The Viking invasions laid the Pictish colleges of Ireland and Scotland in ashes. Pictish libraries were burned.or their contents were scattered and mostly lost. The scholars who escaped massacre fled to the Continent, some of them to the Pictish communities already securely established there. At a few places in Pictland of Alba (Scotland), units of the scattered forces of the Pictish Church managed to survive; but they represented remnants doomed to ultimate decay. Their controlling and supplying monasteries, both in Ireland and in their own land, were ‘burned,’ as the Annalists put it. Bangor, the mother of Churches, was left desolate. When the Church was, in course of time, revived there, and at other centres, it was a new Church, Gaidhealic not Pictish, Roman not Celtic.
The Vikings paralysed Pictish power, and shattered Pictish organization in Church and State. The Picts fell a comparatively easy prey to the Vikings; because, while they fought the Vikings on their front, they were assailed in the rear by Gaidheals; and both in I reland and in Scotland the Gaidheals never relaxed thejr pressure on their possible lines of retreat from the easily accessible and much devastated East Coasts of both countries. As the Viking deluge subsided, it became plain that the Gaidheals would possess the future. They had been able to keep their government, their organization, and some elements of culture; because their lines of retreat to inaccessible mountains and quiet islands had remained open. The Gaidheals possessed also either power or opportunity of absorbing the Vikings which was not given to the Pict. In Shetland, Orkney, and Caithness, the Viking absorbed the Pict, putting it broadly; but in the Southern Hebrides and in North-western Ireland the Gaidheal absorbed the Viking.
The resurrection of Celtic power from the grave of Viking barbarism was a Gaidhealic resurrection. Everywhere in the Celtic territories of Great Britain, except among the remnant of Britons penned up in Wales, Gaidhealic lords or Gaidhealic ecclesiastics began to dominate. The Picts gradually ceased to exist as a separate people and became merged among the other Celts. They lost most of their ancestral lands in Alba, sometimes by force under the excuse of exacting tribute for the sovereign, sometimes by the high hand of the Gaidhealic provincial rulers, sometimes by intermarriage with Gaidheals. After a.d. 842, in Alba, their clan-organizations, their system of monarchy, their Church organization, and their central monastic communities began to disappear or to change by degrees as each new Gaidhealic king stepped to the throne.
In A.D.851 the Gaidhealic clerics forsook lona, which like the Pictish monasteries had been repeatedly desolated by Vikings, and tried to centre themselves at Dunkeld within the borders of the old Pictish kingdom. Each succeeding half-century sees their tentacles seizing the ancient Pictish Church-centres one by one. First it is Abernethy, then St. Andrews, by and by Brechin, and later Deer. Mortlach was left to itself, but new centres were fixed at Birnay and Aberdeen. The Gaidhealic propaganda was persistent but slow, in spite of special missions conducted at refractory Pictish centres like Dornoch by such men as S. Dubthac, a much-lauded saint of the Gaidheals.who came from the Gaidhealicized Church of Armagh to establish a mission at Tain in Ross about the beginning of the eleventh century. Before the Gaidheals had completed the control of the religious and educational centres of Pictland, the Roman Church, under political influence, threatened to undo much of their work by sending into the Highlands Norman or Anglo-Saxon prelates. This policy reanimated the few scattered details of the ancient Pictish Church that survived in odd places;but the Roman Churchmen soon saw their error, and took up the Gaidheals anew, sending to the Highlands, as far as possible, only those who could speak what they called ‘Irish.’
The result of these carefully calculated efforts was that if the Picts did not consent to be Gaidhealicized, they were left outside education and power, and tended to become hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Gaidhealic and, later, to the Saxon incomers. The Gaidheals thus controlled education and the care of the literature of past and present. This Gaidhealic control of power and education, which continued slowly to extend from a.d. 842 onwards, is the reason why what remained of Pictish literature after the Vikings, has come down to us through Gaidhealic editors. They were the most unscrupulous editors that, perhaps, the world has known. Everything was altered in favour of their own interests and their own race. There is one document, one of the Fragments of the Pictish Chronicle and typical of many, where ‘ Scoti ‘ is substituted for ‘ Picti.’ The Gaidheals were overweeningly vain, and loved to exalt the age and exploits of their race to the Anglo-Saxons, who had emerged from barbarism before their eyes. It helped their political and ecclesiastical claims too. For this reason they represented themselves as older than the Picts or Britons, or any other Celts. They did not hesitate to garble versions of the Pictish Chronicle in their own favour, apart from the corruptions due to Gaidhealic orthography. They traced the origin of the Gaidheals to the Greeks, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians, and repudiated a half-hearted romancer who was content to start the race from the Trojans.
Although two Picts and a scholar of the Britons had educated and trained S. Columba, the greatest ecclesiastic of the Gaidheals, the Gaidhealic writers regularly refer to the Picts as ‘ravenous,’ ‘savage,’ or ‘barbarous,’ descriptions hailed by many historical writers down to Mr. Andrew Lang. Although the
Gaidhealic writers annex S. Patrick in face of the historical truth that their forefathers spurned him they have verylittle to sayabout S. Ninian, whose community at Candida Casa sent out many of the most successful missionaries to Ireland. If the world depended on Gaidhealic writers, men would believe that the Picts, S.Comgall the Great and S. Cainnech, had been humble followers and dependents of S. Columba the Gaidheal. With similar historical recklessness the historical S.Servanus in a version of the fabulized Life, with all its extravagances, printed by Skene, Chronicles of Picts and Scots, p. 412,is lifted away from his true period and associated with S. Adamnan, a romanized Gaidheal.
That there was a Pictish literature in Alba (Scotland) before the Vikings is beyond doubt. The evidence is too strong even for cynical historical writers. That some of this literature survives to the present time in Gaidhealic versions which wait the critical analyses of some competent Celtic scholar is apparent. The. Pictish Chronicle at least had a Pictish original. The confusing efforts of the Gaidhealic copyists to render Pictish proper names is evidence of that, apart from other
considerations.
One of our oldest native Latin hymns is the work of a Pictish author. It was written by Mugent,the Ab, a successor of S. Ninian in the presidency of the Brito-Pictish monastery at Candida Casa (Whithorn). In passing, let us not forget that Latin was a living tongue to the early Picts, S. Ninian’s flock heard the Roman legions drilled in the Imperial tongue; traded with them in the regimental market in Latin; actually, as we know from remains, helped the Roman colonists to erect headstones on their family graves, graven with Latin inscriptions; and when the Imperial armies were retreating, said ‘Good-bye’ to them in their own Latin speech, colder than Celtic. It was, therefore, not merely ecclesiastical fashion that moved Mugent to write his dignified prayer in the Latin, so restraining to the deeply-moved Celt. Mugent’s prayer is usually called Mugent’ s Hymn, sometimes it is referred to by the opening words, ‘Parce, Domine, parce populo Tuo quern redimisti.’ It is a remarkable devotional appeal. It dates from the first years of the sixth century. Incidentally we learn from the ancient scholiast’s preface to the ‘Parce, Domine,’ concerning the schools which at this early period were at Candida Casa for young men and women, other than those who intended the Church. Two of these pupils are named, Talmag, a Pict, and Drusticc, daughter of Drust, sovereign of Pictland of Alba died A.D.510) . The schools for laity and clerics imply a literature: and Drusticc indicates that there was a Library at Candida Casa; because, as a bribe to gain a certain end, she offers to one of the masters, S. Finbar, ‘all the books which Mugent has.’
This is S. Finbar of Maghbile and Dornoch who continued S. Ninian’s mission-work in what is now Ayrshire, and theEast and North of Scotland. We know from his Life that he was a lover of manuscripts and very jealous of thosewhich he possessed. He made his own manuscript copy of the Gospels, the Psalter, and other parts of Holy Scripture. The Scholiast in the Kalendar of Angus states that he brought the first complete manuscript of the Gospel’ over to Ireland, when he returned from Pictland. The Kalendar of Cashel goes further and states that he brought the manuscript of the Mosaic Law and the complete Gospel into Ireland. The uniqueness, in Ireland, of S. Finbar’s Gospel is confirmed by the account of how it was stolen for a time by strategy in order that S. Fintan might have a copy of it. S. Columba, while a pupil of S. Finbar, also secretly copied this same Gospel or Psalter with disastrous consequences; because a royal demand that he should give up the copy to S. Fiiibar helped to bring on the sanguinary battle of Cul Dreimhne. The early Gaidheals called this version ‘S. Martin’s Gospel,’ indicating clearly that S. Ninian had brought the manuscript from S. Martin’s community at Tours to Candida Casa, and that through S. Finbar it came into use in Ireland. TheGaidhealic fabulists of a later period invented a story that Columcille went to Tours, opened S. Martin’s grave, and took from it tlie actual manuscript which S. Martin used.
The mention of the School at Candida Casa brings to mind the Schools founded, later, in the sixth century and after, throughout Pictland of Alba (Scotland) by missionaries from the Britons; and also by S. Moluag and other Picts from Ireland. The names of these schools remain attached to the sites until the present time. Wherever in Scotland the names ‘Bangor,’ ‘Banchory,’ or ‘Banagher’ survive, we have the locality of one of the schools that was attached to a community of Pictish or British Clerics. It is safe to assume that these schools were not conducted without the aid of native literature. One feature of the Bangors was that the Psalms were learned and sung with artistic care.
Another Pictish manuscript which long survived in Ireland was the famous ‘Glas Cainic written by S. Cainnech of Achadh-Bo and St. Andrews. It was, apparently,a manuscript of the Gospels with expositions. S.Cainnech’s powers as an expositor were so widely admitted that even S.Columba’s admiration was freely given to him.The Picts had their bards as well as the other Celts. One of their widely known compositions was the Brito-Pictish historical romance, Llallogan. Llallogan ‘ was his pet name. He is Myrdinn, otherwise ‘ Merlinus Caledonicus.’ The characters are historical, but they are brought together without regard to their correct places intime. Vortigern,the leader of the Brito-Pictish confederation, Llallogan the bard,S. Kentigern the Briton and missionary to the Picts, all appear together. Historically, Llallogan was the twin-brother of Gwendydd and kinsman of Urien Rheged of the Strathclyde Britons. His life was a weird one. He went mad after he had gazed on the horrible slaughter of the Brito-Pictish hosts at the close of a battle which had been instigated by his own perfervid verses. Demented he fled to the wilds, lived in the recesses of the woods like a wild beast among wild beasts, and fed on the roots and herbs of the forests. It happened on a day when S. Kentigern was in his retreat in the woods near Glasgow that he encountered this wild creature. After hearing the madman’s story of his life the Saint gave him his blessing, and the outcast came to himself, and was re-admitted to Christian fellowship.
Joceline in the twelfth century was acquainted with some version of this story, because he refers to Llallogan as ‘homo fatuus,’ who was kept by the Kingof the Britons. Walter Bower had also a version of this romance before him in the fifteenth century, and he quotes the main part of the story, Incidentally he indicates that the acquisitive Gaidhealic editor hadnot disappeared in his time; because not only is the British name Gaidhealicized to ‘Lailocen,’ but he candidly avows that some people regarded the bard as a ‘wonderful prophet of the Scots’ (Gaidheals). How little of the Gaidheal was about Llallogan can be seen from the Avellanau in the verses ascribed to him, where his friends and the localities named are British and Pictish.
Ah me Gwendydd shuns me, loves me not!
The chiefs of Rhydderch hate me.
After Gwenddolen no princes honour me
Although at Ard’eryd I wore the golden torques.
Long used to solitude, no demons fright me now;
Not at the dragon presence do I quake
Of the lord Gwenddolen, and all his clan
Who have sown death within the woods of Celyddon.
Gwenddolen ap Ceidian, who, along with Saxon allies and S. Columba’s friend, King Aedhan ‘the False, “fought against Rhydderch the Briton” and were defeated at Ard’eryd, c. 573.
A fragment of another purely Pictish poem has come down to us through Gaidhealic hands. It is known by the opening lines:
‘Iniu feras Bruide cath
Imforba a shenathar’
(To-day Bruide fights in battle *
For the land of his ancestor).
* The Battle of Dunnichen (‘Nechtansmere’), 20th May A.D. 686.
This poem was written in Pictland of Alba, A.D. 686, by Riaghuil, titular Abbot of Bangor in Ulster. Riaghuil had fled for safety to Pictland of Alba; because the Gaidheals of the race of Niall had invaded the kingdoms of the Irish Picts. The Gaidheals burned Dungal the Pictish King, Suibhne, thePictish lord of Kianachta,Glengiven, and captured the great border-fortress of Dun Ceithern. They then wasted the Pictish kingdoms with fire and sword. Apparently the clerics of Bangor and the other religious houses of S. Comgall took flight for a time to the daughter-churches of Bangor in Pictland of Alba. Riaghuil was hospitably received by Brude Mac Bilé, the Sovereign of Pictland of Alba (Scotland). He repaid Brude by becoming his laureate and intercessor, and in this surviving fragment champions him in verse against Egfrid the Anglian invader.
This is not a history of Pictish literature. That subject still awaits the competent Celtic scholar who can divest himself of Gaidhealic and Anglo-Saxon prejudices. Enough has been written to show that the PictishChurchmen did not minister to a people without a literature; and also to show hat the Picts did not derive their love and practice of literature from the Gaidheals. On the contrary it is apparent that the Gaidheals were taught and schooled by Britons and Picts. S. Columba, the greatest of the Gaidheals, was instructed by Pictish and British masters.