Anyone who has an interest in Celts or Picts has probably heard of woad and the warriors it was applied to. Visions of nude blue warriors running through the mist adhere themselves to the psyche, especially when woad has been featured in such movies as Brave Heart and Arthur. What was this mysterious blue concoction?
Most re-enactors, pagan, Pictophiles and Celtophiles, will tell you it is a plant; woad Isatis tinctoria, mixed with various substances from fat to distilled cow urine. Woad itself produces a dark blue to black color like indigo. In fact, woad was the predecessor to indigo. We do know woad was used to dye cloth, however it did not turn blue until it contacted air. This causes a problem if one is mixing it with fat; air contact would be minimal and would take some time to occur. Another problem I see is that indigo is nearly black and a contemporary writer, Julius Caesar, states the color is virtrum I believe that is a blue like lapis or perhaps a Ginseng Arizona iced tea bottle. Pliny observed, women were said to paint their bodies blue like Ethiopians before festivals. Curiously, woad plant seeds didn't show up in Britain until the late Iron Age (the Iron age ranged about 400 B.C.- 400 A.D.), so the Picts and/or Celts probably would not have been painting themselves blue with the woad plant for centuries as some believe. They had to be using something different to paint themselves.
I have spoken with some people who have tried to re-created the woad mixture; all of them said that it didn’t work. Other substances had to be mixed with the fat or some such binding agent. This could smear, or it would just dry and flake off. I have also been told some of the woad re-creations smelled pretty bad (I could imagine if anything near urine was used. I have also read that the indigo plant doesn't smell very good itself whether or not that pertains to woad, I couldn't say).
Unknowingly the idea of using eyeliner put forth from the Highlander TV episode offers some clues. Some of the ingredients of eyeliner include: Ferric ferrocyanide and iron oxides. Ferrocyanide pigments are known to create colors such as Iron blue, Prussian blue and Chinese blue among others. Iron oxide would most likely produce a red to orange color. We know the Celts mined and worked metals. They could then, of course, have easily gather the metal oxides and used them to create body paint.
Of course we don't have a living breathing immortal to tell us what woad was, but we do have a witness of sorts, Lindow Man. In 1984 in Lindow Marsh, Cheshire, UK two peat cutters discovered a well formed human foot, which led to the discovery of a mummified body of Lindow Man a few days later. Lindow Man has been dated to about 2 B.C.-119 A.D. some time in the middle of the Celtic Iron age. What is very interesting is that the skin testing of Lindow Man (along with other bog bodies) found iron, copper, ferrocyanide oxide and clay based paints but no plant based paints. "All test for indigotin (the colorant in woad) were negative; the test itself is very sensitive." Lindow Man: Body in the Bog pg 41.
There are a few scattered writings from contemporary peoples that really only give faint clues as to the composition of the body paint used by the Celts or Picts. The bog bodies can give mute testimony to the use of metal oxides. Only future research may give us certainty as to what components were in the body paint. If the woad plant or indigo created such a superior blue color, why is it not used in cosmetics today? Clearly in centuries we have found nothing better than metal oxides.
Contributing texts and web links:
The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar
The Picts and the Scots by Lloyd and Jenny Laing
Lindow Man: The Body in the Bog by I.M. Stead, J.B. Bourke, Don Brothwell
The Ancient Celts by Barry Cunliffe
Links
http://www.cyberpict.net/sgathan/es
http://www.hippy.com/albion/woad.ht
http://home.columbus.rr.com/hernesw
