A Pictish Miscellany Paul Dunbavin Summary: A collection of the author’s smaller articles and web-pages (2017-2021) on the subject of the Picts of Scotland. For the most part, they complete or build-upon the research of the author’s 1998 book: Picts and Ancient Britons.* The individual articles collected here are: 1) A Crocodile in Loch Ness? – the first report by St Columba that started it all 2) Ptolemy’s Map of Scotland – an Alternative Exploration 3) Three Pictures of Picts – and a new one recently discovered in Fife 4) The Problem of the Picts – overcoming text-book prejudices about origins ******************************** 1) A Crocodile in Loch Ness? An interesting aside to any study of the Picts of Scotland is to read Adamnan’s Life of Saint Columba. Among other things it describes the progress of the Irish saint through the Pictish regions around 565 AD. We hear of his exchanges with the pagan Pictish Druids (shamans) and how he would regularly perform miracles and exorcise demons as he sought to convert the locals to Christianity. In one example, he drove out a Demon that supposedly dwelt in a milk-pail; and another time, he purified a poisonous fountain, which the locals were worshipping as a god. And he also encountered the Loch Ness Monster! It is unfortunate that, wherever it has gone, conversion to Christianity has blurred or destroyed the older beliefs and the information about earlier history that accompanies it. We are left with only snippets of useful information – such as the fact that Columba, himself a Gaelic speaker, had to converse with the Picts through an interpreter. For further information on this topic, see my: Picts and Ancient Britons. One day as Columba was crossing the River Ness near modern Inverness, we are told of how he vanquished an ‘aquatic creature’ that was attacking a local man. …when the blessed man was living for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa (the Ness); and when he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water… Perhaps disbelieving this, Columba instructed one of his companions to swim across the river to fetch a boat, with the inevitable result: But the monster, which so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the stream, and when it felt the water disturbed above by the man swimming, suddenly rushed out, and giving an awful roar, darted after him, with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream. [Chapter XXVIII of Adamnan’s Life Saint Columba in William Reeves translation of 1874] We are told how Columba simply raised his hand and told the monster to go back; at which point it fled, seemingly terrified; and the watching Picts were amazed by the power of the Christian god. Now, this description of a creature attacking ‘with its mouth wide-open’, if it were it to occur anywhere else, would be instantly recognisable to us as the typical attack of a crocodile or an alligator! But: a crocodile in Loch Ness? How could that be? Most rationalisations of the Loch Ness Monster myth look no further than the influence of modern hoaxers, such as the 1933 Surgeon’s Photograph, and their influence on the twentieth-century mind. This neglects the older folklore about a monster in the loch. However, Adamnan’s description does not describe some huge monster, rather a normal-sized predator; and it was in the River Ness, not in Loch Ness itself. It is possible that a crocodile could have been imported into the region as a baby, perhaps by a traveller, or as part of a circus menagerie. People in northern Scotland would never have seen such an exotic creature. It may have become too large for its captors and escaped, or was simply released. As a lone animal living in Loch Ness it could have survived for many years and grown to full size; thus starting all the legends that have persisted ever-since of a ‘monster’ in the loch. Coincidences like this in legends should always catch our attention. Adamnan could not have known that twentieth-century hoaxers would start a monster-myth in precisely this place. If he had wanted to create a fictitious miracle to enhance his story then he could just as easily have placed it in Dornoch Firth or the River Dee. Such coincidences are always a pointer that a core of truth underlies an ancient story. We should then ask: in what circumstances might this be true? Could the Loch Ness Monster myth really be so simple after all, as just one lost crocodile? Tags: Picts, Loch Ness Monster, Adamnan, Saint Columba Copyright: Paul Dunbavin & Third Millennium Publishing, May 2019 v1.2 https://www.academia.edu/68526986/A_Pictish_Miscellany ************************ 2) Ptolemy’s Map of Scotland – an Alternative Interpretation In the geography of Claudius Ptolemy, dating from the second century AD we are offered a curious map of Britain. The map shows the Roman province of Britannia with the unconquered areas of Scotland apparently rotated west-east through a right angle; but here, I shall refer to the north of Britain at this era as Caledonia rather than as Scotland. Ptolemy is believed to have taken his northern geography from an earlier map made by Marinus of Tyre (c. AD 100-120), who is thought to have obtained his details of Caledonia from a quite different source to that of the Roman province to the south. The absence of any mention of Hadrian’s Wall tells us that the source predates the Stanegate frontier and may therefore offer us a snapshot of Caledonia dating from the earlier period of the Flavian expedition around AD 80-84. Most of our meagre list Pictish words are names taken from Ptolemy’s geography. [1] In Picts and Ancient Britons I explored the possibility that Pictish, the language spoken in the North before the Scottish kingdom absorbed the Picts, may have been a Finnic language closely related to Finnish and Estonian. This would be in line with the Picts own traditions of origin, but at odds with the view that specialists have held for so many years. [See: Note 1] Modern DNA evidence now contradicts the old doctrine that the northern tribes were Celts. If the names on Ptolemy’s map of Caledonia were indeed Finnic then it would make Ptolemy’s names the oldest written form of any Finnic language. An alternative explanation that I left unexplored in the 1998 book was that the map used by Marinus was actually made by Rome’s northern proto-Pictish allies; and that Marinus may have mistaken the disposition of the Roman and allied forces to be tribal names. This possibility can only be seen by analogy with a Finnic vocabulary. Our knowledge of Agricola’s expedition to the North-East comes only from the writings of Tacitus. He does not acknowledge that Rome had any client kingdoms or allies in the region; although this would have been normal diplomatic practice as with the Brigantes further south. He does however tell us that Agricola left his troops over winter in the territory of a tribe named the ‘Boresti’; a name unknown from any other source. [2] The accepted explanation is that it simply means: ‘a northern tribe’. The earliest clue that we have comes from Cicero (54 BC). He ventures in a letter that the only economic justification for a conquest of Britain might be the acquisition of slaves. [3] From Saint Patrick we know that the later Picts traded in slaves. [4] A non-contemporary account by Eutropius (AD 360) contradicts Tacitus, saying that the Orkney Islands had submitted to Rome in AD 43 as soon as the Claudian conquest began. [5] May we suppose then, that the Orcadians were Rome’s allies in the North? The possibility that the Orcadian-Picts were slave-traders is suggested by the name ‘Orrea’ as a city that was situated somewhere near the River Tay. The Finnish word Orja means: ‘a slave’. We find two further names on the map that may have been misinterpreted. The first of these is the name ‘Venicones’ (or perhaps ‘Venicontes’ – a manuscript variant) supposedly a tribe occupying the Fife peninsula. Again in Finnish we find Venekunta which means ‘a boat’s crew’; therefore one may suggest a meaning: ‘sailors’ or ‘marines’. Perhaps Fife was the base of the Roman or allied navy? It must have been there somewhere to support Agricola; and we are told that it circumnavigated the north of Britain while the army wintered with the Boresti. [6] In the Grampian triangle we find the ‘Taexali’, a name that has never been convincingly explained as p-Celtic. The nearest equivalent in Finnish is Taistelija. This word means: ‘a fighter’ or a ‘combatant’ (verb: taistella: ‘to fight a battle’) hence perhaps an interpretation: ‘soldiers’ or ‘warriors’ may be appropriate. One may suggest that this is showing us the disposition of the Roman legion, which fought the battle at Mons Graupius somewhere in this region. Ptolemy’s names shown on a rotated modern map of Scotland (other places and rivers omitted) These three coincidences are indicative taken alone. However, other words from the map and later sources also show strong cognates. It may be that either a Pict or perhaps a Roman has rendered the various Pictish words and names phonetically into the Latin alphabet, which fortunately is the same one as used today for most European languages, including Finnish. It may be that the other tribal names in the interior and west coast are just a list of regional Caledonian tribes; as distinct from the ‘proto-Pictish’ tribes of Orkney and the east coast. This would concur with the situation later around AD 208 when we find Severus now opposed by just two northern tribes named as Caledonii and Maeatae. [7] This name ‘Maeatae’ would further support a Finnic interpretation as, in Finnish, the word miehetaa means simply: ‘the men’. This would concur with the Picts own myth of origin as given in various sources, of which the best known is Bede. [8] He tells us that the Pictish invaders came from Scythia (which here implies the Baltic coast region of Russia); also that they were all-male and they obtained wives from the Irish. This interpretation would suggest that, during the Flavian conquest, the Romans were able to penetrate so far to the north only with the acquiescence of their Orcadian allies; but sometime in the early second century this alliance collapsed. In later centuries we find Caledonians and Maeatae as unified opponents of Rome under the general name of Picts. The tribes of the west coast and islands seem to have remained unhindered by Rome until as late as the fourth century when we find them as Attacotti and Scots, raiding the ailing province of Britannia alongside the Picts. [9] Further investigation of all the sources may be found in Picts and Ancient Britons and the various etymologies may now be investigated via any good online translator (*but see Note 1 Below). Sceptics may say that such linguistic coincidences could be found with any language, to which I say: try it and see; you will only find these correspondences with Finnic languages. Note 1: Although lay-persons may make their own comparisons with modern languages; it should be noted that all the suggested Finnic derivations here and in the 1998 book were based on the ancient native Finnish vocabulary as defined by Lauri Hakulinen in ”The Structure and Development of the Finnish language” (1961). [10] These root words he defined as deriving from the proto-Finnic language as it was spoken in the region of the Gulf of Finland in the years around the beginning of the Christian era (with some dating from the earlier Finno-Ugrian period). This would be contemporary with the supposed Pictish invasion as described in the various sources. I add this note to forestall the inevitable criticisms of certain Celtic linguists and others who defend the p-Celtic derivations. References 1. Based on MacBain (1891-2) ‘Ptolemy’s Geography of Scotland’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 21, pp 191214 2. Tacitus, Agricola, 38 3. Cicero, Ad Familiaris, VII,16,7 (letter to Trebatius) 4. Saint Patrick, Epistola 15 5. Eutropius, Roman History, VII,13,3 6. Tacitus, Agricola, 38 7. Dio Cassius, Roman History, LXXVII, 12, 1-4 8. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 1,1 9. Ammianus Marcellinus, Library of History, XXVII, 8, 5 10. Hakulinen, Lauri, The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language, translated by John Atkinson, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana (1961) Tags: Picts, Ptolemy's Map, Caledonia, Venicones, Taexali, Maeatae, Agricola, ancient Scotland Copyright: Paul Dunbavin and Third Millennium Publishing, January 2020 v 1.3 https://www.academia.edu/68526986/A_Pictish_Miscellany ************************** 3) Three Pictures of Picts - What did the Picts look like? Three pictures from the symbol stones of Northeast Scotland give an indication of how the people viewed themselves during the historical Pictish era and in the proto-Pictish tribal era that preceded it. The three carvings featured here (there are others) are the Rhynie Man, now on display in Aberdeen; the Collessie Man on a standing stone in Fife; and the ‘mother and child’ shown on the Inchbraoch Stone, which was used as a cover illustration for my 1998 book: Picts and Ancient Britons.* The Rhynie Man on a stone found on a farm near Rhynie, Buchan, shows a quite unique view of an older man in a tunic carrying a ceremonial axe. The age of the monument is uncertain, but it is assumed to be AD 500-700. The proportions of the Rhynie figure are significant. The head takes up a quarter of the figure rather than a seventh part as most modern artists are taught to draw the human form. His head clearly shows a long beard, a hooked nose and prominent eyebrows. He has a bald (or perhaps shaven) head; and his ears and teeth are visible. It is not clear whether he has long hair or is wearing some kind of headdress. It has been suggested that he is a miner, or perhaps a tonsured monk. The ‘hooked’ nose can be observed among many modern people in the north-east triangle. Other Pictish Studies by Paul Dunbavin: Who were the Irish Cannibals? Attacotti and Scotti Dismissing the Venerable Bede The Collessie Man A much-worn figure on a standing stone set in the middle of a field near the village of Collessie, Fife. It depicts a naked warrior carrying a shield and spear with an ‘apple’ on the shaft. It matches the description of Dio Cassius (third century AD) and may represent a soldier of the Maetae (Miathi) or the Venicones. Again the proportions of the figure and his short legs are evident, as is the prominent nose. He too has long hair, but tied-up in a top-knot. Tacitus describes a similar hairstyle among the Suebian Germans, to give the impression of height http://www.brand-dd.com/stones/fife/collessie.html The Inchbraoch Stone The relief carvings on the Inchbraoch stone show us what appears to be a woman, styling the hair of a young child. However, we should avoid the assumption that the stylized figures are female. As with the other two figures discussed above, both exhibit short legs (or a long body) and again with long hair in the process of being tied-up. The nose is again given prominence although both figures are cartoon in nature. A stocky build with broad muscular legs was remarked-upon by the Roman historian Tacitus as a characteristic of the Caledonian tribes who faced Agricola in the first century AD and whom he likened to the Suebian Germans. In 2017 another stone depicting a naked Pictish warrior was discovered during construction of the new A9/A85 road junction in Perth and Kinross. Although the face is somewhat damaged we can just about make-out again the top-knotted hair, together with a spear reminiscent of the Collessie Man. Of more significance again are the proportions of the figure and the thickset limbs of the warrior. A summary report and illustration is available at: https://www.thenational.scot/news/15629182.workers-discover-significant-pictish-artefact-while-constructing-road/ It is interesting that none of the figures offer any evidence of tattooing. Fashions of hair-style or body art are cultural and could have entered the region with an immigrant population; however, morphology is genetic. The short thickset build can be observed in many modern Scots and less frequently further south. It will be interesting to see whether geneticists can one-day associate such characteristics with a native ‘Pictish gene’ or whether it can be traced to immigrants from Baltic Scythia as the legends suggest. Some of the native tribes named by Ptolemy may have occupied northern Britain since the Ice Age and strictly, they would be neither Picts, nor Scots, rather we should consider them native Caledonians. Tags: Picts, Caledonia, Pictish language, Pictish history, Pictish sources, Collessie man, Rhynie Man, Inchbraoch Stone Copyright: Paul Dunbavin and Third Millennium Publishing, April 2019 V 1.4 https://www.academia.edu/68526986/A_Pictish_Miscellany ******************************** 4) The Problem of the Picts In the 1980’s and 1990’s I lived in Northeast Scotland and, as an Englishman out-of-place I was struck by how different the locals were from other Scots. It seemed obvious to me that the reason for this is that most are not Scots, but Picts! So I decided to investigate further, resulting in the book that I wrote in 1998. Anyone who studies the ethnography of the Picts will find that very little is known about their history. Therefore in 1955 the various historians, linguists and archaeologists got together in a symposium and published their papers in a report called ‘The Problem of the Picts’. The conclusion of the editor F.T. Wainwright regarding Bede’s story of the Scythian origins of the Picts is memorable: “At best it represents a tradition current among the Picts; but no concrete evidence has yet been produced to support the suggestion that the Picts came from Scythia and the story must be dismissed as legend or literary invention” This ‘dismissive’ attitude towards traditional evidence is sadly typical; I encounter it again and again as I study other myths and legends. Quite incredible: for a modern academic to assert that they know better than the Picts knew about their own history, or better than historians who were contemporary with them. Another hangover from this landmark study was the linguistic review given by Kenneth Jackson, which summarised all the earlier commentators. He reviewed the prevailing opinion that Pictish was a pCeltic language related to Welsh and concluded ‘there the matter rests’. However if you read his words carefully he was himself far from convinced that many of the words in the meagre vocabulary available were ‘clearly or probably Celtic’. Nevertheless the editor summarised the prevailing opinion and henceforth the Picts became Celts. The difficulty is that once such ideas become embedded in the textbooks it becomes almost impossible to challenge them. We may find later researchers doing comparative studies of Celtic languages including all the Pictish words as proven Celtic and citing these earlier references. My own opinion of most of the comparative linguistics that I have read could be summed up by an English word beginning with ‘b’. This kind of linguistic study is unsafe when you have only 30 or so words of variable provenance (mostly names from Ptolemy’s map) that can be claimed as Pictish. If some future researcher possessed only 30 random words of English then 60% of them would be of French origin. They would likely conclude that English was a Romance language. New Deer I am indebted to Mrs Jean Pearce of Insch, Aberdeenshire, who wrote to me after reading Picts and Ancient Britons to offer an insight that I had not considered. She suggested that the Picts called Niduari by Bede in his Life of Saint Cuthbert (or Niuduera in another source) might recall a visit by the saint to the monastery at New Deer in Buchan. Although believed to date from 1219, notes in the Book of Deer claim that the first monastery was actually founded by Saint Columba and has its origins in the Pictish period. The etymology of the place-name Deer is obscure (see Kenneth Jackson, Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer, p 39) and so the name New Deer could be an anglicised form, of a Gaelic form, of an original Pictish word. Note that there is also a village called Old Deer a few miles away! Mrs Pearce also drew my attention to the hill of Dunnideer, the vitrified fort near Bennachie. One of the suggestions in my book was that this word Niduari is an example of a Finnic-Pictish word related to the modern Finnish word Noita, implying a shaman, a witch or a warlock, i.e. a Druid. Perhaps Cuthbert was merely stating that he had visited the converted Christian priests of the Picts, who continued to call themselves by their pagan Pictish name. The lady’s suggestion that the saint visited Deer is therefore quite reasonable; and the name Dunnideer would mean something like ‘hill of the Druids’; a venerated pagan holy site. Pictish DNA? Since Picts and Ancient Britons was published in 1998 the science of DNA analysis has advanced beyond all expectations. In 2017 a study of British DNA was published that includes results for Scotland. In the triangle of north-east Scotland the results show overlapping populations that are termed Northeast Scotland 1 & 2. This corresponds to the two tribes on Ptolemy’s map, the Taexali and the Vacomagi. The overlap would suggest an older population overridden by later immigrants. For the Orkney Islands a complex picture emerges; and for southern and western Scotland the populations are more homogeneous and show overlap with Ireland. This has raised again the question that there was an identifiable ‘Pictish gene’, unrelated to the ‘Celtic’ populations further south and west – if indeed these people were themselves ethnically Celtic. This entire question is now openedup for further study. It should not surprise us that 10% of Scots may carry a unique gene related to the Basques of Spain. After all, the historical Scots came from Ireland and all the Irish legends of origin bring the Irish invaders over from Spain. The legends of Pictish origin say they were all-male and came from Baltic Scythia - but they took Irish wives. Therefore, half the people of Pictish origin and all of the western Scots should have Irish DNA. But there were people already in Scotland before these invaders came, so there is much more to this story. Not to be taken too seriously! In the 1990’s I attempted to publish a magazine article in a Scottish magazine, about the Scythian origin of the Picts as it is related by Bede. It was heavy with the usual references to Jackson, Watson, Wainwright, etc, that are expected. The editor came back that unfortunately they couldn’t publish because (I paraphrase from memory) this sort of ‘Biblical who-begat-whom style’ does not make very interesting reading. So, I toned it down a bit and instead tried sending the revised article to a journal that publishes more scholarly papers on Scottish history, who responded that it would indeed be the right place to publish. As expected he submitted it to a suitable referee for an opinion. Back came the reply: ‘clearly he has not read the works of Jackson, Watson, etc … he seems to be suggesting that there were no Celtic Picts’. There is no use saying that it’s only what the Picts themselves believed; and also the venerable Bede, who actually corresponded with living Picts. You can’t argue with a judge in court and you can’t argue with an academic referee! Links to all the above articles are now consolidated in: https://www.academia.edu/68526986/A_Pictish_Miscellany * Longer extracts of all the literary sources discussed here are given in: Dunbavin, Paul (1998) Picts and Ancient Britons, Third Millennium Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-1-7 ****************************