Picts

Abstract: Adomna´n’s Vita S. Columbae narrates a series of miracles relating to Columba’s visit to the Pictish king. One such tale describes Columba’s psalmody outside the Pictish king’s fort, where the saint’s thundering oration reduces the Picts to terror. An anomalous aspect of this miracle-tale is Columba’s selection of Psalm 44; a psalm of laudation to a king on his marriage. It is proposed that the inclusion of this psalm points to an exegetical interpretation that argues against a simple reading of Pictish conversion and, instead, reveals the operation of Adomna´n’s diplomacy and clerical notions of ‘just’ kingship.

Introduction
The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) is a measure of the criminal cognitions and thinking styles that maintain offending. The scale comprises 8 a priori thinking styles and two validation scales, the validation scales having been found to be unreliable. Owing to the large amount of apparently shared variance in the original validation study, this data matrix needs re-analysis. Results from the PICTS were examined in relation to general measures of individual differences, in order to link the PICTS to the broader literature on the characteristics of offenders.

Method
The original PICTS data-matrix was re-analysed using a more parsimonious method of analysis. The PICYS was also given to 54 detained, mentally disordered offenders along with the NEO-Five Factor Inventory, the Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS), the Attention Deficit Scales for Adults (ADSA) and, as a measure of general intelligence, the Standard Progressive Matrices.

Results
Principal components analysis suggested that the PICTS really comprised two factors: a lack of thoughtfulness (i.e. lack of attention to one's experience), and wilful hostility, with the first factor being most well defined. Intelligence was not associated with any factor of criminal thinking style. High scores on the ADSA and Disinhibition and Boredom Susceptibility subscales of the SSS were associated with much greater endorsement of criminal sentiments; high Neuroticism, low Extroversion, and low Agreeableness were slightly lower correlates.

Discussion
The issues involved in criminogenic cognitions need clarification and to be linked to the broader literature on cognitive distortions and personality. Interventions targeted at dismantling impulsive destructive behaviour, whether it be thoughtlessness or wilful hostility, may be effected by increasing thinking skills, so breaking down the cognitions that maintain criminal behaviou

A warrior with his spear marches to the left across the land in four known instances. Three of these spearmen are in the south of Pictland, at Collessie, Bertha(Tulloch), and Balgavies, and only one in the north, at Rhynie. This story started off asking what, and potentially who, this Spearman is. But it quickly fell into a swirling story, of Caledonians and Picts, massacres, grain, Romans, people and ideas facing each other at the far end of their world, and how the Spearman and the early Pictish symbol stones tell their own part in the story of this extraordinary moment in time and place. 

Connecting the Spearman to the Roman and high-status native context in which they are found, points to these Spearman stones being contemporary with the Severan campaign, and this dating is supported by the weapons and portrayal of northern native warriors of the time in Romano-Celtic art.  Archaeology, art history and environmental studies also point to a hiatus in southern Pictland after the Severan massacres, which leads to the conclusion that the CI stones of this southern area are dated to the early centuries AD, with their origin being in the late Iron Age pre-Roman flourishing of native culture.

The Pictish symbols are here provided with a list of each symbol’s occurence, together with a distribution map of that symbol. 
The symbol lists are divided for convenience of size into two papers, Part One and Part Two.
This paper is PART TWO. 
Part One contains mostly high-frequency symbols, Part Two the lower frequency symbols. 
A table of symbol frequency is included in Part One. 
These lists and maps are offered to enable exploration of possible concentrations or peculiarities of certain symbols, which may point to their significance, provide an insight into their function, and take us a step closer to understanding their meaning. 
The papers here do not offer indepth analysis of the data, except for a few brief header notes.

This is a written up version of a paper delivered at a conference in Lerwick in 2008. Publication in an edited volume was supposed to follow within a year or two but has stalled so I am posting this here now. This Versionwas completed in late 2009.

The inscription found on one of the Newton stones has longed baffled experts. Some early scholars have tried to interpret the roman-like characters as Hebrew (George Moore, 1864) while others such as L. A. Waddell saw them as Phoenician (1924). In 1987, Barry Fell read it as corrupt Latin translating it thus: Fide funtato yst sytolo volne-ra ceus. I filius Conoli. Puer. “By faith sustained, wounds carried him off: (the stone) of Caius, son of Conol – a youth.”
Finally, Pavel Serafimov and Giancarlo Tomezzoli, in a recent paper entitled The Stones of Newton (Scotland), translate the inscription using Greek and Sarmatian alphabets yielding ancient and modern Slavic or Bulgarian words.
Although all of this is rather intriguing. Why on Earth hasn’t anyone tried to simply read them as Pictish or some form of Celtic?

This is an Author's Original of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in The Innes Review, Volume 69 Issue 1 (2018), Pages 1-48, ISSN 0020-157x (Available Online May 2018). The Version of Record is available online at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/inr.2018.0158

This article studies the subject matter, details, and vocabulary of the Irish chronicle record relating to northern Britain from A.D. 660 to 800 in order to establish its sources. It rejects theories that the record from 660 to 740 preserves Applecross, Northern British or Pictish chronicles, arguing that an ‘Iona Chronicle’ accounts for nearly all items for northern Britain, and some, but not all, for Ireland. ‘The Iona Chronicle’ was a contemporary text whose style and interests gradually evolved over the period. After 740 the more limited evidence indicates that Iona and somewhere in southern Pictland probably provided written notices of events, but that the record's final form was produced in Ireland. The combination of common features and regional variation reflects the existence of more multiple ‘centres of recording’ which provided written notices of events to the ‘centres of chronicling’ at Iona and later Ireland, where the surviving chronicle text was produced.

The Picts are now understood as the indigenous inhabitants of north-eastern Scotland in the early medieval period, corresponding to the area of distribution of Pictish symbol-bearing stones (broadly dated to the fifth to ninth centuries) which extends north of the Forth and east of Druim Alban. Yet many misconceptions remain, nowhere more so than in discussions surrounding their acceptance of, and supposed reticence toward, the Christian faith. New questions about landscape, materiality, and memory provide new avenues for the study of the conversion of the Picts. These reveal the rich and unique thought world that Christianity needed to negotiate beyond the frontiers of the former Roman Empire. An ideal site with which to embark on a fresh examination of the evidence is Forteviot, Perthshire, which emerges into the historical record of the ninth century as the site of an important Pictish royal palace, monastery, and assembly place. Aerial photographs revealed a long-lived ceremonial landscape bearing evidence of use from the Neolithic to the modern day, thereby allowing us to study a unique mortuary topography in unprecedented detail from prehistory through to the first millennium AD. Between 2007 and 2011, the University of Glasgow’s Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) project established the broad chronology of this ceremonial centre through targeted excavations and radiocarbon dating of various features across the landscape.  By focusing on the later Iron Age and early medieval phases, Forteviot gives us an opportunity to study the cosmological terrain before, during, and after the arrival and acceptance of Christianity.

The population of the North Sea archipelago of Shetland, UK possesses a distinct sense of ethnic identity, which connects the island’s present-day community to that of its Old Norse/Viking settlers from Scandinavia. This sense of Viking ethnicity, however, is relatively recent, first arising in the 19th Century. This paper argues that Shetland’s cultural identity must be understood in terms of the islands’ historical interconnectedness with trends in literature and scholarship in mainland Scotland, Britain, and Europe as a whole. Part II of this two-part paper looks at how the rise of nationalism and philological research into race and ethnicity in the 1800s both drew upon and contributed to Shetlanders’ understanding of their history and culture. In the 1890s, Edinburgh scholar David MacRitchie promoted a theory to explain European and Asian fairy folklore. This theory was grounded in the history of Orkney and Shetland and eventually made a significant impact in Shetland itself, being used by the author Jessie Saxby to promote a distinctive local identity concept. MacRitchie’s work also contributed to later research connected to the development of neopaganism and racist Nazi ideology. The conclusion concerns the role of isolated island communities within flows of cultural development and exchange.

Through this paper, the author deals with the troubling historical episode known as the Barbarica Conspiratio that, in brief, implied a brutal barbarian attack by sea played by Picts, Scots, Saxons and Franks on the shores of continental Gaul and mainly on Britannia. Dr. Álvarez-Jiménez approaches this subject from a close analysis on Ammianus Marcellinus’ narrative and particularly on the his relationship with the later emperor Theodosius I, who was the son of Theodosius the Elder, the general in charge of recovering the British provinces to the Roman dominance.

Aboriginal languages of the Canarian Islands (Guanche) were clearly belonged to the Afro-Asiatic macro-family. However, in addition to the traditional idea of the Guanche languages as Berber-Lybian, the Guanche-Chadic links are demonstrated. 
Substrates in Sardinian include Basque-like, Basque-Caucasian, Basque-Caucasian-Afro-Asiatic, Afro-Asiatic, and Paleo-Balkan elements 
Pictish language might be close to the Siberian Yenisseian languages, cf. possible Yenisseian substrate in Proto-German and Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian language (of possible West European origin) closely related with Yenisseian. 
Remains of pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami/Lappish (related to the I1 haplogroup?) demonstrate similarities with pre-Romanian substrate (related to the I2 haplogroup?). It might be a traces of an initial language of the I male haplogroup

This article is about the forms of rods on Pictish symbols, the V rod and the Z rod. Only four symbols have rods, each with a common form of rod ends. These rod ends change from their common form if the rodded symbol is the lower symbol of a pair of rodded symbols. This behaviour demonstrates that the upper symbol of a pair on a particular stone plays the dominant role which the lower subordinate symbol must respect. Each symbol pair is acting in concert on a stone. If instead the lower symbol is required to be given dominance, then special rules apply to acknowledge the changed condition, again demonstrating that the symbol pair is acting as a pair in an explicit relationship on each symbol stone.

Mathematically, the frequency distribution of Pictish symbols shows that the symbol stones as a body do not hold a personal name, acting as some kind of burial or memorial marker in the form X mac/ui Y, where X and Y are the symbols of a symbol pair.  The evidence for this is reviewed, and the proposal of di-thematic names where each symbol represents a word or ‘theme’ is analysed and this is shown also to be mathematically untenable.  A third possibility is raised, in which a symbol can occasionally be used to represent a name, if and whenever it is required, as part of a broader mnemonic system.

Recent analysis of the axe-wielding and / or beast-headed human figures in Pictish sculpture suggests that they represent Pictish gods. Depictions of these Pictish deities are found on both early incised Pictish stones (Class I) and later relief-carved monuments (Class II, III), traversing the Conversion Period. How early is this tradition in Pictish art, and what was the function of a carved god on Class I monuments? On cross-slabs and later sculpture these figures are usually associated with otherworldly beasts. Although this mythical imagery is generally presented in a non-linear fashion, much of it is repetitive, suggesting that these gods and otherworldly beasts represented well-known mythological narratives in Pictish culture, and that this mythology continued to circulate in the oral culture of the Picts into the Christian period. How do the Pictish mythological narratives, as depicted in sculpture, compare with the mythological traditions of neighbouring cultures?

This paper explores the early evidence for pre-Christian religion and ritual in Pictland, comparing the contexts of Class I monuments with carved deities with the material culture of Iron Age Celtic and Romano-Celtic religious sites. Specific mythological motifs found on Christian Pictish sculpture are compared with examples from Celtic mythology and Indo-European mythology more generally. Such a comparison highlights extensive points of overlap between pre-Christian belief in Pictland and Indo-European mythology more broadly, and demonstrates the immense significance of the Pictish sculptural material in providing a means for reconstructing an otherwise lost belief system.

In Viking Britain, Thomas Williams shows how the people we call Vikings came not just to raid and plunder, but to settle, to colonize and to rule. The impact on these islands was profound and enduring, shaping British social, cultural and political development for hundreds of years. Indeed, in language, literature, place-names and folk-lore, the presence of Scandinavian settlers can still be felt, and their memory – filtered and refashioned through the writings of people like J.R.R. Tolkien, William Morris and G.K.Chesterton – has transformed the western imagination.

Three words in Scottish Gaelic which appear to be loans from Pictish (preas, bad & dail) attest short vowels. In Brittonic (c.500-550) such vowels became lengthened due to the operation of the New Quantity System giving 'prys', 'bod' & 'dôl'. There is no good reason why such vowels should be shortened in Scottish Gaelic and it might suggest that the NQS did not operate in Pictish. The NQS is one of the numerous features of Brittonic directly derived from Late Spoken Latin. Such a linguistic conservatism would sit well with the historically justifiable view that Pictish is largely a somewhat less latinised form of Brittonic.

Any comments or corrections would be appreciated.

The Bell Beaker, the Cauldron of Regeneration, the Grail, are these all part of the same mythology?  There may be a reason for the strength and longevity of this story.  Around the start of the Bronze Age 5000 years ago, the stars around the north celestial pole had shifted, progressed, so that the northern pole star had moved out of the serpent we today call Draco.  A group of the same stars were then re-conceptualised as a cauldron or beaker, holding within it the north polar point, the cauldron we are told in story and shown in art in which people could be reborn to a new life, the Cauldron of Regeneration.

The cross-slab from Hilton of Cadboll in Highland is one of the best-known early medieval sculptures in Britain. Archaeological excavations in 2001 (initiated and managed for Historic Scotland and its partners by Sally Foster) provided a wealth of new information and prompted a major, multi-disciplinary reanalysis of this Pictish sculpture by a team of scholars. The sculpture's 1500-year-old story is rewritten. A biographical approach to the history of ths monument has enabled the changing meanings and values of the monument to be traced through time and has contributed to a wider understanding of attitudes towards early medieval sculpture.

Please note: due to journal copyright conditions I am only able to upload my original working paper. Visit the journal for the final version.

Failure to achieve a consensus on a regular Easter cycle divided Christians in the second century and again in the fourth. In the seventh century and early eighth, the matter was contested among the churches of Britain and Ireland. In this period, Ceolfrith, abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow, sent a letter to the king of the Picts, outlining the reasons for following a nineteen-year paschal cycle. Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica, reproduced Ceolfrith's letter, preserving a unique study on the logistical and theological complexities in the debate on how to derive the correct date to celebrate Easter. Concentration on Ceolfrith's computistical argument, however, can miss his interpretation of paschal theology that emphasises the Resurrection rather than the Passion; his Christological emphasis on the biblical Exodus story; and his mystical interpretation of Easter as a spiritual journey where light triumphs over darkness. This article therefore discusses Ceolfrith's paschal theology and considers the way in which it may have affected liturgical rites.

Aboriginal languages of the Canarian Islands (Guanche) were clearly belonged to the Afro-Asiatic macro-family. However, in addition to the traditional idea of the Guanche languages as Berber-Lybian, the Guanche-Chadic links are demonstrated. 
Pictish language might be close to the Siberian Yenisseian languages, cf. possible Yenisseian substrate in Proto-German and Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian language (of possible West European origin) closely related with Yenisseian. 
Remains of pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami/Lappish (related to the I1 haplogroup?) demonstrate similarities with pre-Romanian substrate (related to the I2 haplogroup?). It might be a traces of an initial language of the I male haplogroup

A critique and update of the author’s previous research into Pictish origins since the publication of Picts and Ancient Britons in 1998. Older theories that the Pictish tribes and their lost language were ‘Celtic’ no longer stand scrutiny alongside the historical sources or more recent DNA evidence that throws doubt upon the continental Celtic origin of the British people. This article follows instead the evidence from the various historical sources, including Bede and the Picts’ own books, which state that they were ‘Scythians’ who arrived in ships from the Baltic coast.

This article discusses the extent and history of two of the most frequently mentioned Pictish territorial terms found in Scottish and Irish sources, Circin and Mag Gerginn. These have previously been considered by most scholars to represent two separate territories and names, but this article argues, after studying the geographical areas these terms cover and linguistic evidence, that they represent a single Pictish territory found in different orthographic guises and interpretations  in various sources. This territory covered the important lowland area from Strathearn to the Mearns, so this study supports Alex Woolf's view that Fortriu was not Strathearn and Menteith, but in northern Pictland. Therefore, this paper enhances our understanding of the development of territorial units in Pictland, and will help future research on this aspect of Scottish history, as well as considering a range of Irish and Scottish sources, including genealogies, king-lists, poems, and tales..

RESUMEN El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar, a través de la clasificación, comparación y análisis de textos específicos clásicos y tardoantiguos griegos y latinos, cómo las fuentes antiguas sobre Britania e Irlanda están, tanto directa como indirectamente, basadas principalmente en datos e información histórico-religiosa, según la expresión de un punto de vista historio-gráfico que, en sus raíces, pretendía reunir y verbalizar el marco épico y mítico de los celtas insulares. Además, esas fuentes tienen un interés historiográfico, geográfico y etnográfico, que se expresa en mayor detalle en la adquisición de topónimos y etnónimos que no omiten elementos sagrados y religiosos, por lo que el conjunto de fuentes reunidas persiste como antes, como testimonio real de un mundo religioso que, desde el punto de vista clásico, nutre la fascinación geo-historiográfica y mitopoyética. ABSTRACT Aim of this article is to show, through the classification, comparison and analysis of Greek and Latin specific classical and late antique texts, how the ancient sources on Britannia and Ireland are, both directly and indirectly, mainly based on historico-religious information and data, as the expression of a historiographic point of view that, back to its roots, was aimed to collect and convey the mythical and epic framework of insular Celts. Moreover, those sources show a historiographic, geographic and etnographic interest, which is expressed in greater detail in the acquisition of toponyms and etnonyms that does not overlook sacred and religious elements, so that the ensemble of the collected sources persists as before, as a real testimony of a religious world that, from the classical point of view, fosters both a geo-historiographic and mythopoietic allure.

Headstone TR33 from Tarbat Cemetery in Portmahomack presents an image that resembles a cross and also forms a rebus inscription similar to a Symbol Stone. It honors Olov IV, Defender of the Southern Border: Olov IV: Farewell from 10,000 men. When the disease began to confine, he made 2120 salmon lines. He brought skill likewise in battle. He delivered to the grey 20 men. Courageous man, champion of Hand, he guarded the border to the south.

Birnie Symbol Stone, a class-I symbol stone carved in 761 AD, stands beside the north entrance of Birnie Kirk Graveyard south of Elgin. The shape of the stone resembles the torso of a Roman general dressed in armor when seen three-quarter view (Figure 1). A stonemason smoothed one face of a granite rock to peck a complicated epitaph of three rebus images: an eagle, divided rectangle and Z-rod. These describe Oengus, the first to rule over Pictland, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A (initial letters): Conquering king he was, lucky he was, offspring of a trustworthy slave. B (eagle): Provider of thousands of men as Hand, also our family champion, likewise the greatest man of all. C (Z rod): You will court a land of treasure, a land of rainbows, summers of peace on earth forever. D (divided rectangle): Farewell Ouon-kuu-s (Strange Moon son); you walk naked now, you begin to fade away indeed.