Cruithne (people)
For the asteroid sometimes (incorrectly) identified as Earth's second moon, see 3753 Cruithne.The
Cruithne or
Cruthin were a historical people known to have lived in the
British Isles during the
Iron Age.
According to
T. F. O'Rahilly's
historical model, the Cruithne were descended from the
Priteni, who O'Rahilly argues were the first
Celtic group to inhabit the
British Isles, and identifies with the
Picts of
Scotland. They settled in
Britain and
Ireland between
700 and
500 BC. They used
iron and spoke a
P-Celtic language, calling themselves
Priteni or
Pritani,
[T. F. O'Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology] which is the origin of the
Latin word
Britannia and the
Old English words "
Briton" and "
British".
More recent theories though, supported by
archaeological evidence, suggest that the Cruithne were a pre-Celtic people, and may have spoken a non-Indo-European language before the spread and dominance of Celtic culture in the British Isles. It is also suggested that these people were the descendants of the
aboriginal neolithic people of the
isles. Around
50 BC Diodorus wrote of "those of the Pretani who inhabit the country called Iris (Ireland)". The first reference to the name Pict is found in a Latin document dated
297 AD.
It should be noted that
Pytheasis credited with first recording the local name of the islands, in Greek as
Prettanike - apparently in connection with the Cornish region - which
Diodorus later rendered
Pretannia.
In Britain these Priteni were absorbed by later invaders and lost their cultural identity, except in the far north where they were known to the
Romans as
Picti, or "painted people," on account of their practice of decorating their bodies with paint or
tattoos (a practice which by then had died out among other Celtic tribes). In Ireland, too, the Priteni were largely absorbed by later settlers; but a few pockets of them managed to retain a measure of cultural, if not political, independence well into the Christian era. By then they were identified as
Cruithne,
P-Celtic linguistic descendants of the
Priteni.
Among the Cruthnian tribes that survived 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).
Cruithne is the name of the
Picts in
Scottish Gaelic.
The language of the inhabitants of the British Isles is called Cruithne in
Jacqueline Carey's
Kushiel's Legacy series.
The existence of the Cruithne in Ireland as a pre-Gaelic people has led some (particularly
unionists) to advocate the theory that they were not, as many
nationalists consider, a "non-native" people.
*
The Cruithne at Electric Scotland*
The Dalriada Celtic Heritage Trust
