News from the Mists of Time
Way back when I was student I studied Anglo-Saxon and the whole of this area of subject had only one joke, “The Study of Anglo-Saxon has no future.” Yes them’s the jokes.’ It’s only a joke, because the language had no future tense and in that sense was a fairly primitive language, but at least there were existing texts and books and stories from that age. The word Pict may even be pejorative, as it was derived from non-Pictish sources and may just be another way of dissing people in the north and there’s been a deal of that.
But what do we know about this early people of Scotland? Well the answer is not a lot. Indeed quite a bit we know comes from my old friends the Anglo-Saxons! But now a carved stone discovered in Caithness could change that a little. This stone might enable archaeologists to shed new light on the development of Pictish symbols, because they didn’t have an alphabet like we do, but wrote rather like the ancient Egyptians in version of Pictish hieroglyphs.
In a cemetery in Ulbster, a scattered crofting hamlet on the eastern coast of Caithness, a woman researching her family history spotted the partly covered stone while looking at gravestones. It is covered in Pictish symbols and is thought to date from about the 6th Century. It has been removed for preservation and renovation and to a place where it can be studied, but no-one holds out much hope that they will fully understand its meaning. It was probably an example of the frugal nature of Highland life and was re-used as a grave marker to save a few bob.
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