which the tribes of the north made a fierce resistance under Calgacos (the name means “swordsman”). But try as he would, Agricola could not conquer the northern tribes, the major one of which was the Caledonii. By a.d. 105, the Romans gave up any pretence of establishing their rule and, following a visit by the emperor Hadrian in 122, built a wall stretching for 117 kilometers, dividing the north from the Roman-occupied south. It was called Hadrian’s Wall and can still be seen today. In 138 a new emperor, Antoninus Pius, made a determined attempt to extend his rule north, and the governor, Lollius Urbicus, pushed as far as the Forth-Clyde isthmus and constructed another wall, the Antonine Wall, stretching only 60 kilometres in length. In 180, however, the Celts swept across the Antonine Wall and pushed the Romans back to Hadrian’s Wall, which remained a border for a while.

At this time the Celts of what was to become Scotland spoke a Brythonic or P-Celtic language. They had a custom of using war paint, much like the American Indians or many other peoples in recent times. Because of this the Roman soldiers, stationed on Hadrian’s Wall, called them “the painted ones.” The term “Pict” was first recorded in a Latin poem of a.d. 297, and it was simply a nickname given to these northern Celtic warriors. Pictii is the past participle of the Latin pingere, “to paint.” The Picts were not a new element among the Celtic tribes of Scotland. They were from many tribes, such as the Caledonii and Maecatae. They called themselves Preteni, which in Gaelic, because of the famous substitute of the “q” for “p,” became Cruithin. Professor Kenneth Jackson has pointed out that when the Picts emerged into recorded record they were already Gaelic-speaking. Yet their king-lists show names that are unquestionably Brythonic or British Celtic in form. This, of course, is not surprising.

However, in recent times, a new myth about the Picts has sprung up in which it is claimed that they were not Celtic. Gaelic was introduced, or reintroduced if you accept the argument that it was the earliest form of Celtic spoken and that the first Celts in Britain spoke the Goidelic form, in the fourth century a.d. with the establishment of the kingdom of Dál Riada on the western seaboard. By the sixth century three main kingdoms had emerged in Scotland: Dál Riada, the kingdoms of the northern and southern Picts in the