PICTISH HUNTING PARTIES VERSUS WAR PARTIES…WITH A SIDENOTE ON WAR DOGS

 

By Simon Burchell - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7405285

Pictish Hunting Parties vs. War Parties:

            I would like to start with the standing stones at Meigle, where Queen Guinevere is rumored to have been buried. At the top of one of the most prominent stones prances a large, mounted rider, cloaked and using a bridle bit, with what appears to be a small cavalry brigade, or at least a company of mounted hunters, below him. The fact that this is the largest figure, depicted above all the others and virtually alone (more on that in a minute), indicates a figure of paramount importance: a chieftain or king. While Norma Lorre Goodrich believes this leader is King Arthur, I think it is the queen’s loyal champion: Lancelot, a great king in his own right.

The riders below the leader may be anonymous loyalists, queen’s men, or else the king’s right hand and heir apparent, Gawain, riding beside two of his brothers, the fiery Agravaine and the more even-tempered Gaheris/Gaheriet/Gareth. Prince Modred, beloved of Scottish chroniclers and wearing a helmet or Phrygian cap as befits a Pictish prince, rides in the place of honor, guarding the rear. Or else, this scene could depict Modred and his two sons, who escorted the queen to safety in the north after their father’s death, with the lordly Galahaut, Guinevere and Lancelot’s staunchest ally, as the rear guard. All the riders are cloaked, hooded, and wielding spears. They are accompanied by hunting or war hounds and preceded by what Goodrich interprets as an angel, representing Guinevere.

Goodrich believed that the angel is facing away from the viewer, wings raised to heaven, and that this back view reveals dress tucks or shoulder blades. I believe that the Angel Guinevere is facing front, with her arms raised in a salutary gesture, a benediction, or a supplication for God’s blessing on her troops. The “tucks” are breasts, deliberately intended by the sculptor to indicate gender. In either case, Guinevere would have been depicted here as the archetypal Argento-coxa, “White-Foot”: a barefooted priestess preceding her Celtic – or Pictish – warriors into battle.

            The standing stone at Strathearn has a similar “hunting party”. This one, while replete with mounted men and hunting hounds, also has buglers winding long horns at the van of the parade. Were these “musicians” ancient beaters, intended to scare the game from hiding for the hounds to run to ground and the hunters to finish? Or were they sounding a primeval Pictish cavalry charge?

By Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7704222

A Sidenote on War Dogs:

The Romans used mastiffs as war dogs. Hannibal Barca kept a stable of mastiffs when he crossed the Alps. Attila the Hun, King Arthur’s fifth-century contemporary, maintained a stable of mastiffs on the steppes. The same country, if my theory is correct, that the Picts once roamed. (In my series, The Annals of Anavere, I have a young Lancelot name his pet mastiff Attila.  When he is older, he will have another dog…named Hannibal).

This is fitting, as the ancient Irish were also known to use dogs in war – as when Donald Yellowlocks pursued an enemy, accompanied by his canine captain: a large bitch leading a pack of fifty hounds. The dog fought beside him and on her own, so we know she had been trained to do so. Similarly, Diarmuid and Gráinne were pursued by handlers holding tracking animals leashed by thick chains, who, once caught up with their prey, were unleashed upon them. There are other, more specific instances of dogs being used in hunting or tracking, or as guard dogs, but these episodes appear to reference a long-time, standardized Irish practice of canine warfare. If the Irish, why not also the Picts?

In his fifth-century Confessions, St. Patrick mentions the exportation of Irish war dogs to the Continent. Some of these Irish war hounds certainly would have ended up in Scotland amongst the Gael’s sometime Pictish compatriots. Perhaps the Picts even bred their own war dogs.

If some of the dogs on the stones are not hunting hounds, but rather war dogs, then it is probable that some of these stones depict Pictish war parties. It is true that the dogs on many of the stones are smaller and sleeker than the muscular mastiff, but this does not necessarily preclude them as war animals. Nor does it eliminate the idea of a warrior being accompanied to battle by his loyal hunting dog. (The Hilton of Cadboll Stone clearly depicts wiry hunting hounds bringing down a deer). War parties have to eat, too.

            At the Battle of Dunichen of May 20, 685, depicted on the Aberlemno Stone in Aberlemno Kirkyard, bearded Pictish warriors on horseback, armed with spears and swords, advance alongside Pictish infantry marching into battle. This is a slam-dunk for our Pictish cavalry theory. Thus, returning to our regularly scheduled program – dogs or no dogs – the Picts did employ horses in combat. And they honored this employment by laboriously and lovingly carving images of their mounts into the timeless medium of stone.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Hughson, Irene. “Pictish Horse Carvings.” Glasgow Archaeological Journal, vol. 17, no. 17, 1991, pp. 53–62., doi:10.3366/gas.1991.17.17.53.

Karunanithy, David. “War Dogs among the Early Irish.” History Ireland, 9 May 2013, www.historyireland.com/uncategorized/war-dogs-among-the-early-irish-2/.

Unknown, Wikipedia. “Hilton of Cadboll Stone.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_of_Cadboll_Stone.

Wagner, Paul. “Pictish Heroic Society.” Pictish Warrior, AD 297-841, by Paul Wagner, Osprey Pub., 2002, pp. 14–21.