HOW THE PICTS LIVED

A STORY used to be current at a southern university of a student, fresh from the works of a certain historian, who declared that Pictland of Alba was a ‘ land of lakes and shallow estuaries where the people lived in crannogs.’ In Pictland certain fishing communities did live in crannogs amid the shallow waters of lakes and estuaries ; and artificial islands, planned with much engineering skill, were constructed as defendable habitations in the same areas; but the majority of the Picts had no special affection for the marshes where ague and rheumatism prevailed. The Picts, considered as a whole, were a pastoral people as is indicated by the wide range of the name Kerones, shepherds. These pastoral folk owned three precious possessions — their dog, their flocks, and their pasture. The Celtic names for these enter into the three expressions of intense love which still survive in colloquial speech. Mynghu* (S. Kentigern’s pet name), my dear one, means, literally, my dog ; m’eüdail, my kind one, means my little cattle; m’ullie, my treasure or my precious one, means my pasture.

The Picts supplemented their pastoral work by agriculture and hunting. Stone querns,the hand-mill for grinding corn still used in Eastern countries, have been recovered from hut-circles, lake-dwellings, brochs, and even from the earth-houses and caves. These querns are constructed with wonderful mechanical balance. The upper stone revolves sunwise with perfect smoothness ; but jams if revolved in the opposite direction, just as the shaped, Pictish, stone-weapons and implements, when laid on a smooth surface, can be spun sunwise successfully; but if turned contrary to the sun they wobble and refuse to revolve. Indeed, this is a test of the  genuineness of Pictish stone weapons and implements; and the most skilled modern forgers have not yet discovered the secret of this feature.

* Mochu in Gaelic. Myn is the British form of the pronoun mo, and
among the Britons and Picts gh took the place of ch, giving the form Mungo.

The Picts were enthusiastic sportsmen. On foot they hunted the deer and wild cattle with dogs and weapons. They fought the wolves in their dens. They knew the best salmon-pools in rivers; and in banks on which they watched for their prey the flint heads of their fish-spears are frequently found embedded. They were acquainted with the fishing net, and could make fish-traps of woven willow- wands which they set at the head of streamy parts of rivers. They marked the haunts of doran, the otter, whom other Celts called the ‘fish-hound.’ The number of Pictish names signifying Otters’ Bank or Otters’ Burn indicate how carefully the Picts followed the ways of this fisher ; doubtless because they knew his habit of leaving an acceptable salmon on the bank minus his favourite mouthful. In the kitchen-middens of the brochs remains of nearly all our common animals, birds, and fishes are found, together with the remains of creatures now extinct. In a grave within the area of S. Ninian’s Churchyard, Sutherland, were found, along with human bones, a flint implement and part of a palmated antler of one of the larger, extinct, deer. That the Picts were prouder of their prowess in the chase than in battle may be inferred from their carved stones which oftener show fights with beasts than with men. Their beasts of burden were the horse and the ox. For transport they used a two-wheeled cart of which a sketch has survived on one of their incised stones.

The Picts were acquainted with the working of iron and bronze. Charcoal and slag-heaps have been discovered deep in the peat at the sites of primitive iron-furnaces. Flint weapons and implements continued in use among the Picts long after they had learned to work metals. A perfectly constructed bronze swivel, which various modern artificers could imitate but badly, was found in Sutherland on the gravel, beneath the peat, beside a flint hide-scraper and a flint spearhead. The smith ranked almost as a noble among the Picts as among other Celts. His professional name is linked with many Pictish place-names. The capital of one of the principalities of Pictlandwas called ‘The Smith’s Mount.’ Dr.Carmichael’s Barra Gowan or Beregonium, capital of the Western Picts before the coining of the Dalriad Gaidheals. This worker could be called on to make any metal article from a sword or spade to a golden torque for a lady, a chief, or a poet. One of the Pictish saints had learned the smith’s craft, and one of his ‘miracles’ was the making of charcoal from reeds for the forge fire. He was brazing the plates of a Celtic handbell, and probably ‘miracle’ was the popular description of some special flux which he had discovered for uniting the metals. The remains of wood-charcoal heaps have been found in the W«»« of brochs near the excavated fire-places; although, a mile or so away, there was an outcrop of coal on the sea-beach.

The Picts were exceedingly fond of the precious metals, which they worked into torques, brooches, and other ornaments of simple but artistic designs. Amulets of pebble and serpentine, and necklaces of shale have been recovered from Pictish burial-cairns. Bronze armlets were used by men to reinforce the biceps in a thrust blow from the hand, or in a lightning sword-stroke.

The Picts knew the use of the potter’s wheel. Food-vessels as well as urns associated with the dead have been found on the sites of dwellings and in graves. The pottery is usually of a heavy type, due more to the coarse nature of the clay and inferior kilns than to want of skill on the part of the potter; because the latter frequently attempted to atone for coarse material by skilful and symmetrical ornamentation. The genuine ‘ Barvas pottery’ of comparatively recent times is primitive compared with some of the food- vessels and urns dug up on the west coast, and dating back more than a thousand years earlier. Fragments of Samian ware, found in forts and brochs, point back to Mediterranean and Gaulish traders, or to the Pictish raids into the Imperial Roman colony in Britain. Recently, while a foundation was being dug in what was formerly part of Caithness, an early Greek coin was found four feet from the surface beside encisted burials in an ancient Pictish burial-ground. If it were not for Ptolemy’s Geography and certain references of early ecclesiastical writers, we would forget that Mediterranean and Gaulish merchants visited Pictland.

Spinning, weaving, and dyeing were practised by the Picts. The carding-comb, which also may have been a dressing-comb, is theleast mysterious of the symbols carved on the stones of Pictland. Although the Pictish warriors, according to Latin and Greek authors, loved to expose the cruits or figures tattooed upon their bodies, and so fought with the minimum of clothing, knowing the benefit of laying aside every weight; they also knew how to clothe themselves comfortably, and even gaily, in time of peace. The Picts of Alba do not appear to have differed from the Picts of Ireland, who came to the battle-ground clothed, but they divested themselves of their garments before entering the fight. A king of the Gaidheals when entering a battle refused to wear a short cape although it had been given to him by S. Columba, and to this was ascribed his defeat. The Pictish clerics, although they denied themselves all luxuries,  wore woollen garments of native make. We learn of an undergarment, apparently a long shirt, reaching below the knees, and of an outer garment reaching equally far down, and having wide sleeves and a capacious hood. The colour was apparently the native shade known as ‘moorag! The Picts could also weave vegetable fibres. Part of what appeared to be a woman’s skirt made of coarse fibrous material was unearthed in Sutherland from a deep bed of dry peat which had acted as a preservative.

The Picts understood the dressing and curing of pelts. The flint flaying-knife, the flint hide-scraper, and the stone for smoothing the inside ofthe hide are common relics in Pictland. Fleece and fur furnished clothing, and hides and skins were spread out to sleep on within the huts. Slaves and furs, secured apparently by raids, are understood to have been the attractions which brought the trading ships of Marseilles to Pictland from before the time of Christ. The traders of this port sent an expedition to Pictland before the Christian era, which sailed as far as the Orkneys.There was also considerable intercourse between the Celts of northern Gaul and the Celts of Pictland, until the ‘migrations of the barbarians’ in the fifth century interrupted communications. The Britons and Picts have not been regarded as sea-going folk for the extraordinary reason that many of the nautical terms in modern Scottish Gaelic are of Scandinavian origin. As a matter of historical fact, when the ships of Caesar met the fleet of the Britons, the British ships were larger and of better build; S.Ninian’s Candida Casa in the early fifth century possessed a fleet which sailed on regular voyages; and there was sea-borne traffic between the Picts of Ireland and the Britons and the Picts of Alba. The Picts organized warlike expeditions by sea; and even the Gaidheals, in spite of the Scandinavian terms in Gaelic, were no mean sailors. The Irish Gaidheals organized a raid by sea on the island of Islay while it was still Pictish; and the Gaidheals of Scottish Dalriada in the sixth century sent their battle-fleet from Argyll in the direction of the Pictish Orkneys.