UK
Pictish stone discovered in Highland cemetery

Tue, November 15, 2022

A carved stone discovered in Caithness could help archaeologists shed new light on the development of Pictish symbols.

A woman researching her family history spotted the partly covered stone while looking at graves in a cemetery in Ulbster.

T he stone is thought to date from about the 6th Century and has been taken to a safe place to be cleaned and studied.

R oland Spencer Jones, of Yarrows Heritage Trust, said the stone could be carved with early examples of Pictish art.

S ome of the symbols, marked in red, on the stone

M r Spencer Jones said: "Pictish art is a bit like Egyptian hieroglyphs with its symbols and pictures of objects.

" Even now we don't really know what those symbols mean, and how they were used so this stone is really at the very beginning of that tradition of carving."

H e said the stone had symbols seen frequently in Pictish art and known to experts as a "mirror" and another as a "z rod".

M r Spencer Jones added: "Every now and then a new Pictish stone appears, sometimes a whole entire magnificent one, sometimes just a fragment.

" Each of them tells a story.

" For a Pictish art historian this adds yet another piece to the complicated jigsaw that is the world of Pictish art."

The Picts created intricately decorated standing stones and also constructed impressive hill forts to defend themselves against rival tribes and invaders.

They battled against the Romans, Angles and the Vikings.

I n 2019, another Pictish stone was found at a cemetery near Dingwall. The stone had been used as a grave marker in the 18th Century.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Heather Ale

A GALLOWAY LEGEND

From the bonny bells of heather
  They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far then honey,
  Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
  And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
  In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
  A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,
  He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
  He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
  Of the dying and the dead.

Summer came in the country,
  Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
  Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children's
  On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather
  Lay numbered with the dead.

The king in the red moorland
  Rode on a summer's day;
And the bees hummed, and the curlews
  Cried beside the way.
The king rode, and was angry,
  Black was his brow and pale,
To rule in a land of heather
  And lack the Heather Ale.

It fortuned that his vassals,
  Riding free on the heath,
Came on a stone that was fallen
  And vermin hid beneath.
Rudely plucked from their hiding,
  Never a word they spoke;
A son and his aged father --
  Last of the dwarfish folk.

The king sat high on his charger,
  He looked on the little men;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
  Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
  And there on the giddy brink --
"I will give you life, ye vermin,
  For the secret of the drink."

There stood the son and father,
  And they looked high and low;
The heather was red around them,
  The sea rumbled below.
And up and spoke the father,
  Shrill was his voice to hear:
"I have a word in private,
  A word for the royal ear.

"Life is dear to the aged,
  And honour a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,"
  Quoth the Pict to the king.
His voice was small as a sparrow's,
  And shrill and wonderful clear:
"I would gladly sell my secret,
  Only my son I fear.

"For life is a little matter,
  And death is nought to the young;
And I dare not sell my honour
  Under the eye of my son.
Take him, O king, and bind him,
  And cast him far in the deep;
And it's I will tell the secret
  That I have sworn to keep."

They took the son and bound him,
  Neck and heels in a thong,
And a lad took him and swung him,
  And flung him far and strong,
And the sea swallowed his body,
  Like that of a child of ten; --
And there on the cliff stood the father,
  Last of the dwarfish men.

"True was the word I told you:
  Only my son I feared;
For I doubt the sapling courage
  That goes without the beard.
But now in vain is the torture,
  Fire shall never avail:
Here dies in my bosom
  The secret of Heather Ale."

---

NOTE TO HEATHER ALE

Among the curiosities of human nature this legend claims a high place. It is needless to remind the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland, occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange; that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler's error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved themselves so ready to receive, about the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue, dwelling underground -- possibly also the distillers of some forgotten spirit? See Mr. Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands.