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PICTS 246 PIERCTE called Cruithen-tuath, the equivalent of Latin Pictavia and Old Norse Pettland, which still survives in the name of the Pentland Firth. There were Cruithni or Cruthnig also in Ireland — never, how- ever, called Picti. The Picts are first mentioned in con- nection with the campaigns of Constan- tius Chlorus in Britain, in 296 and 306. Caledonia is the name given by Tacitus to Scotland N. of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and he describes the Caledon- ians as a noble race of barbarians, who fight in chariots as well as on foot, with long swords and short shields, and whose fair red hair and large limbs argued a German origin. Ptolemy (120) places 14 tribes in Tacitus' Caledonia, in- clusive of the Caledonians themselves, and the more E. ten of these may be claimed as Picts. So troublesome were these Northern tribes to the Roman province that in 208 the Emperor Sev- erus came to Britain and vainly at- tempted their subjugation. The con- temporary historians mention only two tribes N. of the Forth and Clyde wall — the Maeatae and the Caledonii — and Tacitus's noble barbarians appear in their pages but squalid savages. Yet they had chariots and weapons as de- scribed by Tacitus, with daggers and peculiarly knobbed spears. One hun- dred years later the Caledonians and other Picts, as already said, were en- countered by Constantius, and still 50 years later they harassed the Roman province (360) now in company with the Scots, who are first mentioned at this date, and who appeared as great sea- wanderers. The Picts and Scots were helped in this "continual vexing" of the Britons by the Saxons and Atecotti. Theodosius the elder in 369 subdued these Northern foes and restored the district between the walls to Roman Britain, and the usurper Maximus sig- nalized his assumption of power in 383 by an energetic campaign against the Picts and Scots. During the next quar- ter of a century the Romans were losing their hold on Britain, and their North- ern foes pressed on the province with great persistence. The Southern Picts were converted to Christianity by St. Ninian (about 400), and the Northern Picts over a century and a half later by St. Columba. The year 839 saw a great defeat and slaughter of the Picts by the Danes, with confusion once again, from which emerged in 844 Kenneth MacAlpin, the Scot, as king over both nations, hence- forward not to be disunited. Many things contributed to the overthrow of the Pictish kingdom; the disunion, phys- ical and otherwise, between Northern and Southern Picts; the rule of female succession which allowed Anglic, Briton, and Scottic princes to rule in right of their mothers, and the superior culture of the Scots, Christian and literary. We really do not know much about the isles and W. coast N. of Argyll, nor indeed of the counties N. of Inverness, from the time of Brude MacMailchon till the Norsemen came. It is quite cer- tain that the Scots colonized these very early, and had, indeed, established them- selves in Perthshire. Aidan, the son of Gubhran, made expeditions to Orkney, and fought the Picts and defeated them on the Forth, or even farther E., in Mearns. The Picts, whatever traces they show of a non-Aryan racial element, with its consequent survival of lower ideas of marriage laws, spoke a Celtic language belonging to a branch of Celtic allied to the Cymric, but dialectically different from the Welsh of Bede's time; and that this dialect of the Galo-Cymric stock was a wave of Celtic speech from the Conti- nent previous to the Gaulish which held England when Caesar entered Britain. PICUL, a Chinese weight of 133^ pounds. It is divided into 100 catties, or 1,600 taels; also called tan. PIEDMONT, or PIEMONT, a former Italian principality, which now forms the N. W. part of the kingdom of Italy; is by the Alps separated from Switzer- land on the N. and from France on the W.; on the E. lies Lombardy, and on the S. Liguria and Genoa. It included the duchy of Monferrat and part of the old duchy of Milan, and now embraces the provinces of Alessandria, Cuneo, Nov- ara, and Turin, and covers 11,331 square miles, with a pop. about 3,200,000. From the end of the 12th century the name Piedmont was used as a collective title for the territories ruled over by the House of Savoy on the E. side of the Graian and Cottian Alps. PIER, a detached pillar or wall sup- porting the ends of adjoining trusses or spans, or the springers of adjacent arches. Also an upright projecting portion of wall, similar to a pilaster, throwing the intervening sunken por- tions into panel. Also a buttress. Also a mole or jetty extending out from the land into the water, adapted to form a landing place for passengers or mer- chandise from ships which float in the deep water alongside the pier or wharf. PIERCE, FRANKLIN, an American statesman, 14th President of the United States; born in Hillsboro, N. H., Nov. 23, 1804. He was educated in the