Hew Morrison Collection > Leabhar Nan Gleann

kingdom of the Nortli Cymri (Cumbria),
embracing the Scottish counties of Dum-
fries, Ayr, Lanark, and the English Cumber-
land, Westmoreland; parallel thereto on the
cast coast as continuation of the Pictish
state to the south, was the kingdom of the
Angles, Northumberland. In the confusion
which the Yikings, from the end of the 8th
century onwards, brought upon Great
Britain, the Scottish King, Kenneth Mac-
Alpin, managed, about 844, to get possession
■of the Pictish throne, and thus to found a
united Scoto-Pictish kingdom (Alba), north
■of the line of the Firths of Forth and
Clyde.
Exactly 100 years lat.er the English ruler
Eadmund, who possessed Northumberland,
and Malcolm, ruler of the Irish-Pictish
state, Scotland, made an end of the then
still existing British state on the west coast,
south of the boundary so repeatedly referred
to, and divided it between them such that
the IrLsh-Pictish state, Scotland, extended
^so south of this border line. Through
fully 500 years, until the downfall of the
Pictish kingdcjm, the Irish (Scotti) were
most closely bound up with the Picts; first
they are confederates of the Picts, then
burdensome friends, who no more return
liome; finally, after they have Christianized
them, and hngually assimilated them — the
northern Picts, at least — they take away from
them their independence. That we must,
first and foremost, question these good friends
of the Picts if we are to learn more about the
Pictish stock is clear. And we learn many
things. The Irish name for the Picts is
"Cruthentuath (Cruithentuath) i.e., Cruthen-
folk (tuath"); the individual Pict is called
Cruithne, or Cruthnech (Cruithnech), two
formations from "Cruthen," in "Cruthen-
tuath," like Latin "patrius" and "patricus,"
from "pater." In Irish Saga, semi-historical