This Mediterranean type underlies all races and only a few centuries is required for this people to change the physiognomy of their conquerors. Who, for instance, not knowing their real origin, would realize that the first Aryan ancestors of the Italian, the Greek, the Persian and the high-caste Hindu were light eyed blonds, almost identical with the present day Scandinavian?
But to return to the Mediterraneans of the Isles, where these tribes remained a race apart longer than anywhere else. These aborigines are popularly known as Picts, and by this name I have designated them in all my stories – and I have written a number in which I mentioned or referred to them – “The Lost Race”, “The Shadow Kingdom,” “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, “The Dark Man”, “Kings of the Night”, to say nothing of several which I have not marketed.
Doubtless this term is in strictest sense, incorrect. I doubt very much if those ancient folk had any term that designated them as a people; Tuatha Feda, roughly, forest people, was the name given them by the Gaels of Ireland.
Bede says the Picts came to Scotland from Scythia after the Gaels had arrived in Ireland. The Gaels drove them into Scotland, rather, would not let them settle in Ireland, and later came over and dissposessed them. It is readily seen that these people were not aborigines, since the Gaels came into Ireland as late as the first century A.D.
But here arises a question: did these “Scythic” people take the name of an older race among which they settled, or did they lend those older peoples their name?
It is no doubt but that the “Picts of Galloway” were of a very mixed race, with Celtic no doubt predominating. But when I speak of the Picts proper, I am referring to the older, pure-blooded pre-Aryan type.
I think the following theory to be fairly logicaclass="underline" that Caledonia was inhabited from earliest times by a dark Mediterranean people; that the conquest of the Romans drove numbers of Cymric Britons into the heather, whence, no doubt, comes the tales of the “Caledonians”, large, fair haired people who fought with war-chariots. No doubt these tribes mixed a great deal with the natives.
Then, in the press of Roman conquest, which no doubt caused displacements of many Celtic tribes, doubtless including the Gaels, who must have come into Ireland from the mountains of Spain or Southern Gaul, another wave of Celts came into Caledonia, that race known as Picts. They may have been of Gaelic, Belgic or Brythonic type, though all evidence points to a non-Gaelic language. Or they may have been a type of Celt unclassified. Very likely it was already a mixed race, with Latin, Teutonic or even Semitic elements. This race, settling in Caledonia, possibly conquered the natives and gave its name to them.
You understand I have little or no foundation for this theory and am merely putting it forth as a supposition.
The natives of Galloway were spoken of as “The Picts of Galloway” long after the coming of the Saxons. Doubtless a strong strain of Mediterranean blood coursed in their veins, but they were a very mixed breed – besides the Pictish blood mentioned, they had strong elements of Gaelic, Brythonic, Danish and Saxon. More especially as Galloway, as the name implies (Gael-Gall, meaning a province under the control of the Gall, or foreigners) was early conquered by the Angle kings and did not regain its independence for a long time. The name Pict came to mean merely a native of Galloway. But behind that local term loomed a great shadowy realm reaching back into the Stone Age. Therefore, the term Pict as I use it, refers to that old, old Neolithic race in its purity and completeness.
According to Scotch legends, which speak of the Picts with the utmost horror and aversion, the Pictish kingdom was destroyed and its subjects wiped out by Kenith McAlpine. Doubtless the kingdom was destroyed but it is likely that the people were absorbed by the surrounding Gaelic tribes. And this kingdom was the mixed one of which I have already spoken. The old pure Mediterranean type had largely disapproved. The old pure Mediterranan type had largely disappeared. Distance lends perspective but it also distorts and foreshortens. Doubtless the legends of the Picts became mixed with the older, darker legends of the ancient Mongoloids of the Continent. These tales form the basis of the Aryan folk lore – as regards dwarfs, elves, gnomes, kobolds, demons, and the like – and twining themselves about the myths of the Picts, lent them a supernatural accent – demoniac appearance, sub-human stature, and so on. No doubt the later Picts were of more stocky build and unprepossessing appearance than the purer blooded Gaels, but I cannot believe that they were as hideous in aspect as the legends make them out.
NOVEMBER 1930
Kings of the Night is published in Weird Tales.
29 OCTOBER 1931
People of the Dark is returned by Strange Tales for rewrite. The Picts are only glancingly mentioned in this story, but the ‘little people’ or ‘children of the night’ are featured prominently.
DECEMBER 1931
The Dark Man is published in Weird Tales.
CIRCA JANUARY 1932
The People of the Dark is sold to Strange Tales.
SELECTIONS FROM THE HYBORIAN AGE, EARLY 1932
In this essay Howard outlined his imaginary history of the worlds of Kull and Conan, linking them, ultimately, with historical peoples. The Picts feature prominently throughout the essay, as one of the oldest races in the world, rarely rising above a state of barbarism.
Of that epoch known by the Nemedian chroniclers as the Pre-Cataclysmic Age, little is known except the latter part, and that is veiled in the mists of legendry....
The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far out on the western ocean; the Atlanteans, who dwelt on a small continent between the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and the Lemurians, who inhabited a chain of large islands in the eastern hemisphere....
The Thurian civilization was crumbling; their armies were composed largely of barbarian mercenaries. Picts, Atlanteans, and Lemurians were their generals, their statesmen, often their kings....
Then the Cataclysm rocked the world. Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and the Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new continent....
The barbarians fared a little better than the civilized races. The inhabitants of the Pictish Islands were destroyed, but a great colony of them, settled among the mountains of Valusia’s southern frontier, to serve as a buffer against foreign invasion, was untouched. The Continental kingdom of the Atlanteans likewise escaped the common ruin, and to it came thousands of their tribesmen in ships from the sinking land. Many Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the Thurian Continent, which was comparatively untouched....
To the continental kingdom of the Atlanteans, from sunken areas, swarmed myriads of beasts and savages – ape-men and apes. Forced to battle continually for their lives, they yet managed to retain vestiges of their former state of highly-advanced barbarism. Robbed of metals and ores, they became workers in stone like their distant ancestors, and had attained a real artistic level, when their struggling culture came into contact with the powerful Pictish nation. The Picts had also reverted to flint, but had advanced more rapidly in the matter of population and war-science. They had none of the Atlanteans’ artistic nature; they were a ruder, more practical, more prolific race. They left no pictures painted or carved on ivory, as did their enemies, but they left remarkably efficient flint weapons in plenty.