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CELTIC SCOTLAND
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Printed by Thomas and Archibald Constable_,
FOR
DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH
LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND BOWES.
GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELTIC SCOTLAND:
A HISTORY OF
=Ancient Alban=
BY
WILLIAM F. SKENE, D.C.L., LL.D.
HISTORIOGRAPHER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND.
VOLUME I.
HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY.
_SECOND EDITION._
EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS
1886
_All Rights reserved_
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The first volume of _Celtic Scotland_ being out of print, the Author has
very carefully revised the text, with a view to a new edition; but he
has, after mature consideration, found nothing to alter in the views of
early Scottish history expressed in it. He has therefore confined
himself to correcting obvious mistakes and misprints, and, with these
exceptions, this edition is substantially a reprint.
EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH ROW,
_4th September 1886_.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Each volume of this work may be regarded as complete in itself so far as
the object of the volume is concerned, and will be issued separately.
The principal aim of the Author in this first volume of _Celtic
Scotland_ has been to endeavour to ascertain the true facts of the early
civil history. For this purpose the narratives of her early historians
afford no available basis. The artificially-constructed system of
history first brought into shape by John of Fordun, and elaborated in
the more classical text of Hector Boece, must, for the Celtic period of
our history, be entirely rejected. To attempt to found a consecutive
historical narrative on the scattered notices in the Roman writers and
in the Chronicles, which consist merely of lists of kings with the
length of their respective reigns, and notices of a few isolated
battles, would be merely to produce an unsatisfactory and unreadable
book. On the other hand, a succession of general views of the early
periods of its history, founded upon a superficial and uncritical use of
authorities, or the too readily accepted conclusions of more painstaking
writers, however lively and graphic they may be, might furnish very
pleasant reading, but would be worthless as a work of authority.
The first thing to be done is to lay a sound foundation by ascertaining,
as far as possible, the true facts of the early history, so far as they
can be fairly extracted from the more trustworthy authorities. There is,
unfortunately, no more difficult task than to substitute the correct
‘sumpsimus’ for the long-cherished and accepted ‘mumpsimus’ of popular
historians. All that the Author has attempted in this volume is to show
what the most reliable authorities do really tell us of the early annals
of the country, divested of the spurious matter of supposititious
authors, the fictitious narratives of our early historians, and the rash
assumptions of later writers which have been imported into it.
The Author is glad to take this opportunity of acknowledging the
valuable assistance which his excellent publisher, Mr. David Douglas,
has freely and ungrudgingly given him in carefully revising the
proof-sheets. They could have been submitted to no more intelligent
supervision.
EDINBURGH, 20 INVERLEITH ROW,
_1st May 1876_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-------
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
Name of Scotia, or Scotland 1
Ancient extent of the kingdom 2
Physical features of the country 7
Mountain chains 9
The Cheviots 9
The Mounth 10
Drumalban 10
The Grampians 11
The Debateable lands 14
Periods of its history 16
Celtic Scotland 17
Critical examination of authorities necessary 17
Spurious authorities 21
Plan of the work 26
BOOK I.
_HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY._
CHAPTER I.
ADVANCE OF THE ROMANS TO THE FIRTHS OF
FORTH AND CLYDE.
Early notices of the British Isles 29
B.C. 55. Invasion of Julius Cæsar 31
A.D. 43. Formation of province in reign of Claudius 33
A.D. 50. War with the Brigantes 36
A.D. 69. War with the Brigantes renewed 39
A.D. 78. Arrival of Julius Agricola as governor 41
A.D. 79. Second Campaign of Agricola; overruns districts on 43
the Solway
A.D. 80. Third summer; ravages to the Tay 45
A.D. 81. Fourth summer; fortifies the isthmus between Forth 46
and Clyde
A.D. 82. Fifth summer; visits Argyll and Kintyre 47
A.D. 83-86. Three years’ war north of the Forth 48
A.D. 86. Battle of ‘Mons Granpius’ 52
A.D. 120. Arrival of the Emperor Hadrian, and first Roman 60
wall between the Tyne and the Solway
CHAPTER II.
THE ROMAN PROVINCE IN SCOTLAND.
Ptolemy’s description of North Britain 62
The coast 65
The Ebudæ 68
The tribes and their towns 70
A.D. 139. First Roman wall between the Forth and Clyde. 76
Establishment of the Roman province in Scotland
A.D. 162. Attempt on the province by the natives 79
A.D. 182. Formidable irruption of tribes north of wall 79
repelled by Marcellus Ulpius
A.D. 201. Revolt of Caledonii and Mæatæ 80
A.D. 204. Division of Roman Britain into two Provinces 81
A.D. 208. Campaign of the Emperor Severus in Britain. 82
Situation of the hostile tribes
Roman roads in Scotland 86
Severus’s wall 89
A.D. 287. Revolt of Carausius; Britain for ten years 91
independent
A.D. 289. Carausius admitted Emperor 92
A.D. 294. Carausius slain by Allectus 93
A.D. 296. Constantius Chlorus recovers Britain 93
A.D. 306. War of Constantius Chlorus against Caledonians and 94
other Picts
Division of Roman Britain into four provinces 96
A.D. 360. Province invaded by Picts and Scots 97
A.D. 364. Ravaged by Picts, Scots, Saxons, and Attacotts 98
A.D. 369. Province restored by Theodosius 100
A.D. 383. Revolt by Maximus 104
A.D. 387. Withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain; first 105
devastation of province by Picts and Scots
A.D. 396. Repelled by Stilicho, who sends a legion to guard 105
the northern wall
A.D. 402. Roman legion withdrawn; second devastation of 106
province
A.D. 406. Again repelled by Stilicho, and army restored 107
A.D. 407. Constantine proclaimed Emperor. Withdraws the army 108
from Britain; third devastation by Picts and Scots
A.D. 409. Gerontius invites Barbarians to invade empire. 111
Termination of Roman Empire in Britain
CHAPTER III.
BRITAIN AFTER THE ROMANS.
Obscurity of history of Britain after the departure of the 114
Romans
Settlement of barbaric tribes in Britain 114
Ignorance of Britain by writers of the sixth century 115
Position of Britain at this time as viewed from Rome 117
The four races in Britain 119
The Britons 120
The Picts 123
The Scots 137
The Saxons 144
War with Octa and Ebissa’s colony 152
Kingdom of Bernicia 155
A.D. 573. Battle of Ardderyd 157
A.D. 603. Battle of Degsastane or Dawstane 162
CHAPTER IV.
ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN
Inquiry into Ethnology of Britain proper at this stage 164
An Iberian or Basque people preceded the Celtic race in 164
Britain and Ireland
Ethnologic traditions 170
British traditions 171
Irish traditions 172
Dalriadic legend 184
Pictish legends 185
Saxon legends 189
Languages of Britain 192
Anglic language 193
British language 193
Language of the Scots 193
The Pictish language 194
Evidence derived from topography 212
CHAPTER V.
THE FOUR KINGDOMS.
Result of ethnological inquiry 226
The four kingdoms 227
Scottish kingdom of Dalriada 229
Kingdom of the Picts 230
Kingdom of the Britons of Alclyde 235
Kingdom of Bernicia 236
The Debateable lands 237
Galloway 238
A.D. 606. Death of Aidan, king of Dalriada; Aedilfrid 239
conquers Deira, and expels Aeduin
A.D. 617. Battle between Aeduin and Aedilfrid 239
A.D. 627. Battle of Ardcorann between Dalriads and Cruithnigh 241
A.D. 629. Domnall Breac becomes king of Dalriada 242
A.D. 631. Garnaid, son of Wid, succeeds Cinaeth mac Luchtren 242
as king of the Picts
A.D. 633. Battle of Haethfeld. Aeduin slain by Caedwalla and 243
Penda
A.D. 634. Battle of Hefenfeld. Osuald becomes king of 244
Northumbria
A.D. 635. Battle of Seguise, between Garnait, son of Foith, 246
and the family of Nectan
A.D. 634. Battle of Calathros, in which Domnall Breac was 247
defeated
A.D. 638. Battle of Glenmairison, and siege of Edinburgh 249
A.D. 642. Domnall Breac slain in Strathcarron 250
A.D. 642. Osuald slain in battle by Penda 252
A.D. 642-670. Osuiu, his brother, reigns twenty-eight years 253
Dominion of Angles over Britons, Scots, and Picts 256
A.D. 670. Death of Osuiu, and accession of Ecgfrid his son 260
A.D. 672. Revolt of the Picts 260
A.D. 678. Wilfrid expelled from his diocese 262
Expulsion of Drost, king of the Picts, and accession of 262
Brude, son of Bile
A.D. 684. Ireland ravaged by Ecgfrid 264
A.D. 685. Invasion of kingdom of Picts by Ecgfrid; defeat and 265
death at Dunnichen
Effect of defeat and death of Ecgfrid 267
Position of Angles and Picts 267
Position of Scots and Britons 271
Contest between Cinel Loarn and Cinel Gabhran 271
Conflict between Dalriads and Britons 273
CHAPTER VI.
THE KINGDOM OF SCONE.
State of the four kingdoms in 731 275
Alteration in their relative position 276
Legend of St. Bonifacius 277
A.D. 710. Nectan, son of Derili, conforms to Rome 278
Establishment of Scone as capital 280
The Seven provinces 280
The Coronation Stone 281
A.D. 717. Expulsion of Columban clergy 283
Simultaneous revolution in Dalriada and kingdom of the Picts 286
A.D. 731-761. Aengus mac Fergus, king of the Picts 289
Suppressed century of Dalriadic history 292
Foundation of St. Andrews 296
A.D. 761-763. Bruide mac Fergusa, king of the Picts 299
A.D. 763-775. Ciniod, son of Wredech, king of the Picts 300
A.D. 775-780. Alpin, son of Wroid, king of the Picts 301
A.D. 789-820. Constantin, son of Fergus, king of the Picts 302
Norwegian and Danish pirates 302
A.D. 820-832. Aengus, son of Fergus, king of Fortrenn 305
A.D. 832. Alpin the Scot attacks the Picts, and is slain 306
A.D. 836-839. Eoganan, son of Aengus 307
A.D. 839. Kenneth mac Alpin invades Pictavia 308
A.D. 844. Kenneth mac Alpin becomes king of the Picts 309
The Gallgaidhel 311
Obscurity of this period of the history 314
Causes and nature of revolution which placed Kenneth on the 314
throne of the Picts
Where did the Scots come from? 316
What was Kenneth mac Alpin’s paternal descent? 321
A.D. 860-864. Donald, son of Alpin, king of the Picts 322
A.D. 863. Constantin, son of Kenneth, king of the Picts 323
A.D. 877-878. Aedh, son of Kenneth, king of the Picts 328
A.D. 878-889. Girig mac Dungaile and Eochodius, son of Run 329
CHAPTER VII.
THE KINGDOM OF ALBAN.
A.D. 889-900. Donald, son of Constantin, king of Alban 335
A.D. 900-942. Constantin, son of Aedh, king of Alban 339
A.D. 937. Battle of Brunanburg 352
A.D. 942-954. Malcolm, son of Donald, king of Alban 360
A.D. 945. Cumbria ceded to the Scots 362
A.D. 954-962. Indulph, son of Constantin, king of Alban 365
A.D. 962-967. Dubh, son of Malcolm, king of Alban 366
A.D. 967-971. Cuilean, son of Indulph, king of Alban 367
A.D. 971-995. Kenneth, son of Malcolm, king of Alban 368
A.D. 995-997. Constantin, son of Cuilean, king of Alban 381
A.D. 997-1004. Kenneth, son of Dubh, king of Alban 382
CHAPTER VIII.
THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA.
A.D. 1005-1034. Malcolm, son of Kenneth, king of Scotia 384
A.D. 1018. Battle of Carham, and cession of Lothian to the 393
Scots
A.D. 1034-1040. Duncan, son of Crinan, and grandson of 399
Malcolm, king of Scotia
A.D. 1040-1057. Macbeth, son of Finnlaec, king of Scotia 405
A.D. 1054. Siward, Earl of Northumbria, invades Scotland, 408
and puts Malcolm, son of King Duncan, in possession of
Cumbria
A.D. 1057-8. Lulach, son of Gilcomgan, king of Scotia 411
A.D. 1057-8-1093. Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan, king 411
of Scotia
Malcolm invades Northumbria five times 417
A.D. 1092. Cumbria south of the Solway Firth wrested from 429
the Scots
State of Scotland at King Malcolm’s death 432
CHAPTER IX.
THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA PASSES INTO FEUDAL SCOTLAND.
Effects of King Malcolm’s death 433
A.D. 1093. Donald Ban, Malcolm’s brother, reigns six months 436
A.D. 1093-1094. Duncan, son of Malcolm, by his first wife 437
Ingibiorg, reigns six months
A.D. 1094-1097. Donald Ban again, with Eadmund, son of 439
Malcolm, reigned three years
A.D. 1097-1107. Eadgar, son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen 440
Margaret, reigns nine years
A.D. 1107-1124. Alexander, son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen 447
Margaret, reigns over Scotland north of the Firths of
Forth and Clyde as king for seventeen years
A.D. 1107-1124. David, youngest son of Malcolm Ceannmor by 454
Queen Margaret, rules over Scotland south of the Forth and
Clyde as earl
A.D. 1124-1153. David reigns over all Scotland as first 457
feudal monarch
A.D. 1130. Insurrection of Angus, Earl of Moray, and 460
Malcolm, bastard son of Alexander I.
A.D. 1134. Insurrection by Malcolm mac Eth 462
A.D. 1138. David invades England; position of Norman barons 465
Composition of King David’s army 466
A.D. 1153-1165. Malcolm, grandson of David, reigns twelve 469
years
A.D. 1154. Somerled invades the kingdom with the sons of 469
Malcolm mac Eth
A.D. 1160. Revolt of six earls 471
A.D. 1160. Subjection of Galloway 472
A.D. 1160. Plantation of Moray 472
A.D. 1164. Invasion by Somerled. His defeat and death at 473
Renfrew
A.D. 1166-1214. William the Lyon, brother of Malcolm, reigns 474
forty-eight years
A.D. 1174. Revolt in Galloway 475
A.D. 1179. King William subdues the district of Ross 475
A.D. 1181. Insurrection in favour of Donald Ban Macwilliam 476
A.D. 1196. Subjection of Caithness 479
A.D. 1211. Insurrection in favour of Guthred Macwilliam 482
A.D. 1214-1249. Alexander the Second, son of King William 483
the Lyon, reigned thirty-five years. Crowned by the seven
earls
A.D. 1215. Insurrection in favour of Donald Macwilliam and 483
Kenneth Maceth
A.D. 1222. Subjection of Arregaithel or Argyll 484
A.D. 1235. Revolt in Galloway 487
A.D. 1249. Attempt to reduce the Sudreys, and death of the 488
king at Kerrera
A.D. 1249-1285. Alexander the Third, his son, reigned 490
thirty-six years. Ceremony at his coronation
A.D. 1250. Relics of Queen Margaret enshrined before the 491
seven earls and the seven bishops
A.D. 1263. War between the kings of Norway and Scotland for 492
the possession of the Sudreys
A.D. 1266. Annexation of the Western Isles to the Crown of 495
Scotland
A.D. 1283. Assembly of the baronage of the whole kingdom at 496
Scone, on 5th February, to regulate the succession
A.D. 1285-6. Death of Alexander the Third 496
Conclusion 497
APPENDIX.
Remains of the Pictish Language 501
ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS.
Map showing mountain chains _to face page_ 8
The five Ebudæ of Ptolemy compared with the ” 68
islands south of Ardnamurchan Point
The four Kingdoms ” 228
The Kingdom of Alban ” 340
The Kingdom of Scotia ” 396
Feudal Scotland ” 496
INTRODUCTION.
[Sidenote: Name of Scotia, or Scotland.]
The name of Scotia, or Scotland, whether in its Latin or its Saxon form,
was not applied to any part of the territory forming the modern kingdom
of Scotland till towards the end of the tenth century.
Prior to that period it was comprised in the general appellation of
Britannia, or Britain, by which the whole island was designated in
contradistinction to that of Hibernia, or Ireland. That part of the
island of Britain which is situated to the north of the Firths of Forth
and Clyde seems indeed to have been known to the Romans as early as the
first century by the distinctive name of Caledonia,[1] and it also
appears to have borne from an early period another appellation, the
Celtic form of which was Albu, Alba, or Alban,[2] and its Latin form
Albania.
The name of Scotia, however, was exclusively appropriated to the island
of Ireland, which was emphatically Scotia, the ‘patria,’ or mother
country, of the Scots;[3] and although a colony of that people had
established themselves as early as the beginning of the sixth century in
the western districts of Scotland, it was not till the tenth century
that any part of the present country of Scotland came to be known under
that name, nor did it extend over the whole of those districts which
formed the later kingdom of the Scots till after the twelfth century.
[Sidenote: Ancient extent of the kingdom.]
From the tenth to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries the name of
Scotia, gradually superseding the older name of Alban, or Albania, was
confined to a district nearly corresponding with that part of the
Lowlands of Scotland which is situated on the north of the Firth of
Forth. The Scotia of these centuries was bounded on the south by the
Firth of Forth; on the north by the Moray Firth and river Spey; on the
east by the German Ocean; and on the west by the range of mountains
which divides the modern county of Perth from that of Argyll. It
excluded Lothian, Strathclyde, and Galloway, on the south; the great
province of Moravia, or Moray, and that of Cathanesia, or Caithness, on
the north; and the region of Argathelia, or Argyll, on the west.
Subsequently the name of Scotia extended over these districts also, and
the kingdom by degrees assumed that compact and united form which it
ever afterwards exhibited.
The three propositions—1st, That Scotia, prior to the tenth century, was
Ireland, and Ireland alone; 2d, That when applied to Scotland it was
considered a new name superinduced upon the older designation of Alban
or Albania; and 3d, That the Scotia of the three succeeding centuries
was limited to the districts between the Forth, the Spey, and
Drumalban,—lie at the very threshold of Scottish history.[4]
The history of the name of a country is generally found to afford a very
important clue to the leading features in the history of its population.
This is remarkably the case with regard to the history of Scotland, and
the facts just indicated in connection with the application of its name
at different periods throw light upon the corresponding changes in the
race and position of its inhabitants. They point to the fact that, prior
to the tenth century, none of the small and independent tribes which
originally occupied the country, and are ever the characteristic of an
early period in their social history, or of the petty kingdoms which
succeeded them, were sufficiently powerful and extended, or predominated
sufficiently over the others, to give a general name to the country; and
they point to a great change in the population of the country and the
relative position of these kingdoms to each other in the tenth century,
and to the elevation, by some important revolution, of the race of the
Scots over the others, whose territory formed a centre round which the
formerly independent petty kingdoms now assumed the form of dependent
provinces, and from which an influence and authority proceeded that
gradually extended the name of Scotia over the whole of the country, and
incorporated its provinces into one compact and co-extensive monarchy.
[Sidenote: Physical features of the country.]
The great natural features of a country so mountainous and intersected
by so many arms of the sea as that of Scotland, seem at all times to
have influenced its political divisions and the distribution of the
various races in its occupation. The original territories of the savage
tribes of Caledonia appear to have differed little from those of the
petty kingdoms which succeeded them, and the latter as little from the
subsequent provinces of the monarchy. The same great leading boundaries,
the same natural defences, are throughout found occupying a similar
position and exercising a similar influence upon the internal history of
the country, while, amidst the numerous fluctuations and changes which
affected the position of the northern tribes towards the southern and
more civilised kingdoms of Britain, the two ever showed a tendency to
settle down upon the great natural bulwarks of the south of Scotland as
their mutual boundary, to which, indeed, the independent position of the
northern monarchy in no slight degree owed its existence.
Where the great arm of the western sea forming the Solway Firth
contracts the island to a comparatively narrow breadth, not exceeding
seventy miles, a natural boundary was thus partially formed, which had
its influence at the very dawn of Scottish history; but, if during the
occupation of the island by the Romans, who placed their trust more in
the artificial protection of a rampart guarded by troops, the
comparatively level ground in this contracted part of the country
presented facilities for such a construction, the great physical bulwark
of the Cheviot Hills had an irresistible attraction to fix the boundary
eventually between the Solway and the Tweed, where that chain of hills
extending between them proved so effectual a defence to the country
along the whole of its range, that every hostile entrance into it was
made either at the eastern or the western termination of that mountain
chain.
Farther north is the still more remarkable natural boundary where the
Eastern and the Western Seas penetrate into the country in the Firths of
Forth and Clyde, and approach within a comparatively short distance of
each other, separating the northern from the southern regions of
Scotland by an isthmus not exceeding thirty-five miles in breadth. This
was remarked as early as the first Roman invasion of Scotland, when the
historian Tacitus observes that these estuaries almost intersect the
country, leaving only a narrow neck of land, and that the northern part
formed, as it were, another island.[5]
Proceeding farther north, the great series of the mountain ranges,
stretching from the south-west to the north-east, present one continuous
barrier, intersected indeed by rivers forming narrow and easily defended
passes, but exhibiting the appearance of a mighty wall, which separates
a wild and mountainous region from the well-watered and fertile plains
and straths on the south and east; and, while the latter have been at
all times exposed to the vicissitudes of external revolution, and the
greatly more important and radical change from the silent progress of
natural colonisation, the recesses of the Highlands have ever proved the
shelter and protection of the descendants of the older tribes of the
country, and the limit to the advance of a stranger population.
[Illustration:
MAP
SHEWING
MOUNTAIN CHAINS
_W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh & London._
]
The territory which forms the modern kingdom of Scotland is thus thrown
by its leading physical features into three great compartments. First,
the districts extending from the Solway, the Cheviots, and the Tweed, on
the south, to the Firths of Forth and Clyde on the north; secondly, the
low country extending along the east coast from the Forth as far as the
Moray Firth, and lying between the sea and the great barrier of the
Grampians; and thirdly, the Highland or mountainous region on the
north-west.
[Sidenote: Mountain chains.]
In each of these great districts natural boundaries are again found
exercising their influence on the subordinate political divisions.
[Sidenote: The Cheviots.] In the first of these great compartments, the
lofty range of the Cheviots, which forms the southern boundary and
presents a steep face to the north, extends from the Cheviot Hill on the
north-east by Carter Fell to Peel Fell on the south-west; and from
thence a range of hills, sometimes included in the general name of the
Cheviots, separates the district of Liddesdale from that of Teviotdale,
and has its highest point in the centre of this part of the island, in a
group of hills termed the Lowthers, where the four great rivers of the
Tweed, the Clyde, the Annan, and the Nith, take their rise. From thence
it extends westward to Loch Ryan, separating the waters which pour their
streams into the Solway Firth from those which flow to the north. From
the centre of this range a smaller and less remarkable chain of hills
branches off, which, running eastward by Soutra and Lammermoor, end at
St. Abb’s Head, at the entrance to the Firth of Forth, separating the
tributaries of the Tweed from the streams which flow into the Firth of
Forth. In the centre of the island, a barren and hilly region divides
the districts watered by the rivers flowing into the east sea from those
on the west coast.
The same natural boundary which separated the eastern from the western
tribes afterwards divided the kingdom of the Strathclyde Britons from
that of the Angles; at a subsequent period, the province of Galweia from
that of Lodoneia in their most extended sense; and now separates the
counties of Lanark, Ayr, and Dumfries from the Lothians and the Merse.
Galloway in its limited sense was not more clearly separated by its
mountain barrier on the north from Strathclyde, than were the Pictish
from the British races by the same chain, and the earlier tribes of the
Selgovæ and Novantæ from the Damnii.
In the other two great compartments situated on the north of the Firths
of Forth and Clyde, two great mountain chains and two large rivers
formed the principal landmarks in the early history of the social
occupation of these districts. These two principal mountain chains were
in fact the great central ridges from which the numerous minor chains
proceed, and the rivers flow in opposite directions, forming that
aggregate of well-watered glens and rocky defiles which characterise the
mountain region of Scotland, till its streams, uniting their waters into
larger channels, burst forth through the mountain passes, and flow
through the more fertile plains of the Lowlands into the German Ocean.
[Sidenote: The Mounth.]
The first of these two great mountain chains was known by the name of
the Mounth, and extends in nearly a straight line across the island from
the Eastern Sea near Aberdeen to the Western Sea at Fort-William, having
in its centre and at its western termination the two highest mountains
in Great Britain—Ben-na-muich-dubh and Ben Nevis.
[Sidenote: Drumalban.]
The second great chain, less elevated and massive in its character, but
presenting the more picturesque feature of sharp conical summits,
crosses the other at right angles, running north and south, and forming
the backbone of Scotland—the great wind and water shear, which separates
the eastern from the western districts, and the rivers flowing into the
German Ocean from those which pour their waters into the Western Sea. It
is termed in the early records of Scottish history Dorsum Britanniæ, or
Drumalban—the dorsal ridge or backbone of Scotland. It commences in
Dumbartonshire, and forms the great separating ridge between the eastern
and western waters from south to north, till it terminates in the Ord of
Caithness.
These two mountain chains—the Mounth and Drumalban, the one running east
and west, the other south and north, and intersecting each other—thus
divided the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde into four
great districts, two extending along the east coast, and two along the
west, while each of the two eastern and western divisions were separated
from each other by the Mounth. The two eastern divisions are watered by
the two great rivers of the Tay and the Spey and their tributaries, the
one flowing south and the other north from these mountain chains. The
two western divisions are intersected by those arms of the sea or lochs,
which form so peculiar a feature in the West Highlands.
[Sidenote: The Grampians.]
The lesser mountain ridges which proceed on either side of the Mounth,
and separate the various streams which flow into the two great rivers
from each other, terminate as the waters enter the plains of the
Lowlands, and present the appearance of a great barrier stretching
obliquely across each of the two eastern districts and separating the
mountain region from the plain; but, although this great barrier has an
appearance as if it were a continuous mountain range, and is usually so
considered, it is not so in reality, but is formed by the termination of
these numerous lesser ridges, and is intersected by the great rivers and
their tributaries. This great barrier forms what was subsequently termed
the Highland line, and that part of it which extends across the
south-eastern district from Loch Lomond to the eastern termination of
the Mounth was known under the general but loosely applied name of the
Grampians.[6]
Within is a wild and mountainous region full of the most picturesque
beauty which the ever-varied combination of mountain, rock, and stream
can afford, but adapted only for pasture and hunting, and for the
occupation of a people still in the early stage of pastoral and warlike
life; while every stream which forces its way from its recesses through
this terminating range forms a pass into the interior capable of being
easily defended.
Throughout the early history of Scotland these great mountain chains and
rivers have always formed important landmarks of the country. If the
Mounth is now known as the range of hills which separate the more
southern counties of Kincardine, Forfar, and Perth from those of
Aberdeen and Inverness on the north, it was not less known to the
Venerable Bede, in the eighth century, as the steep and rugged mountains
which separate the provinces of the southern from those of the northern
Picts.[7] If Drumalban now separates the county of Argyll from that of
Perth, it formed equally in the eleventh century the mountain range
which separated Arregaithel from Scotia,[8] and at an earlier period the
boundary between the Picts and the Scots of Dalriada.[9]
The river Spey, which now separates the counties of Aberdeen and Banff
from those of Moray and Nairn, was for three centuries the boundary
between Scotia, or Scotland proper, and Moravia, or the great province
of Moray. The Tay, which separates the districts of Stratherne and
Gowry, formed for half a century the limit of the Anglic conquests in
the territory of the Picts, and at the very dawn of our history
interposed as formidable a barrier to the progress of the Roman arms.
The Forth, which for three centuries was the southern boundary of
Scotia, or Scotland proper, during the previous centuries separated the
Pictish from the British population.
[Sidenote: The debateable lands.]
The tract of country in which the frontiers of several independent
kingdoms, or the territories in the occupation of tribes of different
race, meet, usually forms a species of debateable land, and the
transactions which take place within its limits afford in general a key
to much of their relative history. Such were the districts extending
from the river Tay to the minor range of the Pentland hills and the
river Esk, which flows into the Firth of Forth on the south. These
districts fall naturally into three divisions. The region extending from
the Tay to the river Forth, and containing part of Perthshire, was
included in that part of the country to which the name of Alban, and
afterwards that of Scotia, was given. The central district between the
rivers Forth and Carron consisted of the whole of Stirlingshire and part
of Dumbartonshire, and belonged more properly to Strathclyde. The region
extending from the Carron to the Pentlands and the river Esk on the
south comprised the counties of West and Mid Lothian, and was attached
to Northumbria; but all three may be viewed as outlying districts,
having a mixed population contributed by the neighbouring races.
Situated in the heart of Scotland, and having around it tribes of
different races, and subsequently the four kingdoms of the Picts, the
Scots, the Angles, and the Britons, surpassing the other districts in
fertility, and possessing those rich carses which are still
distinguished as the finest agricultural districts of Scotland, this
region was coveted as the chief prize alike by the invaders and the
native tribes. The scene of the principal Roman campaigns, it appears
throughout the entire course of Scottish history as the main battlefield
of contending races and struggling influences. Roman and Barbarian, Gael
and Cymry, Scot and Angle, contended for its occupation, and within its
limits is formed the ever-shifting boundary between the petty northern
kingdoms, till in the memorable ninth century a monarchy was
established, of which the founder was a Scot, the chief seat Scone, and
that revolution was accomplished, which it is difficult to say whether
it was more civil or ecclesiastical in its character, but which finally
established the supremacy of the Scottish people over the different
races in the country, and led to their gradual combination and more
intimate union in the subsequent kingdom of Scotland. The kingdom of the
Scots soon extended itself over these central plains. Its monarchs
usually had their residence within its limits, and the capital, which
had at first been Scone, on the left bank of the Tay, eventually became
established at Edinburgh, within a few miles of its southern boundary.
During the few succeeding centuries of Scottish rule, after the
establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century, it remained
limited to the districts bounded by the Forth on the south, the mountain
chain called Drumalban on the west, and the Spey on the north. The Scots
had rapidly extended their power and influence over the native tribes
within these limits; but beyond them (on the north and west) they held
an uncertain authority over wild and semi-independent nations, nominally
dependencies of the kingdom, but in reality neither owning its authority
nor adopting its name.
It was by slow degrees that the peoples beyond these limits were first
subjugated and then amalgamated with the original Scottish kingdom; and
it was not till the middle of the thirteenth century, when the
annexation of the Western Isles by Alexander the Third finally completed
the territorial acquisitions of the monarchy, that its name and
authority became co-extensive with the utmost limits of the country, and
Scotland was consolidated in its utmost extent of territory into one
kingdom.
[Sidenote: Periods of its history.]
The early history of Scotland thus presents itself to the historian in
five distinct periods, each possessing a character peculiar to itself.
During the first period of three centuries and a half the native tribes
of Scotland were under the influence of the Roman power, at one time
struggling for independent existence, at another subject to their
authority, and awaking to those impressions of civilisation and of
social organisation, the fruits of which they subsequently displayed.
A period of rather longer duration succeeded to the Roman rule, in which
the native and foreign races in the country first struggled for the
succession to their dominant authority in the island, and then contended
among themselves for the possession of its fairest portions.
The third period commences with the establishment of the Scottish
monarchy in the ninth century, and lasted for two centuries and a half,
till the Scottish dynasty became extinct in the person of Malcolm the
Second.
There then succeeded, during the fourth period, which lasted for a
century, a renewed struggle between the different races in the country,
which, although the Scoto-Saxon dynasty, uniting through the female line
the blood of the Scots and the Saxons, succeeded in seating themselves
firmly on the throne, cannot be said to have terminated in the general
recognition of their royal authority till the reign of David the First.
The fifth period, consisting of the reigns of David I., Malcolm IV.,
William the Lion, and Alexander the Second and Third, was characterised
by the rapid amalgamation of the different provinces, and the spread of
the Saxon race and of the feudal institutions over the whole country,
with the exception of the Highlands and Islands, and left the kingdom of
Scotland in the position in which we find it when the death of Alexander
the Third, in 1286, terminated the last of the native dynasties of her
monarchs.
[Sidenote: Celtic Scotland.]
During the first three periods of her early history, Scotland may be
viewed as a purely Celtic kingdom, with a population composed of
different branches of the race popularly called Celtic. But during the
subsequent periods, though the connection between Scotland with her
Celtic population and Lothian with her Anglic inhabitants was at first
but slender, her monarchs identified themselves more and more with their
Teutonic subjects, with whom the Celtic tribes maintained an ineffectual
struggle, and gradually retreated before their increasing power and
colonisation, till they became confined to the mountains and western
islands. The name of Scot passed over to the English-speaking people,
and their language became known as the Scotch; while the Celtic
language, formerly known as Scotch, became stamped with the title of
Irish.
What may be called the Celtic period of Scottish history has been
peculiarly the field of a fabulous narrative of no ordinary perplexity;
but while the origin of these fables can be very distinctly traced to
the rivalry and ambition of ecclesiastical establishments and church
parties, and to the great national controversy excited by the claim of
England to a feudal supremacy over Scotland, still each period of its
early history will be found not to be without sources of information,
slender and meagre as no doubt they are, but possessing indications of
substantial truth, from which some perception of its real character can
be obtained.
[Sidenote: Critical examination of authorities necessary.]
Before the early history of any country can be correctly ascertained,
there is a preliminary process which must be gone through, and which is
quite essential to a sound treatment of the subject; and that is a
critical examination of the authorities upon which that history is
based. This is especially necessary with regard to the early history of
Scotland. The whole of the existing materials for her early history must
be collected together and subjected to a critical examination. Those
which seem to contain fragments of genuine history must be disentangled
from the less trustworthy chronicles which have been tampered with for
ecclesiastical or national purposes, and great discrimination exercised
in the use of the latter. The purely spurious matter must be entirely
rejected. It is by such a process only that we can hope to dispel the
fabulous atmosphere which surrounds this period of Scottish history, and
attempt to base it upon anything like a genuine foundation.
The first to attempt this task was Thomas Innes, a priest of the Scots
College in Paris, who published in 1729 his admirable Essay on the
ancient inhabitants of Scotland. In this essay he assailed the fabulous
history first put into shape by John of Fordun and elaborated by Hector
Boece, and effectually demolished its authority; but he attempted little
in the way of reconstruction, and merely printed a few of the short
chronicles, upon which he founded, in an appendix.
Lord Hailes, who in 1776 published his _Annals of Scotland, from the
Accession of Malcolm_ III., _surnamed Canmore, to the Accession of
Robert_ I., abandons this period of Scottish history altogether, with
the remark that his Annals ‘commence with the accession of Malcolm
Canmore, because the history of Scotland previous to that period is
involved in obscurity and fable.’
The first to attempt a reconstruction of this early history was John
Pinkerton, who published in 1789 _An Enquiry into the History of
Scotland preceding the reign of Malcolm_ III., or the year 1056,
_including the authentic history of that period_. It is unquestionably
an essay of much originality and acuteness; and Pinkerton saw the
necessity of founding the history of that period upon more trustworthy
documents, but they were to a very limited extent accessible to him. The
value of the work is greatly impaired by the adoption, to an excessive
extent, of a theory of early Teutonic settlements in the country and of
the Teutonic origin of the early population, and by an unreasoning
prejudice against everything Celtic, which colours and biasses his
argument throughout.
Pinkerton was followed in 1807 by George Chalmers, with his more
elaborate and systematic work, the _Caledonia_, based, however, to a
great extent upon the less trustworthy class of the early historical
documents, which had been tampered with and manipulated for a purpose.
He, too, was possessed by a theory which influences his views of the
earlier portion of the history throughout; and where John Pinkerton
could find nothing but Gothic and the Goths, George Chalmers was equally
unable to see anything but Welsh and the Cymry.
In 1828 the first volume of a History of Scotland by Patrick Fraser
Tytler appeared, which he continued to the accession of James VI. to the
throne of England; but Tytler not only abandons this early part of the
history as hopelessly obscure, but also a great part of the field
occupied by Hailes in his _Annals_, and commences his history with the
accession of Alexander the Third in 1249.
In 1862 a very valuable contribution to the early history of Scotland
was made by the late lamented Mr. E. William Robertson in his _Scotland
under her Early Kings_, in which the attempt is once more made to fill
up the early period left untouched by Hailes and Tytler. It is a work of
great merit, and exhibits much accurate research and sound judgment.[10]
Such is a short sketch of the attempts which have been made to place the
early history of Scotland upon a sound basis, and to substitute a more
trustworthy statement of it for the carefully manipulated fictions of
Fordun, and the still more fabulous narrative of Hector Boece and his
followers, prior to the appearance of Mr. Burton’s elaborate _History of
Scotland, from Agricola’s Invasion to the Extinction of the last
Jacobite Insurrection_, the first edition of which appeared in 1867, and
the second, in which the early part is revised and much altered, in
1873.
These works, however, are all more or less tainted by the same defect,
that they have not been founded upon that complete and comprehensive
examination of all the existing materials for the history of this early
period, and that critical discrimination of their relative value and
analysis of their contents, without which any view of this period of the
annals of the country must be partial and inexact. They labour, in
short, under the twofold defect, first, of an uncritical use of the
materials which are authentic; and second, of the combination with these
materials of others which are undoubtedly spurious. The early chronicles
are referred to as of equal authority, and without reference to the
period or circumstances of their production. The text of Fordun’s
Chronicle, upon which the history, at least prior to the fourteenth
century, must always to a considerable extent be based, is quoted as an
original authority, without adverting to the materials he made use of
and the mode in which he has adapted them to a fictitious scheme of
history; and the additions and alterations of his interpolator Bower are
not only founded upon as the statements of Fordun himself, but quoted
under his name in preference to his original version of the events.
The author has elsewhere endeavoured to complete the work commenced by
Thomas Innes. He has collected together in one volume the whole of the
existing chronicles and other memorials of the history of Scotland prior
to the appearance of Fordun’s Chronicle, and has subjected them, as well
as the work of Fordun, to a critical examination and analysis.[11]
He now proposes to take a farther step in advance, and to attempt in the
present work to place the early history of the country upon a sounder
basis, and to exhibit Celtic Scotland, so far as these materials enable
him to do so, in a clearer and more authentic light. By following their
guidance, and giving effect to fair and just inferences from their
statements unbiassed by theory or partiality, and subjected to the
corrective tests of comparison with those physical records which the
country itself presents, it is hoped that it may not be found impossible
to make some approximation to the truth, even with regard to the annals
of this early period of Scottish history.
It may be said that this task has been rendered unnecessary by the
appearance of Mr. Burton’s History of Scotland, which commences the
narrative with the invasion of Agricola, and claims ‘the two fundamental
qualities of a serviceable history—completeness and accuracy;’[12] but,
with much appreciation of the merits of Mr. Burton’s work as a whole,
the author is afraid that he cannot recognise it as possessing either
character, so far as the early part of the history is concerned, and he
considers that the ground which the present work is intended to occupy
remains still unappropriated.
[Sidenote: Spurious authorities.]
It remains for him to indicate here at the outset the materials founded
upon by the previous writers which he considers of questionable
authority, or must reject as entirely spurious.
Among the first to be rejected as entirely spurious is the work
attributed to Richard of Cirencester, _De situ Britanniæ et Stationum
quas Romani ipsi in ea insula ædificaverunt_. It was published in 1757
from a MS. said to be discovered at Copenhagen by Charles Julius
Bertram, and was at once adopted as genuine. The author at a very early
period came to the conclusion that the whole work, including the
itineraries, was an impudent forgery, and this has since been so amply
demonstrated, and is now so generally admitted, that it is unnecessary
to occupy space by proving it.[13] The whole of the Roman part of
Pinkerton’s _Enquiry_ and of the elaborate work of Chalmers is tainted
by it; and, what is perhaps more to be regretted, the valuable work of
General Roy[14] on _The Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain_,
published in 1793. He says in his introduction, ‘From small beginnings
it is, however, no unusual thing to be led imperceptibly to engage in
more extensive and laborious undertakings, as will easily appear from
what follows, for since the discovery of Agricola’s camps, the work of
Richard of Cirencester having likewise been found out in Denmark and
published to the world, the curious have thereby been furnished with
many new lights concerning the Roman history and geography of Britain in
general, but more particularly the north part of it,’ and by this
unfortunate adoption of the forged work by General Roy, there has been
lost to the world, to a great extent, the advantage of the commentary of
one so well able to judge of military affairs. Horsley’s valuable work,
the _Britannia Romana_, was fortunately published in 1732 before this
imposition was practised on the literary world; but Stuart has not been
equally fortunate in his _Caledonia Romana_, published in 1845, the
usefulness of which is greatly impaired by it.
Among the Welsh documents which are usually founded upon as affording
materials for the early history of the country, there is one class of
documents contained in the Myvyrian Archæology which cannot be accepted
as genuine. The principal of these are the so-called Historical Triads,
which have been usually quoted as possessing undoubted claims to
antiquity under the name of the Welsh Triads; the tale called Hanes
Taliessin, or the history of Taliessin; and a collection of papers
printed by the Welsh MS. Society, under the title of the Iolo MSS. These
all proceeded from Edward Williams, one of the editors of the Myvyrian
Archæology published in 1801, and who is better known under the bardic
title of Iolo Morganwg. The circumstances under which he produced these
documents, or the motives which led him to introduce so much
questionable matter into the literature of Wales, it is difficult now to
determine; but certain it is that no trace of them is to be found in any
authentic source, and that they have given a character to Welsh
literature which is much to be deplored. In a former work, the author in
reviewing these documents merely said, ‘It is not unreasonable therefore
to say that they must be viewed with some suspicion, and that very
careful discrimination is required in the use of them.’ He does not
hesitate now to reject them as entirely spurious.[15]
It will of course be impossible to write upon the Celtic period of
Scottish history without making a large use of Irish materials; and it
is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the Irish Annals for
this purpose; but these too must be used with some discrimination. The
ancient history of Ireland presents the unusual aspect of the minute and
detailed annals of reigns and events from a period reaching back to many
centuries before the Christian era, the whole of which has been adopted
by her historians as genuine. The work of Keating, written in Irish in
1640, a translation of which by Dermod O’Connor was published in 1726,
may be taken as a fair representation of it. The earlier part of this
history is obviously artificial, and is viewed by recent Irish
historians more in the light of legend; but there is nothing whatever in
the mode in which the annals of the different reigns are narrated to
show where legend terminates and history begins, and there is a tendency
among even the soundest writers on Irish history to push the claims of
these annals to a historical character beyond the period to which it can
reasonably be attached. For the events in Irish history the Annals of
the Four Masters are usually quoted. There is a certain convenience in
this, as it is the most complete chronicle which Ireland possesses; but
it was compiled as late as the seventeenth century, having been
commenced in 1632 and finished in 1636. The compilers were four eminent
Irish antiquaries, the principal of whom was Michael O’Clery, whence it
was termed by Colgan the Annals of the Four Masters. These annals begin
with the year of the Deluge, said to be the year of the world 2242, or
2952 years before Christ, and continue in an unbroken series to the year
of our Lord 1616. The latter part of the annals are founded upon other
documents which are referred to in the preface, and from which they are
said to be taken, but the authority for each event is not stated, and
some of those recorded are not to be found elsewhere, and are open to
suspicion.[16] The earlier part of the annals consists simply of a
reduction of the fabulous history of Ireland into the shape of a
chronicle, and, except that it is thrown into that form instead of that
of a narrative, it does not appear to the author to possess greater
claims to be ranked as an authority than the work of Keating. He cannot
therefore accept it as an independent authority, nor can he regard the
record of events to the fifth century as bearing the character of
chronological history in the true sense of the term, though no doubt
many of these events may have some foundation in fact.[17]
The older annals stand in a different position. Those of Tighernac,
Inisfallen, and the Annals of Ulster, are extremely valuable for the
history of Scotland; and, while the latter commence with what may be
termed the historic period in the fifth century, the earlier events
recorded by Tighernac, who died in the year 1088, may contain some
fragments of genuine history.
[Sidenote: Plan of the work.]
The subject of this work will be most conveniently treated under three
separate heads or books.
The first book will deal with the Ethnology and Civil History of the
different races which occupied Scotland. In this inquiry, it will be of
advantage that we should start with a clear conception of the knowledge
which the Romans had of the northern part of the island, and of the
exact amount of information as to its state and population which their
possession of the southern part of it as a province affords. This will
involve a repetition of the oft-told tale of the Roman occupation of
Scotland. But this part of the history has been so overloaded with the
uncritical use of authorities, the too ready reception of questionable
or forged documents, and the injurious but baseless speculations of
antiquaries, that we have nearly lost sight of what the contemporary
authorities really tell us. Their statements are, no doubt, meagre, and
may appear to afford an insufficient foundation for the deductions drawn
from them, but they are precise; and it will be found that though they
may compress the account of a campaign or a transaction into a few
words, yet they had an accurate knowledge of the transactions, the
result of which they wished to indicate, and knew well what they were
writing about. It will be necessary, therefore, carefully to weigh these
short but precise statements, and to place before the reader the state
of the early inhabitants of Scotland as the Romans at the time knew them
and viewed them, not as what by argument from other premises they can be
made to appear.[18]
This will lay the groundwork for an inquiry into their race and
language; and an attempt will then be made to trace the history of these
different races, their mutual struggle for supremacy, the causes and
true character of that revolution which laid the foundation of the
Scottish monarchy, and the gradual combination of its various
heterogeneous elements into one united kingdom; and thus by a more
complete and critical use of its materials, to place the early history
of the country, during the Celtic period, upon a sounder basis.
The second book will deal with the Early Celtic Church of Scotland and
its influence on the language and culture of the people. The
ecclesiastical history of Scotland has shared the same fate with its
civil history, and is deeply tainted with the fictitious and artificial
system which has perverted both; but the stamp of these fables upon it
is less easily removed. It has also had the additional misfortune of
having been made the battle-field of polemical controversy. Each
historian of the Church has viewed it through the medium of his
ecclesiastical prepossessions, and from the standpoint of the Church
party to which he belonged. The Episcopal historian feels the necessity
of discovering in it his Diocesan Episcopacy, and the partisan of
Presbyterian parity considers the principles of his Church involved in
maintaining the existence of his early Presbyterian Culdees. One great
exception must be made, however, in Dr. Reeves’s admirable edition of
Adamnan’s _Life of St. Columba_, which has laid the foundation for a
more rational treatment of the history of the early Church in Scotland.
The subject of the third and last book will be the Land and People of
Scotland. It will treat of the early land tenures and social condition
of its Celtic inhabitants. The publication of the Brehon laws of Ireland
now enables us to trace somewhat of the history and character of their
early tribal institutions and laws, and of their development in Scotland
into those communities represented in the eastern districts by the
Thanages, and in the western by the Clan system of the Highlands and
Islands of Scotland.
-----
Footnote 1:
See Book i. chap. i. _infra_.
Footnote 2:
It will be seen from the title of this work that the author does not
adopt what he ventures to call the pedantic affectation of using the
form of Alba instead of Alban. The oldest form of the word is Albu, as
that of the name for Ireland was Eriu. Thus, in the oldest Irish
Glossary—that of Cormac—we have, _sub voce_ Trifod, ‘Eriu agus Manann
agus Albu.’ The inflections are Eriu, _G._ Erenn, _D._ Eirinn, _A._
Erinn. Albu, _G._ Alban, _D._ Albain, _A._ Albain or Albu. In the
later Irish documents the forms of Eire and Alba usually occur in the
nominative. A nominative form derived from the genitive is, however,
also found; and the names of places ending in a vowel seem to have a
tendency to fall into this form in current speech. Thus we have Erin
for Eiriu or Eire, Alban for Albu or Alba, Arann for Ara, Rathlin for
Rechra, etc. In his _Irish Glosses_, Mr. Whitley Stokes has ‘Eirinnach
(gl. Hibernigena), from the old name of this island, which is declined
in the _Book of Leinster_ and _Lib. Hymn._ Nom. herinn (Maelmura
Othna’s poem), Dat. dond erinn, Gen. and Acc. herenn (see Fiacc’s
hymn. vv. 7, 8, 10, and the _Orthain_ at the end, and the quatrain
from Marianus Scotus, Z. 944).’—(_Irish Glosses_, p. 66.)
The name of Alban occurs in this form in the nominative also in the
Prophecy of St. Berchan throughout, as ‘Dia mo lan Alban is Eire’
(_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 79); Ba ard Albain chathair bhinn (_ib._
p. 87); Mescfaidh Albain ima chenn (_ib._ p. 89); Ba lomlan Albain o a
la (_ib._ p. 91, etc.).
So also the form of Alban appears as the name of Scotland in all the
Welsh documents, and the Pictish Chronicle, which is evidently
translated from a Gaelic original, has Albania, which must have been
formed from Alban.
The affectation of using the form Alba in the English rendering of the
name was first introduced by the late Dr. O’Donovan, and has been
adopted without much consideration by some Scottish writers; but the
late Professor O’Curry, an equally accurate Irish scholar, invariably
used the form Alban, and the author prefers retaining this
conventional form.
Footnote 3:
Haec autem (Hibernia) proprie patria Scotorum est.—Bede, _Hist. Ec._
B. i. c. i.
Footnote 4:
The first proposition is clearly established by the following catena
of authorities:—
SIXTH CENTURY.
ISIDORUS HISPALENSIS. _Origines._
Scotia eadem et Ibernia, proxima Britanniae insula.... Unde et Ibernia
dicta. Scotia autem quod ab Scotorum gentibus colitur
appellata.—Lib. xiv. c. vi.
THEODORIC. _Vita S. Rumoldi_, 1st July.—_Surius_, tom. vii. p. 563.
Movit hoc ab ortu Ægyptus et India ad occasum alter pene orbis
Britannia cum adjacente Scotia. Tota insula Scotiae mirabatur.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
RAVENNATIS ANONYMI _Cosmographia_.
Finitur autem ipsa Britannia a facie septentrionalis (habet) insulam
Scotiam.
Iterum in eodem oceano occidentali post ipsam magnam Britanniam ...
est insula maxima quae dicitur Ibernia, quae, ut dictum est, et
Scotia appellatur.
ADAMNANUS _in vita S. Columbae_.
De Scotia ad Britanniam ... enavigavit.—Pref. sec.
In Scotia et in Britannia.—Lib. i. cap. i.
De Scotia ad Britanniam ... adduxit.—Lib. i. cap. xxix.
Per totam nostram Scotiam et omnium totius orbis insularum maximam
Britanniam.—Lib. iii. cap. xxiv.
EIGHTH CENTURY.
BÆDA. _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum._
Haec autem (Hibernia) proprie patria Scottorum est.—Lib. i. cap. i.
Dominis carissimis fratribus episcopis, vel abbatibus per universam
Scottiam, Laurentius, Mellitus, et Justus episcopi.—(Letter
addressed to ‘Scotti qui Hiberniam insulam Britanniae proximam
incolunt.’)—Lib. ii. cap. iv.
Columba presbyter de Scottia venit Brittaniam.—Lib. v. cap. xxiv.
_Martyrologium._ De Scotia insula venientes. 13th November.
NINTH CENTURY.
HUCBALDUS, _in vita S. Lebuini_.
Britannia oceani insula, interfuso mari a toto orbe divisa ... cui
adjacet Scotia sive Hybernia.—_Surius_, tom. iii. p. 27.
VITA S. WIRONIS.
Scotia fertilis Sanctorum virorum insula.—_Surius_, tom. iii. p. 114.
VITA S. KILIANI.
Scotia quae et Hibernia dicitur, insula est maris oceani, foecunda
quidem glebis, sed viris Sanctissimis clarior.—_Surius_, tom. iii.
p. 132.
TENTH CENTURY.
HEGESIPPUS. _De excidio Hierosolymitano._
Quid attexam Britannias interfuso mari toto orbe divisas, a Romanis in
orbem terrarum redactas? Tremuit hos Scotia, quae terris nihil
debet.
SECUNDA VITA S. PATRICII, _ap._ Colgan.
Causa haec erat primae peregrinationis atque adventus ejus in
Scotiam.—_Tr. Th._ p. 12.
QUINTA VITA S. PATRICII, _ap._ Colgan.
Scotiam atque Britanniam, Angliam et Normanniam caeterasque gentes
insulanorum baptizabis.—_Tr. Th._ p. 51.
NOTKERUS BALBULUS, _in Martyrologio_.
v. Id. Junias. In Scotia insula Hibernia depositio S. Columbae,
cognomento apud suos Columbkilli.
To which it may be added that King Alfred, in his translation of
Orosius, translates the passage, ‘Hibernia, quae a gentibus Scotorum
colitur,’ by ‘Ighernia, which we call Scotland.’
For the second proposition we have the following:—
In the Pictish Chronicle the name of Scotia is still applied to
Ireland. ‘Scotti in quarta etate Scociam sive Hiberniam obtinuerunt,’
and the only names used for Scotland are Albania and Pictavia. ‘xxx.
Brude regnaverunt Hiberniam et Albaniam.’ ‘Danari vastaverunt
Pictaviam ad Cluanan et Duncalden.’ ‘Normanni predaverunt Duncalden,
omnemque Albaniam.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 3, 5, 8, 9.
In the following century we have
‘Regnum Scotorum fuit, inter cetera regna
Terrarum, quondam nobile, forte, potens....
Ex Albanacto, trinepote potentis Enee,
Dicitur Albania: littera prisca probat.
A Scota, nata Pharaonis regis Egypti,
Ut veteres tradunt, Scotia nomen habet.’
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 117.
Illa regio, quae nunc corrupte vocatur Scotia, antiquitus appellabatur
Albania.... Nunc vero corrupte vocatur Scotia.—_Ib._ p. 135.
Albania est, quae modo Scotia vocatur.—_Ib._ p. 153.
Albania tota, quae modo Scotia vocatur.—_Ib._ p. 154.
Monarchia totius Albaniae quae nunc Scotia dicitur.—_Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 209.
That part of the Saxon Chronicle which precedes the death of King
Alfred in 901, and according to the best authorities was compiled in
his reign, nowhere applies the name of Scotland to North Britain; but
in that part of the Chronicle which extends from 925 to 975, and
which, if not contemporary, was at least compiled in the latter year,
has, in 933, ‘In this year King Æthelstan went into Scotland;’ and in
937, in the contemporary poem on the battle of Brunanburg,
Constantine’s people are called _Sceotta_, and the name applied to
Ireland is Yraland.—_Saxon Chron._, _ad an._
The transference of the name of Scotia from Ireland to Scotland seems
to have been completed in the eleventh century, for Marianus Scotus,
who lived from 1028 to 1081, calls Malcolm the Second, who died 1034,
‘rex Scotiae’ (_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 65), and Brian, King of
Ireland, ‘rex Hiberniae.’ The author of the Life of St. Cadroë, in the
same century, applies the name of Scotia to North Britain (_ib._ p.
113); while Adam of Bremen, who wrote in 1080, has ‘Hibernia Scottorum
patria, quae nunc Irland dicitur’ (_De situ Daniae_, c. 247).
The third proposition is equally important, and it will be necessary
to establish it once for all at the outset. This will appear—First,
from the ancient descriptions of Scotland; Secondly, from
topographical allusions in the Old Laws and in the Chronicles; and
Thirdly, from the names given to the inhabitants of the different
provinces.
Under the first head, we find in the tract _De situ Albaniae_ a
reference to the ‘montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab Arregaithel,’ or
Argyll, and to the Forth, ‘quae regna Scottorum et Anglorum dividit’
(_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 135). In the description of Britain
(_ib._ p. 153) the provinces within the limits of Scotland are thus
enumerated:—‘Ultra [Tede flumen (or Tweed)], usque ad flumen Forthi
magni, scilicet, Loonia et Galweya (Lothian and Galloway) et Albania
tota quae modo Scotia vocatur et Morovia (Moray) et omnes insulae
occidentales occeani usque ad Norwegiam et usque Daciam, scilicet,
Kathenessia Orkaneya Enchegal et Man et Ordas et Gurth et ceterae
insulae occidentales occeani circa Norwegiam et Daciam.’ This points
to the time when Caithness, Orkney, and the Western Isles were
possessed by the Norwegians and Danes, and distinguishes Scotia from
Moray, from which it is separated by the Spey, and from the Norwegian
and Danish possessions, which included Caithness, Sutherland, Argyll,
and the Isles.
In the ‘Brevis Descriptio Scotiae’ (_ib._ p. 214), the provinces of
Tyndale then belonging to Scotland, Lothian and Galloway, are
mentioned, and Argyll is omitted.
Under the second head the same provinces are clearly indicated in one
of the Laws of King William, ‘De lege que vocatur Claremathan.’ It
commences, ‘De catallo furato et calumpniato statuit dominus Rex apud
Perth quod in quacunque provincia sit inventum,’ etc. It then refers
to them thus, ‘Si ille qui calumpniatus est de catallo furato vel
rapto vocat warentum suum aliquem hominem manentem inter Spey et Forth
vel inter Drumalban et Forth;’ that is, a district bounded by the
Spey, Drumalban, and the Forth. Then we have, ‘Et si quis ultra illas
divisas valet in Moravia vel in Ros vel in Katenes vel in Ergadia vel
in Kintyre.’ Then we have ‘Ergadia quae pertinet ad Moraviam.’ Then
‘Si calumpniatus vocaverit warentum aliquem in Ergadia quae pertinet
ad Scotiam tunc veniat ad comitem Atholie,’ showing that the part of
Ergadia next to Athole was said to belong to Scotia as distinguished
from Moravia. Then we have, ‘Omnes illi qui ultra Forth manserint in
Laudonia vel in Galwodia.’—_Acts of Parl._ v. i. p. 50.
Ailred distinguishes Laudonia and Calatria (in Stirlingshire) from
Scotia when he says, ‘Cum Angliæ victor Willelmus Laodoniam Calatriam
Scotiam usque ad Abernith penetraret.’—_Ailred de bello apud
Standardum._
Ordericus Vitalis equally distinguishes Moravia from Scotia when he
says of Angus Comes de Moravia, who rebelled against David I.,
‘Scotiam intravit.’—_Ord. Vit._ p. 702.
Thirdly, the same distinction is maintained in the early notices of
the inhabitants of the different provinces. Thus Ailred describes the
Scottish army at the battle of the Standard under David I. as
consisting of the following bodies of troops:—1st, of Galwenses; 2d,
of Cumbrenses et Tevidalenses; 3d, of Laodonenses cum Insulanis et
Lavernanis; 4th, of Scoti et Muravenses. The accurate Hailes deduces
from this,—‘The Scots, properly so called, were the inhabitants of the
tract between the Firth of Forth and the country then called
Moray.’—Hailes, _An._ vol. i. p. 78.
Footnote 5:
Nam Clota et Bodotria, diversi maris aestibus per immensum revectae,
angusto terrarum spatio dirimuntur: quod tum praesidiis firmabatur:
atque omnis propior sinus tenebatur, summotis velut in aliam insulam
hostibus.—Tacit. _in Vit. Ag._, c. 23.
Footnote 6:
Hector Boece is the first of our historians who brings this Highland
barrier prominently forward as a mountain range. He says, ‘Situs autem
hic lacus (Loch Lomond) est ad pedem Grampii montis Pictorum olim
Scotorumque regni limitis, qua ab ostiis Deae amnis latera Aberdoniae
abluentis mare Germanicum prospectans incurvus asper atque
intractabilis (quod et nomen ejus vernaculum Granzebain significat)
per mediam Scotiam in alterum mare tendens obvio hoc lacu excipitur
sistiturque.’—Ed. 1520, F. vii. 45.
His object was, by identifying this range with the boundary between
the Picts and Scots, to extend the territories of the latter, and by
applying to it the name of Tacitus’s Mons Grampius he has stamped upon
it ever since the appellation of the Grampians. But the older
authorities know nothing of the Grampians, and never mention this
range of mountains. They only specify the mountain ranges of the
Mounth and Drumalban. Thus the Tract de Situ Albaniae (_Chron. Picts
and Scots_, p. 135) mentions the ‘mons qui Mound vocatur, qui a mari
occidentali usque ad mare orientale extenditur.’ And another
description (_ib._ p. 214) has, ‘Et itaque est quoddam vastum quod
vocatur le Mounth, ubi est pessimum passagium sine cibo, longitudinis
lx. leucarum et latitudinis xvi. leucarum.’
The other range is frequently mentioned by Adamnan in the seventh
century as ‘Dorsum Britanniae,’ and once as ‘Dorsi montes Britannici,
quos Pictos et Scotos utrosque disterminant.’ The oldest of the Latin
chronicles mention Fergus, the first king of Dalriada, as reigning ‘a
monte Drumalban usque ad mare Hiberniae’ (_ib._ p. 130); and the Tract
de Situ Albaniae mentions the ‘montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab
Arregaithel.’
As this chain was the great boundary which originally separated the
Picts from the Scots of Dalriada, it is essential to a clear
understanding of the early history that its real position should not
be mistaken, and it is only necessary to examine the passages in which
it occurs to see that it was used with precision, and to identify the
mountain chain which was meant by it. Much confusion, however, has
been thrown into early Scottish history by the loose and arbitrary way
in which this name has been applied by modern writers to any great
mountain chain which they fancied might represent it, arising merely
from a want of accurate acquaintance with the true character of the
mountain system of Scotland, and a careless use of authorities. Of
modern historians Pinkerton alone has rightly placed the name of
Drumalban on the ridge which separates Argyllshire from Perthshire.
Mr. Cosmo Innes, in the map in his _Scotland in the Middle Ages_,
places it upon the great range of the Mounth, in which he is followed
by Mr. E. W. Robertson, in his _Scotland under her Early Kings_; and
Mr. Burton has made confusion worse confounded by identifying it with
“the range now called the Grampians” (_Hist._ vol. i. p. 15); in this
following Boece. Fordun gives an elaborate description of it in his
_Chronicle_, B. ii. c. 7; and Buchanan rightly describes it as the
highest part of Breadalban, and clearly indicates it as the ridge
separating the east from the west waters, ‘ex eo enim dorso flumina in
utrumque mare decurrunt, alia in septentrionem, alia in meridiem.’
The name Dorsum Britanniæ implies that it was part of the ridge which
might be called the backbone of Britain, separating the rivers flowing
in opposite directions, as the backbone of the body separates the
ribs—a definition that never could be applicable to the so-called
Grampians. The name of Drum is found, too, attached to the range along
the whole course of it. We have Tyn_drum_ and Cairn_drum_ at the part
whence the Tay flows; the _Drum_mond hills at the source of the Spey
where the range divides Badenoch from Lochaber; Acha_drum_ where it
crosses the great glen of Scotland between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy;
and Loch _Droma_ where it crosses the valley called the Deary-mor, in
Ross-shire, at the head of the river Broom.
Footnote 7:
Provinciis septentrionalium Pictorum, hoc est, eis quae arduis atque
horrentibus montium jugis ab australibus eorum sunt regionibus
sequestratae.—B. iii. c. iv.
Footnote 8:
Montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab Arregaithel.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_,
p. 135.
Footnote 9:
Quos utrosque Dorsi montes Britannici disterminant.—Adamnan, B. ii. c.
47.
Footnote 10:
The essays contained in the appendix are of peculiar value, and well
deserve the consideration of historians.
Footnote 11:
The author has collected the materials prior to Fordun’s Chronicle in
the volume of _The Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots,
and other early Memorials of Scottish History_, published by the
authority of the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury, under
the superintendence of the Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, in 1867,
and has likewise edited Fordun’s Chronicle for the series of the
Scottish Historians. The introductions to these two works contain a
critical examination and analysis of these early documents as well as
of the chronicle itself. In the _Four Ancient Books of Wales_,
published in 1868, he has subjected the Welsh documents to a similar
critical examination.
Footnote 12:
Burton’s _Hist._, vol. i. Preface, p. v.
Footnote 13:
It is curious how difficult it is to get rid of the effects of an
imposture of this kind, even after it is detected.
Mr. C. H. Pearson is one of those who has most conclusively
demonstrated the forgery, and yet in his historical maps of England,
published in 1869, he places the Roman provinces of Britain according
to an arrangement for which the so-called Richard of Cirencester is
the sole authority. Mr. Burton also denounces this work as a forgery
(vol. i. p. 61, note); but he elsewhere says, ‘Thus there were Scots
in Ireland and Scots in Britain, and _a practice arose among British
writers of calling the latter Attacotti, which has been explained to
mean the hither Scots or Scots of this side_’ (vol. i. p. 256). This
statement is apparently taken from Pinkerton, who identified the
Attacotti with an early settlement of Scots in Argyll solely on the
authority of Richard of Cirencester. The opinion is quite untenable,
and the etymology preposterous. It was, however, rather unexpected to
find Mr. W. Fraser, in a work printed in 1874 (_The Lennox_), adopting
the whole of the spurious matter of the so-called Richard of
Cirencester as genuine.
Footnote 14:
Roy, _Military Ant._, p. ix.
Footnote 15:
See _Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. i. pp. 30-32. In rejecting the
Welsh Triads, which have been so extensively used, the author excepts
those Triads which are to be found in ancient MSS., such as the Triads
of the Horses in the Black Book of Caermarthen; those in the Hengwrt
MS. 536, printed in the _Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. ii. p.
457; and those in the Red Book of Hergest.
Footnote 16:
For instance, the annals record the death of Somhairle MacGillaadomnan
Ri Innsigall at 1083. This was Somerled Regulus of Argyll, whose death
really took place in 1166, and this entry has probably been inserted
at haphazard from some genealogy of the Macdonalds.
Footnote 17:
It is usually supposed that true history in Ireland commences with the
introduction of Christianity and the mission of St. Patrick, but this
date is by no means certain. The author is more inclined to place the
separation between those annals which may be depended on as consisting
in the main of true history, and those which present the appearance of
an artificial construction, into which fragments of history, legendary
matter, and fabulous creations, have been interwoven, at the event
termed the battle of Ocha, fought in 483. By that battle the dynasty
of the Hy Neill was placed on the throne of Ireland. It separates the
Pagan kings from the Christian. The marvellous and fanciful events
which characterise the previous reigns here drop from the annals, and
what follows has an air of probability and reality, and it was
undoubtedly viewed as a great era by the older chroniclers; as, for
instance, Flann of Bute, who wrote his Synchronisms in 1054, has
‘Forty-three years from the coming of St. Patrick to Erin to the
battle of Ocha; twenty years from the battle of Ocha till the children
of Erc, son of Echach Muindremair, passed over into Alban.’—_Chron.
Picts and Scots_, p. 18.
Footnote 18:
The author has explained his views as to the authorities for this
period of the history more anxiously, because he does not at all
sympathise with Mr. Burton in his view of the authority of Tacitus as
an historian, and the character of his narrative. The author is unable
to see how the credibility of his narrative is impaired by the fact
that his Life of Agricola was not included in the first edition of his
works, and was unknown to our historians before Hector Boece. Mr.
Burton hardly ventures to question the authenticity of the Life of
Agricola. The view he appears to hold, that it was written more as a
political manifesto than as a plain historical relation of facts, has
been hastily adopted from a school of German critics, whose views have
not, however, met with acceptance from the sounder class of them. The
author holds the authenticity of the Life of Agricola to be
unquestionable, and that its fidelity as a narrative cannot be
reasonably assailed; and he considers any argument drawn from the
presence or absence of local tradition as to the events it records to
be irrelevant, as all genuine tradition of this kind in Scotland has
perished under the influence of the immense popularity and general
acceptance at the time of Hector Boece’s fabulous history, which has,
in fact, created a spurious local tradition all over Scotland.
BOOK I.
_HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY._
CHAPTER I.
ADVANCE OF THE ROMANS TO THE FIRTHS OF FORTH AND CLYDE.
[Sidenote: Early notices of the British Isles.]
As early as the sixth century before the Christian era, and while their
knowledge of Northern Europe was still very imperfect, the Greeks had
already become aware of the existence of the British Isles. This
comparatively early knowledge of Britain was derived from the trade in
tin, for which there existed at that period an extensive demand in the
East. It was imported by sea by the Phœnicians, and by their colony, the
Carthaginians, who extended their voyages beyond the Pillars of
Hercules; and was subsequently prosecuted as a land trade by their
commercial rivals, the Greek colonists of Marseilles.
A Greek poet, writing under the name of Orpheus, but whose real date may
be fixed at the sixth century, mentions these remote islands under the
name of the Iernian Isles;[19] but in the subsequent century they were
known to Herodotus as the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands,[20] a name
derived from the chief article of the trade through which all report of
their existence was as yet derived.
In the fourth century they are alluded to by Aristotle as two very large
islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and, while the name of Britannia
was now from henceforth applied, especially by the Greek writers, to the
group of islands, of whose number and size but vague notions were still
entertained, the two principal islands appear for the first time under
the distinctive appellations of Albion and Ierne.[21]
Polybius, in the second century before Christ, likewise alludes to the
Britannic Islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to the working of
the mines by the inhabitants.[22]
Besides these direct allusions to the British Isles, we have preserved
to us by subsequent writers an account of these islands from each of the
two sources of information—the Phœnician voyages and the land trade of
the Phocæans of Marseilles—in the narratives of the expeditions of
Himilco and Pytheas.
Himilco was a Carthaginian who was engaged in the Phœnician maritime
trade in the sixth century, and the traditionary account of his voyage
is preserved by a comparatively late writer, Festus Rufus Avienus. In
his poetical Description of the World, written from the account of
Himilco, he mentions the plains of the Britons and the distant Thule,
and talks of the sacred isle peopled by the nation of the Hiberni and
the adjacent island of the Albiones.[23]
Pytheas was a Massilian. His account of his journey is preserved by the
geographer Strabo, and appears to have been received with great
distrust. He stated that he had sailed round Spain and the half of
Britain; ascertained that the latter was an island; made a voyage of six
days to the island of Thule, and then returned. From him Strabo,
Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny derived their information as to the size of
the islands, and his statement made known for the first time the names
of three promontories—Cantium or Kent, Belerium or Land’s End, and
Orcas, or that opposite the Orkneys.[24]
But although the existence of the British Isles was thus known at an
early period to the classic writers under specific names, and some
slender information acquired through the medium of the early tin trade
as to their position and magnitude, it was not till the progress of the
Roman arms and their lust of conquest had brought their legions into
actual contact with the native population, that any information as to
the inhabitants of these islands was obtained.
[Sidenote: B.C. 55.
Invasion of Julius Cæsar.]
The invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar in the year 55 before the
Christian era, although it added no new territory to the already
overgrown empire of the Romans, and was probably undertaken more with
the view of adding to the military renown of the great commander, for
the first time made the Romans acquainted with some of the tribes
inhabiting that, to them, distant and almost inaccessible isle, and
added distinctness and definiteness to their previously vague conception
of its characteristics. Its existence was now not merely a geographical
speculation, but a political fact in the estimation of those by whom the
destinies of the world were then swayed—an element that might possibly
enter into their political combinations.
The conquests of Julius Cæsar in Britain, limited in extent and
short-lived in duration, were not followed up. The policy of the
subsequent emperors involved the neglect of Britain as an object of
conquest; and, while it now assumed a more definite position in the
writings of Greek and Roman geographers, they have left us nothing but
the names of a few southern tribes and localities which do not concern
the object before us, and a statement regarding the general population
which is of more significance.
Cæsar sums up his account by telling us that the interior of Britain was
inhabited by those who were considered to be indigenous, and the
maritime part by those who had passed over from Belgium, the memory of
whose emigration was preserved by their new insular possessions bearing
the same name with the continental states from which they sprang. He
describes the country as very populous, the people as pastoral, but
using iron and brass, and the inhabitants of the interior as less
civilised than those on the coasts. The former he paints as clothed in
skins, and as not resorting to the cultivation of the soil for food, but
as dependent upon their cattle and the flesh of animals slain in hunting
for subsistence. He ascribes to all those customs which seem to have
been peculiar to the Britons. They stained their bodies with woad, which
gave them a green colour, from which the Britons were termed ‘Virides’
and ‘Cærulei.’ They had wives in common. They used chariots in war, and
Cæsar bears testimony to the bravery with which they defended their
woods and rude fortresses, as well as encountered the disciplined Roman
troops in the field. He mentions the island Hibernia as less than
Britannia by one-half, and about as far from it as the latter is from
Gaul, and an island termed ‘Mona’ in the middle of the channel between
the two larger islands.[25]
Strabo and Diodorus Siculus have preserved any additional accounts of
the inhabitants which the Romans received during the succeeding reigns
of Augustus and Tiberius. They describe the Britons as taller than the
Gauls, with hair less yellow, and slighter in their persons; and Strabo
distinguishes between that portion of them whose manners resembled those
of the Gauls and those who were more simple and barbarous, and were
unacquainted with agriculture—manifestly the inhabitants of the interior
whom Cæsar considered to be indigenous. He describes the peculiarity of
their warfare, their use of chariots, and their towns as enclosures made
in the forests, with ramparts of hewn trees. He mentions the inhabitants
of ‘Ierne’ as more barbarous, regarding whom reports of cannibalism and
the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes were current.[26] Diodorus
gives a more favourable picture of the inhabitants who were considered
to be the aborigines of the island, and attributes to them the simple
virtues of the pure and early state of society fabled by the poets. He
alludes to their use of chariots and their simple huts, and adds to
Strabo’s account that they stored the ears of corn under ground. He
represents them as simple, frugal, and peaceful in their mode of life.
Those near the promontory of Belerion or Land’s End he describes as more
civilised, owing to their intercourse with strangers.[27]
Thus all agree in distinguishing between the simple and rude inhabitants
of the interior, who were considered to be indigenous, and the more
civilised people of the eastern and southern shores who were believed to
have passed over from Gaul.
[Sidenote: A.D. 43.
Formation of province in reign of Claudius.]
It was not till the reign of Claudius that any effectual attempt was
renewed to subject the British tribes to the Roman yoke; but the second
conquest under that emperor speedily assumed a more permanent character
than the first under Julius Cæsar, and the conquered territory was
formed into a province of the Roman empire. During this intervening
period of nearly a century, we know nothing of the internal history of
the population of Britain; but the indications which have reached us of
a marked and easily-recognised distinction between two great classes of
the inhabitants, and of the progressive immigration of one of them from
Belgium, and the analogy of history, lead to the inference that during
this period—ample for such a purpose—the stronger and more civilised
race must have spread over a larger space of the territory, and the
ruder inhabitants of the interior been gradually confined to the wilder
regions of the north and west. The name of Britannia having gradually
superseded the older appellation of Albion, and the latter, if it is
synonymous with Alba or Alban, becoming confined to the wilder regions
of the north, lead to the same inference.
As soon as the conquests of the Romans in Britain assumed the form of a
province of the empire, all that they possessed in the island was termed
‘Britannia Romana,’ all that was still hostile to them, ‘Britannia
Barbara.’ The conquered tribes became the inhabitants of a Roman
province, subject to her laws, and sharing in some of her privileges.
The tribes beyond the limits of the province were to them ‘Barbari.’ An
attention to the application of these terms affords the usual indication
of the extent of the Roman province at different times, and, if the
history of the more favoured southern portion of the island must find
its earliest annals in the Roman provinces of Britain, it is to the
‘Barbari’ we must turn in order to follow the fortunes of the ruder
independence of the northern tribes. It will be necessary, therefore,
for our purpose, that we should trace the gradual extension of the
boundary of the Roman province and the advance of the line of
demarcation between what was provincial and what was termed barbarian,
till we find the independent tribes of Britain confined within the
limits of that portion of the island separated from the rest by the
Firths of Forth and Clyde.
It was in the year of our Lord 43, and in the reign of the Emperor
Claudius, that the real conquest of Britain commenced under Aulus
Plautius, and in seven years after the beginning of the war a part of
the island had been reduced by that general and by his successor into
the form of a province, and annexed to the Roman empire,—a result to
which the valour and military talent of Vespasian, then serving under
these generals, and afterwards Emperor, appears mainly to have
contributed. In the year 50, under Ostorius, and perhaps his successor,
the Roman province appears to have already extended to the Severn on the
west, and to the Humber on the north.[28]
Beyond its limits, on the west, were the warlike tribes of the Silures
and the Ordovices, against whom the province was defended by a line of
forts drawn from the river Sabrina or Severn, to a river, which cannot
be identified with certainty, termed by Tacitus the Antona.[29] On the
north lay the numerous and widely-extended tribes of the Brigantes,
extending across the entire island from the Eastern to the Western Sea,
and reaching from the Humber, which separated them from the province on
the south, as far north, there seems little reason to doubt, as the
Firth of Forth.[30] Beyond the nation of the Brigantes on the north, the
Romans as yet knew nothing save that Britain was believed to be an
island, and that certain islands termed Orcades[31] lay to the north of
it; but the names even of the more northern tribes had not yet reached
them.
[Sidenote: A.D. 50. War with the Brigantes.]
It is to the war with the Brigantes that we must mainly turn, in order
to trace the progress of the Roman arms, and the extension of the
frontier of the Roman province beyond the Humber. The Romans appear to
have come in contact with the Brigantes for the first time in the course
of the war carried on by Publius Ostorius, appointed governor of Britain
in the year 50. That general had arrived in the island towards the end
of summer; and the Barbarians, or those of the Britons still hostile to
the Romans, believing he would not undertake a winter campaign, took
advantage of his arrival at so late a period of the year to make
incursions into the territory subject to Rome. Among these invading
tribes were probably the Brigantes; but the general, by a rapid and
energetic movement, put the enemy to flight, and it was on this occasion
that the province was protected against the western tribes by a chain of
forts. Having defeated the powerful nation of the Iceni, who endeavoured
to obstruct his purpose by an attack from a different quarter, and who
were destined at a subsequent period to place the Roman dominion in
Britain in the utmost jeopardy, Ostorius reduced the tribes within the
limits of the subjugated territory to entire obedience, and now turned
his attention to more aggressive measures against those beyond its
boundary.
His first attack was directed against the hostile tribes of the west,
and he had penetrated into their mountain territory nearly as far as the
sea, when he was obliged to turn his steps towards the north by the
threatening aspect of the powerful nation of the Brigantes, whom,
however, on this occasion he soon reduced to subjection. Those he found
in arms were cut to pieces, and the rest of the nation submitted.
On again turning his steps towards the west, he found the nations of the
Silures and Ordovices assembled under the command of the celebrated
native chief Caractacus, and a great battle took place, in which the
discipline of the Roman troops prevailed over the acknowledged bravery
of the natives, even although the latter occupied a well-chosen position
of unusual strength. The army of Caractacus was defeated, his wife and
daughter taken prisoners, while he himself fled for protection to
Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, but that queen, being then at
peace with the Romans, delivered him up to them.
On the death of Ostorius, which took place in the same year, Aulus
Didius was sent to Britain as the next commander, and under him a more
prolonged war with the Brigantes commenced, which throws some light on
their internal condition. After the defeat and death of Caractacus, the
most distinguished native leader was Venusius, a Brigantian, who
belonged to a sept of that nation termed by Tacitus the ‘Jugantes.’[32]
He had married Cartismandua, the queen of the whole nation, and, while
this marriage subsisted, had remained equally faithful to the Romans.
Dissensions, however, arose between them. Venusius was driven from his
throne, and his brother, with the rest of his kindred, seized by the
queen, who raised Villocatus, his armour-bearer, to her throne and bed.
This quarrel led to a civil war between the adherents of Venusius and
those of the queen, and this great nation became divided into two
factions.[33] That part of the nation which adhered to Venusius, and
which there is reason to believe consisted of the more northern tribes,
was from that time in active hostility to the Romans. They had attacked
Cartismandua, who was only enabled to maintain her position by obtaining
the assistance of the Roman army. The short but significant expressions
of Tacitus show that the war was not an easy one for the Romans, and
that they could do little more than maintain their own ground and the
position of their ally.
We hear no more of this war till after that great insurrection of the
Roman provincials under Boadicea or Bondiuca, queen of the Iceni, which
shook the Roman power in Britain to its foundation, and had nearly
resulted in their entire expulsion from the island. A struggle such as
the language of the historians shows this to have been must necessarily
have been a vital one on both sides; and hence, when the Roman arms
eventually prevailed, the result produced a firm consolidation of their
power in that part of the island which formed the Roman province. The
immediate subject before us—the extension of the Roman power towards the
north, and the gradual advance of the northern frontier of the
province—renders it unnecessary for us to dwell with any minuteness upon
their contests with the native tribes in other quarters. It is
sufficient to notice that Veranius succeeded Aulus Didius, but died
within the year, and that under Suetonius Paulinus, one of the most
distinguished of the Roman commanders in Britain, and the governor by
whom the great insurrection of the Iceni was finally quelled, the
western tribes were finally brought under the dominion of the Romans.
[Sidenote: A.D. 69. War with the Brigantes renewed.]
We find the Brigantes again in hostility to the Romans during the
government of Vettius Bolanus, which commenced in the year 69. Venusius
appears to have maintained an independent position and a hostile
attitude towards the Romans throughout, and a lengthened civil war had
continued to prevail between his adherents and that part of the nation
which remained subject to Cartismandua, and in this war the Romans once
more took part under Vettius Bolanus. Venusius was at the head of a
powerful army, and the subjects of the queen flocked daily to his
standard. Cartismandua was reduced to the last extremity, and invoked
the protection of the Romans, who sent troops to her assistance. The war
was prosecuted with varied success; many battles were fought; but
Venusius succeeded in obtaining the throne of the whole nation.[34]
Under Petilius Cerealis, the successor of Vettius Bolanus, who was sent
by the Emperor Vespasian to reduce the Brigantes, the war was brought to
a conclusion. With the assistance of a powerful army, which struck
terror into the natives, he attacked the whole nation of the Brigantes;
and, after a struggle, in which various battles were fought and much
slaughter took place, he subjected the greater part of the extensive
territory in the possession of that powerful nation to the Romans. This
conquest was maintained by his successor Julius Frontinus.[35]
It was during this war with the Brigantes, in which the Roman troops had
probably frequently approached the more northern portion of their
territories, that the Romans became aware of the name of the people who
occupied the country beyond them, and acquired some information
connected with these more northern and hitherto unknown districts. They
now learned the existence of a people to the north of the Brigantes,
whom they termed ‘Caledonii Britanni,’ or Caledonian Britons.[36] The
Western Sea which bounded them they termed the ‘Caledonius Oceanus.’[37]
The war under Vettius Bolanus had, it was supposed, reached the
Caledonian plains.[38] On the conclusion of the war the Roman province
approached the vicinity of the ‘Sylva Caledonia,’ or Caledonian
Forest.[39] They now knew of the ‘Promontorium Caledoniæ,’ or Promontory
of Caledonia, by which they must have meant the peninsula of Kintyre.
From thence could be seen the islands of the Hebudes, five in
number;[40] and they had heard reports of a singular state of society
among their inhabitants. It was reported that they knew nothing of the
cultivation of the ground, but lived upon fish and milk, which latter
implies the possession of herds of cattle. They had, it was said, one
king, who was not allowed to possess property, lest it should lead him
to avarice and injustice, or a wife, lest a legitimate family should
provoke ambition.[41] In short, they learned that there existed among
this new people a state of society similar to that which Cæsar reported
to have found among the indigenous inhabitants of the interior of
Britain. The Orkneys they already knew by report.
The name of Thule was familiar to them as an island whose situation and
attributes were entirely the creation of imagination. The geographers
knew of it as a remote island in the Northern Ocean, the type of
whatever was most northern in the known western world, as the expression
Hyperborean had been to the Greeks. The poets applied it as a poetical
appellation for that part of Britain which remained inaccessible to the
Roman arms, the seat of the recently known Caledonian Britons, and
which, from the deep indentation into the country of the Firths of Forth
and Clyde, and the narrow neck of land between them, presented the
appearance as if it were, to use the words of Tacitus, another island.
The peculiar customs of the ruder Britons are attributed to these
inhabitants of the poetic Thule. They are termed ‘Cærulei’ or Green,
from the woad with which they stained their bodies; and they are said to
have fought in chariots.[42]
[Sidenote: A.D. 78. Arrival of Julius Agricola as governor.]
Such was the state of Britain, and such the knowledge the Romans now
possessed of its northern districts and tribes, when, in the middle of
the summer of the year 78, Julius Agricola arrived to take the
government of Britain. The frontiers of the Roman province had been
extended over the western tribes of Wales, and advanced beyond the
Humber to the north, till they embraced the greater part of the
territories of the Brigantes, and its northern limit certainly touched
upon the Solway Firth in the north-west, while it did not probably fall
much short of the Firth of Forth on the north-east. The present southern
boundary of Scotland seems to have represented the northern limit of the
Roman province at this time, and Agricola was thus the first to carry
the Roman arms within the limits of that part of Britain which
afterwards constituted the kingdom of Scotland.
Agricola had every circumstance in his favour in commencing his
government which could tend to a distinguished result, and the
consciousness of this probably led him to desire to add the wild and
barren regions of the north to the acquisitions of Rome—a design which
could not be justified on any considerations of sound policy, and for
which, in encountering natives apparently of a different race, there was
little excuse. He had already served under three of the governors of
Britain, two of these, Petilius Cerealis and Suetonius Paulinus, among
the most distinguished. He was familiar with all the characteristics and
peculiarities of a war with the British tribes. He had acquired no small
renown for military talent and success, and had given evidence of those
enlarged conceptions of policy and views of government which could not
but greatly affect the state and progress of the province under his
charge.
The appointment of a new governor seems generally to have been a signal
to the persevering hostility of the British tribes to strike a blow for
their independence, till practical experience of the qualities of their
antagonist showed them whether success was likely to attend a
prosecution of the war; and accordingly the first year of a new
government appears always to have been marked by the insurrection of one
or more of the subjugated tribes. On the arrival of Agricola he found
the western nation of the Ordovices in open insurrection. The summer was
far advanced, and the Roman troops stationed at different quarters
expected a cessation of arms during the rest of the year; but, adopting
the policy of Suetonius, Agricola at once drew the troops together, and
attacking the enemy, the Ordovices were defeated in battle and entirely
crushed for the time. Agricola, still having the example of Suetonius
before him, followed up his advantage and accomplished what the latter
had attempted, the subjugation of the island of Mona or Anglesea.
Peace being restored, Agricola now directed his attention to a better
administration of the province, and to the introduction of those
measures most likely to lead to the consolidation of the Roman power and
the quiet submission of the inhabitants of the province. Justice and
moderation were the characteristics of his government. An equal
administration of the laws, and the removal of those burdens and
exactions which pressed most heavily upon the natives, could not but in
time have the desired effect.
[Sidenote: A.D. 79. Second Campaign of Agricola; over-runs districts on
the Solway.]
As soon as the summer of the next year arrived, Agricola proceeded to
carry into execution his deliberately-formed plan for the subjugation of
the northern tribes who had hitherto maintained their independence, and,
indeed, had not as yet come into hostile collision with the Roman power
in Britain. He appears to have directed his course towards the Solway
Firth, and slowly and steadily penetrated into the wild country which
stretches along its northern shore, and brought the tribes which
possessed it under subjection.[43] These tribes seem to have formed part
of the great nation of the Brigantes, a portion of whose territories had
remained unsubdued by his predecessor Petilius Cerealis. He surrounded
the subjugated tribes with forts and garrisons, and the remains of the
numerous Roman camps and stations, which are still to be seen in this
district, comprising the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and
Wigtown, attest the extent to which he had penetrated through that
country and garrisoned it with Roman troops. Between the hills which
bound Galloway and Dumfriesshire on the north and the Solway Firth on
the south, the remains of Roman works are to be found in abundance from
the Annan to the Cree, and surround the mouth of every river which pours
its waters into that estuary.[44] The great and extensive nation of the
Brigantes was now entirely included within the limits of the Roman
province; and Agricola saw before him a barren and hilly region which
divided it from the northern tribes, still comparatively unknown except
by name to the Romans, and with whom their arms had not yet come in
contact.
The following winter was devoted to reducing the turbulent character of
the nations recently added to the province to the quiet submission of
provincial subjects. The policy adopted was the effectual one of
introducing a taste for the habits and pleasures of civilised life. He
encouraged them to build temples, courts of justice, and houses of a
better description. He took measures for the education of the young. The
natives soon began to study the Roman language and to adopt their dress,
and by degrees acquired a taste for the luxurious and voluptuous life of
the Romans, of which the numerous remains of Roman baths which have been
discovered within the limits of the Brigantian territory afford no
slight indication.[45]
[Sidenote: A.D. 80. Third summer; ravages to the Tay.]
The third year introduced Agricola to regions hitherto untrodden by
Roman foot. He penetrated with his army through the hilly region which
separates the waters pouring their floods into the Solway from those
which flow towards the Clyde. He entered a country occupied by ‘new
nations,’[46] and ravaged their territories as far as the estuary of the
‘Tavaus’ or Tay. His course appears, so far as we can judge by the
remains of the Roman camps, to have been from Annandale to the strath of
the river Clyde, through Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire, whence he passed
into the vale of Stratherne by the great entrance into the northern
districts during the early period of Scottish history—the ford of the
Forth at Stirling, and the pass through the range of the Ochills formed
by the glen of the river Allan, and reached as far as where the river
Tay flows into the estuary of the same name.[47]
The country thus rapidly acquired was secured by forts, which, says the
historian, were so admirably placed, that none were either taken or
surrendered; and these we can no doubt still recognise in the remains of
those strong Roman fortified posts which we find placed opposite the
entrance of the principal passes in the Grampians—the stationary camps
of Bochastle at the Pass of Leny, Dealgan Ross at Comrie, Fendoch at the
pass of the Almond, the camp at the junction of the Almond and the Tay,
and the fort at Ardargie. These obviously surround the very territory
which Agricola had just overrun, and are well calculated to protect it
against the invasions of the natives from the recesses of the mountains,
into which the Roman arms could not follow them; while the great camp at
Ardoch marks the position of the entire Roman army. In consequence of
these posts being thus maintained, the Roman troops retained possession
of the newly-acquired territory during the winter.
[Sidenote: A.D. 81.
Fourth summer; fortifies the isthmus between Forth and
Clyde.]
Agricola, with his usual policy, took measures still further to secure
the country he had already gained before he attempted to push his
conquests farther; and the position of the Firths of Forth and Clyde,
and the comparatively narrow neck of land between these, presented
itself to him as so remarkable a natural boundary, that he fixed upon it
as the frontier of the future province. The fourth summer was therefore
spent in securing this barrier, which he fortified by a chain of posts
from the eastern to the western firth.[48] From the shores of the Forth
in the neighbourhood of Borrowstounness to Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde,
these forts extended westward at intervals of from two to three miles.
In front of them stretches what must have been a morass, and on the
heights on the opposite side of the valley are a similar range of native
hill-forts.
Having thus secured the country he had already overrun, Agricola now
prepared for the subjugation of the tribes which lay still farther to
the north. The formidable character of this undertaking, even to the
experienced Roman general, may be estimated by the cautious and
deliberate manner in which he prepared for a great struggle; and in the
position in which he then found himself, the conception of such a plan
must have required no ordinary power of firm determination. Before him,
the more northern regions were protected by a great natural barrier
formed by two important arms of the sea, which in any farther advance he
must leave behind him. Between these two estuaries he had drawn a line
of forts as the formal boundary, for the time, of the province. Beyond
them, at the distance of not many miles, were the forts he had placed
the year before the last, in which a few of the troops maintained
themselves in the precarious possession of a district he acknowledged to
be still hostile. On one side the rough line of the Fifeshire coast
stretched on the north side of Bodotria, or the Firth of Forth, into the
German Ocean. On the other a mountainous region was seen tending towards
the Caledonian or Western Ocean; and the northern horizon presented to
his view the great range of the so-called Grampians, extending from the
vicinity of the Roman stations in one formidable array of mountains
towards the north-east as far as the eye could reach. Of the extent of
the country beyond them; of the numbers and warlike character of the
tribes its recesses concealed; of whether the island still stretched far
to the north, or whether he was at no great distance from its northern
promontories; of whether its breadth was confined to what he had already
experienced, or whether unknown regions, peopled by tribes more warlike
than those he had already encountered, stretched far into the Eastern
and Western Seas, he as yet knew nothing.
[Sidenote: A.D. 82.
Fifth summer; visits Argyll and Kintyre.]
His first object, therefore, was to form some estimate of the real
character of the undertaking before him. With this view, and in order to
ascertain the character of the western side of the country before him,
he in the fifth summer crossed the Firth of Clyde with a small body of
troops in one vessel, and penetrated through the hostile districts of
Cowall and Kintyre till he saw the Western Ocean, with the coast running
due north, presenting in the interior one mass of inaccessible
mountains, the five islands of the Hebudes, and the blue shores of
Ireland dimly rising above the western horizon.[49] The character of the
country on the west being thus ascertained, he determined to make his
attack by forcing his way through the country on the east, and, fearing
a combination of the more northern tribes, he combined the fleet with
the army in his operations.
[Sidenote: A.D. 83-86.
Three years’ war north of the Forth.]
Having crossed the former in the beginning of the sixth summer to
explore the harbours on the coast of Fife, he appears to have had his
army conveyed across the Bodotria, or Firth of Forth, into the rough
peninsula of Fife on the north side of it, and to have gradually, but
thoroughly, acquired possession of the country between the Firths of
Forth and Tay, while his fleet encircled the coast of Fife, and
penetrated into the latter estuary. The appearance of the Roman fleet in
the Firth of Tay, making their way, as it were, into the recesses of the
country, naturally caused great alarm among the natives; and in order to
compel Agricola to abandon his attack on this quarter, they took up arms
and assailed the forts which had been placed by him in the country west
of the Tay in the third year of his campaigns.
That this movement was well devised appears from the proposal of many in
Agricola’s army to abandon the country they had just subdued, and fall
back upon the line of forts between the Firths of Forth and Clyde.
Agricola was at this time probably near the entrance of the river Tay
into its estuary, and the large temporary camp on the east bank of the
Tay opposite Perth, termed Grassy Walls, may have been his position.
Instead of adopting this course, he resolved, trusting to the security
of the forts against any attack, to meet the manœuvre of the natives by
prosecuting his attack upon the country extending from the east coast
north of the Tay to the range of the so-called Grampians; and in order
to prevent his army from being surrounded in a difficult country by
overwhelming numbers, he marched forward in three divisions.
His course, judging from the view his biographer Tacitus gives of his
tactics, must have been nearly in a parallel line with the river Tay—his
march being on the east side of it, and the enemy rapidly returning from
the west to oppose him. The position of the army in its forward march in
three divisions is very apparent in the remains of the Roman camps in
this district of the country. There is a group of three in a situation
remarkably applicable to his design and his position. The camp at
Cupar-Angus, which is farthest to the north of the three, probably
contained the main division of the army. Within little more than two
miles to the south-east is the camp at Lintrose, termed Campmuir, to
cover the country to the east; and as the enemy, he immediately
apprehended, were not in that quarter, in it he placed the ninth legion,
which was the weakest. At an equal distance on the south-west, and
overlooking the river Tay, was another camp, of which a strong post
still remains, and which obviously guarded the passage of the river.
The enemy, having learnt this disposition of the Roman army, resolved to
make a night attack upon its weakest division, and appear to have
crossed the river, passed the main body in the night, and suddenly
fallen upon the ninth legion. The camp at Lintrose has only one gate on
the side towards the larger camp at Cupar-Angus. On the opposite side
the rampart is broken in the centre by the remains of a morass. The
enemy forced their way through the gate, having taken the Romans by
surprise, and an engagement commenced in the very camp itself, when
Agricola, having received information of their march, followed closely
upon their track with the swiftest of the horse and foot from the main
division of the army, overtook them about daybreak, and attacked them in
the rear. The natives were now between two enemies, and a furious
engagement ensued, till they forced their way through the morass, and
took refuge in the woods and marshes.[50]
The Romans were now as much elated by this successful contact with the
enemy as they had before been alarmed, and demanded to be led into the
heart of Caledonia. The natives attributed their defeat to the fortunate
chance for the Romans of their being hemmed in between two forces, and
prepared for a more vigorous struggle the following year. A general
confederacy of the northern tribes was formed, and ratified by solemn
assemblies and sacrifices, and the two contending parties separated for
the winter, prepared for a vital contest when they resumed operations
next year. This campaign had lasted for two seasons, and Agricola
probably returned to the camp at Grassy Walls for winter quarters.[51]
The third season was destined to determine whether the Romans were to
obtain possession of the whole island, or whether the physical
difficulties of the mountain regions of the north, and the superior
bravery of its inhabitants, were at last to oppose an obstacle to the
further advance of the Roman dominion. Agricola commenced the operations
of this year by sending his fleet, as soon as summer arrived, down the
coast to the north, to operate a diversion by creating alarm and
ravaging the country within reach of the ships. He then marched forward
with his army nearly on the track of the preceding year, and crossed the
river Isla till he reached a hill, called by Tacitus ‘Mons
Granpius,’[52] on which the assembled forces of the natives were already
encamped under the command of a native chief, Calgacus, whose name is
indelibly associated with the great battle which followed.
[Sidenote: A.D. 86.
Battle of ‘Mons Granpius.’]
On the peninsula formed by the junction of the Isla with the Tay are the
remains of a strong and massive vallum, called Cleaven Dyke, extending
from the one river to the other, with a small Roman fort at one end, and
enclosing a large triangular space capable of containing Agricola’s
whole troops, guarded by the rampart in front and by a river on each
side. Before the rampart a plain of some size extends to the foot of the
Blair Hill, or the mount of battle, the lowest of a succession of
elevations which rise from the plain till they attain the full height of
the great mountain range of the so-called Grampians; and on the heights
above the plain are the remains of a large native encampment, called
Buzzard Dykes, capable of containing upwards of 30,000 men.
Certainly no position in Scotland presents features which correspond so
remarkably with Tacitus’s description as this, and we may suppose the
Roman army to have occupied the peninsula protected by the rampart of
the Cleaven Dyke in front, and Calgacus’s native forces to have encamped
at Buzzard Dykes. These two great armies would thus remain opposed to
each other at the distance of about three miles, the one containing the
whole strength of the native tribes still unsubdued, collected from
every quarter, and amounting to upwards of 30,000 men in arms, while the
youth of the country, and even men in years, were still pouring in, and
resolved to stake the fortunes of their wild and barren country upon the
issue of one great battle; the other, the Roman army of veteran troops,
flushed with past conquests, and confident in the well-proved military
talent of their general;—the one on the verge of their mountain country,
and defending its recesses, as it were, their last refuge; the other at
the termination of the extensive regions they had already won from the
Britons, and burning with desire to penetrate still farther, even to the
end of the island. Between them lay the Muir of Blair, extending from
the rampart at Meikleour to the Hill of Blair. On the east both armies
were prevented from extending in that direction, or from outflanking
each other, by the river Isla. On the west a succession of morasses,
moors, and small lochs extends towards the hills, and in this direction
the battle eventually carried itself.[53]
Such was the position of the two armies when the echoes of the wild
yells and shouts of the natives, and the glitter of their arms, as their
divisions were seen in motion and hurrying to the front, announced to
Agricola that they were forming the line of battle. The Roman commander
immediately drew out his troops on the plain. In the centre he placed
the auxiliary infantry, amounting to about 8000 men, and 3000 horse
formed the wings. Behind the main line, and in front of the great vallum
or rampart, he stationed the legions, consisting of the veteran Roman
soldiers. His object was to fight the battle with the auxiliary troops,
among whom were even Britons, and to support them, if necessary, with
the Roman troops as a body of reserve.
The native army was ranged upon the rising grounds, and their line as
far extended as possible. The first line was stationed on the plains,
while the others were ranged in separate lines on the acclivity of the
hill behind them. On the plain the chariots and horsemen of the native
army rushed about in all directions.
Agricola, fearing from the extended line of the enemy that he might be
attacked both in front and flank at the same time, ordered the ranks to
form in wider range, at the risk even of weakening his line, and,
placing himself in front with his colours, this memorable action
commenced by the interchange of missiles at a distance. In order to
bring the action to closer quarters, Agricola ordered three Batavian and
two Tungrian cohorts to charge the enemy sword in hand. In close combat
they proved to be superior to the natives, whose small targets and large
unwieldy swords were no match for the vigorous onslaught of the
auxiliaries; and having driven back their first line, they were forcing
their way up the ascent, when the whole line of the Roman army advanced
and charged with such impetuosity as to carry all before them. The
natives endeavoured to turn the fate of the battle by their chariots,
and dashed with them upon the Roman cavalry, who were driven back and
thrown into confusion; but the chariots, becoming mixed with the
cavalry, were in their turn thrown into confusion, and were thus
rendered ineffectual, as well as by the roughness of the ground.
The reserve of the natives now descended, and endeavoured to outflank
the Roman army and attack them in the rear, when Agricola ordered four
squadrons of reserve cavalry to advance to the charge. The native troops
were repulsed, and being attacked in the rear by the cavalry from the
wings, were completely routed, and this concluded the battle. The defeat
became general; the natives drew off in a body to the woods and marshes
on the west side of the plain. They attempted to check the pursuit by
making a last effort and again forming, but Agricola sent some cohorts
to the assistance of the pursuers; and, surrounding the ground, while
part of the cavalry scoured the more open woods, and part dismounting
entered the closer thickets, the native line again broke, and the flight
became general, till night put an end to the pursuit.
Such was the great battle at ‘Mons Granpius,’ and such the events of the
day as they may be gathered from the concise narrative of a Roman
writing of a battle in which the victorious general was his
father-in-law. The slaughter on the part of the natives was great,
though probably as much overstated, when put at one-third of their whole
army, as that of the Romans is under-estimated; and the significant
silence of the historian as to the death or capture of Calgacus, or any
other of sufficient note to be mentioned, and the admission that the
great body of the native army at first drew off in good order, show that
it was not the crushing blow which might otherwise be inferred.
On the succeeding day there was no appearance of the enemy; silence all
around, desolate hills and the distant smoke of burning dwellings alone
met the eye of the victor; but, notwithstanding his success, he
evidently felt that, with so difficult a country before him, and a
native army probably re-assembling in the recesses of a mountain region,
which, if gained, it would manifestly be impossible to retain, and
knowing too somewhat better what the great barrier of the so-called
Grampians was, both to the invading and the native army, he was in no
condition to follow up his advantage. The attempt to subjugate the
northern districts was substantially abandoned, and Agricola appears to
have crossed the Tay and led his army into the country which he had
overrun in the third year, and whose inhabitants are now termed
‘Horesti.’ Having taken hostages from them to prevent their joining the
hostile army, he returned to his winter quarters south of the Firths of
Forth and Clyde with his troops, while he directed his fleet to proceed
along the coast to the north till they had encircled the island.
This voyage the fleet accomplished, coasting round Britain till they
reached the Trutulensian harbour in the south, and then returned to
their station in the Firth of Forth, giving certain proof of its insular
character, and some indication of the extent and nature of the still
unsubjugated country. In the course of their voyage they passed and took
possession of the ‘Orcades’ or Orkneys in name of the Roman Empire, and
they saw the peak of a distant island to the north, which they concluded
might be the hitherto mysterious and unvisited Thule. They described as
peculiarly remarkable that great feature of Scotland, the long lochs or
arms of the sea penetrating into the interior of the country, and
winding among its mountains and rocks.
Thus terminated what proved to be Agricola’s last campaign in Britain.
Whether he resolved to renew the contest for the possession of the
barren region of the north, or had practically abandoned the attempt, we
know not, as the jealousy of the Emperor Domitian recalled him,
ostensibly for a better command, as soon as this great battle was known
in Rome. There is no doubt that he seriously contemplated the
subjugation of Ireland and its annexation to the Roman Empire. Had he
remained to fulfil this intention, the colour of the future history of
these islands might have been materially altered. As it was, the fruit
of his successes was lost, and the northern tribes retained their
independence. The result of his campaigns was that no permanent
impression was made on the country beyond the Tay, the limit of his
third year’s progress.
Such is the conception which we think may be fairly formed of Agricola’s
campaigns in Scotland, from a careful and attentive consideration of the
condensed narrative by Tacitus, taken in combination with an accurate
examination of the physical features of the country. They form too
important a feature at the very threshold of the history of the country,
and have been too much perverted by a careless consideration of the only
record we have of them, and the intrusion of extraneous or spurious
matter, to be passed over in less detail.
Agricola’s successor, Lucullus, was put to death on a trifling excuse by
the tyrant Domitian, and the entire country which had formed the scene
of these campaigns since the first appears to have fallen off from Rome
and resumed its independent state, the Roman province being again
limited to the boundary it possessed on the north when Agricola assumed
the government.
One result, however, was to add greatly to the knowledge the Romans
possessed of the island and its inhabitants, and to give them a
practical acquaintance with the tribes inhabiting Caledonia, and
hitherto known to them only by report, as the ‘Caledonii Britanni.’ The
expression of Tacitus in his narrative sufficiently indicates that they
were to be distinguished from the other Britons as a different race, at
least in some sense or degree as the ‘new nations,’ with whom Agricola
first came in contact in his third campaign. This and similar
expressions are applied to the tribes he encountered during that and the
subsequent years of his government; and the arguments of the historian
as to whether the inhabitants of the island were indigenous or an
immigrant population show that, while the Romans observed considerable
difference in the physical appearance of the different races, they were
not aware of any great distinction in their language. Tacitus considers
the question of origin as it affects the inhabitants viewed as one
nation. He says that the red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of
Caledonia might infer a German descent; the swarthy features and crisp
hair of the Silures, as well as their situation, which in the erroneous
notion of the position of Britain was supposed to be opposite Spain, an
origin from that country; but the other Britons, in all respects,
resembled the inhabitants of Gaul. His remarks have generally been
viewed as if he considered that the Britons consisted of three distinct
races, and that there were traditionary accounts of their respective
origins, but this is entirely to misapprehend the bearing of his
statements. They are arbitrary inferences merely, drawn by himself from
the difference in the physical appearance of different parts of the
nation whose origin he is treating of as a whole; and the general
conclusion he comes to is, that notwithstanding these appearances, the
whole country received its population from Gaul, differing in this
respect from the earlier account of Cæsar, who pronounces the
inhabitants of the interior to be indigenous. As one ground for this
general conclusion, Tacitus adds that their language did not greatly
differ from that of Gaul, which implies that there could have been no
very marked or striking difference of language among themselves. He says
that the Britons possessed the same audacity in provoking danger, and
irresolution in facing it when present. The former quality in a greater
degree, while the latter imputation in the main, is disproved, so far as
the northern tribes are concerned, by the narrative of the historian
himself which follows this statement in his Life of Agricola. He
observes one of the peculiar customs of the Britons among the
Caledonians—the fighting in chariots, which was now apparently confined
to the ruder tribes of the north; but it is remarkable that he alludes
neither to the practice of their staining their bodies with woad, nor to
the supposed community of women among them. He shows that, in the
wedge-like shape attributed to Britain by previous writers, Caledonia
was excluded as still unknown to them. In the language put by the
historian into the mouth of the Caledonian leader Calgacus, he implies
in the strongest manner that the tribes embraced in the designation he
usually gives them of inhabitants of Caledonia, were the most northerly
of the British nations; that no other people dwelt beyond them; that
they had neither cultivated lands, mines, nor harbours; and that he knew
of no state of society among them resembling the promiscuous intercourse
of women, as he mentions their children and kinsfolk, their wives and
sisters, in language only consistent with the domestic relation in
greater purity. He also implies that their normal condition was that of
small communities or ‘civitates,’ who were independent of each other,
and only united in one common action by a formal confederacy among
themselves.
The fruit of Agricola’s campaigns being thus so speedily lost to the
Romans, and the Caledonian tribes having, so far as subjugated by him,
resumed their independence immediately after his recall, matters appear
to have remained in the same state, in other respects, till the reign of
the Emperor Hadrian. On his accession in the year 117, the Britons would
seem to have threatened an insurrection; but of what really took place
during the interval of thirty-six years between the recall of Agricola
and the commencement of his reign we know nothing.
[Sidenote: A.D. 120.
Arrival of the Emperor Hadrian, and first Roman wall between
Tyne and Solway.]
In the year 120 Hadrian visited Britain in person, when he appears to
have put down any attempt at insurrection; and, having adopted, or
rather originated, the policy of defending the frontiers of the Roman
empire by great ramparts, he fixed the limits of the province in Britain
at a line drawn from the Solway Firth on the west to the mouth of the
river Tyne on the east, and constructed a great barrier designed to
protect it equally against the incursions of the Barbarians or
independent tribes to the north of it, and the revolt of those included
within the province. It consists of ‘three parts—a stone wall
strengthened by a ditch on its northern side; an earthen wall or vallum
to the south of the stone wall; and stations, castles, watch-towers, and
roads, for the accommodation of the soldiery who manned the wall, and
for the transmission of military stores. These lie, for the most part,
between the stone wall and earthen rampart.’ The stone wall extends from
Wallsend on the Tyne to Bowness on the Solway, a distance of
seventy-three and a half English miles. The earth wall falls short of
this distance by about three miles at each end, not extending beyond
Newcastle on the east, and terminating at Dykesfield on the west. The
result of the most recent examination of the wall is that the whole is
undoubtedly the work of Hadrian.[54]
Hadrian thus made no attempt to retain any part of the country conquered
by Agricola in his last campaigns, but withdrew the frontier in one part
even from where it had extended prior to Agricola’s government, in order
to obtain a more advantageous line for his favourite mode of defence.
-----
Footnote 19:
Orphei _Argonaut._ v. 1171, ἢν νήσοισιν Ἰέρνισιν ἆσσον ἵκωμαι.
Footnote 20:
Herodot. iii. 115.
Footnote 21:
Aristot. _De Mundo_, iii.
Footnote 22:
Polyb. iii. 87.
Footnote 23:
Ast hinc duobus in Sacram, sic insulam
Dixere prisci, solibus cursus rati est.
Haec inter undas multa cespitem jacet,
Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit.
Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet.
FESTUS AVIEN. _Ora Maritima_, 86.
Footnote 24:
Strabo, _Geog._ Lib. ii.
Footnote 25:
Cæs. _De Bello Gall._ v. 12-14.
Footnote 26:
Strab. _Geog._ Lib. iv.
Footnote 27:
Diod. Sic. v. 21.
Footnote 28:
Consularium primus Aulus Plautius præpositus ac subinde Ostorius
Scapula uterque bello egregius: redactaque paulatim in formam
provinciæ proxima pars Britanniæ.—TACIT. _in Vit. Ag._ 14.
Footnote 29:
The Antona has been supposed to be the Avon, and an emendation of the
text to Aufona has been proposed. This has been pronounced to be a
happy conjecture, but the author does not think so. Avon is derived
from no word that could possibly assume the form of Aufona; and it is
difficult to understand what a line of forts from the Avon to the
Severn was to accomplish. The Nen, which has also been suggested,
confines the province too much. It was more probably the Don, which
falls into the Humber. The Don and the Severn were connected by the
Fosseway and the forts along its line. That the province had reached
the frontier of the Brigantes in the reign of Claudius, may be
inferred from the lines of Lucius Annæus Seneca:—
Ille Britannos Ultra noti
Litora ponti Et cæruleos,
Scuta Brigantas Dare Romuleis,
Colla catenis Jussit, etc.
Footnote 30:
See chap. ii. note ^{63}.
Footnote 31:
Pomponius Mela (A.D. 45) mentions them—‘Triginta sunt Orcades,
angustis inter se ductæ spatiis: septem Hæmodæ, contra Germaniam
vectae’ (_De s. orb._ iii. 6). Eutropius has ‘quasdam insulas etiam
ultra Britanniam in Oceano positas Romano imperio addidit (Claudius)
quae appellantur Orcades’ (_Hist. Rom._ lib. iv. c. 13). It is
difficult to reconcile this statement with that of Tacitus, that
Agricola first made the Orcades known. That any conquest took place in
either case is unlikely, and they were probably annexed to the Roman
Empire in the sense in which an island in the Pacific, when first
observed, is declared to belong to Britain, and named Victoria. The
existence and position of the Orkneys may have become known under
Claudius, and first actually seen under Agricola.
Footnote 32:
The anonymous geographer of Ravenna gives a list of the towns of
Britain when the Romans left the island. Though plainly not stated in
any regular order, they are still manifestly grouped according to
situation, and those north and south of the walls can be clearly
distinguished. Among those north of the wall, between the Solway and
the Tyne, is the town called by him Venusio, and the identity of the
name shows its connection with Venusius.
Footnote 33:
Tacit. _Annal._ lib. xii. c. 40. The expression ‘regnum ejus invadunt’
shows that Cartismandua’s kingdom was now distinguished from that in
the interest of Venusius. ‘Acre prælium fecere cujus initio ambiguo
finis lætior fuit.’
Footnote 34:
Tacit. _Hist._ lib. iii. c. 45. Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola,
implies that Vettius did nothing, and was not equal to his position;
but in his sketch of the previous governors it is manifest that he
endeavours to enhance the fame of his hero by lessening the merits of
his predecessors. The account of the war is taken from his History,
where, although he does not name Vettius, it is plain that the events
there narrated happened during his government, and this accords with
the lines of Statius (see Note ^{38}), which, making due allowance for
a panegyrist, certainly imply a war, the result of which had reflected
credit upon him. The allusion to the Rex Britannus, from whom he took
the ‘thorax,’ is curious. Venusius is probably meant.
Footnote 35:
This narrative of the wars of the Romans with the provincials and the
Brigantes is condensed from Tacitus’s account in the Annals, the
History, and the Life of Agricola.
Footnote 36:
Lucan (A.D. 65) is the first who mentions them—
Aut vaga quum Tethys, Rutupinaque litora fervent,
Unda Caledonios fallit turbata Britannos.—(vi. 67.)
Martial (A.D. 96) says—
Quincte Caledonios Ovidi visure Britannos
Et viridem Tethyn Oceanumque patrem.—(x. 44.)
Footnote 37:
Valerius Flaccus (A.D. 70) says—
Caledonius postquam tua carbasa vexit
Oceanus.—(_Argon._ 1. 7.).
Footnote 38:
Statius (A.D. 96) has the following line in his panegyric upon Vettius
Bolanus—
Quanta Calydonios attollet gloria campos.
(v. 2. 140.)
Footnote 39:
Triginta prope jam annis notitiam ejus Romanis armis non ultra
vicinitatem Sylvæ Caledoniæ propagantibus.—(Plin. iv. 30.)
Footnote 40:
A Caledoniæ promontorio Thulen petentibus bidui navigatione perfecto
excipiunt Hebudes insulæ quinque numero.—(Solinus, _Polyhistor._ c.
22.)
Footnote 41:
_Ibid._
Footnote 42:
Silius Italicus (A.D. 68) says—
Hinc pater ignotam donabit vincere Thulen,
Inque Caledonios primus trahet agmina lucos (_Pun._ iii. 597);
and implies that the inhabitants of Thule had encountered the Romans
when he says, in another place—
Cærulus haud aliter, quum dimicat incola Thules,
Agmina falcifero circumvenit arta covinno.
Statius says of Vettius Bolanus—
Quantusque nigrantem
Fluctibus occiduis fessoque Hyperione Thulen
Intrarit mandata gerens....
Compare this with the line previously quoted.
Footnote 43:
The expression of Tacitus, ‘æstuaria ac silvas ipse prætentare,’ shows
that this was the scene of his campaign. It is only with reference to
the west coast, south of the Clyde, that such an expression is
applicable, and the Solway could hardly have been excluded from it. It
will be afterwards shown that the Selgovæ who occupied its northern
shore were a Brigantian tribe.
Footnote 44:
The position of the Roman camps and forts illustrates in a remarkable
manner the expression ‘præsidiis castellisque circumdatæ.’ It must be
kept in view, in following Tacitus’ narrative, that from the
peculiarity of his style every word is pregnant with meaning, and has
a precision which has been much overlooked.
Footnote 45:
Paullatimque discessum ad delenimenta vitiorum, porticus et balnea et
conviviorum elegantiam.—TACIT. _in Vit. Ag._, c. 21.
Footnote 46:
Novas gentes aperuit.
Footnote 47:
That in this campaign the Roman arms reached the Firth of Tay is
distinctly asserted by Tacitus, and his clear statement cannot be
explained away. Agricola could only reach it by two routes,—either
entirely by land through Stirlingshire and Perthshire, or across the
Firth of Forth through Fife. The former is most probable, as Tacitus
usually mentions crossing estuaries where it takes place; and the
latter route is moreover plainly excluded, as the nations on the north
shore of the Firth of Forth were still new to him in the sixth
campaign.
Footnote 48:
‘Quod tum præsidiis firmabatur.’ These were obviously different from
and farther south than the forts mentioned in the previous campaign.
The expression ‘summotis velut in aliam insulam hostibus’ is the
significant one used in fixing the barrier between the provincial
Britons and the Barbarians (see chap. ii. note ^{70}), and implies
that Agricola’s intention was to add the conquered country south of
the firths to the province. ‘Summotis’ does not here or elsewhere mean
the actual driving out of the natives, but that those within the line
of separation had ceased to be ‘hostes.’
Footnote 49:
The operations of this year have much perplexed historians. The
obvious inference from the passage is that Argyllshire was the region
he visited, and the author has entered thus minutely into the
consideration of what Agricola had to accomplish, and his evident
policy, to show that this was the natural step he would take. It has
generally been supposed that he turned back upon his steps, and that
Galloway was the country ‘opposite to Ireland’ that he visited; but,
as we have seen, its inhabitants could not have been said to be ‘ad id
tempus ignoti,’ and the language of the early geographers rather
characterises Kintyre and the Hebrides as what impressed them most as
overhanging Ireland. Chalmers, in order to avoid the plain inference
from the passage, is driven to suppose that the Tavaus of the third
campaign was the Solway, and that Agricola had advanced no farther,
but this is quite inadmissible. The only alternative, that he crossed
the river Clyde from north to south and entered Ayrshire, is equally
inconsistent with Tacitus’s brief but precise language. Early writers
speak of the Clyde as fordable as far down as Dumbarton, and his
natural course would be to return by the same route as he came.
Tacitus clearly states that he crossed ‘navi in proxima,’ which shows
that it was the estuary, and not the river. The Roman fleet was then
probably in the Firth of Forth, and the expression seems to imply that
he took the first native vessel he could get. There is on an elevated
moor in Cowall, between the Holy Loch and Dunoon, the remains of a
small square fort which has all the appearance of a Roman exploratory
station. It commands an extensive view, in one range, of the entire
Firth to its mouth, the river Clyde for many miles of its straight
course, and Loch Long penetrating in another direction into what was
known to the Romans as the Caledonian Forest, and, if it is a Roman
work, adds strength to the natural reading of the passage, and the
expression, ‘copiis instruxit,’ is singularly applicable.
Footnote 50:
Chalmers has narrated the Roman campaigns with a strange affectation
of military language. He makes the Roman troops debouch, defile, and
deploy through the hills and in the glens in the most wonderful
manner, so as to have rendered the cutting off of the whole army at
any point of their progress no very difficult task to the natives. He
involves the troops in this march, when the army was divided into
three, among the remains of small camps in the hilly region of the
west of Fife in a manner to render the real account of the transaction
very unintelligible. General Roy, with correcter military knowledge,
but without attending to the narrative with sufficient minuteness, is
not more fortunate. He supposes that Agricola’s position was at the
camp at Ardoch, and that, when he divided his army into three, he
remained there with the main division, and sent the ninth legion to
Comrie, and the other division to Strageath, at both of which places
there are the remains of Roman camps; but, independently of the
expression ‘incessit,’ which implies a march forward, conceive an able
general sending the weakest legion into the heart of the Grampians, at
a distance of nine miles from the main body, through an almost
impassable country. So far from preventing the army from being
surrounded, it sent its weakest division into the midst of the enemy.
In what sense, too, could Agricola be said to have followed on the
enemy’s track, and how could he, between night and daybreak, have
received news of the attack, and have traversed what must have been,
without roads, a long day’s march? It is obvious, on a careful
attention to Tacitus’s expressions, that the three divisions could
have been at no great distance from each other, and the main division
nearest the enemy. There is a plan of the camp at Lintrose in General
Roy’s _Military Antiquities_, Plate XIV., which will show how
singularly it corresponds with the narrative.
Footnote 51:
Tacitus commences the campaign in which the ninth legion was attacked
by stating that it was in the sixth year of Agricola’s administration;
and in his speech before the battle at Mons Granpius he says it was
then the eighth year, and that the attack on the ninth legion had
taken place the preceding year. This apparent discrepancy has been
usually solved by supposing the word eighth a mistake for seventh, but
it is more probable that the previous campaign had lasted two years.
Tacitus, after the fifth year, ceases to mark the separate campaigns
with the same precision, and, perhaps, was not unwilling to gloss over
the little real progress that had been made during the last three
years. The expression, ‘Ad manus et arma conversi Caledoniam
incolentes populi,’ probably marks the commencement of the second year
of the campaign.
Footnote 52:
In a recent edition of the Life of Agricola, from two Vatican MSS., by
Carolus Wex, published in 1852, he substitutes Tanaus, Mons Graupius,
and Boresti, for the Taus, Mons Grampius, and Horesti of the ordinary
editions as the correct reading of these MSS., and Mr. Burton has at
once adopted the two former readings. The author, however, questions
their accuracy. It is hardly possible to distinguish _u_ from _n_ in
such MSS., and they are constantly interchanged. That Tauaus is the
correct reading of the first, is plain from the form of the name in
Ptolemy, Ταούα or Tava, and the real form of the second he cannot
doubt was Granpius. The combination of a _u_ or _v_ with a labial is
rarely met in Celtic words. That of the dental with the labial is very
common, as in Banba, an old name for Ireland; Conpur, where the same
combination occurs. As to the third there is fortunately an
inscription on a Roman altar at Neuwied, brought from the Roman
station of Nieder Biebr on the Rhine, where some British cohorts in
the Roman army were stationed in the third century, in the following
terms:—
Idus Octob. Giinio
Hor. N. Brittonum
A. Ib. kiomarius op. fi
Us. posit tum quinta
nensis pos. nt. v. h. m.
which Mr. Roach Smith thus renders:—Idus Octobris Genio Horestorum
numeri Brittonum. A. Ibkiomarus Obfius posuit titulum quintanensis
posuerunt votum hoc monumentum (_Collectanea_, ii. part v. p. 133),
which seems to leave no doubt as to Horesti being the correct form,
and does not inspire one with much confidence in Wex’s new readings,
sanctioned as they are by Mr. Burton.
Footnote 53:
There has been no point in the history of the Roman occupation of
Scotland which has been more contested, or made the subject of more
conflicting theories, than the position of this great battle. Gordon
thought it was at Dealgan Ross, near Comrie. Chalmers, with, less
difficulty, from the size of the camp, at Ardoch; others in Fife, and
latterly a favourite theory has placed it at Urie in Kincardineshire.
Mr. Burton abandons the attempt as hopeless.
The conclusion the author has come to is, that a careful examination
of the narrative, compared with the physical features of the country,
rightly apprehended, points to the site he has selected, and that it
presents features which remarkably correspond with the description of
the battle. This position was originally suggested in the _Statistical
Account of the Parish of Bendochy_, published in 1797 (O. S. A. v. 19,
p. 367), but has not received the attention it deserves.
The combined action of the fleet—præmissa classe—as well as the
history of the previous campaigns, exclude any position west of the
Tay; and if Dealgan Ross is evidently not the place, from the limited
size of the camp, Ardoch is equally objectionable, from there being no
hill near which answers the description of ‘Mons Granpius.’ The
expression ‘transisse æstuaria’ in the plural, in Agricola’s speech,
places it north of the Firth of Tay. The position at Urie involves the
improbability that he marched for several days parallel to the range
of the so-called Grampians, if his route was by Strathmore, and there
are no camps to indicate a march nearer the coast before the battle
was fought. The remains of this ‘vallum’ or rampart between the Isla
and the Tay are still among the most remarkable Roman works in
Scotland, and are known by the name of the Cleaven Dyke. It seems to
have been the work of the same general who constructed the great camp
at Ardoch, for, in connection with the latter, was a small work of an
octagonal shape, with many ramparts, and the only other specimen the
author has observed of a similar work is at the east end of the
Cleaven Dyke.
Footnote 54:
See for an elaborate description of this wall Mr. Collingwood Bruce’s
exhaustive work, _The Roman Wall, a Description of the Mural Barrier
of the North of England_, third edition, 1867. The main authority for
Hadrian’s work in Britain is Ælius Spartianus (181), who says, ‘Ergo
conversis regio more militibus, Britanniam petiit: in qua multa
correxit, murumque per octaginta millia passuum primus duxit, qui
Barbaros Romanosque divideret.’—(_De Hadr._ 11.)