Direct Roman contacts with the Caledonian tribes living to the north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus were limited to occasional military expeditions, such as Septimius Severus’ genocidal campaign in 209-11. The Caledonian tribes responded to the Roman threat by forming tribal coalitions. By the third century, the dozen or so tribes encountered by Agricola had been replaced by just two, the Verturiones or Maeatae, centred on Fife and Strathmore, and the Caledones in the Highlands proper. A century later, these two were reduced to one, the Piets. The abandonment of most brochs and duns in these centuries was probably a result of this process of political centralisation. The name, which means ‘painted people’, is thought to have originated as a nickname among Roman frontier garrisons, perhaps because the Piets decorated their bodies with tattoos. The Piets seem quickly to have adopted the name for themselves. Though they had a common identity, the Piets were divided into a number of regional kingdoms, ruled from small forts on craggy hilltops or coastal headlands. The names of some of these kingdoms have survived in modern place names: Fortriu (Forteviot), Fib (Fife), Athfolta (Atholl) and Cait (Caithness). The earliest historical Pictish king was Bridei mac Maelcon (r. c. 550-84), who ruled his kingdom of Fidach from the stronghold of Craig Phadrig near Inverness. Bridei exercised a form of high kingship over all of Pictland and other rulers sent hostages to his court. After Bridei’s death in battle, power, and the high kingship with it, shifted to the southern Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, which was based on the territory of the Verturiones in fertile Strathmore. In the mid seventh century the Northumbrians began to expand into Pictish territory, conquering Fife and exacting tribute from the Piets. A Pictish rebellion around 670 was crushed, but in 685 King Bride mac Bile of Fortriu overthrew the Northumbrian dominion at the battle of Nechtansmere, near Forfar. A beautifully carved stone cross at nearby Aberlemno showing a battle between Pictish and Anglo-Saxon warriors is thought to commemorate this battle, which established the Piets as the main power in northern Britain.
Little is known about the Pictish language: the few surviving records are limited to personal and place names and a handful of inscriptions in the Roman and the Irish ogham alphabets, which have so far defied translation. Some linguists believe that a few Pictish words are derived from a lost pre-Celtic non-Indo-European language, but most are clearly related to the Brithonic form of Celtic spoken by the Britons. Certainly, the Romans considered the Piets to be close kin of the Britons, but more barbaric because they were not Romanised. The most easily recognised Pictish place-name element is the prefix pit - (as in Pitlochry and Pittenweem), which derived from pett meaning a parcel of land. The distribution of these place names suggests that the main area of Pictish settlement was in Fife, Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire and around the Moray Firth, but it is likely that it was actually much more widespread. Because of the later settlement of Gaelic speakers in the Highlands and of Norse speakers in Caithness and the western and northern isles, and the effects of rural depopulation in the nineteenth century, it is likely that many hundreds of ‘pit’ place names have been lost. When the Piets first appeared they were a pagan people. Nothing is known of their gods, but like other Celtic peoples they practised human sacrifice and venerated springs, wells and caves. The Briton St Ninian began the conversion of the southern Piets to Christianity in the fifth century.
Plate 21 Battle of Nechtansmere, Aberlemno
Source: © Crown Copyright reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland
While the Irish St Columba began the conversion of the northern Piets in 565. During his mission, Columba had the earliest recorded encounter with the Loch Ness monster, which tried to eat one of his monks. Columba’s intervention saved the day, of course, and, as far as is known, the monster has not tried to eat anyone since.
The Piets are best known for their enigmatic carved symbol stones. About 40 to 50 different symbols are known; the most common are the ‘Pictish beast’ (a strange mythological creature likened to a swimming elephant), the mirror and a variety of geometrical figures based on crescents and circles. The meanings of the symbols are unknown, and will probably remain so, but they probably did not have religious significance as they continued to be used after the conversion to Christianity. The earliest known symbols appear on metalwork in the fourth century and their use on stones dates only to the fifth or sixth century. Pictish symbols are usually used in combinations of two to four, with the particular combination of symbols perhaps identifying an individual, family or tribe. The purpose of the symbol stones is as uncertain as their meaning, but several have been discovered in association with burials. It would seem, therefore, that at least some were tombstones, a practice that must surely have been adopted as a result of contacts with early British Christians.
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