In the early centuries of our era the term "Britannus" was shortened in Latin to "Britto" plural "Brittones". This diminutive form, which may be compared with "Scotty" for Scotsman, became popular. In Gaelic it originated the form "Breatain", representing "Brittones" (Britons), which was applied to the Britons of Strathclyde, Wales, and Cornwall, who retained their native speech under Roman rule; in Welsh, the rendering was "Brython". The Welsh name for Scotland became "Prydyn". The northern people of Scotland, having come under the sway of the Picts, were referred to as Picts just as they became "Scots" after the tribe of Scots rose into prominence. In this sense the Scottish Cruithne were Picts. But the Cruithne (Britons) of Ireland were never referred to as Picts. Modern scholars who have mixed up Cruithne and Picts are the inventors of the term "Irish Picts".
The Picts of Scotland have been traditionally associated with the round buildings known as "brochs", which are all built on the same plan. "Of 490 known brochs", says Professor W. J. Watson, "Orkney and Shetland possess 145, Caithness has 150, and Sutherland 67—a total of 362. On the mainland south of Sutherland there are 10 in Ross, 6 Inverness-shire, 2 in Forfar, 1 in Stirling, Midlothian, Selkirk, and Berwick-shires, 3 in Wigtownshire. In the Isles there are 28 in Lewis, 10 in Harris, 30 in Skye, 1 in Raasay, and at least 5 in the isles of Argyll. The inference is that the original seat of the broch builders must have been in the far north, and that their influence proceeded southwards. The masonry and contents of the brochs prove them to be the work of a most capable people, who lived partly at least by agriculture and had a fairly high standard of civilization.... The distribution of the brochs also indicate that their occupants combined agriculture with sea-faring.... The Wigtown brochs, like the west coast ones generally, are all close to the sea, and in exceedingly strong positions."
These Scottish brochs bear a striking resemblance to the nuraghi of the island of Sardinia. Both the broch and the nuraghe have low doorways which "would at once put an enemy at a disadvantage in attempting to enter".
Describing the Sardinian structures, Mr. T. Eric Peet writes:[99] "All the nuraghi stand in commanding situations overlooking large tracts of country, and the more important a position is from a strategical point of view the stronger will be the nuraghe which defends it". Ruins of villages surround these structures. "There cannot be the least doubt", says Peet, "that in time of danger the inhabitants drove their cattle into the fortified enclosure, entered it themselves, and then closed the gates."
In the Balearic Islands are towers called talayots which "resemble rather closely", in Peet's opinion, the nuraghi of Sardinia. The architecture of the talayots, the nuraghi, and the brochs resembles that of the bee-hive tombs of Mycenæ (pre-Hellenic Greece). There are no brochs in Ireland. The "round towers" are of Christian origin (between ninth and thirteenth centuries a.d.). A tomb at Labbamologa, County Cork, however, resembles the tombs of the Balearic Isles and Sardinia (Peet, Rough Stone Monuments, pp. 43-4).
The Picts appear to have come to Scotland from the country of the ancient Pictones, whose name survives in Poitiers (Poictiers) and the province of Poitou in France. These Pictones were anciently rivals of the Veneti, the chief sea-traders in Western and Northern Europe during the pre-Roman period. We gather from Cæsar that the Pictones espoused the cause of the Romans when the Veneti and their allies revolted. They and their near neighbours, the Santoni, supplied Cæsar with ships.[100] These were apparently skiffs which were much lighter and smaller than the imposing vessels of the Veneti. As the big vessels of the Armada were no match for the smaller English vessels, so were the Veneti ships no match for the skiffs of the Pictones.
The Picts who settled in Orkney appear to have dominated the eastern and western Scottish sea-routes. It is possible that they traded with Scandinavia and imported Baltic amber. Tacitus states that the Baltic people, who engaged in the amber trade, spoke a dialect similar to that of Britain, worshipped the mother-goddess, and regarded the boar as the symbol of their deity.[101] Orkney, as has been noted, is derived from the old Celtic word for boar. The boar-people of Orkney who came under the sway of the Picts may have been related to the amber traders.
The Scottish broch-people, associated in tradition with the Picts, were notorious for their piratic habits. In those ancient days, however, piracy was a common occupation. The later Vikings, who seized the naval base of Orkney for the same reason we may conclude as did the Picts, occupied the brochs. Viking means "pirate", as York Powell has shown. In Egil's Saga (Chapter XXXII) the hero Bjorn "was sometimes in Viking but sometimes on trading voyages".[102]
It may be that the term pictus with the racial name Pecti, because the Picts had adopted the sailor-like habit of tattoing their skins—a habit which probably had a religious significance. Claudian, the fourth-century Roman poet, refers to "the fading steel-wrought figures on the dying Pict". Like the sea-faring Scots of northern Ireland who harried the Welsh coast between the second and fifth centuries of our era, the Picts of Scotland had skiffs (scaphæ) with sails and twenty oars a side. Vessels, masts, ropes, and sails were painted a neutral tint, and the crews were attired in the same colour. Thus "camouflaged", the Picts and Scots were able to harry the coasts of Romanized Britain. They appear to have turned Hadrian's wall from the sea. The Pictish sea-faring tribes, the Keiths or Cats and the Mæatæ, have left their names in Caithness, Inchkeith, Dalkeith, &c., and in the Isle of May, &c.[103]
A glimpse of piratical operations in the first century before the Christian era is obtained in an Irish manuscript account of certain happenings in the reign of King Conaire the Great of Ireland. So strict was this monarch's rule that several lawless and discontented persons were forced into exile.