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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX
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The term Prydain was extended by the Greeks and Romans to indicate the whole of Great Britain and its population: Pretaniké nésos, Pretanikai nésoi, Prettania, Pretania, Pretanoi. The Romans, however, had another name for this Island and its population: Brittannia or Britannia, Britanni. Some scholars suggested that the terms Prettanía and Britannia were etymologically identical, but, strange as it may appear to a layman, according to other authorities this theory seems to be wrong.
Very little is known about the ethnic and linguistic affinities of the Picts. They are considered by some scholars as early Celts, by others, for instance by the late Sir John Rhys, by Macalister and MacNeill as the pre-Celtic aborigines of Scotland. One of the main Pictish tribes, the Caledonians, gave the Roman name to the country.
The Script
The Pictish oghams, like some Irish oghamic inscriptions, generally run upward, but, as Professor Macalister points out, the Pictish carvers began on the right hand edge, and "when the inscription crosses the top, the writing must run backward, and the side-scores must be invertedan inconvenience that continues upon the opposite edge. Nothing more clearly proves the Pictish want of experience." One of the main peculiarities of the Pictish oghams is that some of them are marked with binding lines.
Fig. 238, 1 represents an inscription from Brandsbutt, near Inverurie, Aberdeen (Macalister, No. 5); Fig. 238, 2 represents the ogham part of the runic inscription of Malumkun, at Kirk Michael, Isle of Man (Macalister, No. 20).
The Pictish oghams have not yet been satisfactorily translated. The Picts adopted the Irish oghams and tried to adapt them to their own language. This adaptation seems to have been faulty. According to Professor Macalister, Pictish was not only non-Celtic, but even nonIndo-European, and Pictish and Gaelic were phonetically incompatible. Pictish appears to have possessed sounds for which the Irish ogham had no provision. Therefore, in Macalister's view, additional Pictish symbols were invented to express differentiations in the pronunciation of certain letters. These additional symbols seem to have been vowels for the greater part. This suggests, according to Professor Macalister, that, like the Finno-Ugrian languages, Pictish possessed a large variety of vowel-sounds.
Heraldry (?)
It is noteworthy that many Pictish oghamic inscriptions and other Pictish stone monuments contain pictorial symbols, consisting in geometrical signs, representations of animals, birds, fishes, etc. Professor Macalister holds that these pictorial symbols, numbering about fifty, may represent a pictorial heraldry.
