Picts
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Picts. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the name by which, for five and a half centuries (A. D. 296-844), the people that inhabited Eastern Scotland from the Forth to the Pentland Firth, were known. In the Irish chronicles they are generally styled Picti, Pictones, Pictores, or Pic Piccardaig, but sometimes the native Gaelic name of Cruthnig is applied to them, and their country is 246. called Cruithen-tuath, the equivalent of Latin Pictavia and Old Norse Pettland, which still survives in the name of the Pentland Firth. There were Cruithni or Cruthnig also in Ireland-never, however, called Picti. The Picts are first mentioned in connection with the campaigns of Constantius Chlorus in Britain, in 296 and 306. Caledonia is the name given by Tacitus to Scotland N. of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and he describes the Caledonians as a noble race of barbarians, who on foot, with fight in chariots as well as long swords and short shields, and whose fair red hair and large limbs argued a German origin. Ptolemy (120) places 14 tribes in Tacitus' Caledonia, inclusive of the Caledonians themselves, and the more E. ten of these may be claimed as Picts. So troublesome were these Northern tribes to the Roman province that in 208 the Emperor Severus came to Britain and vainly attempted their subjugation. The contemporary historians mention only two tribes N. of the Forth and Clyde wallthe Mæatæ and the Caledonii-and Tacitus's noble barbarians appear in their pages but squalid savages. Yet they had chariots and weapons as described by Tacitus, with daggers and peculiarly knobbed spears. One hundred years later the Caledonians and other Picts, as already said, were encountered by Constantius, and still 50 years later they harassed the Roman province (360) now in company with the Scots, who are first mentioned at this great seadate, and who appeared as wanderers. The Picts and Scots were helped in this "continual vexing" of the Atecotti Britons by the Saxons and Theodosius the elder in 369 subdued these Northern foes and restored the the walls to Roman district between Britain, and the usurper Maximus signalized his assumption of power in 383 by an energetic campaign against the Picts and Scots. During the next quarter of a century the Romans were losing their hold on Britain, and their Northern foes pressed on the province with great persistence. The Southern Picts were converted to Christianity by St. Ninian (about 400), and the Northern Picts over a century and a half later by St. Columba. The year 839 saw a great defeat and slaughter of the Picts by the Danes, with confusion once again, from which emerged in 844 Kenneth MacAlpin, the Scot, as king over both nations, henceforward not to be disunited. Many things contributed to the overthrow of the Pictish kingdom; the disunion, physical and otherwise, between Northern and Southern Picts; the rule of female succession which allowed Anglic, Briton, and Scottic princes to rule in right of their mothers, and the superior culture of the Scots, Christian and literary. We really do not know much about the isles and W. coast N. of Argyll, nor indeed of the counties N. of Inverness, from the time of Brude MacMailehon It is quite certill the Norsemen came. tain that the Scots colonized these very early, and had, indeed, established themson of selves in Perthshire. Aidan, the Gubhran, made expeditions to Orkney, defeated them and fought the Picts and on the Forth, or even farther E., in Mearns. The Picts, whatever traces they show of a non-Aryan racial element, with its of lower ideas of consequent survival marriage laws, spoke a Celtic language belonging to a branch of Celtic allied to the Cymric, but dialectically different of Bede's time; and that from the Welsh this dialect of the Galo-Cymric stock was speech from the Contia wave of Celtic nent previous to the Gaulish which held England when Cæsar entered Britain.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a Celtic people of northeastern Scotland. Little is known of their origin, history, or fate. An amusing discussion of the first question is carried on by Jonathan Oldbuck and Sir Arthur Wardour in the sixth chapter of Scott's Antiquary. The earthhouses of northern Scotland are supposed to be their ancient habitation. Their territory extended from the Firth of Forth to the Pentland Firth. Tradition and the records of monks have preserved a list of sovereigns. They were converted to Christianity about 563. As to their disappearance from history they were doubtless absorbed by the Scots. Without doubt the modern Highlanders are in part the descendants of the Picts. See Scotland
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat the Picts as a puzzle — Aiton's in 1910 admits "little is known of their origin, history, or fate" and sends readers to a comic argument in a Walter Scott novel, while Collier's in 1921 hints at a "non-Aryan racial element, with its consequent survival of lower ideas of marriage laws." That racial framing is gone: modern scholarship treats the Picts as the northern Britons of the Iron Age, who coalesced into kingdoms under pressure from Rome rather than arriving as an exotic separate stock, and the supposed rule of female succession is now generally rejected as a misreading of the king-lists. Collier's guess about the language has fared better — Pictish is now accepted as a P-Celtic tongue close to Brittonic, established chiefly by Kenneth Jackson's work in the 1950s. Excavation has done most to change the picture, above all the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack in Easter Ross, dug through the 1990s and 2000s, and the elite complex at Rhynie in Aberdeenshire; Kenneth MacAlpin's accession, dated firmly to 844 by Collier's, is now read as one stage in a gradual Pictish-Gaelic merger into the kingdom of Alba rather than a conquest.
Written for this edition, 2026.