Who Made the Scottish People... The Picts

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I'm Bruce Fummey. Now, if you follow this channel   then you know that I've been making a series of short videos on the peoples who made Scotland:  the Scots, the Britons,  the Angles, the Vikings  and today I face the most daunting episode  the Picts. The reason that this is the most daunting episode  is that the Picts covered not only the largest landmass in this nascent   Scotland that we've been describing, but also the longest time period.  Depending on how you define them we probably need to cover pre-Roman through to early medieval,  but here's the thing, tying them down is such a problem.  Now it doesn't help that the records that we have often have been written down by,  at best, self-interested outside parties and, at worst, their sworn enemies.  Add to that the fact that they're the group in which most of the   viewers seem to have the greatest emotional investment, and putting your finger on them is like trying to   squeeze the ghost of a tooth fairy, back into the tube when she's greased head to toe in lube.  Actually that sounded more sexual than mysterious didn't it?  but when you wake up in the morning  there'll be an apology on your pillow.  The point is that you may be watching this  hoping that a stand-up comic come tour guide  is going to give you some deep revelation  of certainty about an ancient people  when academics can't entirely agree on the territory they occupied,  the time that they existed, the language that they spoke,  or whether it was mum or dad that passed on their inheritance.  All I can do is what I'll always try and do, and that's give you something to think   about and take you someplace interesting. So if you're interested in the people, places   and events in Scottish history, then click the  subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen.  In the meantime, let me tell you their story. Defining what the Picts were isn't easy,  so let s start with what they weren't. Some folk think that the Picts were some   sort of homogeneous group that were around for a short period, and then ceased to exist and did nothing but paint themselves blue and fight everyone around them,  and of course that s ridiculous. It confuses Picts with Glasgow Rangers fans.  Don't worry there'll be a Celtic joke coming along soon.  I'll maybe put up a picture of their trophy cabinet.   That's the St Johnstone trophy cabinet.  Now the origin myth of the Picts was that  they sailed from Scythia in the east,  reached the Gaels in Ireland and asked  for some land on which to settle.  The Irish told them that there was no space on their island,  but they knew of an island close by, and if they look just to the east,   they'd find it, but the Picts had no women,  so they asked if the Irish would give them some women,  because let's be honest, it's women who build a nation, whether they get the kudos or not.  The Irish agreed, but only on condition   that if, in the future, there was any doubt about kingship,  that the king should be chosen from the female line.  A further story is that the over king of the   Picts was a guy called Cruithne, who had seven sons.  They spread out over the North of what  is now Scotland and gave us the different   geographical regions and names, some of which remain to this day. In Gaelic the Picts are still called na Cruithnich. Needless to say, both these stories came from writings in the Gaelic language much later, and  at a time when it was politically convenient to describe Pictland as a top-down, unified kingdom,   that had always been such, broken into regions,  the king of which just happened to have  a Pictish mother and a foreign father.  So, no creative licence there. Now I'm not saying that the Picts   didn't come from the East. I'm not saying that they didn't sail   to Ireland only for the Irish to say: Well now, there's another island   twice the size of this one, and you sailed past it to get here.  To be fair, you probably didn't notice it because of the fog.  Anyway that's got plenty of space, if you can get there before BREXIT.  Here you better take some of our women, before Phil Lynott gets them.   That's more Pakistani than Irish right? I'm no saying that it didn't happen,  it's just that the Romans wrote their account first and well, you know,  tattooed, blue faced, fighty types sell more papers.  Now here's a short aside. These Picts continue to be a key political   force right up until the 9th Century, six hundred years.  So the idea that Picts can be defined as a single thing  is like saying that a Scot, who fought Edward   Longshanks under Norman Feudalism, is the same as the Scots who campaign   for independence on Twitter today, or that those Scots are the same as   those folk throughout the world who watch  these videos, and claim Scottishness.  They have different accents, eating habits and political beliefs   Now, they all cling to some unifying history,  they claim to share the same name, but they're far from a homogeneous group.  In his book, 'A New History of the Picts', Stuart McHardy suggests that maybe we've   got the Roman origin of the name wrong, that from the Borders to Shetland,   right up until recent times, the name in the oral culture, can be   found as an indigenous word Pechts, meaning something like ancestors.  Maybe these were the hunter gatherer, then farmer migrations of pre-history,   who formed the indigenous people who, over time,   went from hunting woolly mammoths with spears, to showing pictures of steak pie on Facebook.  Now the pre-Roman ancient Greek explorer  Pytheas, called the island and people Prettanike,  (the island of the painted ones). Romans just arrived and changed the P for a B.  Of course, three hundred years later, much of the island was Romanised,  they wore togas instead of tattoos, but up in the north,  where the lands were conquered, but never subdued,  where those primitive, painted people perennially persisted with their pointless alliteration.  If Stuart McHardy is right, calling them Pictii, or painted people,  instead of Pechts, the ancestors,  might have been no more than a bit of name calling in the playground,  or maybe the pub. Pechts did ye say?  Aye Pictii more like. Painted tosspots.  Haw, haw, haw Pictii that's brilliant man. Hilarious haw, haw, haw.  I'm telling wee Rab. Haw Rabius Minimus.  Did you hear Willius Maximus there? Haw, haw, haw. He just called the Pechts, Pictii  He's pure raj man. Bunch of painted dobbers.  I think the subtitles for this bit will just say:  Bruce hilariously caricatures a Roman legionary as a Glasgow ned,  for the folks south of the border, or across the Atlantic. You know what I mean.  Incidentally I did an extended interview  with Stuart McHardy and that's available   for my Patreon members now. Now if you're watching this, there's   a fair chance that you already know that  during Rome's 1st Century, Flavian dynasty,  Agricola invaded, then retrenched. In the 2nd Century, Emperor   Hadrian retrenched further, and built a wall, then Antoninus Pious invaded to build a more   northerly wall between the Forth and Clyde, but they all had to fall back again.  In the 3rd Century, there was another invasion under Rome's African Emperor Septimius Severus  Now obviously he didn't look African in Harry Potter, but that's more historical revisionism isn't it?  Anyway he died at York and the Romans  started squabbling amongst themselves.  During all this period the Romans had identified two different groups in what we now call Scotland.  The Maetae, broadly south of the Forth Clyde line, and the Caledonians to the north.  Now the Romans saw them as two groups, but I'm pretty sure that the groups themselves saw many   more subdivisions into smaller tribes. From the Roman point of view,   the southern Maetae at least partially  came on board with the Roman project,  but the Caledonians in the north, they were a stubborn lot,  and by the time these invasions in the 1st Century, 2nd   Century and 3rd Century were over, the Romans were calling them Picts  and the Pechts seemed to take it as a badge of pride.  By the time the Romans left, Pictland wasn't a nation state,  but whether through opposition to outside  forces, or the imposition by internal strongmen,  tribes were starting to consolidate. These strong men   may have got their authority from their mums, and kingship may indeed have been matrilineal,  the debate will continue, but we're also getting into   that period, where we see the crafted  stones that the Picts are famed for  and it's time that I show you, why I brought you here. This is Tap O Norh  Here on a hill near Huntly in Aberdeenshire, is a huge hillfort.  It's one of the biggest post Roman habitations in Britain.  This was occupied throughout the  timescale that we've discussed.  People lived here from prehistoric, through Roman Iron Age to Pictish proper.  In fact this is the biggest settlement that we know of in the Pictish period.  800 dwelling sites have been found in and around this hill, over an area of 50 football pitches.  At the bottom of the hill, two miles from here, is a place called Rhynie  where you can find hugely significant Pictish carved stones.  It's estimated that 4000 folk may have lived here. Now these were not just painted savages.  This was a Pictish town.  Activity, infrastructure, social structure and political organisation.  Now talking about political organisation, just south of here is the Mounth,  that's the rocky extension of the Highlands  that stretches from the mountains of the west   towards the coast near Stonehaven. That mountainous area down to the   sea, was a dividing line between northern Picts and southern Picts  and as Pictland consolidated, a warlord in one or other  would seek control as the overall King of Pictland.  In this series, I've been trying to give you  a picture of the kingdoms of the Scots,   the Britons, the Angles and the Picts around the 6th to the 7th century.  And for the Picts, that time, and a couple of centuries after,  was a prolific time for those carved stones for which they're so famous.  You can find them at the foot of this hill at Rhynie, at Aberlemno, in the Historic Scotland Museum at Meigle,  at the church at Trinity Gask, and all over what was Pictish territory.  But something else happened in that 7th Century.  To help you understand I made a video  called The Pictish Battle of Bannockburn   and you should watch that, in fact you can come back and   click the white tab up there. That battle of Dun Nechtan did a lot to   further consolidate the Picts into a kingdom, a kingdom that would go on to take   over the kingdom of Scots militarily, and then in turn be taken over BY them politically,   culturally and linguistically.  And through all of that, you can trace the  distinction between the northern  and southern Picts, the people south of   the Mounth and the men of Moray to its north. You can trace it all the way from Pictish times,   through Macbeth, to David I and Robert the Bruce. You can see it in the ghastly end   that I describe in my video 'Forgotten Kings of Scotland'.  Folk have messaged me for some time  to make a video about the Picts.  Now, I don't know if this what you wanted or expected. I'm sure you'll let me know in the comments section below, but it seems to me that the Picts are not a single, homogeneous   people that can be defined in a short video, and maybe that's part of their enduring mystique.  If you want to know about some of  the other peoples that made Scotland,  A video will be coming on screen now.  In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.
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Channel: Scotland History Tours
Views: 59,946
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Keywords: tales from scotlands history, key dates in scottish history, stories from scotlands history, stories from scotlands past, smile about scottish history, tales from scotlands past, day out Scotland, some Scottish humour and history, Bruce Fummey, Scotland history tours, Scottish history tour guides, scottish history for dummies, The Picts, Tap o Noth, Pictish hillforts, hillforts, Dark age Scotland
Id: Dk0C57woplQ
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Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)
Published: Tue Oct 12 2021
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