The Pictish Language: Celtic or Otherwise?© Kelly Vincent
Sep 19, 2002
If you have already heard of the Picts, there's a good chance what you have in your mind is a romanticized image of a big, bulky painted warrior that you have in mind. I'm here to say that it's not really your fault, but it's also not true! This is the image that is usually casually referenced in Celtic literature, and also sometimes in more scholarly historical accounts. But the real Picts were a bit different. The discrepancy comes from the fact that for many years, almost nothing was known about them, and early modern historians individually constructed their realities around the few historical references to the Picts, which all came from outsiders. Circumstantial evidence, such as their name and its relation to the Latin word for 'painted', was capitalized upon by these historians. The long-disappeared Picts of northern Scotland became wild, painted men.
More recently, Pictish Studies has been one of the most hotly debated topics in the study of history of Scotland. Who were they exactly? Were they Neolithic peoples who survived to coexist with the Celtic "invaders" of Britain? Or were they in fact Celts themselves? I won't be addressing all of these questions directly here, as I am focusing especially on the Pictish language. But all of these issues are important in determining what kind of language the Picts spoke, because they left almost no historical documents before they disappeared as a distinctive culture in the tenth century. In the "bad old days" of Pictish studies, there were many mistaken beliefs about the Picts and Pictish. There are many reasons for this, fairly standard in the field of history. One of the most important reason is that early modern historians looking at the Picts were biased toward their own ideas and theories and therefore "found" supporting evidence for them. But the biggest problem was the simple lack of evidence. The only historical document attributable to the Picts is a list of their kings. There is also trouble with this, as there are several versions of it and nobody knows for certain which sections are legitimate. Scribes could have made accidental or intentional mistakes when copying the original documents. So much of what we know has come from archeological sources and careful analysis of the few extant historical documents. The other evidence that is useful especially in terms of language includes place-names and inscriptions on Pictish carved stones. A Ridiculously Short History of the Picts
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