------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Superscripted
characters are preceded by ‘^’, and if there are multiple characters
they are contained by ‘{ }’. There is a several instances of ‘m’ with a
macron, which appears here as ‘m̄’.
Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapter in which they are
referenced.
Footnotes were numbered beginning afresh with each chapter. They have
been resequenced across the entire text for uniqueness. On occasion,
notes are cross-referenced by number. These references have been changed
as well.
In Appendix II (pp. 410-427), a lengthy poem is presented with the
Gaelic and the English translations on facing pages, so that the reader
may readily compare them. They are too wide to give column-wise here. To
honor the intent of the author, this section has been reorganized to
give each verse and its translation together, the English following the
Gaelic in staggered fashion. On the last page of each version, (pp.
426-427), there is, on each page, a _Notes_ section at the bottom. These
have been combined to follow the last of the passages.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
CELTIC SCOTLAND
_Edinburgh: Printed by Thomas and Archibald Constable_
FOR
DAVID DOUGLAS.
LONDON SIMPKIN, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO., LIM.
CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND BOWES.
GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
SCOTLAND
with the
ANCIENT DIVISIONS
Of THE LAND.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELTIC SCOTLAND:
A HISTORY OF
=Ancient Alban=
BY
WILLIAM F. SKENE, D.C.L., LL.D.
HISTORIOGRAPHER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND.
VOLUME III.
LAND AND PEOPLE.
_SECOND EDITION_.
EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS
1890
_All Rights reserved_
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
A new edition of this the third and last volume of Celtic Scotland
having now been called for, the author is glad to have this opportunity
of correcting any mistakes of the press which have occurred in it. As
this volume deals with the early land tenures and social condition of
the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, in which a number of obsolete terms
and old Celtic words occur, it is peculiarly liable to mistakes of this
kind, and the author has revised the text in this view with great care,
but he does not find that he has any material alteration to make in the
views he has expressed, or the conclusions he has come to, as these are,
in fact, the outcome of years of careful research into this very obscure
subject.
EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH ROW,
_7th July 1890_.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
This volume completes the task which the author set before himself of
illustrating the history of Scotland during the Celtic period, when it
bore the name of Alban, and of endeavouring to dispel those fables which
have hitherto obscured it. Like the other volumes, this third volume
forms in itself a substantive work. Its title is ‘Land and People,’ and
its subject, ‘The early land tenures and social condition of the Celtic
inhabitants of Scotland’ (vol. i. p. 28). The real history of a country
may be said only truly to commence when we come to deal with the social
and political organisation of its population. The ethnology of the
nations which compose it—the history of its kings, their reigns, and the
various wars in which they engaged—the extension or restriction of the
frontiers of their kingdom—the introduction of Christianity and the
establishment of a Christian Church, are all great landmarks and
important features of its history; but still they are merely the outward
bulwarks of the kingdom as a whole, and present it to us in its external
relations only. Till we know something of the distribution within the
country of the various races which formed its population, their relative
growth and decay, their social organisation, and the extent to which its
peculiar features were preserved, and influenced and coloured the future
condition of the entire population formed by the amalgamation of its
various elements, we know little of its real history.
To supply, at least to some extent, this information is the main purpose
of the present volume, which the author fears has been very inadequately
carried into effect, and its publication has been from unavoidable
causes delayed much beyond the period when it ought to have appeared. It
was commenced two years ago, when its progress was interrupted partly
owing to his illness, under the depressing influence of which part of
the volume has indeed been written, but mainly because the publication
of the fourth volume of the Ancient Irish Laws, which was to contain
tracts relating to the early land tenure in Ireland, had likewise been
unavoidably delayed, and the author felt that, without consulting these
tracts, he could not satisfactorily treat of the old tribal system from
which the ancient Celtic land tenures in Scotland derived their origin,
and without a knowledge of which their true character could hardly be
ascertained. The author was, however, at length enabled to complete this
part of his volume through the courtesy of the editor, who, with the
kind permission of the Lord Bishop of Limerick, chairman of the Brehon
Law Commission, communicated to him the proof-sheets of the text and
translation of these tracts, but it was not till after this volume had
in the main been printed, and was almost through the press, that the
fourth volume of the Ancient Laws of Ireland was at length published,
and the author had any opportunity of reading the introduction; and thus
in compiling that part of his volume he had unfortunately not the
benefit of the learned editor’s commentary upon these tracts.
The author has to record his thanks to his friends: Mr. Alexander
Carmichael for the instructive account of three of the Long Island
townships embodied in the last chapter; W. M. Hennessy, Esq., of the
Public Record Office, Dublin, for the curious poem relating to the
Kingdom of the Isles, with its translation; and Captain Thomas for the
old description of the Isles, both printed in the Appendix, Nos. II. and
III. He has also, as formerly, to thank Mr. John Taylor Brown for his
ready aid in revising his proof-sheets; and he takes this opportunity
when completing his work of recording his sense of the valuable
assistance and advice he has received throughout from his excellent
publisher, Mr. David Douglas.
The volume containing the History and Ethnology of the kingdom was
brought down to the end of the reign of Alexander the Third, the last of
the old dynasty of Celtic monarchs, which terminated with his death in
the year 1284, and it is with the same reign that our narrative in
treating of the ‘Land and People’ must now commence.
EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH ROW,
_1st October 1880_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-------
BOOK III.
_LAND AND PEOPLE_.
CHAPTER I.
SCOTLAND IN THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER THE THIRD.
PAGE
Consolidation of the provinces of Scotland into one feudal monarchy
completed in this reign, 1
Southern frontier of Scotland, 3
English possessions of the Scottish kings, 5
Northern boundary of Scotland, 7
Physical aspect of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the Third, 9
Population of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the Third composed
of six races, 15
Indigenous races of the Britons and Picts, 16
Colonising races of Scots and Angles, 17
Intruding races of Danes, Norwegians, and Normans, 18
Influence of foreign races on native population, 18
Foreign elements introduced into population of Pictish and Cambrian
territories, 20
Spread of Teutonic people over them, 21
Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, 28
The Gallgaidheal, 29
The Estates of the Realm in 1283, 39
Distinction of population into Teutonic Lowlanders and Gaelic
Highlanders, 40
CHAPTER II.
THE SEVEN PROVINCES OF SCOTLAND.
Old division of Scotia into provinces, 42
Seven provinces in the eighth century, 42
Seven provinces in the tenth century, 44
Districts ruled by kings and afterwards by Mormaers, 49
Petty kings of Argyll and Galloway, 51
Jarl Thorfinn, 52
Mormaers termed by Norwegians, Jarls, 54
Mormaers of Buchan, from the Book of Deer, 55
Toisechs of Buchan, 56
Seven Earls first appear in reign of Alexander the First, 58
Policy of David I. to feudalise Celtic earldoms, 63
Creation of additional earldoms, 66
Earldom of Mar, 68
Earldoms of Garvyach and Levenach, 69
Earldoms of Ross and Carrick, 70
Earldom of Caithness, 71
Seven Earls in the reign of Alexander the Second, 71
Province of Argyll, 78
Seven Earls in the reign of Alexander the Third, 80
State of the land in the reign of Alexander the Third, 83
The Crown demesne, 84
District of Argyll divided into sheriffdoms, 88
CHAPTER III.
LEGENDARY ORIGINS.
The problem to be solved, 90
Early traditions, 90
Ethnic legends, 91
Linguistic legends, 96
Historical legends, 97
Artificial character of early Irish history, 97
Cymric legends, 100
Legendary origin of transmarine tribes, 104
The Nemedians in Scotland, 105
The Firbolg and Tuath De Danan in Scotland, 105
Pictish legends, 107
The Milesians in Scotland, 108
The race of Ith in Scotland, 111
The race of Colla in Scotland, 113
The last three pagan kings of Ireland in Scotland, 114
How far have these legends a historic basis? 120
Early connection between Scotland and Ireland, 125
The twofold division of the Picts and the establishment of Scone as
the capital of the kingdom, 132
CHAPTER IV.
THE TUATH OR TRIBE IN IRELAND.
Mixed population of Scotland, 135
Sources of information as to their early social state, 136
Tribal organisation of the Gaelic race, 136
Influences affecting the tribe in Ireland, 137
Effect of introduction of Christianity, 138
Land originally held in common, 139
Distinction of ranks in the tribe, 139
The Ri or king, 140
Distinction of ranks arising from possession of cattle, 142
Origin and growth of private property, and creation of an order
of territorial chiefs, 144
The Ceile or tenants of a chief, 145
State of the Tuath or territory of a tribe, 147
The Dun or fort, 148
The Mortuath, 149
The Cuicidh or province, 149
The law of Tanistry, 150
Connection between superiors and dependants, 150
The system of fines, 151
The Honor price, 152
System of land measures, 153
Later state of the tribes, 157
CHAPTER V.
THE FINÉ OR SEPT IN IRELAND, AND THE TRIBE IN WALES.
Origin of the Finé or Sept, 171
The Ciné or kinsfolk, 171
The Ceile or tenants, 172
The Fuidhir or stranger septs, 173
Territorial basis of Finé, 175
The four families of the Ciné or kinsfolk, 176
Members of the four families, 179
The Geilfiné chief, 180
Relation of Geilfiné chief to the Ri Tuath, 184
Law of Succession, 187
Sluaged or hosting, 188
Fosterage, 190
Later state of the Finés, 192
The Tribe in Wales, 197
Fines for Slaughter, 204
The sept in Wales, 205
Fosterage in Wales, 207
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRIBE IN SCOTLAND.
Early notices of tribal organisation, 209
The tribe among the Picts, 210
The tribe in Dalriada, 212
The tribe in Galloway, 214
Modification of original tribes under foreign influences, 214
Passing of the Mortuath into the Earldom, and the Tribe into the
Thanage, 215
Distinction of people into free and servile classes, 216
Classes of freemen, 217
Ranks of bondmen, 220
Measures of land, 223
Burdens on the land, 227
The Cain or Can, 228
Conveth, 232
Expedition and hosting, 234
Assimilation to feudal forms, 236
Tenure in feu-farm, 237
Ranks of society on Crown lands, 238
CHAPTER VII.
THE THANAGES AND THEIR EXTINCTION.
Review of the Thanages and their conversion into Baronies, 246
Thanages in Moray and Ross, 247
Thanages in Mar and Buchan, 250
Thanages in Angus and Mearns, 257
Thanages in Fife and Fothriff, 267
Thanages in Stratherne, 269
Thanages in Atholl, 270
Thanages in Gowry, 274
Thanages south of the Forth, 277
Toshachdor and Toshachdera, 278
Result of survey of thanages, 281
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FINÉ OR CLAN IN SCOTLAND.
Clanship in the Highlands, 284
The Highland Line, 285
Break-up of the Celtic Earldoms, 286
Moray, 287
Buchan, 287
Atholl, 288
Angus, 289
Menteath and Stratherne, 290
Mar, 291
Ross, 291
The Gallgaidheal and their lords, 292
Lennox, 300
The Toshachdoracht, 300
First appearance of Clans, 302
Clan Macduff and its privileges, 303
Description of Highlanders—1363-1383, 307
Raid into Angus in 1391, 308
Combat of two clans on North Inch of Perth in 1396, 310
The Clan Chattan and Clan Cameron, 313
The Chief and the Kinsmen, 318
The native-men, 318
Fosterage, 321
The Clan and its Members, 323
CHAPTER IX.
THE CLANS AND THEIR GENEALOGIES.
State of the Highlands in the sixteenth century, 326
Names and position of the clans, 327
Meaning of ‘Clann,’ and the personal names from which their
patronymics were taken, 331
Original importance and position of Clan pedigrees, 334
First change in Clan pedigrees. Influence of legendary history of
Scotland, 336
Second change. Influence of Irish Sennachies, 337
Analysis of the Irish Pedigrees, 338
Artificial character of these pedigrees, 346
Third Change. Influence of Act 1597, 346
Spurious Pedigrees, 349
Result of Analysis of Pedigrees, 364
Termination of Clanship in the Highlands, 365
CHAPTER X.
LAND TENURE IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS SUBSEQUENT TO THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.
Changes in tenure of land, 368
Abolition of Calps, 368
Size of townships, 369
Occupation of townships, 370
Average size of township in Central Highlands, 370
Township in the Islands, 371
Highland deer-forests, 371
Causes affecting the population in the eighteenth century, 372
Townships in the Inner Hebrides in 1850, 374
Existing townships in the Outer Hebrides, 378
APPENDIX.
I.
Translation of a part of the Book of Clanranald, containing the
Legendary History of the Lords of the Isles as given by the
MacVurichs, hereditary Sennachies of the Clan, 397
II.
Baile Suthain Sith Eamhna, an Irish poem relating to the kingdom of
the Isles, with a translation by W. M. Hennessy, Esq., 410
III.
The Description of the Isles of Scotland, written 1577-1595, 428
IV.
On the Authenticity of the Letters Patent said to have been granted
by King William the Lion to the Earl of Mar in 1171, 441
V.
On the Earldom of Caithness, 448
VI.
Original of the Poem on the Lennox, 454
VII.
Comparison between the Highland Clans and the Afghaun Tribes.
Written in 1816 by Sir Walter Scott, 456
VIII.
Legendary Descent of the Highland Clans, according to Irish MSS., 458
INDEX, 493
ILLUSTRATIVE MAP.
Scotland, with the ancient divisions of the land, _to face the
Title_
BOOK III.
_LAND AND PEOPLE_.
——————●——————
CHAPTER I.
SCOTLAND IN THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER THE THIRD.
[Sidenote: Consolidation of the provinces of Scotland into one feudal
monarchy completed in this reign.]
The brightest and most prosperous period in the annals of Scotland was
undoubtedly that during which she was under the rule of the dynasty of
kings which sprang from the union of the Celtic king Malcolm Ceannmor
with the Saxon princess Margaret. It was during this period of upwards
of a century and a half that the different provinces of Scotland were
welded into one feudal monarchy, and the various races which inhabited
them, and upon the allegiance of each of whom the kings of this race had
hereditary claims, were fused into one mixed population combining the
peculiar qualities of each.
The reign of Alexander the Third, the last king of this old Celtic
dynasty of Scottish kings, saw the concentration of the various
provinces of Scotland into one compact kingdom finally completed by the
cession of the Isles in the year 1266. Scotland now presented the same
geographical platform which it ever after possessed. The various races
which composed its population occupied in the main the same relative
position. The kingdom of Scotland could now be no longer viewed as a
limited Gaelic kingdom, possessing dependencies peopled by British,
Anglic, or Scandinavian communities, but had become a feudal monarchy,
the dominant element of which was Teutonic, while the Celtic population
was either restricted to the wilder and more mountain regions, or formed
the under class of serfs and tillers of the soil.
It would seem as if the task of amalgamating the discordant elements of
the population, and of concentrating the semi-independent provinces
which they peopled, had no sooner been completed than the dynasty which
effected it was to pass away, and a war of succession was to follow,
which was still further to root up her ancient institutions, and to
throw the kingdom still more into the hands of kings and nobility of an
alien race.
By the death of his only daughter, who had been married to the king of
Norway, and of his only son in the same year, Alexander the Third found
that unless he had a male heir by a second marriage the succession to
the throne would devolve upon a little grand-daughter, the Princess of
Norway, then only two years old, and on her the succession was settled
in a Parliament held at Scone on the 5th February 1283-4, failing such
male issue. In the instrument by which the succession was so settled the
magnates of Scotland bound themselves to receive Margaret, daughter of
Eric, king of Norway, and of Margaret, daughter of King Alexander, as
their lady and heir of the kingdom of Scotia; and to acknowledge her and
her heirs as their liege lady, and the true heir of their sovereign in
the whole kingdom, and in the island of Man, and all the other islands
pertaining to the kingdom of Scotia, as well as in Tynedale and Penrith,
and other dependencies of the kingdom.[1]
Such were the enlarged limits to which the name of Scotia, once confined
to the districts between the Firth of Forth and the river Spey, had now
extended; and the dependencies of the kingdom, which had then embraced
large semi-independent provinces on the south and west of these
boundaries, were now reduced to the recently-acquired Western Isles, and
to the small districts of Tynedale and Penrith lying beyond her southern
frontier.
If this process of consolidation, however, may be said to have been
completed in the reign of Alexander the Third, it can only be held to
have properly commenced with that of David the First. Prior to his
accession, although the rule of the Scottish monarchs had extended
itself by degrees over the districts south of the Forth and Clyde, and
then west of the Drumalban range and the river Spey, yet the name of
Scotia was still confined to the eastern districts between these limits.
These districts formed the real nucleus and heart of the kingdom, and
were more directly associated with her monarchs as kings of the Scots.
[Sidenote: Southern frontier of Scotland.]
The extension of their power over the southern districts commenced about
a century after the establishment of the Scottish dynasty on the Pictish
throne, when, in the year 946, the districts forming the kingdom of
Cumbria were ceded by Edward the elder to Malcolm king of the Scots.
This kingdom extended, at that time, from the river Clyde to the river
Derwent in Cumberland, and to the cross at Stanmore on the borders of
Westmoreland and Yorkshire, which separated it from the Northumbrian
territories. It embraced the western districts of Scotland from the
Clyde to the Solway, the present county of Cumberland, with the
exception of that part of it which lies on the south of the river
Derwent and formed the barony of Copeland, and the whole of Westmoreland
exclusive of the barony of Kendal, which, with Copeland and the western
districts as far as the borders of Wales, belonged to the Northumbrian
kingdom.
Within eighty years afterwards, the districts on the east coast
extending from the Forth to the Tweed, and consisting of Lothian and
Teviotdale, were ceded to his grandson, another Malcolm. These southern
territories were, however, in the position of dependencies on the
kingdom of Scotland, lying beyond her proper southern frontier and
within that of England, and were on three different occasions entirely
separated from the Scottish kingdom:—First during the usurpation of
Macbeth and the possession of the greater part of Scotland by the
Norwegian Earl of Orkney, whose joint rule certainly did not extend
beyond the Forth, while the southern districts remained faithful to the
family of Duncan; again during the short reign of Donald Ban; and for a
third time after the death of Eadgar, when the territories over which he
had ruled as king were divided between his brothers Alexander and David,
the former reigning as king over the kingdom north of the Forth and
Clyde, while the latter ruled with the title of Earl over these southern
dependencies. The southern frontier of the Cumbrian kingdom did not, at
this time, extend beyond the Solway, for the Norman king, William Rufus,
had, in the year 1092, wrested that part of it which lay between the
Solway and the Derwent from Malcolm Ceannmor, and given it to the Norman
baron Ranulph de Meschines, while Henry I. erected it, with
Westmoreland, in 1132, into the bishopric of Carlisle. The southern
boundary of Earl David’s possessions had thus become coincident with the
southern frontier of the later kingdom of Scotland. It was only on the
accession of David to the throne of Scotland that they became
permanently united to the kingdom, and the name of Cumbria, or
Cumberland, was restricted to that part of the ancient kingdom of
Cumbria which now belonged to England. The connection of the royal
family with the ancient line of the Saxon kings, the training and Norman
tendencies of David himself, and his marriage with the daughter of an
Earl of Northumbria, and widow of an Earl of Northampton, whose mother
was a niece of the Conqueror, created a tie between them and the Anglic
population of the southern districts which was closer than that which
now connected him with the Celtic population of the other portions of
the kingdom; and Lothian assumed that prominent position as the most
valuable and cherished centre of the interests of the monarchy, which
had hitherto belonged to the region between the Forth and the Spey.
[Sidenote: English possessions of the Scottish kings.]
But while David the First may be held to have established the Solway,
the range of the Cheviots, and the Tweed, as the proper southern
boundary of the kingdom of Scotland, his marriage gave him claims to
territories beyond it, which he was disposed to assert when opportunity
offered. During the life of Matilda, his queen, he had enjoyed in her
right the earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon; but on her death,
seven years after he had succeeded to the throne of Scotland, the
earldom of Northampton passed to her son by her first marriage, Simon de
Senlis, while Henry, her son by King David, succeeded to the earldom of
Huntingdon. The death of Henry, king of England, in 1135, and the
disputed succession between his daughter the empress of Germany and his
sister’s son Stephen, Earl of Mortaigne, presented the opportunity King
David longed for. He embraced the cause of the empress, who was his
niece, and in her name took possession of Northumberland, with the
exception of the castle of Bamborough, which he soon after surrendered
to Stephen, who confirmed the Honor of Huntingdon to Prince Henry, with
Doncaster and the castle of Carlisle in addition to it. In the following
year King David again claimed the northern provinces in name of his son
Prince Henry, and both Northumberland and Cumberland were yielded to
him; but on peace being made between him and Stephen he surrendered
Northumberland, retaining, however, Cumberland in England. An attempt,
two years afterwards, to regain Northumberland led to the battle of the
Standard, in which David was defeated; but a peace was concluded in
1139, when Northumberland was made over to Prince Henry, except the
fortresses of Newcastle and Bamborough, which he retained to his death
in 1152, when King David had Malcolm, the eldest son of Prince Henry,
proclaimed heir to the crown, and presented his second son, William, to
the Northumbrian barons as their ruler. Malcolm had not been four years
on the throne when he surrendered Northumberland and Cumberland to the
king of England, which were annexed to the English crown, while the king
restored to him the Honor of Huntingdon. An attempt on the part of his
brother and successor, William the Lion, to regain these provinces, led
to the war in which he was defeated and taken prisoner in 1173, and
Huntingdon was taken from him and given to Simon de Senlis; but on the
death of the latter in 1184 it was restored to King William, who
bestowed it upon his youngest brother David, afterwards known as David,
Earl of Huntingdon, in whose family it remained.[2] The claims of the
Scottish kings upon the northern provinces of England were renewed by
Alexander the Second, but through the mediation of Cardinal Otho, the
Pope’s legate, all questions in dispute between England and Scotland
were finally settled by an agreement concluded at York in September
1237. In lieu of the claims made by Alexander upon the earldoms of
Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, as his hereditary right,
and for the dowry he ought to have received with Johanna, the sister of
the king of England, whom he had married, King Henry undertook to convey
to the King of Scotland in property, lands in the earldoms of
Northumberland and Cumberland to the yearly value of two hundred
pounds.[3] The lands so settled upon him were Tynedale, also called the
barony of Werk, in Northumberland, and the crown demesne in Cumberland,
consisting of Penrith and other lands, with the exception of the castle
of Carlisle.
Such is a short sketch of the attempts made by the kings of Scotland to
extend their frontiers to the south; and the result was that in the
reign of Alexander the Third the southern boundary of Scotland was the
same as it is at present, but Alexander was left in possession of the
lands of Tynedale and Penrith beyond it, as a dependency of the kingdom,
and they remained with his successor John Baliol, when they were finally
lost to Scotland in the war of independence which followed his short and
disastrous reign.
[Sidenote: Northern boundary of Scotland.]
But if the kings of this dynasty struggled vainly to enlarge their
boundaries on the south, they were more successful in gradually
extending the power of the crown over the northern and western
provinces. David I. by successfully defeating and crushing the rebellion
of Angus, Earl of Moray, in 1130, terminated the semi-independent state
of that province, and no earl of this province was permitted to exist
till King Robert Bruce bestowed it upon his nephew Randolph, but its
guardianship was committed to different Scottish nobles, under the title
of _Custos Moraviæ_.[4] The son of Malcolm MacHeth, who called himself
the son of Earl Angus, attempted on the accession of Malcolm IV. to
regain the province with the aid of the powerful Regulus of Argyll, but
unsuccessfully, and their failure was followed by the northern seaboard,
between Inverness and the Spey, where David I. had already planted the
royal castle, being to a great extent taken from the native chiefs and
given to strangers—a policy still further followed out by his successor
William the Lion, who added the district of Ross, in which he built two
castles; and the crown continued to maintain its control over these
provinces, notwithstanding occasional attempts on the part of the Celtic
inhabitants to regain their independence by supporting the pretensions
of the families of MacWilliam and MacHeth. The province of Caithness
too, which at this time included Sutherland, and had for generations
belonged to the Norwegian earls of Orkney, who held it nominally under
the king of Scotland with the title of Earl, was at length brought by
the same monarch more directly under the power of the crown, and placed
in the same position as the other Scottish provinces. By his son
Alexander the Second the still more extensive province of Argathelia or
Argyll, forming the western seaboard of Scotland, and extending from
Loch Long, opening off the Firth of Clyde, to the borders of Caithness,
was brought under subjection, so that in the reign of this king the
power of the crown was firmly established over the whole mainland of
Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. The islands, however,
which surrounded it still belonged to the kingdom of Norway. The Orkney
and Shetland Islands had been colonised by the Norwegians as early as
the ninth century. They had been ruled by a line of Norwegian Jarls, who
owed submission to the king of Norway alone, and though the succession
to these Jarls opened in the reign of William the Lion to two families
of Scottish descent, they were still considered as Jarls under the
Norwegian crown, and the islands did not become connected with the
Scottish kingdom till long after the period we are dealing with. The
Western Isles, however, stood in a different position. Although the
Norwegian Vikings had to a great extent taken possession of them at the
same time that they colonised Orkney, and they had been the subject of
frequent contest between the Norwegian Jarl and the Danish kings of
Dublin, who had acquired possession of the island of Man, they were
still claimed by the Scottish kings as belonging to their kingdom, till
the reign of Edgar, when they were formally ceded to the king of Norway.
They were at this time along with the Isle of Man under the rule of
petty kings of Norwegian descent, and this line of Norwegian kings of
the Isles retained the whole till the year 1154, when the kingdom of the
Isles was divided, and the islands south of the Point of Ardnamurchan
passed under the rule of the Celtic ruler of Argyll, whose claim was
derived through a descent in the female line from one of the Norwegian
kings of the Isles, but who still held them nominally under the king of
Norway. The tie to Norway, however, was becoming weaker and the
connection with Scotland stronger, when the unsuccessful attempt of
Hakon, king of Norway, to firmly re-establish his power over the whole
of the islands in the reign of Alexander the Third, and his defeat and
death, led to the cession of Man and the Isles in the year 1266 to the
Scottish monarch. And in 1284 we find them settled upon the Maid of
Norway as a dependency of the Scottish kingdom. The Western Islands
became from this time firmly united to the rest of Scotland, while the
island of Man, after being in the following century alternately in the
possession of the Scots and the English, finally passed over to the
English crown.
[Sidenote: Physical aspect of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the
Third.]
Such then was, in extent, the Scotland of Alexander the Third, and of
its physical aspect at this time we can also form a very fair
conception. As early as the third century we are told that the Barbarian
tribes beyond the bounds of the Roman province in Britain ‘inhabit
mountains wild and waterless, and plains desert and marshy, having
neither walls nor cities, nor tillage, but living by pasturage, the
chase, and certain berries;’ and that ‘many parts being constantly
flooded by the tides of the ocean become marshy.’[5] Had the writer of
this description ever seen the Scotch mountains, probably ‘waterless’ is
the very last epithet he would have thought of applying to them; and
though the inhabitants are said to have had neither walls nor cities,
yet no doubt every rock and height showed the rude fortification or hill
fort, the remains of so many of which are still seen, and every rising
ground, with its rude collection of huts, would be surrounded with its
rampart of earth and stones. Adamnan, writing in the seventh century,
tells us of the fortified residence of the king of the Picts on the
banks of the river Ness, with its royal house and gates, of a village on
the banks of a lake, and of the houses of the country people. Of the
leading physical features of the country he tells us too, of the large
inland lakes, Loch Ness and Loch Awe, and of the range of mountains
forming the backbone of Britain, or great watershed dividing the eastern
and western waters, and separating the Scots from the Picts;[6] and
Bede, in the succeeding century, talks of the mountains which separated
the southern from the northern Picts, and within which the former had
seats.[7]
To some extent these features must have still characterised the Scotland
of Alexander the Third. The aspect of the country became gradually
altered by the hand of man as he advanced in civilisation. The
introduction of Christianity, and its rapid spread over the country,
would fill it with those rude Celtic monasteries which were everywhere
established, and with small Christian colonies, who practised a rude
agriculture; forests would be cut down and mosses drained; and in place
of ‘those marshy parts of the country, constantly flooded by the tides
of ocean,’ would appear those rich carses which border the estuaries of
her great rivers. The climate would become ameliorated, towns and
villages would spring up, and a more settled mode of life become
established among the Celtic tribes which formed her population. An old
description of Scotland north of the Firths, written in the first year
of the reign of William the Lion, exhibits of course the same great
physical landmarks, which do not alter, as still forming the leading
territorial boundaries. ‘This region is said to exhibit the form and
figure of a man. The chief part of the figure, that is, the head, is in
Arregaithel, or Argyll, in the west part of Scotland, on the Irish Sea.
His feet are upon the German Ocean. The mountains and deserts of
Arregaithel form his head and neck, and his body is the range of
mountains called Mound, or the Mounth, which extends from the western to
the eastern sea. His arms are the mountains which separate Scotia from
Arregaithel. His right side is formed from Moray, Ross, Marr, and
Buchan. His legs are these two great and principal rivers the Tay and
the Spey. Between the legs are Angus and Mearns, on this side of the
Mounth, and other districts on the other side,’ that is, Marr and
Buchan, ‘between the Spey and the Mounth.’[8] This description, which is
fanciful enough, would place the head of the supposed figure at Ben
Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland. The body is formed by the great
range of hills which separated Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire from
the counties of Perth, Forfar, and Kincardine, and which forms, as it
were, the backbone of the Grampians, and these are the mountains
obviously alluded to by Bede as separating the northern from the
southern Picts. The arms are formed by the range of hills which run at
right angles, and are the great watershed dividing the eastern and
western waters. The southern part forming the left arm now separates
Argyllshire from Perthshire, and the northern part, or right arm,
divides the western seaboard of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, which
then formed part of Argyllshire, from the eastern districts of these
counties, and these are equally plainly the Drumalban range, which in
Adamnan’s time divided the Scots from the Picts.
Upon this scene, during the period when Scotland was under the rule of
this dynasty, two great additional features were introduced. The first
consisted of those Norman castles or strongholds, either built by the
Norman barons to whom grants of land had been made, and which
contributed so greatly to their power in the country, or by the kings of
this race upon the crown lands; and around the latter would cluster
those groups of dwellings, inhabited by traders and artisans, which, on
the banks or at the mouths of navigable rivers, formed the burghs and
seaport towns in which the trade and commerce of the country was carried
on. The second great feature consisted of those monasteries founded by
these kings for communities of regular canons or other monastic orders
of the Roman Catholic Church, which, with their stone-and-lime
buildings, the extensive tracts of land attached to them, and the
industrial habits they fostered, would tend greatly to extend the
cultivation of the soil, and to promote the social condition of the
people under their influence.
We have a somewhat imperfect description of Scotland as it was in the
time of Alexander the Third, compiled not long after his death. It
commences at the eastern border between England and Scotland, and first
names Tyvidale, that is, Teviotdale, with its two royal castles of
Rokesborow or Roxburgh, and Geddeworth or Jedburgh, the latter a
favourite residence of Alexander the Third. Then follows Lothian, with
its castles of Berwick, Edinburgh, Dunbar, and Strivelyn or Stirling.
These two provinces extend, it tells us, from the border to Erlesferie
and Queneferie, that is, to the Firth of Forth. In the districts which
extend in the west from the Clyde to the Solway it names only the new
castle built upon the Ayr water, and in Galewey, Anandale the land of
the Lord Robert de Brus, the royal castle of Dounfres or Dumfries, that
of Kirkcudbright, belonging to William de Ferrers, and the castle of
Baleswynton, belonging to John de Cumyn. The central districts are not
named, but here was the extensive forest of Ettrick and Traquair
separating the eastern from the western districts. Beyond Lothian, it
tells us, lay the land of Fif or Fife, in which were the burgh of St.
Andrews and the castle of Locres or Leuchars. Beyond the Firth of Tay
was the land of Anegos or Angus, in which were the castles of Dundee and
Forfar; and then follows ‘a certain waste called the Mounth, upwards of
sixty miles long and sixteen broad, across which a most wretched passage
can be taken to the north, without food’ (ubi est pessimum passagium
sine cibo). Then follows Mar, and Bouwan or Buchan, in which is the
burgh of Aberdene with its royal castle. Followed by the land of Morref
or Moray, with the castles of Elgyn and Spiny, and then Ross and
Cateneys or Caithness.[9]
This description seems to follow the coast, as the central districts of
Gowry, Atholl, Stratherne, and Menteath are omitted, as well as the
district of Arregaithel or Argyll, and the enumeration of the castles is
very imperfect. Fordun, however, gives a view of Scotland in his day
which is probably equally applicable to the time of Alexander the Third,
and in which he seems to break out into enthusiastic admiration of his
native country. ‘It is a country,’ he says, ‘strong by nature, and
difficult and toilsome of access. In some parts it towers into
mountains; in others it sinks down into plains. For lofty mountains
stretch through the midst of it from end to end, as do the tall Alps
through Europe, and these mountains formerly separated the Scots from
the Picts, and their kingdoms from each other,’—a very accurate
description of the Drumalban chain, extending through Scotland from
south to north. ‘Impassable as they are on horseback, save in very few
places,’ he proceeds, alluding here to the passes into Argyll, ‘they can
hardly be crossed even on foot, both on account of the snow always lying
on them, except in summer-time only, and by reason of the boulders torn
off the beetling crags, and the deep hollows in their midst. Along the
foot of these mountains are vast woods, full of stags, roe-deer, and
other wild animals and beasts of various kinds.... Numberless springs
also well up, and burst forth from the hills and the sloping ridges of
the mountains, and trickling down with sweetest sound in crystal
rivulets between flowery banks, flow together through the level vales,
and give birth to many streams; and these again to large rivers, in
which Scotia marvellously abounds beyond any other country; and at their
mouths, where they rejoin the sea, she has noble and secure harbours.
Scotia also has tracts of land bordering on the sea, pretty level and
rich, with green meadows, and fertile and productive fields of corn and
barley, and well adapted for growing beans, peas, and all other produce;
destitute, however, of wine and oil though by no means so, of honey and
wax. But in the upland districts, and along the highlands, the fields
are less productive, except only in oats and barley. The country is
there very hideous, interspersed with moors and marshy fields, muddy and
dirty. It is, however, full of pasturage grass for cattle, and comely
with verdure in the glens along the watercourses. This region abounds in
wool-bearing sheep, and in horses; and its soil is grassy, feeds cattle
and wild beasts, is rich in milk and wool, and manifold in its wealth of
fish in sea, river, and lake.’[10]
We can thus, in some degree, picture to ourselves the Scotland of this
period. Instead of the large tracts of cultivated land and the modern
mansions of its possessors surrounded by plantations, we should see
forests of trees of native growth, from amid which, or on their margin,
would rise the towers of the royal castles, or those of the Norman
barons. We should see small patches of cultivated land, interspersed
with long stretches of barren heath. In sheltered valleys we should find
the seats of the early bishoprics of the Celtic Church, and the more
imposing monasteries of the regular clergy and monastic orders
subsequently introduced, surrounded by a greater extent of cultivated
land, and with the huts of the occupiers of the soil clustering round.
On the banks of the navigable rivers, or at their mouth, we should find
settlements of the trading and industrial population protected by rude
walls; and we should find the northern and western districts exhibiting
very much the same characteristics as they did during the succeeding
centuries:—the two great leading mountain chains of the Mounth and
Drumalban forming a succession of hunting-grounds or forests, left to
the red-deer and other game; the minor chains leading from them to the
south-east and north-east terminating abruptly on the lowland plains,
and forming a great mountain barrier, extending on the south in an
oblique line from Ben Lomond to the great range of the Mounth near
Stonehaven, and on the north from the same range at Ballater to the
river Nairn, through which the great rivers rising among the western
hills pour their waters, through narrow gorges which form the passes
into the mountain region. Within this line the country would be mainly
used for pasturage, and its natural defences would render but few
artificial fortifications necessary.
[Sidenote: Population of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the Third
composed of six races.]
During the period when the boundaries of Scotland had been thus extended
by the kings of this dynasty, its population was composed of several
distinct races, partly of Teutonic and partly of Celtic origin, forming
a people of very mixed descent, in which the Teutonic element was
gradually predominating more and more over the Celtic, and either
absorbing the latter or confining it to the more barren and mountain
regions of the country. The constituent elements of this population bore
six different names. These were the Picts and the Cumbrians or Britons,
the Scots and Angles, the Norwegians, and the Franks or Normans, and we
find them distinguished by these names under the rule of the Scoto-Saxon
monarchs, till they gradually become merged in the general name of
Scots. Thus the charters of Eadgar and Alexander the First are addressed
to their subjects, both Scots and Angles. Those by David the First and
Malcolm the Fourth sometimes to Scots and Angles, at other times to
Franks or Normans and Angles, and frequently to Franks and Angles, Scots
and Galwegians or Picts, while in the charters of the subsequent kings
these distinctions disappear. When the whole force of the kingdom was
called out by David the First at the invasion of England which
terminated in the disastrous battle of the Standard, we find that his
army, according to Richard of Hexham, was composed of Normans, Germans,
Angles, Northumbrians and Cumbrians of Teviotdale, of Lothian, of Picts
commonly called Galwegians, and of Scots,[11] while, according to
Ailred, the army was arranged in the following battalions. The first was
composed of the Galuenses or Galwegian Picts; the second of the
Cumberenses and Teviotdalenses or Britons of Strathclyde and Teviotdale;
the third of the Laodonenses, Insulani, and Lauernani, that is, a mixed
battalion of Angles of Lothian, Norwegians of the Isles, and the Gaelic
people of the Lennox; and the king had in his own battalion the Scotti
and Muravenses, that is, the people of Scotland between the Forth and
the Spey and of the great province of Moray, which he had recently
subjected, beyond it, and along with them ‘Milites Angli et Franci,’[12]
or Saxon and Norman barons.
[Sidenote: Indigenous races of the Britons and Picts.]
Of these races two only were indigenous, and the rest were intruders. To
the indigenous races belonged the Cumbrians or Britons south of the
Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the Picts, who originally inhabited the
whole country north of these estuaries, as well as Galloway and a
considerable part of Ireland. Both belonged to the Celtic race, the
former to that branch of it, the dialect of which is represented by the
Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, and perhaps in the main most nearly
approached the Cornish in the form of their speech. But whether the
Picts were altogether a homogeneous people may perhaps be a question.
From the time when they first became known to the Romans, they appear
throughout as divided into two branches; but whether the expression of
the Roman historian, when he terms these two divisions of the Pictish
people two nations, indicates any diversity of race, or whether, as the
language of Bede rather implies, the distinction was simply
geographical, certainly in one important respect they for a time showed
a material difference, for the southern Picts adopted Christianity at a
much earlier period than the northern Picts, and they were so far
disunited that the conversion of the former did not imply that of the
whole nation, and for a century and a half, while the southern portion
were nominally Christian, the northern half remained Pagan. Every
circumstance, however, connected with them, tends to show that the Picts
who inhabited the northern and western regions of Scotland, as well as
Galloway and the districts in Ireland, belonged to the Gaelic race and
spoke a Gaelic dialect, while the southern Picts, placed between them
and a British people, present features which appear to assimilate them
to both; and the conclusion we came to was that they were probably
originally of the same Gaelic race, while a British element had entered
into their language, either from mixture with that people, or from some
other influence arising from their contact.
[Sidenote: Colonising races of Scots and Angles.]
The sixth century brought in both an additional Gaelic and a Teutonic
element into the population of this part of Britain, for in the
beginning of that century a colony of Scots from Ireland, who were
undoubtedly a Gaelic people, settled on the barren coasts on the north
side of the Firth of Clyde, and the same century saw the eastern
seaboard, extending from the Tweed to the Firth of Forth, in possession
of the Angles of Northumberland; while there is reason to believe that
some parts of the country between these limits had been previously
partially settled by Frisian tribes belonging to the great Saxon
confederation.
[Sidenote: Intruding races of Danes, Norwegians, and Normans.]
In the ninth century the great outburst of piratical adventurers from
the Scandinavian shores brought first the Danes and afterwards the
Norwegians to Scotland, and the latter not only colonised the Orkney and
Shetland Islands but became masters of the Western Isles, and from time
to time of considerable districts on the mainland of Scotland. During
the reigns of the earlier kings of this dynasty the Saxon influence was
largely increased by those who either took refuge in Scotland from the
power of the Norman Conqueror or were attracted by the connection of
these kings through their mother with the Saxon royal family; while
David the First introduced the Norman barons, who obtained large tracts
of land on both sides of the Firths of Forth and Clyde under his
auspices and that of his immediate successors.
[Sidenote: Influence of foreign races on native population.]
In estimating the extent to which these foreign elements influenced the
original inhabitants, and how far they formed a permanent ingredient in
the mixed population, it is necessary to keep in view the circumstances
under which they obtained a footing in the country, and the peculiar
features which characterised the intruders. Did they enter the country
as colonists or as conquerors? If the former, did they come as military
colonists? or did they bring their wives and families with them? Or, if
the latter, did they amalgamate with the conquered population so as to
form one people, the language and institutions of one or other obtaining
the mastery over the whole? or did they exterminate or drive them out?
or were the remains of the conquered people retained as a servile class
under the conquerors? The first recorded settlements which have a
historical basis were those of the Scots on the west coast and of the
Angles on the east. Of these the Scots appear to have come more as
colonists than as invaders. They were a tribe of Scots who came from the
district of Dalriada in Ireland in the beginning of the sixth century,
and brought that name with them which was applied to the southern part
of the great western district of Argyll. They belonged to the same
Gaelic race as the Pictish tribes among whom they were settled, and the
oldest tradition as reported by Bede cannot tell whether ‘they secured
to themselves these settlements by fair means or by force of arms.’[13]
The conversion of the northern Picts to Christianity by the Irish
missionary St. Columba, and the establishment of a Christian church
among them under Scottish clergy, now formed a bond of union between
them; and it is recorded by Bede that up to the time when he wrote his
History their mutual boundaries had remained unaltered. In the same
century the Angles of Bernicia, under the sons of Ida, who had founded
that kingdom, obtained possession of the districts extending along the
east coast as far as the Firth of Forth. They were a Pagan people,
conquering a Christian population of a different race and language from
themselves; and there seems little reason to question that this
settlement was only effected after a fierce and prolonged struggle
between the Angles and the native population, by which, after varied
fortunes on either side, the latter were eventually either exterminated
or driven into the more hilly and barren regions on the west. There were
thus formed four distinct kingdoms, which remained independent of each
other during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, viz. those of the
Picts and of the Cumbrian Britons consisting of the two indigenous
races, and those of the Scots of Dalriada and Angles of Bernicia
established by two of the intruding peoples; and their mutual boundaries
had remained unaltered down to the period when Bede wrote in the eighth
century.
[Sidenote: Foreign elements introduced into population of Pictish and
Cumbrian territories.]
It was not till the ninth century that those changes in their relative
position commenced which ultimately led to their fusion into one mixed
population. A revolution in that century led to a dynasty of kings of
Scottish descent being permanently placed on the Pictish throne, and to
a Scottish element being largely and to an increasing extent introduced
into the Pictish population. The capital of the Pictish kingdom had at
this time been Scone, and around this central point the new Scottish
monarchy had its chief influence, and in the neighbouring districts the
new Scottish population would be most numerous. The province of Fife
seems to have been considered as their main seat, and they appear to
have spread over the central districts of the region extending from the
Forth to the great barrier of the Mounth, while the more independent
portion of its Pictish population appear at its two extremities in the
_firu Fortren_ or men of Fortren, who had their chief stronghold in
Dundurn at the eastern end of Lochearn, and in the _viri de Moerne_ or
men of Mearns, whose principal fortress was _Dunfother_ or Dunnottar at
Stonehaven. These Scots and Picts, belonging to the same Gaelic race and
speaking kindred dialects, would amalgamate readily enough, and they
would probably be found at this time established alongside of each other
in homesteads some of which would be Scottish and others Pictish,—a
state of matters of which we find examples in northern Russia, where the
earlier Finnish population and the intruding Slavs occupy respective
villages, and in parts of Greece, where the distribution of the Albanian
and the Greek population presents the same features. This view of the
distribution of the Scottish and Pictish communities in the new kingdom
of Alban, to which the name of Scotia was soon applied, will to some
extent account for the strange interlacing in this part of the country
of the three earliest dioceses of Dunkeld, of Abernethy, afterwards
represented by the dioceses of Dunblane and Brechin, and of St.
Andrews,—the two former being traditionally connected with the Pictish
name, and the latter closely identified with the Scottish people.
Diocesan boundaries are usually found to reflect more ancient ethnic
divisions.
The Scottish dynasty of kings had not occupied the Pictish throne for
more than sixty or seventy years when the failure of the line of British
kings of the Strathclyde Britons, and the election of a brother of the
Scottish king to be their successor, placed a similar dynasty of
Scottish kings on the throne of the Cumbrian kingdom, and made its
eventual cession to the Scottish monarch a more natural and easy
arrangement; and the cession of Lothian in the following century
completed the territorial formation of the later Scottish kingdom.
[Sidenote: Spread of Teutonic people over them.]
Such being the state of matters when the dynasty of kings sprung from
the union of Malcolm Ceannmor with the Saxon Princess Margaret ruled
over this kingdom, we find when we reach the reign of Alexander the
Third that a great change has taken place. The British speech has
entirely disappeared from the district forming the ancient Strathclyde
kingdom, and their population now speak the same Northumbrian or
northern dialect of English with the people of Lothian; while this
Teutonic language has likewise spread over the eastern districts
extending from the Forth to the Moray Firth, where in the reign of
Malcolm Ceannmor that Celtic king had had to interpret the Saxon speech
of his queen to its inhabitants, and the indigenous Gaelic vernacular
was now confined to the mountain regions of the North and West north of
the Firths of Forth and Clyde, while the people of Lennox and Galloway,
within the limits of the ancient Cumbrian kingdom, likewise retained
their Gaelic speech. There had, therefore, taken place in these
districts a silent revolution, of which history has taken little note.
Besides the violent or organic changes produced in a population by the
invasion or colonisation of a foreign people which history marks, and
the effects of which we can trace in the events recorded in the annals
of the country, there is another silent and inorganic spread of one race
over the territory of another, the eventual results of which are
apparent enough, and the causes which led to it may be divined, but the
steps of its progress are less easily marked. In the one, whole nations
or tribes take possession of part or the whole of new districts; in the
other, they spread not collectively but in families or groups. In the
one, the inroad is effected by force or by direct convention. In the
other, it is the result of natural causes arising from the contact of
two races possessing different qualities and states of civilisation, and
from the influence which the force of character of one people may
exercise over another. Their influence, too, upon the spoken language
and the place-names of the people presents itself in different aspects.
In the one, the language of the invading people is established as the
language of the country when the subject population has been
exterminated or driven out, and the older place-names are either adopted
into the language or changed at once. In the other, the silent and
gradual inorganic colonisation changes by degrees the spoken language,
but not the bulk of the place-names. The great natural features of the
country usually retain the names imposed upon them by its original
inhabitants, but those of the homesteads occupied by the colonising race
assume the forms of their language, and those applicable to the
dwellings of man only remain unchanged when the original people have
lingered longer, or when the name is expressive of some common natural
feature, which has been readily adopted as such by the intruders.
Topography thus affords us some help in indicating the presence of the
stranger, and marking the extent to which the race to which he belongs
has spread over the country.
When Earl David, as Prince of Cumbria, proposed to restore the ancient
church of Glasgow, and asked the elders and wise men of Cumbria to
inquire into the ancient possessions of that church, they told him that
after Kentigern, the founder of the church, and several of his
successors, had passed to God, ‘various seditions and insurrections
rising all around not only destroyed the church and its possessions,
but, laying waste the whole country, delivered its inhabitants into
exile. Thus, also, all good being exterminated, after a considerable
interval of time different tribes of different nationalities pouring in
from different parts inhabited this deserted country, but being of
separate race, speaking a dissimilar language, and living after
different fashion, not easily agreeing among themselves, they maintained
paganism rather than the cultivation of the faith. The Lord, however,
who wills that none should perish, was pleased to visit, in his
clemency, these unhappy inhabitants of a condemned habitation,
irrationally dwelling after the manner of beasts. In the days of Henry,
king of England, Alexander reigning as king in Scotia, God sent them
David, brother-german of the foresaid king, as prince and leader, who
corrected their obscene and wicked contagion, and bridled their
contumelious contumacy with nobleness of soul and inflexible
severity.’[14] This picture, coloured no doubt to deepen the shade of
the past, and to brighten the prospects of the country under David’s
rule, still sufficiently indicates the belief that the British
inhabitants had to a great extent deserted the country, and that it had
been repeatedly laid waste by foreign nations, who had eventually
settled in the country. The allusion to the paganism of some refers
probably to the Norwegians and Danes, the former of whom in 870 besieged
their capital Alclyde, now Dumbarton, and destroyed it after a few
months’ siege, and carried a great host of prisoners with them to
Ireland into captivity, and five years afterwards the Britons of
Strathclyde and Picts of Galloway were ravaged by the Danes of
Northumberland. A Welsh chronicle, attributed to Caradoc of Llancarvan,
tells us that in ‘891 the men of Strathclyde, who would not unite with
the Saxons, were obliged to leave their country, and go to Gwynedd or
North Wales.’[15] In 945 it was ravaged by Edmund, king of Wessex, and
ceded to the Scots. In 1000, Ethelred, king of Wessex, entered Cumbria,
ravaged it nearly all, and it was again laid waste; and in 1070,
Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria, having collected a considerable force,
made a furious incursion into the Cumbrian kingdom, then under the
dominion of the Scottish king Malcolm, spreading slaughter and
conflagration on all sides. These notices sufficiently bear out that
feature in the dark picture of the past history of the British kingdom,
and we may well believe that under these repeated devastations, and
under the Scottish dominion, its Welsh population, isolated in the north
between Picts, Scots, and Angles, and harassed by incessant invasions,
would gradually retreat to their mother country of Wales, and that their
neighbours would gradually settle in the partially deserted country.
There are some indications of earlier settlements among them of
Frisians, who left their name in Dunfres, the town of the Frisians, as
Dunbreatan or Dumbarton is the town of the Britons,[16] and the
subjection of the Cumbrian kingdom to the Angles of Northumbria for
thirty years prior to 685 must have had an effect on its population;
but, be this as it may, the neighbouring Anglic population, attracted by
her fertile plains and valleys, appear at a later period to have made
their way into the upper valley of the Tweed and Teviot, and along the
banks of the great watercourse of the Clyde, and to the plains of
Renfrew and Ayr, where they have left evidence of their settlements in
the numerous Saxon place-names ending with the generic terms of _ton_
and _hame_, while the northern district, where the limits of the
Cumbrian kingdom penetrated into the mountains—the district surrounding
the romantic lake of Loch Lomond—seems soon to have acquired a Gaelic
population, and became known as the Levenach or Lennox. The Gaelic
population of Galloway at the same time appear to have encroached upon
the southern limit of Ayrshire and peopled the district of Garrick with
a Gaelic race. Extensive territories too were granted by Earl David to
his Norman followers. The great district of Annandale was given to De
Bruce. The adjacent districts of Eskdale and Ewisdale were filled with
Normans. The De Morevilles obtained Cuninghame or the northern district
of Ayrshire, and the Norman Fitzallan, who became the Steward of
Scotland, acquired Strathgryff, or Renfrew and part of Kyle. These
Norman barons settled their Northumbrian followers on their lands, and
thus almost the whole of the ancient kingdom of the Cumbrian Britons
became soon entirely Saxonised.
A similar process seems to have commenced in the eastern districts north
of the Forth after the union of the Celtic monarch with the Saxon
princess had given the Saxon influence predominance in the country, and
stamped his children with the character and feeling of Saxon monarchs,
which soon produced a similar result. We find Saxon barons, who fled to
Scotland from the power of the Norman Conqueror, acquiring lands in the
province of Fife. The burghs founded by the kings of this race on the
crown lands were filled with Saxon and Flemish traders, and the latter
people obtained grants of land. Thus we find Malcolm the Fourth granting
the lands of Innes ‘Beroaldo Flandrensi,’ and David, Earl of Huntingdon,
grants lands in Garrioch to Malcolm, son of Bertolf, a Flemish name, and
his charter is addressed to ‘all good men of his kingdom, French or
Normans, English or Angles, Flemish and Scotch.’[17] The great religious
houses established by them brought southern ecclesiastics into the
northern parts of the kingdom, who were accompanied by a southern
following; and on the extensive church lands we find the sole remains of
the Celtic population appearing as serfs, under the Celtic appellations
of ‘Cumlawes’ and ‘Cumherbes,’[18] and large territories speedily passed
into the possession of Norman barons, who settled them with their own
followers.
In the scanty records which throw light upon the history of the land in
these districts, we can see the Gaelic name of the land-owners gradually
becoming more and more restricted, and retreating before the Teutonic
settlers. We can see more and more of the land becoming feudalised, and
being held by the followers of the barons in military tenure. The church
lands, forming a large proportion of the whole, became in fact
agricultural colonies of strangers. In the crown lands alone the older
land tenures maintained their position for a time, though there too the
increasing importance of the royal burghs, and the gradual advance of
their Saxon inmates into the surrounding land, soon carried the Saxon
tongue into them; and thus the old Celtic kingdom of Alban or Scotia,
extending from the Firth of Forth to the river Spey, had in the reign of
Alexander the Third assumed an entirely Teutonic aspect, while what
Fordun tells us of Malcolm the Fourth, that ‘having gathered together a
large army, the king removed the rebel nation of the Moravienses from
the land of their birth, as of old Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had
dealt with the Jews, and scattered them throughout the other districts
of Scotland, both beyond the mountains,’ that is, the Mounth,‘and on
this side thereof, so that not even one native of that land abode there,
and installed therein his own peaceful people,’[19] is probably to some
extent true in so far as regards the inhabitants of the plain country
extending from the Spey along the southern shore of the Moray Firth to
the river Nairn, in which the royal castles of Elgin, Forres, and Nairn
were situated, and which formed the three small sheriffdoms of these
names. It is not at all unlikely that that king, or his successor
William the Lion, should have adopted the policy of interposing between
the native population, ‘who,’ Fordun tells us, ‘would, for neither
prayers nor bribes, neither treaties nor oaths, leave off their disloyal
ways, or their ravages among their fellow-countrymen,’ and the frontier
of the province a tract of country, garrisoned, as it were, with the
more settled people of the lowlands.
[Sidenote: Norwegian kingdom of the Isles.]
But if this silent and gradual immigration of the Teutonic people thus
took place into the southern and eastern districts of the country north
of the Forth and Clyde, and either absorbed its Celtic inhabitants or
gradually drove them back into the more mountainous regions, the latter
were exposed to a more direct assault from another people of Teutonic
race on the north and west, which, however, did not produce the same
permanent effect upon the population. This was that strange and sudden
appearance in the northern and western seas of a piratical horde of
sea-robbers, which issued from the Scandinavian countries lying to the
north of Germany. The first to make their appearance were the Danes, and
though they repeatedly ravaged the Western Isles and destroyed the
Christian monasteries, they effected permanent settlements only in
Ireland, and in the northern provinces of England forming the ancient
kingdom of Northumbria. They were followed by the Norwegians, who appear
to have been more attracted by the islands surrounding Scotland, and
thus came more immediately in contact with the Gaelic population of
Scotland. They entirely occupied the islands of Orkney and Shetland,
which they colonised; and took possession of the Western Isles, without,
however, driving out or absorbing the previous inhabitants of Gaelic
race.
By the Gaelic people these northern ravagers were termed either
_Geinnte_ or Gentiles as being pagans, or _Gall_ or Strangers as being
foreigners, and the two races of the Danes and Norwegians were
distinguished by the terms _Dubhgeinnte_ or _Dubhgall_, that is, black
pagans or black strangers, and _Finngeinnte_ or _Finngall_,[20] white
pagans or white strangers, and the Western Islands were termed
_Innsigall_, or the Islands of the Strangers, while the Norwegians
themselves called them the Sudreys or Southern Islands, to distinguish
them from the Nordereys or Northern Islands, that is, the Orkney and
Shetland Islands.[21]
[Sidenote: The Gallgaidheal.]
That the Norwegians did not so thoroughly colonise the Western Isles and
absorb its Gaelic population, as was the case with the Orkney and
Shetland Islands, may have arisen from their finding in the former a
more dense population, and also that they appear to have used the
Sudreys more as a kind of stepping-stone to other settlements, or as
temporary strongholds, rather than as places for lasting settlements,
and thus their Norwegian population was generally of a more transient
and fluctuating character;[22] but this was mainly true of the earlier
period of their occupation only, and a more important ground of
difference arose from the Gaelic population of the Western Isles more
nearly assimilating themselves to the character of the Norwegian
sea-robbers. They seem to have submitted easily to their rule, and to
have adopted their habits, so that when one of the great Norwegian
Vikings, Ketill Flatnose, succeeded in establishing a petty kingdom in
the Isles in opposition to the rapidly increasing power of Harald
Harfager, the first monarch who acquired the dominion of all Norway, we
find the Isles said by the Sagas to be in the possession of Scotch and
Irish Vikings, and Ketill appears in the Irish Annals under the name of
Caittil Finn as the leader of a people called the Gallgaidheal, a name
applied to those Gaidheal who became subject to the Norwegians, and
conformed to their mode of life. Harald, however, eventually conquered
both the Orkney Islands and the Sudreys or Western Isles. The former
came under the rule of a line of Norwegian Jarls, who, by the marriage
of one of them with the daughter of ‘Dungadr, Jarl of Katenes,’ that is,
of Duncan, the Celtic Mormaer of Caithness, added that province to their
dominions; and the Norwegian population seem to have as completely
colonised the eastern and level part of Caithness as they did the Orkney
Islands.
Harald appears to have governed the Western Isles by Norwegian Jarls,
but his hold upon them was slight, and apparently ceased with his death,
and they became merely the haunt of stray Vikings until the middle of
the following century, when their possession was contested between the
Danes of Dublin and Limerick, who had got a firm hold of the Island of
Man, and the Norwegian Jarls of Orkney. One of the principal leaders of
the Danes of Dublin, Anlaf Cuaran, had become connected with the
Scottish King Constantine, and appears to have exercised some authority
over the islands; but at the great battle of Brunanburgh, in which he
and his father-in-law Constantine were engaged, we find the death of
Geleachan, King of the Isles, recorded, as well as that of Cellach, a
prince or Mormaer of Scotland,[23] names which undoubtedly show a Gaelic
form. Soon after we find Maccus or Magnus, son of Aralt, a leader of the
Danes of Limerick, called King of Many Islands, and a struggle took
place between his brother and successor Godfred, son of Aralt, called
King of Innsigall, and Sigurd, Norwegian Jarl of Orkney, for the
possession of the western Isles, when the former was slain by the Gaelic
people of Dalriada or Argyll, and the Isles were acquired by the Orkney
Jarl, who soon after added to his territories the western and northern
districts of Scotland. His territories are said in the Sagas to have
consisted, besides Orkney and the Sudreys, of Katanes, Sudrland,
Myrhaevi or Moray, and Dali or the glens of Argyll, on the west, and we
find a Jarl Gilli apparently ruling the Isles, whose principal seat was
the island of Coll, and whose name has a Gaelic form.[24] He pays scatt
or tribute to Sigurd, and obtained his sister in marriage. Under
Sigurd’s son Thorfinn, the most powerful of the Orkney Jarls, after the
defeat and death of King Duncan in 1040, the whole of the northern
districts of Scotland, as far as the river Tay, fell under the power of
the Norwegians, who likewise possessed the Sudreys or Western Isles and
the Gaelic district of Galloway, while Macbeth, the Mormaer of Moray,
ruled as king over the dominions left to him, and the other districts
south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde adhered to the family of Duncan;
but on the death of Thorfinn, we are told that the additional
territories acquired by him fell back to their native lords. Malcolm,
the son and heir of Duncan, succeeded in defeating and killing the
usurper Macbeth, and his successor Lulach, also of the family of the
Mormaers of Moray, and establishing himself as king over the same
territories which had been possessed by his father. The Western Isles
pass for a time under the power of an Irish king of Leinster, which
shows how powerful the Gaelic element in their populations still was,
and on his death fell under the authority of the Crown. At this time the
Isle of Man was in the possession of the Danish kings of Dublin, but a
powerful Norwegian Viking who had joined the expedition of Harald, king
of Norway, in 1066, with his followers, and fought at the battle of
Stamford Bridge, succeeded after that defeat in driving the Danes out of
Man and extending his power over the Western Isles, where he founded a
new dynasty of Norwegian kings of the Isles. He is termed in the
Chronicle of Man Godred Crovan, and, in the Irish Annals, Goffraig
Meranach, king of the Galls of Dublin and the Isles, where his
death,[25] which, according to the Chronicle of Man, took place in the
island of Isla, is recorded in 1095. The Isles had, however, two years
before been invaded by Magnus, king of Norway, and brought under his
dominion, and were eventually formally ceded to him by King Eadgar in
the beginning of his reign, who thus, for a time, terminated their
nominal connection with the Scottish kingdom. After the death of King
Magnus, we find the leading men of the Isles applying to the king of
Ireland to send them some person of worth of the royal family to act as
their king till Olave, the son of Godred, should grow up, and Donald,
son of Tadg, was sent, who is said in the Annals of Innisfallen to have
acquired the kingdom of Innsigall by force,[26] but was driven out when
the king of Norway sent a Norwegian named Ingemund. But on his
attempting to have himself appointed king, he was attacked and slain by
the chief men of the Isles, and Olave, the son of Godred Crovan, was
established as king over all the Isles, and ruled them for forty years.
The Norwegians at this time still possessed the western seaboard of
Scotland north of the Firth of Clyde, and the district of Galloway.
According to the Red Book of Clanranald, ‘All the islands from Manann,
or the Isle of Man, to Arca, or the Orkneys, and all the bordering
country from Dun Bretan, or Dumbarton, to Cata, or Caithness, in the
north, were in the possession of the Lochlannach or Norwegians, and such
of the Gaedhal of those lands as remained were protecting themselves in
the woods and mountains.’[27]
This is probably a true picture of the relative position of the
Norwegian and the Gaelic population at this time, and is no doubt
equally applicable to the district of Galloway; but, during the rule of
Olave over the Isles, a simultaneous effort seems to have been made by
the Gaelic inhabitants of both districts to free this mainland border
country from the presence of the Norwegians. The leader of the native
Gaelic population of Argyll was Somerled, and of that of Galloway was
Fergus. The former bears certainly a Norwegian name, but the names of
father and grandfather have been preserved. He was son of Gillebride,
son of Gille-adomnan, and these names are of too purely a Gaelic form to
indicate anything but a Gaelic descent, and they are said in the Book of
Clanranald to have taken refuge from the Norwegians in Ireland, and to
have had a hereditary right to the mainland territories possessed by the
latter. The name of the father of Fergus of Galloway has not been
preserved, but his own name is a purely Gaelic form, and his personal
qualities probably raised him to the leadership of the Gaelic
population. Macvurich describes Gillebride, the father of Somerled, as
being present at a conference held by the Macmahons and Maguires in
Fermanagh, and obtaining help from them to regain his inheritance in
Scotland. He went over to Scotland with his son Somerled and a band of
followers, and when in the mountains and woods of Ardgour and Morvern,
they were surprised by a large force of Norwegians, who were, however,
eventually defeated by Somerled and his party; and, adds Macvurich, ‘he
did not halt in the pursuit until he drove them northward across the
river Sheil, and he did not cease from that work until he cleared the
western side of Alban from such of the Norwegians as had acquired the
dominion of the islands, with the exception of the island called
Innsigall, and he gained victory over his enemies in every field of
battle.’[28] We have no record of what took place in Galloway, except
that the result appears to have been the same, for we find the people of
Galloway joining the army of King David at the Battle of the Standard
under their Celtic leaders, and Fergus fully established in his reign as
Lord of Galloway. The Norwegians, however, were not allowed even to
retain quiet possession of the Isles, and Somerled, who now appears as
Regulus of Argyll, succeeded in eventually wresting the Southern Isles
from them. Macvurich tells us that after he had cleared the mainland of
the Norwegians ‘he spent some time in war, and another time in peace,’
and during one of these intervals peace appears to have been concluded
between the leaders of the Gaelic population and the Norwegian king
Olave, for the latter married Afreca, daughter of Fergus, the Celtic
lord of Galloway, by whom he had a son, Godred, and gave one of his own
daughters to Somerled, the Celtic Regulus of Argyll, in marriage, who
had by her four sons, Dubhgal, Reginald, Angus, and Olave.[29] During
the reign of Olave he is said by the Chronicle of Man to have ‘lived
upon such terms of union with all the kings of Ireland and Scotland that
no one dared to disturb the kingdom of the Isles as long as he was
alive;’ but after his death the two populations came again into
conflict, which resulted in the Gaelic population of Galloway
maintaining their independence, and those of Argyll adding a large
portion of the Islands to the dominions of their leader. Olave was slain
in the island of Man by the sons of his brother Harold, who had formed a
conspiracy against him in the year 1152, upon which, we are told in the
Chronicle of Man, the conspirators divided the land among themselves,
and a few days afterwards, having collected a fleet, they sailed over to
Galloway, intending to conquer it for themselves. The Galloway men,
however, formed themselves in a body and assailed them with great
impetuosity; whereupon they speedily fled in great confusion, and either
slew or expelled from it all the men of Galloway who were resident
within the island.’[30] In the following year Godred, the son of Olave,
arrived with some ships from Norway, and was elected by the chiefs of
the Isles as their king; but he was no sooner secure in his kingdom than
he became tyrannical to his chief men, some of whom he dispossessed, and
others he degraded from their dignities. One of the most powerful of
these, Thorfinn, son of Otter, went to Somerled and asked to have his
son Dubhgal, whose mother was King Olave’s daughter, that he might set
him on the throne of the Isles, and taking him through the Isles he
forced the chiefs to acknowledge him for their sovereign, and to give
hostages for their allegiance. Another of these chiefs called Paul fled
privately to Godred, who seems to have been in Man, and told him what
had taken place, when he immediately collected his followers, got his
ships ready, and sailed to meet the enemy. Somerled, too, collected a
fleet of eighty vessels, and a sea-battle was fought between Godred and
Somerled, during the night of the Epiphany, with great slaughter on both
sides, and next morning they came to a compromise, and divided the
sovereignty of the Isles, ‘so that from that period they have formed two
distinct monarchies till the present time.’[31]
Somerled was slain, as we know, at Renfrew in the year 1164, and on his
death his eldest son Dubhgal appears to have succeeded him in his
mainland territories, while his possessions in the Isles fell to his
second son Reginald with the Norwegian title of king. Godred died in the
Isle of Man in the year 1187, and was succeeded by his eldest son
Reginald. There thus came to be two Reginalds reigning over the Isles at
the same time, the Norwegian Reginald the son of Godred, and the Celtic
Reginald the son of Somerled. Both bore the title of King of the Isles,
and thus they are often confounded. There is preserved in the Book of
Fermoy a curious poem which throws some light on the state of the Isles
at this time.[32] It consists mainly of a panegyric on the Norwegian
Reginald, but appears to allude likewise to the other Reginald. When the
Isles were divided, those which lie south of the Point of Ardnamurchan
appear to have fallen to the share of Somerled, and his son Reginald
seems to have had his chief seat in the island of Isla. The Isles
retained by the Norwegians consisted of Skye, the Long Island, and the
islands of Tyree and Coll. The latter island of Coll, which we find was
the chief seat of the Jarls who had ruled the Isles under the king of
Norway prior to the establishment of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles,
appears to have remained as the chief seat of the Norwegian Reginald,
for he is addressed in the poem as king of Coll. The islands of Arran
and Bute in the Firth of Clyde appear to have been shared between the
two Reginalds, the Norwegian retaining Arran, which forms a prominent
feature in the poem under the poetic name of _Eamain Abhlach_ or Eamania
of the apple-trees,[33] and Bute passing over to the Celtic Reginald.
It is unnecessary for our present purpose to follow the history of the
Western Isles further. Suffice it to say that Argyll came under the
power of the Crown in 1222, when Alexander the Second firmly established
his authority over this extensive western region. In 1196 William the
Lion had brought the great northern district of Caithness under
subjection, and severed the southern half of it, which he placed under a
Scotch lord, and in the same reign of Alexander the Second, the
restricted earldom of Caithness passed into the possession of a branch
of the Celtic family of the Earl of Angus, and he died in the island of
Kerreray while endeavouring to wrest the Isles from Norway. In the
following reign the whole kingdom of the Isles passed into the
possession of the Scottish monarch, the last Norwegian king of Man
having died in 1265, and the Isles being formally ceded to Alexander the
Third in 1266; and thus the power of the Norwegians entirely disappeared
from the mainland of Scotland and from the Western Isles, the islands of
Orkney and Shetland alone remaining as a dependency of the kingdom of
Norway.
During the entire duration of this Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, we
see the frequent appearance of a subordinate body termed the Princes or
Chiefs of the Isles,[34] whose recognition of the authority of the king
was necessary to his assumption of that position. We see them electing a
king and occasionally deposing a king; and that this body consisted of
persons partly of Norwegian and partly of Gaelic descent is evident,
from their sometimes deferring to the authority of the king of Norway,
and at other times appealing to Ireland for aid. When the Norwegian
influence was paramount, they would accept the control of the Norwegian
monarch. When the Gaelic influence predominated, they seem invariably to
have fallen back upon the kindred Gael of Ireland, and come under their
influence. The inferior population of the Isles throughout was probably
Gaelic, who formed the actual occupiers of the soil under superior
lords, some of Norwegian and some of native descent.
When the partition of the kingdom of the Isles took place between Olave
and Somerled, the Southern Isles, which thus passed under the rule of a
native lord, would naturally attract to them the Gaelic population, both
chiefs and people, while the chiefs of Norwegian descent would as
naturally withdraw to the Northern Isles, which remained under Norwegian
rule; and thus the Norwegian population would become more restricted to
these islands, while that of the Southern Isles would become more purely
Gaelic; accordingly we find the Norwegian place-names in Skye and the
Long Island are more numerous and more thoroughly spread over the Isles
than in the islands south of the Point of Ardnamurchan, a result we
might also naturally expect from the Norwegian occupation of the former
having lasted a century longer than that of the latter. We should also
expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern
Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the
population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these
islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it
tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the
island which is called _Leodhus_ or Lewis, which though larger than any
of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely
inaccessible. It is of course thinly peopled, and the inhabitants live
mostly by hunting and fishing. To this island Olave retired, and lived
in the way of poverty. Seeing the island could not support him and his
followers, he went confidentially to his brother Reginald, who was at
that time resident in the Islands, and thus accosted him: Brother, my
lord and sovereign, thou art conscious that the kingdom of the Isles is
my birthright, but as the Almighty hath appointed thee to rule over
them, I neither envy nor begrudge thee this royal dignity. Let me now
only entreat thee to appoint me some portion of land in the Islands,
where I may live creditably with my people; for the island of _Leodhus_,
which thou hast given me, is insufficient for my maintenance.’[35]
Apparently Reginald saw no way of satisfying his demand, and found an
easier solution in making him prisoner and sending him to King William
the Lion, who imprisoned him during the rest of his reign.
We likewise see from the Chronicle of Man that there was frequent
intermarriage between the two races who occupied the islands, and this
would not only lead to the introduction of personal names of Norwegian
form into families of pure Gaelic descent in the male line, but must to
a great extent have altered the physical type of the Gaelic race in the
islands; but there is no reason to suppose that, after the entire defeat
of the Norwegians in the reign of Alexander the Third, and the cession
of the kingdom of the Isles to him, there remained in them many families
of pure Norwegian descent, and from the population of Scotland, as we
find it in his reign, the Norwegian element, never probably a very
permanent and essential ingredient, must now have entirely disappeared.
[Sidenote: The Estate of the Realm in 1283.]
When the ‘Communitas’ or Estates of Scotland met at Scone on the 5th of
February 1283, to regulate the succession to the crown, we find that the
great holders of the land in Scotland consisted at this time, first, of
thirteen of the great hereditary earldoms, one of which was held by a
family of Anglic descent, and four by Norman barons who had succeeded by
inheritance in the female line to the ancient Celtic earls; and,
secondly, of twenty-four barons, of whom eighteen at least represented
the Norman baronage of the kingdom, while the Celtic element is
represented only by three families descended from Somerled, the great
Celtic Lord of Argyll;[36] and when Edward the First placed the whole of
Scotland under four justiciaries in 1305, we find the country south of
the Firths of Forth and Clyde still divided into the two great districts
of Lothian and Galloway, but the lands beyond the Scottish Sea, that is,
north of these firths, are now for the first time differently grouped,
one division consisting of the country between the river of Forth and
the mountains, and the other of the lands beyond the mountains, or that
part of the country to which the Gaelic population was now
restricted.[37]
[Sidenote: Distinction of population into Teutonic Lowlanders and Gaelic
Highlanders.]
The account given by Fordun of the distribution of the population in his
day entirely corresponds with this. He says—‘The manners and customs of
the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech, for two languages are
spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the Teutonic, the latter of which
is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the
race of Scottish speech inhabits the highlands and outlying islands. The
people of the coast are of domestic and civilised habits, trusty,
patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful,
devout in divine worship, yet always prone to resist a wrong at the
hands of their enemies. The highlanders and people of the islands, on
the other hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent,
given to rapine, ease-loving, of a docile and warm disposition, comely
in person but unsightly in dress, hostile to the English people and
language, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation,
and exceedingly cruel. They are, however, faithful and obedient to their
king and country, and easily made to submit to law if properly
governed.’[38]
This description is no doubt to some extent coloured by the
predilections of one who himself belonged to the low-country population,
but it is not greatly unlike the prejudiced view taken of the
characteristics of the Celtic population by late historians, and the
struggle between the prejudices of the old historian against the
Highland population and his reluctant admission of their better
qualities is apparent enough.
We thus find a Gaelic-speaking people in the Highlands and a
Teutonic-speaking people in the Lowlands. The language of the former is
at an earlier period termed Albanic, and afterwards Scotch, the language
of the latter is by the native writers prior to the sixteenth century
usually termed Inglis; but in the sixteenth the progress of a literature
in the latter tongue led to those who used it calling it Scotch, while
they applied to the Celtic dialect, formerly called Scotch, the epithet
of Irish corrupted into Erse. The Celtic part of the population has
never given any other name to their language than Gaelic, and term the
language of the Lowlanders _Beurla Sassannach_, or the Saxon tongue.
It is the social history and position of this portion of the population
with which we have now to do.