That there was in early times a people settled in North Britain bear ing a name of which the Latin Pieti was intended as the representative, may be pronounced to be a fact only to be disputed by that sort of scepticism which is not less hostile to the investigation and establish ment of historic truth than the weakest credulity. They are men tioned under thq name of Pieti not only by Eumenius, Marcellinua, Claudian, and other Roman writers, but by Gildas, Nennius, Bede, and Paul Warnfrid (Paulus Diaconus), all of whom lived while the l'ietish kingdom still subsisted in the country now called Scotland ; Bede even gives a history of the first settlement of the Picts in North Britain, which may be correct or not, or partly truth, partly fable, but which agrees in some remarkable points with the accounts both of the Irish and of the Norwegian or Icelandic annalists; the Saxon Chronicler and other contemporary writers of that nation speak of them under the names of Peoletas, Pyhtas, Pihtura, and Pchiti ; the Welsh historical fragmenta call them Phiddjaid ; the Icelandic writers, Pets ; the ancient Irish annalists, Cruillate for the northern Pieta, while the southern were called Piccardetch, names which are sufficiently ascer tained to indicate the same people : and popular tradition in Scotland still remembers them under the name of Perlis (pronounced with a deep and prolonged guttural intonation), which is probably as near their true name as any of the other forms.
The main dispute with regard to the Picts, as with regard to the Caledonians, with whom they have been sometimes identified, the Scots, the Cimbri of antiquity, and tho Cymry or modern Welsh, the Beige and the Irish Firbolgs, has been, whether they were a Celtic or a Teutonic people. Their Teutonic lineage is maintained by Usher, Stillingileet, and Pinkerton ; that they were Celts is the opinion of Camden, Bishop Lloyd, Father Ines, George Chalmers, Ritson, and others. The historic evidence that bears upon the point does not amount to much; all that can be said is, that the various old legendary accounts all make them to have come to Britain from Scythia or from Scandinavia. But the most curious and valuable fact that we possess in relation to this matter is, that their language appears to have nearly resembled the Welsh, and the Welsh Triads uniformly term them gwyddyl Ffichti, the Gaelic or Celtic Picts. One Pictish word only has been expressly mentioned by any old writer. Peanwahel, Bede tells us, was the Pictish name of the place at which the wall of Antoninus terminated on the Forth, and which Nennius says was called in Welsh Pengaaul (Pengual 7), and in Scotch (Sco(ice) Cenail. It is still in fact known by the name of KinneiL an, or Cean, is the Irish or Gaelic word for a head, and Cenail in that dialect would mean the head of the wall; and that is also the signification of the Welsh name, with which the Pictish is evidently identical. It is remarkable that in Angus, and the other counties on the north-east coast of Scotland where the Picts were longest established, the popular speech is still characterised by the peculiarity of the substitution of the clement f for so, or wh, or gw. Thus, for what the people of that district all say fat, just as their Pictish ancestors for Pcngual said Penfahel or Penfal. And generally it appears that the ancient names of places in those parts of Scotland formerly occupied by the Picts are Welsh, as was long ago pointed out by Camden, and afterwards more fully established by George Chalmers, in his ` Caledonia ;' and has been substantiated by most subsequent investigations.
The greatest diversity of opinion has also prevailed as to the extent of the territory occupied by the Picts in the north of Britain. Pinker ton, who considers the Picts to be the same people with the Cale donians, holds them to have occupied not only the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides, but the whole of Scotland to the north of the Friths of Forth and Clyde, and to have extended their conquests on the east coast as far south as to the Humber. There is every reason indeed to believe that they were at one time in possession of a considerable territory to the south of the Forth. Bede expressly states that in his time the English held possession of the Pictish province in which stood Aebbercurnig, now Abercom, in West Lothian, the seat of one of their bishops. Here too was Peanvahel, now Kinneil ; and Edin burgh, farther to the east, on the same side of the Forth, is also described by old writers as having been at one time within the dominion of the Picts. But, at least during the greater part of the time that it subsisted, the Pictish kingdom appears to have been bounded by the Frith of Forth to the south, and to the west by the mountainous range still separating the Lowlands from the Highlands of Scotland. The kingdom of Strath-Clydo, or Cumbria, however, or Reged (that is, the kingdom, by way of pre-eminence), as it was usually designated by the Welsh, which comprised the south-west of Scotland, and perhaps also the county of Cumberland (if that did not form a separate state), must be regarded as having also been Pictish on the hypothesis which assumes the Picts to have been the same people with the Welsh, the latter being admitted on all hands to bo of the same race with the people of Strath-Clyde.
The history 'of the Pictish kingdom established in the north-east of Scotland is, as may be supposed, exceedingly scanty and obscure. The Scottish and Irish chronicles however supply five different lists of the Pictish kings, no one of which evidently has been copied from another, although they all agree substantially, with the exception of such variations as tend to establish the independent authority of each. From these lists Pinkerton has framed a Pictish chronology, which he divides into two portions : the first, which he entitles Poetical, extend ing from the foundation of the monarchy by Crnthen, or Cruithne (whence the Irish name for the northern Picts), about A.D. 28, through a succession of thirty-six kings, ending with Talore I., A.D. 414; the second, styled Historical, extending from the accession of the successor of Talore, Drust the Great, through forty princes more, to the sub version of the monarchy in A.D. 843, in the reign of Brudi VII. Besides the succession of the kings, a few events of Pictish history aro also recorded by the Irish and Icelandic, as well as by the less ancient Scottish chroniclers. These consist chiefly of the foundations of a few towns, and of battles fought with the Scots, or Irish colonists of the north-west of Scotland, with whom the Picts appear to have been almost constantly at war from the first establishment of these new settlers in the country about the beginning of the 6th century. Bede and Allred state that the Southern Picts were converted to Christianity by St. Ninian about the year 412 ; but it may be doubted whether these were the Picts living between the Forth and the Grampians, as Bede affirms, or the people of Strath-Clyde, among whom it is known that Ninian was established as bishop of Whithern, now Whitehorn, in Wigtonshire. The conversion of the Northern Picts is attributed to St. Columba, about the year 565.