Having corrected Caesar’s narrative to his own satisfaction, Professor Rhys sets himself to prove that matriarchy was a Pictish institution. He observes[1829] that ‘a Pictish king [during the later period of the Roman occupation and afterwards] could not be succeeded by a son of his own, but usually by a sister’s son. The succession,’ he continues, ‘was through the mother, and it points back to a state of society which, previous to the conversion of the Picts to Christianity, was probably based on matriarchy as distinguished from marriage and marital custom.’ To show that matriarchy had formerly prevailed in Britain outside the territory within which the Picts of history were confined, he adds[1830] that ‘the ancient literature of Ireland abounds in allusions to heroes who are usually described with the aid of the mother’s name’, and that ‘this kind of nomenclature implies the Pictish succession as its origin’. Again, he quotes an inscription found at Colchester, which ends with the words
DONVM. LOSSIO. VEDA. DE SVO POSVIT. NEPOS. VEPOGENI. CALEDO.
(‘This gift has been dedicated at his own expense by Lossio Veda, the son of the sister [?] of Vepogen, a Caledonian’), and remarks that when Lossio calls himself a Caledonian, that ‘is for our purpose much the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, and that, moreover, both _Veda_ and _Vepogeni_ ‘may be said to occur in the list of Pictish kings’, where the latter is ‘written _Vipoig_’. _Vepogeni_, indeed, is a Celtic word, borrowed, the professor assures us, in accordance with Pictish custom; but ‘the reduction of Vepogen to _Vepog_, which is what underlies _Vipoig_, is impossible on Celtic ground ... while Pictish offers a simple and natural explanation’.[1831]
Professor Morris Jones remarks, in support of Professor Rhys’s argument, that ‘the Pictish succession’ has ‘come down to our own times among the Berbers’[1832] (or rather Kabyles), who, he says, have been shown, on craniological grounds, to be akin to our neolithic race.
Apparently Professor Rhys does not regard the custom of reckoning descent ‘by birth alone’ as confined in these islands to the Picts, or to the pre-Aryan aborigines: if, as he is inclined, like Professor Zimmer, to believe, it was non-Aryan, ‘it must,’ he says, ‘have been accepted by the Goidelic Celts from the aborigines.’[1833]