Picts. This is the name by which, for five and a half centuries (296-844 A.D.), the people that inhabited eastern Scotland from the Forth to the Pentland Firth were known. In the Irish chronicles they are generally styled Picti, Pictones, Pictores, or Piccardaig—all forms of the same root; but sometimes the native Gaelic name of Cruithnig is applied to them, and their country is called Cruithen-tnath, the equivalent of Latin Pictavia and Old Norse Pettland, which still survives in the name of the Pentland Firth. There were Cruithni or Cruithnig also in Ireland—never, however, called Picti. They formed the petty kingdom of Dálaraide (County Down and part of Antrim) and bordered on the Irish Dalriada; and, as the kinglets of both these provinces were contemporary with the whole extent of Pictish rule, much confusion is thereby caused as to what refers to Scotch and what to Irish Cruithnig in the annals. Other Irish Cruithnig appear sporadically, not to say enigmatically, in Meath and in Roscommon. There does not seem to have been any difference in language and customs between these Irish Cruithnig and the rest of the people of Ireland, at least in historic times. They were probably early invaders from Britain belonging to the Pictish race.
The Picts are first mentioned in connection with the campaigns of Constantius Chlorus in Britain in 296 and 306. Eumachus, his panegyrist, speaks of 'Caledonum aliorumque Pictorum silvas et palmes' (the Caledonians and other Picts), which implies the inclusion of the former in the latter people. Caledonia is the name given by Tacitus to Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and he describes the Caledonians as a noble race of barbarians, who fight in chariots as well as on foot, with long swords and short shields, and whose fair red hair and large limbs argued a German origin. Ptolemy (120) places fourteen tribes in Tacitus' Caledonia, inclusive of the Caledonians themselves, and the more easterly ten of these may be claimed as Picts. So troublesome were these northern tribes to the Roman province that in 208 the Emperor Severus came to Britain and vainly attempted their subjugation. The contemporary historians mention only two tribes north of the Forth and Clyde wall—the Mæatæ and the Caledonii—and Tacitus' noble barbarians appear in their pages but squalid savages, having no cities, knowing no agriculture, possessing wives in common, and tattooing their bodies with pictures of all kinds, to show which 'they wear no clothing,' says Herodian. Yet they have chariots and weapons as described by Tacitus, with dagger and peculiarly knobby spear. One hundred years later the Caledonians and other Picts, as already said, are encountered by Constantius, and still fifty years later they are harassing the Roman province (360) now in company with the Scots, who are first mentioned at this date, and who appear as great sea-wanderers, starting from Ireland and Scotland both, it would seem, and attacking the whole seaboard of the province, especially Wales. The Picts and Scots are helped in this 'continual vexing' of the Britons by the Saxons and Atecotti. The Picts are represented at this time as divided into two nations called Dicalidonæ and Vecturiones, or rather Verturiones, to accept Professor Rhys's happy emendation of Ammianus' text, for this latter form may be identified with the historic Fortrenn (Strathearn and Menteith). Theodosius the elder in 369 subdued these northern foes and restored the district between the walls to Roman Britain, and the usurper Maximus signalised his assumption of power in 383 by an energetic campaign against the Picts and Scots. During the next quarter of a century the Romans were losing their hold on Britain, and their northern foes pressed on the province with great persistence. First the northern wall was rebuilt, then abandoned; and lastly the southern wall was repaired by the last legion sent. In vain did the brave Stilicho gaze on the 'figures fading on the dying Pict,' as Claudian says, for they burst on the Romanised Britons with more fury than ever, and the calling in of the Saxons against the Picts and Scots made the last state of the Britons worse than their first.
At this point the light of Roman history is withdrawn from us, and we have to depend on vague references in native writers—on Gildas of Wales (6th century), on Adamnan (704), on Bede (731), on Nennius (9th century), and on the Irish and other annalists of the middle ages, the best of whom is Tigernach (1088). There is a Pictish Chronicle, perhaps composed in the 10th century, but preserved only in a MS. four hundred years later in date. Gildas describes the Picts and Scots as 'differing somewhat in manners,' and 'shrouding their villainous faces in bushy hair rather than clothing' their lower limbs. Bede points out that the Picts are divided into a southern and a northern division by the Grampians. The southern Picts were converted to Christianity by St Ninian (circa 400), and the northern Picts over a century and a half later by St Columba. Bede also notes and mythically explains the system of succession among the Picts, whereby the reigning monarch was succeeded not by his son but by either his brother or his sister's son, descent being counted through the females. This curious rule is amply confirmed by the Pictish list of kings. Scotland in Bede's time, and for more than a century previously, was divided among four nations: the Saxons and Britons were south of the Firths, and north of them were the Picts east of Drumalban, and the Scots to the west with Dalriada or Argyllshire as their head centre. The annals say little of the Isles and north- west coast, whether they were held by Scots or Picts, though subsequent history makes it clear that the Scots had long colonised them, for the sons of Erc in 501 were but the last of many Scottish invaders and colonisers. That the four nations of Bede's day spoke four different languages is clear from his oft-repeated statement to that effect, and his handing down a word in this Pictish tongue (peanfahel). Columba, according to Adamnan, had to employ an interpreter twice in dealing with the Picts, while Cormac of Cashel mentions a word (cartit) belonging to the berla cruithnech or Pictish language.
In the ninth year of the reign of Brude MacMailchon, the year 563, Columba landed in Scotland to convert the Picts. Brude had his royal residence near Inverness, and was 'a most powerful king,' Bede says, for he represents him as granting Iona to Columba, though Tigernach says that Conall of Dalriada made the gift. But the Picts were carrying on war among the Isles at the time, as the life of St Comgall shows, and Brude had hostages from the king of the Orkneys. Brude's successor, Gartnait, seems to have fixed his capital at Abernethy, the church of which he founded. The Picts were subjugated by Oswald, king of Northumbria, and made tributary by his brother Oswiu after 654. They remained under the Anglian yoke for thirty years; but Brude, son of Bile, asserted his rule among the northern Picts, and meeting the Anglian king Ecgfrid at Dunnichen in 685 defeated and slew him, and thus ended the Anglian rule over the Picts. About 710 Naiton or Nectan, son of Derile, was king of the Picts, and, as Bede tells us, he conformed under Anglic influence to the Roman Church in regard to the celebration of Easter, going indeed so far as to expel recalcitrant Columban clerics across Drumalban. Following a custom not unfrequent at the time, Nectan resigned his throne and became a cleric. A fierce struggle ensued for the throne, during which Nectan emerged from his monastery, but eventually Angus, son of Fergus, petty king of Fortrenn, crushed all his rivals and reigned for thirty years, when this 'sanguinary tyrant' died in 761. His brother Brude died king of Fortrenn in 763, for evidently Angus' monarchy had collapsed and the provincial kings again came to the front. Unfortunately the next eighty years of Pictish and Scottish history is exceedingly difficult to unravel, for only lists of kings and a reference or two in the Annals of Ulster are all the material which is to hand. Ciniod was king after Brude, but his rights were disputed by Aed of Dalriada; and after his death in 774 there is much confusion in the Chronicles, as there must have been in the facts. Dalriadic princes struggle with Pictish princes and with one another for the throne, till Constantine of Dalriada established himself about 815 as king over both. His and his brother's reign ended in 834, and a time of confusion followed, native Pictish princes striving against Eogan of Dalriada, and he ultimately succeeding. The year 839, which ended his reign, saw a great defeat and slaughter of the Picts by the Danes, with confusion once again, from which emerged in 844 Kenneth MacAlpin, the Scot, as king over both nations, henceforward not to be disunited. Many things contributed to the overthrow of the Pictish kingdom, such as it was, and of the Pictish language: the disunion, physical and otherwise, between northern and southern Picts; the rule of female succession which allowed Anglic, Briton, and Scottish princes to rule in right of their mothers, with the consequent degradation of marriage which matriarchy implies; and the superior culture of the Scots, Christian and literary. Nor must it be forgotten that we really do not know much about the Isles and west coast north of Argyll, nor indeed of the counties north of Inverness, from the time of Brude MacMailchon till the Norsemen came. It is quite certain that the Scots colonised these very early, and had, indeed, established themselves in Perthshire. Aidan, the son of Gubhran, makes expeditions to Orkney, and fights the Picts and defeats them on the Forth, or even farther eastward, in Mearns. This aggressive energy, combined with the other facts of the situation above enumerated, would easily enable the Scots to supersede the Picts in power and language.
The real 'Pictish question,' however, is what the language was which they spoke. This question must not be confused with another if allied one, What race did the Picts belong to? The Picts may have spoken a Celtic language though racially possessed of little Celtic blood, and may have retained non-Celtic customs as survivals of a lower culture, as indeed they did in the case of female succession. Four hypotheses have been formed in regard to the language and origin of the Picts. The first, started by Pinkerton and put by Sir Walter Scott into the mouth of the 'Antiquary,' is that they were Teutons, speaking a Gothic dialect; the second, maintained by Dr Skene, is that they were Gaelic-speaking Celts, and that they and not the Scots finally conquered in the 9th century; the third, due to Professor Rhys, is that the Picts were non-Aryans, whose language was overlaid by loans from Welsh and Irish; and the fourth, held by two of the most eminent Celtic scholars of the day, Professor Windisch and Dr Whitley Stokes, is that they were Celts, but more nearly allied to the Cymry than to the Gael.
The materials for deciding the linguistic relations of the Picts, though fairly abundant, consist almost entirely of names—those in the classical writers, in the king lists, and in the Book of Deer, and the still or lately existent place-names of ancient Pictavia. The main agreement between the Gallo-Cymric and Gaelic languages is their dropping of Aryan initial p; their main difference is their developing the labialised guttural qu—the one like the Greeks into p, and the other, the Gaelic, like the Latins into q or c. This fact led Professor Rhys to call them respectively P Celts and Q Celts. No native initial p exists in old Gaelic language. The name Picti, which was usually regarded as the Latin for 'painted men,' is now considered inseparable from Pictones or Pictavi of Gaul, now Poitou, and is therefore Celtic of the P group. An old Gaelic equivalent is supposed to exist in cicht ('engraver'), which leaves the old idea of 'painted or pictured men' intact. Further, the Gaelic name cruthni is derived from cruth ('form, figure'), Welsh pryd; and the Welsh name for Pict is actually Prydyn. The form Prettania, undoubtedly used by the best Greek writers for the Latin Britannia, makes it possible that the Cruthnig gave their name to Britain. The meaning of Bede's Pictish word peanfahel is practically explained by himself as Wall's Head, where pean, with its p, answers to Welsh penn ('head') and not to Gaelic cenn. Similarly Pern and pant in the king lists belong to the P group; but more striking still is the pett of the Book of Deer, which signifies 'a portion of land,' corresponding to Welsh peth, and etymologically to Gaelic cuit ('portion'). Pet or pit is a prefix in place-names in Pictland from Sutherlandshire to the Forth at the present day, some two hundred being easily counted, though the Gaelic Bal has considerably extruded it in western Pictland. It is similar to Aber as a place-name prefix, which is found all over Pictland. This is the Abbor or Apor of the Book of Deer and the Chronicles, and corresponds only to Welsh Aber, older Aper, 'a con- fluence.' Minor points in the phonetics of the Pictish names are the preservation of st and nt as in Cymric; ch, as in Ochil, Welsh Uchel, but Gaelic Uasal; it, in Naiton, for Gaelic Nectan, being Cymric; Elphin for Alpin or Albin; Bridei for Brude, where u, as in Welsh, changes to i; the Cymric forms of the prefix ur or wr for Gaelic for or fer; and others. Names like Talorg and Morcunn remind us of Gaulish Argio-talus, 'silver-brow,' and of Welsh Morgan. Modern place-names like Dee ('goddess'), Don for Divona ('goddess'), Tay, Eden, Nith or Nethy, and Ythan can hardly be paralleled outside Gallo-Cymric ground. The sp of Spey and Spean is evidence of non-Gaelic origin. Dr Whitley Stokes, who has brought together in a list all the extant Pictish words from Tacitus down to the mediæval annalists in his work On the Linguistic Value of the Irish Annals, sums up the philologic arguments with sufficient temperateness thus: 'The foregoing list of names and other words contains much that is still obscure; but on the whole it shows that Pictish, so far as regards its vocabulary, is an Indo-European and especially Celtic speech. Its phonetics, so far as we can ascertain them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish.' The conclusion to which we come is that the Picts, whatever traces they show of a non-Aryan racial element, with its consequent survival of lower ideas of marriage-laws, spoke a Celtic language belonging to a branch of Celtic allied to the Cymric, but dialectically different from the Welsh of Bede's time; and that this dialect of the Gallo-Cymric stock was a wave of Celtic speech from the Continent previous to the Gaulish which held England when Cæsar entered Britain.
See Skene's Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (Edin. 1867), where all the post-classical material is brought together, and his Celtic Scotland, vol. i. (Edin. 1886); Professor Rhys's Celtic Britain (Lond. 1884), and his Rhind Lectures for 1889 in the Scottish Review; Dr Whitley Stokes's work above mentioned; Professor Windisch's article, 'Keltische Sprachen,' in Ersch and Gruber's Encyklopädie; Adamnan's Columba (Edin. 1874); Hennessy's Annals of Ulster (Dublin, 1887); Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the other documents in the Monumenta Historica Britannica; Father Innes' Critical Essay (1729; new ed. Edin. 1879); and Pinkerton's Inquiry into the History of Scotland.