A New History of the Picts E-Book

Stuart McHardy

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

When the Romans came north to what is now modern Scotland they encountered the fierce and proud warrior society known as the Picts, who despite their lack of discipline and arms, managed to prevent the undefeated Roman Army from conquering the northern part of Britain, just as they later repulsed the Angles and the Vikings.A New History of the Picts is an accessible true history of the Picts, who are so often misunderstood. New historical analysis, recently discovered evidence and an innovative Scottish perspective will expose long held assumptions about the native people.This controversial text contests that Scottish history has long since been dominated and distorted by misleading perspectives. A New History of the Picts discredits the idea that the Picts were a strange historical anomaly and shows them to be the descendants of the original inhabitants of the land, living in a series of loose tribal confederations gradually brought together by external forces to create one of the earliest states in Europe: a people, who after repulsing all invaders, merged with their cousins, the Scots of Argyll, to create modern Scotland. All of Scotland descends from the fierce Picts.

Leseprobe

STUART MCHARDY is a writer, musician, folklorist, storyteller and poet, and has lectured on many aspects of Scottish history and culture both in Scotland and abroad. Combining the roles of scholar and performer gives McHardy an unusually clear insight into tradition. As happy singing old ballads as analysing ancient legends, he has held such posts as Director of the Scots Language Resource Centre and President of the Pictish Arts Society. McHardy is a prolific author, and has had several books published, including Tales of the Picts, Tales of Edinburgh Castle, The Quest for the Nine Maidens, On the Trail of Scotland’s Myths and Legends and Edinburgh and Leith Pub Guide. McHardy lives in Edinburgh with his wife Sandra.

Dull StoneDigitally enhanced image from photograph by Noble.

First published 2010

This edition 2011

eISBN: 978-1-912387-80-9

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from

towards the publication of this book.

The paper used in this book is recyclable.

It is made from low-chlorine pulps produced in a low-energy, low-emissions manner from renewable forests.

Printed and bound by

CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham

Map by Jim Lewis

Cover images: Man and horse from a rubbing of the Martin Stone

by Marianna Lines; stag image from the Grantown Stone.

Typeset in 10.5pt Sabon by

3btype.com

The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988 has been asserted.

© Stuart McHardy 2010

Acknowledgements

While all the ideas in this book are mine I would like to thank a variety of people for their assistance in bringing this book to print. My friends in the Pictish Arts Society have, over many years, through the course of often vigorous debate, helped to clarify my own thinking and in particular I would like to thank Sheila Hainey, Marianna Lines and Molly Rorke. Likewise many of my students over the years have helped me see things clearer, most notably Tim Walkingshaw. Dr Dauvit Broun of Glasgow University was kind enough to let me see a pre-publication version of his 2008 paper in the Bibliography, and Dr Brian Moffat of the Soutra Trust was extremely helpful in matters concerning the ‘miracle food’, the Kale Pea. My editor Alice Jacobs was a delight to work with and my son Roderick was of great assistance in amending the text. Thanks are as ever due to my wife Sandra for her continual support and encouragement. Finally thanks go to Gavin MacDougall of Luath Press for his continued support for Scottish culture at all levels and to all the staff of Luath; Leila, Senga, Anne, John-Paul, Christine and Jo, who worked hard to make it all happen.

Contents

The Dull Stone

Map

Preface

Scotland at the dawn of history

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE   Tribal Scotland

CHAPTER TWO   The Romans march north

CHAPTER THREE   Standoff and survival

CHAPTER FOUR   Kinship not kingship

CHAPTER FIVE   The coming of the monks

CHAPTER SIX   Religious and political change

CHAPTER SEVEN   From chief to king

CHAPTER EIGHT   Conflict and consolidation

CHAPTER NINE   Into Alba

CHAPTER TEN   The end of the Picts?

CHAPTER ELEVEN   Then and now

Bibliography

Time Line

Map locations

1

Abercorn

site of short-lived seventh century Northumbrian bishopric.

2

Aberlemno

location of significant symbol stones.

3

Abernethy

possible Pictish capital and early Christian site.

4

Antonine Wall

Roman wall across Central Scotland

5

Anwoth

furthest south example of Pictish symbols.

6

Balbridie

Third Millennium BCE timbered hall.

7

Bennachie

significant mountain with ancient monuments.

8

Carpow

Roman site on the Tay near Abernethy.

9

Collessie

location of carved stone with warrior.

10

Covesea

cave with symbols and First Millennium links to Europe.

11

Cramond

Roman villa.

12

Dingwall

Highland town.

13

Dumbarton

capital of Strathclyde Britons.

14

Dumyat

fort of the Maetae.

15

Dunachton

possible site of battle in 685CE against Northumbrians.

16

Dunadd

capital of Dalriada.

17

Dundurn

Dalriadan fort

18

Dunkeld

important Pictish religious centre from early ninth century.

19

Dunnichen

possible site of battle in 685CE against Northumbrians.

20

Dunnottar

major fortified site.

21

Edinburgh

capital of the Gododdin, Dun Etain.

22

Eigg

site of martyrdom of St Donann.

23

Forres

site of death of king Dub.

24

Forteviot

ancient prehistoric site important into ninth century at least.

25

Gask Ridge

possible site of Roman’s first attempt at frontier.

26

Govan

important early Christian site in Strathclyde.

27

Inverdovat

site of death of king Constantine c.877

28

Inverness

capital of Bridei mac Maelchon visited by St Columba.

29

Iona

home of the Columban church.

30

Kilmartin Glen

pre-Christian sacred site for millennia.

31

Moncrieffe Hill

possible site of battle c.728.

32

Portmahomack

site of recently excavated Pictish monastery.

33

St Andrews

important early Christian site.

34

Stirling

strategic hilltop site at the centre of Scotland.

35

Traprain Law

possible capital of the Votadini, later the Gododdin.

36

Whithorn

important early Christian site, St Ninian.

Preface

Since the Union (of 1707) the writing of the history of Britain has been a more or less political process, the viewpoint of the historian depending on the individual’s position on the meaning and consequences of the Union and on the process of securing the creation of ‘North Britain’ and ‘South Britain’… A small country sharing a small island with a world power will never have a quiet life (as Pierre Trudeau described Canada’s relationship with the USA as ‘being in bed with an elephant’).

[Barclay 2002]

THE RESULT OF THE process described by Barclay has been that much of Scottish history is effectively Anglocentric. The needs of the British state to have a cohesive past have over-ridden much of the reality of Scottish history. This process has been well described in the remarkable The Very Bastards of Creation by James D Young, in which he looks at Scottish Radicalism in the period from 1707 to the close of the 20th century. As the recent work by Doron Zimmerman [2003] has shown, there is still a great deal to be understood about even as recent a Scottish historical phenomenon as Jacobitism. The dominant thrust of Scottish history writing has been to stress the similarities between Scotland and England by downgrading the differences.

England was part of the Roman Empire for 400 years – the idea that Scotland was ever anything other than outside the frontier is risible. Because of this, tribalism in England was on the decline from the beginning of the First Millennium while it survived in Scotland till the 18th century. England was subjected to successful invasion by Danes and Normans, and while Scotland lost vast tracts of its territory to Scandinavian invaders, the area from Edinburgh to Inverness, Argyll to Aberdeen was never conquered. It is perhaps a truism to say that most of Scotland’s history during the period from c.1000CE to the Union of the Crowns in 1603 was dominated by the need to resist invasion from England but it is none the less relevant to who we are in historical terms. Ethnically of course, now that we can see the bias of 18th century ideas more clearly, we can see that all of the British populations are mongrels – the idea of pure ethnicity is as intellectually pathetic as it is politically vile. Unfortunately ideas still abound that the ‘Celts’ are a separate ethnic group but thanks to the seminal works of Simon James [1999] and Brian Sykes [2006] this idea can now be understood for the romantic idiocy that it is. By showing that the very idea of Celticism developed from a need to resist Britishness, James has helped to create a clearer understanding of the past few centuries. While it is generally accepted that the Picts spoke a Celtic language, as did the Scots, and that the Vikings were Germanic speakers, they are all our ancestors. Language is important in helping us to understand the culture of different peoples in the past, and the relationships between them, but can tell us nothing about ethnicity.

Scotland at the dawn of history

SCOTLAND FIRST APPEARS IN written history when the Romans marched north to fight the tribes they called Caledonians. This name appears to be virtually synonymous with Pict. The Romans had already subjugated what is now England, which was to remain a part of the Roman Empire for almost 400 years. After the supposed great Roman victory of Mons Graupius – we only have the Roman side of the story – c.80CE, there are no further mentions of staged battles but Roman sources do mention heavy casualties in the north. The ongoing attempts to subjugate what is now Scotland saw the Romans fail time and again to conquer the Picts. In the period after the Romans left at the beginning of the fifth century CE the situation in the north of Britain changed dramatically. As the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria began to expand from its base in the northeast of England in the sixth and seventh centuries, the tribal peoples to the north came under considerable political and military pressure. By the time that we have more written history to call on, from the sixth century onwards, the earlier tribal peoples of Scotland seem to have merged into four main groupings, most of which were still essentially tribal.

These were the Picts north and east of the Forth–Clyde line, the Scots in Argyll, the Britons of Strathclyde whose territory stretched from the Clyde to Carlisle, and, in the south-east the Gododdin, whom the Romans had previously called the Votadini. All of these groups of people except the Scots appear to have been predominantly P-Celtic speaking. That is, they spoke a form of Celtic language which can be seen as a precursor of modern Welsh and Breton. This accounts for the fact that the oldest known Welsh poem, Y Gododdin, was written in Edinburgh at the dawn of the seventh century.

The Scots spoke a related Q-Celtic tongue which developed into modern Scottish Gaelic, which is itself related to modern Irish. After managing to halt the expansion of Northumbrian power in the seventh century the Picts began a process of consolidation which saw them eventually allying with their cousins the Scots in the 10th century to form the united kingdom of Alba, which in time became known as Scotland. From the eighth century onwards much of the Hebrides and northern Scotland fell under the control of the Vikings and eventually became subject to the Kings of Norway. Over the next couple of centuries the south-west and south-east of Scotland were drawn into the new kingdom and in the Middle Ages the islands and the north were ceded to the kings of Scots to create what we nowadays think of as Scotland. Today, Scotland is to a great extent the lands north of Hadrian’s Wall which the Romans never did manage to conquer.

Introduction

THE TITLE OF THIS work is A New History of the Picts, but any attempt at a truly definitive history of the Picts is, at the moment, impossible. The Picts were the people who were in what is now Scotland when the Romans arrived from England in the first century, a people who while being non-literate left behind a wonderful corpus of carved stone monuments which continue to inspire and puzzle people today. They had no cities, or even towns according to the Romans, and appear to have been an essentially tribal, pastoral society. Perhaps in the future, as a result of increased archaeological investigation we may have a more complete picture. The problem we face at the moment regarding archaeology is that until recently very few of our resources have been devoted to investigating our Pictish past. Due primarily to the effects of being locked in a political Union with a larger neighbour, and the consequent Imperial need to develop a ‘British’ history, in which the Romans played an important part, much of our scarce resources have been devoted to digging up Roman remains. While the Romans are of importance to our understanding of Scotland’s past, these archaeological investigations are of extremely limited use in understanding the development of indigenous societies. The limited written Roman sources that have survived do tell us a considerable amount about Scotland and its inhabitants in their time, but their actual influence over the development of Scottish history has been, and continues to be, overstated.

The essentially English-based focus in the development of this British history has given rise to the situation where one can go into the magnificent new Museum of Scotland and find a considerable concentrated display of Roman artefacts while references to the Picts are scattered thinly throughout the Early Peoples section of the museum. In part this is because the nature of the brief Roman occupation of parts of southern Scotland left us so much more in the way of recognisable artefacts than the indigenous tribes of the period who were living in scattered and self-sufficient communities. The simple reality is that we have not excavated as many indigenous sites from the Pictish period as we have of the Romans. To deny the importance of the Romans to our understanding of Scotland’s past would be an exercise in futility, but the fact that so many of our resources have been devoted to investigating their temporary presence here tells us a lot more about the inclinations of our own historians when looking at Scotland’s history, than it does about the realities of Scotland’s past.

Archaeology is conservative by its very nature, and increasingly the tendency is to leave things alone till better methodologies of understanding arise. This attitude is understandable given some of the destruction wrought in the early days of archaeology and the significant levels of investigation that can now be carried on through recently developed techniques such as aerial photography, geophysics, and soil analysis. However there is another, and entirely understandable, limitation on archaeological investigation. To try and understand any archaeology one must have a series of questions that can be asked of the artefacts, structures and landscape variations that are encountered. In this sense the investigation of Roman outposts, signal stations and other sites are straightforward in that so much is known about them that a series of very specific questions can be postulated. For instance the types of nails used by the Romans in wooden buildings changed over time, and particular types can give specific dates of occupation. Other technical aspects of Roman fort construction, coinage and weaponry can similarly be given relatively precise dates. Recently there has been a growth in the excavation of Pictish sites and following the same requirement for a clear set of questions to be asked, they have in the main been early Christian sites. Again this is because we have a great deal of comparative material from elsewhere, as well as a considerable amount of documentation about religious, and economic practice in such institutions. To investigate a pre-Christian Pictish site is more difficult, in that to date there have not been so many clear questions that could be posited. Partly this is because so few of them have in fact been investigated but there is another limitation. Little attempt has been made in our institutions, constrained by the limitations of an essentially Christian and ‘Britishist’ historical approach, to understand what preceded Christianity in Scotland. The use of the term pagan, like Celtic, is something I will try to avoid as both words have been bandied about in so many different situations, often by people meaning totally different things, as to render their meanings indeterminate. I believe that there is much that can be understood about the beliefs and perhaps even practices of pre-Christian sacral behaviour and will look at this extensively in a forthcoming work on early Pictish symbol stones, but to describe such behaviour as pagan is not particularly helpful. Even the idea of a cohesive single religion, akin to the big world religions that exist today suggests a conformity and uniformity that is highly unlikely to have existed before the monks arrived.

Because we have no written records from the Picts themselves they can seem almost historically invisible. Scotland as a whole has virtually no surviving documents from the First Millennium and what has survived, is in later copies of supposedly earlier works. It seems clear that after the arrival of the Christian monks, particularly Columba in the 560s, the Picts must at the least have known of writing, but nothing that we can claim to be Pictish has survived. Our limited knowledge is based on such sources as the Irish Annals, the King Lists of the Picts that survived in Continental monasteries, and early historical works, none of which are indigenous to Scotland, never mind Pictland. So we know of the deaths of kings and of major battles and other general information which made its way into the annotations of early Annals [see below p.89]. Even the King Lists are problematic in that no son ever succeeds his father [see below p.113]. Whether this is due to some form of succession through mother-right is still being debated but it does tell us that the Picts do not seem to conform to easily understood historical models. The situation is complicated by the existence of the Pictish symbol stones, one of the most under-appreciated collections of art in human history. While clearly in existence before the arrival of the Christian monks, the tradition of carving symbols on stone soon itself became Christianised and led to the development of many truly wondrous sculptured monuments. Even the function of these stones is unclear and discussion continues as to the possible meaning of the early symbols, many of which were adopted and used in later, obviously Christian, sculptures. What we can be sure of is that in the First Millennium in what we now call Scotland there was a people who in time were seen as quite distinct from the other peoples of the period, the Scots of Dalriada – modern Argyll and the Inner Hebrides – the Britons of Strathclyde and the Gododdin of the Lothians. The Picts, Britons and the Gododdin are nowadays seen as having been speakers of a P-Celtic tongue, a series of languages or dialects which were related to but distinct from the Q-Celtic Gaelic of the Scots in the west which was close to the similarly Q-Celtic tongues of Ireland and Man. The P-Celtic languages survive in the modern world in Welsh, Breton and the revived Cornish language.

From the various external sources, Roman, Irish, English and Continental we do know of some significant dates concerning the Picts. Although till recently it was thought wise to restrict the use of Picts or Pictish to the period after 297CE [see below p.57] I herein submit that the Picts were effectively the indigenous people(s) of the northern half of Britain. They enter history at the battle of Mons Graupius c.80CE. This battle is reported in a single Roman source but opens a period of Scotland’s past where there are limited, but informative, Roman sources delineating their continual and unsuccessful attempts to conquer the northern tribes, and telling us something of the Picts themselves. The Romans left Britain c.409CE and there is no historically accurate information about the Picts for a couple of centuries. By the second half of the seventh century however we enter into a new phase of British history with the expansion of the Northumbrian Angles, and increasingly what little information we can glean about the Picts can be supported from a variety of sources. The great battle between the Northumbrians and the Picts in 685CE, variously known as Nechtansmere or Dunnichen is a key date in that subsequent to this the expansionist policies of Northumbria were doomed to failure. From this time to the eventual creation of the combined Scottish and Pictish Kingdom of Alba in the early 10th century we still lack indigenous source material and there is not a great deal from elsewhere. There is sufficient however to give us a picture of Scotland in the second half of the First Millennium that is open to a variety of interpretations. The vast majority of this material derives from sources created by Christian monks in one way or another and the role of Christianity itself is absolutely central in the societal and political development of the Picts from a tribally structured society to something akin to a nation state, or kingdom. There is enough material, however, to flesh out a clear narrative of who the Picts were and how their society developed, and its fundamental importance in the eventual creation of what we nowadays call Scotland.

At this point I would like to make it clear that I believe, as I have stated elsewhere [McHardy 1997] that our understanding of the past can be greatly enhanced by the critical study of what is generally referred to as folklore. Troy was found because Heinrich Schliemann ignored professional advice from historians and archaeologists and used the ‘stories’ of Homer to find the location of what was till then considered an imaginary location. Likewise there is much in Scottish tradition that can perhaps be drawn on to help us expand our knowledge of the past. I shall consider particular instances of this variously below, but for those who doubt the practicality of such an approach I recommend consideration of the Diprotodons. The term Diprotodon was coined in the second half of the 20th century to describe prehistoric giant marsupials whose bones and fossils were found in Australia. Ever since the first white man had arrived on the Continent the Dreamtime stories of the aboriginal population concerning these animals had been dismissed as fantasy. The fact is that the indigenous people had carried knowledge of these creatures, through oral transmission, for a period of around 40,000 years [Isaacs 1991]. Story has no brief to tell of precise dates, times and locations but can still tell us much. It can perhaps be used to glean a clearer understanding of our past. If the aboriginal peoples of Australia can hold on to ascertainable facts for 40,000 years it is clearly not beyond possibility that traditions relevant to our understanding of the Picts could have survived in Scotland since the time of the first post-Ice Age settlers.

There is a candidate for just such a tale. It is mentioned by the Christian monk Bede, generally considered the father of English history, who wrote his History of the English Church and People in Northumbria in the first quarter of the eighth century. He tells us that

some Picts, from Scythia, put to sea in a few longships and were driven by the storms around the coasts of Britain, arriving at length on the north coast of Ireland...

[1955, p.38]

This raises an intriguing possibility. Scythia is quite specific and in Bede’s time was used to refer to Denmark and southern Scandinavia in general. Can we therefore discern in this tradition the survival of an oral tradition harking back to early settlers who arrived by following the coast of the land that existed in much of what is now the North Sea before 6000BCE? This is well within the bounds of possibility and the Pictish peoples would be truly unique if they possessed no tales of their own origins within their oral traditions.

A further aspect of the value of traditional folklore can be seen in the very name of the Picts, perhaps originally something more like Pecht, which was what they were known as in folklore traditions throughout Scotland well into the 19th century. The term was in use from the Borders to Shetland and seems to have had the meaning of ‘the ancestor peoples’. It was only as universal schooling was established that this term was replaced by Picts, precisely because this, as the term the Romans had used, had become the accepted literary form. As Rivet and Smith suggest in their comments on the term [1979, p.438f], the Romans probably just misheard the real name. The idea that the term Pict is derived from the Roman term Picti, supposedly meaning the painted people, does not stand up to scrutiny as Rivet and Smith have shown. The term Pecht, which survived till very late in the oral tradition and in place names, is possibly what they called themselves.

When the Romans arrived in Scotland the population was undoubtedly tribal. It is a telling point that 1,700 years later a considerable part of the country was still essentially the same. The society that existed in the 18th century in much of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was an anachronism in modern Europe in that the clan system was still, just, a society that was tribal, pastoral, warrior-based and Celtic-speaking, which in itself could be a fair description of the Picts. And I hope I am not alone in hearing an echo of the phrase used by Dio Cassio that these tribes ‘were addicted to raiding’, in the warnings posted on kirk doors by the British Government in 1746 about the Highland cattle thieves, those members of the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie who had refused to surrender and reverted to a combination of traditional cattle-raiding and guerrilla warfare to survive. To this day in many parts of the globe people still live in tribal societies whose daily life is focused round the needs of their cattle, the source of much of their food, the basis of their economy, and certainly throughout Eurasia in prehistoric times the primary focus of inter-tribal raiding. The misreading of Scottish history that has developed has blinded us to the fact that the clans in the Highlands were the descendants of the Picts as well as of the Scots, nor should we forget the role of the Vikings, and as I hope to show, the differentiation of these two groups may well have been little more than the language they spoke. And language is not now, nor has ever been, a badge of ethnicity.

Just because people live in tribes does not mean they are incapable of high levels of organisation. What can be construed as the tyranny of literacy has led us into supposing a level of primitivism always existed amongst pre-literate peoples. The very existence of intricate and sophisticated structures such as Maes Howe, Brodgar, Calanais and the rest from millennia ago shows that the ancestral societies of the tribes of north-west Europe were not composed of ignorant savages. And of course the Pictish symbols stones are themselves a reminder that the people creating them were great artists. The idea that the ‘barbarian’ tribes were awaiting the guiding hand of the Roman Empire or the Christian Church to bring them forth from the darkness of ignorance into the light of understanding is an unfortunate interpretation that has underpinned much of our understanding of the past in north-western Europe. Modern western notions of civilization are predicated on urban development and literacy, overlaid with a quasi-religious faith in ‘progress’, nowadays obsessed with industrialisation and economic development and driven by the profit motive. The state of our planet suggests such faith is misplaced and that there is more to be learned from how our predecessors lived than is generally accepted.

Modern interest in the ancient Pictish peoples of Scotland was both reflected and stimulated by the publication in 1955 of a book called The Problem of the Picts. Unfortunately this choice of title has led to a situation where the Picts have continued to be perceived as essentially enigmatic, even unknowable. Hopefully this is no longer the case. Over the past 20 years a series of remarkable about-turns have occurred in our understanding of Scotland’s past. That cornerstone of Scottish history, the founding of Dalriada by ‘invaders’ from Ulster, has been shown by Dr Ewan Campbell [2000] to have no provable foundation at all and the whole concept of the ‘Celtic’ world has been effectively demolished by Simon James in his The Atlantic Celts.

Because of the nature of Scottish historiography to date I believe we are in a position that if we want to create a truly Scottish history of our land we must go back to the basics and ‘mak it new’. In this work I am trying to present a cohesive and straightforward narrative of Pictish history. In the course of the book we will consider the Romans, what they had to tell us and how they interrelated with the indigenous tribes; the growth of Northumbria and its effects on the Picts and their neighbours, the Scots and the Britons; their relationships with those neighbours; the arrival and influence of the new Christian religion and how the eventual Pictish state came into existence in relationship to continuing external pressures including the Viking raids from the early ninth century onwards.

Because of this lack of early written indigenous sources, the interpretation of our distant past has always necessitated a considerable deal of speculation. Until we have considerably more archaeological investigation to help us better understand Scotland’s past, such speculation must continue and the best I can hope for is that the reader considers my suggestions and interpretations as being at least informed speculation. There is an old cliché about the past being another country – when that country is described according to the history of another society it can hardly hope to fit. The ideas presented herein are mine and if they are felt to be wrong-headed, or even offensive, the blame too is mine, and mine alone.

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