Were the Picts Weirdos, or Just… Special?

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Camelot Chat! I’m your hostess, Shannon Watson; and today, we will be discussing whether the Picts were “Weirdos, or Just… Special?”

The Picts had a quantity of weird practices. Or at least, practices that appear strange in retrospect and to the modern eye.

Some of these customs were, frankly, pretty neat, like the straight-out-of-a-faerie-tale-looking Pictish brochs: high, stone round towers of which Rapunzel would have been proud. The Pictish broch was the skyscraper of its Dark Age day. Brochs are scattered throughout the Scottish landscape, and the Arthurian villain, Meleagant, built just such a tower in which to imprison Lancelot, whom he had ambushed in a most un-chivalric manner.

Then, there were the souterrains. These were underground caverns, clearly manmade and hand dug, that littered the British Isles like outsized gopher holes.

But what were souterrains? What was their purpose? Was it for fighting? Defense? Worship? Food storage? Shelter?

No one knows.

The likeliest answer is food storage. I know it isn’t sexy, but it makes sense.

Souterrains, being underground, would have been entirely impractical as a defense system. Once the Pictish defenders were inside, any sensible enemy could have just blocked up the cavern door and set a fire. Smoke inhalation would have done his job for him, unless there was a second form of egress.

So, food storage seems the safest bet. In the souterrains, perishables could be kept at a colder temperature–or possibly even frozen in winter–thereby supplying a large town or small fortress with vittles till spring.

Another solution is animal pens. The giant, shaggy, Scottish cattle–the Pictish and Irish currency of the day–were so valuable–and vulnerable to reivers, predators… and weather–that their masters often kept them inside their huts overnight and in winter, alongside their children and themselves. The cattle’s body heat provided additional warmth during the long cold season. So, why not keep them in souterrains, where that same heat, enclosed in a tight, well-hidden space, might similarly protect them?

It is thus possible that the function of these underground caverns was that of food storage, or animal pen… or both.

Here’s another odd potential Pictish trait.

Sir Gawain was a giant. Or at any rate, a really big guy.

Gawain was a famous warrior. His earliest known name, Gwalchmai, meant “Hawk of May.” He was a renowned fighter and general and King Arthur’s right-hand man.

Like Achilles, however, Gawain had a weakness, although it was perhaps not a fatal flaw. His strength–having reached its zenith, like the sun, at noon–thereafter, began a steady decline, fading until he became at least as weak as a normal man.

“Midday infirmity” seems like a strange trait to assign to an invulnerable giant. Later scholars have suggested that Gawain is a remembrance of a Celtic sun-hero: a champion, whose strength is tied to the sun’s daily cycle in the sky.

But there might be another option. Some academics have suggested that this character trait reflects another quality: hypoglycemia. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hypoglycemia as an “abnormal decrease of sugar in the blood.”

In fact, I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia as a child. It does feel abnormal. And alarmingly abrupt.

One minute, you’re fine. The next, you’re nauseated, dizzy, and in a cold sweat. If you don’t sit down and get some sustenance into your system, you faint.

That happened to me twice, when I didn’t get nourishment quickly enough. And, over the years, I have lost track of the near misses. It’s an unpleasant sensation, to say the least.

A good part of my ancestry comes from the British Isles. Of that, most is Irish. My surname, Watson, is Scottish. Through my Watson ancestry, I am at least 1/16 Scottish. So, who can say whether any of my Watson genes–or my Irish ones, for that matter–are actually Pictish genes?

It seems probable, however, that Gawain was at least part-Pictish. Geoffrey of Monmouth thought Gawain, who he called Gunuuasius, ruled Orcadum, or the “Orkney Islands,” which were inhabited by Picts, but too far north to fit the Arthurian geography. Maybe Geoffrey’s designation, Orcadum, indicated something else: perhaps, something like “Land of the Orcs.”

There are hints in the written and archaeological records of a Pictish tribe known as the Orcs, or “Boars.” A Pictish Boar symbol was carved into the coronation stone at Dunadd hillfort, which later became the coronation site for the Scottish kings of Dál Riada.

So, maybe boars, like hounds, were an ancient symbol of kingship? Or perhaps, there really was an ancient Pictish Boar Clan known as the Orcs.

If this is true, and Gawain was Pictish, could the Picts have suffered from a genetic predisposition to hypoglycemia? If so, the strange mechanism by which Gawain’s strength failed at noon may actually be a cultural memory, neatly embedded in medieval romance. Meaning: He didn’t eat his breakfast before battle.

Then there is the question of matrilinear succession. To twenty-first-century Western eyes, this custom appears unusual, if not outright strange.

Why was it so important for Arthur to marry Guinevere? Was the Round Table some sort of boundary marker? And did the king lose more than his pride when Guinevere allegedly absconded with the lordly Lancelot and later, with Modred?

There seems to have been an ancient real property law working behind the scenes in Arthurian legend. Could this law have issued from the original inhabitants of the land, the Picts?

The Pictish word pett, or “share of land,” survives to this day in Scottish place names. While real property seems to have been held in common by the tribe and not the crown–perhaps, the king or queen was merely in charge of ensuring that everyone got their fair use of the land–matrilinear succession was the order of Arthur and Guinevere’s day. This meant that kingship passed from the king to his eldest sister’s eldest son, and land passed from mother to daughter.

If this practice obtained in King Arthur’s Court, then it places extra emphasis on the importance of Queen Guinevere. It would have been she, and not Arthur, who held the land. Only through marriage to Guinevere, and consummation of that marriage, could the king hold sway over his subjects, their land… and the warriors who came with it and provided his real power. And hers.

And here’s one last, unusual Pictish custom: Grudge-holding.

In King Arthur’s court, a relative had the right to demand justice–which in the fifth century, may have amounted to straightforward revenge–down through nine generations of family. Students of medieval literature have noticed that, in Arthurian lore, a plaintiff could claim compensation for a wrong done a member of his family nine generations earlier. Meaning, if someone murdered his great-great-great-grandfather or raped his great-great-grandmother, the victim’s grand-something could legally demand to be remunerated.

That’s a long time to hold a grudge, people.

In next week’s episode, I'm digging into "The Legend of the Pictish Heather Ale." A mysterious decoction that made warriors fight like immortals in combat. A secret recipe whole tribes died to the last man to defend. Real historical names that echo those of famous Arthurian characters. What's not to love? Learn more about the secret recipe the Picts died for… next week.

If you can’t wait till the next episode for more Arthurian lore, 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.