The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

86 PHGNICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

MS. Codex.: This list, which is substantially identical with the versions of the same in the Irish Books of Ballymote and Lecan, extends from the first eponymous king of the Picts in Scotland, called “ Cruithne,” to Bred, the last king of the Picts, about A.p. 834.

This name “ Cruithne ” for the first king of the Picts in Scotland is held by Celtic scholars to be the Pictish form of spelling “‘ Pruithne”’ or “Briton,” on their theory that the Picts and Celts or Gaels substituted Q for P in their spelling of names, and also substituted B for P in such names—though it may be observed that Celtic scholars do not explain why the Picts and Gaels who had Q in their alphabet do not use it in spelling this name, but employ a C instead. If ‘ Cruithne,”’ however, really represents ‘‘ Prwithne,’ as believed, then the first king of the Picts in Scotland bore a name substantially identical with “‘ Prwt,” the erector of the Newton Stone monument, and thus presumably was identical with him.

This “ Cruithne”’ (or “ Pruithne”’) is stated to be the “son of Cinge,”’ and this is expanded by the Imsh Book versions above cited into “ Cinge, son of Luchtai, son of Parthi or Parthalan.’? This last statement is interesting and important as connecting Cruithne traditionally with Part-olon—a name which we have seen was only a family title, his personal name being Itar. But this making him to be the third descendant from Partolan is presumably a gloss by later Irish scribes to suit the Irish tradition that Partolan settled in Ireland and died there, and that it was his descendants of the third generation who migrated to Scotland.

“ Cruithne ” (or ‘‘ Pruithne ’’) is followed in the Pictish king-list by the names of ‘“‘ seven sons’? who are each supposed to have reigned consecutively after their father. But, as the Irish versions state, these names are those of the seven divisions or provinces of medieval Scotland, beginning

1 The ‘“‘ Colbertine MS.” is a fourteenth-century Latin copy made at York of an earlier old Gaelic or Irish original written in the tenth century A.D., and is now in the “‘ Imperial ” Library, Paris (No. 4126). It contains the well-known “‘ Pictish Chronicle,” of which the best published edition with translation is by W. F. Skene (S.C.P.}, where a facsimile of the most important part of the MS. is given.

*'S.C.P., 23 and 24.