Lists, more or less complete, of the Pictish kings have been found in
the Histories of Fordun and Winton, in the pages of the Scalacronica and
Chronicles of Tighernach, in the Irish copy of Nennius, in the extracts
published by Sir Robert Sibbald and Father Innes from the lost Register
of St. Andrews, and in the old Chronicum Regum Pictorum, supposed to be
written about A.D. 1020, and preserved in the Colbertine Library.

None of these lists include a Pictish king of the name of Getus, Geat,
or Gweth. Some of the authorities--as the Register of St. Andrews,
Fordun, and Winton--enter as the second king of the Picts Ghede or Gede,
the Gilgidi of the _Chronicum Regum Pictorum_; and this latter chronicle
contains in its more mythical and earlier part the appellations Got,
Gedeol, Guidid, and Brude-Guith; but none of these surnames sufficiently
correspond either to Mr. Lhwyd's statement or to the requirements of the
inscription.

But whilst thus setting aside the conjectures as to the Cat-stane
commemorating the name of a Scottish King Constantine, or of a Pictish
King Geth, I would further remark that the surname in the inscription,
namely--VETTA FILIUS VICTI--is one which appears to me to be capable of
another and a more probable solution. With this view let us proceed then
to inquire who was

VETTA, _the son_ of VICTUS?

And _first_, I would beg to remark, that the word Vetta is still too
distinct upon the Cat-stane to allow of any doubt as to the mere name of
the person commemorated in the inscription upon it.

_Secondly_, The name of Vetta, or, to spell the word in its more common
Saxon forms, Wetta or Witta, is a Teutonic surname. To speak more
definitely, it pertains to the class of surnames which characterised
these so-called Saxon or Anglo-Saxon invaders of our island, and allied
Germanic tribes, who overran Britain upon the decline of the Roman
dominion amongst us.

Bede speaks, as is well known, of our original Teutonic conquerors in
the fifth century as coming from three powerful tribes of Germany;
namely, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. "Advenerant autem de tribus
Germaniae populis fortioribus, id est, Saxonibus, Anglis, Jutis" (lib. i.
c. 20).[161] Ubo Emmius, in his _History of the Frisians_, maintains
that "more colonies from Friesland than Saxony, settled in Briton,
whether under the names of Jutes, or of Angles, or later of the
Saxons."[162] Procopius, who lived nearly two centuries before Bede, a