The reply "Oh, I’m a Pict" was a way of side-stepping a question about one’s background during a boring party. In a way it was just a joke: but many subsequently important things start as jokes. The claim, "I am a Pict" could be said light-heartedly only because it did have validity. My forebears are buried in the kirkyard of the parish church of Dunnichen. I grew up in that strange, open rather than barren, north-eastern corner of what geographically is now called Scotland. Echoing my father I can truly say "This is my country, the land that begat me, These windy spaces are surely my own..."

Growing up in that country of the "marsh and the moorland" one was aware, in a curious way, that it was a world apart. The local phrases such as "Aberdeen an’ twal mile roond" or "Here’s tae us, Fa’s like us, Dom few and they’re a’ deid" had an underlying truth. In an odd fashion they were more statements of fact than of aggression . They might be arrogant, but there was little desire to convert or to conquer. Like the sparrow of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Buchanite just "knows that he excels".

This deep-seated certainty of identity together with a tolerance of one’s fellow mortals became puzzling as one did conventional school history. The Covenanters , so praised in most text books, did not ring true in the folk memory. They had been imprisoned in Dunnotar and elsewhere, and to those of the north-east this seemed a very proper place for them. Religious strife, and religious commitment were to a great extent alien to the area. Cynics might say that this was because the area had scarcely been converted to Christianity, and, indeed, much of the balladry and folk legends seemed more to echo the Nordic gods, or even an earlier and pragmatic nature worship.

So, gradually what had started as a joke developed its own reality. Was there a strain in the ancestry of many in the east and north-east which was different? Was it Pictish? Who were the Picts anyway? In any event did it matter? The continuing internal niggle meant that somehow those questions did have a validity. Were the Picts pre-Celtic or proto-Celtic? The little that one learnt suggested that whatever they were they were not identical with either of the main Celtic strains who had occupied what is now called Scotland. Even the very term Scotland is ambivalent to some who consider themselves Picts, seriously or otherwise, for it is the name of the conqueror or at least the usurper. There was a farmer acquaintance, who lived between Ellon and Fraserburgh, who a quarter of a century ago when others wrote ‘Get out Yanks ‘ or ‘go home English’ on the walls inscribed ‘Go home Scots’ on the end of his barn. This was very much in keeping with that sense of twisted and almost black humour which is the distinctive mark of the true inhabitant of the north-east.

As the years passed, one continued, in a dilatory way, to take some interest in, and cognisance of, this Pictish strain. There was a pride in the culture which had produced the Ogam stones, and other memorials and edifices; and a sadness that nothing else had seemingly survived. Yet this was also true other cultures which had left few traces but many influence, such as the Etruscans. There were fascinating leads , though possibly deadends, suggesting affinities to the Albanians or the Basques; fascinating but probably irrelevant. There were also the questions as to why those distant forebears had finished up in such bleak and inhospitable lands. This seemed to indicate a strange paradox. In one way they had been losers, forced to move to the periphery of the inhabitable world; and yet, despite this, they were survivors. These two qualities in combination perhaps gave for the lasting toleration together with the aforementioned self-mocking exclusivity.

Of course there are many ethnic strains in the present day inhabitants of this area. A Norman top-dressing and cultural elements; many Norse influences on top of an earlier Saxon-speaking intake; which in turn overlay a Brythonic-Celtic period. Where under all this are the Picts and their culture; and does it matter? For me the answer is "Yes, it does". It may well be a matter of belief rather than capable of scientific verification, but this belief provides a sense of continuity, a recognition of the value of survival, a sense of that bemused detachment from the rest of the world, which, whilst it can be self-indulgent, also contributes to the feeling of identity and permanence. All this is reinforced by the landscape "scooped out like a saucer"; the clarity of the northern light, and the permanence of the underlying granite on top of which one’s ancestors scraped out a livelihood.

Yes, though I do not understand it; and though it may be irrelevant in today’s world, I am, in some way , a Pict; and I believe that this Pictish strain, in one way or another, will outlast Nineveh and Rome, let alone London and Edinburgh.

John Gray (October 1989)