PICTS, the name of one of those nations who anciently possessed the north of Britain. It is believed by some writers that they were so called from their custom of painting their bodies; an opinion which Camden supports with considerable erudition. It is certainly liable, however, to many objections; for as this custom prevailed amongst the other ancient inhabitants of Britain, who used the glastum of Pliny and the vitrum of Mela for the same purpose, it may be asked why the name of Pieti was confined by the Romans to only one tribe, when it was equally applicable to many others? Why should they designate them only by an epithet, without ever annexing their proper name; or why should they impose a new name upon this people alone, when they gave their proper names to all the other tribes which they had occasion to speak of? As these questions cannot be answered in any satisfactory manner, it is plain that we must look for some other derivation of the name.
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The Highlanders of Scotland express the name of this once famous nation by the term Pictich ; a word familiar to the ears of the most illiterate, who could never have derived it from the Roman authors. But the word Pictich signifies pilferers or plunderers ; and the appellation was probably imposed upon this people by their neighbours, or assumed by themselves, some time after the reign of Caracalla, when the unguarded state of the Roman province, on which they bordered, afforded them frequent opportunities of making incursions, and committing depredations therein. Accordingly the name appears to have been unknown until the end of the third century. Eumenius the Panegyrist is the first Roman author who mentions this people under their new name of Pictich, or, with a Latin termination, Picti. But when we say that this name may have probably been assumed for the reason just now mentioned, we must observe, that, in those days of violence, the character of robber was not attended with any disgrace. If a person of this description had the address to lay his schemes well, and to execute them successfully, he was rather praised than blamed for his conduct, providing he made no encroachments upon the property of his own tribe, or that of any of its allies. Nor is this any peculiar stigma upon the Picts; for other nations of antiquity, in the same rude state, thought and acted as they did in such circumstances.^[1. See Thucydides, lib. iii. p. 3; and Virgil, Aeu. vii. 745 and 749. ]

Concerning the origin of the Picts, authors are very much divided in opinion. Boethius derives them from the Aga-thyrsians, Pomponius Laetus from the Germans, Bede from the Scythians, Camden and Father Innes from the ancient Britons, Stillingfleet from a people inhabiting the Cimbrica Chersonesus, and . Keating and O’Flaherty, on the authority of the Cashel Psalter, from the Thracians. But the most probable opinion is, that they were the descendants of the ancient Caledonians. Several very cogent reasons have been urged in support of this opinion by Pinkerton and others; and the words of Eumenius, “Caledonum, aliorumque Pictorum, silvas,” plainly imply that the Picts and Caledonians were one and the same people. But the question arises here, Of what race were the ancient Caledonians? Were they of Celtic origin, or were they of northern or Scythian descent, a branch of that great family which everywhere overran and occupied the territories possessed by the Celts? Each of these opinions has found its advocates, and has been supported by much erudition and ingenuity; but, without entering into the discussion of a subject so little interesting to the generality of readers, it may be sufficient to state, that the preponderance of evidence and authority is clearly in favour of •the latter hypothesis, which Pinkerton has rendered as clear as any matter of this kind can be expected to be made. ∙

As there has been great difference of opinion about the origin of the Picts, so there has likewise been much dispute about their language. There are several reasons which, according to some, make it plain that their tongue was the Gaelic or Celtic; and these reasons are considered as a further confirmation of their having been of Caledonian origin. Through the eastern and north-eastern coasts of Scotland, which were possessed by the Picts, we meet with an innumerable list of names of places, rivers, mountains, and other natural objects, which, it is said, are manifestly Gaelic. From a very old register of the priory of St Andrews,^[2. Dalrymple’s Collections, p. 122. ] it appears, that in the days of Hungus, the last Pictish king of that name, St Andrews was called Muk-ross ; and that the town now called Queensferry had then the name of Ardcliinneachan. But both these words are claimed as Gaelic. The former, we are told, signifies the heath or promontory of boars; and the latter, the height or peninsula of Kenneth. In the list of Pictish kings published by Father Innes, most of the names are apparently Gaelic, and in many instances the same with the names in the list of Scottish or Caledonian kings published by the same author. But Innes understood nothing of that language, and certainly his nomenclature is as little to be relied on as some of his etymologies. Besides, he forgets that the predominance of the Celts at a period long anterior to the settlement of the Picts, and the traces of their language still to be found in the names of places and natural objects, are points which, as far as we know, have never been seriously disputed. This, however, does not prove that the Picts were a branch of the great Celtic family, and there is no good evidence to show that they ever spoke the language of that people. On the contrary, it seems highly probable that they were of German or Scandinavian origin; and although almost no remains of their language now exist, it may be proved negatively, as indeed Pinkerton has done, that it could not have been Celtic.

The Picts of the earliest ages, as appears from the joint testimony of all writers who have examined the subject, possessed only the eastern and north-eastern coast of Scotland. On one side, the ancient Drumalbin, or that ridge of mountains reaching from Lochlomond, near Dumbarton, to the Moray Frith, was the boundary of the Pictish dominions. Accordingly we find in the life of St Columba, that, in journeying to the palace of Brudius, king of the Picts, he travelled over Drumalbin, the Dorsum Britan-ìiiae of Adomnan. On the other side, the territory of the Picts was bounded by the Roman province. After Britain was abandoned by the Emperor Honorius, the Picts and the Saxons were by turns masters of those countries which lie between the Frith of Forth and the river Tweed. We learn from Bede, that when he finished his Ecclesiastical History, the Saxons were masters of Galloway. The Picts, however, soon afterwards made a conquest of that country; so that, before the extinction of their monarchy, all the territories bounded on the one side by the Forth and the Clyde, and on the other by the Tweed and the Solway Frith, fell into their hands.

The history of the Picts, as well as that of all the other ancient inhabitants of Britain, is involved in great obscurity. The Irish historians give us a long list of Pictish kings, who reigned over Pictavia for the space of twelve or thirteen centuries before the Christian era. After them, Innes, in his Critical Essay, gives us a list of above fifty, of whom no less than five are said to have swayed the sceptre, each for a whole century. It is probable that these writers confounded the history of the Picts with that of their ancestors the ancient Caledonians. In any other view, their accounts of this people are highly fabulous, and undeserving of serious attention. The Picts, as has already been observed, were probably not known by that name before the third century; at least the first mention of them is made by Eumcnius the Panegyrist, in the passage already referred to. Further, Adomnan, abbot of Iona, is the first author who expressly mentions any Pictish king; and the next after him is the Venerable Bedc. We are informed by these two writers that St Columba converted Brudius, king of the Picts, to the Christian faith. But St Columba landed in Britain in the year of our era 565. Before that period we have no general record from which to ascertain so much as the name of any Pictish king. The history of Drust or Drost, who is said to have reigned over the Picts in the beginning of the fifth century, when St Ninian first preached the gospel to that nation, has all the appearance [7:17:740] of fiction.^[3. According to Camden, this conversion happened about the year G30, in the southern Pictish provinces; whilst the northern, which were separated by mountains, ware converted by St Columba. ] His having reigned a hundred years, and his putting an end to a hundred wars, are stories which exceed all the bounds of probability.

Brudius, the contemporary of St Columba, is therefore the first Pictish king mentioned by any writer of authority. But what figure his ancestors made, or who Were his successors on the throne of Pictavia, cannot be ascertained. Bede informs us, that, during the reign of one of them, the Picts killed in battle Egfred, king of Northumberland, and destroyed, the greater part of his army. The same author mentions another of their kings called Naitan, for whom he had a particular regard. It was to this Naitan that Ceolfrid, abbot of Wiremouth, wrote his famous letter concerning Easter and the Tonsure;^[4. We are told by some authors that St Columba taught the Piets to celebrate Easter always on a Sunday between the 14,tħ and 20th of March, and to observe a different method of tonsure from the Romans, leaving an imperfect appearance of a crown. This occasioned much dispute, till Naitan at length brought his subjects to the Catholic rule. In that age many of the Picts went on a pilgrimage to Rome, according to the custom of the times; and amongst the rest we find two persons mentioned in the Antiquities of St Peter’s Church. Αι∙ ierius> count of the Picts, and Syra, with Some of his countrymen, performed their vōw. ] a letter in which Bede himself is supposed to have had a principal hand. Roger Hoveden and Simon of Durham mention two other Pictish kings, Onnust and Kinoth ; the former of whom died in 761, whilst the latter flourished about the year 744, and gave an asylum to Alfred of Northumberland, who about that time was expelled from his kingdom. The accounts given by the Scottish historians, of several other Pictish kings, cannot be depended on; nor are the stories told by the British historians, Geoffroy of Monmouth and the author of the Eulogium Britanniae, worthy of much greater credit.

Towards the close of the ninth century, the Pictish nation was totally subdued by, or rather amalgamated with, the Scots, in the reign of Kenneth' Macalpin. Since that time their name has been lost in that of the conquerors, with whom they were incorporated; but they seem to have been treated by the Scottish kings with great lenity, so that for some ages afterwards they commanded great respect. The prior of Hogulstead, an old English historian, relates, that they made a considerable figure in the army of David the Saint, in his disputes with Stephen the king of England. In a battle fought in the year 1136, by the English on one side, and the Scots and Picts on the other, the latter insisted on their hereditary right of leading the van of the Scottish army, and were indulged in that demand by the king.

The principal seat of the Pictish kings was at Abernethy. Brudius, however, as appears from the accounts given by Adomnan, in his life of St Columba, had a palace at Inverness, which was probably near the extremity of his territory in that quarter; for there is no good reason to believe, with Camden, that this king had any property in the Western Isles, or that he made a gift of Iona to St Columba when he visited the saint in that island.

With respect to the manners and customs of the Picts, there is no reason to suppose that they were any other than those of the ancient Caledonians, of which many particulars are related by the Greek and Roman writers who have occasion to speak of those nations. Upon the decline of the Roman empire, cohorts of barbarians were raised, and Picts were invited to enter the service by Honorius; and when peace was everywhere restored, they were named Honoriaci. Those of them who served under Constantine opened the passes of the Pyrenean mountains, and let the barbarous nations into Spain. From this period may be dated the civilization of their manners, which happened after they had, first by themselves, and afterwards with the assistance of the Scots, ravaged the Roman province. This brought them in contact with civilization, and they profited by the collision.

Picts’ Wall, in Antiquity, a wall begun by the Emperor Hadrian, on the northern boundaries of England, to prevent the incursions of the Picts and Scots. It was at first made only of turf strengthened with palisades, but the Emperor Severus; coming in person into Britain, built it of solid stone. This wall, part of which still remains, began at the entrance of the Solway Frith, in Cumberland, and running north-eastward, extended to the German Ocean.