  The neutron skin of $^{208}$Pb has received considerable attention in recent
years. A variety of strongly-interacting probes depict a rather consistent
picture but pionic probes have not been referred to in this context. We present
here neutron-skin values from pionic atoms and from total reaction cross
sections of $\pi ^+$ between 0.7 and 2 GeV/c which fit well into the picture.
In addition we show that a neutron skin for $^{48}$Ca can be obtained from
existing data on pionic atoms and the result agrees with pion scattering
experiments and with the scattering of $\alpha $ particles.
