Without begging any question concerning the origin, ethnology, or
homogeneity of those who are called 'Picts' in history, from the times
of Ammianus Marcellinus and Claudian until Kenneth MacAlpine united the
Pictish kingdom with the Scottish, we can nevertheless accept the fact
that the name 'Pict' has been popularly applied to some pre-Celtic race
or races, to whom certain ancient structures, such as 'vitrified forts'
and 'Picts' houses' have been attributed. In Cornwall there are
instances of prehistoric structures being called 'Piskies' Halls' (there
is an _allée couverte_ so called at Bosahan in Constantine), and
'Piskies' Crows' (_Crow_ or _Craw_, Breton _Krao_, is a shed or hovel;
'pegs' craw' is still used for 'pig-sty'); and there are three genuine
examples of what would in Scotland be called 'Picts' Houses' just
outside St. Ives in the direction of Zennor, though only modern
antiquaries have applied that name to them. In the district in which
they are, the fringe of coast from St. Ives round by Zennor, Morvah,
Pendeen, and St. Just nearly to Sennen, are found to this day a strange
and separate people of Mongol type, like the Bigaudens of Pont l'Abbé
and Penmarc'h in the Breton Cornouailles, one of those 'fragments of
forgotten peoples' of the 'sunset bound of Lyonesse' of whom Tennyson
tells. They are a little 'stuggy' dark folk, and until comparatively
modern times were recognized as different from their Celtic neighbours,
and were commonly believed to be largely wizards and witches. One of Mr.
Wentz's informants seems to attribute to Zennor a particularly virulent
brand of pisky, and Zennor is the most primitive part of that district.
Possibly the more completely unmixed ancestors of this race were 'more
so' than the present representatives; but, be this as it may, if _Pixy_
is really _Picty_, it would seem that, like the inhabitants of the
extreme north of the British Isles, the south-western Britons eventually
applied the fairly general popular name of the mysterious, half dreaded,
half despised aboriginal to a race of preternatural beings in whose
existence they believed, and, with the name, transferred some of the
qualities, attributes, and legends, thus producing a mixed mental
conception now known as 'pisky' or 'pixy'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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