User:Catfish Jim and the soapdish/Pictish origin myth

The Pictish origin myth is an account of the origins of the Picts as recounted by the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede (672-735) and repeated in subsequent documents.

The myth
The origin myth states that the Picts originated in Scythia, and travelled to the British Isles in a few "ships of war", first arriving on the northern shores of Ireland. There they allegedly met the Scoti, who denied their request to settle, sending them eastwards across the North Channel to present-day Scotland where they settled. Having no women in their retinue, the Picts are said to have been allowed to marry Scoti women on the condition that they adopted a matrilineal system of royal succession.

Historicity of the myth
The myth appears to have originated as a conflation of the Picts of Northern Britain with the Agathyrsi, a Scythian people who inhabited the region of present day Transylvania in Romania. This appears to have been carried out by by Early Medieval, Irish Monastic scholars.

The Agathyrsi are mentioned by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) as a real people but, while he discusses their custom of reciting laws, he makes no reference to their appearance. It has been argued that, subsequent to this record, the Agathyrsi's existence is purely literary. this Virgil refers to them as pictique Agathyrsi Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) later mentioned them in his description of Scythia in book four of his Natural History, noting that they had blue hair.

Cronica de origine antiquorum Pictorum, the rather rambling and confused account of the origin of the Picts found in the Pictish Chronicle preserved in the 14th century Poppleton manuscript, borrows heavily from Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae but no link is made by Isidore between the Picts and the Scythians, despite his mention of Picts elsewhere in the book.

Virgil's Aeneid, book 4, lines 142-146:

''Qualis ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta deserit ac Delum maternam invisit Apollo, instauratque choros, mixtique altaria circum Cretesque Dryopesque fremunt pictique Agathyrsi[...]''

Of wint'ry Xanthus, and the Lycian coast, When to his native Delos he resorts, Ordains the dances, and renews the sports; Where painted Scythians, mix'd with Cretan bands, Before the joyful altars join their hands

Around his shrines Dryopians, sons of Crete, And tattooed Agathyrsians shouting meet.

It has long been known that there is no historical basis for a Scythian origin of the Picts.

Servius Danielis clarifies that picti Agathyrsi were not tattooed like the picti of Britain

Pictique agathyrsi populi sunt Scythiae [...] 'picti' autem, non stigmata habentes, sicut gens in Britannia, sed pulchri, hoc est cyanea coma placentes.

Painted Agathyrsi are a Scythian people [...] "Painted" are not tattooed like the people in Britain, but a beautiful blue hair.

Scythia
[Editors note: By Scythia Bede means Scandinavia. He only mentions this account as a tradition.

T had possessed themselves of the southern. Now the Picts had no wives, and asked them of the Scots; who would not consent to grant them upon any other terms, than that when any question should arise, they should choose a king from the female royal race rather than from the male: which custom, as is well known, has been observed among the Picts to this day. In process of time, Britain, besides the Britons and the Picts, received a third nation, the Scots, who, migrating from Ireland under their leader, Reuda, either by fair means, or by force of arms, secured to themselves those settlements among the Picts which they still possess. From the name of their commander, they are to this day called Dalreudini; for, in their language, Dal signifies a part.