Races of Britain and Ireland
Colours of Ancient Races and Mythical Ages--Caucasian
Race Theory--The Aryan or Indo-European Theory--Races and
Languages--Celts and Teutons--Fair and Dark Palæolithic Peoples
in Modern Britain--Mediterranean Man--The Armenoid or Alpine
Broad-heads--Ancient British Tribes--Cruithne and Picts--The
Picts of the "Brochs" as Pirates and Traders--Picts and
Fairies--Scottish Types--Racial "Pockets".
The race problem has ever been one of engrossing interest to
civilized peoples. In almost every old mythology we meet with
theories that were formulated to account for the existence of
the different races living in the world, and for the races that
were supposed to have existed for a time and became extinct. An
outstanding feature of each racial myth is that the people among
whom it grew up are invariably represented to be the finest type of
humanity.
A widespread habit, and one of great antiquity, was to divide
the races, as the world was divided, into four sections, and to
distinguish them by their colours. The colours were those of the
cardinal points and chiefly Black, White, Red, and Yellow. The same
system was adopted in dealing with extinct races. Each of these
were coloured according to the Age in which they had existence, and
the colours were connected with metals. In Greece and India, for
instance, the "Yellow Age" was a "Golden Age", the "White Age" a
"Silver Age", the "Red Age" a "Bronze Age", and the "Black Age" an
"Iron Age".
Although the old theories regarding the mythical ages and mythical
races have long been discarded, the habit of dividing mankind and
their history into four sections, according to colours and the
metals chiefly used by them, is not yet extinct. We still speak of
the "Black man", the "Yellow man", the "Red man", and the "White
man". Archæologists have divided what they call the "pre-history of
mankind" into the two "Stone Ages", the "Bronze Age" and the "Iron
Age". The belief that certain races have become extinct as the
result of conquest by invaders is still traceable in those histories
that refer, for instance, to the disappearance of "Stone Age man"
or "Bronze Age man", or of the British Celts, or of the Picts of
Scotland.
That some races have completely disappeared there can be no shadow
of a doubt. As we have seen, Neanderthal man entirely vanished from
the face of the globe, and has not left a single descendant among the
races of mankind. In our own day the Tasmanians have become extinct.
These cases, however, are exceptional. The complete extinction of a
race is an unusual thing in the history of mankind. A section may
vanish in one particular area and yet persist in another. As a rule,
in those districts where races are supposed to have perished, it is
found that they have been absorbed by intruders. In some cases the
chief change has been one of racial designation and nationality.
Crô-Magnon man, who entered Europe when the Neanderthals were
hunting the reindeer and other animals, is still represented in
our midst. Dr. Collignon, the French ethnologist, who has found
many representatives of this type in the Dordogne valley where
their ancestors lived in the decorated cave-dwellings before their
organization was broken up by the Azilian and other intruders, shows
that the intrusion of minorities of males rarely leaves a permanent
change in a racial type. The alien element tends to disappear.
"When", he writes, "a race is well seated in a region, fixed to
the soil by agriculture, acclimatized by natural selection and
sufficiently dense, it opposes, for the most precise observations
confirm it, an enormous resistance to new-comers, whoever they may
be." Intruders of the male sex only may be bred out in time.
Our interest here is with the races of Britain and Ireland, but, as
our native islands were peopled from the Continent, we cannot ignore
the evidence afforded by Western and Northern Europe when dealing
with our own particular phase of the racial problem.
It is necessary in the first place to get rid of certain old theories
that were based on imperfect knowledge or wrong foundations. One
theory applies the term "Caucasian Man" to either a considerable
section or the majority of European peoples. "The utter absurdity of
the misnomer Caucasian, as applied to the blue-eyed and fair-haired
Aryan (?) race of Western Europe, is revealed", says Ripley,[91] "by
two indisputable facts. In the first place, this ideal blond type
does not occur within many hundred miles of Caucasia; and, secondly,
nowhere along the great Caucasian chain is there a single native
tribe making use of a purely inflectional or Aryan language."
[91] _Races of Europe_, p. 436.
The term "Aryan" is similarly a misleading one. It was invented
by Professor Max Müller and applied by him chiefly to a group
of languages at a time when races were being identified by the
languages they spoke. These peoples--with as different physical
characteristics as have Indians and Norseman, or Russians and
Spaniards, who spoke Indo-European, or, as German scholars have
patriotically adapted the term, Indo-Germanic languages--were
regarded by ethnologists of the "philological school" as members of
the one Indo-European or Aryan race or "family". Language, however,
is no sure indication of race. The spread of a language over wide
areas may be accounted for by trade or political influence or
cultural contact. In our own day the English language is spoken by
"Black", "Yellow", and "Red", as well as by "White" peoples.
A safer system is to distinguish racial types by their physical
peculiarities. When, however, this system is applied in Europe, as
elsewhere, we shall still find differences between peoples. Habits
of thought and habits of life exercise a stronger influence over
individuals, and groups of individuals, than do, for instance, the
shape of their heads, the colours of their hair, eyes, and skin, or
the length and strength of their limbs. Two particular individuals
may be typical representatives of a distinct race and yet not only
speak different languages, but have a different outlook on life, and
different ideas as to what is right and what is wrong. Different
types of people are in different parts of the world united by their
sense of nationality. They are united by language, traditions, and
beliefs, and by their love of a particular locality in which they
reside or in which their ancestors were wont to reside. A sense
of nationality, such as unites the British Empire, may extend to
far-distant parts of the world.
[Illustration: EUROPEAN TYPES
I, Mediterranean. II, Crô-Magnon. III, Armenoid (Alpine). IV,
Northern.]
But, while conscious of the uniting sense of nationality, our
people are at the same time conscious of and interested in their
physical differences and the histories of different sections of our
countrymen. The problem as to whether we are mainly Celtic or
mainly Teutonic is one of perennial interest.
Here again, when dealing with the past, we meet with the same
condition of things that prevail at the present day. Both the ancient
Celts and the people they called Teutons ("strangers") were mixed
peoples with different physical peculiarities. The Celts known to
the Greeks were a tall, fair-haired people. In Western Europe, as
has been indicated, they mingled with the dark Iberians, and a
section of the mingled races was known to the Romans as Celtiberians.
The Teutons included the tall, fair, long-headed Northerners, and
the dark, medium-sized, broad-headed Central Europeans. Both the
fair Celts and the fair Teutons appear to have been sections of
the northern race known to antiquaries as the "Baltic people", or
"Maglemosians", who entered Europe from Siberia and "drifted" along
the northern and southern shores of the Baltic Sea--the ancient
"White Sea" of the "White people" of the "White North". As we have
seen, other types of humanity were "drifting" towards Britain at the
same time--that is, before the system of polishing stone implements
and weapons inaugurated what has been called the "Neolithic Age".
As modern-day ethnologists have found that the masses of the
population in Great Britain and Ireland are of the early types known
to archæologists as Palæolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age men, the
race history of our people may be formulated as follows:
The earliest inhabitants of our islands whose physical
characteristics can be traced among the living population were the
Crô-Magnon peoples. These were followed by the fair Northerners,
the "carriers" of Maglemosian culture, and the dark, medium-sized
Iberians, who were the "carriers" of Azilian-Tardenoisian culture.
There were thus fair people in England, Scotland, and Ireland
thousands of years before the invasions of Celts, Angles, Saxons,
Jutes, Norsemen, or Danes.
For a long period, extending over many centuries, the migration
"stream" from the Continent appears to have been continuously
flowing. The carriers of Neolithic culture were in the main
Iberians of Mediterranean racial type--the descendants of the
Azilian-Tardenoisian peoples who used bows and arrows, and broke up
the Magdalenian civilization of Crô-Magnon man in western and central
Europe. This race appears to have been characterized in north and
north-east Africa. "So striking", writes Professor Elliot Smith,
"is the family likeness between the early Neolithic peoples of the
British Isles and the Mediterranean and the bulk of the population,
both ancient and modern, of Egypt and East Africa, that a description
of the bones of an Early Briton of that remote epoch might apply in
all essential details to an inhabitant of Somaliland."[92]
[92] _The Ancient Egyptians_, p. 58.
This proto-Egyptian (Iberian) people were of medium stature, had
long skulls and short narrow faces, and skeletons of slight and
mild build; their complexions were as dark as those of the southern
Italians in our own day, and they had dark-brown or black hair with
a tendency to curl; the men had scanty facial hair, except for a
chin-tuft beard.
These brunets introduced the agricultural mode of life, and, as they
settled on the granite in south-western England, appear to have
searched for gold there, and imported flint from the settlers on the
upper chalk formation.
In time Europe was invaded from Asia Minor by increasing numbers of
an Asiatic, broad-headed, long-bearded people of similar type to
those who had filtered into Central Europe and reached Belgium and
Denmark before Neolithic times. This type is known as the "Armenoid
race" (the "Alpine race" of some writers). It was quite different
from the long-headed and fair Northern type and the short, brunet
Mediterranean (proto-Egyptian and Iberian) type. The Armenoid
skeletons found in the early graves indicate that the Asiatics were a
medium-sized, heavily-built people, capable, as the large bosses on
their bones indicate, of considerable muscular development.
During the archæological Bronze Age these Armenoids reached Britain
in considerable numbers, and introduced the round-barrow method of
burial. They do not appear, however, as has been indicated, to have
settled in Ireland.
At a later period Britain was invaded by a people who cremated their
dead. As they thus destroyed the evidence that would have afforded us
an indication of their racial affinities, their origin is obscure.
While these overland migrations were in progress, considerable
numbers of peoples appear to have reached Britain and Ireland by sea
from northern and north-western France, Portugal, and Spain. They
settled chiefly in the areas where metals and pearls were once found
or are still found. "Kitchen middens" and megalithic remains are in
Ireland mainly associated with pearl-yielding rivers.
The fair Celts and the darker Celtiberians were invading and settling
in Britain before and after the Romans first reached its southern
shores. During the Roman period, the ruling caste was mainly of
south-European type, but the Roman legions were composed of Gauls,
Germans, and Iberians, as well as Italians. No permanent change
took place in the ethnics of Britain during the four centuries of
Roman occupation. The Armenoid broad-heads, however, became fewer:
"the disappearance", as Ripley puts it, "of the round-barrow men
is the last event of the prehistoric period which we are able to
distinguish". The inhabitants of the British Isles are, on the whole,
long-headed. "Highland and lowland, city or country, peasant or
philosopher, all are", says Ripley, "practically alike in respect to
this fundamental racial characteristic." Broad-headed types are, of
course, to be found, but they are in the minority.
[Illustration:
Valentine
RUINS OF PICTISH TOWER AT CARLOWAY, LEWIS
Modern "black house" in the foreground.]
The chief source of our knowledge regarding the early tribes or
little nations of Britain and Ireland is the work of Ptolemy, the
geographer, who lived between A.D. 50 and 150, from which the
earliest maps were compiled in the fourth century. He shows that
England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were divided among a number of
peoples. The Dumnonii,[93] as has been stated, were in possession of
Devon and Cornwall, as well as of a large area in the south-western
and central lowlands of Scotland. Near them were the Durotriges, who
were also in Ireland. Sussex was occupied by the Regni and Kent by
the Cantion. The Atrebates, the Belgæ, and the Parisii were invaders
from Gaul during the century that followed Cæsar's invasion. The
Belgæ lay across the neck of the land between the Bristol Channel
and the Isle of Wight; the Atrebates clung to the River Thames,
while the Parisii, who gave their name to Paris, occupied the east
coast between the Wash and the Humber. Essex was the land of the
Iceni or Eceni, the tribe of Boadicea (Boudicca). Near them were the
Catuvellauni (men who rejoiced in battle) who were probably rulers of
a league, and the Trinovantes, whose name is said to signify "very
vigorous". The most important tribe of the north and midlands of
England was the Brigantes,[94] whose sphere of influence extended to
the Firth of Forth, where they met the Votadini, who were probably
kinsmen or allies. On the north-west were the Setantii, who appear
to have been connected with the Brigantes in England and Ireland.
Cuchullin, the hero of the Red Branch of Ulster, was originally named
Setanta.[95] In south Wales the chief tribe was the Silures, whose
racial name is believed to cling to the Scilly (Silura) Islands.
They were evidently like the Dumnonii a metal-working people.
South-western Wales was occupied by the Demetæ (the "firm folk"). In
south-western Scotland, the Selgovæ ("hunters") occupied Galloway,
their nearest neighbours being the Novantæ of Wigtownshire. The
Selgovæ may have been those peoples known later as the Atecotti. From
Fife to southern Aberdeenshire the predominant people on the east
were the Vernicones. In north-east Aberdeenshire were the Tæxali.
To the west of these were the Vacomagi. The Caledonians occupied
the Central Highlands from Inverness southward to Loch Lomond. In
Ross-shire were the Decantæ, a name resembling Novantæ and Setantii.
The Lugi and Smertæ (smeared people) were farther north. The Cornavii
of Caithness and North Wales were those who occupied the "horns" or
"capes". Along the west of Scotland were peoples called the Cerones,
Creones, and Carnonacæ, or Carini, perhaps a sheep-rearing people.
The Epidii were an Argyll tribe, whose name is connected with that
of the horse--perhaps a horse-god.[96] Orkney enshrines the tribal
name of the boar--perhaps that of the ancient boar-god represented
on a standing stone near Inverness with the sun symbol above its
head. The Gaelic name of the Shetlanders is "Cat". Caithness is the
county of the "Cat" people, too. Professor Watson reminds us that the
people of Sutherland are still "Cats" in Gaelic, and that the Duke of
Sutherland is referred to as "Duke of the Cats".
[93] Englished "Damnonians" (Chapter IX).
[94] Tacitus says that the Brigantes were in point of numbers the
most considerable folkin Britain (_Agricola_, Chapter XVII).
[95] Evidently Cuchullin and other heroes of the "Red Branch" in
Ireland were descended from peoples who had migrated into Ireland
from Britain. Their warriors in the old manuscript tales receive
their higher military training in Alba. It is unlikely they would
have been trained in a colony.
[96] Ancient sacred stones with horses depicted on them survive
in Scotland. In Harris one horse-stone remains in an old church tower.
The Picts are not mentioned by Ptolemy. They appear to have been an
agricultural and sea-faring people who (_c._ A.D. 300) engaged in
trade and piracy. A flood of light has been thrown on the Pictish
problem by Professor W. J. Watson, Edinburgh.[97] He shows that
when Agricola invaded Scotland (A.D. 85) the predominant people
were the Caledonians. Early in the third century the Caledonians
and Mæatæ--names which included all the tribes north of Hadrian's
Wall--were so aggressive that Emperor Septimus Severus organized a
great expedition against them. He pressed northward as far as the
southern shore of the Moray Firth, and, although he fought no battle,
lost 50,000 men in skirmishes, &c. The Caledonians and Mæatæ rose
again, and Severus was preparing a second expedition when he died
at York in A.D. 211. His son, Caracalla, withdrew from Scotland
altogether. The Emperor Constantius, who died at York in A.D. 306,
had returned from an expedition, not against the Caledonians, but
against the Picts. The Picts were beginning to become prominent. In
360 they had again to be driven back. They had then become allies
of the Scots from Ulster, who were mentioned in A.D. 297 by the
orator Eumenius, as enemies of the Britons in association with the
Picti. Professor Watson, drawing on Gaelic evidence, dates the first
settlement of the Scots in Argyll "about A.D. 180".
[97] _The Picts_, Inverness, 1921 (lecture delivered to the
Gaelic Society of Inverness and reprinted from _The Inverness
Courier_).
In 368 the Caledonians were, like the Verturiones, a division of the
Picts. Afterwards their tribal name disappeared. That the Picts and
Caledonians were originally separate peoples is made clear by the
statement of a Roman orator who said: "I do not mention the woods
and marshes of the Caledonians, the Picts, and others". In 365 the
Pecti, Saxons, Scots, and Atecotti harassed the Britons. Thus by the
fourth century the Picts had taken the place of the Caledonians as
the leading tribe, or as the military aristocrats of a great part of
Scotland, the name of which, formerly Caledonia, came to be Pictland,
Pictavia.
Who then were the Picts? Professor Watson shows that the racial name
is in old Norse "Pettr", in Old English "Peohta", and in old Scots
"Pecht"[98] These forms suggest that the original name was "Pect".
Ammianus refers to the "Pecti". In old Welsh "Peith-wyr" means
"Pict-men" and "Peith" comes from "Pect". The derivation from the
Latin "pictus" (painted) must therefore be rejected. It should be
borne in mind in this connection that the Ancient Britons stained
their bodies with woad. The application of the term "painted" to
only one section of them seems improbable. "Pecti", says Professor
Watson, "cannot be separated etymologically from Pictones, the name
of a Gaulish tribe on the Bay of Biscay south of the Loire, near
neighbours of the Veneti. Their name shows the same variation
between Pictones and Pectones. We may therefore claim Pecti as a
genuine Celtic word. It is of the Cymric or Old British and Gaulish
type, not of the Gaelic type, for Gaelic has no initial P, while
those others have." Gildas (_c._ A.D. 570), Bede (_c._ A.D. 730), and
Nennius (_c._ A.D. 800) refer to the Picts as a people from the north
of Scotland. Nennius says they occupied Orkney first. The legends
which connect the Picts with Scythia and Hercules were based on
Virgil's mention of "picti Agathyrsi" and "picti Geloni" (_Æneid_ IV,
146, _Georgics_, II, 115) combined with the account by Herodotus (IV,
10) of the descent of Gelonus and Agathyrsus from Hercules. Of late
origin therefore was the Irish myth that the Picts from Scythia were
called Agathyrsi and were descended from Gelon, son of Hercules.
[98] The fact that in the Scottish Lowlands the fairies were
sometimes called "Pechts" has been made much of by those who
contend that the prototypes of the fairies were the original
inhabitants of Western Europe. This theory ignores the
well-established custom of giving human names to supernatural
beings. In Scotland the hill-giants (Fomorians) have been
re-named after Arthur (as in Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh), Patrick
(Inverness), Wallace (Eildon Hills), Samson (Ben Ledi), &c.
In like manner fairies were referred to as Pechts. The Irish
evidence is of similar character. The Danann deities were
consigned to fairyland. Donald Gorm, a West Highland chief, gave
his name to an Irish fairy. Fairyland was the old Paradise.
Arthur, Thomas the Rhymer, Finn-mac-Coul, &c., became "fairy-men"
after death. A good deal of confusion has been caused by
mistranslating the Scottish Gaelic word _sith_ (Irish _sidhe_)
as "fairy". The word _sith_ (pronounced _shee_) means anything
unearthly or supernatural, and the "peace" of supernatural
life--of death after life, as well as the silence of the
movements of supernatural beings. The cuckoo was supposed to
dwell for a part of the year in the underworld, and was called
_eun sith_ ("supernatural bird"). Mysterious epidemics were
_sith_ diseases. There were _sith_ (supernatural) dogs, cats,
mice, cows, &c., as well as _sith_ men and _sith_ women.
There never were Picts in Ireland, except as visitors. The theory
about the Irish Picts arose by mistranslating the racial name
"Cruithne" as "Picts". Communities of Cruithne were anciently settled
in the four provinces of Ireland, but Cruithne means Britons not
Picts.
[Illustration:
Valentine
A SCOTTISH "BROCH" (Mousa, Shetland Isles)
Compare with Sardinian _Nuraghe_, page 136.]
The ancient name of Great Britain was Albion, while Ireland was in
Greek "Ierne", and in Latin "Iubernia" (later "Hibernia"). The racial
name was applied by Pliny to Albion and Hibernia when he referred
to the island group as "Britanniæ". Ptolemy says that Albion is "a
Britannic isle" and further that Albion (England and Scotland) was
an island "belonging to the Britannic Isles". Ireland was also a
Britannic isle. It is therefore quite clear that the Britons were
regarded as the predominant people in England, Wales, Scotland,
and Ireland, and that the verdict of history includes Ireland in
the British Isles. The Britons were P-Celts, and their racial
name "Pretan-Pritan" became in the Gaelic language of the Q-Celts
"Cruithen", plural "Cruithne".
In Latin the British Isles are called after their inhabitants,
the rendering being "Britanni", while in Greek it is "Pretannoi" or
"Pretanoi". As Professor W. J. Watson and Professor Sir J. Morris
Jones, two able and reliable philologists, have insisted, the Greek
form is the older and more correct, and the Latin form is merely an
adaptation of the Greek form.
In the early centuries of our era the term "Britannus" was shortened
in Latin to "Britto" plural "Brittones". This diminutive form, which
may be compared with "Scotty" for Scotsman, became popular. In
Gaelic it originated the form "Breatain", representing "Brittones"
(Britons), which was applied to the Britons of Strathclyde, Wales,
and Cornwall, who retained their native speech under Roman rule;
in Welsh, the rendering was "Brython". The Welsh name for Scotland
became "Prydyn". The northern people of Scotland, having come under
the sway of the Picts, were referred to as Picts just as they became
"Scots" after the tribe of Scots rose into prominence. In this sense
the Scottish Cruithne were Picts. But the Cruithne (Britons) of
Ireland were never referred to as Picts. Modern scholars who have
mixed up Cruithne and Picts are the inventors of the term "Irish
Picts".
The Picts of Scotland have been traditionally associated with the
round buildings known as "brochs", which are all built on the same
plan. "Of 490 known brochs", says Professor W. J. Watson, "Orkney
and Shetland possess 145, Caithness has 150, and Sutherland 67--a
total of 362. On the mainland south of Sutherland there are 10 in
Ross, 6 Inverness-shire, 2 in Forfar, 1 in Stirling, Midlothian,
Selkirk, and Berwick-shires, 3 in Wigtownshire. In the Isles there
are 28 in Lewis, 10 in Harris, 30 in Skye, 1 in Raasay, and at least
5 in the isles of Argyll. The inference is that the original seat of
the broch builders must have been in the far north, and that their
influence proceeded southwards. The masonry and contents of the
brochs prove them to be the work of a most capable people, who lived
partly at least by agriculture and had a fairly high standard of
civilization.... The distribution of the brochs also indicate that
their occupants combined agriculture with sea-faring.... The Wigtown
brochs, like the west coast ones generally, are all close to the sea,
and in exceedingly strong positions."
These Scottish brochs bear a striking resemblance to the _nuraghi_
of the island of Sardinia. Both the broch and the _nuraghe_ have
low doorways which "would at once put an enemy at a disadvantage in
attempting to enter".
Describing the Sardinian structures, Mr. T. Eric Peet writes:[99]
"All the _nuraghi_ stand in commanding situations overlooking large
tracts of country, and the more important a position is from a
strategical point of view the stronger will be the _nuraghe_ which
defends it". Ruins of villages surround these structures. "There
cannot be the least doubt", says Peet, "that in time of danger the
inhabitants drove their cattle into the fortified enclosure, entered
it themselves, and then closed the gates."
[99] _Rough Stone Monuments_, pp. 82 _et seq._
In the Balearic Islands are towers called _talayots_ which "resemble
rather closely", in Peet's opinion, the _nuraghi_ of Sardinia.
The architecture of the _talayots_, the _nuraghi_, and the brochs
resembles that of the bee-hive tombs of Mycenæ (pre-Hellenic Greece).
There are no brochs in Ireland. The "round towers" are of Christian
origin (between ninth and thirteenth centuries A.D.). A tomb at
Labbamologa, County Cork, however, resembles the tombs of the
Balearic Isles and Sardinia (Peet, _Rough Stone Monuments_, pp. 43-4).
The Picts appear to have come to Scotland from the country of the
ancient Pictones, whose name survives in Poitiers (Poictiers) and
the province of Poitou in France. These Pictones were anciently
rivals of the Veneti, the chief sea-traders in Western and Northern
Europe during the pre-Roman period. We gather from Cæsar that the
Pictones espoused the cause of the Romans when the Veneti and their
allies revolted. They and their near neighbours, the Santoni,
supplied Cæsar with ships.[100] These were apparently skiffs which
were much lighter and smaller than the imposing vessels of the
Veneti. As the big vessels of the Armada were no match for the
smaller English vessels, so were the Veneti ships no match for the
skiffs of the Pictones.
[100] _De Bello Gallico_, Book III, Chapter II.
The Picts who settled in Orkney appear to have dominated the eastern
and western Scottish sea-routes. It is possible that they traded with
Scandinavia and imported Baltic amber. Tacitus states that the Baltic
people, who engaged in the amber trade, spoke a dialect similar to
that of Britain, worshipped the mother-goddess, and regarded the boar
as the symbol of their deity.[101] Orkney, as has been noted, is
derived from the old Celtic word for boar. The boar-people of Orkney
who came under the sway of the Picts may have been related to the
amber traders.
[101] _Manners of the Germans_, Chapter XLV. The boar was the son
of a sow-goddess. Demeter had originally a sow form.
The Scottish broch-people, associated in tradition with the Picts,
were notorious for their piratic habits. In those ancient days,
however, piracy was a common occupation. The later Vikings, who
seized the naval base of Orkney for the same reason we may conclude
as did the Picts, occupied the brochs. Viking means "pirate", as York
Powell has shown. In _Egil's Saga_ (Chapter XXXII) the hero Bjorn
"was sometimes in Viking but sometimes on trading voyages".[102]
[102] _Scandinavian Britain_ (London, 1908), pp. 61-3.
It may be that the term _pictus_ was confused with the racial
name Pecti, because the Picts had adopted the sailor-like habit
of tattoing their skins--a habit which probably had a religious
significance. Claudian, the fourth-century Roman poet, refers to "the
fading steel-wrought figures on the dying Pict". Like the sea-faring
Scots of northern Ireland who harried the Welsh coast between the
second and fifth centuries of our era, the Picts of Scotland had
skiffs (scaphæ) with sails and twenty oars a side. Vessels, masts,
ropes, and sails were painted a neutral tint, and the crews were
attired in the same colour. Thus "camouflaged", the Picts and Scots
were able to harry the coasts of Romanized Britain. They appear to
have turned Hadrian's wall from the sea. The Pictish sea-faring
tribes, the Keiths or Cats and the Mæatæ, have left their names in
Caithness, Inchkeith, Dalkeith, &c., and in the Isle of May, &c.[103]
[103] Rhys, _Celtic Britain_ (4th ed.), pp. 152, 317.
A glimpse of piratical operations in the first century before the
Christian era is obtained in an Irish manuscript account of certain
happenings in the reign of King Conaire the Great of Ireland. So
strict was this monarch's rule that several lawless and discontented
persons were forced into exile.
"Among the most desperate of the outlaws were the monarch's
own foster brothers, the four sons of Dond Dess, an important
chieftain of Leinster. These refractory youths, with a large
party of followers, took to their boats and ships and scoured
the coasts of Britain and Scotland, as well as of their own
country. Having met on the sea with Ingcel, the son of the King
of Britain, who, for his misdeeds, had been likewise banished
by his own father, both parties entered into a league, the
first fruits of which were the plunder and devastation of a
great part of the British coast."
[Illustration:
By courtesy of the Director of The British School of Rome
A SARDINIAN _NURAGHE_ (page 134)
Compare with the Scottish "Broch", page 132.]
They afterwards made a descent on the coast of Ireland, and when
King Conaire returned from a visit to Clare, "he found the whole
country before him one sheet of fire, the plunderers having landed in
his absence and carried fire and sword wherever they went".[104]
[104] O'Curry, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, Vol.
III, p. 136.
In his description of Britain, Tacitus says that the inhabitants
varied in their physical traits. Different conclusions were drawn
concerning their origin. He thought the Caledonians were, because of
their ruddy hair and muscular limbs, of German descent, and that the
dark Silures of Wales were descendants of Iberian colonists. He noted
that the inhabitants of southern England resembled those of Gaul.[105]
[105] _Agricola_, Chap. XI.
Later writers have expressed divergent views regarding the ethnics of
the British Isles. One theory is that the fair Teutonic peoples, who
invaded Britain during the post-Roman period, drove the "dark Celts"
westward, and that that is the reason why in England and Scotland the
inhabitants of western areas are darker than those in the eastern.
As we have seen, however, the early metal workers settled in the
western areas for the reason that the minerals they sought for were
located there. In south-western Scotland the inhabitants are darker
than those on the east, except in Aberdeenshire, where there are
distinctive megalithic remains and two famous pearling rivers, the
Ythan and Ugie, as well as deposits of flint and traces of gold.
The people of Scotland are, on the whole, the tallest and heaviest
people in Europe. It has been suggested that their great average
stature is due to the settlement in their country of the hardy
Norsemen of the Viking period, but this is improbable, because the
average stature of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark is lower than that
of Scotland. A distinctive feature of the Scottish face is the
high cheek-bone. The Norse cheek-bone is distinctly flatter. It
may be that the tall Crô-Magnons, who had high cheek-bones, have
contributed to Scottish physical traits. That all the fair peoples
of Britain and Ireland are, as has been indicated, not necessarily
descendants of the fair Celts and Anglo-Saxons is evident from the
traces that have been found of the early settlement in these islands
of the proto-Scandinavians, who introduced the Maglemosian culture
long before the introduction of the Neolithic industry. Modern
ethnologists lean to the view that the masses of the present-day
population of Europe betray Palæolithic racial affinities. In no
country in Europe, other than our own, have there been fewer ethnic
changes. As we have seen, there were only two or three intrusions
from the Continent between the periods when the bronze and iron
industries were introduced--that is, during about a thousand years.
The latter invasions were those of types already settled in Britain.
As in other countries, the tendency to revert to the early types
represented by the masses of the people has not been absent in our
native land. The intrusions of energetic minorities may have caused
changes of languages and habits of life, but in time the alien
element has been absorbed.[106] Withal, the influences of climate
and of the diseases associated with localities have ever been at
work in eliminating the physically unfit--that is, those individuals
who cannot live in a climate too severe for their constitutions. In
large industrial cities the short, dark types are more numerous than
the tall, fair, and large-lunged types. The latter appear to be more
suited for an open-air life.
[106] "The rule is", writes Beddoe in this connection
(_The Anthropological History of Europe_, p. 53), "that an
anthropological type is never wholly dispossessed or extirpated".
"Pockets" of peoples of distinctive type are to be found in different
parts of the British Isles. In Barvas, Lewis, and elsewhere in the
Hebrides, pockets of dark peoples of foreign appearance are reputed
by theorists, as has been indicated, to be descendants of the
sailors of the Spanish Armada. They resemble, however, the Fir-bolgs
of Ireland and the Silures of Wales. Hertfordshire has a dark, short
people too. Galloway, the country of the ancient Selgovæ (hunters),
is noted for its tall people. It may be that there is a Crô-Magnon
strain in Galloway, and that among the short, dark peoples are
descendants of the ancient metal workers, including the Easterners
who settled in Spain. (See Chaps. IX and XII.) Beddoe thinks that the
Phoenician type "occasionally crops up" in Cornwall.[107]
[107] _The Anthropological History of Europe_ (new edition,
Paisley, 1912), p. 50.