fless block-house, aptly
described by Dr. Joseph Anderson as a "safe." It could not be battered
down or set on fire, and if an enemy got inside it, he would find
himself in a sort of trap surrounded by the defenders of the broch,
and a mark for their missiles. The broch, too, was quite distinct from
the lofty, narrow ecclesiastical round tower, of which examples still
are found in Ireland, and in Scotland at Brechin and Abernethy.

To resist invasion the Picts would be armed with spears, short swords
and dirks, but, save perhaps a targe, were without defensive body
armour, which they scorned to use in battle, preferring to fight
stripped. They belonged to septs and clans, and each sept would have
its Maor, and each clan or province its Maormor[9] or big chief,
succession being derived through females, a custom which no doubt
originated in remote pre-Christian ages when the paternity of children
was uncertain.

Being Celts, the Picts would shun the open sea. They feared it, for
they had no chance on it, as their vessels were often merely hides
stretched on wattles, resembling enlarged coracles. Yet with such
rude ships as they had, they reached Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes and
Iceland as hermits or missionaries.[10] In Norse times they never
had the mastery of the sea, and the Pictish navy is a myth of earlier
days.[11]

Lastly, as we have seen, the Picts of Cat had never been conquered,
nor had their land ever been occupied by the legions of Rome, which
had stopped at the furthest in Moray; and the sole traces of Rome in
Cat are, as stated, two plates of hammered brass found in a Sutherland
broch, and some Samian ware. Further, Christian though he had been
long before Viking times, the Pict of Cat derived his Christianity
at first and chiefly from the Pictish missions, and later from
the Columban Church, both without reference to Papal Rome; and his
missionaries not only settled on islands off his coasts, but later on
worshipped in his small churches on the mainland; and many a Pictish
saint of holy life was held in reverence there.

About the eighth century and probably earlier, immigrants from the
southern shores of the Baltic pressed the Norse westwards in Norway,
and later on over-population in the sterile lands which lie along
Norway's western shores, drove its inhabitants forth from its western
fjords north of Stavanger and from The Vik or great bay of the
Christiania Fjord, whence they may have derived their