ancient Neolithic village of pit-dwellers as "Hamlet of the Picts."1 At Pitchley also, in Northamptonshire, an ancient village with a church building of the twelfth century, which is called in Domesday Book "Pihtes-lea and "Picts-lei "—names clearly designating it as "The Lea of the Picts "-the skulls unearthed from the numerous old stone-cists of a prehistoric cemetry under the church, and under the early Saxon graves, with no trace of metals and presumably of late Neolithic Age, appear to be of this river-bed type. One of the typical skulls is described as" having the peculiar lengthy form, the prominent cheek-bones and the remarkable narrowness of the forehead which characterize the Celtic' races" (see Fig. 22, p. 135). In Ireland this river-bed type of Stone Age skull is also found as above noted. And we have seen that the Matriarch Cesair and her Ban or Van or Fen horde of the Fomor clan entered Ireland in the Neolithic Age presumably from Britain and were of the same Van or Vind race to which the Picts belonged. We have also seen that these primitive aborigines of Ireland were called “ The tribe of Fidga," that is a dialectic form of "Pict," in series with the Welsh "Ffichti." This suggests that the river-bed aborigines of Ireland also were presumably the Picts. It seems, too, a dialectic form of the same name which is given as "Gewictis " for the aborigines of Ireland in the account of the invasion of Ireland by the Iber-Scots or Scots from Iberia, especially as it was usual to spell the analogous Wight, or Vectis, with an initial G. The Mother-Right, or Matri-linear form of succession through the mother and not through the father, which was prevalent amongst the later historical Picts down to the ninth century, when they suddenly disappear from history, is now explicable " • Another skeleton, found in a "circumscribed " cist of Neolithic age at Maidstone, is described by B. Poste as having the skull very narrow in the front part and also in the forehead," but stature about five feet seven. -Jour. Archæol. Assoc., iv, 65, cited W.P.A., 182. A.W. Brown in Archæol. Jour. iii, 113, cited W.P.A., 180-1. This chronicle states that a Scot from Spain (Iberna), named Iber-Scot, on landing" in yat cuntre, yat now is callit Irland, and fund it vakande, bot of a certanne of Gewictis, ye quhilk he distroyt, and inhabyt yat land, and callit it eftir his modir Scota, Scotia." S.C.P., 380. PICTS AS ABORIGINES OF IRELAND 123 by the Matriarchist Van origin of this race. The Pictish Chronicles, both of the Irish-Scots and the Picts of Scotland, make repeated and pointed reference to this custom and it is borne out by the lists of the Pictish kings. These show that the Pictish king was not succeeded by his own son, but by his brother, the next son of his mother, or by his sister's son; and many of the kings appear to be named after their mother, or specified as the son of their mother. The Picts in Scotland, probably to excuse themselves in the eyes of the Scots and Britons who were of the Aryan patrilinear society, state in their Chronicles that this custom was imposed on them by "the women of Ireland," with whom they appear to have kept up some kindred intermarriage. But it is significant that these aboriginal women of Ireland are not stated to be the "wives" of the men they consort with, but it is said each woman was with her brother," which is suggestive of the primitive Matriarchist promiscuity before the institution of Marriage. These aboriginal women, called Ban," (i.e. Van or "Biani ") are stated to have imposed the matrilinear contract by oath : " They imposed oaths on them By the stars, by the earth, That from the nobility of the Mother It was probably Part-olon's attempts to abolish this Matriarchist promiscuity and mother-right by the introduction of the Aryan custom of marriage with patrilinear succession, which is referred to in the Pictish Chronicles as one of the great offences of "Cruithne" (i.e. Pruthne or Part-olon), that he "took their women from them." Another vestige of this ancient matriarchy in Ireland appears in the custom in the first century B.C. by which a married woman retained her private fortune independent of her husband.1 It was this Pictish promiscuity presumably, regarding which Cæsar makes his remarkable statement that "the inland non-agricultural people" who were clad in skins and stained their skins blue (i.e., obviously the Picts): "ten or a dozen had one wife in common, brothers and fathers sharing with their sons." This, however, is believed by several authorities to be due to a misunderstanding on Cæsar's part. And in view of the brief hurried circumstances of his visit, confined to only a few months' strenuous campaigning in the south-east corner of England, in a foreign country, and dependent on interpreters, it seems probable that it is one of his several mistaken statements, and that the Pictish custom in question was not polyandry, but matriarchy. The Serpent-worship of the Picts also, which was so universal, as seen everywhere on the prehistoric monuments in Pictlands, and figuring freely also on the early Christian monuments and "Celtic" crosses of the Picts, is now explained by the matriarchist Van or Fen origin of this race. We have seen the prominence of the Serpent-cult Witch's Bowl or Cauldron amongst the Feins of prehistoric Ireland, and the Serpent guardians there of the Tribe of the "Fidga," i.e., the Picts, the Serpent-cult enmity against the Sun-worshipping heroes Diarmait and Conn of the Irish-Scots, and the widespread carving of the Serpent and its coiled symbols on the prehistoric stone monuments in Ireland, and how St. Patrick the Scot in the fifth century A.D. traditionally banished the Serpent-cult from Ireland and demolished the chief Matriarchist idol. In Britain, the Serpent and its interlacing coils are freely sculptured on many of the prehistoric monuments and early Christian crosses. In Scotland, the last refuge of the Picts, where their early monuments have most largely escaped destruction, this symbolism is especially widespread and occurs on many of the several hundreds of prehistoric monuments and early Christian crosses figured by Dr. Stuart in his classic Sculptured Stones of Scotland, and it is well exemplified in the great prehistoric "Serpent Stone," which now stands alongside the Newton Stone. 2 1 D.B.G., v, 5. Cf. H.A.B., 414, etc. E.g., His statement that the Pine and Beech do not grow in Britain, D.B.G., v., 5. PICTS ARRIVE IN ALBION IN STONE AGE 125 In Cornwall, the prehistoric whorls of pierced stone, called "Pixies' grindstones," and presumably amulets, are also called "Snake stones." This Serpent-cult character of the Picts would explain the prevalence of human sacrifice amongst the Druid priests of the aborigines who were of this lunar matriarchist cult, and also the historical notices of the existence of cannibalism amongst the barbarian tribes of Caledonia as late as the time of St. Jerome (fourth century A.D.), as well as the traditional immolation of a victim by St. Columba in founding his first church at Iona for the "Culdees" or Picts. 2 It thus transpires by the new evidence that the "Picts" were the primitive small-statured prehistoric aborigines of Albion or Britain with the "River-bed" type of skulls. They were presumably a branch of the primitive smallstatured, narrow-browed and long-headed dark race of matriarchist Serpent-worshipping cave-dwellers of the Van Lake region, the Van, Biani, Fen, or Khal-dis or primitive "Chaldees," Caleds or Caledons, who, in early prehistoric times in the Old Stone Age, sent off from this central hive swarm after swarm of " hunger-marchers" under matriarchs, westwards across Asia Minor to Europe, as far as Iberia and the Biscay region, after the retreating ice. The hordes, which ultimately reached Albion overland, formed there the " aborigines" of Albion. They appear to have entered Southern Albion by the old land-bridge at Kent, after the latter end of the last glacial period, when the reindeer, mammoth and woolly rhinoceros still roamed over what is now called England. And then, long ages afterwards, in the late Stone Age, presumably before 2000 B.C., they gave off a branch to Erin under a Van, Ban or Fian matriarch, forming the aborigines of Ireland. Having thus elicited the apparent solution to the long oustanding problem of "Who are the Picts"-the primitive non-Aryan race over which the Aryan Part-olon and his successors, the " Brude," " Bret," or Briton kings ruled in Scotland, and found that they were the aborigines of Albion, we are now in our search for the first advent of the 1 Cf. L.H.C., 49° ■ Ib. 30. Aryans into Britain before Part-olon's epoch, still faced by an equally enigmatic and hitherto unsolved problem. This is the vexed question "Who were the Celts?" For the "Celts" have been supposed by philologists to be Aryans in race, and to be the first Aryan civilizers of Britain, whilst anthropologists find that they are not racially Aryan at all. |