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

ORIGIN OF NAME “ PICT” II5

The remoter origin of the Nordic name Peft or Peht or Pihta, which was presumably latinized by the Romans into “ Pict,’ seems to me to be probably found in the V7t or Vet or J7tr title in the Gothic Eddas for a chief of a clan of the primitive ‘“‘ Blue Leg’ dwarfs of Van and Vindia, who js mentioned alongside Baomburr (who was obviously, as we have seen, the eponym of the Irish aboriginal Fomors) V, B and P, being freely interchangeable dialectically.

| This “ Vit ” means literally “ witted”’ or “ wise,’”? and is also used in a personal sense as “ witch’ or “ wizard,’ with the variant of “ Viti,” “ Vitki,” literally “ witch,’ and meaning “ witch-craft and charms’’;* and in a contemptuous general sense as Vetta and Vett “a wight” and secondarily as “ naught ” or “ nothing ” or“ nobody ’* and thus “ petty ”’ ; and as Veit? and “* Pit-(lor) ’, itis a Norse nickname.® It thus appears probable that “ Pett ’ or “ Pihta ” or “‘ Pict ’”’ are later dialectic forms of the epithet Vit, Vet, or Vetta or Vitki applied contemptuously by the Early Goths to a section of the dwarf “ Blue Leg” ancestors of the Picts, and designated them as “ The petty Witch Wights,” that is, the Witch-ridden devotees of the cult of the Matriarch witch or wise woman.]

This early association of the Picts with “ petty ’’ and witches would now seem to explain why in modern folklore these dwarfish people are associated and identified with Fauns, Fians, Pixies and wicked Fairies—indeed the modern word “ wicked ” is derived from “‘ Witch’ and thus seen to have its origin in the Gothic Vitki, ‘‘ the wicked witch ” title of the Van ancestors of the Picts, a people who all along appear to have been devotees of the cult of the Serpent and its Matriarchist witches and their magic cauldron.

Indeed, this ‘‘ Vit’ epithet for the Picts, or ‘‘ Pihtas ” of the Anglo-Saxons, appears to find some confirmation from Czsar’s journal, While Cesar nowhere calls any of the people of Britain “ Pict,’ he, even when referring to the natives of Britain staining their skin for war, does not use the word pictus or “ painted; but uses ificiunt (i.e., infect or

‘ Vity (in which the final y is merely the Gothic nominative case-ending, in Volu-spa Edda (Codex Regius, p. 1, 1. 25) ; and “ Velr of Vind’s vale ” in Vaf-thrudnis Mal Edda (Cod. reg. p. 15, Il. 20 and 22),

=WebDy 723° + Ib. 713, 714. “1b. 720. 5 Ib. 7OX, 477-