratum—may have been overlaid in part by a British element. If so, it is far from improbable that the south of Scotland in its turn received a 'Pictish' element, when that district was abandoned by the Romans. A mixed population of this kind would readily enough coalesce with the native (British) inhabitants.