PICT

(from Latin Picti, painted), one of an ancient people who lived in what is now eastern and northeastern Scotland, from Caithness to Fife. Their name may refer to their custom of body painting or possibly tattooing. Probably descendants of pre-Celtic aborigines, the Picts were first noticed in AD 297, when a Roman writer spoke of the Picts and Irish attacking Hadrian's Wall. Their warfare with the Romans during the occupation was almost continual. Then or soon after, they seem to have developed two kingdoms north of the Firth of Forth, a southern and a northern; but by the 7th century there was a united Pict-land, which already had been penetrated by Christianity. In 843, Kenneth I MacAlpin, king of the Scots (centred in Argyll and Bute), became also king of the Picts, uniting their two lands in a new kingdom of Alba, which evolved into Scotland. The Pictish kingdom is notable for the stylized but vigorous beauty of its carved memorial stones and crosses. The round stone towers known as brochs, or Pictish towers, and the underground stone houses called weems, or Picts' houses, however, both predate this kingdom.