| Pictish | |
|---|---|
| Region | Scotland, north of theForth-Clyde line |
| Ethnicity | Picts |
| Extinct | byc. 1200 AD |
| Some scattered instances ofOgham script Some possible instances ofLatin script[1] | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xpi |
xpi | |
| Glottolog | pict1238 |
Pictish was the extinctBrittonicCeltic language spoken by thePicts, the people of eastern and northernScotland fromlate antiquity to theEarly Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number ofgeographical andpersonal names found on monuments and early medieval records in the area controlled by thekingdoms of the Picts. Such evidence, however, shows the language to be anInsular Celtic language – possibly a variant of theBrittonic language once thought to be spoken in most of Great Britain.[2]
The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was either that Pictish was a non-Indo-Europeanlanguage isolate, or that there coexisted not one but two Pictish languages: one Indo-European (Brittonic Celtic branch) and the other non-Indo-European.
Pictish was replaced by – or merged into –Gaelic in the latter centuries of the Pictish period. During the reign ofDonald II of Scotland (889–900), outsiders began to refer to the region as thekingdom of Alba rather than thekingdom of the Picts. However, the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly. A process ofGaelicisation (which may have begun generations earlier) is thought to have been under way during the reigns of Donald II and his successors. By a certain point, probably during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, and the Pictish identity was forgotten.[3]
The existence of a distinct Pictish language during the Early Middle Ages is attested clearly inBede's early eighth-centuryEcclesiastical History of the English People, which names Pictish as a language distinct from those spoken by theBritons, theIrish, and theEnglish.[4] Bede states thatColumba, aGael, used an interpreter on one occasion during his mission to the Picts. A number of competing theories have been advanced regarding the nature of the Pictish language:
Most modern scholars agree that the ancestor of the Pictish language, spoken at the time of theRoman conquest, was a branch of the Brittonic language, while a few scholars accept that it was merely "related" to the Brittonic language.[5][6][7]Thomas Charles-Edwards argues that there was a common language in north Britain in the early Roman period, and that the Pictish language developed as a consequence of the emergence of the Pictish confederation in the late third century.[8] Pictish came under increasing influence from the Goidelic language spoken inDál Riata from the eighth century until its eventual replacement.[5][9][6][7]
Pictish is thought to have influenced the development of modern Scottish Gaelic. This is perhaps most obvious in the contribution of inherited words, but, more importantly, Pictish is thought to have influenced thesyntax of Scottish Gaelic, which bears a greater similarity to those of the Brittonic languages than it does to that of Irish.[5][9][10]
Some commentators have noted that, in light of the disparate nature of the surviving evidence and large geographical area in which it was spoken, that Pictish may have represented not a single language, but rather a number of discrete Brittonic varieties.[11][12]
The evidence ofplace names andpersonal names demonstrates that an insular Celtic language related to the more southerly Brittonic languages was formerly spoken in the Pictish area.[13] The view of Pictish as a P-Celtic language was first proposed in 1582 byGeorge Buchanan, who aligned the language withGaulish.[14] A compatible view was advanced by antiquarianGeorge Chalmers in the early 19th century. Chalmers considered that Pictish andBrittonic were one and the same, basing his argument on P-Celtic orthography in thePictish king lists and in place names predominant in historically Pictish areas.[15]
Although demonstrably Celtic-speaking, the exact linguistic affinity of the Roman-era predecessors to the Picts is difficult to securely establish. The personal nameVepogeni, recorded c. 230 AD, implies that P-Celtic was spoken by at least theCaledonians.[12]
Celtic scholarWhitley Stokes, in a philological study of theIrish annals, concluded that Pictish was closely related to Welsh.[17] This conclusion was supported by philologistAlexander MacBain's analysis of the place and tribe names in Ptolemy's second-centuryGeographia.[18] ToponymistWilliam Watson's exhaustive review of Scottish place names demonstrated convincingly the existence of a dominant P-Celtic language in historically Pictish areas, concluding that the Pictish language was a northern extension of British and that Gaelic was a later introduction from Ireland.[19]
William Forbes Skene argued in 1837 that Pictish was a Goidelic language, the ancestor of modernScottish Gaelic.[20][21] He suggested that Columba's use of an interpreter reflected his preaching to the Picts inLatin, rather than any difference between the Irish and Pictish languages.[22] This view, involving independent settlement of Ireland and Scotland by Goidelic people, obviated an Irish influence in the development of Gaelic Scotland and enjoyed wide popular acceptance in 19th-century Scotland.[23][24]
Skene later revised his view of Pictish, noting that it appeared to share elements of both Goidelic and Brittonic:
It has been too much narrowed by the assumption that, if it is shewn to be a Celtic dialect, it must of necessity be absolutely identic in all its features either with Welsh or with Gaelic. But this necessity does not really exist; and the result I come to is, that it is not Welsh, neither is it Gaelic; but it is a Gaelic dialect partaking largely of Welsh forms.[25]
Other scholars also shared similar views, classifying Pictish as Celtic but not Brythonic and neither Gaelic language contrary to Guto Rhys's opinion on Pictish as a Brythonic language or dialect.[26][27][28]
The Picts were under increasing political, social, and linguistic influence from Dál Riata from around the eighth century. The Picts were steadilygaelicised through the latter centuries of the Pictish kingdom, and by the time of the merging of the Pictish and Dál Riatan kingdoms, the Picts were essentially a Gaelic-speaking people.[5]Forsyth speculates that a period of bilingualism may have outlasted the Pictish kingdom in peripheral areas by several generations.[29]Scottish Gaelic, unlikeIrish, maintains a substantial corpus of Brittonic loan-words and, moreover, uses a verbal system modelled on the same pattern asWelsh.[30]
There has been significant scholarly debate as to the extent to which Pictish differed from the rest of Brittonic. Jackson (1953) and Koch (1983) proposed that Pictish differed from British in numerous phonetic, lexical and semantic senses, and had been evolving independently from around the 1st century AD.[31] Conversely, when discussing place-names, Watson (1926) eschewed the terms "Pictish" and "Cumbric" in favour of "British" andW. F. H. Nicolaisen (1976) groupedCumbric and Pictish names together, implying merely dialectal distinction.[19][32][12] Guto Rhys (2015) gave evidence that the majority of proposals that Pictish diverged from Brittonic at an early date were spurious, and argued for significant co-evolution.[12]
The traditional Q-Celtic vs P-Celtic model, involving separate migrations of P-Celtic and Q-Celtic speaking settlers into the British Isles, is one of mutual unintelligibility, with the Irish Sea serving as the frontier between the two. However, it is likely that the Insular Celtic languages evolved from a more-or-less unified proto-Celtic language within the British Isles.[33] Divergence between P-Celtic Pictish and Q-Celtic Dalriadan Goidelic was slight enough to allow Picts and Dalriadans to understand each other's language to some degree.[9][34] Under this scenario, a gradual linguistic convergence is conceivable and even probable given the presence of the Columban Church in Pictland.[9]
In 1892, the Welsh scholarJohn Rhŷs proposed that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language. This opinion was based on the apparently unintelligibleogham inscriptions found in historically Pictish areas (compareOgham inscription § Scholastic inscriptions).[35] A similar position was taken byHeinrich Zimmer, who argued that the Picts' supposedly exotic cultural practices (tattooing and matriliny) were equally non-Indo-European,[36] and a pre-Indo-European model was maintained by some well into the 20th century.[37]
A modified version of this theory was advanced in an influential 1955 review of Pictish byKenneth Jackson, who proposed a two-language model: while Pictish was undoubtedly P-Celtic, it may have had a non-Celticsubstratum and a second language may have been used for inscriptions.[38] Jackson's hypothesis was framed in the then-current model that a Brittonic elite, identified as theBroch-builders, had migrated from the south of Britain into Pictish territory, dominating a pre-Celtic majority.[39] He used this to reconcile the perceived translational difficulties ofOgham with the overwhelming evidence for a P-Celtic Pictish language. Jackson was content to write off Ogham inscriptions as inherently unintelligible.[40]
Jackson's model became the orthodox position for the latter half of the 20th century. However, it became progressively undermined by advances in understanding of late Iron Age archaeology.[41] Celtic interpretations have been suggested for a number of Ogham inscriptions in recent years, though this remains a matter of debate.[42]
Traditional accounts (now rejected) claimed that the Picts had migrated to Scotland fromScythia, a region that encompassed Eastern Europe and Central Asia.[43] Buchanan, looking for a Scythian P-Celtic candidate for the ancestral Pict, settled on the Gaulish-speakingCotini (which he rendered asGothuni), a tribe from the region that is nowSlovakia. This was later misunderstood byRobert Sibbald in 1710, who equatedGothuni with the Germanic-speakingGoths.[44]John Pinkerton expanded on this in 1789, claiming that Pictish was the predecessor tomodern Scots.[45] Pinkerton's arguments were often rambling, bizarre and clearly motivated by his belief that Celts were an inferior people. The theory of a Germanic Pictish language is no longer considered credible.[46]
Although the interpretation of over 40 Ogham inscriptions remains uncertain, several have been acknowledged to contain Brittonic forms,[47] although Rodway (2020) has disputed this.[48] Guto Rhys (2015) notes that significant caution is required in the interpretation of such inscriptions because crucial information, such as the orthographic key, the linguistic context in which they were composed and the extent ofliteracy in Pictland, remains unknown.[12]
An Ogham inscription at theBroch of Burrian,Orkney has been transliterated asI[-]IRANNURRACTX EVVCXRROCCS.[49] Broken up asI[-]irann uract cheuc chrocs, this may reveal a Pictish cognate ofOld Welshguract 'he/she made' in*uract.[49][50] (The only direct continuation in Middle Welsh is 1sg.gwreith <*u̯rakt-ū in the poem known as "Peis Dinogat" in the Book of Aneirin; this form was eventually reformed togwnaeth.[51]) With the fourth word explained as spirantized Pictish*crocs 'cross' (Welshcroes < Latincrux) and the corrupted first word a personal name, the inscription may represent a Pictish sentence explaining who carved the cross.[49][47][50]
The Shetland inscriptions atCunningsburgh andLunnasting readingEHTECONMORS and[E]TTECUHETTS have been understood as Brittonic expressions meaning "this is as great" and "this is as far", respectively,[47] messages appropriate forboundary stones.[47]
Transliterated asIRATADDOARENS, it is possible that theBrandsbutt Stone inscription attests a Pictish form cognate withOld Bretonirha-, "he lies", inIRA-,[49] occurring at the Lomarec inscription inBrittany.[49]
Pictish toponyms occur in Scotland north of theRiver Forth.[52] Distributed fromFife to theIsle of Skye, they are relatively abundant south of theDornoch Firth but rare in the extreme north.[12][47]
Many principal settlements and geographical features of the region bear names of Pictish origin, including:
Several Pictish elements occur multiple times in the region.[52] This table lists selected instances according to the Welsh equivalent.[2][52][47][53]
| Element (Welsh) | Meaning | Place names |
|---|---|---|
| bryn | hill | Burnbane, Burnturk, Cameron (Markinch), Cameron (St Andrews), Newburn, Strathburn |
| caer | fort, stronghold; wall, rampart | Cardean, Carey, Cargill, Carmurie, Carpow, Carpoway, Crail, Kair, Keir, Kercock, Kirkbuddo, Kirkcaldy |
| coed | trees, forest, wood | Catochil, Erchite, Inchkeith, Keith, Keith Lundie, Keithack, Keithick, Keithmore, Keithny, Keithney, Keithock, Kitattie, Rothket |
| dôl | field, meadow | Dalfouper, Dallas, Dallasbraughty, Doll, Dollar, Dull |
| llannerch | clearing, glade | Landrick, Lanrick, Lendrick |
| mig(n) | swamp, quagmire | Dalmigavie, Meckphen, Meigle, Megen, Megevie, Meggen, Meggernie, Midmar, Midstrath, Migdale, Migger, Migvie, Strathmiglo |
| pant | hollow | Panbride, Panholes, Panlathy, Panmure, ?Pannanich |
| pen | head; top, summit; source of stream; headland; chief, principal | Pandewen, Pennan, Pinderachy, Pinnel |
| tref | town, homestead, estate, township | Cantray, Cantress, Menstrie, Montrave, Rattray (Blairgowrie), Rattray (Buchan), Tramaud, Trefor, Trefynie, Trostrie, Troustrie |
Some Pictish names have been succeeded by Gaelic forms, and in certain instances the earlier forms appear on historical record.
It is possible that more apparently Gaelic-derived place-names have Pictish origins. Pictish elements in some names may have been widely adapted with their Gaelic cognates, creating the appearance of a name coined from scratch in Gaelic.[57]
Pictish personal names, as acquired from documents such as thePoppleton manuscript, show significant diagnostically Brittonic features including the retention of final-st and initialw- (cf. P.Uurgust vs. GoidelicFergus) as well as development of-ora- to-ara- (cf. P.Taran vs G.torann).[1][12]
Several Pictish names are directly parallel to names and nouns in Brittonic languages. Several Pictish names are listed below according to their equivalents in Brittonic and other Celtic languages.[47][1]
| Pictish | Brittonic cognate(s) | Other Celtic cognate(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Mailcon | Mailcon (Old Welsh),Maelgwn (Welsh) | Máelchú (O. Irish) |
| Morcunt,Morgunn,Morgainn | Morcant (Old Welsh) | Morgán, Morgunn (Gaelic) |
| Taran | taran (Welsh) | torann (Gaelic),Taranis (Gaulish) |
| Unust | Unwst (Welsh) | Oengus (Gaelic) |
| Uoret,Urad | Guoret (Old Welsh) | Ferat (Gaelic) |
| Uuen (Latinised) | Owain (Welsh) | Eògan (O. Irish) |
| Uurgust | Gurgust (Old Welsh) | Fearghas (Gaelic) |
Several elements common in forming Brittonic names also appear in the names of Picts. These include*jʉð, "lord" (>Ciniod) and*res, "ardor" (>Resad; cf. WelshRhys).[54]
The 9th century workSanas Cormaic (or Cormac's Glossary), an etymological glossary of Irish, noted a wordcatait ("Pictish brooch") (also spelledcartait andcatit) as being of Pictish origin. Isaac (2005) compared the word withOld Welshcathet (of uncertain meaning but thought to mean "brooch" and appearing in a 10th century poem listing precious gifts) and offered a speculative Pictish reconstruction*kazdet.[58]
Etymological investigation of theScottish Gaelic language, in particular the 1896 efforts ofAlexander Macbain,[59] has demonstrated the presence of a corpus of Pictish loanwords in the language.[12][59] The items most commonly cited as loanwords arebad ("clump";Bretonbod),bagaid ("cluster, troop";Welshbagad),dail ("meadow"; Wdôl),dìleab ("legacy"),mormaer ("earl"; Wmawr +maer),pailt ("plentiful";Cornishpals),peasg ("gash"; Wpisg),peit ("area of ground, part, share"; Wpeth),pòr (Middle Welshpaur; "grain, crops"),preas ("bush"; Wprys).[59] On the basis of a number of the loans attesting shorter vowels than other British cognates, linguist Guto Rhys proposed Pictish resisted some Latin-influenced sound changes of the 6th century.[60] Rhys has also noted the potentially "fiscal" profile of several of the loans, and hypothesized that they could have entered Gaelic as a package in a governmental context.[12]
Several Gaelic nouns have meanings more closely matching their Brittonic cognates than those in Irish, indicating that Pictish may have influenced the sense and usage of these words as asubstrate.[52]Srath (>Strath-) is recorded to have meant "grassland" inOld Irish, whereas the modern Gaelic realization means "broad valley", exactly as in its Brittonic cognates (cf. Welshystrad).[52]Dùn,foithir,lios,ràth andtom may, by the same token, attest a substrate influence from Pictish.[52][2]
Greene noted that the verbal system inherited in Gaelic from Old Irish had been brought "into complete conformity with that of modern spoken Welsh",[61] and consequently Guto Rhys adjudged that Pictish may have modified Gaelic verbal syntax.[12]
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