Ever since they were first called Picti, ‘the Painted Ones’, by the Roman soldiers along Hadrian’s Wall, the Piets have been the subject of myth and misconception. Roman historians and poets portrayed them as uncouth barbarians, descended from equally barbaric ancestors who lived ‘in tents, unclothed and unshod, sharing their women and bringing up all their children together’, their bodies painted or tattooed with strange designs. This was all hearsay, of course, and embellished for political effect. Even the great Bede, writing his Ecclesiastical History in the early 8th century, repeated political propaganda fed to him by the Scots when he wrote of Piets coming by sea from Scythia to Ireland, asking for land of the Irish Scotti and being sent on to settle instead in northern Britain. As the Piets had come without their women, they were given Scottic wives on condition that ‘when any dispute arose, they should choose a king from the female royal line rather than the male’, thus neatly preparing the way for the eventual ‘legitimate’ takeover of Pictland by the Scots.
Worse was to come in the way of myth-building. In the I2th century, an anonymous Norwegian historian wrote: ‘The Piets were little more than pygmies in stature. They worked marvels in the morning and evening building towns, but at midday they entirely lost their strength and lurked through fear in little underground houses’. This vision of tiny Piets living underground persisted into this century, colouring both Robert Louis Stevenson’s ballad, ‘Heather Ale’, and John Buchan’s story, ‘No-man’s land’. Folklore insists that the first Vikings who came to Rousay in Orkney dared not land because of beings like elves or trolls bearing shining spears, and even Sir Walter Scott believed that the galleries in the walls of the brochs were low and narrow because of the small size of the Piets (in common with his generation, Sir Walter mistakenly believed these prehistoric stone towers to be Pictish).
The reality about the Piets is perhaps more prosaic, but they remain a fascinating people. First their name—or rather the name by which others knew them, because we have no means of knowing what name or names they used themselves. Picti was first recorded in a Latin poem of AD 297, and it is thought that it may have originated as a nickname amongst the Roman garrisons of northern Britain. It is possible that at that time the Piets painted or tattooed their bodies, but no mention is made of such a custom by Bede, writing of the Piets in the later 7th and 8th centuries. The symbols on the carved stones may have begun as personal decoration in the early centuries AD and been transferred later to clothing, personal belongings and stonecarving.
A portrait of a Piet incised on a piece of slate from Jarlshof in Shetland.
This fine head of a Piet decorates a gilt-hron:e pin found at Golspie, Sutherland (now in the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh).
Opposite
The cross-slab at Elgin (Moray) has an appropriate setting within the ruined cathedral but it was originally discovered during street repairs in 1823 near St Giles’ Church.
There is a distinctly malevolent air about the Rhynie man, the most recently discovered of a series of carved stones found in the Rhynie area of Aberdeenshire. Such large-scale single figures are rare in the Pictish repertoire (this one stands fully 1.03 m high) and must surely have seized a special purpose. The aura of strength and malevolence conveyed by this slightly stooping figure with its carefully drauti axe, hared teeth and hooked nose may mean that this is no ordinary portrait of a Piet hut an evocation of some character from Pictish mythology. The stone is displayed in WotxJhill HcHi. se in. Aberdeen, and there is a cast in the Museum of Sicotland, Edinburgh.
Could this threatening scene be a graphic expression of paganism versus Christianity? The bearded warrior with axe and knife at the ready appears to be confronting two Christian symbols: the lion that represents the Evangelist, St Mark, and the fish which is one of the earliest and most lasting of Christian motifs.
Or is it simply another version of the biblical story of David fighting the lion? This is a detail of the carving on the back of a cross-slab from Golspie, Sutherland (in Dunrobin Museum).
The Piets were not a new element in the population. They were simply the descendants of indigenous iron-age tribes given a new name. From various references in the works of Roman authors, it appears that a process of tribal amalgamations took place during the Roman period; by the early 3rd century a number of smaller tribes had been absorbed into two confederations: the Caledonii and the Maeatae, and by the end of the century both were labelled Picti. They were a frequent harassment to the soldiers along Hadrian’s Wall in the 3rd and 4th centuries, even attacking south of the Wall by coming in from the sea. Loot from some of these raids may account for the ready supplies of silver available to later Pictish craftsmen—part of a Roman silver spoon was found amongst the hoard of Pictish silverwork from Norrie’s Law in Fife.
As indigenous inhabitants, the Piets had no need to beg wives from Ireland, and, although Bede claims that the Piets practised matrilinear succession in his own day, modern historians are divided over whether this was really true. Women are very rarely portrayed in Pictish art, although they could be given the special burial in formal grave-monuments accorded to the leading sector of Pictish society (see p 51). Such burials demolish the much-loved myth about the Piets being ‘little more than pygmies in stature’: in common with contemporary peoples in Britain, their average height was only a couple of centimetres below the modern average. The notion that they lived underground led to the mistaken identification of Tayside souterrains, or earth-houses, as Pictish, but these belonged to iron-age settlements and went out of use around the end of the 2nd century—and they were storehouses rather than dwellings.
If we attempt to distinguish reality from myth, we find a perfectly respectable population inhabiting the whole of the mainland and islands north of the Forth and Clyde estuaries who, from the later 3rd century, were known as Piets. Much of Argyll was lost to the Scots, whose gradual settlement of the area led by the 6th century to the establishment of the kingdom of Dalriada. Historical records of the Pictish kings also begin in the mid 6th century, and by the end of that century the conversion of the Pictish kingdom to Christianity had begun. The cultural influence of the Church was considerable for it brought Pictland into the mainstream of European art and civilisation. The emergence of the kingdom of the Piets mirrored the social developments taking place elsewhere in Britain but without the political instability created by the arrival of land-hungry Angles and
Saxons from North Germany. This internal stability provided ideal conditions for the development of Pictish art and stonecarving. There were inter-tribal problems among the Piets from time to time, as well as political and territorial struggles with their neighbours, particularly the Scots to the west and the Angles to the southeast. The independent kingdom of the Piets came to an end in the 9th century; their distinctive culture was gradually replaced in the far north by Scandinavian ideas and elsewhere Pictland became Scotland.
The only Pictish documents to have survived are copies of lists of kings, written in Latin. There are no monastic annals, records of events year by year, such as those kept by monks on Iona, in Ireland and in England. Yet it is inconceivable that monasteries in Pictland were idle in this respect and wrote nothing. We know from Bede that messengers were sent from the Pictish king, Nechton, to Ceolfrid, abbot of the twin Northumbrian monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, in AD 710, asking for advice on Church matters. It has been argued that the letter was written for Nechton by an Englishman at his court named Egbert, rather than by a Pictish scribe; nevertheless, when Ceolfrid’s reply arrived, the advice that it contained was ‘immediately sent out under a public order to all the provinces of the Piets to be copied, learned, and adopted’, and this can only have been done in Pictish monasteries. We can only speculate about the other manuscripts of Pictland, although a strong case has been made for allowing the possibility that the illustrated gospels known as the Book of Kells was created in a monastery somewhere in eastern Pictland. The stylistic links between the Book of Kells and Pictish stonecarving are certainly very impressive. If such documents were being produced in Pictland, what happened to them? Some may have been destroyed after the Scots took over—any Pictish annals might have been suppressed then for political reasons—and the rest may have fallen foul of reforming zeal in the 16th century.
A few Latin inscriptions carved on stone have survived from the 8th and 9th centuries, and the fact that the inscriptions on one of the sword-fittings in the St Ninian’s Isle treasure are written in Latin (see p 44) suggests that knowledge of the language was not confined to the Church by the later 8th century. Earlier, however, there were clearly language problems: Ceolfrid’s letter in the early 8th century had to be translated for the Pictish king and his ‘learned men’, from Latin into the Pictish dialect of Celtic. This dialect was not the same as Gaelic, the Celtic language spoken in Ireland; thus St Columba had needed the help of interpreters when he was in Pictland in the later 6th century.
The lack of Pictish manuscripts means that we are dependent for information upon records kept outside Pictland and upon the evidence of archaeology and art-history.
Were massive silver chains the emblems of royal office? Made of solid silver and weighing more than 2 kg, this ceremonial chain bears a double disc and Z-rod symbol, inlaid with red enamel, on its fastening ring (nine other such chains have survived; this one is in the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh).
The excitement of re-discovery - the caiss-slab at St Madoes (Perth and Kinrt)ss) has been hidden within a protective wooden box for stjme years, but the K>x was removed for one day in 1988 so that the stone could be properly recorded by the Royal Q>mmission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (The stone is now in Perth Museum.)
Papil, Shetland: the design of this cross-slab has a pleasing simplicity. The lion is the Evangelist’s symK>l of St Mark, but the strange bird-men below may be a later addition to the stone (Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh).
The earliest carved stones are those on which Pictish symbols are incised directly into the natural, unshaped surface of the stone (symbol stones; sometimes known as Class I), and these were gradually replaced in technique and design by symbol-bearing cross-slabs (Class II), carved in relief as well as incision on carefully dressed slabs with the Christian cross as a dominant motif. Both are found in eastern and northern Scotland, hut symbol stones are more prolific in Aberdeenshire and around the Moray Firth (with scattered examples in western Scotland), whereas cross-slabs are concentrated in Tayside. Both symbc)ls and various forms of cross were also carv’ed on the walls of caves along the coasts of Fife (East Wemyss; Claiplie) and Moray (Cbvesea).
The fact that so many symbol-bearing stones have survived the last twelve or more centuries is itself proof of how' common a sight they were in Pictish times. Some we know to have been lost or destroyed in relatively recent times: a stone at Lynchurn on Speyside survived until the late 19th century only to be re-used as a tombstone, its finely incised crescent and V-rod symbol removed. We are told in old records that ‘the person who had appropriated the stone spent much labour in chipping off the whole of the pattern. The individual who committed this piece of vandalism is now buried beneath the ancient monument he so wantonly destroyed.’ Resting uneasily perhaps!
In other cases, stones recorded in the 18th or 19th century have simply vanished. One of these was specially important for our knowledge of Pictish life in Shetland, where few examples of symbols have survived. In 1774 the Reverend George Low described and, fortunately, drew a sketch of a stone that he had seen at Sandness on the west coast of mainland Shetland: it bore three incised symbols, the rectangle, the horseshoe and the mirror. Neither the Reverend Low nor the local people understood the significance of the designs, but the stone had ‘a sort of superstitious value’ locally, and it was undoubtedly such superstition that throughout Scotland saved many carved stones from destruction. It was surely ‘superstitious value’ or antiquarian interest that prompted the Baptist missionary to Shetland to adopt the famous Papil cross-slab as a somewhat unexpected tombstone for his family burial-place on the Isle of West Burra.
The exquisite craftsmanship of the Hilton of CadK)ll stone is a visual testimony to the wealth and patronage available in the 8th centur-. The hunting scene includes a rare portrayal of a woman, here riding side-saddle (top left of the panel), and the decorative vine-scroll running down either side is topical of contempt>rar>- Northumbrian sculpture (Museum of Scotland. Edinburgh).
TTic Lindorts stone at Abdie (North-east Fife): the triple disc and crescent and V-rod symbols are overlain by a sundial and a bench-mark. There is a mirror on one side of the stone.
What is even more surprising is the extent to which individual stones have travelled from their original location, a factor that has an important limiting effect on studies of their topographical settings. Not far from the Aberlemno stones in Angus, another cross-slab was found in 1819 in the foundations of a tower-house at Woodwray; it was given to Sir Walter Scott, who set it up in his garden at Abbotsford in the Borders, and eventually in 1923 it was presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in Edinburgh for their museum. Its elaborately decorated cross had been chiselled off in religious fervour before it was relegated to builder’s rubble for the tower-house foundations, and the same fate befell the cross on what is still one of the finest of Scotland’s Dark Age sculptures, the slab found near the Hilton of Cadboll chapel on the coast of Easter Ross. In this case, the cross was replaced by a funerary inscription dated 1676—yet the exuberant decoration on the back of the stone was allowed to remain. In the second half of the 19th century, it was removed from Hilton of Cadboll and erected in the grounds of Invergordon Castle until 1921 when it was sent to London to the British Museum. Instant pnnests from Scottish antiquaries resulted in its return within the year to Edinburgh.
Many stones were re-used and even re-shaped in antiquity, often for secular purposes. The once magnificent cross-slab, no 7, at St Vigeans was drastically re-shaped, perhaps in an effort to make it conform with free-standing crosses, and the symbol stone at Abemethy was trimmed to make a convenient building block for the foundations of a house in the village. A more aesthetic purpose was devised for the symbol stone from Lindores: set on a south-facing slope above the village, first a finely worked sundial was added to the. existing symbols and later a bench-mark (after a period of being built into a garden wall in the village, this stone is now under cover at nearby Abdie churchyard).
Despite defacement, loss, displacement or even destruction, the wealth, both in number and imagery, of the surviving symbol stones is an astounding testimony to the artistry and output of Pictish sculptors. There are 16 individual symbol-bearing stones in state care, many in the open air, along with collections of stones at Meigle, St Vigeans and St Andrews, and they form an outstanding sample of Pictish stonecarving. Many other examples are illustrated in this book for comparison, several from the large collections in the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and in the privately-owned museum at Dunrohin Castle, Sutherland.
There was, of course, more to the Piets than their symbol stones, and an attempt has been made here both to set the stones in the context of their times and to explore what the stones themselves have to say about Pictish life. Several of the domestic settlements in state care were inhabited in Pictish times, and these provide tangible evidence of houses and everyday tools. The Burghead Well (Moray) lies within a great Pictish fort, and the boar carved near the summit of the hill at Dunadd in Argyll strikes a Pictish note within a royal stronghold of the Scots of Dalriada, a mute legacy from some episode in Picto-Scottish relations.
The Piets were farmers, horse-breeders, fishermen and craftsmen, but above all they were warriors and theirs was an heroic society cast in the mould of their Celtic forebears. Their high-kings could command to battle war-lords, each with his band of warriors, travelling by land or water. One mustering centre whose feasting hall could tell many a fine tale was the royal fortress at Burghead.
The Piets shared an interest in allegorical monsters with contemporary peoples throughout Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries. This fine stone at Rossie Priory (Perth and Kinross) is unusual both in bearing a cross on both sides and in the variety and detail of its monsters: the cross on this face stands out in high relief like that on the Aberlemno churchyard stone (see p 23) and is surrounded by wonderfully ingenious figures in low relief. T>ie two antlered beasts bottom left each has the head of a bird in its mouth, and a foot of each bird is interlocked with the nearside foreleg of its tormentor. Above this foursome, a beast and a fish-tailed serpent have hold of an unfortunate human whose head is in the beast’s mouth and whose ankle is gripped in the serpent’s mouth. A bird-headed human threatens an animal with a large axe, top right, while the animal below the right arm of the cross tries to swallow a serpent already laced in and out of his own neck and belly. The intertwined creatures at bottom right have the bodies of animals, the heads of bearded men and their tails end in animal heads.
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