Pagan Symbols of the Picts by Stuart McHardy sampler

the pagan symbols of the picts
king hath nothing of hys own, but taketh from every mans.
Hee is bound to equitie by certaine lawes: and lest he may
start from right through covetousness, he learneth justice by
povertie, as who may have nothing proper or peculiar to
himselfe, but is found at the charges of the Realme.
Golding 1587, p.22
Although he uses the term for king, rex, this is clearly a tribal society
where the leader is responsible to the population as a whole. This is
something that is also echoed in later times when the clan system
developed. Clan, Clann, in Gaelic, means ‘the children’ and makes
it plain that the leader of that society is to a considerable extent the
steward working on behalf of the children to come, just as he had
to honour the ancestors that had gone before. The following is
from Burt’s Letters to A Gentleman, written in the 1720s
This power of the chiefs is not supported by Interest, as they
are landlords, but as lineally descended from the old
Patriarchs or Fathers of the Families; for they hold the same
Authority when they have lost their Estates, as may appear
from several, and part i cularly one who commands his Clan,
though, at the same Time, they maintain him, having
nothing left of his own.
On the other hand, the Chief, even against the Laws, is to
protect his followers, as they are sometimes called, be they
never so criminal.
1998, p.193
Here I believe that Burt misunderstands clan society. What is
criminal to him was not criminal by the laws and customs of the
clans. I suggest that while the clans were not precisely the same as
the tribal arrangements of Pictish times, they had in fact developed
from them and there is no evidence I can find to the contrary.
I have suggested this tribal society as a model for understanding
‘Dark Age’ Scotland (McHardy 2010) in terms of a series of inter-
20