The Last of the Picts

Long, long ago, there lived in this land a people called the Picts. They were very tiny folk, with red hair, long arms, and feet so broad that when it rained, they could lift them over their heads, and they would serve as umbrellas.

The Picts were great builders; they built all the ancient fortresses in the land. And do you know how they built them? I’ll tell you. They would line up from the quarry to the building site, and each would pass stones forward to their neighbor until the work was done.

The Picts were also a great people because of the ale they brewed from heather. This ale, you see, was an extraordinarily accessible drink, for heather, I assure you, was as abundant then as it is now. Another tribe in the land coveted this skill of theirs, but the Picts never revealed the secret. Instead, they passed it down from father to son, with a strict command from one to the next: never let anyone else learn it!

In the end, the Picts faced great wars, and many of them were slain. Soon, indeed, they dwindled to a mere handful of people and were likely to vanish from the face of the earth.

Still fiercely guarding the secret of heather ale, they resolved that their enemies would never wrest it from them. Well, it finally came to a great battle between them and the Scots, in which they suffered a complete defeat, and all were slain except for two—a father and his son.

And so, these two men stood before the king of the Scots, brought to him so that he might frighten them into revealing the secret. He told them plainly that if they did not disclose it willingly, he would torture them until they did, and so it would be better for them to yield in time. "Very well," said the old man to the king, "I see there’s no use resisting. But there is one condition you must agree to before you learn the secret." "And what is that?" asked the king. "Do you promise to fulfill it, if it is not against your own interest?" asked the old man. "Yes," said the king, "I give you my word." Then the Pict said, "You must know that I desire the death of my son, though I would not take his life myself. Kill the son first, and I will be ready to tell you how we brew our ale from the heather flowers!"

No doubt, the king was greatly astonished by this request, but since he had promised, he ordered the boy to be executed immediately. When the old man saw that his son was dead, he leaped up and cried, "Now do with me as you will. You could force my son, for he was but a weak youth, but you will never force me! And I will not tell you, though you are ready to kill, how we brew our ale from the heather flowers!"

Now the king was more astonished than ever, for never before had a mere savage outwitted him. Yet he decided it was not worth killing the Pict and that the greatest punishment for him now would be to let him live. So, he was taken as a prisoner, and he lived many years after that, until he became a very, very old man—bedridden and blind. People forgot that such a man had ever lived. But one night, some young men came to the house where he was and boasted greatly of their strength. He raised himself from his bed and said he would like to test one of their wrists to compare it with the hands of men who lived in the old days. And they, for a laugh, handed him a thick iron rod. He simply snapped it in two with his fingers, as you might snap a reed. "A fair bit of gristle," he said, "but nothing like the sinews of my time." This was the last of the Picts.

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The Last of the Picts

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