Pagan Symbols of the Picts by Stuart McHardy sampler

the pagan symbols of the picts
common to tribal structures across the globe. Effectively, tribes are
groups of inter-related families occupying specific territory and
usually claiming descent from a common ancestor. The tribe or clan
is defined by its strength in warriors, as well as its wealth in cattle,
and the warriors are related by blood. The role of the chief in such
societies is defined as much by duties as by rights. While he is the
undoubted leader of his people he is also of them, as opposed to
over them. Even into the 18th century there are instances of clan
chiefs being dismissed from their positions, one particularly wellknown
instance (Scott 1843, p.47ff.) being simply because the chief
appeared to his kin to have the wrong attitude towards his
position! It would be wrong to think of Cassius’s description of the
Caledonian tribes being democratic as suggesting they were akin to
modern Western societies or even Greek city states, but it does
suggest that such governance as did exist amongst the natives of
early Scotland may well have been akin to the Things we know
existed amongst that other warrior people of Scotland, the Vikings.
The Things were assemblies where situations were exten si ve ly
debated by a considerable section of the community before
decisions were taken as to what action was required. In Scotland
the place-name Dingwall in Easter Ross, an area controlled by the
Norsemen for centuries, refers directly to this practice.
The idea that tribes are primitive societies run by absolute
despots has no support. Tribal societies are based on sophisticated
social arrangements where all members of the group are bound
together by often complex arrangements of mutual duties and
rights. This was nowhere more so than in Scotland, where the
tribal system survived into the second half of the 18th century, even
if by then it was in terminal decline. There is no reason to think
that the medieval clan societies of the Scottish Highlands were not
the direct descendants of the earlier tribal structures amongst the
Picts, and, in the west, the Scots.
In this respect it is worth remem b e ring that the term ri, the
Gaelic usage of which has always been trans lated as meaning king,
has a different meaning in the P-Celtic languages and means lord,
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