The Picts

Every child in Scotland had heard of the Pechs, a race of small red-haired men, who are said to have lived long
ago, and built all the huge castles and bridges in the country. The Picts, whom antiquaries suppose to have been the same as what are called the Pechs, are understood to have been the people who lived in the country north of the Forth, about a thousand
years ago.

They had a king of their own for many ages; but at length a race of Irish adventurers, who came in upon
Scotland by the west, got the better of their monarch, or else succeeded to his crown by marriage, so that there was never any more heard of them as a separate nation. This event is said to have taken place in the year 843.

Tacitus describes these Picts as a tall and fair race; but tradition now speak differently of the Picts. Both in tbe
border counties, and in those which the Picts once occupied, they are represented by the common people, and in all nursery stories, as a squat and robust race of men, with red hair, and arms of ench length that they could tie the laces of their shoes without stoopinp.

The Scottish peasant ascribed all old public works of which he does not know the origin to the Pechs, and their plan of working, according to his creed, was to stand in a row between the quarry and the building, handing forward stones to one another.

When a person has either red hair, long arms, or a very sturdy body, it is common to say to him tauntingly:
“Ye mann be come of the Pechs.”

Yet there is also a very prevalent understanding that they are now gone, at least as a nation. There are some popular tales wbich even speak of the death of the last individual of the race.

The inhabitants of Lammermoor, a lonely mountain region between East Lothian and Berwicksbire, have an ancient tradition that the last battle fought by the Pechs against the Scots, by whom they were oppressed, took place near a hill called Manslaughter Law. So dreadfully were they cut up, that only two persons of the Pictish nation survived the fight, a father and a son.

These were brought before the Scottish king, and promised life on condition that they would disclose the secret, peculiar to their nation, of the art of distilling ale
from heather. But this was a secret upon which tlse Pechs prided themselves very moch, so that they never would divulge it except to their own kindred. Both refused to purchase their lives on this condition, and they were about to be put to a painful and torturing death, when the father seemed to relent, and proposed to yield up the secret, provided that the Scots would first kill his son.

The victors, though horrified at the unnatural selfishness of the old man, complied with his request, and then asked its reward.

‘‘Now,” said the ancient Pech, “you may kill me too, for you shall never know my secret. Your threats might
have influenced my son, but they are lost on me.”

The King of Scots could not help admiring tIns firmness of principle, even in so small a matter as small ale, and he
condemned the veteran savage to life.

It is further related by the tradition of Teviolilale, that his existence, as a punishment from heaven for his crime,
was prolongeil far beyond the ordinary term of mortal life. When some ages had passed, and the last of the Pechs
was blind and bed—ridden, he overheard some young men vauting of their feats of strength. he desired to feel the
wrist of one of them, in order to compare the strength of modern men wiih those of tIme early times, winch were
now only talked of as a fable.

They reached him a bar of iron instead of a wrist, that they might enjoy the expressions of indignation which they thought he would be sure to utter. But instead, he seized the huge bar, and, snapping it through like a reed, only remarked very coolly:

‘‘It’s a bit good grissle, but nothing to the shackle-bones of my young days.”

The feelings of the young men may be imagined.

Into such forms as these do historical facts become transmuted after a long series of ages; and such is
the popular remembrance of a nation which once occupied the greater part of this country.

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