Noble sons were not raised by their birth parents, but sent for fostering by another family. It was considered a great honour to be entrusted with the upbringing of another’s child, and in Ireland ‘five hundred kyne and better’ were sometimes given as gifts to ensure the fosterage of a great man’s son. Fosterage was designed to create ties of brotherhood between two clans, and was practised by all Celtic societies, including the Picts – we know this because St Adomnan (St Columbus’ biographer) mentions that Brude mac Maelchon had a foster-father.
A grim-faced Pictish horse-lord leads his troops into battle on the Dupplin Cross.
The foster-father was responsible for providing a rounded education, which included physical, academic and artistic endeavours. Welsh, Irish and Highland sources paint a remarkably consistent picture of a young warrior’s education, which must have applied to the Picts as well. The ‘four and twenty games of the Britons’ give a neat list of the skills a well-rounded Celtic warrior was expected to acquire, including ‘Six Feats of Activity’ (hurling weights, running, leaping, swimming, wrestling and riding), ‘Four Exercises of Weapons’ (archery or javelin throwing, sword, sword-and-buckler and quarterstaff), ‘Three Rural Sports’ (hunting, fishing and hawking), ‘Seven Domestic Games’ (such as poetry, musicianship, heraldry and diplomacy) and four board games.
Much of this education was entrusted to the Druids and bards, or later the Celtic Church. Although there was a strong emphasis on eidetic memory, the Christian Picts knew how to write ogham, and there are references to ‘old books of the Picts’, so there is no reason to believe they were any less literate than their neighbours; a sword-chape from Shetland is even inscribed in Latin with ‘In the name of God the highest’, and the name of the owner, ‘Resad son of Spusscio’.
While intelligence and learning were highly valued, the martial arts were the first priority. Training began young; the Scots Highlanders began at age ten, the ancient Irish at seven. Several customs recorded in Wales, Scotland and Ireland show how important warfare was, even from childhood – for example, the right hand of the child would be left unblessed at Christening so that ‘unhallowed blows could be struck upon the enemy’, and even the first meat that a child received was served on the point of a sword.
Training in arms was systematic and sophisticated, and the Irish sagas contain a detailed syllabus of the chleas or ‘feats’ which a warrior was expected to master. These involved feats of dexterity (such as juggling swords), agility (such as the standing high jump or ‘salmon’s leap’), strength (such as tossing the caber), voice (the stunning ‘hero’s cry’), weapon handling, and finally the ‘spear vault’, where the champion would thrust a spear butt-first into the ground and ‘jump and perform on its point’. Many of these feats are also recorded in Highland folktales, indicating a longstanding tradition. Such feats could also be of great practical value in combat, and for the Picts, who generally fought unarmoured, the emphasis on agility and co-ordination would be vital. Some idea of their ability can be gained from the recruiting tests for the Irish fianna. ‘In a trench, the depth of the knee, the candidate, with a shield and hazel stick only, must protect himself from nine warriors, casting javelins at him from nine ridges away. Given the start of a single tree, in a thick wood, he has to escape unwounded from fleet pursuers. So skilful must he be in wood-running, and so agile, that in the flight no single braid of his hair is loosed by a hanging branch. In his course he must bound over branches the height of his forehead, and stoop under others the height of his knee, without delaying, or leaving a trembling branch behind. Without pausing in his flight he must pick from his foot the thorn it has taken up. In facing the greatest odds, the weapon must not shake in his hand.’
Among the very few pieces of possible Pictish helmets are fragments of embossed ornamental plates as found on 5th-7th century helmets such as the Sutton Hoo helmet. This reconstruction is by Warren Green.
The young Pict would probably practise swordplay using sticks or ‘cudgels’, like later Highlanders, and the Mabinogi records how the Peredur practised with stick and shield against one of his cousins ‘until his eyebrow sagged down over his eye and the blood ran in streams’. The Pictish warrior would be expected to master a variety of combat arts, including sword, single-handed axe and spear, alone and in combination with a buckler, two-handed spear, two-handed axe, dagger fighting and wrestling.
Games were an important tool for developing the skills needed for survival on the battlefield. Games like shinty, played throughout the Celtic world since the Iron Age, were considered ideal practice for fast-moving mêlées typical of Celtic warfare, and at night strategy games such as brandab were played to keep the mind sharp. However, the emphasis was primarily on field craft, agility and prowess in individual combat.
Most Pictish training would be done in the foster-father’s household, learning skills and techniques from veteran fighters. If the warrior was exceptionally talented, however, he might receive further training at special ‘martial academies’, and the Irish tales credited the Picts with having the best teachers of all. In the ‘Wooing of Emer’, Cú Chulainn is told, ‘if he could go and visit Domnall Mildemail, the War-Like in the land of Alba, he would fight more marvellously still; while if he visited Scathach, the Shadowy One, and studied the Warrior’s Art with her, he could beat any Hero in Europe’.
The feats taught by masters such as Domnall and Scatha were highly potent, practical moves. For example, when Cú Chulainn fights ‘Cochar Cruibne, one of Scathach’s soldiers, and a very hardened man…Cochar tried his special tricks of battle, but Cú Chulainn parried them as if he had studied them his whole life’. Here, the ‘special tricks’ are probably advanced techniques of swordsmanship.
Upon reaching adulthood the warriors would be required to give public proof of both their valour and skill at arms, usually by participating in a raid and returning with some kind of trophy. The Middle Irish ‘Fitness of Names’ states ‘each young man of theirs [Ulster] who first took up arms would enter the province of Connacht on a foray or seek to slay a human being’, a custom still recorded in 17th-century Scotland. This ancient Celtic custom of headhunting for trophies also appears to have been practised by the Picts under at least some circumstances; on several occasions the Picts are recorded as beheading defeated enemy leaders, a severed head is carved between two raven-masked figures on a stone from Papil, Shetland, while piles of severed heads are clearly depicted on the battle-face of Sueno’s Stone.
The fully trained Pictish warrior was part of a noble elite, and the right to bear arms was the duty and privilege of the aristocracy. The warrior would be a proud, boastful and confident professional fighter. Several Pictish stones show war bands, and there appear to have been two classes of soldier depicted: the mounted horse-warrior and the spear-armed infantryman. However, determining the exact structure of Pictish warrior bands is difficult from the available evidence.
The young Pictish warrior would aim to join a king’s war band, and expect to receive hospitality, arms and treasure in return for service. They were not exactly mercenaries, but adventurous young nobles who offered their military skill to any leader who rewarded them with fine weapons, mead, feasts and praise from the bards. Warriors earned their living by bearing arms, and Athenaeus quotes one old Celtic hero as saying, ‘My pointed spear, my sharp sword, my glittering shield are my wealth and riches; with them I plough, with them I sow, and with them I make my wine; whoever dare not resist my pointed spear, my sharp sword, and my glittering shield, prostrates himself before, and adores me as his lord and king’.
Dark Age Celtic weaponry.
(a) Small Irish shield boss, Lagore.
(b) Arrowheads from Buiston, Ayrshire.
(c) ‘Fire arrow’ head from Dumbarton.
(d) Irish ribbed spearhead, Co. Offaly.
(e) 6th century British spearhead.
(f) Scottish javelin head, Dunadd.
(g) British javelin head, Buiston.
(h) Irish axe head, similar to those on Pictish carvings.
(i) Romano-British spatha hilt.
(j) Hilt from Co. Antrim, Ireland. The pommel bears some resemblance to the Norries Law sword.
(k) & (l) Typical wide-bladed Irish swords.
These sentiments still underlay 16th-century Celtic society, when John Major wrote (rather less sympathetically) that the High-landers, ‘delight in the chase and a life of indolence; their chiefs eagerly follow bad men if only they may not have the need to labour; taking no pains to earn their own livelihood, they live upon others, and follow their own worthless and savage chief in all evil courses sooner than they will pursue an honest industry’.
The primary military unit in Dark Age Celtic society was the band of mounted warriors who served the king. Caesar called them equites and in Wales they were called the teulu (‘family’). Ireland had several such fraternities, of which the ‘Red Branch’ of Ulster is the most famous and distinguished, but others recorded in the Irish annals include the Clanna Morna, Clana Baoisgne and Clanna Deagha; the frequency of the word clanna in these titles indicates the importance of kinship. Others had more colourful names, such as the ‘Men of the Lion’, ‘Men of the Green Swords’, ‘Men of Snow’, ‘Knights of the Calf’ and, in Munster, the ‘Knights of the Golden Collar’. The last group derived their name from a golden chain worn around the neck, like the torc that was indicative of status throughout Celtic Europe. Identical fraternities must have existed among the Picts, as at least ten massive silver neck-chains inscribed with Pictish symbols have been found throughout Scotland: these must have originally hung around the neck of campaigning horse-warriors. The fact that most have been found outside Pictish areas no doubt marks a sorry end for the original owners.
A Pictish war-band accompanied by war dogs, on a stone from Dull.
An alternative to serving in a king’s troop was to join a mercenary band where a young warrior could gain experience and accumulate wealth. In Ireland these bands were known as the fianna, and it was expected that noble sons would spend their youth in such a band as part of their education: it was even said ‘every one is a fian-member until he comes into an estate’. Several years of service as a fian might even be necessary before the young warrior was considered worthy of joining a king’s war band.
The understandable desire to segregate sexually mature, unmarried males from the rest of society has close parallels in many other tribal systems, and was an ancient Celtic practice; the historian Polybius describes a group called the Gaesatae, and the Gundestrup Cauldron features a row of beardless, spear-armed youths. In Wales they were known as cantrefs, and the medieval Gaels called them ceathernach, anglicised as ‘kern’ in Ireland and ‘cateran’ in Scotland.
The Fell pony, an ancient breed that is probably the large, heavyset horse shown on some Pictish stones.
The fianna were bound closely together as a pagan warrior cult, and when a new warrior joined he would undergo an initiation ceremony and undertake solemn oaths. Irish monks condemned them as the ‘sons of death’ and recorded that the fian made a ‘vow of evil’ and wore diabolo instinctu or ‘diabolical marks’, suggesting warrior tattoos like the Picts. The fian’s oath of fealty was to their own chiefs, who were considered kings in their own right, and like other sub-kings were theoretically answerable to the High King.
Service in the fianna was a noble calling and a social service, and the new recruit was obliged to forswear the usual rights of compensation in case of death. Irish tales portray the fianna acting as a cross between the High King’s paramilitary police force and a wandering band of ‘knights errant’, who were in high demand to provide military services for clans that did not have a ‘Red Branch’ of their own. When they were not needed the fianna supported themselves by hunting in the forests, and their life in the wilderness was often compared to that of wolves, and called ‘wolfing’ in the Irish annals. The Roman Marcellinus seems to refer to similar groups in the mid-4th century when he recorded that ‘the Attacots warlike band, and the Scots, wandering up and down, committed great depredations’.
In Ireland, the presence of fianna bands can be tracked archaeologically by the presence of fulacht fiadh or fulacht fian, pre-prepared stone-lined cooking sites scattered throughout the wilderness for hunting bands to use as needed. In Scotland any such traces have long since been obliterated, but hunting was clearly an important part of Pictish noble life, and the extremely rich body of fianna lore in Highland folk tradition would seem to suggest that such bands existed in early medieval Scotland. However, their position in Pictish society is uncertain. ‘Wolfing’ was not an easy life, and the Irish fianna often drifted into brigandage, but there is no indication of widespread brigandage or instability in Pictland. It seems likely that inexperienced Pictish warriors had their service tied to particular clans or lords, rather than acting as freebooting mercenaries.
In times of crisis Celtic armies were augmented by foot soldiers provided by the lower ranks, who owed a certain amount of military service to their local rulers. Members of this class also provided the warrior’s full-time servants, popularly known as ‘ghillies’. Records of Pictish musters have not survived, but 12th-century Scotland retained a system which had its root in older tribal customs, and may provide some clues. The ‘free service’ was owed by freeholders, including the nobility, who were expected to have some amount of armour and to be mounted (everyone who possessed land had to keep at least one horse), while the ‘Scottish Service’ consisted of the peasantry, who had to present themselves twice a year, armed with bow, spear or axe. Although not professional warriors, the lower classes of Celtic society took the privilege of bearing arms seriously; in the 13th century Gerald of Wales wrote that his countrymen were
entirely bred up to the use of arms; for not only the nobles but all the people are trained to war, and when the trumpet sounds the alarm the husbandman rushes as eagerly from his plough as the courtier from his court…they anxiously study the defence of their country and their liberty; for these they fight, for these they undergo hardships; and for these willingly sacrifice their lives; they esteem it a disgrace to die in bed, and honour to die in the field of battle…In time of peace the young men, by penetrating the deep recesses of the woods and climbing the tops of mountains, learn by practice to endure fatigue through day and night; and as they meditate on war during peace they acquire the art of fighting by accustoming themselves to the use of the spear and by inuring themselves to hard exercise.
These sentiments were echoed in 1250, when an Englishman wrote;
The londe Scotia hath the name of Scottes that there dwelle. The nem are lygthe of harte, fiers and couragious on theyr enmyes. They love nyghe as well death as thraldome, and they account it for slouth to dye in bed, and a worshyppe and vertue to deye in a felde fyghtynge agynst enmyes.
Pictish costume. (a) A shepherd wearing deeply pleated material, perhaps a leine or belted plaid.
(b) Two axemen grappling, wearing simple short tunics, from Glamis Manse. Such tunics are the most commonly depicted form of Pictish costume.
(c) A cowled Pict with baggy shorts, from St Vigeans.
(d) David from the St Andrews Sarcophagus, wearing what appears to be a belted plaid. Although the sarcophagus is unusual, the horseman matches closely with other Pictish carvings, so it can be argued that David is based on a contemporary Pictish shepherd as well.