length recede to an immense distance from each other. Beda, who flourished about the year 700, relates, that in the island of Britain the gospel was then preached in five languages; those of the Angles, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Romans'. Instead of five languages, Buchanan proposes to substitute five dialects: but as Beda has enumerated the Latin and Saxon tongues, this interpretation of his words is evidently inadmissible. His testimony does not however amount to a positive proof, that the Pictish language was a dialect of the Gothic; though it certainly evinces, that the Pictish and Scotish tongues were materially distinguished. Henry of Huntingdon, according to Dr Macpherson's representation, " expresses his astonishment to find the Pictish tongue was in his time totally extinguished, insomuch that the accounts given of it by writers of former ages had the appearance of downright fiction. Henry wrote his history within less than four hundred years after the Pictish nation was incorporated with the Scots. It is therefore matter of great surprise, that no vestige of the Pictish tongue remained in his time, if it differed at all from the Galic of the Scots." It was incumbent upon Dr Macpherson to produce the authority without misrepresenta Bedæ Hist. Ecclesiast. Gent. Anglor. p. 41. edit. Smith. $ Macpherson's Dissertations on the Caledonians, p. 57. tion. Henry has affirmed, that the Picts themselves, as well as their language, were totally extinct' and if one clause of the assertion be found erroneous, the other must at least be regarded as suspicious. That the Picts were ever extirpated, is an opinion which has at length become almost obsolete. At the battle of the standard, fought in the year 1138, the Picts of Galloway claimed their ancient privilege of forming the van"; a circumstance which tends to evince, that they were neither few in number, nor undistinguished for their prowess. This famous battle was fought during Henry's own life. The above passage of his work is very obnoxious to criticism. After having enumerated the Pictish tongue among the other languages then spoken in Britain, he gravely proceeds to observe, that the Picts and their tongue seemed as if they never had existed. It is evident however that he considered the Pictish as a distinct speech. These insulated facts seem to afford some faint traces of evidence, that the Celtic language was not universally spoken in Scotland; but there t❝ Quinque autem linguis utitur Britannia; Brittonum videlicet, Anglorum, Scottorum, Pictorum, et Latinorum, quæ doctrina Scripturarum cæteris omnibus est facta communis: quamvis Picti jam videantur deleti, et lingua eorum ita omnino destructa, ut jam fabula videatur quod in veterum scriptis eorum mentio invenitur." H. HUNTINGDON. Hist. p. 299. apud Savile. "Ailred. de Bello Standardi, col. 342. apud Twysden. are others which may perhaps be represented as leading to an opposite conclusion. The names of the Pictish kings, it has frequently been asserted, "are exactly the same with others that were common among the ancient Scots, and continue to be so in the Highlands to this day." Yet Dr Macpherson, notwithstanding his triumphant exclamations, has only been able to produce eight names from the catalogue and these eight, as he indeed admits, belonged to Pictish kings who reigned after the introduction of Christianity. Whether he has been guilty of mangling these names, I shall not pretend to determine; but a charge of this kind has with sufficient violence been urged against him. Beda observes, that the Pictish name of a certain place at the east end of Antoninus's wall was Peanfabel: and from this solitary word Camden and Innes have supposed, that an argument may be derived in proof of the identity of the Welch and Pictish languages". In the Welch, they have affirmed, this compound term signifies the head of the wall: but, on the other hand, it has been very confidently asserted, that the Welch tongue contains no such words as pean and fahel. But if it were even admitted, that peanfabel is either a simple or a compound term which may be traced in both languages, no important conclu Bedæ Hist. Ecclesiast. Gent. Anglor. p. 50. w Camdeni Britannia, p. 85. edit. Lond. 1600, 4to. sion could thence be deduced. The same combinations of letters may often be found in lan-guages which have distinct origins. Scribes, cave, thus, cur rides, are either Latin or English, according to the manner in which they are pronounced. The letters a, m, a, t, may either signify a mat or be loves. The Italian pronoun eglino might in a Scotish song be commodiously transformed into Eglin-O. The Greek word vous and the French nous are formed by the same arrangement of the same letters: but are we thence authorized to conclude, that Greek and French are dialects of the same language? Pliny supposes the Celtic. word Druid to be derived from deus an oak; as if those who in all probability never heard of the Greeks or their language should have applied to such a source*. Yet this etymology is perhaps Strabo with superior good sense has remarked, that barbaric appellations are not to be traced to a Greek source. The learned Bochart however contends for the correctness of Pliny's etymology: “De nomine Druidum Plinio assentior.---Nec est quod quis miretur cur Druides Græco nomine appellentur, cum etiam apud Celtas quercus deru dicta sit.? (Geographia Sacra, p. 666. b.) But this is itself a substantial reason for supposing the Celtic term Druid to have no connection with Greek ety mology. Caius's etymology of the word is still more fanciful than that of Pliny. Druid, as he affirms, is derived from Druys, the name of a very ancient British king. (De Antiquitate Cantabrigensis Academia, p. 15.) Menage's derivation is perhaps as rational as any other that can be traced: "Je croirois plustost que Druides viendroit de drus, qui en vieux langage Britannique signifie un démon, un esprit, et mesme un magicien.” (Origines de la Langue Françoise, p. 256.) In the etymological works of Vossius and Junius, other derivation's of the word may be found. as correct as that of Camden and Innes. Dr Gibson, in one of his notes on the Polemo-Middinia, affords another illustration of the danger of relying too much on etymological conjectures. Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum. The origin of the word harlai, he remarks, must be traced to the Icelandic bardlya, or, by contraction barla; perquam, valdè, fortiter. According to this notion, the verse must be interpreted, "He begins to summon them to the hardy fight." But its real signification is, " He begins to play Scotish tune called The battle of Harlaw." The following wretched epigram on Erasmus is the production of an obscure poet named Thomas Prujean: That thou'rt a man, each of thy learn'd works shows: Dr Duport, in an epigram on Andrew Melvin, has displayed the same elegance of taste: Qui non Mel, sed fel, non vinum das, sed acetum, These are rare illustrations of the plastic nature of etymology. Of the impropriety of drawing, from the consideration of detached words, exten y Prujean's Aurorata, sig. D. Lond. 1644, 12mo. 2 Duport. Musæ Subsecivæ, p. 70. Cantab. 1676, 8vo. |