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The Cruithne or Cruithin were a semi-mythical people, with occasional historic reference in Irish sources, that lived within the British Isles during the Iron Age. Specifically, Cruithne was the contemporary Irish word for the peoples referred to in Roman histories, and subsequent derivative works, as the Picts.

According to T. F. O'Rahilly's historical model, the Cruithne were descended from the Priteni, who O'Rahilly argues were the first Celtic group to inhabit the British Isles, and identifies with the Picts of Scotland. They settled in Britain and Ireland between 700 and 500 BC. They used iron and spoke a P-Celtic language, calling themselves Priteni or Pritani,^[1] which is the origin of the Latin word Britannia and the Old English words "Briton" and "British".

More recent theories [propagated by whom?], supported by archaeological evidence, suggest that the Cruithne were a pre-Celtic people, and may have spoken a non-Indo-European language before the spread and dominance of Celtic culture in Ireland and Britain. It is also suggested that these people were the descendants of the aboriginal neolithic people of the isles.^{[citation needed]} Around 50 BC Diodorus wrote of "those of the Pretani who inhabit the country called Iris (Ireland)". The first reference to the name Pict is found in a Latin document dated 297 AD.

The Strathpeffer Eagle Stone

The latin term "Pict" is from the same stem-word as the english word "picture". [1] Warriors of pictish tribes encountered by the Roman Emperial forces were famously naked, and painted from head to toe, often in blue Woad. The physical remnants of the culture is largely represented by intricately engraved standing stones.

"The finest examples of ornamented stone monuments, metal work and jewellery have been found in the areas of Britain and Ireland that had, at one time, been inhabited by the 'Cruithne.' The term is now applied to some of the Britons of the parts of Scotland beyond the Roman Walls where some southern tribes of Britons, rather than submit to Roman rule joined and merged with the northern Britons, who, before the Roman invasion had also peopled a part of Northern Ireland.

"The nickname Pict given by the Roman soldiery to these northern Britons was a descriptive one. It referred to fondness for colours as a characteristic and to their amazing skill in firing enamel colours on metal ornaments for the warrior, his horse and chariot. In battle, the Britons, for unhampered movements, discarded all clothing and decorated their bodies in colours with tribal symbols, charms and patterns.

"The ornaments in the Books of Darrow, Kells, Lindisfarne, St. Chad, MacRegol, and MacDurnan are similar to those of the Pictish ornamented stones of the east coast of Britain from Durham to Shetland and to the ornamented stones in the Pictish area of north Ireland. In the remaining parts of Britain and Ireland the Celtic ornaments of the stone monuments are different and belong to a variety of schools of Celtic Art. A few fragments, that survived the thoroughness of Augustine and his Church in carrying out the order of Pope Gregory the Great to completely destroy the early British Celtic Christian Church, are evidences that the Picts returned to the midlands of England after the fall of Rome." -- George Bain in Celtic Art: The Method and Construction (1951, Wm Maclellan Publisher)

George Bain in Celtic Art: The Method and Construction (1951, Wm Maclellan Publisher) discusses similarities between the early stonework, metalwork, and manuscript illuminative artwork of Britain, the earliest records of which are attributed to the "Pictish" culture, and ancient Asiatic art. In this he draws support from Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in correspondence published in the same manuscript.

According to Bain, the "peculiar manner of expressing the forms and movements of animals may be seen in the metal work of the 5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C. period of culture of the City of Ur " (Sumeria). He found significant, unmistakable similarity in some motifs, with designs of pre-historic Greece, Cnossus (Crete), Mayan people of Central America, and Buddhist India.

Like many prehistoric cultures, early culture endemic to Britain contains no realistic portrayal of natural forms, probably because it was forbidden to represent them -- a restriction found in many cultures still extant, or recorded in detail in available written historical records.

According to Bain, much of what had been written about such early British art and history was inaccurate, frequently the result of inadequate examination of the evidence, as well as political influences, such as the domination of the Roman Catholic church after the Synod of Whitby of 664. Bain's tract continues, from "after the fall of Rome": "The political purpose of the Synod of Whitby was to give the glory of civilizing and Christianizing of the 'Savage Britons' to the Church of St. Peter." Whether he is correct about motivations, the existence of pre-Catholic Christianity in Britain is largely forgotten, but it is well represented in the remaining Pictish art.

Bain's critique of 19th and early 20th Century historical interpretations of Pictish culture was based in his lifelong study of the remnant artwork, the stylistic and methodological evolution of which he claimed demonstrated significant inaccuracies in the accepted historical development of the peoples and associated artworks, which Bain claimed had not received more than a cursory examination prior to his own study, due mainly to a lack of supporting historical records which simplify such a task.

It should be noted that Pytheas in about 325 BC is credited with first recording the local name of the islands, in Greek as Prettanike - apparently in connection with the Cornish region - which Diodorus later rendered Pretannia.

In Britain these Priteni were absorbed by later invaders and lost their cultural identity, except in the far north where they were known to the Romans as Picti, or “painted people,” on account of their practice of decorating their bodies with paint or tattoos (a practice which by then had died out among other Celtic tribes). In Ireland, too, the Priteni were largely absorbed by later settlers; but a few pockets of them managed to retain a measure of cultural, if not political, independence well into the Christian era. By then they were identified as Cruithne, P-Celtic linguistic descendants of the Priteni.

Among the Cruthnian tribes that survived were the Loíges and Fothairt in Leinster. The name of the first of these tribes - modernized as Laois - has been revived and given to one of the counties of Leinster (formerly known as Queen's County).

The existence of the Cruithne in Ireland as a pre-Gaelic people has led some (particularly unionists) to advocate the theory that they were not, as some nationalists consider, a "non-native" people.

The language of the inhabitants in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series is called Cruithne.

• 3753 Cruithne
• List of Hiberno-Saxon illustrated manuscripts

• The Cruithne at Electric Scotland