ging of VETTA to VIC, etc., we have the two terminal letters of
JACIT--viz. the IT, changed into the seven-lettered word CONSTAN,
apparently with no object but the support of a theory as to the person
commemorated in the legend and the monolith. Most assuredly there is not
the very slightest trace of any letters on the surface of the stone
where the chief part of the word CONSTAN is represented as
existing--viz., after JACIT. It would be difficult, perhaps, to adduce a
case of more flagrant incorrectness in copying an inscription than Mr.
Wilkie's and Lord Buchan's reading of the Cat-stane legend affords. Mr.
Gough, in his edition of Camden's _Britannia_ (1784), only aggravates
this misrepresentation. For whilst he incorrectly states that the
inscription is "not now legible," he carelessly changes Mr. Wilkie's
alleged copy of the leading word from CONSTAN to CONSTANTIE, and
suppresses altogether the word VIC.

GETUS, GWETH, or GETH?--I have already cited Mr. Lhwyd's conjecture that
the Cat-stane is "the tomb of some Pictish King," and the opinion
expressed by him and Mr. Hicks, that taking the V in the Latin VETTA of
the inscription as equal to the Pictish letters G or Gw, the name of the
Pictish king commemorated by the stone was Getus, "of which name,"
observes Mr. Lhwyd, "I find three Pictish kings." In the analogous
account sent by Mr. Hicks to the _Philosophical Transactions_ along with
Mr. Lhwyd's sketch of the Cat-stane, it is stated that the person's name
on "this Pictish monument" was Gweth or Geth, "of which name," it is
added, "were divers kings of the Picts, whence the vulgar name of
Ketstone."

It is unnecessary to stop and comment on the unsoundness of this
reasoning, and the improbability--both as to the initial and terminal
letters--of the surname VETTA in this Latin inscription being similar to
the Pictish surname Geth or GETUS, as Lhwyd himself gives and writes it
in its Latin form. Among the lists of the Pictish kings, whilst we have
several names beginning with G, we have some also commencing in the
Latinised forms of the Chronicles with V, as Vist, Vere, Vipoignamet,
etc.

But a much more important objection exists against the conjecture of Mr.
Lhwyd, in the fact that his memory had altogether misled him as to there
having been "three" Pictish kings of the name of "Getus," or "divers
kings of the Picts of the names of Geth or Gweth," to use the words
employed in the _Philosophical Transactions_.