WHO
WERE THE PICTS?
The brief answer must
be:- A tribe or coalition of tribes who inhabited, certainly, the
coastal plains of Northern Britain, beyond the Tay Estuary up to
the Moray Firth.
You could add :- They also,
at some point in their collective history, occupied, or ruled
over, Fife down to the Firth of Forth, and the coastal strip from
the Moray Firth to the Pentland Firth, and the Orkneys.
The Picts first appear in
history as such, in a Roman panegyric (fancy name for political
propaganda,either verbal or
published) composed in 297 CE, by Eumenius. He was complaining
about the coalition of Northern tribes known collectively as the Hiberni
(or Scoti) and the Picti, who were constantly
upsetting the Romans' happy subjects, the Britanni. For
some obscure reason, these Northern folk did not want to be
slaves of the fabulous Roman Empire.
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The Scoti are known to have come from what is now
Ireland, and occupied land in the West of Scotland, and the Picti
were previously thought to have occupied Orkney, Caithness,
Sutherland, the North-East Coastal strip, Fife and Galloway.
Nowadays, it is thought Galloway was Irish, and Fife may
not have been a permanent Pictish territory.
The problem hinges around whether you are talking about
a people, or only their aristocratic rulers. For instance, most
of what would become England and Wales, and the Southern half of
Scotland were, for a while, part of the Roman Empire, but that
did not make these people "Romans". (Except in the
fevered imaginations of some Romans, perhaps)
Judging by the relative lack of symbol stones on the
West Coast and the Hebrides, (and the symbol stones are the sole
identifying mark of Pictishness known to us at present. There is
no definite Pictish style of architecture, or farming, or burial
practice that is distinctive enough to label, yet.), the core of
Pictland lay in the area encompassed by the Tay Valley, the
Grampian Mountains, and the Moray Firth, with settlement up the
North-East strip to Thurso, and, at least in the Class I phase of
stone carving, settlements in Orkney. The scattered stones on the
West Coast and the Hebrides might indicate the presence of local
overlords, or colonists (See Map 4)
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What else did the Romans say about the Picti?
Roman historians said the Picti were some
kind of Nordic hippy.
They "lived in tents, unclothed and unshod, sharing
their women and bringing up all their children together."
No wonder the Romans, who couldn't exist without baths
and underfloor heating, didn't make much inroads into N.E.
Scotland. Unclothed and unshod? They must have been hardy!
They also claimed that they charged, naked, into battle,
to show off their tattooed bodies.
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Those who want the Picts to be regarded as respectable
cast doubt on this, but the Viking nutters charged naked into
battle, too (the berserkers- the shirtless ones.) and it was said
that Highlanders up until they joined the British Army and
learned to be dressed in all sorts of climates, and do
disciplined charges, also shed their cumbersome plaid-cum-kilt
and hurled themselves into war, each man for himself. Some say
that they were only painted with woad, in the Anglo-Saxon style.
Certainly, the word picti indicates pictures or
tattooes or cicatrices (which are cuts with pigment applied). Pingo
only came into Latin in the mid 16th Century, from the Tahitian
used amongst the Trobriand Islanders, who went in for tattooes
in a big way. [ Incidentally, nothing at all to with Picts at all,
but when I was researching this "pingo" word, I
discovered that the Eskimo/ Inuits have a very similar word (pinguk)
relating to low conical or dome-shaped mounds of earth over
permafrost, and the image reminded me of cicatrices where mud is
pushed under the skin.] Also, there was apparently an Old English
word ping, which was related to Latin pungere
prick, in the sense 'to prick, poke or push'.
Besides, Isidore of Seville, writing about 600CE, states
that "... they (the Picts) bear the resultant marks [cicatrices]
according to the personal rank of the individual, their painted
limbs being tattoed to to show their high birth." He is
obviously indicating that tattooes were a permanent reminder of a
person's rank.
The Irish name for the Picts was Cruithne which
means ' the people of the designs'.
In 787 CE, we find Bishop George of Ostia, during a visit
to Northumbria, ranting about certain people tattooing themselves.
"For God made man noble in grace and form, but the
pagans with their diabolical instinct put most hideous scars upon
themselves..... For he who defiles and disfigures his own
creature, clearly does injury to the Lord. Certainly, if one were
to suffer this injury of staining on behalf of God, he would
receive for it great reward. But whoever does this from
superstition of the gentiles, it does not lead him to salvation..."
From this, it is clear that Bishop George wants to make a
clear distinction between those who wear Christian
tattooes, and those who wear heathen markings, but with a
wish to have a general prohibition on the practice altogether.
In 796, Osbald, a Northumbrian noble, fled to the King of
the Picts, after being involved in the murder of King Aethelred
of Northumbria, but failing to take over the throne. Bishop
Alcuin of York sent him a letter which ends "...if you can
at all exhort the race among whom you are exiled concerning its
salvation, do not neglect to do so." From this we can take
it that at least some of the Picts were still not
Christian. The other obvious fact here is that Osbald felt safe
going North instead of further South. Without knowing the man's
politics, it would be foolhardy to say he was more in sympathy
with the ways of the Picts than the Christianized Southerners. He
may have been motivated by simple greed.
If we put the Pictish paganism and the talk of tattooes
together,we get who Bishop George was aiming his diatribe against.
In the Book of Kells (its origins need not
bother us here), there are many examples of Pictish-looking
people in its richly decorated pages. They have big noses,
distinctive hairstyles, pointy beards,and the naked ones are
covered with green or blue patterns. (Perhaps a careful
examination of these tiny masterpieces might yield Pictish
designs?) These characters usually have yellow or red hair.
Tacitus reported that the Caledonians had reddish hair.
Gildas, writing in the 6th Century, said the Picti
"cover their villainous faces with hair"
Isidore declares that the genti Pictorum put
tattoos on their painted limbs.
It certainly looks as though the illustrators of the Book
of Kells knew what a Pict looked like, especially if you compare
the descriptions with the people on the standing stones. They all
have carefully combed hair, and prominent noses. Unfortunately,
there are few examples of naked men. Ironically, the only example
of naked pagans is on the Bridgness slab, which was a Roman
distance marker on the Antonine Wall. Also, although they have
carefully trimmed hair, they are also clean-shaven, and carry
small rectangular shields unlike any on the sculpted Pictish
stones. Maybe they are Scots?
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The figures on the stones usually are dressed in long
cloaks, with long hair either tied back, or worn coiled. They
have big noses, with what appears to be goatee beards. There are
occasional examples of what seem to be bald folk, but none of
them seem to be hatted nor helmeted. The upright men seem to
quite fully dressed, with the cloaks or gowns coming right down
to their ankles, usually, although there are examples of tunics
ending above the knee. They have belts, and swords, shields and
lances. These shields are most often small round targes about 18"
dia (45cm), or squares about the same size. Usually they have a
central boss to protect the hand that holds them. Although there
are men on foot with axes, none of the horsemen are armed thus.
Whether this indicates they didn't use axes, or merely that they
are usually portrayed going hunting, cannot be judged. They ride
horses with saddlecloths that appear to double as stirrups,
because it looks like their feet are thrust into pockets at the
front. Some riders obviously do not have this facility, for their
legs and feet are quite plain to see.
The horses are, in the main, well-drawn and lively-looking,
although there are some "cuddies" and it is impossible
to decide whether this represents a different kind of horse, or
is merely due to inferior sculpting. Some have full, luxuriant
tails, while others are docked. (Another practice the good Bishop
George fulminated against.) The other mutilations he railed
against, such as slitting the horses' nostrils cannot be observed,
but the ears all seem to be intact. Perhaps some of his attacks
were aimed at the Northumbrians, who were apparently great horse-fanciers,
even to the extent of eating them.
The hunters are usually accompanied by greyhound-like dogs
running at full pelt, deep-chested and long-legged.
Apart from the horses, and the hunters' prey (beautifully
depicted stags), most creatures are phantastic. They are bizarre
twisted serpents and composite creations as if referring to folk-stories.
The most striking exception is the collection of bull-carvings
from Burghead. These carvings just ooze the muscular power of the
cattle. Was there a bull-cult at Burghead? I remember reading
once that there were still white cattle roaming the Caledonian
Forest well into historic times. This requires more research.
Since they were capable of such well-observed carvings, why
did they not do more? For some reason, most of their work is
abstract.
Another thing that makes them distinct from their contemporary
neighbours is the lack of written records.
Either everything they wrote was completely destroyed by
the Irish incomers, or the Christian monks, or they were simply
not writers as such. Perhaps they relied on bardic traditions for
their records? Perhaps they simply did not care for complicated
memorials, being content to let the Past slip away, living for
the Present, and taking things as they came along. It would
certainly tie-in with the "Nordic hippy" image.
Certainly there are no matching versions of the Pictish King-lists
until the Irish monks started carefully recording them. Then
again, the monks were bureaucrats, laying down laws for people,
making sure they got their share of what was going, and writing
everything down so they could prove legal ownership of it. Hard
at work laying up treasures on Earth.
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Maybe they did not lay great store by Kings and Queens and
people who tell you they know better than you do, how to live
your life. Maybe they practiced self-sufficiency. They could
certainly afford to, since they settled on fertile ground,
shunning the hard places of the mountain wastes. They would be
well-fed, and with a modicum of care, they would have food for
the Winters, both crops and fare from the forests and streams,
and they had a long seaboard to collect shellfish and go fishing
from.. They would have had peat and timber to fend off the
Scottish Winter.
On the other hand, judging from the battles they won, both
against the Romans, and their oldest rivals, the Northumbrians,
they were quite capable of getting together to field a formidable
fighting force. They even managed a few victories against the
Dalriadans, who had previously been their allies, before giving-in
to them.
Did they simply get fed-up of fighting, or did they get fed-up
of the dynastic squabbles of their own royal families, and
decided to get rid of them?
We will never know.
So where did this aristocracy come from?
There is archaeological evidence that the British Isles
have been settled for many thousands of years, which would give a
long enough time-span for particular families to set themselves
up as nobility, but the Venerable Bede, writing about 730CE,
passed on the tradition that the Picts had come from Scythia (the
area North and North-East of the Black Sea) and once they arrived
in Northern Ireland, they took wives from there, and went on to
settle on the East Coast of Scotland.
Could this belief explain the persistent rumour that the
Pictish royalty favoured matrilinear succession? Did the leaders
from Scythia take wives from some Irish noble family, and
therefore their subsequent claims to aristocracy rested on
descent from the original female lines?
On the other hand, perhaps their religion made them seek
succession through the female line. Could it be that they
deliberately left their former homeland to seek out some special
type of women, to start a new cult somewhere else? It might
explain why we have difficulty with the mysterious symbols that
do not seem to occur anywhere else
It is certainly a kinder thought than "You might never
know who the father is, but you can always tell who the mother is."
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So what do we have?
We have people who apparently did not write, who may or may
not have set store by a nobility, who may or may not have
practised matriliny.
If they were independent-minded people, they could come
together in times of conflict, and they formed alliances with the
Dalriadic Scots often enough and strongly enough to hold the
Northumbrians at bay for most of the time, and the Romans at arm's
length until they gave up and retreated back beyond Hadrian's
Wall in the South.
If indeed, there was a Scythian segment in the population,
it might explain why some scholars think there was a non-Indo-European
element in the language. By the same token, if there is
such an element, it might be some vestigial culture that managed
to hold its ground against the numerous invaders the British
Isles has had to accomodate. There is talk of "proto-Picts"
and it is only logical that the Picts did not spring out of thin
air, and that they did not just disappear into thin air.
We need to "engineer backwards" from what exists
today, and search outwards to see where the seams with the rest
of the World occur.
Endlessly combing over the same limited material, and
constructing pointless theories posing as certainties is just not
good enough, and takes us no further forward.
It should be obvious why I included the above as an essay,
rather than putting it in the factual section of the site. I hope
it piques your interest, and possibly provokes a response.