personal names in the Pictish chronicle, and Pictish names like
"Peanfahel,"[38] have Brythonic affinities. If the Picts spoke a
Brythonic dialect, S. Columba's need of an interpreter when preaching to
them would be explained.[39] Later the Picts were conquered by Irish
Goidels, the Scotti. The Picts, however, must already have mingled with
aboriginal peoples and with Goidels, if these were already in Britain,
and they may have adopted their supposed non-Aryan customs from the
aborigines. On the other hand, the matriarchate seems at one time to
have been Celtic, and it may have been no more than a conservative
survival in the Pictish royal house, as it was elsewhere.[40] Britons,
as well as Caledonii, had wives in common.[41] As to tattooing, it was
practised by the Scotti ("the scarred and painted men"?), and the
Britons dyed themselves with woad, while what seem to be tattoo marks
appear on faces on Gaulish coins.[42] Tattooing, painting, and
scarifying the body are varieties of one general custom, and little
stress can be laid on Pictish tattooing as indicating a racial
difference. Its purpose may have been ornamental, or possibly to impart
an aspect of fierceness, or the figures may have been totem marks, as
they are elsewhere. Finally, the description of the Caledonii, a Pictish
people, possessing flaming hair and mighty limbs, shows that they
differed from the short, dark pre-Celtic folk.[43]

The Pictish problem must remain obscure, a welcome puzzle to
antiquaries, philologists, and ethnologists. Our knowledge of Pictish
religion is too scanty for the interpretation of Celtic religion to be
affected by it. But we know that the Picts offered sacrifice before
war--a Celtic custom, and had Druids, as also had the Celts.

The earliest Celtic "kingdom" was in the region between the upper waters
of the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Danube, where probably in Neolithic