The Celtic influence permeated the British Islands several centuries before Christ, affecting the languages and culture of modern-day Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. The Roman invasions of Britain resulted in the culture in southern Britain (England and Wales) being heavily influenced by the Roman culture of the conquerors.
In northern Britain, however, the natives remained strong and independent. The Romans found these lands and these people too distant, too desolate, and possibly too dangerous to conquer. They sought instead to isolate the natives of north Britain, some of whom they called Caledonians, from the south by building Hadrian's Wall across the waist of Britain, and to influence them through diplomatic and other means.
After about AD 400, Roman control waned in southern Britain. By 700 a new kingdom had grown up in lowland Scotland north of the Clyde-Forth line, its inhabitants being known as Picts, since the Romans named them 'Picti' in Latin due to their blue tattoos. In Argyll on the west coast, Gaels known in Latin as 'Scotti' had established Dalriada, a kingdom which the Picts conquered by 750. By 1000, Gaelic had become predominant in the Pictish kingdom (called 'Alba' in Gaelic), inspiring the later myth that the Pictish king Cinaed son of Alpin (Kenneth MacAlpine), who ruled from 842 to 858, had