into the otherworld at lakes and
streams, or else on faerie-hills under cromlechs (dolmans) or inside souterrains
(underground chambers).
The otherworld of faerie-maidens (Gaelic "sidhe," pronounced
"shee") was part of a dawn or pre—Christian religion that included sacral
kings, sun gods and ancestor worship, "gessa" or taboos, moon goddesses, fertility
cults, divine heroes, nature worship, druidic oak groves, and goddesses presiding over
rivers and lakes. Other aspects included head-hunting and the cult of the head (the Gaelic
sun-god, the god of wisdom, is named after the head in its capacity as the seat of
reason), ritual triads (things done three times: St. Patrick railed against sun-worship
and made use of the three-leaf clover to demonstrate the trinity for his pagan Irish
audience), sacred tribal animal totems and shape-changing (werewolves count here, as does
the raven, in which form Odin presided over battles), votive offerings in wells (holy
wells are still associated with healing and prophecy), burnt offerings and human
sacrifice.
For their part, the Picts shared in this common northern tradition, and
yet by the seventh century there were differences which made the Picts unique. For one
thing, Christianity came later to Pictland, and labored harder in establishing itself
there than it had
in Ireland or Northumbria. But the real roots of the Pictish difference lay in the
continued manifestation among them of elements once common all over the North, and in
Ireland as well. Chief among these was the non—Indo-European custom of matrilineal
succession (passing royalty through the female line) and the presence of an active
pre—Celtic population among the Picts, the last of which were the Atecotti
("very old ones") in the far north. The Picts, as Cruithne in the Gaelic tribal
scheme, had followed the pattern of intermarriage with the native pre—Celts as had
the Cruithne of Ireland. However, by the first century A.D., none of the other tribal
groups of Gaeldom appear in Alba, and the Erainnian Scots did not establish themselves in
Argyle until the sixth century. Therefore the Cruithne remained in Alba for hundreds of
years essentially as a prototypical [La Tene] warrior aristocracy over an apparently
larger pre—Celtic population. In the absence of Celtic reinforcement in the
intervening centuries, both the P—Celtic language of the Picts and the
non—Indo-European language of the pre—Celtic Atecotti (recorded on ogham stones)
survived intact well into historical times. The Cruithne in Alba adopted the matrilineal
system of the "very old ones," along with their reverence for the
mother-goddess. The system was foregrounded in Pictland, but elements of the cult of the
mother-goddess (essentially a neolithic fertility cult) remained in medieval Ireland in
the ritual matings of patrilineal Celtic dynasts with white mares symbolizing the land of
Ireland: Mother Earth. This symbolic act was the remaking of the original mating of the
Celtic male sun-god with the mother-goddess of pre—Celtic Ireland. The Pictish
difference was that Pictland maintained the original pattern of matrilineality. Meanwhile,
the famous Atecotti merged with the Cruithne about A.D. 600.
