SPAM:: LL-L 'History' 2006.10.07 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 07 October 2006 * Volume 04
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.10.05 (09) [E]


>From: Ole Stig Andersen [osa at olestig.dk]
>Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.10.05 (06) [E]
>
>This interesting discussion reminds me of the eminent Scottish political
>artist Robbie the Pict who has made many hilarious stunts and shrewd

Although Robbie's antics have nothing to do with the Picts or Pictishness!

It really just goes to show that you can make a career out of being an
eccentric if you're good enough at it. A bit like Richard (I've met him,
but I forget his last name) the "King of Hay" who was tolerated by the
people of Hay-on-Wye because of the amount of business he generated for
the town. I consider the King of Hay to be the mightier because while
Robbie made his name by leaning on a popular fantasy, Richard made his
out of nothing but his own personality and genuine business interests.

>Aadmiring the wellformedness and zenlike structure of several of his
>expolits I had some respect for him, but Pictish a Finnish language, no. To
>make it worse, he also entertained some idea about Phoenician influence in
>Scotland/Pictland, which I found slightly Atlantis-like.

The idea that Finnish and Pictish are related far predates Robbie the
Pict. The idea is that the Gaelic hero Finn McCool (the Gaelic spelling
is abandoned in order to make him sound cool, and Finnish!) came from
Finland and his people founded the Pictish nation. It's a bit of a stretch!

I had a Swedish tutor who, being a Finn, had "proved" that English was
the most closely related language to Finnish and neither of them were in
anyway related to Hungarian. But then again in 18th Century England it
was often considered that Hebrew and English were close relatives.

It's useless to decide what you want to be true, and then try to prove
it. Science (not including mathematics) is about formulating theories
and seeing if they can be _disproved_.

>An explanation for the Brythonic placenames in Pictland could be a gradual
>replacement of a former Pictish language of unknown affiliation by
>Brythonic, couldn't it? Such a substitution should leave traces of the
>former language(s). Are there not placenames in Pictland that are NOT of
>Celtic form?

You have, for example, the "pit" in Pitlochry and Pittenweem, which is
said to e Pictish. But what does this mean? They could just be Brythonic
words that weren't used in place names in the more southerly Brythonic
dialects we're familiar with. It's the Occam's razor thing. We don't
need to postulate a whole new language just to account for a handful of
words that aren't found in other areas.

>And after all there once was a stone age population in the area, before
>agriculture and Indoeuropean languages arrived.
>
>Or is that irrelevant?

I think so, because it's the Romans who mention the Picts. There's no
reason to make a linguistic connection with much earlier populations.

>From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
>Subject: History
>
>Let me mention as an aside that "Picts" in the sense of "painted (with woad)"
>(Greek _Πικτοί_, Latin _Picti_) appears to be an ancient folk etymology on the
>part of Southern explorers and invaders. Apparently, it's now believed that the
>name comes from Celtic _pehta_ or _peihta_ 'fighter', 'warrior' (cf. Modern Scots
>_Pecht_ 'Pict'), which is related to English "fight," Low Saxon _vechten_
>(_fechten_) 'to fight', German _fechten_ 'to fence', etc.

Don't forget that in modern Scots, "fight" is "fecht".

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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