> But, is there a possibility, even remote, of these legends be a
true basis?
Not likely.
> Why did Scots relate themselves to Scythia or Egypt? The folk-
etymological
> association between Scotia and Scythia? The Biblical references to
Egypt,
> including them in the Moses cycle?
Continental Christian authors of late antiquity, into the Dark Ages
(such as Orosius and Isidore of Spain) engaged in fantastic
speculation on the tymologies of ethnic names - because the ethnic
name Scotti (which only started being applied to the Irish in late
antiquity) looked superficially like the Greek word Skythai
(Latinized as Scythae, with variants, though this is not the name
that the ethnic Scythians called themselves), they imagined that the
two peoples were connected somehow (facilitated byt he fact that both
the Irish and Scythians were wild barbarians that lived beyond the
fringes of civilization).
In actuality, Scotti is from a Celtic root and has no relation
linguistically to Scythae whatsoever - but that didn't stop newly
converted Christians in Ireland (who were quite fond of authors such
as Orosius and Isidore, and were anxious to drop their own native
pagan histories in favor of ones that connected the Irish with both
the classical world and the people of the Bible) from accepting these
wild speculations as the truth. They went on to combine both native
traditions with Classical and Biblical pseudo-histories, synthesizing
them into a "new chronology", which became the basis of works such as
the Lebor Gabala Erenn.
> I've already references in books about dog breeds, that Celtic
terriers
> could have been a Egyptian origin, relating them to the
Egyptian "teckel", a
> small, short-legged dog, usually considered to be ancestor of German
> dachshund, Welsh Pembroke Corgi, and even Maltese bichon.
The origins of a domestic animal (which could have easily been spread
far and wide via trade) has no real bearing on the ethnicity of the
people.
- Chris Gwinn