Pictish Warrior AD 297

The weapons wielded by the early Picts must have derived substantially from those of the Caledonian tribes. This warrior (1) is clad in long tartan trousers or trews, and his helmet (2) is of the contemporary British type, decorated with enamel in a similar ‘Ultimate La Tene’ style to his bodypaint. Tacitus noted that the Caledonians used small round bucklers (3), while Herodian said they used long oval shields (4). The main missile weapon was the spear (5), which had a hollow brass butt and was rattled to frighten enemies. He wears an armband (9), and a torc (10) around his neck.

His sword (6, and scabbard 6a) is a native British type, although Tacitus describes the Caledonian swords at Mons Grampius as not just ‘long’, but as ingentes gladii (‘giant swords’). Such remarkable language was also used to describe the hasta ingens and hasta enorma (‘enormous lance’) in the German arsenal of the same era, referring to 2.5 metre-long (7 ft) fire-hardened oak halberds, some of which have been excavated in Lower Saxony. The illustrated weapon (7) is a hypothetical fire-hardened wooden sword that may have been the Caledonian equivalent.

Did the Picts fight naked?
(a) The ‘naked’ spearman as depicted on Collessie, Balgavies and Rhynie. His large rectangular shield is that of the ancient Caledonians shown on the nearby Antonine Wall, and probably does not depict a contemporary Pict, but rather an ancient hero.
(b) Two ‘naked’ Picts from Shandwick, Easter Ross. This is a hunting scene, not a battle, and these figures may either be engaged in a formal duel, or perhaps a sword-dance, in either case suggesting a ritual element to such combat.
(c) Two Picts from St Andrews duel ‘naked’, while a female figure, also seemingly naked, dances between them, above two ravens.
(d) Spearman with only a cloak, from Eassie, Angus.

Also depicted is a carnyx (8), an extraordinary Celtic trumpet shown on the Gundestrup Cauldron. This example, recovered from a bog near Deskford, Scotland, dates from between AD 100-300 and has a handsome wild boar’s head, with eyes of red enamel and a movable wooden tongue. Diodorus Siculus reported ‘their trumpets again are of a peculiar barbarian kind; they blow into them and produce a harsh sound which suits the tumult of war’; in fact, the ‘barbarian’ carnyx is one of the most sophisticated musical instruments ever made, as well as one of the loudest. A carnyx was capable of a startling range of tones, from a deep drone to a high, shrill trumpet, textured by a buzz, growl or rattling drone. Outdoors, the carnyx could be heard at a tremendous distance, as it was held vertically four feet over the heads of the battling warriors, and both the wooden tongue and the jaws moved as if alive.

In this plate the legendary Scatha is shown teaching Cú Chulainn a special technique or ‘feat’ with sword and buckler. According to the Irish tales, Scatha’s island was found either ‘in the east of Alba’ or on the Isle of Skye, where local tradition places it at Dunsgaith (Dun Scatha).

It is perhaps striking that specialised institutions existed for advanced martial training, and that these arts would be taught by women. The participation of women might be explained by the spiritual or magical aspect of their activities. In Ireland it was a druidess, Bodbmall, who trained Finn mac Cumaill; Buanann ‘taught the use of arms to the fiana’, and in Wales, Peredur was trained by nine ‘witches’ who fought in helmets and armour and had the Druidic gift of prophesy. In Pictland Scatha, the ‘Shadowy One’, was described as a prophetess and sage, and Cú Chulainn had to fight her rival Aife and several other ‘hags’. When Fionn chased Oscar and Diarmuid to Pictland and was unable to overcome them, he also enlisted a ‘hag’ to ‘practice magic against him’.

This supernatural side to female involvement suggests that the women warriors were not merely martial artists, but represented a Druidic class, perhaps priestesses teaching the secret arts of the war goddess to a few chosen heroes. The Celtic war-goddess, best known as the Irish triplicate Morrigan, appeared under many names but was always translated as Victoria, ‘the victorious one’, by the Romans, and was invoked by both the Gauls and Britons before battle.

‘Boudica then raised her hands to heaven and said ‘I thank you, Andrasta, and call upon you as woman speaking to woman…I beg you for victory and preservation of liberty…Mistress, be forever our leader’.

The Morrigan was closely associated with ravens, for obvious reasons; clouds of carrion birds would follow Celtic armies, eager to feed off the inevitable dead. Like the Norse Valkyries, who carried the dead from the field of battle to paradise in Valhalla, the Celtic Morrigan also performed a function as a ‘psychopomp’, devouring the bodies of the fallen heroes in the form of a carrion bird and transporting them to the otherworld. The Celtiberians saw the Morrigan in the form of their local carrion bird, as Silius Italicus noted: ‘…for they believe that the soul goes up to the gods in heaven, if the body is devoured on the field by the hungry vulture’.

The Morrigan survived as an important being even after the coming of Christianity, and in the 9th-century Irish tales, morrigna were harpy-like monsters in female form, ‘hooded crows, or women of the sid…not demons of hell but demons of the air’ who dwelt ‘in rough places yonder…where the raven-women instigate battle’ and then claimed their due after the slaughter. Even in 18th-century Scotland, the Cailleach or Skadi was feared in the Highlands in the form of raven and hooded crow.

There may also be a connection with the strange bird-masked figures on Pictish stones. A clue to their nature can be found when Cú Chulainn fights the ‘one-eyed hag’ in Pictland, who is named ‘Eis Enchenn, the bird-headed’, mother of three of Aife’s champions. ‘Enchenn’ here is an enchendach, a bird-feather mask or cloak worn in totemistic ceremonies, and mentioned as being worn by druids such as Cathbad. This would suggest that the Pictish figures are raven-masked priests or priestesses, whose appeasement of the war goddess may have been considered too important to be extirpated by the Pictish church. Similarly, the carved deer heads may also have been ritual masks, and dog or wolf-masked figures are also recorded on Pictish stones. Such costumes may have been more than ceremonial; the Black Book of Carmarthen contains a reference to Arthur fighting dog-heads at Dun-Eidyn (Edinburgh):

Strange bird-headed figures often adorn Pictish stones.
(a) from Murthly in Perthshire, this may be a representation of ‘Eis Enchenn, the bird-headed’ fighting the Hound of Ulster, or represent the rival warrior cults of the raven-goddess and the ‘dog-heads’.
(b) from Rossie Priory.
(c) from Hunter’s Hill, with a smaller animal-headed attendant.
(d) two raven-masked figures holding a severed head between their beaks, from Papil, Shetland.

Though Arthur was but playing,

blood was flowing

in the hall of Afarnach

fighting with a hag.

He pierced the cudgel-head

in the halls of Dissethach

On the mount of Eidyn

they fought Dog-heads;

by the hundred they fell.

Both the Picts and the Scots were known to the Romans primarily as sea raiders, and sea power was a vital part of their military strength. Celtic boats were currachs, made from hide stretched over a frame. Caesar implies frames of wickerwork, while the monks of Iona ordered wood for a ‘long ship’, probably for the frame and mast.

At up to 50 feet long, currachs were not small. Allectus’ coins show them as high-riding vessels with up to seven oars each side and a single sail, while the Irish Broighter model boat has nine rowing benches and oar holes through the hull, a steering oar set on the port side, and a mast and yard. The St Orland’s Stone shows a Pictish boat with several oars, and the Dalriadan Senchus Fer n Alban specifies seven-bench boats. Medieval Highland galleys were crewed by two or three men per oar in wartime, and Adomnan’s descriptions confirm that the Scottish ships could carry over 20 people, indicating at least two men per oar. With navies as large as the 140 boats maintained by Dalriada, and the 150 Pictish ships wrecked off Ross in 736, the northern Celts could swiftly transport thousands of warriors huge distances by sea, and fight major campaigns from Orkney to Man. At least one great sea battle is recorded between Cenel nGarbar and Cenel nLoairn in 719.

The Pictish boat from the Cossans cross-slab. Weathering has obscured the figure in the prow, and it is often mistaken for a ‘large object’.

These ships were capable of long voyages, and Tim Severin’s recreation voyage in the Brendan proved that currachs could sail intact as far as America. In the 4th century Theodosius pursued a Pictish fleet to ‘Thule’, which was the name Ptolmy, Pytheas and the Irish monks gave to Iceland. Hordes of Roman coins from the period AD 270-305 have been found in Iceland, presumably placed there by retreating Pictish pirates. This plate shows a Pictish currach approaching the coast of Iceland in order to recover their looted Roman silver.

The early Pictish elite supported itself by raiding Roman Britain from land and sea. To them, Britain was a rich, under-defended land, and silver hordes such as the Mildenhall Treasure and the Traprain Law Horde were clearly buried to hide riches from Pictish raiders.

From the first mention of the Picts, raiding was their primary occupation, which the Romans seemed powerless to stop. In AD 343 the emperor came to Britain and entered in to truce with them, but by 360 ‘savage tribes of Scotti and Picti, having broken the truce, were ravaging the part of Roman Britain in the neighbourhood of the wall’, and over the next seven years ‘the Picti, Saxones, Scotti and Atecotti harassed the Britons continually’.

The raids of the 360s were not the random rages of uncivilised barbarians, but appear to have been carefully planned and coordinated by an unusually capable man, almost certainly the Pictish High King. He had no thought of conquest, only of the riches that Roman Britain could provide, and his masterplan, the Conspiratio Barbarica, was a stroke of criminal genius.

The Picts coordinated with tribes in Ireland, the Hebrides, and as far away as Gaul and Germany. Ships were built, war bands trained and assembled. Front-line militia units and agents of the Arcani (a kind of Roman secret service) were bribed to keep silent. Then, on the appointed day in 368, a single massive attack was launched on the Roman Empire. The Picts, Scots and Saxons launched hundreds of multiple sea-borne raids, and more Picts poured over the wall. The Alemanni broke into Gaul and other tribes attacked central Europe. Fullufaudes, ‘Duke of the Britons’, was ambushed with his army as he rushed from York. Nectarides, ‘Count of the Saxon Shore’, and his fleet were destroyed at sea by the Saxons. The badly mauled army retreated in confusion and sat immobilised in their barracks, giving the Picts free reign throughout the country.

Although it was the most devastating raid ever reported from Britain, it was not a conquest, and the death toll was probably fairly low. The attacks on the Continent had little hope of equal success, but they did prevent fresh Roman forces from being immediately dispatched to Britain. By the time Theodosius arrived with reinforcements, the province had been picked clean, and many of the warrior bands had returned northwards.

Theodosius pursued the remaining raiding parties but a whole year passed before peace was restored. The Roman fleet conducted reprisal attacks on the Orkneys and Shetlands, and once more the Romans attempted to create a new province between the Walls. However, the slaves were gone and could not be replaced, and the Britons’ confidence in Rome had been shattered. Most significantly, a whole tribe of captured Alemanni were shipped over as foederati, marking the start of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain.

During the period of Roman collapse the Picts expanded southwards under Drust Mac Erp, who ‘reigned for 100 years and fought 100 battles’. Gildas said ‘they seized the whole of the extreme north of the island from its inhabitants, right up to the wall’, and raided deep into southern Britain, resulting in the need for Vortigern to invite Saxon warriors ‘into the island like wolves into the fold, to beat back the peoples of the north’. Initially Hengist’s cousins Octa and Ebissa attacked Orkney and established themselves ‘as far as the borders of the Picts’, but the Picts soon formed an alliance in support of the Saxon rebellion. Drust Mac Erp seems to have finally met his match in the legendary Arthur, who is believed to have fought several battles with the Picts, and expelled them from the Lowlands. This plate shows a Pictish raiding party surprising Romano-British defenders on Hadrian’s Wall, as described by Gildas: ‘there was no respite from the barbed grappling irons flung by their naked opponents, which tore our wretched countrymen from the walls and dashed them to the ground’.

The Boighter model of an Irish currach, from around 100 BC. Such boats were the mainstay of Celtic seapower until replaced by the Viking longship.

The remains of Pictish armour and weapons are few and fragmentary, and reconstructions must be made by matching the iconographic evidence with contemporary finds from elsewhere in Britain, Ireland and Europe.

The helmet types (1) and (2) are typical Dark Age helmets, based on late Roman models, and most likely looted from Roman, British or Saxon foes. The swords are of various styles; (3) is similar to contemporary Irish swords, with bone and antler fittings, (4) is based on a possible 10th-century Pictish sword in the National Museum of Scotland, and is what most Pictish carvings appear to depict, while (5) shows an Anglian influence, topped by a pommel from Moray. The scabbard (6) is tipped by a decorated chape from the St Ninian’s Horde. (7) is a reconstruction of the late-Roman model crossbow, a weapon that uniquely survived in Pictish use throughout the Dark Ages, primarily as a hunting weapon.

The shields are of the basic types shown on carved stone; (8) is square, (9) is the H-shape held by ‘David’ on the St Andrew’s sarcophagus, and (10) is round. All of these would be held with a simple punch-grip.

Axes and spears came in a wide variety of head shapes. Shown here are (11) a simple wedge, (12) a distinctive Pictish square head, (13) a two-handed battle-axe and (14) a stout spear with a broad blade, as described in The Destruction of Da Dergas Hostel.

During the mid-7th century Northumbria expanded aggressively into southern Scotland, and Bede claimed that the Northumbrian king ‘subjected most of the Picts to English rule’. The Picts were certainly not conquered or occupied, but it seems Iona pressured them to accept Northumbrian overlordship, since both Oswald and Oswiu (sons of King Aethelfrith of Bernicia) grew up in exile in Iona and supported the Columban church in Northumbria.

In 664 the southward-expanding Celtic church met the Romans coming north, and held the famous Synod of Whitby. When Northumbria switched allegiance to Rome, Iona withdrew its recognition of Northumbrian suzerainty. Oswiu’s successor, Ecgfrith, attempted to regain this militarily, and in 672 he massacred a Pictish army at Carron. Afterwards the Picts were again ‘reduced to slavery and remained subject under the yoke of captivity’, indicating that Ecgfrith extracted heavy tribute from them.

A medieval Hebridean grave slab showing the quilted leather aketon or cotun, perhaps worn by the Golspie Pict and the ‘king’ on Sueno’s Stone. Usually believed to have arrived in Europe with the Crusaders, the Aztecs also invented similar armour, so an independent development by the Picts cannot be ruled out.

In response, the Picts elected a new king, Bruide Mac Bili, brother to Owen the Bald of Strathclyde. Bruide united and invigorated his demoralised people, retaking Dunnottar and Orkney and conquering Dunnadd. Then, on 20 May 685, he led an army of Picts, Scots and Britons to the most important Celtic victory since Mount Badon.

Dunnichen Moss or Nechtansmere was probably fought near the town of Forfar, Angus. The Northumbrians were lured in between the hill-fort of Dun Nechtan and a boggy loch called Nechtan’s Mere or, in the Irish annals, Linn Garan (‘the Pool of Herons’). Bede described how Ecgfrith ‘rashly led an army to ravage the province of the Picts. The enemy pretended to retreat, and lured the king into narrow mountain passes, where he was killed with the greater part of his forces’.

In one mighty victory, the Picts recovered all the territory lost and pushed the Angles back beyond the Lammermuir Hills. In 698 there was another invasion, but Bruide once again destroyed the Northumbrian host.

This plate shows the sort of warriors that would have won this great Pictish victory. The infantryman’s equipment is minimal – he is barefoot, dressed in a knee-length tunic, armed with a two-handed spear, javelins, a sword and a buckler. The cavalryman wears the sort of full equipment that would have been restricted to the Pictish kings, with a helmet and scale armour, and armed with a sword, a shield slung over his back, and lance. The detail of scale construction is based on the example found in Perthshire.

Here we see Adomnan, Abbot of Iona, and his mother viewing the aftermath of a battle between Picts and Northumbrians, and coming across a slain warrior woman with an infant still clinging at her breast. This scene so distressed the Abbot’s mother that she forced him to propose the ‘Law of the Innocents’, forbidding women to fight or command warriors, and which was ratified at the Synod of Birr in Ireland in 697 by 51 Celtic kings and 40 churchmen.

The presence of Pictish women on the battlefield is a good example of where popular perception and academic scepticism clash. Certainly, there were female combatants in other Celtic societies – although only 10 per cent of continental Celtic female graves contain weapons, and over half these are ornamental, this still leaves a significant number of women’s graves with battle-scarred weapons, heroes’ torcs and chariots. In early Ireland, several women were members of the fianna, while the use of arms was a legal requirement of landed women. Warrior queens like Macha of the Red Hair, Maeve of Connaught, Creidne the Feinid, and the British queens Cartimandua and Boudicca won their fame on the battlefield. Petronius describes a female British gladiator who fought from a chariot, and medieval Scottish and Irish women were also frequently involved in warfare, particularly as commanders.

While women are rarely depicted on Pictish stones, it is reasonable to assume that the Picts were simliar to other Celtic peoples in this respect. The common references in Irish tales to female fighters in Alba suggest that, if anything, women warriors were more common among the Picts. It can be further argued that Adomnan is unlikely to have convinced nearly 100 Celtic leaders to specifically exempt women from the legal responsibility of being warriors or military commanders unless there were a real need, and Pictish women were fighting and dying in battle. It is plausible to conclude that, prior to 700, the Picts allowed and/or required women to fight.

The candidates for the Pictish throne were expected to be experienced warriors, and the Picts valued valour and martial prowess in their leaders as much as any other Celtic people. Sometimes they gained the throne itself by force of arms – one of the disadvantages of the Pictish matrilinear tradition was that there were always large numbers of eligible would-be kings, and when the democratic system failed, the results could be ugly. Between 726 and 729 four candidates for the throne fought at least nine pitched battles, before the mighty Oengus Mac Fergus emerged the victor.

The advantage of such bloody political selection was that the successful contender would inevitably be a strong and resourceful leader, and Oengus proved to be a great warrior king. In 734 he captured and drowned the king of the Northern Picts, in 736 he beheaded the Scottish king and became the first king of both Picts and Scots; and in 740 he crushed a Northumbrian invasion.

The dominant power in the north was the British kingdom of Strathclyde, which ruled lowland Scotland from Clyde to Solway from their great fortress capital at Dumbarton. The Strathclyde Britons had an enviable military history, and Oengus must have seen them as a challenge. In 744 he attacked and defeated them, a truly remarkable achievement that is almost certainly the great battle celebrated on the Aberlemno Battle Stone, which probably dates from the mid-8th century. This plate shows the battle as depicted at Aberlemno, with a central Pictish schiltron repelling the Strathclyde cavalry, while flanking Pictish horsemen sweep around to envelop them.

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