William Arthur Cummins

Just finished this little gem of a book. The author makes the most of the scanty evidence in existence about the Pictish nation in the Dark Ages of Scotland. Most of this consists of the Pictish Chronicles, two separate lists of kings, giving names and years of reign, corroborating data from the Ulster Chronicle of Ireland and the life of St. Columba (who was granted the isle of Iona by a Pictish king), as well as the king lists of both Wales and Scotland. Also used are relevant snippets of Bede, Nennius, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Not a lot, but some interesting conclusions can be inferred from them.

Most of the data covers the interaction between the Picts of the eastern two-thirds of 'Scotland' and the Irish Scotti tribe of Dalriada, roughly modern Argyll in western modern Scotland. After showing the validity of the Pictish Chronicle by comparing it against the Ulster Chronicle mostly using the dates of events in the life of St. Columba, the crux of the book lays out a rough outline of a probable history of a large nation of unknown people (as far as where exactly they came from), and a supposition as to where they went. As opposed to a fictional story, I have no problem throwing out a 'spoiler' to a history, so the author's theory is simply that the Picts never went anywhere. The key to this to my mind is the simple sentence 'Over the centuries, the English language had far more success than the English armies.' The different names applied to 'Pictavia' reflect the changes in language throughout the British Isles, and the Picts simply lost their language, slowly, to a more succinct and versatile English. Thus, they became referred to as Scots and so they became Scots, simple as that. Kenneth mac Alpin appears in both the Pictish Chronicle and the list of Scottish kings, and is referred to in various sources as both king of the Scots and King of the Picts. There is absolutely no reference to any mass defeat or extinction/exodus, so the simplest solution is that they never left and just merged in with the Scotti. Over this span, the region went from being called Pictavia to Alban to Fortren (a diplomatic name for an allied region against the Vikings) to Scotland.

All in all, quite a lot of information gleaned from scattered and lean sources. There is even a bit of discussion about Pictish standing stones and an attempt to understand, if not decipher the symbols on them. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of the British Isles, but probably pretty drab for someone who could care less.… (meer)