THE LITERATURE OF THE  PICTS

 
‘No scrap of Pictish literature ever existed.’ Such was the ill-founded decision of an accepted Scottish historian. Yet in the Irish Nennius reference is made to the Books of the Picts, ‘ As it is written in the Books of the Cruitneach. ‘ It was an audacious deliverance to make to a generation which had seen the literary treasures of Europe greatly enriched by the manuscripts from the libraries of the famous Celtic monasteries founded, one at Bobbio in Lombardy by S. Columbanus, (bom A.D. 543. His first instructor was S. Sinell, who had been a pupil of Finnian of Clonard, who was educated in Britain. S. Sinell’s cell was on Cluain Innis, Loch Erne) the other at St. Gall in Switzerland by S. Gall.(bom A.D.545. In an old MS. from the St. Gall library his father’s name is given as ‘Kethernac Mac Unnchun.’ His own name means Stranger. ‘Kethem’ was the name of one of the early Pictish heroes. Dr. Reeves states that he was of the race of Ir, progenitor of one branch of the Irish Picts. Ir was a sovereign of Ireland). Both founders were Pictish scholars educated by S.Comgall the Great at Bangor in Ulster, the chief centre of learning among the Irish Picts. Both were born in the ancient territories of the northern Irish Picts in the north of Leinster, S. Gall in the north of Louth on the Ulster border; and S. Columbanus, also on the border-land, in the district lying between Louth and southern Loch Erne. S. Columbanus surveyed the locality about Lake Constance within the two years of his wanderings after his banishment from Luxeuil, A.D.610; and there he left S. Gall to settle. S. Columbanus then made his way into Lombardy, and in A.D.612 he settled at Bobbio in the Apennines.

The catalogues of the libraries of Bobbio and St. Gall have been published. (The Catalogue of Bobbio, by Muratori and Peyron. For St. Gall see Ferdinand Keller’s  Bilder und Schriftszüge in den Irischen Manuskripten.The tenth-century catalogue used by the students at Bobbio has been reproduced; and the catalogue of St. Gall, compiled there for the convenience of readers in the ninth century, is still accessible. In the ninth century St. Gall possessed five hundred and thirty-three volumes; and in the tenth century Bobbio contained seven hundred. From the Bobbio collection came the Antiphonary of Bangor. It contains prayers, canticles, hymns, especially an alphabetical Hymn in honour of S. Comgall, the founder of Bangor, and rules as to the order of prayer. The MS. is now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. It was edited in 1893 by Dr. Warren. It is a purely Pictish ‘Liber Officialis’; and it enables us to have an idea of the service which S. Moluag introduced from Bangor among the Picts of Alba, and to realize that the same order of worship was followed in Alba that was followed at Bangor, and at its daughter-houses at Luxeuil, Bobbio, and St. Gall. Bobbio naturally possessed the manuscript of the Gospels which, as we know from his Life, S. Columbanus carried with him wherever he went. It bore the inscription ‘Ut traditum fuit illud erat idem liber quem Beatus Columbanus Abbas in pera secum ferre consuevat”. 

In the University library at Turin are fragments of a Commentary on S. Mark’s Gospel with notes in Celtic. In the Ambrosian Library at Milan is a complete Commentary on the Psalms, also with Celtic notes. Both works belonged to Bobbio; and both are ascribed to S. Columbanus. The latter is regarded as the ‘Commentary on the Psalter catalogued in the tenth century as part of the Bobbio collection. To this library founded in a Pictish monastery we owe the only surviving Canon of the New Testament, the famous Muratorian Fragment. Among its manuscripts, as fragments in the Imperial Library at Vienna indicate, confirming the old catalogue, were most of the Apostolic Epistles, texts of Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, and many other Greek and Latin authors. These texts were copiously annotated, often in Celtic. The library of St. Gall was more than once pillaged by scholars who entered it as borrowers and left it thieves. A certain Poggio of Florence, who was interested in the works of Cicero arrived at St. Gall in 1416 with two confederates, and on his departure to Constance took with him two cart-loads of priceless manuscripts which included texts of Cicero, Quintilian, Lucretius, Priscian, the unfinished Argonautica of C. V. Flaccus, and other writings. These manuscripts were taken to Italy ultimately. An ‘Oecumenical’ Council receives
much blame for these thefts.

To this library of a monastery founded by a Pictish scholar came secretaries from the most Catholic Council of Constance (A.D. I414-I418) to borrow books which would reinforce any inspiration or knowledge that this despised Synod presumed to possess. One sign of knowledge in the borrowers was that they knew something of the value of the manuscripts; because they never returned them. It is not out of harmony with other acts of this Council that the members apparently sought authority for their doings in the works of pagan orators and poets while they left excellent copies of the Gospels and Epistles unconsulted.Europe owes to St. Gall the Dresden Codex Boernerianus which has S. Paul’s Epistles in Greek; various Fragments of the Gospels; a palmpsest of Virgil; a thirteenth-century Nibelungenlied; and certain books with unread glosses in Celtic, together with the ‘iron-bound book’ ascribed to S. Gall himself There was also at St. Gall what from old descriptions appears to have been another copy of the Antiphonary of Bangor (From a reference by Notker Balbulus). Of the thirty volumes written in Celtic script, which were in the library of St. Gall in the ninth century, according to the surviving catalogue of that period, only one volume remained twenty-five years ago.

Continental scholars are generally very wary in referring to the Celtic glosses in the manuscripts that belonged to Bobbio and St. Gall. They are usually satisfied to call the language ‘Celtic’; but some British writers have boldly pronounced it “Goidelic”; although they candidly admit that it is often difficult to interpret, except through known Brittonic words and orthography. Gaidhealic scholars doubtless wandered to the Continent of Europe as well as Picts, especially after the Vikings began their ravages; but the organized missions from Bangor and the communities of the Britons in the sixth century, which founded Luxeuil, Bobbio, St. Gall, and other Celtic monasteries in the European uplands, were led and staffed by men who were born Picts, or Britons, educated at Pictish or British monasteries, who spoke a Pictish or Brittonic dialect of Celtic when they did not speak Latin or Greek. Many writers have followed the Gaidheals in assuming that the continental designation ‘ Scot ‘ signified a Gaidhealic Celt; but from early times on the Continent ‘Scot’ was applied to a native of ‘Scotia,’ that is Ireland, without consideration as to whether he belonged to the Pictish or Gaidhealic branch of the Celts.

Among others, Columbanus was called a Scot on the Continent, and he spoke of himself as a native of ‘Scotia,’ i.e. Ireland. No scholar has yet applied himself seriously to the Continental Celtic writings for the purpose of separating what is Pictish or British dialect from what is Gaidhealic dialect. In like manner no scholar has yet attacked the Celtic manuscripts of Britain and Ireland for the purpose of separating the literature which originated among the Picts of Alba or Ireland from the literature which originated among the Gaidheals. After the deluge of Viking barbarism had subsided in the Pictish territories of Alba and Ireland, the Gaidheals gradually served themselves heirs to Pictish lands and heritages; and, when they had secured control of education, served themselves heirs to Pictish literature. The memory of Pictish scholars like Cainnech and Columbanus was revived; but in a Gaidhealic atmosphere. S. Comgall, the greatest Pictish Abbot, was represented as a protege of S. Columba the Gaidheal. The motive for the Gaidhealic usurpation of all Celtic greatness that had preceded the rise of the Gaidheals was at first political, and was also designed in view of the Pictish properties. The romanized Church of the Gaidheals, too, saw and seized its own opportunity of forwarding its own claims to primacy, and to the property of the old Celtic Church. It exalted the Gaidhealic claims into a system, and applied it everywhere without scruple. In Ireland the old Pictish territory of Armagh was represented as having been Gaidhealic from all time.

When the inventions of the Irish Churchmen were exhausted Latin Churchmen were brought from England to rewrite the Lives of the old Celtic Churchmen, in the professed interests of elegant Latin and orthodoxy; but, really, to ground the claims of the new Church.The saints of the ancient Pictish Church are put into the background to show up the figure of an unhistorical S. Patrick. Although the Gaidheals and their king Laeghaire were hostile to the historical S. Patrick and the king died an ‘obstinate pagan’; the S. Patrick of fable is represented as rising into power through the favour of the Gaidheals of the race of Niall who in course of time became the patrons and protectors of Armagh, the seat of the primacy. The ‘obstinate pagan,’ Laeghaire, is also passed through history as S.Patrick’s convert.Joceline of Furness and others. Joceline re-wrote the Life of Kentigern from a Celtic original. At the request of Thomas of Armagh, John de Courcy, and others, he re-wrote the Life of S. Patrick. He gave both Lives abundance of Roman colouring. John de Courcy had a political purpose in getting the Life of Patrick garbled ; just as the purpose of Thomas was ecclesiastical. Again, the historical S.Bridget, who belonged to the Pictish district of Louth, is transformed into the slave of a Gaidhealic bard, and exalted to later ages as the ‘Mary of the Gaidheal.’ Other pre-Gaidhealic saints and heroes are treated in similar fashion. Many fragments of history, poems, and stories now presented to the world as Gaidhealic literature can be detected by internal as well as external evidence as having been altered from their original form. They are merely Gaidhealic versions, bearing traces of the Gaidhealic editor, of works composed where Pictish was the dialect of Celtic in general use. In various Gaidhealic vocabularies, many words marked ‘early Irish’ and ‘old Irish’ are word-forms current among the Picts.

As an example of a Gaidhealic version of a work originally written in a different dialect of Celtic there survives the lorica called Feth-Fiadha, ‘Cry of the Deer,’ S. Patrick’s well-known Celtic hymn. There are various editions; but one often figures as a specimen of ‘Gaidhealic literature.’ The matter may be little changed from the original; but the form is certainly much changed. The author, S. Patrick, was a Briton, his dialect was Brittonic, his historical work was performed in the territories of the northern and southern Irish Picts where his Britonic dialect would be understood. The pagan Gaidheals were, as we have seen, hostile to him, and did not allow him to do more than touch the fringes of their clan settlements. Once, he visited their king after the Gaidheals had begun to wedge themselves in between the Picts of the north and south in Ireland. He and his disciples, who were Britons and Picts, approached, chanting this hymn. In the strange dialect it was so unintelligible to the Gaidheals, that it sounded with no more meaning than the ‘Cry of the Deer’ on the hill-slope, so they expressed it, and thus the lorica received its popular name.

Another work frequently represented as a ‘ Gaelic composition ‘ is the metrical memoir of S.Patrick known as the ‘Hymn, ‘ascribed to S. Fiacor Flag of Sleibhte in Leinster. The work is partly Celtic and partly Latin with extensive Scholia. If S. Fiac really composed the work, and if the surviving manuscript is ‘Gaelic,’ then it is  really a version; because S. Fiac lived and laboured in Leinster among the Manapian Picts and the Brigantes who were Britons. It is safe to assumethathewroteforhisown clerics and people in their own dialect of Celtic, and not for their enemies the Gaidheals, who had little interest in Patrick while he lived, and only took up his name many long years after S. Fiac’s time, when the romanized Gaidheals were seeking to centre the primacy in Armagh ; and when they required a saintly founder who could more easily be set up as in communion with Rome, and as of ‘ Catholic’ ways than any of the Pictish or Gaidhealic Saints. The Picts of Leinster (where S. Fiac laboured) had even more reason to keep clear of the Gaidheals than the Picts of Ulster; because the Picts of the north-east sought only to keep their lands against the covetous Gaidheals, when at the end of long intervals they came out for an increase of territory ; but the Picts of Leinster required to contend with the yearly fever of blood-lust which seized the Gaidhealic Nialls of the Midlands, who tried to wedge them apart from their kin in the north-east under the excuse of collecting the notorious  Boromhe.The Gaidheals wished the Picts to bribe them with this payment to let them alone, but the Picts steadily refused. It was not hymns about Patrick that the Gaidheals took from Leinster in S. Fiac’s time, or long after, but tribute, when they were able to collect it.

The authenticity of S. Fiac’s ‘Hymn’ has been doubted becauseof the reference in it to the desolation of Tara, the old capital. That reference, on the contrary, might be a sign of genuineness; because, in the eyes of a Pict, Tara was desolated when the Gaidheals took it and hoisted their flag there early in the fifth century, long before it was cursed, and made desolate after the death of King Diarmait, the Gaidheal, A.D.565. The correct criticism of the Fiac manuscript is, that if S. Fiac was the author of the hymn, the manuscript is a Gaidhealic version of a Pictish work which was written by a Pict for Picts in the Pictish dialect of Celtic. Once more, therefore, we may have an item of Pictish literature ; but it has come to us through a Gaidhealic editor, like many another Pictish work, Joceline of Furness and others. Joceline re-wrote the Life of Kentigern from a Celtic original. At the request of Thomas of Armagh, John de Courcy, and others, he re-wrote the Life of S. Patrick. He gave both Lives abundance of Roman colouring. John de Courcy had a political purpose in getting the Life of Patrick garbled ; just as the purpose of Thomas was ecclesiastical. It is asked why Pictish compositions have come down to us through Gaidhealic hands. The answer is, that the turn of historical events towards the close of the first millennium gave the Gaidheals the hegemony of the Celts in Ireland and Scotland, and the control of education and literature.