The Groam House Lectures have been an annual treat for Pictish enthusiasts since 1989; in a way the event combines two lectures in one, since the written text of the previous year’s talk is launched the same evening. The present volume, containing Dr Anna Ritchie’s 1993 address, is the fourth in the series to be published, and is of the expected high standard. In matters of presentation, it is the best to have appeared so far. The now familiar key pattern border of the front cover - adapted from one of the Rosemarkie stones - is printed in grey against a light yellow background, a bright and attractive effect, with a splendid drawing by Jack Burt of the Eassie cross-slab in the centre. An innovation this year is a slight change in page size.

1993’s experiment with colour illustrations has not been repeated - any gain no doubt not being worth the extra expense - and the numerous black and white illustrations, both line/tone drawings and photographs, are notably well reproduced.

In 1993 Dr Ritchie chose to explore the ways ideas about the Picts have evolved over the last seventeen hundred years since the first recorded use of the name by Eumenius in AD 297. One of the striking aspects of Pictish perceptions is the way our Dark Age predecessors seem to have attracted myths almost from their first notice by the ancient authors, myths - such as that of the Picts’ red hair, short stature and habit of tattooing - which have not necessarily run their course even at the present day. Dr Ritchie divides the history of ideas about the Picts into four blocks of time: the works of Classical and Early Medieval authors who wrote when the Pictish nation still existed; the period from the C9th up to the C16th, when European contacts with painted and tattooed Native Americans led artists such as John White to depict wonderfully decorated Pictish "Noble Savages"; the beginnings of antiquarian research from the C16th to the C19th, and the period from the late C19th work of Joseph Anderson down to the present day. Each period has had its own way of looking at the Picts, explored here by Dr Ritchie, who touches also on such modern "myth makers" as John Buchan.

The perception of the Picts as tattooed barbarians is a legacy of the Classical authors and their immediate successors such as Isidore of Seville (who, on the strength of the quotation given here, if he had not seen tattooing himself, at least knew how it was done). It is paradoxical that, as the author points out, a custom of tattooing among the Picts is not mentioned by Dark Age authors living in Britain, not even by Gildas, who certainly went as far as he could in portraying the Picts as barbarous savages. Nevertheless, I feel that we do not have to be too sceptical about the early reports. Dr Ritchie suggests that tattooing: ". . was part of the civilised world’s perception of a typical barbarian . ." (5). This is clearly true, yet this concept had solid foundations: many of the Greeks’ and Romans’ "barbarian" neighbours - such as the Scythians, Thracians and Gauls - undoubtedly did practice tattooing as, coming forward some centuries in time, did the Scandinavian Rus. It could therefore be going a little far to refer to tattooing as an "extraordinary custom", as there is abundant evidence that tattooing or body painting - perhaps the most ancient of all forms of art - have been practised over vast swathes of the Old and New Worlds among a multitude of cultures. Maybe the discovery of a Pictish "bog body" will one day shed light on this interesting problem.

In a chapter on "Contemporary perceptions in Britain" Dr Ritchie emphasises how: ". . at this period a writer’s perception of the Picts depended upon his political affiliations" (7). The British monk Gildas castigated his people’s enemies with undisguised venom, while Adomnán, close friend of the Pictish king and administrator of monasteries among both the Scots and Picts, touched in his biography of Columba on a "pagan but civilised" people (8). The Book of Kells, probably written at Columba’s monastery of Iona, has numerous details strongly reminiscent of Pictish art, some of which are reproduced here. The parallels between the crouching warrior on folio 200R and a figure on the Eassie Stone are striking. The author puts forward the delightful idea that a detail from the opening to St Mark’s Gospel, showing a very Pictish-looking man who appears to be ". . naked and covered with body-painting" (10) could be a play on the name Pict - a "monkish joke". The brilliant colours of Kells and other manuscripts may give us some idea of the bright pigments which almost certainly once covered the Pictish carved stones.

Another remarkably Pictish-looking work by a non-Pictish artist is illustrated by a photograph of a detail of an archer from the C14th oak roof of the Great Hall of Darnaway Castle in Moray, a reminder that the Picts would undoubtedly have had a splendid tradition of carving in wood to match the brilliance of their art in stone. The archer’s bow - or crossbow - so resembles that on the Drosten Stone, and the beast he is aiming at looks so like numerous Pictish representations, that one wonders if the Medieval craftsman might not have copied the motif from a local Dark Age carving.

The Darnaway carving is included in a chapter on "The Picts’ perception of themselves" - the "self-portraits" found in Pictish art that compensate us to a large extent for the disappearance of their written records. Brought together for the first time for comparison are drawings of the vivid Rhynie, Golspie and Mail men, as well as the cartoon-like "cloaked figure" on a stone from Burness in Orkney. This is perhaps the most useful group of illustrations in the book. I was pleased too to see the engraving of the lost slab Meigle 10, probably the most important known to have been destroyed in modern times, with its unique depiction of a carriage. Known only from C19th engravings, this stone should nevertheless not be ignored in any discussion of Pictish art.

Sections follow on "The language and origins of the Picts" and "Pictish symbol stones". Dr Ritchie touches on the numerous controversies that have surrounded these topics, on which the opinions put forward by certain commentators have verged on the eccentric. Some indeed have more than verged on it.

Succeeding chapters discuss "Favourite myths" - "Pictish towers", (i.e. brochs) and the Picts’ supposed small stature - endorsed by Sir Walter Scott after creeping through a gallery in the Broch of Mousa. There is also the legend of the Picts of Galloway, now sufficiently exploded by Dr Richard Oram in PAS Journal 4 (a work cited here), but exploited to good effect in a short story by John Buchan. The Leydenfrost illustration of a "troll-like" Pict reproduced here from the story could be a still from a Hammer Horror film.

A final chapter summarises "Current perceptions of the Picts". The preoccupation of the majority of the Pictish population is rightly cited as: ". . the arduous business of making a living" (27). Archaeology will gradually increase our knowledge of Pictish daily life, the Ritchies’ own excavations having already made a huge contribution, but the last word is reserved for the continuing mystery of the symbol stones, a perhaps insoluble puzzle that will continue to mark the Picts out from the other peoples of Early Medieval Europe.

As a highly readable and attractive introduction to the field of Pictish studies, Perceptions of the Picts could hardly be bettered, and I look forward to the Groam House Lectures continuing this high standard in the future.

Perceptions of the Picts: from Eumenius to John Buchan can be obtained from:

Groam House Museum, High Street, Rosemarkie,
IV10 8UF, price £4.50, including postage (UK only).

Still available at the same price are the first three published Groam House Lectures:

The art & function of Rosemarkie’s Pictish monuments by Isabel Henderson.

Curadán, Boniface and the early church of Rosemarkie by Aidan MacDonald.

The neighbours of the Picts: Angles, Britons & Scots at war and at home by Leslie Alcock.

Niall M Robertson.