Re: CHAT: Pre-Celtic substrate (was: CHAT: RE: R: Italian Particles)

At 01:23 PM 4/27/2000 +0100, Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>...[snip lots of interesting stuff about Celtic, Hamito-Semitic, etc.]
>
>Western Europe & the Iberian peninsular are big enough to have housed more
>than one pre-IE population.  And who did live in Ireland & Britain before
>the various Celtic-speaking peoples moved here?
What about the Picts?  I've heard lots of mutually contradictory things
about them, and it seems that the name has been applied to at least two
distinct groups of people.  Am I correct in thinking that at least one of
these groups was non-IE and lived in Britain before the arrival of the
Celts?  (And that virtually nothing is known about their language, so for
all we know it could have been related to Basque, or Berber, or Etruscan,
or ...?)  (I've even heard it suggested that they might have contributed to
the legends of elves, leprechauns, etc., and that the word "pixie" might
have originally been a diminutive of "Pict".  But I have no idea how
plausible this is.)

- Tim

------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith

"To live outside the law you must be honest."
        -- Bob Dylan