There is much confusion over the so-called
King-lists of Pictish times.
On their own, they are riddled with inconsistencies.
A big, and basic, problem is that we have no definite record of
how the Picts referred to themselves.
A reference to King Brude of the Kralokes is no use if we don't
know who the Kralokes are. We might be allowed to surmise that
that the Kralokes could be the mysterious Picts, because
we have references to other King Brudes linked to them.
When you throw into the mix the lack of hard-and-fast dates to
identify this person's slot in history, the confusion grows.
As far as we know at present... ( I only
say this as an attempt at open-mindedness. The likelihood of
finding some incredible trustworthy "History of the Picts"
is as remote as me swimming to Tierra del Fuego.)... the Picts
did not write anything of their own. And apparently when they did,
it was dyslexic, if you judge by the scholars' failure to
decipher their ogham.
All we know of them is derived from outsiders, and not always
sympathetic observers, at that. (Cf the essays on Who were the
Picts, etc.)
Another difficulty arises when we come
to consider the background of the Lists.
They exist in different forms, list different Kings, in not
necessarily the same order.
Some were undoubtedly written to legitimize the takeover by the
Scots aristocracy, and normalize the succession, by showing that
the Seven Sons of Cruithné (who were supposedly the Irish
founding fathers of Pictland) had laid out the Seven Provinces of
Pictland away back.
Maybe they did. We don't know one way or the other.
But by #### we are being told there were only two Pictish
Kingdoms.
Should that be two major provinces under one aristocracy?
Do the King-lists refer only to Supreme Kings, or provincial
rulers as well?
Were the provincial rulers called kings, just as the Celtic
system had family chiefs, clan chiefs, and Great Chiefs who ruled
over all the sub-sects of the clan? Long after the feudal system
was well established, the clansman's loyalty extended only to the
Great Chief, and the Kings of Scotland was not a real figure of
authority.
So, if the Lists were derived from Bardic recollections,
did the Bards memorialize every ruler they had? History is
full of people re-writing history to suit some political interest.
You will all have knowledge of this if you are honest. I don't
mention any examples because I have no interest in being
embroiled in other people's petty obsessions. I have enough of my
own, thank-you.
It would be all-too-easy to simply omit someone from a story,
if required. After a couple of generations, he or she would be
forgotten amongst the general population, and obliterated from
the records if the professional rememberers chose to ignore them.
On the other hand, with a few deft switches of names in stories
too well-known to drop, the same character (remember, a "character"
is the sum of mannerisms and life-features that differentiate one
entity from another) can be assigned another name.
The example I want to use, although it does not apply to a
human, is the way the Christians have totally upended the concept
of Hell. In the Norse legends, Hel is Queen of the Underworld,
and her huge palace is called "Sleetcold". The place is,
appropriately, a cold, dismal windswept icy desert inhabited by
monstrous and deeply unhappy and tortured beings. Now,
Christianity, a religion formed largely in the Middle East and
Mediterranean countries, saw acute discomfort as being seared by
the relentless Sun, and its fire, and they contrasted the image
of Heaven (all sweetness and light) with the fire and brimstone
of Hades, the torture-chamber for the unholy. The transition was
relatively simple for simple-minded people.
Heaven is wonderful, Hades is horrible, Hel is horrible, so
Hades = Hel / Hell, in direct contrast to Heaven. Eventually, the
bulk of people were Christianized, and the old meaning died away.
It has all the logic of talking about icebergs in the Sahara.
Don't ever use the expression "Until Hell freezes
over." You're already too late.
If a concept that was deeply embedded in a religion that was
probably evolving for thousands of years can be overturned so
completely in a few hundreds, think how easily a relatively
unknown man or woman who lived for seventy years at most, and
ruled for... six months to sixty years maximum?... could
disappear.
As mentioned in the first essay on the Lists, there are no
Pictish writings, so unless their manuscripts were completely
destroyed by the Scots version of the Firing of the Library of
Alexandria, the likelihood leans strongly towards purely verbal
transmission of their records. [ In the passing, the Library of
Alexandria was reputed to have held 700,000 manuscripts on vellum,
wood, copper, tablets etc, from all over the then-known World. In
51 BCE, Caesar set fire to the boats in the harbour, and the
houses nearby went up in flames, and engulfed the Library. In 389
CE, the Roman Emperor, Theodosius, who was trying to establish
Christianity as the State Religion, ordered the burning of the
Temple of Serapis (A Graeco-Eyptian god) which housed the
surviving Library. Its learning was all lost, unless the rumours
that the priests and their slaves saved some of the most precious
manuscripts are true.]
So how do you cross-check verbal references? Especially since
the carriers have been dead for longer than the society they
recorded existed.
We have to surmise.
I submit that there is no reason for the King-lists to match-up,
because there was no "King of Pictland" as such.
I believe the Picts formed loose coalitions, maybe up to the
level of counties, but that they had no over-ruling aristocracy
until a war-council was convened.
I think that different petty kings possibly held lordship over
different areas at different times.
For example "King A" might have held territory in
more than one province, say Provinces 1,2 and 3, and the Bards in
those provinces would have recorded his overlordship, and his
exploits in their areas. But. In Provinces 4, 5,6 and 7, "King
B" would be being remembered as king, so "King A"
would not appear in their King lists.
"King A" then dies, and his son (or nephew, or niece,
or his boyfriend or some other usurper, seizes the throne and
rules Provinces 1,2 and 3 at the same time as "King B"
is ruling Provinces 3-7.
I won't complicate matters by suggesting that there could be seven
different rulers, as per the Irish origination story for Pictland.
Nor shall I suggest that families are often wracked by greed, and
ambition, and that they might form alliances to overpower someone
too strong to tackle individually. Nor shall I suggest that one
or other of them marries a "princess" or "widow-queen",
and gains control of some other province, or provinces. Neither
shall I introduce the notion that total outsiders upset the
dynasty by taking over chunks of "Pictland" and were an
embarassment to future generations who might like to believe in
their own infallibility once normal service was resumed.
The point is, modern academics, especially those who have
chosen to specialize in Pictish studies, are trying to gain
respectability for such a shaky subject by tidying things up, as
if it were a truly historically provable area of endeavour.
Diametrically opposed to them are the utter nutters who exploit
all the gaps to form theories that are as relevant as "The
Hobbit".
The truth lies somewhere in the Lists, but sweeping things
under the bed because it doesn't fit doesn't help to clarify the
subject.
If we return to one of my favourite analogies in this context,
it is a bit like building a jigsaw picture by including a wrong
piece into it, and then finding later you can't find the piece to
complete another section.
We should try to collate everything that does fit, and
find out why the other bits don't, and not assume that
because we can't make sense of it, it doesn't mean it's senseless.
It just means we don't understand it - yet.
Think of it as a jigsaw where the picture on the box has
almost faded away. And so have some of the pieces... Oh- God, don't
bother! It's too depressing!