'A missing link in ancient Scottish history': on the trail of the Picts
Beatles on the radio, rocks in the head, masons on their way to work. Got to Get You Into My Life finds a fanfare of daffodils around the edges as the van rumbles past.
They park near Aberlemno Town Hall. There is a job to do. The Pictish monoliths for which this corner of Angusis is known spend the winter in wooden shelters, sheltered from the frost. Now Historic Environment Scotland stonemasons are uncovering them for spring.
Three by the roadside, a fourth in the graveyard, the stones have stood here or around for 1,500 years, and now - after some quick work with screwdrivers and stepladders - their faces are exposed to another season of light.
While the sun rises, the shadows recede, and the carvings reveal themselves: a serpent, a centaur, and symbols of unknown meaning that experts call Z-rods and V-rods. The most impressive stone depicts a battle: a crow of stone feasts on the corpse of a slain king while, in the trees overlooking the cemetery of Aberlemno, his living descendants creak and croak.
Who carved these marvels ? The people of what is now north-eastern Scotland, whose culture emerged in the late 3rd century and died out in the 10th century. Pictland began roughly north of the Forth Firth and had a center of power at Fortriu, a territory around the Moray Firth. The Picts are mysterious. Their language, which was believed to be close to Welsh, is lost. Other languages, other eyes, offer them to us. The name comes from the Latin - Picti, meaning "painted people", in apparent reference to the tattooed warriors the Romans encountered on the northern frontier of their empire.
"Be it Bede or the Romans, everyone writes about the Picts," is as playwright David Greig puts it, "but we have nothing from their point of view. So you almost feel a historical duty to try to imagine yourself in their place. The journey begins in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland, where I meet Greig.
We descend and stand in a circle of beasts. This is a display of stones from across Scotland, each bearing inscribed animals: a bull from Burghead, a boar from Dores, a goose and fish from Easterton-of-Roseisle.
Beatles on the radio, rocks in the head, masons on their way to work. Got to Get You Into My Life finds a fanfare of daffodils around the edges as the van rumbles past.
They park near Aberlemno Town Hall. There is a job to do. The Pictish monoliths for which this corner of Angusis is known spend the winter in wooden shelters, sheltered from the frost. Now Historic Environment Scotland stonemasons are uncovering them for spring.
Three by the roadside, a fourth in the graveyard, the stones have stood here or around for 1,500 years, and now - after some quick work with screwdrivers and stepladders - their faces are exposed to another season of light.
While the sun rises, the shadows recede, and the carvings reveal themselves: a serpent, a centaur, and symbols of unknown meaning that experts call Z-rods and V-rods. The most impressive stone depicts a battle: a crow of stone feasts on the corpse of a slain king while, in the trees overlooking the cemetery of Aberlemno, his living descendants creak and croak.
Who carved these marvels ? The people of what is now north-eastern Scotland, whose culture emerged in the late 3rd century and died out in the 10th century. Pictland began roughly north of the Forth Firth and had a center of power at Fortriu, a territory around the Moray Firth. The Picts are mysterious. Their language, which was believed to be close to Welsh, is lost. Other languages, other eyes, offer them to us. The name comes from the Latin - Picti, meaning "painted people", in apparent reference to the tattooed warriors the Romans encountered on the northern frontier of their empire.
"Be it Bede or the Romans, everyone writes about the Picts," is as playwright David Greig puts it, "but we have nothing from their point of view. So you almost feel a historical duty to try to imagine yourself in their place. The journey begins in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland, where I meet Greig.
We descend and stand in a circle of beasts. This is a display of stones from across Scotland, each bearing inscribed animals: a bull from Burghead, a boar from Dores, a goose and fish from Easterton-of-Roseisle.
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