PICT3. 



PICTURESQUE. 



Belgrc and the Irish Firbolgs, has been, whether they were a Celtic or 

 a Teutonic people. Their Teutonic lineage is maintained by Usher, 

 Stillingfleet, and Pmkerton ; that they were Celts is the opinion of 

 Camden, Bishop Lloyd, Father Inaes, George Chalmers, Kitson, and 

 others. The historic evidence that bears upon the point does not 

 amount to much ; all that can be said is, that the various old legendary 

 accounts all make them to have come to Britain from Scythia or from 

 Scandinavia. But the most curious and valuable fact that we possess 

 in relation to this matter is, that their language appears to have nearly 

 resembled the Welsh, and the Welsh Triads uniformly term them 

 gwyddyl Ffahti, the Gaelic or Celtic Picts. One Pictish word only has 

 been expressly mentioned by any old writer. Peanvahel, Bede tells 

 us, was the Pictish name of the place at which the wall of Antoninus 

 terminated on the Forth, and which Nennius says was called in Welsh 

 Pengaaul (Pengual ?), and in Scotch (Scotice') Cenail. It is still in fact 

 known by the name of KinneiL On, or Cecai, is the Irish or Gaelic 

 word for a head, and Cenail in that dialect would mean the head of 

 the wall; and that is also the signification of the Welsh name, with 

 which the Pictish is evidently identical. It is remarkable that in 

 Angus, and the other counties on the north-east coast of Scotland 

 where the Picts were longest established, the popular speech is still 

 characterised by the peculiarity of the substitution of the element / 

 for ie, or tcA, or gw. Thus, for what the people of that district all say 

 fat, just as their Pictish ancestors for Pengual said Penfahel or PenfaJ. 

 And generally it appears that the ancient names of places in those 

 parts of Scotland formerly occupied by the Picts are Welsh, as was 

 long ago pointed out by Camden, and afterwards more fully established 

 by George Chalmers, in his ' Caledonia ;' and has been substantiated by 

 most subsequent investigations. 



The greatest diversity of opinion has also prevailed as to the extent 

 of the territory occupied by the Picts in the north of Britain. Pinker- 

 ton, who considers the Picts to be the same people with the Cale- 

 donians, holds them to have occupied not only the Orkney Islands and 

 the Hebrides, but the whole of Scotland to the north of the Friths of 

 Forth and Clyde, and to have extended their conquests on the east 

 coast aa far south as to the Humber. There is every reason indeed to 

 believe that they were at one time in possession of a considerable 

 territory to the south of the Forth. Bede expressly states that in his 

 time the English held possession of the Pictish province in which 

 stood Aebberournig, now Abercorn, in West Lothian, the seat of one 

 of their bishops. Here too wag Peanvahel, now Kinneil ; and Edin- 

 burgh, farther to the east, on the same side of the Forth, is also 

 described by old writers as having been at one time within the 

 dominion of the Picts. But, at least during the greater part of the 

 time that it subsisted, the Pictish kingdom appears to have been 

 bounded by the Frith of Forth to the south, and to the west by the 

 mountainous range still separating the Lowlands from the Highlands 

 of Scotland. The kingdom of Strath-Clyde, or Cumbria, however, or 

 Reged (that is, the kingdom, by way of pre-eminence), aa it was usually 

 designated by the Welsh, which comprised the south-west of Scotland, 

 and perhaps also the county of Cumberland (if that did not form a 

 separate state), must be regarded as having also been Pictish on the 

 hypothesis which assumes the Picts to have been the same people with 

 the Welsh, the latter being admitted on all hands to be of the same 

 race with the people of Strath-Clyde. 



The history 'of the Pictish kingdom established in the north-east of 

 Scotland is, as may be supposed, exceedingly scanty and obscure. The 

 Scottish and Irish chronicles however supply five different lists of the 

 Pictish kings, no one of which evidently has been copied from another, 

 although they all agree substantially, with the exception of such 

 variations as tend to establish the independent authority of each. 

 From these lists Pinkerton has framed a Pictish chronology, which he 

 divides into two portions : the first, which he entitles Poetical, extend- 

 ing from the foundation of the monarchy by Cruthen, or Cruithne 

 (whence the Irish name for the northern Picts), about A.D. 28, through 

 a succession of thirty -six kings, ending with Talorc I., A.D. 414 ; the 

 econd, styled Historical, extending from the accession of the successor 

 of Talorc, Drust the Great, through forty princes more, to the sub- 

 version of the monarchy in A.D. 843, in the reign of Brudi VII. 

 Besides the succession of the kings, a few events of Pictish history 

 are also recorded by the Irish and Icelandic, as well as by the less 

 ancient Scottish chroniclers. These consist chiefly of the foundations 

 of a few towns, and of battles fought with the Scots, or Irish colonists 

 of the north-west of Scotland, with whom the Picts appear to have 

 been almost constantly at war from the first establishment of these 

 new settlers in the country about the beginning of the 6th century. 

 Bede and Ailred state that the Southern Picts were converted to 

 Christianity by St. Ninian about the year 412 ; but it may be doubted 

 whether these were the Picts living between the Forth and the 

 Grampians, as Bede affirms, or the people of Strath-Clyde, among 

 win mi it is known that Ninian was established as bishop of Whithern, 

 now Whitehom, in Wigtonshire. The conversion of the Northern 

 Picts is attributed to St. Columba, about the year 565. 



No passage of the obscure story of the Picts is involved in greater 

 darkness than the sudden catastrophe which appears to have put an 

 end to their dominion in their principal seat, the north-east of Scot- 

 Utnl. The common account of the Scottish historians is, that the 

 Pictish kingdom was conquered in the year 843 by the Dalriadic or 



ARTS AND 8Ct. DtV. VOL. VI. 



Scottish king Kenneth II., who thus, for the first time, united the 

 whole of North Britain into one monarchy. The oldest authorities 

 for this account are the Chronicon Begum Pictorum, written appar- 

 ently about the beginning of the llth century (it comes down to the 

 year 992), and first published by Father Innes, in 1729; and the 

 Register of St. Andrew's, written about 1130. On the other hand it 

 is extraordinary that no allusipn should be made to any revolution as 

 having taken place in Pictland about this time, either by Nenuius, 

 who wrote about 858, and who expressly states that the Picts then 

 continued to hold a third part of Britain ; by Asser, the biographer 

 of king Alfred, who wrote before the end of the same century, and 

 who speaks of the Danes ravaging the Piots in 875; by the Saxon 

 Chronicler, by Ethelwerd, or by Ingulphus, who, in the 10th and llth 

 centuries, all continue to speak of the Picts as an existing people ; 

 by the Irish annalist, Tighernac, who wrote about 1088, and who con- 

 tinues a regular chronicle of the Pictish kings, among whom he 

 reckons Kenneth himself, down to the death of hie son Constan- 

 tino II., in 875 ; by the Welsh annalists, who, in h'ke manner, style 

 Kenneth simply king of the Picts ; or finally, by the singular genea- 

 logical poem, commonly called the Gaelic or Albania Duan, belonging 

 to the reign of Malcolm III. (1056-1093), which passes over the reign 

 of Kenneth II. without any remark ; though it states that the 

 Cruithne had gone from Ireland, and seventy kings had possessed the 

 Cruithne plains. It thus appears that neither the Irish, the Welsh, 

 nor the Saxon annalists who lived nearest to the time, ever heard of 

 this subjugation of the Picts by the Scots, which the later Scottish 

 chroniclers would have us btlieve amounted to the entire destruction 

 of the Pictish nation, and indeed to the utter extirpation of that 

 people from the soil of Scotland. Nevertheless, the fact remains un- 

 questionable and undisputed, that Kenneth II., or Kenneth Macalpin, 

 as he is commonly called, having been originally king of the Scots, or 

 Dalriads, became king of the Picts about the date assigned to his 

 conquest of that people ; and the probability therefore seems to be 

 that this Dalriadic king had a claim by descent to the Pictish throne, 

 and that the contest in which he proved victorious was in fact not a 

 war between the Scots and Picta, but merely a dispute between him 

 and a rival claimant for the crown of Pictland, which terminated in 

 ita acquisition by Kenneth, and consequently in the union of the two 

 kingdoms under one sceptre. The two people also were of allied races, 

 and might have easily amalgamated. Kenneth, we may here notice, 

 appears to have followed up this success by a course of policy having 

 for its aim the ultimate incorporation with his own dominions of the 

 adjoining (perhaps Pictish) kingdom of Strath-Clyde; and that object 

 was in fact accomplished, and the whole of what is now called Scotland 

 brought (nominally at least) under one rule, in the year 973, in the 

 reign of his great-great-grandson Kenneth III. Even down to a con- 

 siderably later date than this, however, a great part of the north-east of 

 Scotland appears to have been actually held by Norwegian princes, who 

 did not acknowledge the sovereignty of the descendants of Kenneth 

 Macalpin ; and even some of the great Highland chiefs of the west 

 long continued to maintain almost as substantial if not as openly 

 avowed an independence. 



Certain 1 singular architectural remains found in some parts of Scot- 

 land are stiH popularly known there by the name of Picts' houses : 

 and the Picts, or Pechs, live in the traditions of the country as a 

 people of almost superhuman strength and dexterity. This would 

 seem to indicate the possession by that race of a more advanced civili- 

 sation than belonged to the other races by whom they were surrounded. 

 .Many carvings on stone, of a very remarkable character, the prevailing 

 emblems being a serpent with a zigzag line passing through it, and 

 two or sometimes three circles united by double parallel lines, are 

 scattered over the whole of the tract which once formed the 

 dominion of the Picts ; but these curious monuments have not yet 

 received the investigation they deserve, and whether they are Pictish 

 or Norwegian remains doubtful. Of these various works an interest- 

 ing account is given in Daniel Wilson's ' Archaology and Prehistoric 

 Annals of Scotland,' 1851. 



PICTURE. [PAINTING.] 



PICTURESQUE (in Italian Pittorvtco, painter-like or picture-like, 

 and therefore expressed in German by the word MaliJcrisch, which is of 

 exactly the same import) is that quality which peculiarly recommends 

 objects for pictorial representation. Consequently, in order to ascer- 

 tain wherein this quality consists, it is necessary to consider what it is 

 that, independently of other things, contributes to the general effect of 

 a picture, and recommends more particularly certain classes of objects 

 as suitable for the pencil. A picture is a representation upon a plane 

 surface of bodies in relief, delineated as they appear to the eye, by 

 means of form and colour, and their accompanying light and shade, 

 which degree of relief OP illusion will generally be in proportion as the 

 objects themselves are favourable to artistical execution on account o 

 the apparent diversity and variety which they present to the eye, and 

 with which they must accordingly be represented in painting, although 

 in themselves, or taken separately, they may appear monotonous. 

 Hence, provided any object presents that variety to the eye which the 

 artist requires in order to display the artifice of his pencil, it matters 

 not how unpicturesque it may be when otherwise viewed, or though it 

 should possess in itself none of those qualities which are commonly 

 insisted upon as essential to the picturesque. 



bt, 



