Pictish succession - part 1 of 3
Stewart Baldwin
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Back in October, Mike Davidson mentioned an article by Alex Woolf
entitled "Pictish Matriliny reconsidered", Innes Review 49 (1998),
147-67, which argues against the idea of matrilineal succession among
the Picts. Thanks to Mike, I have now been able to examine a copy of
the article, and I am now posting my reactions. Due to the length, it
is being posted in three parts.
The bottom line is that, in my opinion, Woolf did not make his case,
and I still believe that the available evidence makes it highly
probable (though not conclusively proven) that the Picts practiced
matrilineal succession. Since many of the readers of this newsgroup
may not be familiar with the history of this issue, I will begin by
defining the term "matrilineal", and giving a brief description of
some previous discussions of the issue as it relates to the Picts.
First, it is important to distinguish the difference between the term
"matrilineal" and the very similar sounding term "matriarchal". The
confusion between these two terms, and uncertainty about the
definition of "matrilineal" in general, has sometimes caused
misleading statements to be made about what the consequences of
possible matrilineal succession among the Picts might be. Strictly
speaking, the term "matriarchal" refers to a society ruled by women.
To my knowledge, none of the scholars discussing succession among the
Picts has suggested that the Picts were matriarchal. In a matrilineal
society, political power is generally held by men, but succession is
determined by descent through females. A typical matrilineal family
(or "matriline") would consist of a woman and her children (both male
and female), her daughter's children, her daughter's daughter's
children, and so forth. Any two individuals (either male or female)
whose direct female-line ancestry (i.e., mother, mother's mother,
mother's mother's mother, etc., which has often been referred to as
the "umbilical" line in discussions in this newsgroup) goes back to
the same individual are said to be a part of the same matriline, and
in a matrilineal society, succession is through the matriline, rather
than from father to son. Thus, in a typical matrilineal case, a king
might be expected to be succeeded by a brother (having the same
mother), or by a sister's son (said sister having the same mother, but
not necessarily the same father). The way in which a system might
come about is not too difficult to fathom. In a society in which
women have relationships with more than one man, the maternity of a
child is certain (at least in theory, ignoring baby-switching
conspiracies and the like), whereas the paternity of a child is
uncertain, and a man cannot be sure that his wife's son is related to
him, whereas his mother's daughter's son has a known and
(theoretically) certain relationship. Thus, with kinships in the same
matriline being regarded as certain, and other kinships being regarded
as open to doubt, succession devolves to the closest relative in the
matrilineal sense (brother, sister's son, etc.). One final point
about matriliny is that just because succession in a matrilineal
society is through females, that does not mean that male line ancestry
in such a society is either unknown or irrelevant. Just as a person's
maternal relatives can be politically important in a patrilineal
society, the same holds for paternal relatives in a matrilineal
system.
Matrilineal succession among the Picts was widely regarded as settled
until it was argued against by Alfred P. Smyth [Smyth (1984), 36-84].
In general, I was unconvinced by his arguments, which were further
weakened by the lack of footnotes and direct references to support the
argument. (The absence of footnotes was not the author's fault, as
that was the standard format of the series of books on Scottish
history in which he was presenting his case, but I always wondered why
he chose that forum to present such a major departure from the
previous scholarly opinions, when a journal article would have allowed
him to give direct citations on the more important points of the
discussion.) W. D. H. Sellar, in a review article of Smyth's book
[Sellar (1985)], used more than half of the article to present a
detailed rebuttal to Smyth's arguments about matrilineal succession,
arguing that Smyth had not presented a convincing case. Now, Alex
Woolf has taken on Smyth's case, adding significant additional
arguments, and concluding that matriliny "... is not likely, on
balance, to have been the system practised by the Picts." [Woolf
(1998), 164]. In this posting, I will be arguing that, on the
contrary, it is highly probable that the Picts used a system of
matrilineal succession, at least in the early part of their history.
Smyth, Sellar, and Woolf mention three basic strands of evidence for
matrilineal succession among the Picts (with minor differences in
wording and the order in which the three items are listed), namely:
(1) The Pictish origin legend.
(2) The evidence for a relationship between certain Pictish and
non-Pictish kings in the seventh century.
(3) The absence of father-to-son succession in the Pictish king-list
before the end of the eighth century.
To these, I will add a fourth (and, in my opinion, very important)
piece of evidence supporting matriliny among the Picts, which has been
mentioned before in the scholarly literature, but which was overlooked
by Smyth, Sellar, and Woolf in their arguments, and that is:
(4) The striking dichotomy between the names of Pictish kings and the
names of fathers of Pictish kings.
1. THE PICTISH ORIGIN LEGEND
The Pictish origin legend is a story of apparently Irish origin which
states that when the Picts came to Britain, they had no women, and
that they obtained women from the Irish on the condition that
succession was to be in the female line. The legend is mentioned by
Bede, writing in the early eighth century, when the Pictish kingdom
still existed, so his contemporary evidence proves that the Pictish
origin legend cannot be dismissed as a late medieval invention.
The Pictish origin legend is one one the main items that has been put
forward as positive evidence by proponents of matrilineal succession.
The story given in the origin legend is transparently fictional,
apparently an attempt to explain the method of succession used by the
Picts. However, even if the story itself is unlikely, the very
existence of the legend appears to imply that there was something
unusual to explain, and that Pictish succession was unusual in a way
which involved females. The statement by Bede that this custom was
still used among the Picts in his time is important contemporary
evidence.
The phrase from Bede that has given ammunition to those arguing
against matrilinear succession is that Bede states the qualification
that succession through females is used when any doubt should arise
("ubi res veniret in dubium"), so that Bede is not describing
matrilineal succession per se. Thus, Woolf suggests that Bede is
describing a system in which succession is usually patrilineal, but in
which succession through females is allowed under special
circumstances, such as the systems of succession commonly used in
Eurpoe in modern times, and used in Britain occasionally among the
Welsh during early medieval times. Woolf's argument is that Bede, and
his Irish sources for the Pictish origin legend, were so used to
strictly patrilineal succession that any type of inheritance that
allowed succession through females, even on occasion, would have
looked strange to them, and would have been enough to require special
mention.
Woolf further suggests that the case of the brothers Brude and
Nechtan, sons of Derile, brothers who ruled the Picts in the late
seventh and early eighth centuries, did succeed through their mother,
but that they were identified as the sons of their mother rather than
their father in the sources, and that this distinguished tham from
their predecessors. Although this is a plausible enough argument, the
available evidence is too slim to decide whether or not it has any
weight. There are enough unidentified parents in the Pictish
king-list that other kings might be given as sons of their mothers for
all that we know, and the case for making Derile the mother, rather
than the father, of Brude and Nechtan is possible, but inconclusive.
The linguistic argument that Derile looks like a female name is quite
weak, as very little is known about the Pictish language, so an Irish
analogy might not apply here. The case rests on identifying Nechtan
son of Derile with the Nechtan son of Dairgart who is mentioned in AU
under the year 710, supported by certain versions of the kinglist
which give Brude and Nechtan as sons of a Dergard rather than Derile.
While the genealogical construction suggested by Woolf is possible, I
think it is also possible that Derile was Nechtan's father rather than
his mother, that Nechtan son of Derile and Nechtan son of Dergard
(apparently a member of the Cenél Comghaill) were different
individuals (and that is certainly how it looks from a reading of AU
alone), and that the late sources which give Dergard (or some variant)
as the name of the father of the Pictish kings Brude and Nechtan is a
result of confusion between the two Nechtans (a confusion which is
made easier by the similar looking first syllables in their fathers'
names). (Another observation is that there are other examples of
Pictish kings who apparently succeeded through their mothers, as will
be discussed below, and it is therefore not clear that Woolf's
suggestion about the parentage of Brude and Nechtan, if correct, would
even help his case.)
In discussing this case at some length, Woolf suggests that Bede might
have been specifically addressing the case of Brude and Nechtan when
he used the words "ubi res veniret in dubium". In emphasizing the
exact words used by Bede, it is important to ask what Bede really knew
about the succession practices among the Picts. Did he really know
the succession of Pictish kings for any period of time, or did he just
know the details for the last few kings? Was he just assuming that
the succession through females that he had observed was exceptional
when he wrote the words "ubi res veniret in dubium"? Would an eighth
century writer who was used to patrilinear succession, and had only
observed a generation or two of matrilinear succession, give a correct
description of that system? Woolf finishes his discussion of the
Pictish orogin legend with the words "Bede was not a stupid man." A
modern anaolgy is useful here. In the introduction of their original
(1961) version of the translation of Adomnan's life of Columba
[Anderson (1961)], A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson, in the process
of discussing matrilineal succession among the Picts (which had not
bee seriously questioned at that time), suggested that Brude, son of
Bile, got his claim as king of the Picts as the grandson (rather than
sister's son) of Talorcan, son of Eanfrith, which is not consistent
with matrilinear succession (since Talorcan and Brude would not then
be in the same matriline). If two well respected scholars such as A.
O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson could make a careless slip of this type
regarding the nature of matrilineal succession, might not Bede be
capable of making a similar slip?
With regard to the Pictish origin legend, the bottom line is that by
itself, it tells us very little about the method of succession
practiced by the Picts, and its importance lies in the weight that it
adds to other evidence.
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end part 1 of 3