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The Pictish foundation myth

The Pictish Chronicle is a collection of medieval manuscripts containg several lists of Pictish kings, counting from a century or two BC to the mid-9th century AD. The 'Pictish foundation myth' that precedes the king-lists tells how Cruithne, the father of the Picts, arrived from Scythia and reigned for 100 years. He divided the land into seven areas, named after each of his seven sons:

'Seven sons of Cruithne then
Into seven divided Alban,
Cait, Ce, Cirig, a warlike clan
Fib, Fidach, Fotla, Fortrenn.'

These seven kingdoms are readily identified: Fib is Fife, Cait is Caithness, Fotlaig is Atfodla (Atholl), and Fortrenn was the district around Mentieth and Strathearn. Cirig can be traced to Maghcircin, the 'Plains of Circinn,' now Mearns. Ce survives in Bennachie in Aberdeenshire, leaving Fidach as the area around the Moray Firth. These areas match closely those historically occupied by the Picts, who were not found in Argyll, nor along the western coast south of Skye, the closest Pictish colony to Iona.

It has been suggested that the Pictish foundation myth was political propaganda, designed to unite the warring tribes into a single nation, or to legitimise a ruling dynasty, or perhaps to confirm Scottish sovereignty in Argyll. Celtic oral tradition, however, is a source to be respected, and even such obvious mythology as this should not be dismissed unhesitatingly, especially when other sources tell essentially the same tale. Gildas, a 6th-century British monk, brings the Picts hairy and unclothed in currachs from the north across the sea, and states that not until the final departure of the Romans did the Picts settle down in Scotland 'for the first time' as they 'seized the whole northern part of the land as far as the wall, to the exclusion of the inhabitants', clearly indicating that the Picts were not considered natives. Nennius, another British monk who, around AD 800, compiled a history from all the older documents he could find, also says that they settled first in Orkney and then moved south to conquer a third of Britain. According to Bede, the mostly reliable Northumbrian cleric writing in the late 7th and early 8th century, the Picts arrived in a few boats, driven around Britain by a storm. They eventually landed in northern Ireland and asked permission to settle, but were told there was no land to spare, and they should try northern Britain.

"So the Picts crossed into Britain and began to settle in the north of the island, since the Britons were in possession of the south. Having no women with them, these Picts asked wives of the Irish, who consented on condition that, when any dispute arose, they should choose a king from the female royal line rather than the male. This custom continues among the Picts to this day."

Some believe that this story was invented to legitimise the Scottish takeover of the Pictish throne. This is unlikely, as when Bede was writing, the disorganised Scots had just been conquered by the Picts. It is also worth remembering that the first Norse pirates who arrived in Orkney, Man and the Western Isles did so without women, and had to take them from the native populations, while the remnants of Magnus Maximus' army who settled in Brittany in the late 4th century also arrived without women, and so killed the Amorican men and cut out the women's tongues 'lest the pure British speech be corrupted', so the Pictish tale is not without precedent. There is also reason to believe that the Pictish acquisition of women may not have been entirely peaceful; an ancient Irish poem Duan Gircanash records how 300 Irish women were kidnapped by the womenless Picts.

'Cruithne, son of Cuig, took their women from them
It is directly stated
Except Tea, wife of Hermion
Son of Miledh....

There were no charming, noble wives
For their young men;
Their women having been stolen...'

Other Welsh and Irish versions of the story add more detail, but the basic thrust was that the Picts originated as warriors who came from across the seas and first settled in the far north of the country. They had to obtain Irish women, for which Cruithne 'swore by the heaven and the earth, the sun and the moon, the sea and the land, the dew and the elements, that of women should be the Royal succession among them for ever', and they were implacable enemies of the native Britons, whom they eventually conquered.

Whatever the truth in the story, it was an important core belief. As a commonly held myth it gave the Picts a sense of 'national identity,' and helped to weld them into a powerful and united political entity.

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The Pictish foundation myth

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