“It is plausible to conclude that, prior to 700, the Picts allowed and/or required women to fight.” Paul Wagner, Pictish warrior, AD 297-841 (Osprey, 2002), p.63
I find this statement difficult to reconcile with what we know of the Picts. It is based chiefly on Adomnan’s Law of Innocents (AD 697) which established a code of conduct for protecting non-combatants (women, children and monks) from military service and from the ravages of warfare. The code was ratified by nearly every Celtic kingdom in the British Isles and was reinforced by a system of fines. Wagner is not alone in assuming that Adomnan’s plea for women to be exempt from military service means that they were routinely recruited as soldiers prior to 697. Like others before him he supports his view by pointing to Irish legends of female warriors and to historical figures such as Boudicca. He cites no examples from the early medieval period because none exist.
There were, no doubt, many desperate occasions when individual Pictish women took up arms to defend their homes and families against marauders. From here it is a big leap to imagine formal recruitment of weapon-bearing females into the warband of a Pictish king. Neither the Picts nor their neighbours operated egalitarian societies where everyone got involved and did their bit for the wider community. On the contrary, these societies were strictly hierarchical. At the top of the social structure stood a rich aristocracy from whose ranks the king and his family were drawn. These aristocrats also provided an exclusive warrior class and were the only social group permitted to engage in warfare. There was no middle class and – in Celtic society at least – no free, weapon-bearing peasantry akin to the later Anglo-Saxon fyrd. The gulf between nobles and peasants – in terms of wealth and status – was huge and insurmountable.
Early medieval societies were not only unequal but patriarchal as well. They were male-dominated and gave little real authority to women. This is why the Pictish regnal lists show a long line of kings but no queens. It also explains why only one female Pict, a princess called Eithni, is mentioned by name in early medieval sources. In this context it is important to note that Pictish royal matriliny – the selection of a king by his maternal ancestry – is not the same as Pictish matriarchy. Female Picts, even aristocratic ones, were denied access to the upper levels of power and authority. In patriarchal societies women are normally excluded from warfare and are not expected to fight alongside their menfolk except in dire circumstances.
The notion of Pictish female warriors is, in fact, highly implausible. Aristocratic Pictish women were excluded from military service by reasons of gender. Peasant women were excluded by reasons of gender and social class. These exclusions were mirrored across the whole of Europe and were not confined to Northern Britain alone. The same restrictions applied also to Boudicca of the Iceni, though she seemingly bucked the trend and led her people to war. We should nevertheless regard her as an exception to the norm, just as the later Anglo-Saxon warrior queens Aethelburh (who besieged Taunton in 722) and Aethelflaed (the “Lady of the Mercians”) were exceptional in their own times. Whether any of these charismatic and resourceful women ever actually fought in combat is a different matter.
What I find interesting about your post is that it is not referenced at all, you state your opinions as facts, and the cornerstone of your argument, which you assume to be true – women were excluded from military service by reasons of gender – is in fact the same thing that you are arguing to defend. Furthermore, there are example in The Tain of female warriors from Alba; I imagine you would discard those as the rantings of a celtic, uncivilized people? You above rant reminds me of Paul the Deacon, who found the celtic histories of the Lombard “silly” and “laughable” in regards to their origin stories and decided to simply ignore them. Your argument is not convincing.
n
I regard the Tain as a classic of Celtic heroic literature but it is not a source of social or political history. The main point of my argument is that female warriors are absent from the historical texts (e.g. Bede and the Irish Annals). Their appearance in literary works such as the Tain is not surprising and rather supports my “rant”.
They wouldn’t have to make laws and write stories encouraging women to stop fighting and act like *good* women in a patriarchy should unless they were fighting, and were not acting like *good* women. Thus the Tain is a great example of how women were fighting and generally *not* acting in line with the patriarchal interests.
When you talk of Bede and the Irish Annals you talk of history that was written by devoutly patriarchal and sexist men. So, to use that as proof that women didn’t fight is invalid. As I pointed out before, your argument is the same as your conclusion; you ask me to put faith in patriarchal and sexist text to prove your point. If I was willing to put faith into those patriarchal texts then we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.
Also, women are mentioned in the Irish Annals. The details around their lives are vague, or not there are all. This is a very good sign that their acts didn’t serve the translators or transcribers agenda, and so were left out. It’s a game of Telephone or Chinese Whispers that was influenced by generations of patriarchs with an interest in maintaining the patriarchy.
As for Boudicca and Aethelburh being exceptions to patriarchal rule, I will agree there. They were exceptions because their stories were somehow preserved even through generations of patriarchal translations and transcriptions.
Thanks,
n.
Good point about Bede and other texts being the products of a patriarchal and chauvinistic society. It would indeed be surprising to see women regularly portrayed in non-traditional roles (e.g. as warriors) in such texts. But surely the Tain and similar examples of Celtic heroic saga originated in the same kind of patriarchal environments as the world of Bede and the Irish annalists? One possible interpretation is that the female warriors depicted in Celtic lore of any time-period might be fictional caricatures of women devised by men, rather than respected professional fighters of equal status to the male soldiers of the royal warbands. This could apply to later Irish monastic texts such as Cain Adamnain as well as to the heroic tales of a more remote past. It would not apply if we had good evidence that gender hierarchies in pre-Christian Ireland differed from those of Adomnan’s time but such evidence has not been found. Unfortunately the tales themselves cannot be taken at face value as sources of pre-Christian social history (this is not my own personal view but reflects the general consensus).