| The Picts were known to have existed from about 7000 B.C.
until about the year 845 A.D. An interesting feature of Pict society was that
the crown was passed using a matrilineal basis; that is to say the crown was
passed through the mother, and Pictish kings were not succeeded by their sons,
but by their brothers or nephews or male cousins traced through the female line.
Historians have traced a complicated series of intermarriages
between seven Pict royal houses. The end of the Pict royal bloodline came when
the crown of Alba and the title "Rex Pictorum", King of the Picts, passed to a
Celtic Scot by the name of Kenneth MacAlpin, a son of a Pictish princess.
Kenneth MacAlpin harbored a familial hatred of the Picts arising from his
father's kingship over the Scots having been lost to the Pictish king Oengus,
who had ruled as both the King of the Picts and the Scots. In an act known as
"MacAlpin's Treason", Kenneth murdered the members of the remaining seven royal
houses thus securing the Alba throne for the Scots, and the eventual erasure
from history of the Pictish race, culture and history. T he
men and the women fought side-by-side with their
tattoo designs displayed proudly on
their naked bodies. Although Rome engaged the Picts in constant battles,
Rome never succeeded in subjugating either them or their land. The famous
Hadrian's Wall, built by Emperor Hadrian, was itself an ultimately futile
attempt to keep the Picts from their frequent forays against the Romans in the
south of Britain. The wall stretched 70 miles from east to west coasts, and
extensions made to it by subsequent Roman leaders were all to no avail. The Romans referred to these tattooed tribes in Latin as "Pictii", which
translates as "The Painted Ones". This was in reference to the elaborate
tribal tattoos with which
the Picts decorated their entire bodies. |
|
There is little known of the Picts today, which adds weight to the words of the
Pictish chief, Calgacus, recorded by Roman writer, Eumenius; "We, the most
distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded...by
our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name...Beyond us lies
no nation, nothing but waves and rocks"
(c) John Corney 2004 |
