Bran Mak Morn - Picts in Fantasy

Picts in Fantasy

Many writers have been drawn to the idea of the Picts and created fictional stories and mythology about them in the absence of much real data. This romanticised view tends to portray them as occasionally noble savages, much as the view of Europeans on Native Americans in the 18th century.

They are a special favorite race of Robert E. Howard and are mentioned frequently in his tales, having a continuity from the tales of King Kull of Atlantis, where they are his allies, to the Hyborian Age of Conan the Barbarian where they are the mortal enemies of the Cimmerians, who are actually descended from the old Atlanteans though they do not remember their ancestry or old alliance. Howard also wrote tales about the last King of the Picts Bran Mak Morn set in real historical time and they figure commonly as enemies of Cormac mac Art. In fact, the character of Brule, the Spear Slayer, in the Kull stories, is a member of the Pre-Cataclysmic Age Picts.

Howard's Picts are said to have originated in the westernmost reaches of North America, and gradually migrated into the Mediterranean area. At one time they spread to large areas of the world, but gradually vanished except for several splinter groups. Although some of these groups lived in remote jungles and southern continents, the most prominent body of Picts settled in the British isles, where they displaced a supposedly mongoloid race that had been the initial residents of the isles (though their origins were elsewhere).

An interesting point is that, in the Hyborian age, when they populate the western edge of Europe and share a border with Aquilonia, which tries to push them further west to colonize new provinces, the Picts show clear native American influence, in their appearance, dress, armament, manner of conducting wars, and even the place names of the new Aquilonian provinces. It is hard to tell whether this is a case of inconsistency on the part of Howard, or a throwback to their earliest origins and savagery, as Hyborian Picts are definitely more primitive and savage than those Kull knew.

This previous race sought refuge underground, and over long millennia they evolved into stunted and hideous creatures, who were the initial subjects of tales concerning elves and dwarves. The Picts were in turn displaced by the invading Celts, and they fled northward and interbred with a tribe of 'red haired barbarians,' resulting in a genetic shift toward diminished height. Following subsequent Roman, Breton, and Saxon invasions, the Picts too sought refuge underground, just like the natives they had displaced before.

Howard's descriptions of the later Picts portray them as very small in height, squat and muscular, adept at silent movement, and most of all brutish and uncivilised. They painted themselves with woad, much like the historical Picts, and lived in very large caverns, some natural and some artificially expanded. They had a custom of burning enemy prisoners alive, a ceremony usually presided over by their 'wizards' or priests, whom Howard portrayed as having a twisted philosophy and mindset produced by many years of hatred, in direct opposition to the Pictish warrior-king Bran Mak Morn, who attempted to restore the Picts to their honourable place in the world and drive out the Roman invaders.

Bran Mak Morn's mindset was very unusual for his time and location, because he favored an alliance of the 'native' British populations, including the Picts, Bretons, and Celts, against the Romans, in a setting when each of these tribes fostered an intense hatred and mistrust for all the others. Robert E. Howard also mentions that some warriors among the Picts could assume the forms of wolves, in the manner of werewolves, on their own free will. These Picts were a 'race' with whom Howard felt the most affinity, and for this reason they were one of his favorite subjects, despite being almost wholly fictitious and deviating from historical fact.