Cruthin
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The Cruthin, in Middle Irish Cruithni, in Modern Irish Cruithne were a semi-mythical people, with occasional historic reference in Gaelic sources, that lived within the British Isles during the Iron Age. Specifically, Cruithne was the contemporary Gaelic word for the peoples referred to in Roman histories, and subsequent derivative works, as the Picts.[clarify]
The Gaelic (Q-Celtic) name Cruithne is derived from Priteni (also Pritani),[1] from which derives the name Pretannike (Latin Britannia), used as the term for the British Isles by Pytheas in about 325 BC.
T. F. O'Rahilly in his historical model for the Celtic invasion of the British Isles supposes that these Priteni were the first Celtic group to inhabit the British Isles, and identifies them with the Picts of Scotland. They settled in Britain and Ireland between 700 and 500 BC. Around 50 BC Diodorus wrote of "those of the Pretani who inhabit the country called Iris (Ireland)". Whether the Priteni can be considered Celts in the linguistic sense thus depends on the classification of the Pictish language.[2]
The first reference to the name Pict is found in a Latin document dated AD 297.
Among the Cruthnian tribes that survived in Ireland were the Loíges and Fothairt in Leinster. The name of the first of these tribes - modernized as Laois - has been revived and given to one of the counties of Leinster (formerly known as Queen's County).
[edit] Notes
- ^ O'Rahilly, T. F. (1946). Early Irish History and Mythology. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
- ^ Wainwright, F.T. (editor), The Problem of the Picts (1955). ISBN 0-906664-07-1.
