The Picts did not excel in architecture. Almost all their erections were circular. In districts like Sutherland, where the face of the land has been little changed by agriculture, the sites of Pictish villages may still be seen. Groups of hut-circles with adjacent groups of burial-cairns occupy sunny slopes on the sides of valleys, or comfortable situations on plateaux where once there were clearings in the original forest. It is evident from remains that exist that the machair, or plain-land by the sea, and the flat stretches by the rivers were also occupied by these villages, although the modern road-boards and cultivators have within recent years competed in removing the last traces of them. The Pict evidently built on the principle that here we have no continuing city. His dwelling was of the simplest. His finished hut was like a hollow cone, the apex being slightly open to draw away the smoke. This cone-like structure was made with the trunks of forest trees and thatched with branches, reeds, or heather. The heavy ends of the trunks were firmly bedded at the desired angle in a thick circular retaining wall, the remains of which are known to-day as a ‘hut circle.’ The doorway was made through this retaining wall and faced invariably towards the south. Frequently it was defended by massive stone outworks which concealed a short angular passage with one or even two guardrooms. Sometimes huts contained underground chambers with a tunnelled exit into the open beyond the circle of the hut-wall. The sides of these chambers and of the passage were built up with irregular-shaped stones; and all, roofed over with heavy flat undressed stones. Inclosures with wide entrances, as if for cattle, oblong in shape, square in a few instances, are found in or near the hut villages.

The Pictish towns and villages were situated on some naturally strong site, or close to a broch.Called also Caer (Cathair), Dün, Tor, and Caisteal. To different brochs within the single parish of Kildonnan these names are applied. From S. Ninian’s time, the first Churches were planted near these strong places, which reminds us how old the proximity of Church and Castle is. Some of the Pictish settlements were within earthen ramparts still clearly defined. A Pictish broch was constructed by raising two massive concentric walls tied together by long stones winding round the outer circumference of the inner wall and ascending gradually to the top, forming steps to the summit for the defenders or watchers. There was no opening in the outer wall except one low and narrow doorway leading, through a narrow passage easily blocked and indented with guard-chambers, into the circular area within the inner wall. The structure was roofless. Chambers on the ground level were opened out in the inner wall and entered from the interior. Windows also opened through the inner wall, letting in light from the interior to the stairways between the walls. Very often these brochs were accessible by only one narrow footway. They are believed to have been places of refuge for women and children and their defenders, in time of sudden attack. Although some brocks had wells others had none, and these could not have sustained long sieges. Weapons and implements of stone, bronze, and iron have been found in the brocks, as well as women’s ornaments, combs, bone hair-pins, and bone needles threaded by the side of the eye. Built hearths have been uncovered in the inner area; and, in one case, bones broken for the sake of marrow, were found beside two grease-stained stones that had served as hammer and anvil.

Some have thought that the Picts learned the art of broch-buildingfrom the Phoenician traders and slave-raiders who visited the coasts; because structures nearly akin in type have been found in Sardinia and North Africa. Towers resembling them in many features have been noted as part of the remarkable buildings at the Phoenician gold-workings at Zimbabwe. Whatever the origin of the brocks they agree with the Pictish preference for circular buildings. In what is now the mainland and islands of northern Scotland we see them arranged in such relation to one another that fire signals lighted on the summit of one would convey information to another, and so to every brock over an extensive area. The site of one of the best known brochs bears a Celtic name meaning Rock of the signal-fire. When the Vikings came to the locality of this broch they found it necessary to erect a fort to watch it, and, in the old Icelandic, continued the name, calling their stronghold, ‘Town of the signal-fire.’

The Churches of the Picts were at first constructed of oak-logs on stone foundations. One of the native colloquial names for them was Datrteach, the oak-house, and among the Celts this name came in time to mean prayer-house or Church. The Churches were apparently rectangular and for a long time represented an innovation upon the circular building favoured by the Picts. In storm-swept districts like the north coast of Caithness, where wood was scarce, the whole Church appears to have been of stone, roofed with logs and heather-thatch, as was the case into the early Roman Catholic period. The high Round Towers associated with rectangular Pictish Churches emphasize the Pictish partiality for circular building. They were used as watchtowers to anticipate foreign raiders ; ecclesiastical valuables and manuscripts were carried into them in time of danger. The only entrance was at a considerable height from the ground, and was reached by a ladder which was hoisted inside and thedoor locked, while the enemy continued to lurk about. The doorway could be defended with missiles from above, and the tower was proof against fire laid to it. Examples of these Pictish towers are seen at S. Cainnech’s, Kilkenny, at Abernethy, Brechin, and Deerness, the headland of the Daire, or Oak- Church.

Venerable Bede is responsible, through misinterpreting his information, for the impression that stone buildings were unknown to the Britons and Picts until S. Ninian built Candida Casa. This of course is incorrect, because wherever the Imperial Roman colonists settled, or the legions formed permanent camps, stone buildings were erected, before the date of Candida Casa. The Picts in their many successful raids were only too familiar with these buildings and with their contents. Archaeologists have shown that after the Romans departed the Picts occupied the Roman structures, although they do not appear to have imitated them, except in the construction of a few of their churches.

The Picts, like many other fighting nations who gave their enemies a bad time, were wantonly libelled by their foes. Roman historians of the minor order accepted the slanders of the mercenaries, and stated that the Picts were cannibals, and that they offered human sacrifices. They allege that their women submitted to polyandry. The Gaidheals called the Picts ‘savage’ and ‘cruel.’ The Angles spoke of them as ‘vile.’ There is not a word in the story of the dealings of the Pictish missionaries with their converts which indicates that these charges were true, or that the Picts were worse than their unscrupulous assailants. Domestic infelicities with which S. Comgall, S. Kentigern and others were called upon to deal, indicate that a woman’s unfaithfulness to her own husband was regarded as a serious breach of the tribal as well as of the moral law. The wives of kings, chiefs, and commoners are always represented as living in family with their own husbands.

Certain historians have professed to see confirmation of the charge of polyandry in the peculiar law regulating the Pictish sovereignty, by which a sovereign’s brother, or his sister’s son, or, in certain circumstances, his elder daughter’s son, was preferred before the sovereign’s son. These historians have failed to make clear that the Pictish sovereign acceded from the royal race after election and approval by the petty kings and chiefs of Pictland. The story that the Gaidheals supplied wives from time to time for the Pictish kings so that their children only might claim the throne of Pictland is a stupid fable promulgated by the Gaidheals to justify the accession of Kenneth Mac Alpin and the continuation in line of his dynasty to the Pictish sovereignty; an accession which the Picts considered illegal, because won by treachery; and a continuation which they disputed and which was only maintained by force of the Gaidhealic soldiery when the Picts had been weakened by repeated Viking
onslaughts.

Mr. Andrew Lang regarded succession in the direct line of the father as a sign of superior civilization. It may have been so ; but it had serious practical disadvantages when a nation depended on unity and strong leadershipAlthough the system of Pictish succession offers no room for the moral reflections of some historians; its practical advantages should be noted. It bound those chiefs who used their votes in favour of the sovereign to support him on the throne, a very important result among a people organized in clans any one of which was sometimes more powerful than the clan of the successful nominee. Again, the election of a grown-up member of the ruling caste to the supreme power always saved the Picts from the rule of a minor, with a consequent regency and the intrigues and abuses connected therewith. The succession of a minor or incompetent king, apart from the will of the people, simply because he, or she, was nearest heir in direct line from a royal father was the cause of some of the greatest woes that befell Pictland after it came under the rule of the Scotic dynasties. Science, forethought, and adaptation to the needs of a nation of clans, were all in the Pictish system of succession; in spite of the fact that certain historians have been able to see only signs of moral laxity and want of moral progress.