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tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Scots/Picts/Celts/Romans/Saxons/etc
Nov 03, 2012, 09:52
GLADMAN wrote:
thesweetcheat wrote:

I must admit that I hadn't really considered the Picts and the Scots to be distinct, in much the same way I wouldn't think of the Cornish/Welsh as being distinct from the Celtic people who were here before the Romans and Saxons (Sais) arrived.


That is just the issue. What is 'Celtic'? The Romans apparently understood that term to refer to 'foreigners' on the continent? Never mentioned any peoples living on these isles as 'Celtic'. And they should know!! Were they before the Anglo Saxons? Who says? I've just read Barry Cunliffe's new book and I'm sad to say I'm not at all convinced. Is there such a thing as a Celt? I reckon not. Based on a 'style of art'?

Besides, the archealogical evidence strongly suggests the 'Anglo Saxon taxeover' as being no-more than the Norman Conquest... one elite replacing another... the peasants going 'whatever', another load of bastards demanding taxes. Vast majority of the people remaining as was.

I would suggest a guilt complex is placiing 'rose tinted specs' over the eyes of modern Scots. Face it. You destroyed the Picts.


Cunliffe suggests an immigrant Anglo -Saxon ratio in the south and east of England of between 1:3 to 1:5 and describes it as “significant” .

The genocide of the Picts was a medieval myth . Most contemporary historians of the period point out the gradual gaelicisation of Pictland long before the accession of Kenneth who may well have been pictish himself and was described at his death as King of Picts . The Dupplin Cross close to the important royal centre of Forteviot has gaelic references to Pictish kings prior to Kenneth . Kenneth's son Causantín , complete with pictish name , was described as King of the Picts which is odd if his father had just destroyed them . Alex Woolf describes Kenneth as “the fifth last of the Pictish kings rather than the first Scottish king."
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