lled the _Cat_-stanes or Battle-stanes.[203]
Single stones in various parts of North Britain are still known under
the appropriate name of _Cat_-stanes. The name (he adds) is plainly
derived from the British _Cad_, or the Scoto-Irish _Cath_, which
signify a battle."[204] But the word under the form _Cat_ is Welsh or
British, as well as Gaelic. Thus, in the _Annales Cambriae_, under the
year 722, the battle of Pencon is entered as "Cat-Pencon."[205] In his
edition of the old Welsh poem of the Gododin, Williams (verse 38) prints
the battle of Vannau (Manau) as "Cat-Vannau."

The combination of the Celtic word "Cat" with the Saxon word "stane" may
appear at first as an objection against the preceding idea of the
origin and signification of the term Cat-stane. But many of our local
names show a similar compound origin in Celtic and Saxon. In the
immediate neighbourhood, for example, of the Cat-stane,[206] we have
instances of a similar Celtic and Saxon amalgamation in the words
Gogar-burn, Lenny-bridge, Craigie-hill, etc. One of the oldest known
specimens of this kind of verbal alloy, is alluded to above a thousand
years ago by Bede,[207] in reference to a locality not above fourteen or
fifteen miles west from the Cat-stane. For, in his famous sentence
regarding the termination of the walls of Antoninus on the Forth, he
states that the Picts called this eastern "head of the wall" Pean-fahel,
but the Angles called it Pennel-_tun_. To a contracted variety of this
Pictish word signifying head of the wall, or to its Welsh form Pengual,
they added the Saxon word "town," probably to designate the "villa,"
which, according to an early addition to Nennius, was placed there.
"Pengaaul, quae villa Scottice Cenail [Kinneil], Anglice vero Peneltun
dicitur."[208]

The palaeographic peculiarities of the inscription sufficiently bear out
the idea of the monument being of the date or era which I have ventured
to assign to it--a point the weight and importance of which it is
unnecessary to insist upon. "The inscription," says Lhwyd, "is in the
barbarous characters of the fourth and fifth centuries." Professor
Westwood, who is perhaps our highest authority on such a question,
states to me that he is of the same opinion as Lhwyd as to the age of
the lettering in the Cat-stane legend.

To some minds it may occur as a seeming difficulty that the legend or
inscription is in the Latin language, though the leader commemorated is
Saxon. But this