[blam]

"The Picts were a Celtic people, probably P-Celtic (like the Welsh and Cornish for example), and this is based on the surviving snippets of their language. "

Watch your P's and Q's.

Two different DNA studies did not find any difference between the Picts and other people in the region.
Genetically, they're basically the same people...differences were culturally and probably due to some period of relative isolation.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks blam!

[Verginius Rufus]

Q-Celtic and P-Celtic are linguistic realities which do not depend on the DNA of the speakers. The Celtic spoken in ancient Ireland (which later spread to Scotland and the Isle of Man) was Q-Celtic. The other Celtic languages were P-Celtic (of which only Welsh and Breton are still spoken--Cornish died out a couple of centuries ago).

There apparently was another Indo-European language spoken in the British Isles before the Celts arrived, or at least some of the river names seem to indicate that.

One example of the differences:

"Pinmore" (a place in Ayrshire mentioned in one of Dorothy Sayers' mysteries) is Q-Celtic and means "big hill."

Bryn Mawr has the same meaning but is P-Celtic.