Picti and Pixies and Dwarves… Oh, My!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Camelot Chat! I’m your hostess, Shannon Watson; and today, we will be talking about the mysterious Picts of ancient Scotland… and the fairy-tale characters that evolved from Pictish legend. This episode is therefore playfully entitled, Picti and Pixies and Dwarves… Oh, My!

The Picts were a group of natives who inhabited early Scotland, both before the Romans conquered most of southern Britannia, and after 410 AD, when the Briton landholders kicked out the remaining Roman administration. After that, Rome never returned to Britain.

And the Romans never fully conquered Scotland. The most they could muster were the two great, stone walls they erected across the narrowest part of the island. The area in between the walls is designated as Borders.

The northern wall is called the Antonine Wall, and the southerly one is known as Hadrian’s Wall. Both were built to keep the northern marauders from pillaging the settled south. Ignoring the stone elephants in the room, however, the northerners frequently crossed one or both walls, raiding south into Britain.

These annoying northern barbarians were the Picts.

The name Picts came from Latin, from the Roman designation for their ferocious neighbors: Picti, or “Painted Ones.” The word Picti was the plural of pictus, “painted,” possibly referring to the Picts’ tattoos or body-paint.

Were the Picts the earliest, native inhabitants of Britain, Scotland, and possibly even Ireland? Did they migrate from Scythia, as an ancient legend says they did? Or were they some other early relative of another enigmatic people, like the Basques of Spain or the Sami of Lapland?

No one knows for sure. As the science of genetics develops, perhaps some of these questions may be answered, even in our lifetimes. But for now, the mystery remains.

Their language is equally puzzling. Pictish remains undeciphered, although it does share some words and characteristics with early Celtic languages. But whether those words are borrowings from Brythonic or Goidelic, or just part of their own branch of the Celtic language tree, is uncertain.

Anyway, on to more certain matters… like faeries!

What does the word Picti sound like? That’s right: Picti sounds like Pixie!

Pixies, or Faeries, were Picts.

See if this sounds familiar.

The Picts were known to appear suddenly in battle–say, over the crest of a hill–and to disappear just as quickly. It was whispered that they lived in the mountains, in the forest… and in hidden underground homes, which no one could find. No one seemed to see them coming or know where they went when they left.

What’s more, the Scottish Grampian Mountains were rumored to be the home of a group of people called “the White Dwarves.”

Could dwarves once have inhabited the desolate crags and crannies of the remote Highland north?

Sure, they could! And we have the pictures to prove it!

On the lichen-covered standing stones of the north, little bearded men scamper–hunting and hawking and fighting–pointed hats set jauntily atop their heads, small, round shields called “bucklers” strung across their arms. Their tiny faces are fiercely determined. Some ride sturdy ponies without a stirrup or bridle. Others march stoutly in file, short swords at their hips, spears slung across their shoulders. Lithe hounds–surely swift in the hunt and in battle–gambol at their feet.

Could these be the origins of the legends of dwarves… at least, in the British Isles?

It would seem so. And, if so, then these legendary Grampian dwarves may have been an ancient tribe of Picts.

What do dwarves and pixies–and Picts–have to do with Arthurian legend, you ask?

In the medieval tome, The Knight of the Cart, written by Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot gallops two horses to death. After both his steeds have foundered, he is forced to ride in a cart, driven by a dwarf. Later, Gawain encounters the same dwarf, though he elects to ride alongside, rather than in, the cart. The dwarf guides these two knights as they journey into the Otherworld in their hunt for the kidnapped queen. The cart serves as a humbling vehicle for the proud Lancelot, for carts in the Middle Ages were reserved for criminals.

But what if the cart was a war chariot and the dwarf a Pictish charioteer? More accurately, a cultural memory of a war chariot, for–though it was all of sixteen hundred years ago–the fifth century was still too recent for chariots.

Codes such as these–cart, dwarf–are embedded in Arthurian legend. Mermaids equal water-women, or priestesses. Hounds symbolize kingship. Knights double as warriors of the barbaric stripe. Perhaps, dwarves stood in for the mysterious, miniature Picts.

In next week’s episode, we will unravel the mystery behind the strange markings on the bodies of the Picts. Were they really tattoos? Body painting? Some early medieval form of henna?

Did the Picts actually tattoo themselves with woad? Or was it something else?

So, all you fans of Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 film, King Arthur, tune in to next week’s episode: The Painted Ones: Tattoos, Body-Paint, or Branding?

If you can’t wait for more Arthurian lore till the next episode, you will find my historical fiction novel, The Wanderer and the Wolves, told from Queen Guinevere’s perspective, on Amazon.com. The link is included below. And be sure to check out my author page at ShanavereStudios.com.

Until next week: People who read live in many worlds. Books are the surest portals to those worlds. So, keep living, keep reading, and keep dreaming... till we meet again.