Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

PREFACE. xxvli
obfcrve, that it is fomewhat ilrange that the
Attacotti, notwithilanding of their barba-
rity, fhould have been Canibals, at a time
they had hogs, (heep and cattle before them.
The policy of the Romans muft have been
extreamly relaxed in their province of Gaul,
when the buttocks of their fubjeds were fo
much expofed to the barbarous gluttony of
the Attacottip
But leaving this faS. on the authority of
Jerome, it appears certain that the Attacotti
were a Britifii people. Buchanan and Camb-
d<tn prove, from the Notitia, that fome of
that nation were among the mercenary troops
of the empire in its decline. Jn what part
of Caledonia the Attacotti were fettled is
difficult to determine. Buchanan, with
great probability, places them between the
walls ; and in that cafe they muft have been a
powerful tribe of the Masats of Dion.
Stillingfleet obferves, that the ety-
iTion of Attacotti has not hitherto been un-
derllood. The Dodlor adds, by way of
fiieer on the whimfical etymologiftis of Bri-
tifii names from the Punic, that he doubts
much whether it ever fliall, unlefs fome
learned critic chufe to trace it to the Phoe-
nician language-j-. A tolerable knowledge
^ Orisincs Britan. p. 287.
of