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THE PICTS

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« on: December 01, 2007, 07:11:14 pm »








Author  Topic: the Picts & the Lost English Mythology 
Europa

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   posted 11-29-2005 12:00 AM                       
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The Picts

"Venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis, Quae Scotto dat frena truci ferronque notatas Perlegit examines Picto moriente figuras"

The above words of the Roman poet Claudian perhaps give the only physical description of the race of people known as Picts who once raided Roman Britain, defeated the Angle-Saxon invaders and in one of the great mysteries of the ancient world, disappeared as a separate people by the end of the tenth century. "This legion, which curbs the savage Scot and studies the designs marked with iron on the face of the dying Pict," are the Claudian words which give some insight as to the name given by Rome to the untamed tribes north of Hadrian's Wall . The Romans called this pre-Celtic people Pictii, or "Painted," although Claudius' words are proof that (as claimed by many historians), the ancient Picts actually tattooed their bodies with designs. To the non-Roman Celtic world of Scots and Irish and the many tribes of Belgic England and Wales they were known as "Cruithni" and for many centuries they represented the unbridled fury of a people who refused to be brought under the yoke of Rome or any foreign invader.
The origins of the Picts are clouded with many fables, legends and fabrications, and there are as many theories as to who the Picts were (Celtic, Basque, Scythians, etc.), where they came from, what they ate or drank, and what language they spoke, as there once were Pictish raiders defying the mighty legions of Rome. Legend tells us, perhaps incorrectly, that Rome's mighty Ninth Legion, the famous "Hispana" legion, which had earned its battle honors in Iberia, conquering Celtic Spain for Caesar is never heard of again when faced against the Picts (they actually surfaced years later in Israel). We do know that the Picts may have spoken a non-Celtic language, (although many Celtophiles feel the Picts spoke a Brythonic-Gaulish form of Celtic language) as St. Columba's biographer clearly stated that the Irish saint needed a translator to preach to the Pictish King Brude, son of Maelchon, at Brude's court near the shores of Loch Ness. At other times the Pictish king lived at Scone, and we know there often were two separate Pictish kingdoms of Northern and Southern Picts. We know that they were mighty sailors, for the Romans feared the Pictish Navy almost as much as the wild men who came down from the Highlands to attack the villages along the wall. We also know that as far as the 9th century they wrote in stone a language which was not far in design from the Celtic "Ogham" script but was not Celtic in context, although Prof. Richard Cox thinks that it is Norse, which has really turned the carefully galvanized world of Pictish academic opinions upside down. By the legacy of their standing stones, we know that they were great artists as well. It is also well known that the Picts were one of Western culture's rare matrilinear societies; that is, bloodlines passed through the mother, and Pictish kings were not succeeded by their sons, but by their brothers or nephews or cousins as traced by the female line in (according to the scholar Dr. Anthony Jackson) a complicated series of intermarriages by seven royal houses.
It was this rare form of succession which in the year 845 A.D. gave the crown of Alba and the title Rex Pictorum to a Celtic Scot, son of a Pictish princess by the name of Kenneth, Son of Alpin. This Kenneth MacAlpin, whose father's kingship over the Scots had been earlier taken over by the Pictish king Oengus, who ruled as both king of Picts and Scots, and who possibly harbored a deep ethnic hatred for the Picts, and in the event known as "MacAlpin's Treason" murdered the members of the remaining seven royal houses thus preserving the Scottish line for kingship of Alba and the eventual erasure from history of the Pictish race, culture and history.
The true mystery in Pictish studies is the extraordinary disappearance of the culture of the tattoed nations of the North. The fact that within three generations of MacAlpin kings, the Picts were almost held in legendary status as a people of the past must be the real question to be answered, and the historian is consumed by legend, lack of facts and the nagging story of an obscure intrigue leading to genocide of a people, its customs, culture, laws and art.
It is in the sculptured stones of Scotland, left behind by the Pictish and proto-Pictish people of ancient Alba and present day Scotland that we can find some information about a mighty race of people who defied and defeated Rome and who slaughtered the invincible barbarian hordes of Angles Germans at Nechtansmere in Angus, and hammered the invading Vikings back home thus forever preserving a separate culture and race in Scotland. It is in these sometimes mighty, sometimes delicate stones that the history of ancient Scotland is now recorded. Were they descendants of the ancient Basque people of northern Spain once known to Rome as Pictones, who then migrated to northern Britain after they had helped the Empire defeat the seagoing people of Biscay? Or are they descendants of the dark tribes of ancient Stygia and the huge Eastern steppes? No one knows - only the Stones. 
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« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2007, 07:13:00 pm »








Europa

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Introduction...

Perhaps the greatest mystery of Scottish or even European history is the people who once inhabited the lands north of Hadrian's Wall and as far north as the Shetlands. Who were these fiercely independent people? Where did the come from? Which language did they speak? What did they call themselves? We first hear of them in the third century from a Roman writer, who describes their fierceness and battle skills. The writer Eumenius, writes about them 200 years after Rome has been in Britain, and the name associated with the Pict is forever coined. To this day, we do not know if this is truly as in "pictus" (the Latin for "painted") or a Latin form of a native name. Because of the isolation of northern Scotland, history yields little, and the Roman Empire's expeditions into the north ended in little gains.
"We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded...by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name...Beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks"
The above words by the Pictish chief Calgacus are recorded by the Roman enemy in the words of Tacitus and are a perfect example of the obscurity and legendary status held by the Picts almost 2,000 years ago.
Early Scotland

The earliest recorded evidence of man in Scotland is dated to 8,500 B.C. It is thus that a few thousand years before the birth of Christ, Neolithic men from Spain and France, makers of fire and herders of sheep and cattle had already made their way to Scotland. Some archeologists suggest that these people may have built and used the great chambered cairns which dot the Scottish countryside. It has also been suggested that their descendants eventually merged with the Beaker people (who probably came from northern Europe), and this ethnic union made up the pre-Celtic stock of the northern lands.

The link of these early inhabitants to their Iberian ancestors can be found in the many spiral pattern grooves cut into the rocks and boulders of this northern land and which can also be found in Spain, France and Ireland. The design of burial chambers located in the Orkney islands also provide an important link to the Iberian origin of their builders. Farming arrived in these islands around 4,000 BC (3-4,000 years after it started in Asia Minor) and as it replaced the nomadic way of life, the Orkneys became an island fortress with its many stone settlements. By the time Rome became a world empire, the Orcadians were recognized by Rome as a sea power. From recent excavations, it seems that these Orcadian people were a slim, swarthy Caucasian race, with long, narrow heads. 
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« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2007, 07:14:18 pm »








Europa

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The great stone circles such as Sunhoney were probably being built around 3,300 BC, quite possibly around the same time as the arrival of the Beaker people from Northern and Central Europe. These newcomers were of a different ethnic group from the Iberian stock in northern Britain, as their skulls were much broader and round. Evidence of contact between these new people and their continental ancestors have been discovered in several excavations, and seem to indicate a flourishing trade between ancient Scotland and Europe. It is thought by many scholars that the union of these two peoples resulted in the creation of the pre- Celtic stock eventually loosely called Pict by the Roman and Cruithne by the Celts.
The arrival of the Celts to Britain and Ireland brings yet another culture to these northern parts. The Irish call themselves the "Milesian race," based on the myth that they are descended from Milesius, a Celtic King of Spain.

Celtic Torque from Spain

The Celts arrived in Britain around 500 B.C. A nomadic people whose culture spread from Eastern Europe to Iberia, they were sometimes described as as fair headed, tall, fierce warriors by the Greeks (Since many Celts dyed their hair with lye, some historians believe that this is what the Greeks meant by fair-headed) althought the Britannic Celts encountered by the Romans were usually described as dark haired and short. As a warrior culture, it was a Celtic army which nearly destroyed Rome in her early days and thus forever made themselves an unforgivable enemy of the Latin empire. Because the first historical reference to the Picts appears in 297 A.D., when they are mentioned as enemies of Rome in the same context as the Hiberni (Irish), Scotii (Scots) and Saxones (Saxons), many historians assume that the Picts were simply another Celtic tribe. Although is quite probable that there was much Celtic stock in some of the southern tribes in the loose federation of tribes which eventually made up the Pictish nation, it is my opinion that the vast majority of the Pictish peoples north of the Forth were made up mostly from the earlier, pre-Celtic people of northern Britain. Some historians use Ireland as an example, and Michael Lynch eloquently states that "Whatever the Picts were, they are likely, as were other peoples either in post-Roman western Europe or in contemporary Ireland, to have been an amalgalm of tribes, headed by a warrior aristocracy which was by nature mobile. Their culture was the culture of the warrior... ." More on this later.

The bottom line is that so little is known, that most Pictophiles need to make huge leaps and prodigious interpretations of the "facts" to state their views. The explanations migrate to this core of "facts" in a futile effort to explain this mysterious people.

The Romans came to Scotland, often defeated the Picts in battle, but they never conquered them or the land on which they lived. By the third century A.D. the Roman general Agricola slaughtered a Pictish army led by the quoted Calgacus, the Swordsman (as many of 10,000 Picts may have been killed and 340 Romans). The Picts who fought Agricola at Mons Grampius were described as tall and fair headed. Agricola's legions halted near Aberargie in Perthshire, where they built a fort. They also met a new tribe of barbarians, who the Romans described as swarthy and looking like the Iberians they had conquered in southern Spain. It was to retain control of the advances made by Agricola that several forts were built between Callander near Stirling up to Perth. Within thirty years of their establishment, the Picts had destroyed and burned the Roman forts, and according to Victorian legend, Rome's most famous legion, the Ninth was sent north from Inchtuthil to perhaps relieve Pictish pressure. Legend has it that legion was massacred and forever lost in some unknown battle against the painted men of the north, although history shows us that the Ninth reappears later on in Judea.
It was Hadrian who decided that northern Scotland was not worth more legions, and so he pulled back the Empire to the Tyne and the Solway. There he built the famous wall which bears his name, seventy miles from sea to sea. Perhaps because of constant warfare and attacks against the wall, that Antoninus Pius advanced the frontier again to the thin Scottish neck between the Forth and Clyde. Thirty nine miles long and boasting twenty forts, it may have separated Pictish tribes on either sides of the wall. The wall was manned by the Second, Sixth and Twentieth Legions during its forty years. The Picts never ceased attacking it, and in fact the Romans lost it and regained it twice before finally giving it up by the end of the second century and retreating to Hadrian's Wall. We lean from the words of Cassius Dio that the northern tribes "crossed the wall, did a great deal of damage and killed a general and his troops." 
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« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2007, 07:15:44 pm »








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In 208 A.D., the governor of Britain was forced to appeal to the Emperor for help against the barbarians, and Septimus Severus decided to come to Britain together with his sons. The old soldier took a Roman fleet loaded with 40,000 centurions into the Firth of Forth, landed a vengeful Roman army ashore, and although he defeated every Pictish army he met and beheaded every Pictish chief who failed to surrender, he failed to conquer the land which he called Caledonia and he too was soon dead. However, the lesson grimly taught by the Roman and the decimation caused in the Pictish countryside must have been of such consequences that for nearly a century peace was kept in the land; the Romans manned Hadrian's Wall and the northern tattoed tribes stayed in their grim, brooding hills north of it.


The fourth century erupts in warfare again and in 305 A.D. the Romans fought against "Caledones and other Picts." The northern tribes are now called "Picts" by their enemies, and in the south, Scots, Saxons and Franks also add to the woes of Rome by raiding southern Britain. In 343 A.D. Constans starts a campaign against the Picts and probably entered into a truce with them. In 360 Ammanius Marcellus states that the "Picts were now two peoples - the Dicalydones and Verturiones." That same year, the truce is broken and the Picts, allied with the Scots of Ireland pour through the wall into northern England and are repulsed back. They kept hammering at the wall, and may have in fact joined in a multi- tribal alliance against Rome. In 382-3, allied with the Scots they again invade England, and this time the damage done to the wall and its forts is never repaired although the invaders are driven back by Magnus Maximus. The end of the century brings yet another Pictish invasion, this time met by the great Roman general Stilicho himself, who also manages to send the great Irish hero Niall of the Nine Hostages, scampering back to Ireland.
By 409 the Roman hold on Britain was slipping away, and Britons were told to defend themselves. About this time the Celtic Gaelic tribe of Scots begins settling in the southwest of Scotland, creating the kingdom of Dalriada in Argyll (Oir Ghaedhil or Eastern Gaels). Out of the need to protect themselves from the barbaric Pictish and Scottish hordes, a new kingdom is created by the Britons of Strathclyde, who spoke a Celtic tongue much like their cousins in Wales. By 450 the Picts are pouring into the south again, and the monk Gildas calls them the "foul hordes of Scots and Picts, like dark throngs of worms who wriggle out of narrow fissures in the rock when the sun is high and the weather grows warm." This is the last time we hear of the Picts and Scots fighting as allies, and if we take Gildas literally, the Scots return to Ireland around this time. In 461, St. Patrick dies, but Christianity is well spread in Ireland. 
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« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2007, 07:16:39 pm »








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   posted 11-29-2005 12:07 AM                       
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The Land of the Picts

By studying the Roman accounts of the Pictish Wars as well as later accounts, it appears that the Pictish lands were essentially north of the Forth-Clyde line, north of the Antonine Wall. Roman pacification, and Celtic and Saxon migration from the south would have erased any Pictish claims to people or lands south of the wall. In the west, Pictish presence in Argyll must have disappeared quickly after the arrival of the Scots of Dalriada around 500 A.D., although as evidenced by the standing stone near the entrance to Inveraray castle in Campbell country, they were there at one point in their history. In the north, Pictish influences reached as far north as the islands went and stones have been found in nearly all of them. This land was defended many times after the departure of Rome's legions. The Picts fought invasions by the Scots in the west, the Britons and Angles in the south and the Vikings in the north. They sometimes lost great battles and huge chunks of land, only to regain it in the vicious warfare of the Dark Ages. In the 7th century the Scots pushed their frontier far north, and a victorious Celtic army came within a half-day march of the Pictish capital of Inverness in the north before it was crushed. In the south, the Angles marched their Teutonic armies north and held Pictish lands for thirty years before they were butchered and sent fleeing south by a united Pictish army.
Although historians disagree on nearly everything which has been written about the Picts, and they disagree on the following, it is thought that the Picts had 69 Kings.

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« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2007, 07:18:51 pm »








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   posted 11-29-2005 12:12 AM                       
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The Pictish Kings

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As one would expect, the information available as to the history of the kings of Pictland or Alba is as full of mystery, legends, hearsay as the origins of the people themselves. The fact is that most of what is known about the kings of this ancient race comes from lists and chronicles generally written by other peoples, some of whom were enemies of the Picts.

The only historical writing which may have been a Pictish version of events is the document known as "The Pictish Chronicle". As the only possibly Pictish-written historical record, it is a sad reminder of the incredible lack of Pictish records, for the Chronicle is nothing more than a list of kings. Thus, historians try to use other documents of the time to attempt to reconstruct and verify some claims from the Chronicle. There are Irish documents and legends, the writings of Bede in 731 A.D. and other missionaries tales, Roman reports, Greek maps, etc.






The Legends



In the beginning of time, there was a Pict king named Cruithne, son of Cing, and Cruithne reigned for 100 years. He had seven sons (the number seven is the key to many Pictish mysteries, and as the work of Jackson shows a key element to understand the Pictish stones - more later). His sons were called Fib, Fidach, Foclaid (or Fotla), Fortrenn, Caitt (or Cat), Ce and Circenn. The names of Cruithne's seven sons were also equated to the seven provinces of Pictland detailed in an ancient account of Scotland called De Situ Albanie (possibly written in the 14th century according to F.T. Wainwright). Of note, Argyll, which was the beachead of the invading Scots, is not listed as a Pictish province.

The list of kings does verify one area which is the largest obstacle to those who seek the Celtification of the Picts - The list delivers clear evidence that the Picts were a matrilinear society - that is: the bloodlines passed through the mother, and rarely did a son succeed a father to the crown of Pictland. This is rare enough in western society and not recorded in any Celtic society (although the Scots, once they assumed the Pictish throne, curiously kept a matrilinear descent of the crown, but within the MacAlpin dynasty). This Pictish matrilinear evidence is confirmed by Bede, who wrote that the Pictish succession went through the female line. Bede also re- affirms the existence (at least at the time of his writing in the mid 700's) of two kingdoms of the Picts - a northern and southern king.





The Historical Kings




Many Pictish kings were named Bridei (or Brude). In the writings of St. Columba's biographer (who was no friend of the Picts) we learn of one of the most powerful of these Bridei kings.

The writer (Adamnan) details the journey of the Irish saint to the court of Bridei near Loch Ness. The legendary monster of the lake makes its historical debut in this same story, and we are told that King Bridei (ruled 554-584) was an exceptionally powerful king. We are also told that Columba needed interpreters to speak to the king, clear evidence that the Picts did not speak the Celtic language of the Irish and Scots (or at the very least not the Gael version of the Celtic tongue). King Bridei also defeated the Scots, in battle against their king Gabran and laid waste to the Scottish holdings in the west. Had he pressed on and expelled the Scots from Argyll, Scotland may still be Pictland or Alba today.

Bridei was succeeded by Gartnait IV, the 37th king in the list, who reigned for about 20 years. Sometime during this period, the son of the defeated Scottish king, Aedan MacGabran (who may have been married to a Pictish princess), began warring against the Picts in his northern frontier (and the Northumbrians to his south) once more. The Scottish king was defeated in his southern expansions, by the great Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelfrid of Northumbria. It was this same Teutonic king who then marched into Pictland and conquered it as far as the Firth of Forth; suddenly, the Picts had a new worry in the nearly invincible Germanic tribes who had conquered most of Celtic England by this time.

Back to the Pictish kings, Gartnait IV followed was Nechtan II, son of Irb (Canonn in the Irish lists). He was succeeded by Ciniath (around 630), son of Lutrin. He was in turn followed by Nechtan III, son of Uid, Bridei/Brude II and Talorc IV. In 637, Pictish warriors may have fought on Irish soil as part of a multinational host of Britons, Saxons, Scots and Picts assembled by the Ulster nobleman Congal Claen to take over the crown of Ireland. Back in the Anglo- Saxon borders, Oswald had become King of Northumbria, and by 668, his brother Oswiu had conquered part of Dalriada and more of southern Pictland. In the free north, another Gartnait had ruled and died in 663 to be succeeded by Drest, who revolted against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, but was crushed by a Northumbrian host led by King Ecgfrith, who had succeeded Oswiu. After the defeat, Drest was removed as a king by another Bridei. This great Pictish king began his reign by taking the great ancient Pictish fortress at Dunnottar in 681.





The modern Dunnottar Castle c. 11th century



He then assembled a Pictish fleet which sailed north and destroyed the growing Orcadian sea power in 682 and finally laying waste to the Scottish capital of Dunnadd in 683. Two years later, on 20 May 685, the Pictish King faced the huge host of the Anglo-Saxon invader on the plains of Dunnichen, in Angus. The battle which followed, called the Battle of Nechtansmere by the English and Dunnichen by Caledonians, remains one of the most significant turning points in ancient history and has shaped the character of the land for the next 1300 years.

It was at Nechtansmere that Bridei made his name great. The invincible Anglo-Saxons had defeated every force which they had faced, and by now had occupied southern Pictland for 30 years. The Picts won that day, and massacred the entire English Anglo-Saxon host including its proud king as well as "cleansing" the land by killing or enslaving the remaining Northumbrians who had settled in Pictland. Had Bridei lost that great battle, the Scotland of today would not exist and all of Britain would have been English.

Bridei was followed by Taran, son of Enfidach and he was in form followed by Brude/Bridei IV, possibly the grandson of the Brude of Nechtansmere fame. He also fought the Northumbrians (this time far south of Pictland) and is thought to have destroyed yet another Northumbrian host and killed a Teutonic sub-king in the Lothians. Legend has it that this King endorsed (along with 51 other tribal kings of Britain) "The Law of the Innocents," which prohibited women from fighting in battle and in turn protected them, children and the clergy from the viciousness of the war itself. It is interesting to know that the "Law" had been proposed by Adamnan, whose mother Irish legend has it was horrified to see Pictish women fight viciously in war and made Adamnan promise that he'd stop women from taking their place on the battlefield. Brude was succeeded on his death in 706 by Nechton mac Derile. It was this King who rejected the Celtic Church and embraced the Roman Church.


After Nechton, the Pictish List King becomes muddled by in-fighting and rapid successions (the ugly problem of matrilinearity and the large numbers of aspiring and eligible would-be kings). In 724 Nechton entered a monastery for a few years and was succeeded by Drust, who was removed two years later by Alpin. In 711 a Pictish army is routed by a Northumbrian host on the plain of Manaw, probably somewhere in West Lothian; this marks the last known threat from these southern neighbors as Northumbrian power declines soon after that and ends with the fall of York to the Danes in 866.

Alpin was in turn replaced by Oengus (Angus), who defeated the old retired king Nechton, as well as his successor Drust, whom he killed in battle in 729. Oengus comes to us as a true warrior king. Upon taking the Pictish throne from his contenders, he turned his attention to the Scottish problem. Together with his son (called Brude) he laid waste to the Scottish fortresses of Dunnadd and others, and after brutalizing the Scots on British soil, he invaded Ireland and massacred them on their ancestral homeland by defeating them in two great battles in 741. Nearly invincible, he captured and drowned the King of Atholl, conquered the remaining Dalriada Scots on Britain and after beheading the Scottish king, became the first King of Picts and Scots.

The great military victories of Oengus once more gave the Pictish nation the chance to rule unhindered by the Scottish menace. The Dalriada Scots had been beaten on Argyll and on Ireland, and a Pict ruled over them as king and liege lord. Drunk with victory and mad with power, Oengus unwisely looked south for more territory to conquer, in the lands of the Britons of Strathclyde, the kingdom formed south of the old Roman Wall. He fought them in 744 and may have defeated them in open battle. Six years later (in 750) he fought them again, in a battle in which the Picts may have been led by his brother Talorcan (possibly in contention for the Pictish throne); in any event, some historians feel that Talorcan, not Oengus may have been leading the Pictish armies. Regardless, Talorcan was killed, as was the British king Tewdur, Son of Beli at the battle of Mocetwawc. The Britons held and Oengus had to retreat. Again in 756 the Pictish King marched his tattooed host south, to the great Briton fortress at Dumbarton Rock, where he was joined by a Northumbrian ally intent on destroying the Strathclyde kingdom. This time the combined armies nearly succeeded in capturing the great rock fortress, but in a stunning reversal, they were nearly destroyed in battle and Oengus retreated north where he died five years later.

His brother Brude V succeeded him for two years, and then Ciniod (who may have had Scottish blood as well as Pictish), son of Wredech reigned until 775. Meanwhile, in the nearly forty years since Dalriada had been wasted by Oengus, the Scots had been rebuilding under the leadership of Aed Finn, son of Eochaid, who by 768 was invading the Pictish territories again. However, a blanket of historical darkness engulfs both Pictish and Scottish history though the latter years of the eight century and the ninth. Nonetheless, according to The Annals of Tigernach, no less that 150 Pictish ships were wrecked by a storm near Ross Crussini, perhaps a hint of a war fleet raised against northern enemies. We also know that Aed Finn repealed Pictish laws and managed to regain freedom for the Scots in 768, and by the time of his death, Dalriada was independent again.

Confusion reigns in the List of Kings now. Three Pictish kings are listed in a period of seven years (Alpin II, Drust VII and Talorc II). He is succeeded by Talorc III, possibly a son of Oengus, and in turn Talorc III is followed by Conall. The next Pictish king was to rule for 35 years, again as the second King of Picts and Scots.

Castantin son of Uurguist possibly won the Pictish throne by defeating and killing Conall and he also wore the crown over the Scots of Dalriada, who by now may have been a significant part of the Pictish royal lines through intermarriage. He was succeeded by his brother Oengus II, who is reputed to have brought the relics of St. Andrews back to Scotland. Oengus II was followed by Drust VIII and Talorc.

Uven, who may have been a son of Oengus II, followed Talorc and is listed as the King of both Picts and Scots. He was killed in 839 by the great new menace in the north, at a great battle where the northern Pictish armies were destroyed by the new enemy: the Vikings. He is the last Pictish king to be recorded in the Irish versions of the list of Pictish kings. Other lists record Uurad, son of Bargot and Brude, son of Ferath. He is followed by Kenneth, son of Ferath and Brude's brother, yet another Brude, son of Fethal and finally Drust IX, yet another son of Fethal.

This list of 69 Pictish kings ended with Drust IX, when he was killed by that dark, shadowy figure of Kenneth MacAlpin, the first Scot to become King of Picts and Scots in an episode known as "MacAlpin's Treason."

Most historians agree that around 839 a huge battle took place in which the Pictish king died while leading his men against the Vikings. This shattering defeat also took the life of his brother (and thus successor to the crown) as well as "others almost without numbers." This decimation of the Pictish warrior class by the Vikings is perhaps the most decisive point which swings the pendulum of control to the Scots. The Pictish defeat at the hands of the Norsemen ranks as the most significant in Pictish history, and was ironically repeated many centuries later by the destruction of the Scottish nobles at Flodden. This culling of the Pictish royal houses and its warrior elite, delivered the decisive shift in the pattern of succession, and handed the Pictish crown to the Scottish House of MacAlpin.


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« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2007, 07:20:20 pm »








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Mac Alpin's Treason: The End of the Picts


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The Gael warrior king whose bloody sword enthroned a Scottish line of kings which eventually created modern Scotland is perhaps one of the most mysterious figures of ancient history. His is a life surrounded by treacherous myths, dark stories and unproved allegations of shameful deeds and sinful accomplishments. That the first true Scottish king of the various peoples of Scotland is smeared with the stain of treason and backstabbing is as much a product from lack of knowledge as it is from the terrible bits and pieces from a story of treason which has survived for over a thousand years.

There is very little fact upon which to base a story; indeed there is a lot of falsified or embellished documents from later Scottish Churchmen and Church historians, eager to create a Church approved version of how the Gael line of kings (and its Church) came to conquer Alba, completely erase Pictish culture and destroy the Pictish Church.

That the Scots' aim was to free Dalriada from Pictish domination and establish Scottish rule over the Picts is clearly evident by the actions of Kenneth MacAlpin's father, known as Alpin, who in 834 AD, as the Picts faced the new Viking threat in the north, rebelled against his Pictish King of Scots and Picts. This ruler of both Pictland and Dalriada was Oengus II, and according to the Chronicles of Huntingdon, the subject of Alpin's rebellion.

The rebellion by his Scottish subjects in the south forced the Pictish king to forego his total preoccupation with the Vikings in the north; Oengus II split his land army in two and faced the Scottish rebel (and southern threat) on Easter day, 834 AD. The Picts suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of Alpin and the Scots and the Irish Annals record that Oengus, King of the Picts and Scots died that year. Overwhelmed with victory, Alpin marched north to attack the rear of the main Pictish army in the north. The Scots and Picts met in battle on August of that same year, and the Scots suffered a brutal defeat in which Alpin was captured and beheaded.

Five years later, the Picts still faced the northern threat of the nearly invincible Vikings. The Picts had suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Vikings in 839 AD. The Norsemen had by that year conquered and settled Shetland, the Outer Hebrides and as far south as the mouth of the Clyde. Additionally, Caithness, Sutherland and even Dalriada were being attacked and harassed by the long boats. The brutalizing defeat at the hands of the Vikings in 839 not only killed most of the Pictish nobility, including the King of Picts and Scots Uven Mac Angus II, his brother Bran and "numberless others", but also opened Mac Alpin's claim to the vacant Pictish throne, via his mother, who was a Pictish princess.

Recalling the peculiarity of a matrilineal succession which governed Pictish crowns, it is evident that Kenneth Mac Alpin (the Hardy) grounded his claims to the Pictish crown from his mother's bloodlines. His claim to the crown of Dalriada came from his father, who was a member of clan Gabhran, which had produced most Scottish kings, such as his ancestors King Eachaidh, King Alpin Mac Eachaidh, King Aed and King Fergus. His Pictish mother was descended from the royal house of Fortrenn, and his great-grand uncle, Alpin Mac Eachaidh had actually reigned as King of Picts until deposed by Oengus I. It is thus that Kenneth Mac Alpin was one of several nobles with a claim to the crown of Picts and Scots.





Mac Alpin, the King



The sources for facts of how Kenneth Mac Alpin, the avenging son of the slain Alpin, became King of Picts and Scots are few and suspect. Two such sources, The Prophecy of St. Berchan, and De Instructione Principus note that in 841 AD Mac Alpin attacked the remnants of the Pictish army and defeated them (he is lauded as "the raven feeder").
Mac Alpin then invites the Pictish king Drust IX and the remaining Pictish nobles to Scone to perhaps settle the issue of Dalriada's freedom or MacAlpin's claim to the Dalriadic crown. Faced with a recently victorious MacAlpin in the south, and a devastated army in the north, Drust, as well as all claimants to the Pictish throne from the seven royal houses attend this meeting at Scone. Legend has it that the Scots came secretly armed to Scone, where Drust and the Pictish nobles were killed.

It is Giraldus Cambresis in De Instructione Principus who recounts how a great banquet was held at Scone, and the Pictish King and his nobles were plied with drinks and became quite drunk. Once the Picts were drunk, the Scots allegedly pulled bolts from the benches, trapping the Picts in concealed earthen hollows under the benches; additionally, the traps were set with sharp blades, such that the falling Picts impaled themselves (the The Prophecy of St. Berchan tells that "...[Mac Alpin] plunged them in the pitted earth, sown with deadly blades...") . Trapped and unable to defend themselves, the surviving Picts were then murdered from above and their bodies, clothes and ornaments "plundered."

Although their king and royal houses had been murdered, and their armies wiped out in the north by the Vikings and decimated in the south by the Scots, the Picts nonetheless resist Scottish domination and as late as the 12th year of MacAlpin's reign the The Chronicle of Huntington tells us that Mac Alpin "fought successfully against the Picts seven times in one day" (perhaps wiping out the last remnants of an independent Pictish armed force).

Pictish resistance of a sort resurfaces after the end of the short reign by MacAlpin's second son, Aedh, when an attempt is tried to revive the Pictish matrilineal form of succession in the form of bringing to the throne Eochaidh Mac Run, son of Kenneth's daughter by a King of the Britons, which was in turn a joint ruler with a Pict named Giric, son of Dungal. They were expelled within ten years and Donald, who was the grandson of Kenneth via Kenneth's eldest son, assumed the throne.

The Scottish kings' dominion was essentially limited to Fortrenn, the Mearns and Dalriada, as the rest of the Pictish lands were under the yoke of the Vikings. Nonetheless, within a few generations, the Pictish language is forgotten, the Pictish Church taken over by the Scottish Columban Church and most vestiges of Pictish culture erased.

Furthermore, the seat of Kings is moved to Scone, sacred heart of the Pictish land and the sons of Mac Alpin accept the crown over the land of Picts and Scots seated on a slab of stone which Scottish myth tells us was carried by the Celtic tribes since their origins in Spain, brought to Tara in Ireland, built into the wall of Dunstaffnage Castle and then brought to Scone.

The Scots move north, ally themselves with the Vikings; in the south they lose and then defeat the Angles and with their borders relatively safe, forever suffocate Pictish culture.

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Author  Topic: the Picts & the Lost English Mythology 
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The Picts

"Venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis, Quae Scotto dat frena truci ferronque notatas Perlegit examines Picto moriente figuras"

The above words of the Roman poet Claudian perhaps give the only physical description of the race of people known as Picts who once raided Roman Britain, defeated the Angle-Saxon invaders and in one of the great mysteries of the ancient world, disappeared as a separate people by the end of the tenth century. "This legion, which curbs the savage Scot and studies the designs marked with iron on the face of the dying Pict," are the Claudian words which give some insight as to the name given by Rome to the untamed tribes north of Hadrian's Wall . The Romans called this pre-Celtic people Pictii, or "Painted," although Claudius' words are proof that (as claimed by many historians), the ancient Picts actually tattooed their bodies with designs. To the non-Roman Celtic world of Scots and Irish and the many tribes of Belgic England and Wales they were known as "Cruithni" and for many centuries they represented the unbridled fury of a people who refused to be brought under the yoke of Rome or any foreign invader.
The origins of the Picts are clouded with many fables, legends and fabrications, and there are as many theories as to who the Picts were (Celtic, Basque, Scythians, etc.), where they came from, what they ate or drank, and what language they spoke, as there once were Pictish raiders defying the mighty legions of Rome. Legend tells us, perhaps incorrectly, that Rome's mighty Ninth Legion, the famous "Hispana" legion, which had earned its battle honors in Iberia, conquering Celtic Spain for Caesar is never heard of again when faced against the Picts (they actually surfaced years later in Israel). We do know that the Picts may have spoken a non-Celtic language, (although many Celtophiles feel the Picts spoke a Brythonic-Gaulish form of Celtic language) as St. Columba's biographer clearly stated that the Irish saint needed a translator to preach to the Pictish King Brude, son of Maelchon, at Brude's court near the shores of Loch Ness. At other times the Pictish king lived at Scone, and we know there often were two separate Pictish kingdoms of Northern and Southern Picts. We know that they were mighty sailors, for the Romans feared the Pictish Navy almost as much as the wild men who came down from the Highlands to attack the villages along the wall. We also know that as far as the 9th century they wrote in stone a language which was not far in design from the Celtic "Ogham" script but was not Celtic in context, although Prof. Richard Cox thinks that it is Norse, which has really turned the carefully galvanized world of Pictish academic opinions upside down. By the legacy of their standing stones, we know that they were great artists as well. It is also well known that the Picts were one of Western culture's rare matrilinear societies; that is, bloodlines passed through the mother, and Pictish kings were not succeeded by their sons, but by their brothers or nephews or cousins as traced by the female line in (according to the scholar Dr. Anthony Jackson) a complicated series of intermarriages by seven royal houses.
It was this rare form of succession which in the year 845 A.D. gave the crown of Alba and the title Rex Pictorum to a Celtic Scot, son of a Pictish princess by the name of Kenneth, Son of Alpin. This Kenneth MacAlpin, whose father's kingship over the Scots had been earlier taken over by the Pictish king Oengus, who ruled as both king of Picts and Scots, and who possibly harbored a deep ethnic hatred for the Picts, and in the event known as "MacAlpin's Treason" murdered the members of the remaining seven royal houses thus preserving the Scottish line for kingship of Alba and the eventual erasure from history of the Pictish race, culture and history.
The true mystery in Pictish studies is the extraordinary disappearance of the culture of the tattoed nations of the North. The fact that within three generations of MacAlpin kings, the Picts were almost held in legendary status as a people of the past must be the real question to be answered, and the historian is consumed by legend, lack of facts and the nagging story of an obscure intrigue leading to genocide of a people, its customs, culture, laws and art.
It is in the sculptured stones of Scotland, left behind by the Pictish and proto-Pictish people of ancient Alba and present day Scotland that we can find some information about a mighty race of people who defied and defeated Rome and who slaughtered the invincible barbarian hordes of Angles Germans at Nechtansmere in Angus, and hammered the invading Vikings back home thus forever preserving a separate culture and race in Scotland. It is in these sometimes mighty, sometimes delicate stones that the history of ancient Scotland is now recorded. Were they descendants of the ancient Basque people of northern Spain once known to Rome as Pictones, who then migrated to northern Britain after they had helped the Empire defeat the seagoing people of Biscay? Or are they descendants of the dark tribes of ancient Stygia and the huge Eastern steepes? No one knows - only the Stones.
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Introduction...

Perhaps the greatest mystery of Scottish or even European history is the people who once inhabited the lands north of Hadrian's Wall and as far north as the Shetlands. Who were these fiercely independent people? Where did the come from? Which language did they speak? What did they call themselves? We first hear of them in the third century from a Roman writer, who describes their fierceness and battle skills. The writer Eumenius, writes about them 200 years after Rome has been in Britain, and the name associated with the Pict is forever coined. To this day, we do not know if this is truly as in "pictus" (the Latin for "painted") or a Latin form of a native name. Because of the isolation of northern Scotland, history yields little, and the Roman Empire's expeditions into the north ended in little gains.
"We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded...by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name...Beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks"
The above words by the Pictish chief Calgacus are recorded by the Roman enemy in the words of Tacitus and are a perfect example of the obscurity and legendary status held by the Picts almost 2,000 years ago.
Early Scotland

The earliest recorded evidence of man in Scotland is dated to 8,500 B.C. It is thus that a few thousand years before the birth of Christ, Neolithic men from Spain and France, makers of fire and herders of sheep and cattle had already made their way to Scotland. Some archeologists suggest that these people may have built and used the great chambered cairns which dot the Scottish countryside. It has also been suggested that their descendants eventually merged with the Beaker people (who probably came from northern Europe), and this ethnic union made up the pre-Celtic stock of the northern lands.

The link of these early inhabitants to their Iberian ancestors can be found in the many spiral pattern grooves cut into the rocks and boulders of this northern land and which can also be found in Spain, France and Ireland. The design of burial chambers located in the Orkney islands also provide an important link to the Iberian origin of their builders. Farming arrived in these islands around 4,000 BC (3-4,000 years after it started in Asia Minor) and as it replaced the nomadic way of life, the Orkneys became an island fortress with its many stone settlements. By the time Rome became a world empire, the Orcadians were recognized by Rome as a sea power. From recent excavations, it seems that these Orcadian people were a slim, swarthy Caucasian race, with long, narrow heads.
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The great stone circles such as Sunhoney were probably being built around 3,300 BC, quite possibly around the same time as the arrival of the Beaker people from Northern and Central Europe. These newcomers were of a different ethnic group from the Iberian stock in northern Britain, as their skulls were much broader and round. Evidence of contact between these new people and their continental ancestors have been discovered in several excavations, and seem to indicate a flourishing trade between ancient Scotland and Europe. It is thought by many scholars that the union of these two peoples resulted in the creation of the pre- Celtic stock eventually loosely called Pict by the Roman and Cruithne by the Celts.
The arrival of the Celts to Britain and Ireland brings yet another culture to these northern parts. The Irish call themselves the "Milesian race," based on the myth that they are descended from Milesius, a Celtic King of Spain.

Celtic Torque from Spain

The Celts arrived in Britain around 500 B.C. A nomadic people whose culture spread from Eastern Europe to Iberia, they were sometimes described as as fair headed, tall, fierce warriors by the Greeks (Since many Celts dyed their hair with lye, some historians believe that this is what the Greeks meant by fair-headed) althought the Britannic Celts encountered by the Romans were usually described as dark haired and short. As a warrior culture, it was a Celtic army which nearly destroyed Rome in her early days and thus forever made themselves an unforgivable enemy of the Latin empire. Because the first historical reference to the Picts appears in 297 A.D., when they are mentioned as enemies of Rome in the same context as the Hiberni (Irish), Scotii (Scots) and Saxones (Saxons), many historians assume that the Picts were simply another Celtic tribe. Although is quite probable that there was much Celtic stock in some of the southern tribes in the loose federation of tribes which eventually made up the Pictish nation, it is my opinion that the vast majority of the Pictish peoples north of the Forth were made up mostly from the earlier, pre-Celtic people of northern Britain. Some historians use Ireland as an example, and Michael Lynch eloquently states that "Whatever the Picts were, they are likely, as were other peoples either in post-Roman western Europe or in contemporary Ireland, to have been an amalgalm of tribes, headed by a warrior aristocracy which was by nature mobile. Their culture was the culture of the warrior... ." More on this later.

The bottom line is that so little is known, that most Pictophiles need to make huge leaps and prodigious interpretations of the "facts" to state their views. The explanations migrate to this core of "facts" in a futile effort to explain this mysterious people.

The Romans came to Scotland, often defeated the Picts in battle, but they never conquered them or the land on which they lived. By the third century A.D. the Roman general Agricola slaughtered a Pictish army led by the quoted Calgacus, the Swordsman (as many of 10,000 Picts may have been killed and 340 Romans). The Picts who fought Agricola at Mons Grampius were described as tall and fair headed. Agricola's legions halted near Aberargie in Perthshire, where they built a fort. They also met a new tribe of barbarians, who the Romans described as swarthy and looking like the Iberians they had conquered in southern Spain. It was to retain control of the advances made by Agricola that several forts were built between Callander near Stirling up to Perth. Within thirty years of their establishment, the Picts had destroyed and burned the Roman forts, and according to Victorian legend, Rome's most famous legion, the Ninth was sent north from Inchtuthil to perhaps relieve Pictish pressure. Legend has it that legion was massacred and forever lost in some unknown battle against the painted men of the north, although history shows us that the Ninth reappears later on in Judea.
It was Hadrian who decided that northern Scotland was not worth more legions, and so he pulled back the Empire to the Tyne and the Solway. There he built the famous wall which bears his name, seventy miles from sea to sea. Perhaps because of constant warfare and attacks against the wall, that Antoninus Pius advanced the frontier again to the thin Scottish neck between the Forth and Clyde. Thirty nine miles long and boasting twenty forts, it may have separated Pictish tribes on either sides of the wall. The wall was manned by the Second, Sixth and Twentieth Legions during its forty years. The Picts never ceased attacking it, and in fact the Romans lost it and regained it twice before finally giving it up by the end of the second century and retreating to Hadrian's Wall. We lean from the words of Cassius Dio that the northern tribes "crossed the wall, did a great deal of damage and killed a general and his troops."
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In 208 A.D., the governor of Britain was forced to appeal to the Emperor for help against the barbarians, and Septimus Severus decided to come to Britain together with his sons. The old soldier took a Roman fleet loaded with 40,000 centurions into the Firth of Forth, landed a vengeful Roman army ashore, and although he defeated every Pictish army he met and beheaded every Pictish chief who failed to surrender, he failed to conquer the land which he called Caledonia and he too was soon dead. However, the lesson grimly taught by the Roman and the decimation caused in the Pictish countryside must have been of such consequences that for nearly a century peace was kept in the land; the Romans manned Hadrian's Wall and the northern tattoed tribes stayed in their grim, brooding hills north of it.


The fourth century erupts in warfare again and in 305 A.D. the Romans fought against "Caledones and other Picts." The northern tribes are now called "Picts" by their enemies, and in the south, Scots, Saxons and Franks also add to the woes of Rome by raiding southern Britain. In 343 A.D. Constans starts a campaign against the Picts and probably entered into a truce with them. In 360 Ammanius Marcellus states that the "Picts were now two peoples - the Dicalydones and Verturiones." That same year, the truce is broken and the Picts, allied with the Scots of Ireland pour through the wall into northern England and are repulsed back. They kept hammering at the wall, and may have in fact joined in a multi- tribal alliance against Rome. In 382-3, allied with the Scots they again invade England, and this time the damage done to the wall and its forts is never repaired although the invaders are driven back by Magnus Maximus. The end of the century brings yet another Pictish invasion, this time met by the great Roman general Stilicho himself, who also manages to send the great Irish hero Niall of the Nine Hostages, scampering back to Ireland.
By 409 the Roman hold on Britain was slipping away, and Britons were told to defend themselves. About this time the Celtic Gaelic tribe of Scots begins settling in the southwest of Scotland, creating the kingdom of Dalriada in Argyll (Oir Ghaedhil or Eastern Gaels). Out of the need to protect themselves from the barbaric Pictish and Scottish hordes, a new kingdom is created by the Britons of Strathclyde, who spoke a Celtic tongue much like their cousins in Wales. By 450 the Picts are pouring into the south again, and the monk Gildas calls them the "foul hordes of Scots and Picts, like dark throngs of worms who wriggle out of narrow fissures in the rock when the sun is high and the weather grows warm." This is the last time we hear of the Picts and Scots fighting as allies, and if we take Gildas literally, the Scots return to Ireland around this time. In 461, St. Patrick dies, but Christianity is well spread in Ireland.
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The Land of the Picts

By studying the Roman accounts of the Pictish Wars as well as later accounts, it appears that the Pictish lands were essentially north of the Forth-Clyde line, north of the Antonine Wall. Roman pacification, and Celtic and Saxon migration from the south would have erased any Pictish claims to people or lands south of the wall. In the west, Pictish presence in Argyll must have disappeared quickly after the arrival of the Scots of Dalriada around 500 A.D., although as evidenced by the standing stone near the entrance to Inveraray castle in Campbell country, they were there at one point in their history. In the north, Pictish influences reached as far north as the islands went and stones have been found in nearly all of them. This land was defended many times after the departure of Rome's legions. The Picts fought invasions by the Scots in the west, the Britons and Angles in the south and the Vikings in the north. They sometimes lost great battles and huge chunks of land, only to regain it in the vicious warfare of the Dark Ages. In the 7th century the Scots pushed their frontier far north, and a victorious Celtic army came within a half-day march of the Pictish capital of Inverness in the north before it was crushed. In the south, the Angles marched their Teutonic armies north and held Pictish lands for thirty years before they were butchered and sent fleeing south by a united Pictish army.
Although historians disagree on nearly everything which has been written about the Picts, and they disagree on the following, it is thought that the Picts had 69 Kings.

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The Pictish Kings

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As one would expect, the information available as to the history of the kings of Pictland or Alba is as full of mystery, legends, hearsay as the origins of the people themselves. The fact is that most of what is known about the kings of this ancient race comes from lists and chronicles generally written by other peoples, some of whom were enemies of the Picts.

The only historical writing which may have been a Pictish version of events is the document known as "The Pictish Chronicle". As the only possibly Pictish-written historical record, it is a sad reminder of the incredible lack of Pictish records, for the Chronicle is nothing more than a list of kings. Thus, historians try to use other documents of the time to attempt to reconstruct and verify some claims from the Chronicle. There are Irish documents and legends, the writings of Bede in 731 A.D. and other missionaries tales, Roman reports, Greek maps, etc.


The Legends

In the beginning of time, there was a Pict king named Cruithne, son of Cing, and Cruithne reigned for 100 years. He had seven sons (the number seven is the key to many Pictish mysteries, and as the work of Jackson shows a key element to understand the Pictish stones - more later). His sons were called Fib, Fidach, Foclaid (or Fotla), Fortrenn, Caitt (or Cat), Ce and Circenn. The names of Cruithne's seven sons were also equated to the seven provinces of Pictland detailed in an ancient account of Scotland called De Situ Albanie (possibly written in the 14th century according to F.T. Wainwright). Of note, Argyll, which was the beachead of the invading Scots, is not listed as a Pictish province.

The list of kings does verify one area which is the largest obstacle to those who seek the Celtification of the Picts - The list delivers clear evidence that the Picts were a matrilinear society - that is: the bloodlines passed through the mother, and rarely did a son succeed a father to the crown of Pictland. This is rare enough in western society and not recorded in any Celtic society (although the Scots, once they assumed the Pictish throne, curiously kept a matrilinear descent of the crown, but within the MacAlpin dynasty). This Pictish matrilinear evidence is confirmed by Bede, who wrote that the Pictish succession went through the female line. Bede also re- affirms the existence (at least at the time of his writing in the mid 700's) of two kingdoms of the Picts - a northern and southern king.

The Historical Kings

Many Pictish kings were named Bridei (or Brude). In the writings of St. Columba's biographer (who was no friend of the Picts) we learn of one of the most powerful of these Bridei kings.

The writer (Adamnan) details the journey of the Irish saint to the court of Bridei near Loch Ness. The legendary monster of the lake makes its historical debut in this same story, and we are told that King Bridei (ruled 554-584) was an exceptionally powerful king. We are also told that Columba needed interpreters to speak to the king, clear evidence that the Picts did not speak the Celtic language of the Irish and Scots (or at the very least not the Gael version of the Celtic tongue). King Bridei also defeated the Scots, in battle against their king Gabran and laid waste to the Scottish holdings in the west. Had he pressed on and expelled the Scots from Argyll, Scotland may still be Pictland or Alba today.

Bridei was succeeded by Gartnait IV, the 37th king in the list, who reigned for about 20 years. Sometime during this period, the son of the defeated Scottish king, Aedan MacGabran (who may have been married to a Pictish princess), began warring against the Picts in his northern frontier (and the Northumbrians to his south) once more. The Scottish king was defeated in his southern expansions, by the great Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelfrid of Northumbria. It was this same Teutonic king who then marched into Pictland and conquered it as far as the Firth of Forth; suddenly, the Picts had a new worry in the nearly invincible Germanic tribes who had conquered most of Celtic England by this time.

Back to the Pictish kings, Gartnait IV followed was Nechtan II, son of Irb (Canonn in the Irish lists). He was succeeded by Ciniath (around 630), son of Lutrin. He was in turn followed by Nechtan III, son of Uid, Bridei/Brude II and Talorc IV. In 637, Pictish warriors may have fought on Irish soil as part of a multinational host of Britons, Saxons, Scots and Picts assembled by the Ulster nobleman Congal Claen to take over the crown of Ireland. Back in the Anglo- Saxon borders, Oswald had become King of Northumbria, and by 668, his brother Oswiu had conquered part of Dalriada and more of southern Pictland. In the free north, another Gartnait had ruled and died in 663 to be succeeded by Drest, who revolted against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, but was crushed by a Northumbrian host led by King Ecgfrith, who had succeeded Oswiu. After the defeat, Drest was removed as a king by another Bridei. This great Pictish king began his reign by taking the great ancient Pictish fortress at Dunnottar in 681.


The modern Dunnottar Castle c. 11th century
He then assembled a Pictish fleet which sailed north and destroyed the growing Orcadian sea power in 682 and finally laying waste to the Scottish capital of Dunnadd in 683. Two years later, on 20 May 685, the Pictish King faced the huge host of the Anglo-Saxon invader on the plains of Dunnichen, in Angus. The battle which followed, called the Battle of Nechtansmere by the English and Dunnichen by Caledonians, remains one of the most significant turning points in ancient history and has shaped the character of the land for the next 1300 years.

It was at Nechtansmere that Bridei made his name great. The invincible Anglo-Saxons had defeated every force which they had faced, and by now had occupied southern Pictland for 30 years. The Picts won that day, and massacred the entire English Anglo-Saxon host including its proud king as well as "cleansing" the land by killing or enslaving the remaining Northumbrians who had settled in Pictland. Had Bridei lost that great battle, the Scotland of today would not exist and all of Britain would have been English.

Bridei was followed by Taran, son of Enfidach and he was in form followed by Brude/Bridei IV, possibly the grandson of the Brude of Nechtansmere fame. He also fought the Northumbrians (this time far south of Pictland) and is thought to have destroyed yet another Northumbrian host and killed a Teutonic sub-king in the Lothians. Legend has it that this King endorsed (along with 51 other tribal kings of Britain) "The Law of the Innocents," which prohibited women from fighting in battle and in turn protected them, children and the clergy from the viciousness of the war itself. It is interesting to know that the "Law" had been proposed by Adamnan, whose mother Irish legend has it was horrified to see Pictish women fight viciously in war and made Adamnan promise that he'd stop women from taking their place on the battlefield. Brude was succeeded on his death in 706 by Nechton mac Derile. It was this King who rejected the Celtic Church and embraced the Roman Church.


After Nechton, the Pictish List King becomes muddled by in-fighting and rapid successions (the ugly problem of matrilinearity and the large numbers of aspiring and eligible would-be kings). In 724 Nechton entered a monastery for a few years and was succeeded by Drust, who was removed two years later by Alpin. In 711 a Pictish army is routed by a Northumbrian host on the plain of Manaw, probably somewhere in West Lothian; this marks the last known threat from these southern neighbors as Northumbrian power declines soon after that and ends with the fall of York to the Danes in 866.

Alpin was in turn replaced by Oengus (Angus), who defeated the old retired king Nechton, as well as his successor Drust, whom he killed in battle in 729. Oengus comes to us as a true warrior king. Upon taking the Pictish throne from his contenders, he turned his attention to the Scottish problem. Together with his son (called Brude) he laid waste to the Scottish fortresses of Dunnadd and others, and after brutalizing the Scots on British soil, he invaded Ireland and massacred them on their ancestral homeland by defeating them in two great battles in 741. Nearly invincible, he captured and drowned the King of Atholl, conquered the remaining Dalriada Scots on Britain and after beheading the Scottish king, became the first King of Picts and Scots.

The great military victories of Oengus once more gave the Pictish nation the chance to rule unhindered by the Scottish menace. The Dalriada Scots had been beaten on Argyll and on Ireland, and a Pict ruled over them as king and liege lord. Drunk with victory and mad with power, Oengus unwisely looked south for more territory to conquer, in the lands of the Britons of Strathclyde, the kingdom formed south of the old Roman Wall. He fought them in 744 and may have defeated them in open battle. Six years later (in 750) he fought them again, in a battle in which the Picts may have been led by his brother Talorcan (possibly in contention for the Pictish throne); in any event, some historians feel that Talorcan, not Oengus may have been leading the Pictish armies. Regardless, Talorcan was killed, as was the British king Tewdur, Son of Beli at the battle of Mocetwawc. The Britons held and Oengus had to retreat. Again in 756 the Pictish King marched his tattooed host south, to the great Briton fortress at Dumbarton Rock, where he was joined by a Northumbrian ally intent on destroying the Strathclyde kingdom. This time the combined armies nearly succeeded in capturing the great rock fortress, but in a stunning reversal, they were nearly destroyed in battle and Oengus retreated north where he died five years later.

His brother Brude V succeeded him for two years, and then Ciniod (who may have had Scottish blood as well as Pictish), son of Wredech reigned until 775. Meanwhile, in the nearly forty years since Dalriada had been wasted by Oengus, the Scots had been rebuilding under the leadership of Aed Finn, son of Eochaid, who by 768 was invading the Pictish territories again. However, a blanket of historical darkness engulfs both Pictish and Scottish history though the latter years of the eight century and the ninth. Nonetheless, according to The Annals of Tigernach, no less that 150 Pictish ships were wrecked by a storm near Ross Crussini, perhaps a hint of a war fleet raised against northern enemies. We also know that Aed Finn repealed Pictish laws and managed to regain freedom for the Scots in 768, and by the time of his death, Dalriada was independent again.

Confusion reigns in the List of Kings now. Three Pictish kings are listed in a period of seven years (Alpin II, Drust VII and Talorc II). He is succeeded by Talorc III, possibly a son of Oengus, and in turn Talorc III is followed by Conall. The next Pictish king was to rule for 35 years, again as the second King of Picts and Scots.

Castantin son of Uurguist possibly won the Pictish throne by defeating and killing Conall and he also wore the crown over the Scots of Dalriada, who by now may have been a significant part of the Pictish royal lines through intermarriage. He was succeeded by his brother Oengus II, who is reputed to have brought the relics of St. Andrews back to Scotland. Oengus II was followed by Drust VIII and Talorc.

Uven, who may have been a son of Oengus II, followed Talorc and is listed as the King of both Picts and Scots. He was killed in 839 by the great new menace in the north, at a great battle where the northern Pictish armies were destroyed by the new enemy: the Vikings. He is the last Pictish king to be recorded in the Irish versions of the list of Pictish kings. Other lists record Uurad, son of Bargot and Brude, son of Ferath. He is followed by Kenneth, son of Ferath and Brude's brother, yet another Brude, son of Fethal and finally Drust IX, yet another son of Fethal.

This list of 69 Pictish kings ended with Drust IX, when he was killed by that dark, shadowy figure of Kenneth MacAlpin, the first Scot to become King of Picts and Scots in an episode known as "MacAlpin's Treason."

Most historians agree that around 839 a huge battle took place in which the Pictish king died while leading his men against the Vikings. This shattering defeat also took the life of his brother (and thus successor to the crown) as well as "others almost without numbers." This decimation of the Pictish warrior class by the Vikings is perhaps the most decisive point which swings the pendulum of control to the Scots. The Pictish defeat at the hands of the Norsemen ranks as the most significant in Pictish history, and was ironically repeated many centuries later by the destruction of the Scottish nobles at Flodden. This culling of the Pictish royal houses and its warrior elite, delivered the decisive shift in the pattern of succession, and handed the Pictish crown to the Scottish House of MacAlpin.


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Mac Alpin's Treason: The End of the Picts


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The Gael warrior king whose bloody sword enthroned a Scottish line of kings which eventually created modern Scotland is perhaps one of the most mysterious figures of ancient history. His is a life surrounded by treacherous myths, dark stories and unproved allegations of shameful deeds and sinful accomplishments. That the first true Scottish king of the various peoples of Scotland is smeared with the stain of treason and backstabbing is as much a product from lack of knowledge as it is from the terrible bits and pieces from a story of treason which has survived for over a thousand years.

There is very little fact upon which to base a story; indeed there is a lot of falsified or embellished documents from later Scottish Churchmen and Church historians, eager to create a Church approved version of how the Gael line of kings (and its Church) came to conquer Alba, completely erase Pictish culture and destroy the Pictish Church.

That the Scots' aim was to free Dalriada from Pictish domination and establish Scottish rule over the Picts is clearly evident by the actions of Kenneth MacAlpin's father, known as Alpin, who in 834 AD, as the Picts faced the new Viking threat in the north, rebelled against his Pictish King of Scots and Picts. This ruler of both Pictland and Dalriada was Oengus II, and according to the Chronicles of Huntingdon, the subject of Alpin's rebellion.

The rebellion by his Scottish subjects in the south forced the Pictish king to forego his total preoccupation with the Vikings in the north; Oengus II split his land army in two and faced the Scottish rebel (and southern threat) on Easter day, 834 AD. The Picts suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of Alpin and the Scots and the Irish Annals record that Oengus, King of the Picts and Scots died that year. Overwhelmed with victory, Alpin marched north to attack the rear of the main Pictish army in the north. The Scots and Picts met in battle on August of that same year, and the Scots suffered a brutal defeat in which Alpin was captured and beheaded.

Five years later, the Picts still faced the northern threat of the nearly invincible Vikings. The Picts had suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Vikings in 839 AD. The Norsemen had by that year conquered and settled Shetland, the Outer Hebrides and as far south as the mouth of the Clyde. Additionally, Caithness, Sutherland and even Dalriada were being attacked and harassed by the long boats. The brutalizing defeat at the hands of the Vikings in 839 not only killed most of the Pictish nobility, including the King of Picts and Scots Uven Mac Angus II, his brother Bran and "numberless others", but also opened Mac Alpin's claim to the vacant Pictish throne, via his mother, who was a Pictish princess.

Recalling the peculiarity of a matrilineal succession which governed Pictish crowns, it is evident that Kenneth Mac Alpin (the Hardy) grounded his claims to the Pictish crown from his mother's bloodlines. His claim to the crown of Dalriada came from his father, who was a member of clan Gabhran, which had produced most Scottish kings, such as his ancestors King Eachaidh, King Alpin Mac Eachaidh, King Aed and King Fergus. His Pictish mother was descended from the royal house of Fortrenn, and his great-grand uncle, Alpin Mac Eachaidh had actually reigned as King of Picts until deposed by Oengus I. It is thus that Kenneth Mac Alpin was one of several nobles with a claim to the crown of Picts and Scots.

Mac Alpin, the King
The sources for facts of how Kenneth Mac Alpin, the avenging son of the slain Alpin, became King of Picts and Scots are few and suspect. Two such sources, The Prophecy of St. Berchan, and De Instructione Principus note that in 841 AD Mac Alpin attacked the remnants of the Pictish army and defeated them (he is lauded as "the raven feeder").
Mac Alpin then invites the Pictish king Drust IX and the remaining Pictish nobles to Scone to perhaps settle the issue of Dalriada's freedom or MacAlpin's claim to the Dalriadic crown. Faced with a recently victorious MacAlpin in the south, and a devastated army in the north, Drust, as well as all claimants to the Pictish throne from the seven royal houses attend this meeting at Scone. Legend has it that the Scots came secretly armed to Scone, where Drust and the Pictish nobles were killed.

It is Giraldus Cambresis in De Instructione Principus who recounts how a great banquet was held at Scone, and the Pictish King and his nobles were plied with drinks and became quite drunk. Once the Picts were drunk, the Scots allegedly pulled bolts from the benches, trapping the Picts in concealed earthen hollows under the benches; additionally, the traps were set with sharp blades, such that the falling Picts impaled themselves (the The Prophecy of St. Berchan tells that "...[Mac Alpin] plunged them in the pitted earth, sown with deadly blades...") . Trapped and unable to defend themselves, the surviving Picts were then murdered from above and their bodies, clothes and ornaments "plundered."

Although their king and royal houses had been murdered, and their armies wiped out in the north by the Vikings and decimated in the south by the Scots, the Picts nonetheless resist Scottish domination and as late as the 12th year of MacAlpin's reign the The Chronicle of Huntington tells us that Mac Alpin "fought successfully against the Picts seven times in one day" (perhaps wiping out the last remnants of an independent Pictish armed force).

Pictish resistance of a sort resurfaces after the end of the short reign by MacAlpin's second son, Aedh, when an attempt is tried to revive the Pictish matrilineal form of succession in the form of bringing to the throne Eochaidh Mac Run, son of Kenneth's daughter by a King of the Britons, which was in turn a joint ruler with a Pict named Giric, son of Dungal. They were expelled within ten years and Donald, who was the grandson of Kenneth via Kenneth's eldest son, assumed the throne.

The Scottish kings' dominion was essentially limited to Fortrenn, the Mearns and Dalriada, as the rest of the Pictish lands were under the yoke of the Vikings. Nonetheless, within a few generations, the Pictish language is forgotten, the Pictish Church taken over by the Scottish Columban Church and most vestiges of Pictish culture erased.

Furthermore, the seat of Kings is moved to Scone, sacred heart of the Pictish land and the sons of Mac Alpin accept the crown over the land of Picts and Scots seated on a slab of stone which Scottish myth tells us was carried by the Celtic tribes since their origins in Spain, brought to Tara in Ireland, built into the wall of Dunstaffnage Castle and then brought to Scone.

The Scots move north, ally themselves with the Vikings; in the south they lose and then defeat the Angles and with their borders relatively safe, forever suffocate Pictish culture.

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                                         Spain and Scotland: The Ancient Connections





Of these ancient kingdoms, Galicia, of course, is still one of the seven recognized Celtic nations, and the word itself means "The Land of the Gaelic People." It is from Galicia that Irish origin legends claim that the Irish race sprung towards Ireland.

According the Irish origin myths, King Brigus built Breoghan's Tower or Brigantia in Galicia, and also the city of Brigantia or Braganza in Portugal. He also created the most ancient kingdom of Castile which was then also called after him or "Brigia." The ancient Celtic blood of the Castilians was later the driving force in the creation of the modern Spanish nation as the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon joined under the crowns of Isabella and Ferdinand in the 15th century.

Some Victorian scholars, such as John O'Hart, submit that "Castile" (or "Castilla" or "Castle Land" in Spanish) itself was so called from the figure of a castle which Brigus bore for his Coat of Arms on his banner. The name of that ancient land, however, can only be historically traced to the Dark Ages. In any event, King Brigus, well used to conquering lands and establishing new kingdoms, sent a colony of his people into Britain. His invaders settled in that territory now known as the counties of Durham, Westmoreland, Lancaster, and perhaps Cumberland. These settlers were named after him and were called "Brigantes" by the Greeks. It was these people who ferociously opposed the Roman invader centuries later.

Of even more interest to Pictophiles, King Brigus' son was named Bile, and he was also a Celtic King of Spain. Several Pictish Kings were also called Bile or Bili, including its most famous King, the destroyer of the Angles at Dunnichen in 685 A.D. The name Bile is of high interest also to students of Celtic mythology. According to the Celtic Encyclopedia

"In British tradition he was called Bel or Belinus, but in Irish he was Bile. In some texts, he is said to come to Ireland from Spain - which is clearly intended to be the Land of the Dead. The fires of Beltaine were lit to mark his recognized feast. Very little is known of his mythos, but he, like Danu who is sometimes named as his consort, was a powerful ancestral deity to the Celtic races. (bil-ay) One of the names of the god of Death (i.e. of the Underworld), father of Miled; equivalent, Cymric god Beli, husband of Don".
Bile's son was Milesius, perhaps the most famous of all the Celtic Kings of Spain and the father of the Irish race. As a youth Milesius, distinguished himself as a warrior in Egypt and was also known as Galamh. According to Hynes:

"The original name of Milesius of Spain was, as already mentioned, "Galamh" (gall : Irish, a stranger; amh, a negative affix), which means, no stranger: meaning that he was no stranger in Egypt, where he was called "Milethea Spaine," which was afterwards contracted to "Miló Spaine" (meaning the Spanish Hero), and finally to "Milesiius" (mileadh: Irish, a hero; Lat. miles, a soldier)".

Celtic Helmet from Spain
Because of his prowess as a warrior, Milesius was given the hand of Scotta, daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh. From her name comes the name of the Scottish people. He took her to Spain and they reigned as King and Queen of that European nation.

As legend has it, it was his uncle (or perhaps brother or even grandfather), Ith, who one clear day saw the outlines of Ireland from a high tower built by King Brigus. King Miled then sent a fleet of warriors to investigate and by the time it was all over and done, Ith was killed trying to solve a dispute between three kings in Ireland and as a result the avenging Sons of Mile conquered Ireland and defeated the Tuatha de Danaan. According to the Celtic Encyclopedia, the Danaan were:

"The people of Dana. They ruled Ireland after Nemed, according to the Book of Invasions, and were descended from one of his great-grandsons. They were supposed to come from the northern isles of Greece where they had learned all the arts of magic. They brought four treasures with them from these parts: the Stone of Fal from Falias, which screamed under the foot of every rightful king; the Spear of Lugh, which came from Gorias; the Sword of Nuada, from Findias; and the Cauldron of the Dagda from Murias. They fought long against the Fomorians and the Firbolgs, but were eventually vanguished by the Milesians, after which they retired to the Otherworld."
and the Firbolg people. Again, according to the Celtic Encyclopedia the Firbolg were:
"(fir vulag) Nemedian survivors who return to Ireland; name signifies 'Men of the Bags'; the FirBolg, FirDomnan, and Galionin races general-ly designated as the Firbolgs; the Danaan's and the Firbolgs; The first inhabitants of Ireland, according to ancient traditions, were the Firbolgs, who were conquered and driven into the Western Islands by the Tuatha De Danann. The Firbolgs became the first Fairies of Ireland, Giant-like, grotesque creatures. They and the Tuatha De Danann may be compared with the Titans and the Olynpic gods of Greece; They settled in Ireland, fleeing Greece where they had been enslaved and made to carry earth in bags. They afterwards made ships out of these bags and sailed to Spain. They held Ireland after the death of Nemed until the coming of the Tuatha de Danaan."
who at that point were the living in Ireland. It is thus that the Irish are known as "the Milesian race."
And thus we now come to the Pictish connection - probably more fable than truth, but present nonetheless: One of King Milesius' sons was Heremon. He and his eldest brother, Heber reigned together in conquered Ireland and were thus the first Milesian Kings of Ireland. After Heber was slain (c. 1698 B.C.) Heremon reigned as sole King of Ireland for fourteen years; during which time a new group of Iberian settlers arrived in Ireland. These new people we called "Cruitnii" by the Irish - or the "People of the Designs," -- these people were the Picts.

Irish legend says that the Picts arrived in Ireland and requested Heremon to assign them a part of the newly-conquered country to settle in, but he refused. Since the Picts had not brought wives with them, the King gave them as wives the widows of the Tuatha de Danaans, whose husbands had been slain in battle by the Spanish, and he sent them with a large party of his own forces to conquer the country to the East then called "Alba," (present day Scotland) with the condition that they and their posterity should be liege to the Kings of Ireland and that all bloodlines should pass through the wives.


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                                                             History





Many archaeological remains in the form of buildings and jewelry have survived to give an impression of the society of the Picts, but little in the way of writing has survived. Pictish society seems to have comprised a number of small kingdoms which occasionally clashed.

Scholars believe that Pictland comprised all of modern Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde except for Argyll. It appears that two over-kingdoms existed: one north of the Mounth with its core in Moray, the other to the south with the capital at Forteviot. Irish sources recorded that seven ancient Pictish kingdoms existed:

Cait — situated in modern Caithness and Sutherland
Ce — situated in modern Mar and Buchan
Circinn — situated in modern Angus and the Mearns
Fib — situated in the modern Fife and Kinross (Fife remains known to this day as 'the Kingdom of Fife') One remnant is found in Glenrothes in Fife called Pitcairn house by the community.
Fidach — situated in modern Moray and Ross
Fotla — situated in modern Atholl and Gowrie
Fortriu — situated in modern Strathearn and Menteith (also known as 'Fortrenn' and as the Verturiones to the Romans)

However, good archaeological evidence and some written evidence suggest that a Pictish kingdom also existed in Orkney.

Christian missionaries completed the conversion of Pictland in the 7th century, having converted southern kingdoms in the 5th or 6th centuries. Although the Britons of southern Scotland and then the Northumbrian church played a part in this process, the Celtic church of Saint Columba and his successors proved the most influential in the missionary work. They established strong and enduring links between Pictland and Iona.

Historians now question the idea of Pictland coming under pressure from Dalriadan invaders. No evidence exists of Dalriadan dominance in the 8th or 9th centuries. The Pictish kings Onuist mac Uurgust (fl. 729–761) and Caustantin mac Uurgust (fl. 789–820) dominated Dalriada. Onuist sacked Dunadd and captured the sons of the King of Dalriada. Caustantin put his son on the throne of Dalriada and his brother, son and nephew succeeded him as Kings of Pictland until Viking invaders defeated the Picts in 839.

In the Viking age Norse invaders conquered much of northern Pictland — Caithness, Sutherland, the Western Isles and Ross. In southern Pictland, wars with the Vikings continued until the reign of Constantine mac Aeda (900–942/3), grandson of Kenneth mac Alpin. Constantine reigned as the first King of Alba. 
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                                                     Pictish language





Little definite knowledge survives of the Picts' language, Pictish, its relationships and cognates.
It remains uncertain whether or not we should classify the Picts as Celts, although most available placename evidence tends to support the hypothesis that they spoke a Brythonic language.

Placenames often allow us to deduce the existence of historic Pictish settlements in Scotland. Those prefixed with "Aber-", "Lhan-", "Pit-" or "Fin-" indicate regions inhabited by Picts in the past (for example: Aberdeen, Lhanbryde, Pitmedden, Pittodrie, Findochty, etc). In support of this hypothesis, Gaelic tradition sees the Picts as identical with or descended from the Brythonic group which the Gaels called, and still call, the Cruithne. Cruithne has a likely cognate in the Welsh Prydain, in which we can see the standard /k/ to /p/ Goidelic to Brythonic sound correspondence (both sounds come from /kw/). From the Brythonic Celtic Prydain (or rather from its older form Pretani) comes (via Latin) the English word Britain.

Other hypotheses exist. For instance, the Basque nationalist Federico Krutwig tried to connect the Pictish and the Basque language, which would be remnants of the pre-Indo-European population of Europe. However lack of data about the Pictish language makes it difficult to test his hypothesis. The Symbol Stones of Scotland (Anthony Jackson, 1984) presents evidence of a decidedly un-Celtic matrilinear culture in Pictish lands, as reported by Bede.

Legends about the Picts also include mention of possible Scythian origins — linking them with another remote pre-literate people. Again, lack of information about the Pictish language makes it difficult to evaluate these legends. It should also be noted that Roman and Medieval scholars tended to ascribe a Scythian origin to any barbarian people (including the Scots and Goths) in order to emphasise their barbarity and 'otherness'. 
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                                           The legends of the "Painted People"





Popular etymology has long interpreted the name Pict as if it derived from the Latin the word Picti meaning "painted folk" or possibly "tattooed ones"; and this may relate to the Welsh word Pryd meaning "to mark" or "to draw". Julius Caesar, who never went near Pictland, mentions the British Celtic custom of body painting in Book V of his Gallic Wars, stating Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem, atque hoc horridiores sunt in pugna aspectu; which means: "In fact all Britanni stain themselves with vitrum, which produces a dark blue colour, and by this means they are more terrifying to face in battle;"

Linguists generally translate the Latin word vitro as "with woad". The Latin phrase “vitro inficiunt” could very well have meant “dye themselves with glazes” or “infect themselves with glass”. This could have described a scarification ritual which left dark blue scars, or formed a direct reference to tattooing. Subsequent commentators may have displaced the 1st-century BC southern practices (of the Brittani, a tribe south of the Thames) to the northern peoples in an attempt to explain the name Picti, which came into use only in the 3rd century AD. Julius Caesar himself, commenting in his Gallic Wars on the tribes from the areas where Picts (later) lived, states that they have “designs carved into their faces by iron”. If they used woad, then it probably penetrated under the skin as a tattoo. More likely, the Celts used copper for blue tattoos (they had plenty of it) and soot-ash carbon for black. Further study of bog bodies may provide more information on the specific tattooing techniques (if any) used by the Picts.

The Picts left virtually no written record of themselves so little first-hand knowledge of their history or ephemeral culture exists. Ancient legends indicate they had origins in "the east" (Baltic), or in "Scythia" (the Steppes). These legends cannot be verified.
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                                                The Picts in Fantasy





Many writers have been drawn to the idea of the Picts and created stories and mythology about them in the absence of much real data. This romanticised view tends to portray them as occasionally noble savages, much as the view of Europeans on Native Americans in the 18th century. They are an especial favourite "race" of Robert E. Howard and are mentioned frequently in his tales, having a continuity from the tales of King Kull of Atlantis, where they are his allies to the Hyborian Age of Conan the Barbarian where they are the mortal enemies of the Cimmerians, who are actually descended from the old Atlanteans though they do not remember their ancestry or old alliance. Howard also wrote tales about the last King of the Picts Bran Mak Morn set in real historical time and they figure commonly as enemies of Cormac mac Art.





                                                          References



Pictish language/dialect:



Ball, Martin J. and James Fife, eds. The Celtic Languages. London: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 041528080X
Cox, R. A. V. Abstract: Modern Scottish Gaelic Reflexes of Two Pictish Words: *pett and *lannerc. in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (eds.) East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), p. 504
Forsyth, K.; "Language in Pictland- The Case Against 'Non-Indo-European Pictish'" in Studia Hameliana #2. Utrecht: de Keltische Draak/The Celtic Dragon (1997). Rev. Damian McManus. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies #38 (Winter 1999), pp. 109-110
Forsyth, K.; "Literacy in Pictland" in Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press (1998), pp. 39-61
Forsyth, K.; "Abstract: The Three Writing Systems of the Picts." in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (eds.) East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), p. 508
Griffen, T.D.; "The Grammar of the Pictish Symbol Stones" in LACUS Forum #27 (2001), pp. 217-26
Okasha, E.; "The Non-Ogam Inscriptions of Pictland" in Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies #9 (1985), pp. 43-69





Pictish culture:



Battaglia, F.; "The Matriliny of the Picts" in Mankind Quarterly #31 (1990), pp. 17-44
Black, C.; "Abstract: The 'Pictish beast': The Origins and Evolution of the Symbol." in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (eds.) East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), pg. 497
Bruford, A.; "Trolls, Hillfolk, Finns, and Picts: The Identity of the Good Neighbors in Orkney and Shetland." in The Good People: New Fairylore Essays. Peter Narváez, ed. New York and London: Garland (1991), pp. 116-141
Carrington, A.; "David Imagery and the Chase Motif in Pictish Sculpture" in Studia Celtica #30 (1996), pgs. 147-158
Carrington, A.; "Abstract: The Eassie and the Kirriemuir No. 2 Cross-Slab Chase Motifs: A Part of the Pictish 'David Cycle'?" in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (eds.) East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), p. 500
Henderson, I.; "Variations on an Old Theme: Panelled Zoomorphic Ornament on Pictish Sculpture at Nigg, Easter Ross, and St. Andrew's Fife, and in the Book of Kells." in The Insular Tradition. Catherine E. Karkov, Michael Ryan, and Robert T. Farrell (eds.) Albany: State University of New York Press (1997), pp. 143-166
Hughson, I.; "Horses in the Early Historic Period: Evidence from the Pictish Sculptured Stones." in The Horse in Celtic Culture: Medieval Welsh Perspectives. Sioned Davies and Nerys Ann Jones (eds.) Cardiff: University of Wales Press (1997) pp. 23-42
Hughson, I.; "Pictish Horses and Pictish Society." in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (eds.) East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), pp. 211-221
Laing, L.; "The Hoard of Pictish Silver from Norrie's Law, Fife" in Studia Celtica #28 (1994), pp. 11-38
Laing, L., Laing, J.; "The Picts and the Scots" London: Alan Sutton (1993)
MacQuarrie, C.; "Abstract: Stigmata or Stigmatisation? Picts, Celts, and the Body as (Pre)text" in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. Ronald Black, William Gillies, and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (eds.) East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), p. 531
Ross, A.; "'Harps of Their Own Sorte'? A Reassessment of Pictish Chordophone Depictions" in Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies #36 (Winter 1998), pp. 37-60
Woolf, A.; "Pictish Matriliny Reconsidered." The Innes Review #49/2 (Autumn 1998), pp. 147-167





Pictish history:



Bannerman, J. "The Scottish takeover of Pictland and the relics of Columba" in The Innes Review #48/1 (Spring 1997), pp. 27-44
Cummins, W.A.; "The Age of the Picts" Stroud: Alan Sutton (1995) Rev. David Rollason in Early Medieval Europe #6 (1997), pg. 126
Foster, S.M.; "Picts, Gaels, and Scots" London: Batsford/Historic Scotland, 1996. Rev. Colleen Batey in Early Medieval Europe #6 (1997), pp. 234-236
de Napier, S.; "Naomh Pádraig agus na Pictigh" in An t-Ultach #62/5 (1985), pp. 19-20
[edit]Eumenius's panegyric:
Baehrens, Aemilius [Emil] (ed.); "XII Panegyrici Latini" (1874) [Latin edition]
Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.); "XII Panegyrici Latini", Oxford Univ. Press (1964) ISBN: 0198146477 [Latin edition]
Rodgers, B.S., Nixon, C.E.V. (eds.); "In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini", Univ. of California Press (1995) ISBN: 0520083261 [Latin and English translation edition]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts 
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Bianca
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« Reply #12 on: December 01, 2007, 07:32:05 pm »








unknown

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   posted 11-29-2005 08:38 AM                       
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Great thread Europa

I am curious about the Picts as well, Robert E. Howard is one of my favorite authors, from what I have read about him he was particularly fascinated by the Picts. 
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« Reply #13 on: December 01, 2007, 07:33:18 pm »






Europa

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Unknown, I think it's the idea that the Picts were in the habit of painting themselves blue for war that have drawn writers like Robert E. Howard to them.

It's interesting because Mel Gibson also has the Scots carrying on the tradition in the movie Braveheart in their battles against England. Although I'm not sure they were doing that at that point like they were in the movie. 
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« Reply #14 on: December 01, 2007, 07:34:23 pm »








unknown

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Howard was very familiar with the Mythologies/folklore of europe he portrayed the Picts as the last surviving remnants of the Atlantean race, This is cleary demonstrated in his Books about Bran Mak Morn in one story His mythological Atlantean King, King Kull comes back(forward in time) to help them defeat the Vikings and Roman Legions.

Howard's cosmology is as complete and fascination as other great pulp Authors like HP Lovecraft and could even be comparable in its complexity to those of later authors like Tolkein or Herbert.
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