Culture in early Scotland

Front matter

BY JAMES MACKINNON, M.A., Ph.D., Author of "South African Ti-aits," and " Ninian und sein Einfluss. LONDON : WILLIAMS & NORGATE. 1892. PRINTED AT THE DARIEN PRESS, BRISTO PLACE, EDINBURGH. TO WILHELM ONCKEN DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GIESSEN, AND ONE OF GERMANY'S MOST DISTINGUISHED CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS, A SMALL TRIBUTE TO THE WORTH OF THE MAN, THE INSPIRING POWER OF THE PROFESSOR, AND THE WELL-EARNED REPUTATION OF THE EDITOR OF, AND CONTRIBUTOR TO, THE MONUMENTAL WORK, " Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzel-Darstellungen."

Preface

. The subject treated in the following chapters embraces the Prehistoric, Roman, and Celtic Christian Culture of Scotland. Though North Britain was not known by the name of Scotland before the eleventh century, and the term Scotia must always be understood of Ireland previous to that time, I have retained it as most convenient, while not limiting myself exactly to the modern territorial boundary. As I explain further on, I use the word culture in a wide sense to denote anything of interest in the social, religious, and intellectual condition of a people. I have in a critical, yet, I trust, unbiassed spirit, gathered my material from every source fitted to throw light on what is in some portions of it an obscure subject. In treating such portions I have largely used the illustrative method, aiming to set before the reader a suggestive general picture of a state of things with which the want of sufficient information baffles a detailed acquaintance.

Happily, however, the testimony of archæology, of folk-lore, and of the older historians such as Bæda, Gildas, Adamnan, and others, who have noticed ancient Scotland, has enabled me to deal in a more direct fashion with other periods in the culture of our forefathers. Happily, too, there are not wanting outstanding figures within the pale of the historic epoch, treated in the second and third books, whose lives may be taken as an epitome of the culture of their age. While giving in the footnotes the authorities on whom I base some statement or conclusion, I have refrained from lingering in the text over intricate and dry processes of archæological or historical

PREFACE.

. reasoning, and have striven to render the story of our past readable as well as instructive. This merit cannot be claimed, with the rarest exceptions, for the treatises on the history or archæology of Scotland, which are irksome reading to all but the knowledge-thirsty student. Whilst I acknowledge my obligations to the scholars whose in dustry and erudition have done much for the elucidation of our early civilisation, I claim the indulgence of the reader in making an independent attempt to portray the culture of early Scotland in the sense of the German " cultur." In regard both to the method of treatment adopted, and the conclusions come to, I would remark, in the words of a great modern English historian,* that " in fairness the author has a right to demand that his critic should have tried to put himself in his place, and look at the subject from his standpoint." * Stubbs, " Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History," p. 60. CONTENTS.

Book I

— PREHISTORIC CULTURE. PAGE

Chapter I

— INTRODUCTORY. Culture and its survival — The dawn of written record — The archives of the soil and their interpretation — Principle of arrangement — Intervening stages — Intermingling of objects — The interest and importance of old things, I

Chapter II

— THE SAVAGE. Development, not degradation, the course of man — Interrupted by relapse or decay — Records of primeval British savage in the gravel beds of Ice Age — Conditions of life — Beginning of history of art — Architecture of of Later Stone Age — Cairns and their contents — Their builders — Additional evidence — The living representative of the Stone Age savage — The qualities with which he is credited, ....... 9

Chapter III

— WORK AND PROGRESS. Development represented by Bronze — Ethnology of new race — Non-survival of human dwellings — Stone circles the silent monuments of forgotten history — Their fictitious interest — Family or district cemeteries — Their significance from standpoint of culture — Moral anomalies — Mode of life — Abundance of gold — Community rude, but influence of elevating forces, .... •9

Chapter IV

— ARCHITECTURE AND WAR. Advent of the Celt — Celtic art — The light-bearing dawn of history — Architectural remains — Human dwellings — The brochs and their inhabitants— Lake dwellings and earth houses, and their occupants — Inferences from these structures in harmony with first historic glimpses — The significance of their defensive character in connection with tribal division — Effort to maintain the community and the home — Tales of Greek romancers — Barbarian, not savage culture — The reality of things, 5- CONTENTS. X

Chapter V

— CELTIC PAGANISM. PAGE No written literature in prehistoric times— Existence of religious culture in earlier ages— Religious culture of pagan Celts —A priestridden people— Patriotism of Druids and their suppression by the Romans— The British hierarchy in Tacitus— The Celtic Pantheon— Superstitious remains of paganism— Burns's " Hallowe'en "—Moral power of Druidic cult— Moral condition of British Celts— Tacitus's estimate of northern tribes, .... 48

Chapter I

— THE PLASTIC TOUCH OF ROME. Scotland as part of Roman empire — Relations of Britain to Rome — Heterogeneous character of settlers — Roman conquest at first a beneficial revolution — Transformation effected in South and North— Hostile relations between Roman and Pict — Edinburgh a Roman settlement — Along the Wall of Antoninus— Traces of the refined products of Italy— The "Pompeii" of Britain —Intellectual culture— Greek culture in the Roman world — Travelling libraries — Material and social condition of Roman Britain — The dark side of the picture — How colony regarded — Misgovernment and character — Indirect influence of Rome beyond Forth — Long continued hostility, ...... 65

Chapter II

— THE BROKEN GODS AND CHRISTIANITY. Variety of religions — Toleration — Religious earnestness — Comprehensiveness of the polytheist — Cosmopolitanism — Religion the nurse of Art — Intolerant treatment of Christianity — Displaced paganism, perpetuated Empire — Its power — Stoicism as competitor — Paucity of Christian relics in Roman Britain — Extravagance of legend — The Fathers and British Church — No national Church, . S5

Chapter III

— NINIAN : HIS AGE AND HIS INFLUENCE Bæda's reference to Ninian — Legendary lives — The spell wielded by Rome — Influence of Roman bishop in West — British Church affected by this ecclesiastical influence — The monastic movement — Missionary spirit — St Martin at Marmoutier — Key to the chronology of Ninian's life — Gaulish artisans in Britain — Candida Casa — The tragic CONTENTS. PAGE character of his age — Extent of his labours — Political significance — His mission a practical inspiration — His teaching — Blended with superstition — Date of death, ....... IOO

Chapter IV

— TWO CENTURIES OF CLAIR-OBSCURE. Still in touch with Roman culture — Gildas — Traditional and historic importance — " Concerning the Destruction of Britain " — Saxon invasion, and the struggles of rival chiefs — Effects on culture — Candida Casa, the first Scottish university — Bardic poetry — Germanus and the British Church — Gildas on the condition of the clergy- - Relapse into paganism in the North — Indirect influence of St Patrick — Arthur as culture hero — Kentigern — Biography by Joceline— Bishop of Strathclyde — Community at Glasgow — Retirement to Wales — Estimate of reputation and influence — Pope Gregory on the decay of Rome, 121

Chapter I

— COLUMBA AND IONA. Celtic culture and the barbarism of Roman empire — Political state of Ireland — The monastery a national institution — Columba and Adamnan — Royal descent and boyhood — Activity in Ireland — His missionary pilgrimage to Iona, an act of penance ? — Monastery at Iona — King Brude — Conversion and Druid opposition — Columba's life rich in significant incident — Plan of operations — Monastic churches — Contemporary missionaries from Ireland — Estimate of results — Cormac and the spirit of adventure — The community at Iona — Intellectual culture of school — The personality of Columba, . 145

Chapter II

— THE CELTIC MISSIONARY IN NORTHUMBRIA. Columba's mission continued and consolidated — Iona and the outside world — Teutonic conquest of Northumbria— Norseman or Saxon ? — Culture of invader— The spirit of freedom — Reverence for the supernatural — The Witenagemot in favour of Christianity — Liberality and sagacity of Roman Church — Penda and Oswald — Aidan at Lindisfarne— King and bishop — Renewed disorder— Oswin and Aidan — Bæda's tribute — Penda as type of pagan Anglo-Saxon chief— Monastic establishments CONTENTS. PAGE between Forth and Humber — Anglo-Saxon youth and Irish seminaries — Intercourse between North and Con tinent, and revival of Roman culture — Friction be tween Roman and British Churches — Controversy in Northumbria — Importance for intellectual life of period — St Peter versus Columba — Bæda's appreciation of the worth of Celtic monks — Toleration incompatible with spirit of age — Decision in favour of unity, instructive political lesson for Saxon and Celt — Brings North into close touch with broader, more refined culture — Trace in Adamnan of more pliable spirit at Iona towards it — His literary distinction — King Nechtan — Rome at length conquers Grampians, ..... 172

Chapter III

— THE MONK OF MELROSE. Life of Cuthbert — An epitome of Celtic Christian culture — His boyhood, and quickness of fancy — Student under Boisel at Melrose — His contemporay Wilfrid — Almoner at Ripon — Cuthbert as wandering preacher — At Lindisfarne — Anchorite on the islet of Fame — Morbid spiritualism — Practical effects — Cuthbert as bishop of diocese of Lindisfarne — National calamity — Death, and last words, ....... 199

Chapter IV

— DEGENERATION AND DECAY. Meagre literary sources for history of Celtic period — Political condition of the country — Ravages of the Norsemen — Martyrdom of Blaithmac and Adrian — Seizure of ecclesiastical property and disorganisation of Church — Interruption of connection with Ireland — Caddroe — The Culdees — Roman ecclesiastical revival in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ..... 215

Chapter V

— THE CELTIC MONASTERY. Testimony of archæology— Architectural remains — The Celtic monk on the Continent — Monastery as literary workshop—Manuscripts and art — The monkish sculptor — Disciple of the scribe — Illustrative of the life of period — Object-lesson in religion — Sculptor as moralist — Ogham inscriptions, .....

Chapter I. Introductory

I USE the word culture in a general sense. It embraces the mental condition of man and its modes of expression, — whatever, in short, is of interest and importance in the condition of a people. It refers to its intellectual and moral state, its sense of art or its manual skill, its customs and social institutions, &c, as far as these may be inferred, or have been handed down by written record. The term is usually applied to denote intellectual acquisition or refinement, and viewed in this sense may appear entirely out of its element in conjunction with the words barbarian or savage. It may seem, at first sight, to be degrading gold with a coating of tin. But culture need not be the equivalent for high intellectual refinement or attainment, though it has come to have this special meaning in literary phraseology.

The history of the race, as of the individual, is a history of development, and every stage of civilisation indicates a grade of culture, however low it may be. There'is such a thing, then, as primitive culture, and the manner in which the primitive man thinks and acts is truly a phase of that growth by which the highly refined man has reached maturity. The culture of to-day rests indeed on that of primeval ages, and it is not difficult to find in the customs, the traditions that have survived from the remote past, the traces of its presence and its A influence. "Survival in culture," says Dr Tylor, "placing all along the course of advancing civilisation waymarks full of meaning to those who can decipher their signs, even now sets up in our midst primitive monuments of barbaric thought and life."* We may feel a vast gulf between ourselves and our primeval ancestors, who lived in caves and hunted with the flint arrowhead, and in many respects we cannot be said to be related by any bond of sympathy.

The influences which shape our thoughts are largely different, for instance ; still there is the race connection, there is the human spirit, in whose workings a real though rude soul reflects itself. Genius there may not be in our sense of the term, but reason certainly, and we must be shortsighted and supercilious to a degree if we can perceive no trace of our likeness in the reflection. In the case of a highly civilised country, the indications of this lower culture must be looked for in the archives of the soil, in those prehistoric deposits of objects found in the graves of the dead, or left on purpose or by accident in the sand or the moss by the living. The dawn of written record broke comparatively late for manypeoples, and beyond their first appearance in history there lie long ages of silence, whose secrets are but meagrely and dimly disclosed by the researches of the archæologist.

This is markedly the case with Britain, lying, as it does, in a remote north-western corner of Europe, far from the scene of the earlier civilisations. Though not unknown to the Greeks of the time of Pytheas, the Humboldt of antiquity, who visited it and the islands northward of it in the middle of the fourth century B.C., and connected by traffic with the Greek merchants of Massilia (Marseilles), the informa tion derived from historic sources is extremely fragmentary before the Roman invasion. It is not indeed till the age of Domitian that the pregnant pen of Tacitus, in describing the campaigns of his father-in-law, Agricola, touches on the martial tribes of Caledonia, and, unfortunately, he has not immortalised their manners in the same systematic and graphic way that he has those of the Germans.

From this time to the advent of the Christian missionary * " Primitive Culture," p. 21. ARCHIVES OF THE SOIL. 3 we get occasional glimpses of the barbarian inhabitants of- Northern Britain from foreign authors like Dion Cassius and Ammianus Marcellinus, which we shall notice later on. Of this written information we shall make use as tending to some extent to reflect the prehistoric culture with which we purpose to deal in this book, but for the ages which preceded Roman governor and Christian missionary we must have recourse chiefly, as I have said, to the archives of the soil. These afford us, however, a varied and eloquent tale of the peoples that have successively colonised our northern land in prehistoric times, or are found contemporaneously occupying it during its earliest historic period.

The surface of the country may, in fact, be compared to a manuscript in which the record of the culture of many nations, who have marked their presence, if not with pen and ink, in the less coherent but still eloquent characters of their weapons and implements, their monuments and ornaments, is strangely interwritten. Finn and Goidel, Brython and Roman, Saxon and Norseman, and may be others long forgotten, have contributed their share to this record, which the soil of the country has preserved. We may not, in the shadowy light that falls on it, especially in considering the remains of the remoter cultures of the Stone and Bronze Ages, hit on the right interpretation of this intricate record ; but the writing is there, and our archæologists can at least claim that they have done their best to decipher it.

And not without result. We may hesitate, for instance, before accepting the evidences of Phœnician influence, and an elaborate Druidic cult, which Colonel Leslie Forbes* finds in the mysteriously inscribed blocks of stone in Aberdeenshire, but to any man of trained observation, the objects which the primeval mourner placed in the graves of the departed so far explain themselves, and Sir Daniel Wilson, Dr Anderson, Dr Monro, and others have interpreted those and other prehistoric remains, in their monumental works on Scottish archæology, with an enthusiasm tempered by a scientific spirit. Their inferences as to the social condition and moral character, for instance, of the men who used the implements and * "The Early Races of Scotland.' weapons and erected the cairns and stone circles of the Stone and Bronze periods, seem to me too flattering at times (of which more anon), and the vagueness that hangs like a dreamy haze over the remote past will not be disenchanted even by enthusiasm and science.

But facts speak for themselves and tell us something definite, whether our general conclusions be right or wrong. An important question suggests itself at the outset. Can the mass of objects recovered from their lair under neath the surface of the soil be arranged in intelligible order, so as to yield some sort of connected story? Is there a means of distinguishing objects representing a more remote culture from those which may represent a less remote one ? A gradual succession of date is of course impossible where no written record exists to guide us, but there is a principle of arrangement which, in some degree, supplies its place. It is as simple as it is obvious. The method is just to proceed, as a rule, from the ruder things to the less rude, from the simple to the less simple, from the stone or bone which came more easily to the hand of primitive man to the metal which required for its production a skill and observation gained by increased experience.

The tribes of the human race, which occupy the lowest level of civilisation in our modern world, have been found to be those who worked or hunted with instruments fashioned of bone or stone. Wherever there is a knowledge of the metals, the degree of culture is correspondingly higher. This order of development is thus as historically certain as it is intuitively probable. But there still remains the question as to the order in the use of the metals. Here again the amount of skill and experience necessary for their production suggests the answer. The knowledge and use of copper and tin must precede the manufacture of bronze, which marks one of the epochs in the history of inventive genius, and which forms the natural stepping stone to a discovery still more significant in the history of culture— the smelting of iron.

It is not necessarily evident that the manufacture of iron in every case succeeded that of bronze. It is conceivable that the former process may have been discovered by some sagacious individual among INTERVENING STAGES. 5 a people to whom the fusion of copper with tin was unknown. The modern savage, we know, passed in many instances, by contact with the European merchant or colonist, from the use of stone or bone or wood to that of iron without any intervening stage. But it is certain that the possession of iron instruments denotes a higher condition of culture than the use of the less serviceable alloy of copper and tin, and we may safely regard the conventional divisions of prehistoric time into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages as accurately expressing progressive stages in the culture of our insular ancestors.

Of course, there may have been, probably were, intervening stages corresponding to the use of other materials besides these three. Articles of tin, copper, and lead are also found amid the remains of our prehistoric insular culture. Among the American Indians, tribes have been found using only instruments of copper, and axes of this material existed in Scotland, Italy, and Hungary-. Herodotus informs us that the Massagetæ, a people living near the Caspian Sea, had no iron or silver, but plenty of gold and copper. Their lances and axes were of copper, and their caps and belts were decorated with golden ornaments.* It is more than likely that in a country where copper was not unplentiful, and which is easily worked, there was a time when the awakening intelligence of the savage fashioned instruments of this material, or used it as he did the gold and tin, for making the ornaments with which he decorated himself.

But copper, tin, or lead do not singly possess the qualities which go to produce a serviceable instrument, and thus we do not find them in the abundance which lends such a typical distinction to the objects made of iron, bronze, or stone. These divisions may thus not be quite exhaustive, but they are not arbitrary, like many of the divisions which the historian makes when dealing with written record, and discussing the progress of events or the growth of institutions. In these we may sometimes perceive the reflection of opinion * Herodotus, i., c. 215 : " They make great use of gold and copper ; they use no silver or iron." rather than the indication of fact. But stone, bronze, and iron mark with unmistakable emphasis so many stages in human experience and progress. This principle of arrangement, according to these three prevailing types of material, may be objected to on the ground that, though we may separate them on the shelves of a museum into their respective periods, they are often found together in the same deposit, as if the man who owned an iron sword, also wore a bronze armring, and used a stone hammer or drinking cup.

It is very probable that he did, nay, it is certain. We must guard against the mistake of supposing that the objects embraced by these divisions stand out distinct and unconnected. The use of bronze did not result in the discontinuance of the use of stone, nor that of iron in the disappearance of its two predecessors. The advance of the human race is by gradual development rather than by distinct leaps, and while there is progress by new departures, there is the survival of the old along with it. Our modern culture, as I have already remarked, comes not merely from, say, the resplendent antiquity of Athens or Rome, but from the days as well when what is now the rush-covered mass of stones and mud in some bog or " mere " was a lake dwelling, and from a past reaching even further back. But there is a means of deciding whether weapons or implements of stone, bronze, or iron recovered from the soil really belong to the age when this material furnished the means of making war or obtaining sustenance.

When we find only fragments of stone tools in a grave, we may safely take this as an indication that the mourners who placed them there were unacquainted with anything else. Or should we light upon some cemetery of the Bronze Age, and dig up a collection of bronze weapons and ornaments, with perhaps an urn bearing a peculiar style of ornamentation, we may quite as safely conclude that they mark the last resting-place of one who fought with weapons of bronze, but who had never wielded a sword or an axe of iron. So too, — apart from the objects themselves, — the type of structure in which theyare found, or of the art by which they are decorated, enables the archæologist to OLD THINGS. 7 denote what stage in the culture of our forefathers these things represent. These old things, which thus arrange themselves in the cases or on the shelves of an antiquarian museum, like that of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at Edinburgh, are replete with living interest, when we try to realise their importance.

For one thing, they come to us as messengers from the dead, because, as I have already observed, the workers of these remote periods, living as it were at the back of time, wrote the outlines of their existence with the weapons or implements they fashioned. Be it remembered, too, in considering this message in bronze or stone or iron, that the effort of skill necessary to conceive and produce a gracefully fashioned and chastely decorated urn, for example, is no contemptible evidence of that intelligence in the individual which is the secret spring of progress in the community. And these things appeal not merely to the speculative reason, but to the imagination as well. They reflect upon the dim canvas of the remote past a picture which is not without its fascination, all the more that it is so unlike the world in which we live.

We feel as if looking into the unseen, not the to be, but that which has been and vanished. The finding of some article, it may be thousands of years old, three or four feet beneath the present surface of the soil, is an unveiling of the past akin to that which we strive, during moments of longing or reflection, to wring from the vague future, and lends an interest to some waste and barren spot more real than poet inspired could give it. Truly the archæologist has his hours of romance, and if we catch him sometimes dreaming rather than soberly reasoning, we must not forget that dreams now and then foreshadow or reflect a truth. At all events, his inductions add to the poetry of the past. Sir Daniel Wilson,* for instance, finds in the now desolate hillsides of parts of Argyleshire indications of a degree of cultivation having existed at some former period far beyond what is exhibited in that locality at the present day.

And such evidences of ancient population and industry are, he informs us, by no means confined to the remote districts of * " Prehistoric Annals of Scotland," p. 231. ancient Dalriada. They occur in many parts of Scotland, startling the believer in the unmitigated barbarism of the country, prior to the mediæval era, with the evidence of a state of prosperity and civilisation at some remote epoch, the date of which has yet to be ascertained. Another significant glimpse of this kind, to mention but one more example, was afforded by the discovery of two pairs of celt moulds in the parish of Rosskeen, Ross-shire. " The site of this interesting discovery," says the same author,* " is about four miles inland, on the north side of the Cromarty Firth, on a moor which the proprietor is reclaiming from the wild waste and restoring once more to the profitable service of man.

In the progress of this good work abundant evidence demonstrated the fact that the same area, from which the accumulated vegetable moss of many centuries is now being removed, had formed the scene of a busy, intelligent, and industrious population." * Pp. 223, 224. PROGRESSION, NOT DEGRADATION. 9

Chapter II. The Savage

WE may, without being guilty of calumniating the dead, pronounce our ancestors of the Stone Age savages. However eloquently the archæologist may draw pictures of their skill or their taste, the fact will not be blinked. The evidence, such as it is, reveals, for the most part, a state of w-retchedness and rudeness compatible only with the culture of a people at a low stage of development, The tradition of the degradation of the human race from a high condition of primeval civilisation to that of savages, has given place, in the view of thinking men, to the inference that the progress of the race has rather been from a lower to a higher culture. Archæological and anthropological investigation into the dim past of the race discloses no paradise, no golden age in which an elastic fancy has fondly placed the early ancestors of a people.

Intellectual and material progress, not degradation from some long lost culture, is the verdict of history. "The notion of the intellectual state of savages," it has been well said* "as resulting from decay of previous high knowledge, seems to have as little evidence in its favour as that stone celts are the degenerate successors ot Sheffield axes, or earthen grave mounds degraded copies of Egyptian pyramids." There have undoubtedly been cases of relapse. What we may find in the individual or the community we find also in the race at large. Misfortune may reduce many a tribe in the scale of civilisation, and in this sense there has been degradation. The Bushman, who was pressed into the barren wilds along the south-western coast of the Cape by invading tribes from the north-east, was compelled to become the victim of a wilder and less prosperous existence than when he dwelt in the more fertile regions, of which he was dispossessed.

There are instances, too, in which a * Tylor, "Primitive Culture," p. 6S. more civilised race has left the monuments of its culture as the witness to its memory when a less civilised one has taken its place, as in the case of the mound builders of the Mississippi.* Civilisations too have flourished and passed away, and the degenerate posterity of a people has more than once survived, in puny impotence, the grandeur and strength of their forefathers. But it does not follow from this that the people, which is found in a rude state of culture, has as a rule fallen back from a comparatively high state. Where there is no evidence of the existence of a high culture, we are not entitled to reason from the emblems of savagery that have come down to us, say from the remote Stone Age, that any higher culture preceded that which they indicate.

Britain may have been the scene of a culture as high as that of ancient Egypt or Babylon, but there is nothing to indicate this in its prehistoric annals ; they reveal, on the other hand, the progression, which is observable in the history of the human race in general — from savagery to barbarism and from barbarism to civilisation. If Roman civilisation was swept away by the rude Pict and the fierce Saxon, the disturbance w-as but temporary, and new growth succeeded the decay and destruction of the old. It is in the drifts and gravel beds of the Age of Ice that we must seek the records of the primeval British savage. What archæologists like Prestwickj Evans, and others, discovered in the gravel beds of the Somme — hand-shaped flints embedded along with the remains of animals — was subsequently found in other valley deposits in Europe.