name of one of those nations who anciently possessed the north of Britain. It is generally believed that they were so called from their custom of painting their bodies. But as this custom prevailed among the other ancient inhabitants of Britain, who used the glastra of Pliny and the vitrum of Mela for the like purpose, it may be asked, Why the name of Picti was confined by the Romans to only one tribe, when it was equally applicable to many others? Why should they design them only by an epithet without ever annexing their proper name? Or why should they impose a new name on this people only, when they give their proper name to every other tribe which they have occasion to speak of? As these questions cannot be answered in any satisfactory manner, it is plain we must look for some other derivation of the name.

The Highlanders of Scotland, who speak the ancient language of Caledonia, express the name of this once famous nation by the term Pitich; a name familiar to the ears of the most illiterate, who could never have derived it from the Roman authors. The word Pitich means pilferers or plunderers. The appellation lation was probably imposed upon this people by their neighbours, or assumed by themselves, some time after the reign of Caracalla, when the unguarded state of the Roman province, on which this people bordered, gave them frequent opportunities of making incursions thither, and committing depredations. Accordingly this name seems to have been unknown till the end of the 3rd century. Eumenius the Panegyrist is the first Roman author who mentions this people under their new name of Pictish, or, with a Latin termination, Picci. When we say that this name may have been probably assumed for the reason just now mentioned, we must observe, that, in those days of violence, the character of a robber was attended with no disgrace. If he had the address to form his schemes well, and to execute them successfully, he was rather praised than blamed for his conduct; providing he made no encroachments on the property of his own tribe, or any of its allies. We mean this as no peculiar stigma upon the Picts; for other nations of antiquity, in the like rude state, thought and acted as they did. See Thucydides, lib. 3. p. 3. and Virg. Aen. 7. 745 & 749.

Concerning the origin of the Picts, authors are much divided. Boethius derives them from the Agathyrsi, Pomponius Laetus from the Germans, Bede from the Scythians, Cambden and father Innes from the ancient Britons, Sillingfleet from a people inhabiting the Cherestoneus Cymbricae, and Keating and O'Flaherty, on the authority of the Pictish Cashel, derive them from the Thracians. But the most probable opinion is, that they were the descendents of the old Caledonians. Several reasons are urged in support of this opinion by Dr Macpherson; and the words of Eumenius, "Caledonum, aliorumque Pictorum, filvas, &c." plainly imply that the Picts and Caledonians were one and the same people.

As there has been much dispute about the origin of the Picts, so there has been likewise about their language. There are many reasons which make it plain that their tongue was the Gaelic or Celtic; and these reasons are a further confirmation of their having been of Caledonian extract. Through the east and north-east coasts of Scotland (which were possessed by the Picts) we meet with an innumerable list of names of places, rivers, mountains, &c. which are manifestly Galic. From a very old register of the priory of St Andrews (Dalrymple's Collections, p. 122.) it appears, that in the days of Hurtus, the last Pictish king of that name, St Andrew's was called Mukros; and that the town now called Queensferry had the name of Ardchinnichan. Both these words are plain Gaelic. The first signifies "the heath or promontory of boars;" and the latter, "the height or peninsula of Kenneth." In the list of Pictish kings published by father Innes, most of the names are obviously Galic, and in many instances the same with the names in the list of Scottish or Caledonian kings published by the same author. Had Innes understood anything of this language, he would not have supposed with Cambden that the Picts spoke the British tongue. It was unlucky that the two words on which they built their conjecture (Strath and Aber) are as common in the Galic as they could have been in the British, and at this day make a part of the names of places in countries to which the Pictish empire never extended. The names of Strathfillan and Lochaber may serve as instances.

The venerable Bede, as much a stranger to the Celtic as either of the antiquaries just now mentioned, is equally unhappy in the specimen which he gives of the Pictish language in the word penuachol, "the head of the wall." Allowing the commutation of the initial p into c, as in some other cases, this word has still the same meaning in Gaelic, which Bede gives it in the Pictish. It is true, there might have been then, as well as now, a considerable difference between different dialects of the Celtic; and thus, perhaps, that pious author was led to discover five languages in Britain agreeably to the five books of Moses: A conceit from which the good man derived a great deal of harmless satisfaction.

The Picts of the earliest ages, as appears from the joint testimony of all writers who examined the subject, possessed only the east and north-east coast of Scotland. On one side, the ancient Drumalbin, or that ridge of mountains reaching from Lochlomond near Dumbarton to the frith of Tain, which separates the county of Sutherland from a part of Ross, was the boundary of the Pictish dominions. Accordingly we find in the life of Columba, that, in travelling to the palace of Brudius, king of the Picts, he travelled over Drumalbin, the Dorsum Britanniae of Adamnan. On the other side, the territory of the Picts was bounded by the Roman province. After Britain was relinquished by the emperor Honorius, they and the Saxons by turns were masters of those countries which lie between the frith of Edinburgh and the river Tweed. We learn from Bede, that the Saxons were masters of Galloway when he finished his Ecclesiastical History. The Picts, however, made a conquest of that country soon after; so that, before the extinction of their monarchy, all the territories bounded on the one side by the Forth and Clyde, and one the other by the Tweed and Solway, fell into their hands.

The history of the Picts, as well as of all the other ancient inhabitants of Britain, is extremely dark. The Irish historians give us a long list of Pictish kings, who reigned over Pictavia for the space of eleven or thirteen centuries before the Christian era. After them Innes, in his Critical Essay, gives us a list of above fifty, of whom no less than five held the sceptre, each for a whole century. It is probable that these writers had confounded the history of the Picts with that of their ancestors the old Caledonians. In any other view, their accounts of them are highly fabulous; and have been long ago confuted by Dr Macpherson of Slate, an antiquary of much learning and research. The Picts, as has been already observed, were probably not known by that name before the 2nd or 3rd century. Adamnan, abbot of Iona, is the first author that expressly mentions any Pictish king; and the oldest after him is Bede. We are informed by these two writers that St Columba converted Brudius king of the Picts to the Christian faith. Columba came into Britain in the year of the vulgar era 565. Before that period we have no general record to ascertain so much as the name of any Pictish king. The history of Druis or Dreis, who is said to have reigned over the Picts in the beginning of the fifth century, when St Ninian first preached the gospel to that that nation, has all the appearance of fiction. His having reigned a hundred years, and his putting an end to a hundred wars, are stories which exceed all the bounds of probability.

Brudius, the contemporary of Columba, is the first Pictish king mentioned by any writer of authority. What figure his ancestors made, or who were his successors on the throne of Pictavia, cannot be ascertained. Bede informs us, that, during the reign of one of them, the Picts killed Egfred king of Northumberland in battle, and destroyed the greatest part of his army. The same author mentions another of their kings called Naitan, for whom he had a particular regard. It was to this Naitan that Ceolfrid, abbot of Wiremouth, wrote his famous letter concerning Easter and the Tonfure; a letter in which Bede himself is supposed to have had a principal hand. Roger Hoveden and Simon of Durham mention two other Pictish kings Onnust and Kinoth, the first of whom died in 761, and the latter flourished about the 774, and gave an asylum to Alfred of Northumberland, who was much about that time expelled his kingdom. The accounts given by the Scots historians of several other Pictish kings cannot be depended on; nor are the stories told by the British historians, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the author of the Eulogium Britanniae, worthy of much greater credit.

In the ninth century the Pictish nation was totally subdued by the Scots in the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin. Since that time their name has been lost in that of the conquerors, with whom they were incorporated after this conquest; however, they seem to have been treated by the Scottish kings with great lenity, so that for some ages after they commanded a great deal of respect. The prior of Hoghilthead, an old English historian, relates that they made a considerable figure in the army of David the Saint, in his disputes with Stephen, king of England. In a battle fought in the year 1136, by the English on one side, and the Scots and Picts on the other, the latter insisted on their hereditary right of leading the van of the Scots army, and were indulged in that request by the king.

The principal seat of the Pictish kings was at Abernethy. Brudius, however, as appears from the accounts given by Adamnan, in his life of Columba, had a palace at Inverness, which was probably near the extremity of his territory in that quarter; for, there is no good reason for believing, with Cambden, that this king had any property in the Western Isles, or that he had made a gift of Fona to St Columba when he visited him in that place.

With respect to the manners and customs of the Picts, there is no reason to suppose they were any other than those of the old Caledonians and Scots, of which many particulars are related in the Greek and Roman writers who have occasion to speak of those nations.

Picts Wall, in antiquity, a wall begun by the emperor Adrian, on the northern bounds of England, to prevent the incursions of the Picts and Scots. It was first made only of turf strengthened with palisadoes, till the emperor Severus, coming into Britain in person, built it with solid stone. This wall, part of which still remains, begun at the entrance of the Solway Frith in Cumberland, and running north-east extended to the German Ocean. See Adrian and Picus.

Severus.