COLUM'S DAY
Book I : Children of AN
Part 1 : Autumn 533
Five hundred years after the death of Christ, the people of the far north of Scotland are still not Christians. The Qritani or Coritani, known to the Romans as Caledonii or, laughingly, Picti, from their custom of tatooing themselves all over still have their own religion which, like their culture, is half Nordic, half Celtic, while the little people, the Elpi, the first-comers (sometimes confused with the Shelti, another seemingly aboriginal people, who have almost disappeared) keep alive what they can of the Shelti mystical tradition that stretches back into the mists of time.
The Elpi roam the northern Forest, but the Qritani or Picts, more civilised, have settled down on farms and in townships in a kingdom that covers most of modern Scotland. To their south, in the border area, are the Cymru or Britons (modern Welsh) of Strathclyde and Gododdin, on the east (North Sea) coast are the Angles of Northumbria, Bernicia and Lothian (as far north as Edinburgh), and on the west coast are the Scotti of Dalriada (roughly modern Argyll), another wave of recent immigrants, this time from Ireland.
In the south, war is raging between the Britons, who had occupied all of modern England, Wales and southern Scotland, and the incoming Angles and Saxons who now occupied much of the east and south coast of modern England.
It is the time of Arthurm and Guinevere.
And Modred.
And it is, or will soon be, the time of the coming of Christianity: Colum's day ...
