A view which has become fashionable of late years, owing to the influence of Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer, is that the [dolichocephalic] neolithic people of this country were identical with the Picts,[1775] whose name first occurs in the panegyric addressed about A.D. 296 to Constantius Caesar.[1776] To clear the ground, I should say, first, that it is universally admitted that descendants of the neolithic race survived not only in the part of Scotland which was inhabited by the Picts but in most parts of Britain. The question is whether the Picts represented that race in a special sense, and still spoke the neolithic non-Aryan language. As we shall see, Professor Rhys himself, who maintains that they did, emphatically affirms that among the medley of tribes who were known as Picts some were Celtic and spoke a Celtic tongue. Secondly, it may be well to state certain elementary facts of Celtic phonology (although I dare say that to most of those who may read these pages they are already familiar), without a knowledge of which parts of the following discussion and of the later section on the Celts would be unintelligible. The ancient Gauls, for the most part,[1777] and the Brythons, from whose dialect modern Welsh is descended, are commonly called the P Celts; while the Goidels, whose dialect was the ancestor of Gaelic, Irish, and Manx, are known as the Q Celts. The reason of this distinction is that the Gauls and Brythons changed the original sound _qu_ into _p_, while the Goidels retained it, and in the sixth century of our era modified it into _c_.[1778] It has been affirmed, however, on the evidence of the formularies of Marcellus of Bordeaux, that some of the Western Gauls in the fourth century spoke a dialect which was akin to Goidelic;[1779] and Professor Rhys and Mr. Nicholson[1780] regard the words _Sequani_ and _Sequana_ (the Gallic name of the Seine) as proving that this dialect was not confined to the west: but M. d’Arbois de Jubainville refuses to admit that these names are Celtic,[1781] and contemptuously denies that the formularies are to be taken seriously.[1782] Professor Rhys[1783] and Mr. Nicholson[1784] also infer from certain inscriptions found in the departments of the Ain and Deux-Sèvres, which probably belong respectively to the first and the fourth century of our era, that a dialect akin to Goidelic was spoken in those localities: but here again M. d’Arbois dissents;[1785] and he remarks that an inscription found at Géligneux in the department of the Ain contains a word, _petru-decametos_,[1786] which belongs to the language of the P Celts. Professor Rhys urges that ‘the presence of monuments in the language occupying the subordinate position may be taken as evidence presumptive of its being the vernacular in the immediate neighbourhood’:[1787] but, as we shall see hereafter,[1788] a pillar, bearing a Goidelic inscription, has been found at Silchester, where the vernacular was undoubtedly Brythonic; and the obvious explanation is that the inscription was the work of a stranger. M. d’Arbois,[1789] moreover, unlike Professor Rhys, maintains that when the Celts first invaded Britain, the Celtic language everywhere was one and the same: according to him, none of the Celts had then changed _q_ into _p_, but that change was made at a later date by the Celts who conquered Gaul, and some of whose descendants afterwards conquered Britain. Until near the end of the nineteenth century Celtic scholars unanimously believed that all the Celtic dialects had rejected ‘Indo-European _p_’, except, as Mr. Nicholson says,[1790] ‘in borrowed words or in certain combinations of consonants’; in other words, that wherever the Indo-European or Aryan tongue from which Celtic was descended had the sound of _p_ the Celtic dialects had all lost it: but Professor Rhys holds that Mr. Nicholson has proved from the above-mentioned inscriptions, found in the departments of the Ain and Deux Sèvres, that it was retained by the Sequani and the Pictones.[1791] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville of course rejects this conclusion; and he reminds his opponents that _p_ is absent from all Ogam inscriptions.[1792]