Chapter XI

WHO WERE THE PICTS?

Disclosing their Non-Aryan Racial Nature and Affinity with Matriarchist Van, Wan or Fian "Dwarfs," and as Aborigines of Britain in Stone Age.

"The Picts, a mysterious race whose origin no man knows."-Prof. R. S. RAIT, Hist. of Scotland, 1915, 11.

"No craft they knew
With woven brick or jointed beam to pile
The sunward porch; but in the dark earth burrowed
And housed, like tiny ants in sunless
caves." Prometheus Bound 1.

The mysterious Picts, whose origin and affinities have hitherto baffled all enquiries, nevertheless require their racial relationship to the aborigines of Britain and to the Aryans to be elicited, if possible, as an essential preliminary to discovering the agency by which Civilization was first introduced into Britain and the date of that epoch-making event.

The "Picts" are not mentioned under that name by Caesar, Tacitus, Ptolemy or any other early Roman or Greek writer on Ancient Britain. This is presumably because, as we shall find, that that was not their proper name, but a nickname.

The "Picts" first appear in history under that name at the latter end of the third century A.D. as the chief inhabitants of Caledonia.2 They reappear in 360 A.D. as warlike barbarian

1 AEschylus, Prometheus Bound ll. 456-459, translated by J. S. Blackie, 195.
2 The name first appears in 296 A.D. in the oration of Eumenius to the Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus, which says: "the Caledonians and other Picts"-"Non dico Caledonum aliorumque Pictorum silvas at paludes, etc." (Latin panegyrics. Inc. Constantino Augusto, c.7.).

111

p.112: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

marauders in association with the Irish-Scots,1 breaking through the Antonine Wall between the Forth and Clyde, and raiding the Roman province to the south, whence they were driven back by Theodosius in 369. On the departure of the Roman legions in 411, their renewed depredations in South Britain became so incessant and menacing that the king of the South Britons, Vortigern, eventually invoked in 449 the aid of his kinsmen the Jutes from Denmark to expel them, with the well-known result that the Anglo-Jute mercenaries turned fiercely on their hosts and carved out by their swords petty kingdoms in South Britain for themselves. Thenceforward the Picts and Scots aided the Britons in defending against their common foe, the Anglo-Saxons, what remained of independent Briton in the western half of South Britain-Strath-Clyde or the Cambries2 from the Severn to the Clyde, with Wales and Cornwall, and Caledonia north of Northumbria.

In North Britain, from the sixth century to the eighth A.D., the Picts are disclosed in the contemporary histories of Columba and Bede, supplemented by the Pictish Chronicles, as occupying the whole of North Britain north of the Antonine Wall between the Clyde and Forth, except the south extremity of Argyle, which was occupied by Irish-Scots from Ulster. Besides this there are numerous references to "The Southern Picts"3 south of the wall and especially in the Galloway province of the Briton kingdom of Strath-Clyde, bordering the Solway, where St. Ninian in the fourth century converted "The Southern Picts," and built in 397 his first Christian church at Whitherne.4

1 The Scots as "Scoti" first appear under that name in history (apart from the Early British Chronicles) in 360 in the contemporary Roman history of the Roman military officer Ammianus Marcellinus (Bk. 20, i 1), and they are associated with the Picts in raiding the Roman province (see also Gildas c.19). From the accounts of Claudian, the Briton monk Gildas (about 546) and Bede, these Scoti were Irish-Scots who raided and returned to Ireland with their booty. See S.C.P. cvii.
2 "Cambries" is used by the contemporary historian Gildas the Younger as the title for the Briton kingdom of Strath-Clyde. See P.A.B. 1857, 49. etc. It included Cambria (Wales), Cumbria (Cumberland), Westmorland and Lancashire, and Strath-Clyde from Solway to Clyde.
3 Thus Bede, B.H.E. 3, 4.
4 So numerous were the Picts in Galloway, the people of which were called "Gall-Gaedhel" (S.C.P. cxciii) that in 741 the Irish-Scot king of Dalriada

p.113: SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF "PICTS"

In South Britain no historical references are found to "Picts" as forming an element of the early population, though the subterranean dwellings called "Picts' Houses" are widely distributed, and are associated in Devon and Cornwall with the "Pixies;" and some place-names contain the element "Pict" (see later). And Caesar's statement about the general prevalence in Britain of polyandry of a promiscuous kind1 amongst the natives in the interior, and of the "interiores" as being clad in skins2 probably referred to the Picts, as Caesar describes the Britons whom he met as being richly garbed.

In Ireland also, Picts are not mentioned under that Latin nickname, but they are generally identified with the "Cruithne," though this title, as we have seen, is used ambiguously, and does not properly belong to the Picts at all. That the Picts were of the same kindred as the aboriginal Irish Feins, is evident from the numerous records that the Picts in Scotland were in the habit of obtaining wives from Ireland3 and that their matrilinear succession and use of the Irish "Celtic" were derived from the same.4

Then, in the middle of the ninth century A.D., with the final conquest of the "Northern Picts" in 850 by the Scot king Kenneth, son of Alpin, from Galloway, and his establishment as "King of the Scots "and his introduction of the name "Scot-land5 for North Briton," the "Picts" completely disappeared from history as suddenly as they first appeared. No historical trace of that race is to be found thereafter, notwithstanding that there is no evidence whatever of any exodus or any wholesale massacre of these people. 6

As a result presumably of this complete disappearance of

established himself there as "King of the Picts" (ib. clxxxvii); and St. Mungo or Kentigern of Glasgow (601 A.D.), the bishop of Strath-Clyde cleansed from idolatry "the home of the Picts which is now called Galwietha [i.e. Galloway] and its adjacent parts" (Kentigern's Life by Jocelyn of Furness.)

1 D.B.G. v, 14, 4-5.
2 Ib. v. 14, 2.
3 S.C.P., 123, 160, 298 etc.
4 Ib. xcviii v. 98.
5 Ib. 200, 299.
6 In one chronicle (Scala chronica) it is stated that in 850, at a conference at Scone, the Irish Scots by stratagem "slew the king and the chief nobles" of the Picts (S.C.P. cxci), but there is no reference or suggestion anywhere to any massacre of the people themselves.

p.114: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS


this people, the name "Pict" has tended to become mythical; and the Picts are described in medieval and later folklore as malicious fairy dwarf folk, pigmies, pixies, fauns and elves; and significantly they are associated with the Irish fairies, the Fians, or Bans.

We are thus confronted by the questions: "Where did the Picts come from so suddenly?" and "Whither did they disappear just as suddenly?" Their sudden mysterious appearance and disappearance under the circumstances above noted suggested to me that both events were probably owing to a mere change in their tribal name as aborigines. And so it seems to prove.

"Pict" is an epithet, presumably a contemptuous nickname, applied to these people by outsiders, and never seems to have been used by these people themselves. It thus appears to be analogous to the terms "Greek" and "German" applied by the Romans to those two nations who never called themselves by these names. The term "Pict" appears to have been consciously used by the Romans (who are found to be the first users of it) in the sense of "painted" (pictus) with reference to the custom of these people to stain their skin blue with woad dye. In Scottish these people are called Peht,l in Anglo-Saxon Pihta, Pehta or Peohta,2 and in Norse Pett;3 and the Welsh bard Taliessin calls them Peith. These Norse and other forms, it will be noticed, contain no c, and are perhaps cognate with our English "petty," Welsh pitiw, and French petit, "small," to designate these people as dwarfish. And significantly it is seen from the map on p. 19 that the numerous Pictish villages in the neighbourhood of the Newton Stone and in the Don Valley, as similarly many towns over Britain generally, bear the prefix "Pit" or "Pet," presumably in the sense of Pict or the Anglo-Saxon "Pihta" or Scottish "Peht," to distinguish these native villages from the settlements of the Aryan rulers in the neighbourhood called "Cattie," "Cot-town," "Seati-ton," "Bourtie," &c. (See map).

1 J.S.D., 389, where also Pechty, Peaght and Pegh.
2 B.A.S., 182, "Peohta" is form used by King Alfred in his translation of Bede's "Picti."
3 See below.

p.115: ORIGIN OF NAME "PICT"

The remoter origin of the Nordic name Pett or Peht or Pihta, which was presumably latinized by the Romans into "Pict," seems to me to be probably found in the Vit or Vet or Vitr1 title in the Gothic Eddas for a chief of a clan of the primitive "Blue Leg" dwarfs of Van and Vindia, who is mentioned alongside Baomburr (who was obviously, as we have seen, the eponym of the Irish aboriginal Fomors) V, B and P, being freely interchangeable dialectically.

[This "Vit" means literally "witted" or "wise,"- and is also used in a personal sense as "witch" or "wizard," with the variant of "Vitt," "Vitki," literally "witch," and meaning "witch-craft and charms";3 and in a contemptuous general sense as Vetta and Vaett "a wight" and secondarily as "naught" or "nothing" or "nobody"4 and thus "petty"; and as Vetti and "Pit-(lor)", it is a Norse nickname.5 It thus appears probable that "Pett" or "Pihta" or "Pict" are later dialectic forms of the epithet Vit, Vet, or Vetta or Vitki applied contemptuously by the Early Goths to a section of the dwarf "Blue Leg" ancestors of the Picts, and designated them as "The petty Witch Wights," that is, the Witch-ridden devotees of the cult of the Matriarch witch or wise woman.]

This early association of the Picts with "petty" and witches would now seem to explain why in modern folklore these dwarfish people are associated and identified with Fauns, Fians, Pixies and wicked Fairies-indeed the modern word "wicked" is derived from "Witch" and thus seen to have its origin in the Gothic Vithi, "the wicked witch" title of the Van ancestors of the Picts, a people who all along appear to have been devotees of the cult of the Serpent and its Matriarchist witches and their magic cauldron.

Indeed, this "Vit" epithet for the Picts, or "Pihtas" of the Anglo-Saxons, appears to find some confirmation from Caesar's journal. While Caesar nowhere calls any of the people of Britain "Pict," he, even when referring to the natives of Britain staining their skin for war, does not use the word pictus or "painted;" but uses inficiunt (i.e., infect or

1 Vit-r (in which the final r is merely the Gothic nominative case-ending, in Volu-spa Edda (Codex Regius, p.1, l. 25); and "Vetr of Vind's vale" in Vaf-thrudnis Mal Edda (Cod. reg.p.15, ll. 20 and 22).
2 V.D., 713.
3 Ib. 713, 714.
4 Ib. 720.
5 Ib. 701, 477.

p.116: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

"tattoo"?). Yet curiously he is made to call the blue dye used for this purpose "Vitro," a word which is interpreted as "Woad" by classic scholars solely in translating this passage, though elsewhere in Latin it invariably means "glass."1 This suggests that there is some corruption in the copies of Caesar's manuscript here; and that "Vitro" of the text may perhaps have been intended by Caesar for the Gothic "Vitr" title for the "Blue-legged" dwarfs or the "Picts."

Another early form of this nickname of " Pict " for the aborigines of Alban appears to me to be found in the title of "Ictis,"2 applied by the early Ionian navigator Pytheas to the tin-port of Britain, a name identified also by some with the Isle of Wight. This tradition is confirmed by the name given to the Channel in the Pict Chronicles in describing the arrival in Alban of the Britons under Brutus, where the English Channel is called "The Sea of Icht."3 This presumes that South Britain was possibly then named after its aborigines of those days, the Vichts, Ichts or Picts; just as at the other extremity we have the "Pentland Firth," which was earlier known to the Norse as the "Pett-land Fjord"4 or "Firth of the Petts (or Picts)," from its bounding "The Land of the Picts." Indeed, the Danish writer of the twelfth century, Saxo Grammaticus, calls Scotland "Petia" or "Land of the Picts." This would now explain the statement of the Roman historian that a nation of the Picts in Britain was called "The Vect-uriones."5

The proper name for the "Picts," as used presumably by themselves in early times, was, I think, from a review of all the new available evidence, the title "Khal-dis" or Khal-tis,

1 Moreover, the scientific name of the Woad plant is "Isatis tinctoria," and not Vitrum.
2 "Iktis" is the form of the name preserved by Diodorus Siculus (Bibl. Hist. v., 22); and it has been identified with the "Vectis" of Pliny, who, however, places it between South Britain and Ireland, whilst he confounds "Ictis" as "Mictis" apparently with Thule. For discussion on Ictis v. Vectis and "Mictis," see H.A.B., 499, etc. The initial V often tends to be lost or become merged with its following vowel in Greek, see later, so that "Ictis" may represent an earlier Vectis.
3 S.C.D. 57.
4 See Edda V.P., 2, 682.
5 Ammianus Marcellinus, 27, viii., 5.

p.117: PICTS AS CHALDEES OR CALED-ONS

i.e., "The Children of the River (Khal or Gully)."1 This title of "Khaldis" is applied to the aborigines of Van in Asia Minor in the numerous sacred monuments erected by their Aryan overlords there in the ninth century B.C. and later. And concurrently with this title they also called themselves (from their old home-centre "Van," "Wan" or "Fen" Fian or Fein), Biam or "Ban," like their branch which first peopled Erin.

Now, this riverine title "Khal-dis" appears to be not only the source of the ethnic name "Caled-on" but also the source of the numerous ancient river-names in Britain called variously Clyde or Clotia, Clwyd, Cald, Caldy, Calder and Chelt; and such names as the Chilt-ern Hills and Chelten-ham near the old prehistoric dwellings at Gloster, as well as the title of Columba's mission to the Pictish aborigines - "Culdee." This application of the name "Caled-on" to the Picts is confirmed, as we have seen, by the Roman reference to the Picts as "Caledons"; and it is emphasized by the further Roman record that " he Picts are divided into two nations, the Di-Caled-ones and the Vect-uriones,"2 in which "Vect" appears to be cognate with "Pict." "Caled" (or Caled-on ) thus seems to have been the early title used by the Picts for themselves;3 and, as we shall see in the next chapter, it is cognate through its original "Khal-dis" or "Khal-tis" with "Chaldee," "Galati" and "Kelts" or "Celts."

Identified in this way with the cave-dwelling, dwarfish, dark Vans or Wans and gipsy "Chals" of Van and Galatia in Asia Minor, whose prehistoric line of migration westwards overland to Western Europe and Britain has already been traced, the Picts also, who were also cave-dwellers, appear to have left traces of their "Pict" or "Pit" title in some places en route, as well as in Britain and Ireland, in addition to their Van name.

1 On this name, see before, also next chapter.
2 A.M.H., 27, viii, 5.
3 Tacitus speaks of "the red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia" (Agricola II); but he is speaking not of aboriginal Caledons, but of the ruling race in Caledonia who were opposing Agricola, and who, we have seen, were Britons and Scots properly so-called.

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[In Iberia (and the Picts, we shall see, were of the Iberian physical type) the Vett-ones inhabited in the Roman period the valley of the great Guadalquivir.1 Pictavia was the ancient name for Piccardy2, a division of Gaul stretching from Iberia northwards to Britanny, and it was inhabited by the Pictones; and its chief capital still bears the Pictish name of Poitiers which significantly is in the province of "Vienne", obviously a variant of Van or "Bian".

In Britain, south of the Tweed, the old place-names bearing the prefix "Pit" and "Pet" have not survived so freely as those of "Wan" and "Venta." The ancient village of "Pitchley" in Northampton in the Wan's Dyke area was still called in Domesday Book "Picts-lei" and "Pihtes-lea"3 that is, the "lea of the Picts"; and it contains, as we shall see, prehistoric, human remains, presumably of the Pictish period. In Surrey are the villages of Pett, Petworth, the "Peti-orde" of Domesday - and Pettaugh. Glastonbury in Somerset, with its prehistoric lake-dwellings, was called "Ynys Vitr-ain" or "Isle of Vitr-land," thus preserving the Gothic form of the Pictish eponym. "Pet-uaria" was the chief town between York and the Wash, in Ptolemy's day; it was in the Fens presumably of the lake-dwelling Vans or Fens, and to its north is a "Picton" in the valley of the Tees.

In Scotland, which was called "Pictavia" in medieval Latin histories and the Pict Chronicles, the prefix "Pit" and "Pet" is common in old village names, and presumably preserves the title of the aboriginal Picts for these villages of the natives, to distinguish them from the settlements of the ruling Aryan race in the adjoining villages called "Catti" and "Barat." For numerous series of these ancient village Pit names in Sharp contrast with the "Catti" and "Barat" villages studding the Don Valley of Old Pictland around the Newton Stone, see Map, p. 19. One of these "Pit" names, it is noteworthy, is "Pit-blain," that is "The Bluc Pit or Pict," in which the word for "blue" is the identical British Gothic word "blain," used in the Eddas for "The Blue Leg" tribe of dwarfs. And the "Pent-land" Hills to the south of the Forth preserve the same "Pict" title as the "Pentland" Firth does to the north, and in Shetland, in addition to the saga references to Picts, there are several places named Petti.4

1 The ancient Baetis river of Baetica. S. 3, i, 6.
2 "Piccard-ach" was an ancient name for the Southern Picts in Scotland, S.C.P. 74-76.
3 A. W. Brown Archaeolog. Jour. 3-13, cited W.P.A., 180.
4 Petti-dale and Pett-water on border of Tingwall parish, and Petti-garth Fell, and at Fetlar is "The Finn's Dyke" (Finni-girt Dyke).

p.119: PICTS AS ABORIGINES OF ALBION

In Ireland, in an Irish epic tale of the first century A.D., Picts arc located in Western Ulster.1 But in the earlier period of the Irish legends the Picts are clearly, I think, the same primitive people who are called "The tribe of Fidga,"2 of the plain of "Fidga," a locality not yet located. These "Fidga" are repeatedly mentioned as opposing the Sun-worshippers (i.e. the Aryan overlords), and derived their origin from Britain (Albion); they used poison weapons, and were defended by two double-headed Serpents3 showing that they were, like the Picts and Vans, devotees of the Serpent-cult. This Irish form of their name is in series with the Welsh name for the Picts, namely "Fficht;" and they appear to have been of the same primitive race as the Van or Fen (or early Fein).]

This racial position for the Picts as the primitive pre-Aryan aborigines of Britain and Ireland in the Stone Age, thus confirms and substantiates, but from totally different sources, the theory of their non-Aryan nature advanced by Rhys. This philologist believed that the Picts were the non-Aryan aborigines of Britain, merely because of a few non-Aryan words occurring in ancient inscriptions in Scotland, which he surmised might be Pictish,4 though this surmise was not generally accepted.5 Nor did he find traces of such Pictish. words in England or Wales, besides "The Sea of Icht," although he believed he found one solitary word in Ireland.6

In physical type, the Picts, according to general tradition, were dark "Iberian," small-statured and even pygmy,7 more or less naked, with their skins "tinged with Caledonian or Pictish woad."8 They have been allied to the semi-Iberian Basques,9 whose language was radically non-Aryan, on

1 Tain bo Cualnge, J. Dunn, 1914, xvii, 375.
2 Tuath Fidga.
3 Book of Leinster, 15a and R.H.L. 631 and 641.
4 Rhind Lects, 1889; P.S.A.S. 1892, 305, etc.; Welsh People,1902, 13, etc.
5 H.A.B., 409g., etc.
6 This was inferred by him on the theory that the "Cruthni" designated Picts (Welsh People 1902, 13). But on the other hand he holds the opposite view that "Cruthni" was a Celtic spelling of "Priten" or "Briton," which name, he thinks, means "Cloth clad," to distinguish the Aryan Britons or "Pritens" from the non-Aryan aborigines or Picts, which mutually destroys his argument.
7 MacRitchie M.F.P., etc. He cites a fifteenth-century account of early pygmy Picts in Orkney, Monthly Rev. Jan. 1901, 141.
8 Wharton, on Milton.
9 R.R.E., 375.

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account of the latter occupying the old Pictavia region on the border of Iberia. Their primitive habits and living in caves and underground burrows or "Pict-dwellings," like the Vans or Khaldis,1 as well as their immemorial occupation of the land, have doubtless accounted for their being in modern folklore identified with malignant fauns, Fians and Pixies, which latter name seems to preserve "Pict."

The early prehistoric Picts thus appear to have been the primitive aborigines of Albion in the late Old Stone Age and early Neolithic Age whose long-headed, narrow and low-browed skulls (see Fig. 22, p. 135) are mostly found in the lower strata of the ancient river-beds, and hence termed by Huxley "The River-bed" type. The peculiar, though unsuspected, literal appropriateness of this title will be obvious when we recall that these people seem to have actually called themselves "The Children of the River" (Khal-dis or "Caleds") presumably through their finding their primitive livelihood along the river-banks and river-beds.

This river-bed race of primitive dwarfish men was shown by Huxley to have been widely distributed in remote prehistoric times over the British Isles, from Cornwall to Caithness, and over Ireland, and also over the European continent from Basque and Iberia eastwards.

[He especially records it from the Trent Valley of Derbyshire, in the Ledbury and Muskham skulls,2 in Anglesea, the Thames Valley. In Ireland it is seen in the river-bed skulls of the Nore and Blackwater in Queen's County and Armagh.3 He also observed this type of skull in the more ancient prehistoric sites on the European continent from Gaul and Germany and Switzerland to the Basque country (Picardy) and Iberia.4 And he significantly added that he suspected that it would be found in the inhabitants of Southern Hindustan --which it has been in the dark aborigines of Central and Southern India,

1 We have seen that the old and existing cave-dwellings and subterranean burrows of the Vindia region west of Van are of the same general characteristic prehistoric subterranean Picts' Houses and "Weems" or cave-dwellers in Early Albion. Thus the name "Pitten-weem" for a seaport on the Forth coast, with a series of caves with prehistoric human remains, and meaning "Caves of the Pitts or Picts" is especially obvious as an early settlement of cave-dwelling Picts.
2 L.H.C., 120, etc.; 123, etc.
3 Ib. 123, 125, etc,
4 Ib.136.

p.121: PICTS PREHISTORIC RIVER-BED TYPE

the Dravids or Doms-just as he had already found it in the dark aborigines of Australia,1 one of the lowest of the most primitive savage races of the present day. And his inferences have been fully justified.]

This widespread prevalence of the river-bed type of men in the Stone Age is confirmed and considerably extended backwards by Sir Arthur Keith in his classic "Antiquity of Man," recording mostly fresh discoveries and observations of his own. He establishes the fact that this type of river-bed skull existed over Britain as far back in the Old Stone Age as about 25,000 years ago, in the Langwith Cave in Derbyshire;2 and at a somewhat later period in the Oban Cave in Scotland with Azilian (or Mentone) culture of the Old Stone Age, and at Aberavon, east of Swansea, and in Kent's Cavern at Torquay. In the Neolithic age of about eight thousand years ago it is found in the Tilbury man of the Thames Valley, who resembled the race of equal age found at Vend-rest (a name suggestive of the "Vend" title of the Picts), about sixty miles east of Paris. It is also found in the same Neolithic Period in the great megalithic tomb at Coldrum in the Medway Valley of the Kent Downs, near the famous Kit's Coty cromlech, where these long-headed people were still of relatively small stature-the men averaging 5 feet 4 inches and the women 5 feet, that is about 3 inches below the modern British average, though the brain had now reached practically the modern standard with a skull width of 77.9 per cent. of the length.3 And significantly the large Neolithic village of pit-dwellings, with rude pottery and finely worked flint implements in the neighbourhood at "Ight-ham," seems to preserve in the latter name "Ight-ham" or "Hamlet of the Ight," the later shortened title of the Picts, in series with the southern dialectic form of Pliny's "Vectis" for the Isle of "Wight," and "Ictis," the old Irish name for the English Channel, and the Eddic Veig, Vige, Vit and Vikti forms of the eponym for "Pict."4 This modern name thus appears to preserve the old designation of that

1 L.H.C., 130.
2 K.A.M., 89, etc.
3 K.A.M., 22.
4 See before.

p.122: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

ancient Neolithic village of pit-dwellers as "Hamlet of the Picts."1

At Pitchley also, in Northamptonshire, an ancient village with a church building of the twelfth century, which is called in Domesday Book "Pihtes-lea" and "Picts-lei"-names clearly designating it as "The Lea of the Picts"-the skulls unearthed from the numerous old stone-cists of a prehistoric cemetery under the church, and under the early Saxon graves, with no trace of metals and presumably of late Neolithic Age, appear to be of this river-bed type. One of the typical skulls is described as "having the peculiar lengthy form, the prominent cheek-bones and the remarkable narrowness of the forehead which characterize the 'Celtic' races"2 (see Fig. 22, p. 135).

In Ireland this river-bed type of Stone Age skull is also found as above noted. And we have seen that the Matriarch Cesair and her Ban or Van or Fen horde of the Fomor clan entered Ireland in the Neolithic Age presumably from Britain and were of the same Van or Vind race to which the Picts belonged. We have also seen that these primitive aborigines of Ireland were called "The tribe of Fidga," that is a dialectic form of "Pict," in series with the Welsh "Ffichti." This suggests that the river-bed aborigines of Ireland also were presumably the Picts. It seems, too, a dialectic form of the same name which is given as "Gewictis" for the aborigines of Ireland in the account of the invasion of Ireland by the Iber-Scots3 or Scots from Iberia, especially as it was usual to spell the analogous Wight, or Vectis, with an initial G.

The Mother-Right, or Matri-linear form of succession through the mother and not through the father, which was prevalent amongst the later historical Picts down to the ninth century, when they suddenly disappear from history, is now explicable

1 Another skeleton, found in a "circumscribed" cist of Neolithic age at Maidstone, is described by B. Poste as having the skull "very narrow in the front part and also in the forehead," but stature about five feet seven. - Jour. Archaeol. Assoc., iv, 65, cited W.P.A., 182.
2 A.W. Brown in Archaeol. Jour. iii, 113, cited W.P.A., 180-1.
3 This chronicle states that a Scot from Spain (Iberna), named Iber-Scot, on landing "in yat cuntre, yat now is callit Irland, and fund it vakande, bot of a certanne of Gewictis, ye quhilk he distroyt, and inhabyt yat land, and callit it eftir his modir Scota, Scotia." S.C.P., 380.

p.123: PICTS AS ABORIGINES OF IRELAND

by the Matriarchist Van origin of this race. The Pictish Chronicles, both of the Irish-Scots and the Picts of Scotland, make repeated and pointed reference to this custom and it is borne out by the lists of the Pictish kings. These show that the Pictish king was not succeeded by his own son, but by his brother, the next son of his mother, or by his sister's son; and many of the kings appear to be named after their mother, or specified as the son of their mother. The Picts in Scotland, probably to excuse themselves in the eyes of the Scots and Britons who were of the Aryan patrilinear society, state in their Chronicles that this custom was imposed on them by "the women of Ireland," with whom they appear to have kept up some kindred intermarriage. But it is significant that these aboriginal women of Ireland are not stated to be the "wives" of the men they consort with, but it is said "each woman was with her brother,"1 which is suggestive of the primitive Matriarchist promiscuity before the institution of Marriage. These aboriginal women, called "Ban," (i.e. Van or "Biani") are stated to have imposed the matrilinear contract by oath:-

"They imposed oaths on them
By the stars, by the earth,
That from the nobility of the Mother
Should always be the right of reigning."2

It was probably Part-olon's attempts to abolish this Matriarchist promiscuity and mother-right by the introduction of the Aryan custom of marriage with patrilinear succession, which is referred to in the Pictish Chronicles as one of the great offences of "Cruithne" (i.e. Pruthne or Part-olon), that he "took their women from them."3 Another vestige of this ancient matriarchy in Ireland appears in the custom in the first century B.C. by which a married woman retained her private fortune independent of her husband.4

It was this Pictish promiscuity presumably, regarding which

1 Books of Ballymote and Lecan, S.C.P., 39.
2 Ib. S.C.P. 40.
3 Book of Lecan, S.C.P., 47.
4 Cf. Dunn Tain bo Cual. (xviii).

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Caesar makes his remarkable statement that "the inland non-agricultural people" who were clad in skins and stained their skins blue (i.e., obviously the Picts): "by tens or twelves together have wives in common, and the offspring is credited to him who first had the mother as a virgin."1 This is believed by some writers to be a misunderstanding by Caesar. And in view of the briefness of his visit, confined to only a few months' strenuous campaigning in the south-east corner of England, in a foreign country, and dependent on interpreters, it seems probable that it is one of his several mistaken statements,2 and that the Pictish custom in question was not polyandry, but matriarchy.

The Serpent-worship of the Picts also, which was so universal, as seen everywhere on the prehistoric monuments in Pictlands, and figuring freely also on the early Christian monuments and "Celtic" crosses of the Picts, is now explained by the matriarchist Van or Fen origin of this race. We have seen the prominence of the Serpent-cult Witch's Bowl or Cauldron amongst the Feins of prehistoric Ireland, and the Serpent guardians there of the Tribe of the "Fidga," i.e., the Picts, the Serpent-cult enmity against the Sun-worshipping heroes Diarmait and Conn of the Irish-Scots, and the widespread carving of the Serpent and its coiled symbols on the prehistoric stone monuments in Ireland, and how St Patrick the Scot in the fifth century A. D. traditionally banished the Serpent-cult from Ireland and demolished the chief Matriarchist idol. In Britain, the Serpent and its interlacing coils are freely sculptured on many of the prehistoric monuments and early Christian crosses. In Scotland, the last refuge of the Picts, where their early monuments have most largely escaped destruction, this symbolism is especially widespread and occurs on many of the several hundreds of prehistoric monuments and early Christian crosses figured by Dr. Stuart in his classic Sculptured Stones of Scotland, and it is well exemplified in the great prehistoric "Serpent Stone," which now stands alongside the Newton Stone.

1 D.B.G., v, 5. Cf. H.A.B., 414, etc.
2 E.g., His statement that the Pine and Beech do not grow in Britain, D.B.G., v., 5.

p.125: PICTS ARRIVE IN ALBION IN STONE AGE

In Cornwall, the prehistoric whorls of pierced stone, called "Pixies' grindstones," and presumably amulets, are also called "Snake stones."1 This Serpent-cult character of the Picts would explain the prevalence of human sacrifice amongst the Druid priests of the aborigines who were of this lunar matriarchist cult, and also the historical notices of the existence of cannibalism amongst the barbarian tribes of Caledonia as late as the time of St. Jerome (fourth century A.D.),2 as well as the traditional immolation of a victim by St. Columba in founding his first church at Iona for the "Culdees" or Picts.

It thus transpires by the new evidence that the "Picts" were the primitive small-statured prehistoric aborigines of Albion or Britain with the "River-bed" type of skulls. They were presumably a branch of the primitive small-statured, narrow-browed and long-headed dark race of matriarchist Serpent-worshipping cave-dwellers of the Van Lake region, the Van, Biani, Fen, or Khal-dis or primitive "Chaldees," Caleds or Caledons, who, in early prehistoric times in the Old Stone Age, sent off from this central hive swarm after swarm of "hunger-marchers" under matriarchs, westwards across Asia Minor to Europe, as far as Iberia and the Biscay region, after the retreating ice. The hordes, which ultimately reached Albion overland, formed there the "aborigines" of Albion. They appear to have entered Southern Albion by the old land-bridge at Kent, after the latter end of the last glacial period, when the reindeer, mammoth and woolly rhinoceros still roamed over what is now called England. And then, long ages afterwards, in the late Stone Age, presumably before 2000 B.C., they gave off a branch to Erin under a Van, Ban or Fian matriarch, forming the aborigines of Ireland.

Having thus elicited the apparent solution to the long outstanding problem of "Who are the Picts"- the primitive non-Aryan race over which the Aryan Part-olon and his successors, the "Brude," "Bret," or Briton kings ruled in Scotland,-and found that they were the aborigines of Albion, we are now in our search for the first advent of the

1 Cf. L.H.C., 49.
2 Ib. 30.

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Aryans into Britain before Part-olon's epoch, still faced by an equally enigmatic and hitherto unsolved problem. This is the vexed question "Who were the Celts?" For the "Celts" have been supposed by philologists to be Aryans in race, and to be the first Aryan civilizers of Britain, whilst anthropologists find that they are not racially Aryan at all.

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