Pagan Symbols of the Picts E-Book

Stuart McHardy

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Stuart McHardy examines the Pictish symbols which have been discovered on various items across Scotland. The book sets out a cohesive interpretation of the Pictish past, using a variety of both temporal and geographical sources. This interpretation serves as a backdrop for his analysis of the symbols themselves, providing a context for his suggestion that there was an underlying series of ideas and beliefs behind the creation of the symbols.

Leseprobe

First published 2012

eISBN: 978-1-912387-81-6

The paper used in this book is sourced from renewable forestry

and is fsc credited material

Printed and bound by

MPG Books Ltd., Cornwall

Typeset in 11 point Sabon

by 3btype.com

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

Text and Line Drawings © Stuart McHardy

Pictish Photo Art © Nick Simpson

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Map

CHAPTER ONE Who Were the Picts?

CHAPTER TWO Pictish Symbolism

CHAPTER THREE Dating

CHAPTER FOUR Symbolism

CHAPTER FIVE Before Literature

CHAPTER SIX The Symbol Stones

Animals

Bear

Boar/Sow

Cattle

Deer

Dog

Eagle

Goose

Horse

Salmon

Serpent

Serpent and Z-rod

The ‘Beastie’

Geometric Shapes

Cauldron

Circles

Crescent and V-rod

Double Crescent

Double Disc

Mirror and Comb/Mirror and Comb Case

Notched Rectangle

Circular Disc and Rectangle

Spiral

Z-rod

CHAPTER SEVEN Pre-Christian Religion in Scotland

A Decayed Goddess

Basses

Pictish Photo Art by Nick Simpson

Conclusion

Coda

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Bibliography

Time Line

List of Symbols

Preface

GIVEN THE LENGTH of time since they were created and the lack of direct written evidence concerning the Pictish symbols, some of their meanings are more opaque than others. My interpretations in some cases have extensive support within early texts while in other instances much of what I suggest is almost completely speculative and perhaps incapable of any real extent of proof. Hopefully, with the increasing sophistication of archaeological methodologies and the development of new techniques, our understanding will be improved. However, I hope the approach adopted here can lead to a clearer vision of what the symbols may mean, and thus may help us gain a clearer understanding of the inhabitants of 1st millennium Scotland and earlier.

The ideas presented in this book have developed over nearly 40 years of study and contemplation and thus any mistakes are mine alone. Where I have quoted others, this is in support of my contentions and it should not be assumed that those quoted agree with all, or even any, of what is presented herein. Having taken a university degree in history, I am aware that most of what is called history has been written at the behest of what can only be called ‘elites’. Because of this, much of what passes for human history, and indeed archaeology, is overly concerned with earlier elites, even where there is no hard evidence that they existed. Most history books until relatively recently paid little attention to anyone other than elite groups of males between their late teens and middle age. Women generally are only noticed in detail when they are fulfilling a role normally assumed to be a masculine one and there are few, if any, mentions of other women, children, healers, poets, musicians, farmers, fisherfolk, craftspeople and many other groups in society. Historians have long been obsessed with what they perceive as elite behaviour, though the growth of social history over the past half century is beginning to give us a more rounded picture of what the past was like.

In this work I draw heavily upon material that initially survived through oral transmission and was thus not subject to the control of religious, military or economic elites, as written history has always been. In A New History of the Picts, I have gone so far as to suggest that in tribal Britain the modern concept of the elite would have been anachronistic and is unhelpful in trying to understand our common past. At least some of my ancestors were Picts – the name McHardy seems to have originated in what was the Pictish province of Mar – but some were Irish and, according to family tradition, there are Norse antecedents in there too. However, I make no claim to being a Pict, or even a Celt, a term that has no ethnic significance whatsoever. I am a Scot who believes that the past of my country has been badly interpreted and considerably misunderstood and it is in pursuit of a greater understanding of that past that I have developed the ideas here presented.

Thanks, as ever, are due to the Luath crew for teasing this work into print. Additionally thanks to Nick Simpson and Davie Moir for help with illustrations and stimulating discussions.

Stuart McHardy

Introduction

Methodology

DUE TO THE lack of early written Scottish sources it has been necessary for commentators on our past to look elsewhere for historical sources. In the main, this has in effect been the Roman Empire, England and Ireland, simply because there are surviving early sources from all three. It is ironic that so many have used English sources considering the role played by Edward I and later Cromwellian troops in destroying what did exist of early documentation in Scotland. Although the material emanating from the early Irish annals is of considerable importance, it is my contention that far too much attention has been paid to the supposed influence of Ireland on Scotland. In his article ‘Were The Scots Irish?’ (2000) Ewan Campbell of Glasgow University has, I believe, totally debunked the notion that Dalriada, the Scottish society based around the Kilmartin valley in the 1st Millennium, was founded by invaders from Ulster c.500CE. He points out that there is no contemporary historical, archaeological or linguistic evidence that supports the contention that the Scots arrived from Ireland, and goes so far as to suggest that there was in fact considerable cultural and political influence in the opposite direction. Further, I would suggest that the many references in histories of the period to the Kingdoms of Dalriada and Pictland is, for reasons that will become clear, unhelpful in understanding how those societies functioned, and for much of the 1st Millennium is simply inaccurate.

The Romans describe tribal societies. As late as the 18th century tribal society still flourished in much of the Scottish mainland. Are we to believe it disappeared and then returned? This is unheard of in the human story. Therefore we must surely accept that in some ways the tribal societies of late Medieval Scotland developed over time from those earlier tribal societies described by the Romans. From what we can tell, those societies were exclusively non-literate when the Romans arrived and it was only with the introduction of Christianity that the written word appeared amongst the native peoples. And for long enough after that, reading and writing was the sole prerogative of churchmen; churchmen who, from the Synod of Whitby in 664, owed their allegiance to an organisation centred in far off Rome, and whose writings are unashamedly propagandistic. God was, after all, on their side.

It is one of the major mistakes of historians to assume that once literature is introduced into society, oral tradition either disappears or is discredited. For many millennia such societies as did exist in what we now call Scotland were held together by myths and legends, stories and tales, that could only pass from lip to ear. Evidence from Australia illustrates that oral transmission can carry accurate information over tens of thousands of years (Isaacs 1991), but here I would mention the case of Troy. Troy was found not by professional archaeologists or historians but by a German industrialist Heinrich Schliemann who, despite the objections of the professionals, had decided that the tales Homer spun into the Iliad were based on fact. To the academic establishment of his day, Homer’s sources were ‘just stories’. That is a fair description of much of the material that I have used to try to tease out meaning from the symbols of the Picts, and it is worth remembering that we too have at least one Pictish instance of the viability of traditional tales. Norrie’s Law was long said to be the burial site of a warrior, traditionally a Danish rather than a Pictish warrior, who was buried in a suit of silver armour. The veracity of this can be checked by looking at the remnants of the silver found in the tumulus, now on show in the Museum of Scotland.

History is limited by the tyranny of the written word. As Campbell (supra) and others have shown, the written word is often little more than propaganda. We have to be critical in our approach to the written word and this applies just as much to words written down that were once spoken as story. Wherever possible I have considered a variety of sources, temporal and geographic, in suggesting possible direct links to what we can only call pagan belief. The general meaning of pagan here is pre-Christian, and where I go further to suggest specific possibilities and relationships, I should re-emphasise that this is derived from my own thinking. According to the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the term pagan originally had the sense of

… villager, rustic… indicating the fact that the ancient idolatry lingered on in the rural villages and hamlets after Christianity had been generally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire

1979, p.2052

Given that Scotland had very few towns or cities until well into the medieval period this seems particularly apt. By analysing material that emanated from the traditional stories, myths and legends of Wales, Ireland and Scandinavia I hope I can show that we can put together a model for understanding something of what the symbols may have meant to the people who created them.

One of the reasons for investigating the pre-Christian Picts is to develop a picture that archaeologists can perhaps use to pose questions about sites from pagan times. In order to develop such a picture I have spent considerable effort trying to understand not only how relevant information can be transmitted through the oral tradition, but also in analysing the Scottish landscape in the light of putative pagan belief. Through a combination of approaches, I have come up with an interpretation of the Pictish past which, correct or not, has the advantage of being cohesive and as such might well fill the role of stimulating further discussion and hopefully begin to provide a framework that might allow the development of a specifically Scottish archaeological approach to the Picts.

Map of sites mentioned in the text

1 Abernethy

2 Achnabreck

3 Ardross

4 Bennachie

5 Burghead

6 Collessie

7 Congash

8 Clynemilton

9 Drimmies

10 Dull

11 Dumbarton

12 Dunachton

13 Dunadd

14 Dunrobin

15 Easterton of Roseisle

16 Eday

17 Eildon Hills

18 Grantown

19 Glamis

20 Inverurie

21 Kintore

22 Kintradwell

23 Knocknagael

24 Latheron

25 Lindores

26 Logie Elphinstone

27 Meigle

28 Moy

29 Newton

30 North Berwick Law

31 Paps of Fife

32 Paps of Jura

33 Rhynie

34 St Vigean’s

35 Sandside

36 Strathpeffer

CHAPTER ONE

Who were the Picts?

THE QUESTION OF who the Picts were has been the cause of much controversy over the years. The lack of early written material from Scotland has meant we have virtually no direct historical evidence regarding the Picts. This vacuum has served to create a situation where a whole range of theories have arisen regarding the origin of the Picts. Short of any evidence pointing to a major population influx in Scottish pre-history, and to date this has not been presented, it seems to me that the most sensible approach is to consider the Picts as the descendants of the original inhabitants of this part of the world (McHardy 2010).

Given that we now know that stories can pass down provable facts over millennia (Isaacs 1991), there may in fact be a hint as to their origin in the far past. The tradition given by Bede, a monk writing in Jarrow monastery in the 9th century, is that the Picts came from Scythia. In the 1st Millennium and into the Early Medieval period, Scythia referred, not to the area north of the Black Sea, but to the southern area of Scandinavia, modern Denmark and the adjoining areas. For a considerable period after the close of the last Ice Age, much of the area that is now the North Sea was dry land and it seems likely that people travelled east from Denmark and the Low Countries to Britain as well as coming into what is now England from the south.

The idea that people only came into Scotland after having come first into England has no specific evidence to support it. While some people probably did come by this route, early settlers were just as likely to have come in across the land bridge from the Continent. The geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer states that according to genetic analysis there was an influx of people from northern Norway as early as 4000BCE (2006, p.190) Given that Isaacs (1991, passim) has shown that stories containing factual, provable data have survived upwards of 30,000 years in Australia, the idea that memories of such an event could survive for 10,000 years in Scotland is hardly impossible.

The first written references we have to people in this part of the world come from the Romans. They called the people here Caledonians and Picts. In fact, the terms seem to have been inter-changeable and were applied effectively to the entire population north of Hadrian’s Wall. In their references to the people here they seem to have been using both terms as generic descriptors of the tribal peoples they came across. While the Romans were only in Scotland for one extended period – nowadays the Antonine Wall is seen as having lasted no more than about 15 to 20 years at the most (McCann 1988), and the campaign of Severus lasted only a few seasons in the early 3rd century – they do tell us quite a lot about the inhabitants.

This is from the Roman Dio Cassius writing at the beginning of the 3rd century CE,

There are two principal tribes of the Britons, the Caledonii and the Maeatae, and the names of the others have been merged in these two. The Maeatae live next to the cross-wall which cuts the island in half, and the Caledonians are beyond them. Both tribes inhabit wild and waterless mountains and desolate swampy plains, and possess neither walls, cities, nor tilled fields, but live on their flocks, wild game, and certain fruits; for they do not touch the fish which are found in immense and inexhaustible quantities. They dwell in tents, naked and unshod, possess their women in common and in common rear all their offspring. Their form of rule is democratic for the most part, and they are fond of plundering; consequently they choose their boldest men as rulers. They go into battle in chariots, and have small swift horses; there are also foot soldiers, very swift in running and very firm in standing their ground. For arms they have a shield and a short spear, with a bronze apple attached to the end of the spear-shaft, so that when it is shaken it may clash and terrify the enemy; and they also have daggers. They can endure hunger and cold and any kind of hardship; for they plunge into the swamps and exist there for many days with only their heads above water, and in the forests they support themselves upon bark and roots, and for all emergencies they prepare a certain kind of food, the eating of a small portion of which, the size of a bean, prevents them from feeling either hunger or thirst.

1927, p.264

This is a description of a tribal warrior society and in the 2nd century, the Roman geographer Ptolemy gave a list of what were supposed to be the dominant tribes throughout the north of the British Isles. The interpretation of what were essentially tribal areas as being in some way akin to modern nation states with defined boundaries and centralised political structures is anachronistic, certainly before the 7th century when the expanding Northumbrians perhaps began to force the natives of Scotland into tighter political and military alignments. Dio Cassius also tells us that one of the two main tribes of the Caledonians, the Maetae, lived up against the wall, that cuts the island in half’ (Ibid.). He was writing in 217CE, half a century after the Antonine Wall was finally abandoned, so is clearly writing about Hadrian’s Wall. The Maetae are generally accepted as the equivalent of the southern Picts so what this tells us is that, certainly from the Roman point of view, the Picts were the inhabitants of all of what we now think of as Scotland. Folklore talks of Pechs or Pechts from the Borders to Shetland. From this perspective, the Scots can be understood as one of the Pictish tribes, and certainly as part of the Pictish world.

The reference by Cassius to the Caledonians being democratic is easily understood. We know that well into the late Medieval period the Highland tribes of Scotland, by now called clans, had an element of election in the selection of their chiefs and this is in fact common to tribal structures across the globe. Effectively, tribes are groups of inter-related families occupying specific territory and usually claiming descent from a common ancestor. The tribe or clan is defined by its strength in warriors, as well as its wealth in cattle, and the warriors are related by blood. The role of the chief in such societies is defined as much by duties as by rights. While he is the undoubted leader of his people he is also of them, as opposed to over them. Even into the 18th century there are instances of clan chiefs being dismissed from their positions, one particularly well-known instance (Scott 1843, p.47ff.) being simply because the chief appeared to his kin to have the wrong attitude towards his position! It would be wrong to think of Cassius’s description of the Caledonian tribes being democratic as suggesting they were akin to modern Western societies or even Greek city states, but it does suggest that such governance as did exist amongst the natives of early Scotland may well have been akin to the Things we know existed amongst that other warrior people of Scotland, the Vikings. The Things were assemblies where situations were extensively debated by a considerable section of the community before decisions were taken as to what action was required. In Scotland the place-name Dingwall in Easter Ross, an area controlled by the Norsemen for centuries, refers directly to this practice.

The idea that tribes are primitive societies run by absolute despots has no support. Tribal societies are based on sophisticated social arrangements where all members of the group are bound together by often complex arrangements of mutual duties and rights. This was nowhere more so than in Scotland, where the tribal system survived into the second half of the 18th century, even if by then it was in terminal decline. There is no reason to think that the medieval clan societies of the Scottish Highlands were not the direct descendants of the earlier tribal structures amongst the Picts, and, in the west, the Scots.

In this respect it is worth remembering that the term ri, the Gaelic usage of which has always been translated as meaning king, has a different meaning in the P-Celtic languages and means lord, or perhaps even chief. In many of the tales collected by John Francis Campbell as Popular Tales of the West Highlands and More West Highland Tales (Campbell 1994), actions attributed to kings, queens, princes and princesses are often remarkably mundane and might be better understood as referring to chiefs whose day-to-day lives might not have differed much from those of their clansmen, rather than those of beings whose very situation set them apart from the rest of society.

When Cassius tells us that they choose their boldest men as leaders he is underlining the point that at the reported battle of Mons Graupius the Caledonians were led by Calgacus, who is not referred to as king, emperor or even chief. He is clearly a war leader and this is something that also survived into clan times. Chiefs were expected in their youth to lead a raid to show their skill and courage, but each clan had a specific captain who was in charge of their fighting activities. This is only sensible. The entire clan were bound by ties of blood and common ancestry, and it would make sense for the community of warriors to be led by the best man for the job. The idea that the hereditary chief was always the leader in battle misinterprets the functioning of tribal society.

Cassius’s point that they are ‘fond of plundering’ is also remarkably like the government descriptions of Highland clans in the 17th and 18th centuries as little more than ‘cattle thieves’. I have written of this elsewhere (McHardy 2004) but suffice it to say that one of the most important regular activities of the warriors of the clans was ‘lifting’ the cattle of other clans. This was not a criminal act but an exercise in military skill and was a fundamental aspect of the training of all warriors. Solinus c.250CE tells us that in the Hebrides

Next come the iles called Hebudes [Ebudes] five in number, the inhabitants whereof, know not what corne meaneth but live onely by fishe and milke. They are all undere the government of one king, for as many of them as bee, they are severed but with a narrow groope one from another. The king hath nothing of hys own, but taketh from every mans. Hee is bound to equitie by certaine lawes: and lest he may start from right through covetousness, he learneth justice by povertie, as who may have nothing proper or peculiar to himselfe, but is found at the charges of the Realme.

Golding 1587, p.22

Although he uses the term for king, rex, this is clearly a tribal society where the leader is responsible to the population as a whole. This is something that is also echoed in later times when the clan system developed. Clan, Clann, in Gaelic, means ‘the children’ and makes it plain that the leader of that society is to a considerable extent the steward working on behalf of the children to come, just as he had to honour the ancestors that had gone before. The following is from Burt’s Letters to A Gentleman, written in the 1720s

This power of the chiefs is not supported by Interest, as they are landlords, but as lineally descended from the old Patriarchs or Fathers of the Families; for they hold the same Authority when they have lost their Estates, as may appear from several, and part I cularly one who commands his Clan, though, at the same Time, they maintain him, having nothing left of his own.

On the other hand, the Chief, even against the Laws, is to protect his followers, as they are sometimes called, be they never so criminal.

1998, p.193

Here I believe that Burt misunderstands clan society. What is criminal to him was not criminal by the laws and customs of the clans. I suggest that while the clans were not precisely the same as the tribal arrangements of Pictish times, they had in fact developed from them and there is no evidence I can find to the contrary.

I have suggested this tribal society as a model for understanding ‘Dark Age’ Scotland (McHardy 2010) in terms of a series of inter-related and relatively stable kin groups. These societies were both P- and Q-Celtic-speaking with the Q-Celtic Scots being resident in the West. Differences in sound between the languages led to them being called P- and Q-Celtic because in Gaelic, Irish and Manx many words begin with the ‘k’ sound, while similar Welsh and Breton begin with a ‘p’. The word Celtic was chosen in the 18th century to represent these in north-west European languages and the term has no actual ethnic value whatsoever. Recent research is underlining the idea that Germanic languages were known in Britain long before the arrival of the Romans (English URL; Fowler 1943). As this fits in with Oppenheimer’s findings of genetic evidence for settlement in Scotland from northern Norway in the distant prehistoric past, it is likely that there were some Germanic speakers in the east of Scotland, and perhaps in the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland. The barbarian conspiracy of 365CE was composed of Picts, Scots and Attacotti, according to the Romans they attacked. We have no other references to the Attacotti in Britain and it is worth considering whether they were in fact either a Germanic-speaking people or even Continental warriors, as there was a simultaneous attack on the Roman frontier in Germany. Apart from the early prehistoric arrivals from Norway we know that there were contacts between the coastal parts of the British Isles, Continental Europe, Scandinavia and even Africa from the Megalithic Age on, 3,000 years before the Pictish period.

One problem that faces us is that the Pictish Symbols are found almost exclusively north of the Forth-Clyde axis, and this distribution has understandably been the focus of much study. However, the only specific political demarcation from the Dark Age period in Scotland is the temporary Antonine Wall, just to the south of that part of Scotland where political and military struggle continued to erupt into battle till the 18th century. In the analysis presented here the ideas concerning possible remnants of a truly ancient religion apply as much to the tribes of southern Scotland, Damnonni, Novantae, Selgovae and Votadini that Ptolemy noted in the 2nd century, as to the tribal peoples to the north, and west. Likewise, the traditional dating of the Pictish period from 297 is arbitrary and unhelpful – the reference from then is to Caesar having fought the Picts – and a more suitable date for the commencement of the Pictish period, suggested by Smyth, would be the Battle of Mons Graupius, c.80BCE. However, there seems to be no good reason why we should put such a specific limit on the Pictish period as it seems clear to me that the Picts were the indigenous people of Scotland when the Romans arrived, and as such were the direct descendants of the first settlers after the Ice Age, no doubt intermingled with later small-scale groups of incomers. Or as the wisdom of the tradition has it, we are all Jock Tamson’s bairns.