No passage of the obscure story of the Picts is involved in greater darkness than the sudden catastrophe which appears to have put an end to their dominion in their principal scat, the north-cast of Scot land. The common account of the Scottish historians is, that the Pictish kingdom was conquered in the year 843 by the Dalriadic or Scottish king Kenneth IL, who thus, for the first time, united the whole of North Britain into one monarchy. The oldest authorities for this account are the Chrotficon Regurn Pictorum, written appar ently about the beginning of the Ilth century (it comes down to the year 992), and first published by Father Ines, in 1729; and the Register of St. Andrew's, written about 1130. On the other hand it is extraordinary that no allusipn should be made to any revolution as having taken place in Pictland about this time, either by Nenuius, who wrote about 858, and who expressly states that the Pieta then continued to hold a third part of Britain ; by Asser, the biographer of king Alfred, who wrote before the end of the same century, and who speaks of the Danes ravaging the Piots in 875; by the Saxon Chronicler, by Ethelwerd, or by Ingulphus, who, in the 10th and 11th centuries, all continue to speak of the Picts as an existing people; by the Irish annalist, Tighernac, who wrote about 1088, and who con tinues a regular chronicle of the Pictish kings, among whom he reckons Kenneth himself, down to the death of hie son Constan tine IL, in 875; by the Welsh annalists, who, in like manner, style Kenneth simply king of the Picts ; or finally, by the singular genea logical poem, commonly called the Gaelic or Albanic Duan, belonging to the reign of Malcolm III. (1056-1093), which passes over the reign of Kenneth II. without any remark ; though it states that the Cruithne had gone from Ireland, and seventy kings had possessed the Cruithne plains. It thus appears that neither the Irish, the Welsh, nor the Saxon annalists who lived nearest to the time, ever heard of this subjugation of the Picts by the Scots, which the later Scottish chroniclers would have us believe amounted to the entire destruction of the Pictish nation, and indeed to the utter extirpation of that people from the soil of Scotland. Nevertheless, the fact remains un questionable and undisputed, that Kenneth II., or Kenneth Macalpin, as he is commonly called, having been originally king of the Scots, or Dalriads, became king of the Picts about the date assigned to his conquest of that people; and the probability therefore seems to be that this Dalriatlic king had a claim by descent to the Pictish throne, and that the contest in which he proved victorious was in fact not a war between the Scots and Picts, but merely a dispute between him and a rival claimant for the crown of Pictland, which ,terminated in its acquisition by Kenneth, and consequently in the union of the two kingdoms under one sceptre. The two people also were of allied races,
and might have easily amalgamated. Kenneth, we may here notice, appears to have followed up this success by a course of policy having for its aim the ultimate incorporation with his own dominions of the adjoining (perhaps Pictish) kingdom of Strath-Clyde; and that object was in fact accomplished, and the whole of what is now called Scotland brought (nominally at least) under one rule, in the year 973, in the reign of his great-great-grandson Kenneth III. Even down to a con siderably later date than this, however, a great part of the north-east of Scotland appears to have been actually held by Norwegian princes, who did not acknowledge the sovereignty of the descendants of Kenneth Macalpin ; and even some of the great Highland chiefs of the west long continued to maintain almost as substantial if not as openly avowed an independence.
Certain singular architectural remains found in some parts of Scot land are still popularly known there by the name of Picts' houses : and the Picts, or Pechs, live in the traditions of the country as a people of almost superhuman strength and dexterity. This would seem to indicate the possession by that race of a morn advanced civili sation than belonged to the other races by whom they were surrounded. Many carvings on stone, of a very remarkable character, the prevailing emblems being a serpent with a zigzag line passing through it, and two or sometimes three circles united by double parallel lines, are scattered over the whole of the tract which once formed tho dominion of the Picts ; but these curious monuments have not yet received the investigation they deserve, and whether they are Pictish or Norwegian remains doubtful. Of these various works an interest ing account is given in Daniel Wilson's Archtcology and Prehistoric) Annals of Scotland,' 1851.