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The Pictish King Lists and the Matrilineal Succession Debate

The Pictish King Lists and the Matrilineal Succession Debate

Were the Picts ruled through their mothers? For more than a century this has been one of the most argued-over questions in early Scottish history. It rests on one sentence written by Bede in Northumbria, on a few lists of kings copied out centuries after the Picts were gone, and on a handful of kings whose fathers were not Picts at all. This is part 12 of our Picts series. As always, history, legend and scholarly debate are kept apart, and the sources are named.

History (The Lists Themselves)

The Picts left no chronicle of their own that survives. What we have are king lists: names, father's names and reign lengths, running from a legendary founder down to the ninth century. Scholars sort them into two families. Molly Miller called them the Series longior (the longer series) and the Series breuior (the shorter series); Marjorie Anderson called the same two families Group P and Group Q.

The best copy of the longer series is in the Poppleton manuscript, a fourteenth-century book written in northern England and named after Robert of Poppleton, now in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 4126). Marjorie Anderson studied it in the Scottish Historical Review in 1949 and in her book Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland (1973). Another copy of the longer series travelled into Irish learning in Lebor Bretnach, the Irish version of the Historia Brittonum, and later into additions to Lebor Gabála Érenn. The shorter series survives only in Scottish manuscripts of the fourteenth century and later, with Gaelic-looking spellings.

Anderson showed that the two families go back to one written list that ran at least to the reign of Nechtan son of Der-Ilei in the 720s. Alex Woolf (1998) suggested the list was first put together around then, probably by 724, under the sons of Der-Ilei. Molly Miller (1979) argued that the list becomes contemporary, written as things happened, from around the reign of Gartnait son of Domnall in the 650s. Nicholas Evans (2010) argues that the shorter series is itself a merger of two lists, which is why it duplicates some kings, and that their common source ran on to at least 834.

From the later sixth century the lists can be checked against the Irish annals, and they hold up well. The Annals of Ulster record the death of "Tolorgan son of Ainfrith, king of the Picts" in 657 and of "Bruide son of Bile, king of Fortriu" in 693, both names that appear in the lists.

History (The Strange Pattern)

Read the historical part of the list and something stands out. For two centuries, no king of the Picts is the son of an earlier king of the Picts. Brothers follow brothers, and cousins appear, but sons do not follow fathers until the very end of the eighth century. Talorgan son of Onuist (783 to 785) and Drest son of Constantín (834 to 837) are among the first.

Some fathers were not Picts at all:

If kingship could pass through a royal mother, kings with British, English or Gaelic fathers make sense. That is the heart of the matrilineal theory.

Legend (The King Lists' Own Beginning)

The Poppleton list opens in legend: "Cruidne son of Cinge, father of the Picts living in this island, reigned a hundred years." His seven sons, Fib, Fidach, Floclaid, Fortrenn, Got, Ce and Circinn, carry the names of Pictish districts, such as Fife (Fib) and Fortriu (Fortrenn). Dauvit Broun has argued that this section is a statement about the kingdom, written in the 860s or 870s under Constantín son of Cináed.

Then comes a strange run of names: Brude bont, "from whom thirty Brudes ruled Ireland and Alba for a hundred and fifty years", listed in pairs such as Brude pant and Brude urpant, Brude leo and Brude uleo. Only twenty-eight are written down. Nick Aitchison (2019) has read this Brude list as a praise poem for a king named Bridei, chanted in call and response. A later legendary king, Drest son of Erp, "reigned a hundred years and fought a hundred battles", and Saint Patrick came to Ireland in his nineteenth year.

Legend (The Wives from Ireland)

Bede finished his Ecclesiastical History in 731. In Book I, chapter 1, he tells how the Picts came from Scythia, landed in the north of Ireland, and were sent on to Britain. Having no wives, they asked the Irish for women, who agreed on one condition: "when the matter should come into doubt" (ubi res veniret in dubium), they would choose their king from the female royal line rather than the male, "and it is well known that this custom has been kept among the Picts to this day."

The Irish tradition tells the story at more length. In Lebor Gabála Érenn (Macalister's translation, on Mary Jones's site), the Cruithne land at Inber Sláine, and one of their druids saves the king of Leinster from the poisoned weapons of the Túath Fidga with the milk of white hornless cows poured into trenches. Cruithnechán son of Cing then seeks wives from Érimón and is given the widows of men drowned at the Sandhills, under "the surety of sun and moon" about how land would be inherited among the Cruithne-folk.

Debate (Mothers or Kindreds?)

For much of the twentieth century Pictish matriliny was treated as fact. F. T. Wainwright's The Problem of the Picts (1955), Isabel Henderson's The Picts (1967), Anderson (1973) and Anne Boyle's "Matrilineal succession in the Pictish monarchy" (1977) all worked with it. Molly Miller studied the origin legend as "matriliny by treaty" (1982) and wrote "Eanfrith's Pictish son" (1978) on Talorgan.

Alfred Smyth challenged it in Warlords and Holy Men (1984). He argued that kingship moved between rival kindreds, and that the wives story was Gaelic propaganda. David Sellar answered him sharply in the Innes Review (1985).

Alex Woolf's "Pictish matriliny reconsidered" (Innes Review, 1998) sorted the evidence into three strands: Bede's origin legend, the lack of father-to-son succession, and the links to non-Pictish kings. He pointed out that Bede's rule applies only "when in doubt", that early Irish versions of the wives tale did not mention matriliny at all, and that Talorgan and Bridei could fit an ordinary male-line kindred too. He compared Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Welsh kingship and even Roman law, and called the absence of Pictish kings named as fathers of later Pictish kings before the 780s the most curious fact of all.

Alasdair Ross ("Pictish Matriliny?", Northern Studies, 1999) concluded that neither matriliny nor patriliny had been proved, and that "king of the Picts" may have been an overlordship shared or fought over by several kindreds. Nicholas Evans (2008 and 2010) has argued that the debate has overshadowed the lists themselves: who wrote them, when, and why.

What is left is the evidence itself: a sentence in Bede, lists shaped by later scribes, and a pattern of kings no one has fully explained. Whichever way the argument goes, it is one of the clearest windows we have on how the Picts thought about kingship and kin.

Pretani and Cruithin

The Gaelic name Cruithni was used for the Picts of Britain and also for the Cruthin of Ulster, and both words go back to the old name Pretani for the people of Britain. Scholars such as Kenneth Jackson and Marjorie Anderson were careful to note that the Irish Cruthin were not simply the same people as the Picts. The shared name is a thread between the two shores of the North Channel, and a reminder of how old people's connection to these lands is.

Sources

History, legend and scholarly debate are marked separately in the headings above.

First shared on X @dalriada36963.

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