XPost: soc.culture.scottish, soc.culture.irish, ie.general
From: micheil@shaw.ca
On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 10:39:19 GMT, Ciaran wrote:
>allan connochie wrote:
>> "Ciaran" wrote in message
>> news:455E9F8B.9020903@ciaran.com...
>>> allan connochie wrote:
>>>> "Ciaran" wrote in message
>>>> news:s9h6h.64485$rP1.8080@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>>>>> Some form of Q-Celtic Gaelic may have been used by the Picts as on the
>>>>> inscription in the Gaelic Ogham alphabet cited below. Note that
>>>>> "mac"/"mic" means "son" in both Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig) and Irish
>>>>> Gaelic (Gaeilge) - if you pronounce the Pictish incription "meqq" it
>>>>> sounds much closer to the Gaelic version than to the P-Celtic Brythonic
>>>>> version "mab"/"map" which means "son" in both Welsh (Cymraeg) and
>> Breton
>>>>> (Brezhoneg).
>>>>
>>>> This is nothing new though. It is generally accepted that the 'meqq'
>> could
>>>> mean son of. It could be Gaelic - which would be no surprise as the
>> Picts
>>>> became Gaelicised, at first probably just influenced by, then probably
>>>> bi-lingual, then Gaelic speakers. However that is not the same as the
>>>> Pictish language itself being Gaelic. Likewise 'meqq' could simply be
>> their
>>>> way of putting 'map' to print. It is also possible that 'meqq' has
>> nothing
>>>> to do with son of - I'd doubt that myself by the fact is we don't know.
>>>> Likewise some have suggested that the inscriptions don't actually mean
>>>> anything - though again I'd doubt that.
>>>>
>>>> What is true though is that the suggestion that 'meqq' could be the
>> original
>>>> Pictish 'map' Gaelicised has been public knowledge ever since people
>> started
>>>> looking at the inscriptions. Little things like that are what pushed
>> some
>>>> scholars in the 19thC to suggest that Pictish may have been Q-Celtic.
>>>> However these views have ben roundly debunked for a century or so and
>>>> opinion amongst those who study the subject is just about unanimous. It
>> is
>>>> generally accepted that the Pictish language was P-Celtic.
>>>>
>>>> Allan
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Sorry, No, VERY UNLIKELY - the Ogham letter Ceirt (5 horizontal strokes
>>> to the left of the line) which is transliterated as "q" represents a
>>> hard "K" sound as in "Mack". There are other Ogham letters for "b/p"
>>> which they would have used instead. "MAQ" is also used extensively on
>>> definite Gaelic Ogham inscriptions everywhere Ogham is found.
>>
>> What is very unlikely? The whole post? I've given several possible reasons
>> which have been put forward. It is all by the by anyway. Even if it is a
>> representation of Mac actually in Gaelic, which I said would be no surprise,
>> it makes no difference to the argument. No-one is denying that Gaelic didn't
>> spread into Pictland, influence Pictish and eventually replace it - what is
>> being said is that the Pictish language itself was P-Celtic.
>>
>> I take it your point is about the 'meqq' possibly being the Pictish attempt
>> at puting 'map' to print? This is not my idea. I was simply giving one of
>> the possible reasons. Talking about the said subject Elizabeth Sutherland in
>> her book "In Search of the Picts" quotes Niall Robertson............."when
>> the Picts wrote their Ogam inscriptions in P-Celtic they might have used the
>> 'fid' for 'q' to represent 'p', so that inscriptions using MEQQ or MAQQ
>> would have been read as MAP or MAPP"
>>
>> She then goes on to explain "Ogam inscriptions in the other P-Celtic areas
>> such as Wales and the old district of Dumnonia used the 'cert' for 'q' if
>> they used it at all, but these inscriptions are written in Irish and don't
>> attempt to represent local language as the Pictish Ogams seem to do"
>>
>> Again I have no wish to personally put forward this particular theory. It
>> was just one of the various theories around.
>>
>> Sutherland by the way was responsible for establishing the museum at Groam
>> House in Rosemarkie as a Pictish centre. I think she knows a thing or two
>> about the Picts as she has dedicated a good part of her life to studying
>> them. She doesn't herself come to any conclusion about the MEQQ question,
>> which is possibly sensible, as it couldn't be proved one way or the other.
>> Whatever the answer is though it doesn't itself affect the overall
>> acceptance of Pictish being P-Celtic and she says "the opinion generally
>> held by Celtic scholars from the beginning of the 20thC is that Picts spoke
>> a P-Celtic language"
>>
>> I could of course quote from stacks of volumes written by respected
>> historians but I thought this one would do to make a point. You suggested
>> that it wasn't you who has an agenda here, rather it is myself and the
>> entire Scottish community of historians who have the bias. These are two
>> quotes from William Ferguson's "The Identity of the Scottish Nation"
>>
>> "Indeed about the one fact that modern scholarship has established with
>> certainty is that the Picts were P-Celts"
>>
>> Now according to you scholars like Ferguson are pushing this idea to forward
>> their own agendas. The only problem is he makes repeated statements
>> throughout the book like this
>>
>> "It was the Scots of Dalriada, an Irish tribe who settled in Argyll in the
>> sixth century AD and gradually extended their sway over most of Scotland
>> north of the Forth, who gave their name to the country; and more than their
>> name, for they contributed to and, to a large extent, shaped the subsequent
>> Kingdom of Scotland. For many centuries, and those the most formative, their
>> language, Gaelic, was the lingua scotica of the regnum scotica"
>>
>> In other words your suggestion that people claim the Picts were P-Celts in
>> order to knock Gaelic is utter codswallop. The Gaelic language is important
>> enough that you don't need to reshape history in order to make it more so.
>>
>>
>> Allan
>Allan, the Wiki classifies Pictish as possibly Brythonic in the context
>that all Insular Celtic languages are closely related anyway and it
>presents evidence of this:
>
>Insular Celtic languages
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
>Jump to: navigation, search
>Insular Celtic
>Geographic
>distribution: British Isles
>Genetic
>classification: Indo-European
> Celtic
> Insular Celtic
>Subdivisions:
>Brythonic
>Goidelic
>
>The Insular Celtic hypothesis concerns the origin of the Celtic
>languages. The six Celtic languages of modern times can be divided into:
>
> * the Goidelic languages (Irish, Manx, and Scottish); and
> * the Brythonic languages (Breton, Cornish and Welsh).
The following may be instructive: Notes I wrote some years ago.
The Children of the Celts
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