Re: Picts

From: DEFAYES MICHEL
Message: 1789
Date: 2000-03-07

Yves Deroubaix a écrit:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Could someone tell me if the Picts were Celts? I heard they were releated to
> the Basques. Is that true.
> ______________________________________________________

Lat. pictus variegated
Lat. Picti An ancient people of the British Isles. The word
appears for the first time in 297 in Eumenius' Panegyric. It is a translation of
the Breton Breizad "Breton" (from brezel "war", thus "the warriers") and
confused with brez "variegated" ? 3.2.33; this confusion prompted Isidore of
Seville to say that their name arose from their being tattooed (which was just a
supposition). Thus Pict was simply a name for a Celtic people (Breton or Welsh)
and not the mysterious people often referred to. GUITER (Bull. Soc. vascongada,
1968) shows convincingly that the inscriptions found in the British Isles do not
differ any more from Basque than a dialect. This is no proof that the Picts were
Basques, but simply that the Basques, a people of navigators, had left their
traces in this country (as they have in America). Pict is without any relation
to "Pictones" the ancient name of the inhabitants of Poitou, France.
Michel