[blam]

"I'm not convinced the Picts were Lapps though. It's a mystery."

At various times, I have tried to associate the Picts to the Xiongnu and the Schytians. (Can't make a good case yet)

[patton]

Grandpaw says (said, he died last year) we came out of Israel, and settled in Ireland, until the exodus to Scotland.

Circa 866, I think.

Oral history - who can believe it?

[Sam Cree]

Are the Lapps also 4 footers? I htink I am skeptical about the height.

I was in northern England about 35 years ago with my brother. We were shown Hadrian's wall, which still exists in places in the beautiful English countryside.

Gives you a weird feeling to see the ancient thing going randomly through farms.

[Swordmaker]

i think the Picts are still there... or at least their genes. I believe the theory that the Pictish peoples were bred into the British/Irish/Scottish gene pool is the correct one, and that occasionally, their genes appear in one family or another.

You should meet my brother-in-law, now 82, a small leprechaunish gnome of a man named O'Hare: an artist, painter, printer, sculptor. You would swear you had met a genuine member of the "little people." In fact, I found a garden scupture leprechaun that looked EXACTLY like him and bought it for his mother for her 95th birthday. He married a woman who looked like a pixie, also short. His entire family, save for the oldest son who more closely resembles Boris Karloff in his most famous role, carry the leprechaunish/pixieish look and are also are given to fine artistry (one is a co-owner of a pewter foundry and was once commissioned to do the Lord of the Rings Chess Set!). My mother-in-law, who was only 15 years older than her son, also had the same stature and looks as did her first husband, my B-i-L's father. They were often mistaken for brother and sister.

His sister, my wife (26 years younger than he), being the mixture of her mother and her mother's second husband, a tall Swede, got her mother's and half-brother's short stature (less than 5') but lacks the leprechaunish look. My daughters are tall, being even farther removed, as the product of their mother's and my Scottish-English (plus twelve generations in North America) genes. (My 10th great-grandfather was the founder of Salem, Massachusetts, and the first English governor of the Massachusetts Colony, John Endicott.)