a short piece on the Picts

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.academia.edu/34681572/Woolf_2017_On_the_Nature_of_the_Picts.pdf

a short but quite interesting look into the origin and continuity of the term Pict and its meaning

[Anton]

My initial thoughts are that looking for continuity in word usage is a vexed business when we consider the gaps in our sources.  From memory we have 87 Greek and Roman textual references to Britain and its inhabitants and these tend to cluster at certain points, some of them are very brief.

The Irish texts always seem to think of the Picts as British.

Koch likewise sees the Picts as speaking a Celtic language. 

I wouldn't put over much weight on Gildas's statement that the Picts were a transmarine people given his own caveats on the historical content of his famous work.  Though certainly Pict raiders would have arrived any where below the Wall by boat.  The author by making his Tunisian comparison where we do have incoming Arab invaders and a new culture seems to think that the Picts also came in from elsewhere.  I can think of no evidence to support this beyond reliance on Gildas.

Given what we do and don't know about early Mercia I'm not sure where that comparison is supposed to take us.

As ever its always interesting to see what people are thinking and writing about.

[Duncan Head]

The author by making his Tunisian comparison where we do have incoming Arab invaders and a new culture seems to think that the Picts also came in from elsewhere.  I can think of no evidence to support this beyond reliance on Gildas.

No, I don't think Woolf is saying that the Picts came to Scotland from elsewhere, merely that the Pictish kingdom is centered in Fortriu and that they were outsiders to other regions - Fife, in his example. Islam coming to Tunisia is perhaps a clumsy comparison: I think he's saying that we shouldn't expect to see a "proto-Pictish" culture in Fife any more than we'd see a "proto-Roman" culture in Lucania.

[Imperial Dave]

agreed. The pre and post Roman meanings of Pict is to my eyes different

[Erpingham]

agreed. The pre and post Roman meanings of Pict is to my eyes different

Discussions of 11th century Scots armies elsewhere has led to some reading of 12th century sources.  Incidentally, these refer to the Scots as Picts.  At the same time, Normans are called Gauls.  I am reminded of the Byzantine tendency to call peoples after the ancient name for the place they came from.  We could easily be seeing the same with Picts - that the early medieval ones have no connection to the Roman ones, just that they came from the same areas.

Also reading the article, I thought the author's point was not to make too many assumptions about Pictish language from the limited evidence we have because it may embed linguistic traditions which predate or run alongside Pictish hegemony rather than coming from the Picts themselves.   I'm not sure he is arguing it is non-celtic.

[eques]

Blimey, someone needs to introduce Mr Woolf to the concept of the full stop.

[Imperial Dave]

if we equate Pictish with Northern Briton (at least in the late Roman sense) then Brythonic it is

[Anton]

Certainly Brythonic, but Patrick sees a difference between the peoples between the Walls and the peoples beyond them.  Originally a political difference between Roman Clients and those who were not.  Dumnville thinks there was a linguistic shift too. The intra - mural Brythons are fellow cives, the Picts are not.

But back to Woolf.

I find it is an odd rather than clumsy comparison. We are invited to compare two things that aren't remotely alike. Here's Woolf's question:

"Was the culture of sixth and seventh century Fife, for example, any more 'proto Pictish' than the culture of sixth and seventh century Tunisia was 'proto Islamic'."

Given the Pict formation arose from the same extra mural British cultural region that contained Fife then it's probably reasonable to answer, yes, the culture of sixth and seventh century Fife was more proto Pictish' than the culture of sixth and seventh century Tunisia was 'proto Islamic'.

To answer yes, doesn't take us anywhere. What have we learned?

If we answer no, then we need to explain why the initial question is neither clumsy, in Duncan's view, or odd, in my own, but is instead pertinent and helpful. That is what eludes me.

[Imperial Dave]

indeed, it is an odd comparison and one not really worth alluding to. Better off just describing the shift from the Roman to the Post Roman sense of what the term Pict came to mean (or at least make a good stab at it)

[Andreas Johansson]

I'm struggling to see what's so odd about it. Islam was an import to Tunisia, without any particular local roots. In the Fraser-Woolf scenario, Pictishness (whatever that is) was an import to Fife, without any particular local roots. Seems analogous to me.

Anyway, what I found the most interesting was the claim that in the Roman sources Picti does not seem to be regarded as an ethnonym. Woolf fails to say what it was then regarded as - a simple descriptive term? A generic label like "nomad" or "barbarian"?

[Imperial Dave]

I'm struggling to see what's so odd about it. Islam was an import to Tunisia, without any particular local roots. In the Fraser-Woolf scenario, Pictishness (whatever that is) was an import to Fife, without any particular local roots. Seems analogous to me.

Anyway, what I found the most interesting was the claim that in the Roman sources Picti does not seem to be regarded as an ethnonym. Woolf fails to say what it was then regarded as - a simple descriptive term? A generic label like "nomad" or "barbarian"?

possibly 'man beyond the wall' or similar generic term

[Duncan Head]

Anyway, what I found the most interesting was the claim that in the Roman sources Picti does not seem to be regarded as an ethnonym. Woolf fails to say what it was then regarded as - a simple descriptive term? A generic label like "nomad" or "barbarian"?

A geographic term rather than an ethnic one, is perhaps what he means? Anna Ritchie's lecture, which Woolf cites, is online at http://s3.spanglefish.com/s/213/documents/pdf%20files/perceptions%20of%20the%20picts.pdf and she suggests that

It seems ... that Eumenius used the term Picti simply because it was familiar to his audience in 297, who would understand it to mean the people who lived in the far north of Britain ...

[Imperial Dave]

Anyway, what I found the most interesting was the claim that in the Roman sources Picti does not seem to be regarded as an ethnonym. Woolf fails to say what it was then regarded as - a simple descriptive term? A generic label like "nomad" or "barbarian"?

A geographic term rather than an ethnic one, is perhaps what he means? Anna Ritchie's lecture, which Woolf cites, is online at http://s3.spanglefish.com/s/213/documents/pdf%20files/perceptions%20of%20the%20picts.pdf and she suggests that

It seems ... that Eumenius used the term Picti simply because it was familiar to his audience in 297, who would understand it to mean the people who lived in the far north of Britain ...

thanks for the example Duncan....its what I was groping for!

[Andreas Johansson]

A geographic term rather than an ethnic one, is perhaps what he means?

That'd make sense I guess. Mind, Gildas' story of their arrival over the sea doesn't really invite such a reading.

I was a little surprised at Ritchie saying the consensus is now that Picti is a Latinization of a native name, not simply Latin for "painted ones". Any such consensus doesn't appear to've spread to popular sources like WP.

[Imperial Dave]

I am a little surprised too.......Picti for me is no different to Brittone from a latin root word persepctive