Chapter II

Early Inhabitants--Roman Writers--Aristotle--Tacitus--Dion Cassius--Caledonians and Mæatæ--Eumenius--Picts--Dicaledones and Vecturiones--Claudian--Inferences--Ecclesiastical Chroniclers--Their value--Gildas--Adamnan--Northern and Southern Picts--Columba’s “Interpreter”--Bede’s Account of Picts--Pictish Language--Peanfahel--Northern and Southern Picts--Welsh Triads--Irish Annals--Evidence from Language--Cymric and Gaelic Theories--Inver and Aber--Innes’s Theory--Conclusion.

The preceding chapter has been occupied almost entirely with an account of the transactions of the Romans in the north of Scotland, and it is now our duty to go back and narrate what is known of the internal history of the Highlands during the time of the Romans. In doing so we are brought face to face with certain much agitated questions which have for centuries engaged the attention of antiquaries, and in the discussion of which many bulky tomes have been written and incredible acrimony displayed. To enter with anything like minuteness into this discussion would occupy more space than can be devoted to the entire history, and, moreover, would be out of place in a popular work like the present, and distasteful to most of its readers. The following are some of the much-discussed questions referred to:--Who were the original inhabitants of Caledonia? To what race did they belong--were they Gothic or Celtic? and if Celtic, were they Cymric or Gaelic? When did they enter Scotland, and whence did they come--from the opposite continent, or from the south of Britain? Was the whole of Scotland, in the time of Agricola, occupied by one people, or by a mixed race, or by various races? Were the Picts and Caledonians the same people? What is the meaning and origin of Pict, and was Caledonia a native appellation? What were the localities of the Northern and Southern Picts? Who were the Scots? What was the nature of the union of the Scots and Picts under Kenneth Macalpin?

The notices of the early inhabitants of the Highlands in the contemporary Roman historians are so few, the information given so meagre and indefinite, and the ecclesiastical historians of a later time are so full of miracle, myth, and hearsay, and so little to be depended on, that it appears to us almost impossible, with the materials at present within the historian’s reach, to arrive at anything like a satisfactory answer to the above questions. The impression left after reading much that has been written on various sides, is one of dissatisfaction and bewilderment,--dissatisfaction with the far-fetched and irrelevant arguments frequently adduced, and the unreliable authorities quoted, and bewilderment amid the dust-cloud of words with which any one who enters this debatable land is sure to be enveloped. “It is scarcely necessary to observe, that there are few points of ethnology on which historians and antiquaries have been more at variance with each other, than respecting the real race of those inhabitants of a portion of Caledonia popularly known by the designation of Picts. The difficulty arising from this discrepancy of opinion is increased by the scanty and unsatisfactory nature of the materials now available to those who wish to form an independent judgment. No connected specimen of the Pictish language has been preserved; nor has any ancient author who knew them from personal observation, stated in direct terms that they approximated to one adjoining tribe more than another. They are indeed associated with the Scots or Irish as joint plunderers of the colonial Britons; and the expression of Gildas that they differed in some degree from the Scots in their customs, might seem to imply that they did bear an analogy to that nation in certain respects. Of course, where there is such a lack of direct evidence, there is more scope for conjecture; and the Picts are pronounced by different investigators of their history to have been Germans, Scandinavians, Welsh, Gael, or something distinct from all the four. The advocates of the German hypothesis rest chiefly on Tacitus’s description of their physical conformation. Dr. Jamieson, assuming that the present Lowland Scotch dialect was derived from them, sets them down as Scandinavians; Bishop Lloyd and Camden conceive them to have been of Celtic race, probably related to the Britons; Chalmers, the author of ‘Caledonia,’ regards them as nothing more than a tribe of Cambrians or Welsh; while Skene, one of the latest authors on the subject, thinks he has proved that they were the ancestors of the present race of Scottish Highlanders.”[24]

The earliest known name applied to Britain is found in a treatise on the World ascribed to Aristotle, in which the larger island is called Albinn, and Ireland referred to as Ierne; and it is worthy of notice that at the present day the former is the name applied to Scotland by the Highlanders, who call themselves the Gael Albinnich. The first author, however, who gives us any information about the early inhabitants of the north part of Scotland is Tacitus, who, in his Life of Agricola, devotes a few lines, in a parenthetical way, to characterising each of the great divisions of the people who, in the time of that general, inhabited Britain. Tacitus tells us that in his time the inhabitants of Britain differed in the habit and make of their bodies, and from the ruddy locks and large limbs of the Caledonians he inferred that they were of German origin.[25] This glimpse is clear enough, but tantalizing in its meagreness and generality. What does Tacitus mean by German--does he use it in the same sense as we do at the present day? Does he mean by Caledonia the whole of the country north of the Forth and Clyde, or does it apply only to that district--Fife, Forfar, the east of Perth, &c.--with the inhabitants of which his father-in-law came in contact? We find Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished about the middle of the 2d century A.D., mentioning the Caledonians as one of the many tribes which in his time inhabited the north of Scotland. The term Caledonians is supposed by some authorities to have been derived from a native word signifying “men of the woods,” or the inhabitants of the woody country; this, however, is mere conjecture.

The next writer who gives any definite information as to the inhabitants of Caledonia is Dion Cassius, who flourished in the early part of the 3d century, and who wrote a history of Rome which has come down to us in a very imperfect state. Of the latter part, containing an account of Britain, we possess only an epitome made by Xiphilinus, an ecclesiastic of the 11th century, and which of course is very meagre in its details. The following are the particulars given by this writer concerning the early inhabitants of north Britain. “Of the Britons the two most ample nations are the Caledonians and the Mæatæ; for the names of the rest refer for the most part to these. The Mæatæ inhabit very near the wall[26] which divides the island into two parts; the Caledonians are after these. Each of them inhabit mountains, very rugged and wanting water, and also desert fields, full of marshes: they have neither castles nor cities, nor dwell in any: they live on milk and by hunting, and maintain themselves by the fruits of the trees: for fishes, of which there is a very great and numberless quantity, they never taste: they dwell naked in tents and without shoes: they use wives in common, and whatever is born to them they bring up. In the popular state they are governed, as for the most part: they rob on the highway most willingly: they war in chariots: horses they have, small and fleet; their infantry, also, are as well most swift at running, as most brave in pitched battle. Their arms are a shield and a short spear, in the upper part whereof is an apple of brass, that, while it is shaken, it may terrify the enemies with the sound: they have likewise daggers. They are able to bear hunger, cold, and all afflictions; for they merge themselves in marshes, and there remain many days, having only their head out of water: and in woods are nourished by the bark and roots of trees. But a certain kind of food they prepare for all occasions, of which if they take as much as ‘the size’ of a single bean, they are in nowise ever wont to hunger or thirst.”[27]

From this we learn that in the 3d century there were two divisions of the inhabitants of the Highlands, known to the Romans as the Caledonians and Mæats or Mæatæ, the latter very probably inhabiting the southern part of that territory, next to the wall of Antonine, and the former the district to the north of this. As to whether these were Latinized forms of native names, or names imposed by the Romans themselves, we have no means of judging. The best writers on this subject think that the Caledonians and Mæats were two divisions of the same people, both living to the north of the Forth and Clyde, although Innes,[28] and one or two minor writers, are of opinion that the Mæats were provincial Britons who inhabited the country between the wall of Hadrian and that of Antonine, known as the province of Valentia. However, with Skene,[29] Mr. Joseph Robertson, and other able authorities, we are inclined to think that the evidence is in favour of their being the inhabitants of the southern portion of Caledonia proper.

Herodian,[30] who wrote about A.D. 240, tells us that the Caledonians were in the habit of marking or painting their bodies with figures of animals, and that they wore no clothes in order that these figures might be preserved and exhibited.

The next reference made by a Roman writer to the inhabitants of Caledonia we find in a panegyric pronounced in his presence on the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, by Eumenius, a professor of rhetoric at Augustodunum (Autun) in Gaul, in the year 296 or 297, who speaks of the Britons, in the time of Cæsar, having been attacked by the half-naked Picts and Irish. To what people the orator meant to apply the term Picts, around which there has clustered so much acrimonious disputation, we learn from another oration pronounced by him on the same emperor, before his son Constantine, in the year 309, in which, recording the actions of Constantius, he speaks of the woods and marshes of the Caledonians and other Picts.

After this no further mention is made of the Caledonians by any Roman writer, but towards the end of the 4th century Ammianus Marcellinus, in his account of the Roman transactions in Britain, speaks of the Picts in conjunction with the Saxons, Scots, and Attacots harassing the provincial Britons about the year 364. Further on he informs us that at this time the Picts were divided into two tribes or nations, the Dicaledones and Vecturiones, remarking, at the same time, that “the Attacots were a warlike race of men, and the Scots a people much given to wandering, and in the habit of ravaging or laying waste the districts into which they came.”[31]

Claudian the poet, writing, about 397, in praise of Honorius, mentions, among other actions of Theodosius, the grandfather of that emperor, his having subdued the Picts, who were fitly so named,[32] and makes various other references to this people and the Scots, which show that these two in combination were troubling the Roman provincials not a little.[33]

Such are most of the scanty details given by the only contemporary historians who take any notice of the inhabitants of North Britain; and the unprejudiced reader will see that the foundation thus afforded upon which to construct any elaborate theory is so narrow that every such theory must resemble a pyramid standing on its apex, liable at the slightest touch to topple over and be shattered to pieces. It appears to us that all the conclusions which it is safe to draw from the few facts stated by the contemporary Roman historians are, that at the commencement of the Christian era Caledonia proper, or the Highlands, was inhabited by a people or peoples apparently considerable in number, and who in all probability had been settled there for a considerable time, part of whom at least were known to the Romans by the name of Caledonians. That these Caledonians, those of them at any rate with whom Agricola came in contact in the first century, were red or fair haired and large limbed, from which Tacitus inferred that they were of German extraction. In the beginning of the third century there were at least two divisions of the inhabitants of Caledonia,--the Caledonians and Mæats,--the former inhabiting the country to the north of the Grampians, and the latter, in all probability, that to the south and south-east of these mountains. They appear to have been in many respects in a condition little removed from that of savages, although they must have made wonderful attainments in the manufacture of implements of war.

In the latter part of the third century we found the Highlanders spoken of under a new name, Picti, which the Roman historians at least, undoubtedly understood to be the Latin word meaning ‘painted,’[34] and which all the best modern writers believe to have been imposed by the Romans themselves, from the fact that the indomitable Caledonians had retained the custom of self-painting after all the Romanized Britons had given it up. There is the strongest probability that the Caledonians spoken of as Picts by Eumenius were the same as the Caledonians of Tacitus, or that the Caledonians and Picts were the same people under different names. The immediate cause for this change of name we have no means of ascertaining. It is in every way improbable that the Picts were a new people, who had come in upon the Caledonians, and supplanted them some time after Agricola’s invasion. The Romans were constantly coming into contact with the Caledonians from the time of Agricola till they abandoned Britain entirely, and had such a supplantation taken place, it certainly could not have been done quietly, and without the cognizance of the Romans. But we find no mention in any contemporary historian of any such commotion, and we know that the inhabitants of the Highlands never ceased to harass the British provincials, showing that they were not much taken up with any internal disturbance. Indeed, writers who adopt the most diverse opinions on other points in connection with the Pictish question are all agreed as to this, that the Caledonians and Picts were the same people.[35]

We learn further from our authorities, that towards the end of the fourth century the inhabitants of Caledonia were known to the Romans under the names of Dicaledones and Vecturiones, it being conjectured that these correspond to the Caledonians and Mæats of Dio, and the Northern and Southern Picts of a later period. The connection of the latter part of the word Di-caledones with Caledonii is evident, although the significance of the first syllable is doubtful,--some authorities conjecturing that it is the Gaelic word du, meaning “genuine.” It appears at all events to be established that during the early history of the Highlands, whatever other divisions may have existed among the inhabitants, those dwelling to the north and those dwelling to the south of the Grampians were two separate confederacies, and were known by distinct names.

Another not unimportant fact to be learned from the Roman historians in relation to the Picts or Caledonians is, that about the middle of the 4th century they were assisted by the Attacots, Saxons, and Scots. As to who the Attacots were it is now impossible to conjecture with anything like certainty, there being no sufficient reason for believing that they were allied to the Irish Scots. It is well enough known who the Saxons were, but how they came at this early period to be acting in concert with the Picts it is difficult to say. It is possible that numbers of them may have effected a settlement, even at this early period, in North Britain, although it is more likely that they were roving adventurers, who had left their homes, from choice or on compulsion, to try their fortune in Britain. They were probably the first droppings of the abundant shower that overwhelmed South Britain a century later. The Romans at this period had an officer with the title of “Comes litoris Saxonici per Britanniam;” and Claudian, in his praises of Stilicho, introduces Britain, saying--

“Illius effectum curis, ne bella timerem Scotica, ne Pictum tremerem, ne littore toto Prospicerem dubiis venturum Saxona ventis.”

It is interesting to notice that this[36] is the first mention made of the Scots in connection with what is now Scotland; but whether there were settlements of them at this time among the Picts, or whether they had come over from Ireland for the purpose of assisting the latter to harass the Romans, it is difficult to say. Probably, as was the case with the Saxons, these were the harbingers of the great migration that reached its culmination about a century and a half later. They appear, from what Ammianus says, to have been at this time a set of destructive vagabonds. We shall have more to say about them further on.

From the general tone of these contemporary Roman historians we learn that, whether Celtic or Gothic, these Picts or Caledonians were a hardy, indomitable, determined race, with a strong love of liberty and of the country in which they dwelt, and a resolution never to be subject to the greedy Roman. Comparatively few and barbarous as they were, they caused the Romans far more trouble than all the rest of Britain together; to conquer the latter and Romanize it appears to have been comparatively smooth work, but the Italians acknowledged the Highlanders invincible by building walls and other fortifications, and maintaining extra garrisons to protect the provincials from their fierce and wasting inroads. Whether the present Highlanders are the descendants of these or not, they certainly possess many of their qualities.

It will have been seen that the Roman historians give us almost no clue to what we now deem of most interest and importance, the place of the early inhabitants among the families of men, the time and manner of their arrival, the language they spoke, and their internal history generally. Of course the records of contemporaries stand in the first place of importance as evidences, and although we have other sources, historical, linguistic, and antiquarian, which shed a little light upon the subject, these, for various reasons, must be used with great caution. The only statement approaching to anything like a hint as to the origin of the Caledonians is that of Tacitus, referring to their ruddy locks and large limbs as an evidence of their German origin. There is no reason to doubt that those with whom Agricola came in contact were of this make and complexion, which, at the present day, are generally held to be indicative of a Teutonic origin; whereas the true Celt is popularly believed to be of a small make and dark complexion.[37] It may have been, that in Agricola’s time the part of the country into which he penetrated was occupied by considerable numbers of Teutons, who had effected a settlement either by force, or by favour of the prior inhabitants. The statement of Tacitus, however, those who uphold the Celtic theory endeavour to explain away.

We may safely say then, that with regard to all the most important points that have excited the curiosity of modern enquirers, the only contemporary historians to whom we can appeal, leave us almost entirely in the dark.

The writers, next in order of importance to whom an appeal is made as witnesses in this perplexing case, are the ecclesiastical chroniclers, the chief of whom are Gildas, Adamnan, Bede, Nennius. “Much of the error into which former writers have been led, has arisen from an improper use of these authors; they should be consulted exclusively as contemporary historians--whatever they assert as existing or occurring in their own time, or shortly before it, we may receive as true; but when we consider the perverted learning of that period, and the little information which they appear to have possessed of the traditions of the people around them, we ought to reject their fables or fanciful origins as altogether undeserving of credit.”[38] Though this dictum may perhaps be too sweeping, still any one who examines the authors referred to for himself, must admit that it is in the main just. It is well known that these writers exercise little or no discrimination in the composition of their narratives, that tradition, miracle, and observed fact are placed side by side, as all equally worthy of belief. Even Bede, the most reliable and cautious of these early chroniclers, lived as long after some of the events of which he professes to give an account, as we of the present day do after the time of the Crusades; almost his sole authority being tradition or hearsay. Moreover, the knowledge which these writers had of the distinction between the various races of mankind was so very hazy, the terms they use are to us so comparatively unintelligible, and the information they do contain on the points in dispute so brief, vague, and parenthetical, that their value as authorities is reduced almost to a minimum.

Whoever was the author of the work De Excidio Britanniæ, one of the latest and most acute writers[39] on ethnology has shown that he is almost totally unworthy of credit, the sources of his information being exceedingly suspicious, and his statements proved to be false by comparison with trustworthy contemporary Roman historians. There is every reason to believe that the so-called Gildas--for by Mr. Wright[40] he has been reduced to a nominis umbra--lived and wrote about the middle of the 6th century A.D., so that, had he used ordinary diligence and discrimination, he might have been of considerable assistance in enabling us to solve the perplexing mystery of the Pictish question. But indeed we have no right to look for much history in the work of Gildas, as it professes to be merely a complaint “on the general destruction of every thing that is good, and the general growth of evil throughout the land;” it is his purpose, he says, “to relate the deeds of an indolent and slothful race, rather than the exploits of those who have been valiant in the field.”[41] So far as the origin and early history of the Picts is concerned, Gildas is of almost no value whatever, the only time he mentions the Picts being incidentally to notice an invasion they had made into the Roman provinces.[42] If we can trust him, the Picts and their allies, the Scots, must have been very fierce enemies to deal with. They went about, he tells us, almost entirely destitute of clothes, having their faces covered with bushy hair, and were in the habit of dragging the poor enervated Britons from the top of their protecting wall with hooked weapons, slaughtering them without mercy. Some writers infer from this narrative that, during the Roman occupation, no permanent settlement of Scots had been effected in present Scotland, but that the Scots who assisted the Picts came over from their native Scotland (Ireland) for that purpose; he tells us that the Scots came from the north-west, and the Picts from the north.[43] “North-west” here, however, would apply quite as well to Argyle as to Ireland.

The writer next in chronological order from whom we derive any information of consequence concerning the Picts is Adamnan, a member of the early Irish Church, who was born in the county of Donegal about the year 625, elected abbot of Iona in 679, and who died in the year 704. Adamnan wrote a life of his great predecessor St. Columba, in which is contained much information concerning that great missionary’s labours among the Northern Picts; and although he narrates many stories which are palpably incredible, still the book contains much which may with confidence be accepted as fact. In connection with the questions under consideration, we learn that, in the time of Columba and Adamnan, there were--as formerly, in the time of the Roman writers--two divisions of the Picts, known in the 7th century and afterwards as the Northern and Southern Picts. Adamnan informs us that Columba’s mission was to the Northern Picts alone,--the southern division having been converted by St. Ninian in the 5th century. There has been much disputation as to the precise district inhabited by each of these two divisions of the Picts,--some maintaining that the southern division occupied the country to the south of the Forth and Clyde, while the Northern Picts occupied the whole district to the north of these estuaries. The best authorities, however, are of opinion that both divisions dwelt to the north of Antonine’s wall, and were divided from each other by the Grampians.

What more immediately concerns our present purpose is a passage in Adamnan’s work in which he speaks of Columba preaching to the Picts through an interpreter. Now Columba was an Irish Scot, whose native tongue was Gaelic, and it is from this argued that the Picts to whom he preached must have spoken a different language, or at least dialect, and belonged to a different race or tribe from the saint himself. Mr. Skene,[44] who ably advocates the Gaelic origin of the Picts, perceiving this difficulty, endeavours to explain away the force of the passage by making it mean that Columba “interpreted or explained the word of God, that is, the Bible, which, being written in Latin, would doubtless require to be interpreted to them.” The passage as quoted by Skene is, “Verbo Dei per interpretorem recepto.” Garnett, however, one of the most competent and candid writers on this question in its philological aspect, and who maintains, with the greatest clearness and ability, the Cymric origin of the Picts, looks at the passage in a different light. The entire passage, he says,[45] as it stands in Colganus, is as follows:--“Alio in tempore quo sanctus Columba in Pictorum provincia per aliquot demorabatur dies, quidam cum tota plebeius familia, verbum vitæ per interpretorem, Sancto prædicante viro, audiens credidit, credensque baptizatus est.”[46] “Here it will be observed,” continues Garnett, “Adamnan does not say, ‘verbum Dei,’ which might have been construed to mean the Scripture, but ‘verbum vitæ, Sancto prædicante viro,’ which can hardly mean anything but ‘the word of life, as it was preached by the Saint.’” Certainly, we think, the unprejudiced reader must admit that, so far as this point is concerned, Mr. Garnett has the best of it. Although at that time the Gaelic and Cymric dialects may have had much more in common than they have at the present day, nevertheless it appears to be beyond a doubt that the difference between the two was so great that a Gael would be unintelligible to a speaker of Cymric.[47]

The next and most important authority of this class on this quæstio vexata is the Venerable Bede, who, considering the age in which he lived, exercised so much caution and discrimination, that he deserves to be listened to with respect. Bede was born about 673. He was educated in the Monastery of Wearmouth, whence he removed to Jarrow, where he was ordained deacon in his nineteenth year, and priest in his thirtieth, and where he spent the rest of his days, dying in 735. He wrote many works, but the most important is the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, the materials for which he obtained chiefly from native chronicles and biographies, records and public documents, and oral and written communications from contemporaries.

We shall transcribe most of the passage in which Bede speaks of the ancient inhabitants of Britain; so that our readers may be able to judge for themselves of the nature and value of the testimony borne by this venerable author. It must, however, be kept in mind that Bede does not pretend to give any but the ecclesiastical history of the English nation, everything else being subsidiary to this.

“This island at present, following the number of the books in which the Divine law was written, contains five nations, the English, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own peculiar dialect cultivating the sublime study of Divine truth. The Latin tongue is, by the study of the Scriptures, become common to all the rest. At first this island had no other inhabitants but the Britons, from whom it derived its name, and who coming over into Britain, as is reported, from Armorica, possessed themselves of the southern parts thereof. When they, beginning at the south, had made themselves master of the greatest part of the island, it happened, that the nation of the Picts coming into the ocean from Scythia, as is reported, in a few tall ships, were driven by the winds beyond the shores of Britain and arrived off Ireland, on the northern coasts, where, finding the nation of the Scots, they requested to be allowed to settle among them, but could not succeed in obtaining their request. The Scots answered, that the island could not contain them both; but ‘we can give you good advice,’ said they, ‘what to do; we know there is another island, not far from ours, to the eastward, which we often see at a distance, when the days are clear. If you will repair thither, you may be able to obtain settlements; or if they should oppose you, you may make use of us as auxiliaries.’ The Picts accordingly sailing over into Britain, began to inhabit the northern parts thereof, for the Britons were possessed of the southern. Now the Picts having no wives, and asking them of the Scots, they would not consent to grant them upon any other terms, than that when any difficulty should arise, they should rather choose themselves a king from the female royal race than from the male; which custom, as is well known, has been observed among the Picts to this day. In process of time, Britain, besides the Britons and the Picts, received a third nation, the Scots, who, departing out of Ireland under their leader Reuda, either by fair means, or by force of arms, secured to themselves those settlements among the Picts which they still possess. From the name of their commander, they are to this day called Dalreudins; for in their language Dal signifies a part.... It is properly the country of the Scots, who, migrating from thence, as has been said, added a third nation in Britain to the Britons and the Picts. There is a very large gulf of the sea, which formerly divided the nation of the Picts from the Britons; which gulf runs from the west very far into the land, where, to this day, stands the strong city of the Britons, called Alcluith. The Scots arriving on the north side of this bay, settled themselves there.”[48]

Here then Bede informs us that in his time the common report was that the Picts came into Scotland from Scythia, which, like the Germania of Tacitus, may be taken to mean the northern countries of Europe generally. This is substantially the same statement as that of the author of the Historia Britonum, commonly called Nennius, who lived in the 9th century, and who informs us that the Picts coming to Scotland about 300 B.C., occupied the Orkney Islands, whence issuing, they laid waste many regions, and seized those on the left-hand side, i.e. the north of Britain, where they still remained in the writer’s time, keeping possession of a third part of Britain.[49]

Supposing that Bede’s report was quite in accordance with truth, still it gives us but small help in coming to a conclusion as to the place of these Picts among the families of men. It is certain that by far the greater part of Europe had at one time a Celtic population who preceded, but ultimately gave way to another wave of emigrants from the east. Now, if we knew the date at which this so-called migration of the Picts took place it might be of considerable assistance to us; but as we cannot now find out whether these emigrants proceeded from a Celtic or a Teutonic stock, the statement of Bede, even if reliable, helps us not at all towards a solution of the question as to the race of the Picts. Innes[50] remarks very justly on this point--“Now, supposing that there were any good ground for the opinion of these two writers, which they themselves give only as a conjecture or hearsay, and that we had any certainty of the Caledonians, or Picts, having had their origin from the more northern parts of the European continent, it were an useless, as well as an endless discussion, to examine in particular from which of all the northern nations of the continent the first colony came to Caledonia; because that these nations of the north were almost in perpetual motion, and changing habitations, as Strabo remarks; and he assigns for it two reasons: the one, because of the barrenness of the soil, they tilled not the ground, and built habitations only for a day; the other, because being often overpowered by their neighbours, they were forced to remove. Another reason why it is impossible to know from which of those nations the northern parts of Britain, (supposing they came from thence) were at first peopled, is because we have but very lame accounts of these northern nations from the Greek or Roman writers, (from whom alone we can look for any thing certain in those early times) especially of those of Scandia, to the north of the Baltic sea, as the same Strabo observes. Besides, it appears that Caledonia was peopled long before the inhabitants of these northern parts of the continent were mentioned, or even known by the most ancient writers we have; and perhaps before the first nations mentioned by them were settled in those parts.”

There is, however, another statement made by Bede in the passage quoted, upon which, as it refers to his own time, much more reliance can be placed; it is, that in his time Britain contained five nations, each having its own peculiar dialect, viz., the English, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins. We know that the English spoke in the main Saxon; the Britons, i.e., the inhabitants of Wales, Cumbria, &c., Welsh; the Scots, Gaelic; the Latins, we suppose, being the Romanized Britons and ecclesiastics. What language then did the Picts speak? As we know that Bede never travelled, he must have got his information from an informant or by hearsay, which circumstance rather detracts from its value. But supposing we take the passage literally as it stands, we learn that in Bede’s time there were five distinct peoples or nations, whose names he gives, sharing among them the island. He does not say there were five distinct tongues, which would have been quite a different statement; he speaks of them not so much in respect of their language as in respect of their being the separate items which composed the inhabitants of Britain. In his time they were all quite distinct, in a measure independent of and at enmity with each other. He does not classify them in respect of the race to which they belonged, but with reference to the particular districts which they inhabited, and perhaps with regard to the time and means of their conversion to Christianity, each having been converted at a different time and by a different saint. The substance then of what he says appears to be, that there were in his time five distinct tribes or congregations of people in Britain, each converted to Christianity, and each having the gospel preached in its own tongue. Supposing that the Picts and Scots, or Picts and Britons, or Picts and English did speak exactly the same tongue, it is not at all likely that Bede, in the present case, would have classed them together as both being one nation. Moreover, suppose we allow that Bede did mean that each of these nations spoke a language quite distinct from all the others, then his statement cuts equally at the Gothic and Celtic theory. The conclusion we are forced to is, that from this passage nothing can be gained to help us out of our difficulty.

There is a statement at the end of the passage quoted to which we would draw the reader’s attention, as being Bede’s way, and no doubt the universal way in his time, of accounting for a peculiar law which appears to have regulated the succession to the Pictish throne, and which ultimately, according to some, was the means of placing on that throne a Scottish monarch; thus accounting to some extent for the sudden disappearance and apparent destruction of the Pictish people and language.

We shall here refer to one other passage in the same historian, which has perhaps given rise to greater and more acrimonious contention than any other point in connection with this wordy discussion. The only word that has come down to us, which, with the exception of the names of the Pictish kings, we can be sure is a remnant of the Pictish language, is the name said by Bede to have been given to the eastern termination of the wall of Antonine. Bede,[51] in speaking of the turf wall built by the Britons of Valentia in the beginning of the 5th century, says, “it begins at about two miles distance from the monastery of Abercorn on the west, at a place called in the Pictish language Peanfahel, but in the English tongue Penneltum.” This statement of Bede’s is straightforward and clear enough, and has never been disputed by any writer on any one of the three sides of the question. Nevertheless it has been used by the advocates respectively of the Gothic, Gaelic, and Cymric origin of the Picts, as an undoubted proof of the correctness of each of these theories. Pinkerton, whose dishonesty and acrimoniousness are well known, and must detract considerably from the force of his arguments, claims it as being entirely Gothic or Teutonic. “The Pictish word,” he says,[52] “is broad Gothic; Paena ‘to extend,’ Ihre; and Vahel, a broad sound of veal, the Gothic for ‘wall,’ or of the Latin vallum, contracted val; hence it means ‘the extent or end of the wall.’” This statement of Pinkerton’s may be dismissed as too far-fetched and awkward to merit much consideration, and we may safely regard the word as capable of satisfactory explanation only in Celtic. Innes, who upholds the British, i.e. the Cymric, origin of the Picts, says,[53] “we nowhere find a clearer proof of the Pictish language being the same as the British [Welsh], than in Bede, where he tells us that Penuahel in Pictish signifies the head of the wall, which is just the signification that the same two words Pen and Uahel have in the British.” In this opinion Chalmers and other advocates of the Cymric theory coincide. Mr. Garnett, who essentially agrees with Innes and Chalmers as to the Cymric origin of the Picts, lays little stress upon this word as furnishing an argument in support of his theory. “Almost the only Pictish word given us by an ancient writer is the well-known Pen val (or as it appears in the oldest MSS. of Bede (Peann fahel)), the name given by the Picts to the Wall’s End, or eastern termination of the Vallum of Antoninus. It is scarcely necessary to say the first part of the word is decidedly Cymric; pen, head, being contrary to all Gaelic analogy. The latter half might be plausibly claimed as the Gaelic fal; gwall being the more common termination in Welsh for a wall or rampart. Fal, however, does occur in Welsh in the sense of inclosure, a signification not very remote.”[54]

The two most recent and able supporters[55] of the Gaelic theory are of much the same mind as Garnett, and appear to regard this tantalizing word as affording no support to either side. Burton[56] cannot admit that anything has been made out of this leading to a historical conclusion.

We may safely conclude, then, that this so called Pictish word, or, indeed, any information which we find in Bede, affords us no key to the perplexing question of the origin and race of the Picts.

We learn, however, one fact from Bede[57] which is so far satisfactory, viz., that in his time there were two divisions of the Picts, known as the Northern and Southern Picts, which were separated from each other by steep and rugged mountains. On reading the passage in Bede, one very naturally supposes that the steep and rugged mountains must be the Grampians, to which the expression applies more aptly than to any other mountain-chain in Scotland. Even this, however, has been made matter of dispute, it being contended by some that the locality of the Southern Picts was in the south-west and south of Scotland, where some writers set up a powerful Pictish kingdom. Mr. Grub,[58] however, has clearly shown that the locality of the Southern Picts was to the north of the Forth and Clyde, and to the south of the Grampians. “The mistake formerly so common in regard to the country of the Southern Picts converted by St. Ninian, was in part owing to the situation of Candida Casa. It was supposed that his see must have been in the country of those whom he converted.” He clearly proves that it was not so in reality, and that there was nothing so unusual in the situation as to justify the conclusion which was drawn from it. “It was, no doubt, the case that the teachers by whom the chief Celtic and Teutonic nations were converted generally fixed their seat among those whom they instructed in the faith. But there was no necessity for this, especially when the residence of the teacher was in the neighbourhood of his converts. St. Columba was primate of all the churches of the Northern Picts, but he did not permanently reside among that nation. St. Ninian had ready access to his Pictish converts, and could govern them as easily from his White Church on the Solway, as Columba could instruct and rule the Northern Picts from his monastery in Iona.”[59]

Other authorities appealed to by the upholders of each of the Celtic theories are the Welsh traditions, the Irish Annals, the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, and various legendary documents of more or less value and authenticity. As these are of no greater authority than the writers with whom we have been dealing, and as the partisans of each theory claim the various passages as either confirming, or, at any rate, not contradicting their views, we shall not further trouble the reader with specimens of the manner in which they are dealt with. There is one passage, however, in the Welsh Triads, which the advocates of the Gaelic hypothesis claim as strongly confirmatory of their theory. After referring to the coming in of the Cymry, the Britons, etc., the Triads[60] go on to say, “Three tribes came, under protection, into the Island of Britain, and by the consent and permission of the nation of the Cymry, without weapon, without assault. The first was the tribe of the Caledonians in the north. The second was the Gwyddelian Race, which are now in Alban (Scotland). The third were the men of Galedin, who came into the Isle of Wight. Three usurping tribes came into the Island of Britain and never departed out of it. The first were the Coranied, who came from the land of Pwyl. The second were the Gwyddelian Ffichti, who came into Alban over the sea of Llychlyn (Denmark). The third were the Saxons.” “The Triads,” says Skene[61] in connection with this, “appear distinctly to have been written previous to the Scottish conquest in the ninth century, and they mention among the three usurping tribes of Britain the ‘Gwyddyl Ffichti,’ and add immediately afterwards, ‘and these Gwyddyl Ffichti are in Alban, along the shore of the sea of Llychlyn.’ In another place, among the treacherous tribes of Britain, the same Triads mention the ‘Gwyddyl coch o’r Werddon a ddaethant in Alban,’ that is ‘the Red Gwyddyl from Ireland, who came into Alban,’ plainly alluding to the Dalriads, who were an Irish colony, and who have been acknowledged by all to have been a Gaelic race. It will be observed from these passages that the Welsh Triads, certainly the oldest and most unexceptionable authority on the subject, apply the same term of Gwyddyl to the Picts and to the Dalriads, and consequently they must have been of the same race, and the Picts a Gaelic people. Farther, the Welsh word ‘Gwyddyl,’ by which they distinguish that race, has been declared by all the best authorities to be exactly synonymous with the word Gael, the name by which the Highlanders have at all times been distinguished, and the Welsh words ‘Gwyddyl Ffichti’ cannot be interpreted to mean any thing else than ‘The Gaelic Picts,’ or ‘Pictish Gael.’”

The following is the substance of the information given by the Irish writers as to the origin, race, and early history of the Picts. The greater part of it is, of course, mere tradition, accumulating as it grew older, and heightened by the imagination of the writers themselves.[62] The Picts were called by the Irish writers Cruithnidh, which O’Brien considers to be the same as Britneigh, or Britons; but according to others the name was derived from Cruthen, who founded the kingdom of the Picts in North Britain, in the first century; others derive the name from Cruit, a harp, hence Cruitneach, the Irish for Pict, also signifies a harper, as they are said to have been celebrated harpers. The ancient Britons are mentioned by Cæsar, and other Roman writers, to have painted their bodies of a blue colour, with the juice of a plant called woad, hence the painted Britons were called by the Romans Picti. The Picts or Cruthneans, according to the Psalter of Cashel, and other ancient annals, came from Thrace, in the reign of the Milesian monarch Heremon, nearly a thousand years before the Christian era, and landed at Inver Slainge, now the Bay of Wexford, under two chief commanders named Gud and Cathluan, but not being permitted to settle in Ireland, they sailed to Albain, or that part of North Britain, now Scotland, their chiefs having been kindly supplied with wives of Irish birth. The Cruthneans became possessed of North Britain, and founded there the kingdom of the Picts. A colony of the Cruthneans, or Picts, from North Britain, settled in Ulster in early times, and are often mentioned from the first to the ninth century; they resided chiefly in Dalaradia and Tir Eogain, or parts of Down, Antrim, and Derry, and became mixed by intermarriages with the old Irish of the Irian race, and were ruled over by their own princes and chiefs; and some of those Picts, also settled in Connaught, in the county of Roscommon. According to the Irish writers, the Picts, in their first progress to Ireland from Thrace, settled a colony in Gaul, and the tribes called Pictones and Pictavi, in that country, were descended from them, and they gave name to Pictavia, or the city of Poictiers, and the province of Poitou; and from these Picts were descended the Vendeans of France. The Caledonians, or first inhabitants of Scotland, are considered to have been the same as the Picts, and mixed with Cimbrians or Britons, and some of the Milesian Scots from Ireland.

The advocates of the various theories, apparently aware of how little can be made of the meagre and suspicious information afforded by these early histories and chronicles, have latterly made language the principal battle-ground on which to fight out this endless and profitless strife. Most of them take for granted that if the language spoken by any people can be found out, a sure indication is afforded of the race to which that people belonged; and that the topography of a country must necessarily have been imposed by the earliest inhabitants of whom we have record; and that, if so, the limits of their territory must have been co-extensive with the limits of such topography. This, however, is going too far. All the length to which we are permitted in fairness to go, when we find in any district or country an abundance of names of natural objects, as rivers and mountains, which can with certainty be traced to any particular language, is, that at one time or other, a race of people speaking this language must have passed over and dwelt for some time in that particular district or country. We find Celtic names of rivers and mountains scattered all over Europe, in the midst of peoples who are admitted on all hands to have little or none of the Celtic element in them.[63] So that an unprejudiced judge must admit that the fact of Cymric and Gaelic words being found in certain districts of the north of Scotland argues only that at one time people speaking these dialects must have dwelt in these districts. It affords no proof by itself that the people whom we first meet with in these districts are the people who spoke these dialects, and who imposed these names; nor indeed, if we could be sure that the people whom we first meet with as inhabitants also spoke the dialect to which such names belong, does it prove that they were the imposers of these names, that the dialect was their native and original tongue, and that they had not acquired it either as conquerors or conquered. Nor can it be adduced as a proof of sameness of race, that the present inhabitants of any particular district speak the same language as those who inhabited that district 1800 years ago or less. “He who trusts to language, and especially to written language, alone, as an index to race, must be prepared to maintain that the Gallic nation emigrated from the seven hills of Rome, and that the Franks came with them; that the Romans extirpated the Celts and Iberians of Spain, and that the Goths and Moors spoke nearly the same language as the Romans; that the Negroes of the United States and Jamaica were exported from England when in their infancy. So would Philology, if left to herself, interpret phenomena, of which we know, from other sources of information, that the causes are totally different.”[64] “The clearest proof that a mountain or river has a Celtic name, only shows that at some time or other Celts had been there; it does not tell us when they were there. Names, as the experience of the world amply shows, live after the people who bestowed them have long disappeared, and that through successive races of occupants.”[65]

The materials which have been wrought up into a linguistic argument by the upholders of each of the three Pictish theories, Gothic, Gaelic, and Cymric, are chiefly a list of Pictish kings which, we believe, may be depended on as authentic, and the topography of the country to the east and south-east of the Grampians, together with the single so-called Pictish word Peanfahel, which we have already considered. The theorists differ as much in their interpretation of the significance of what remains of the Pictish language, as we have seen they do in their interpretation of any references to the subject in dispute in ancient chronicles. The names of the kings, and the names of places have been traced by the disputants to Gothic, Gaelic and Cymric roots. As an amusing specimen of the ingenuity displayed in this hunt after roots, we give below a small table from Burton, comparing the different etymologies of names of kings given by Pinkerton, Chalmers, and Jamieson.[66]

It is, however, generally admitted at the present day, that so far as language is concerned, the Gothic theory has not the remotest chance; that names of places and of kings are most satisfactorily and straightforwardly explained by Cymric roots. As the Gothic or Teutonic theory cannot stand the test of modern criticism, we shall content ourselves with giving specimens of the manner in which the linguistic, or, more strictly, topographical argument is used by the advocates of the Cymric and Gaelic hypotheses respectively.

The Cymric argument is clearly, ably, and succinctly stated by Mr. Garnett in his essay on “The Relation of the Pict and Gael;” he, however, it must be remembered, looked at the whole question mainly in its philological aspect. In stating the argument we shall use chiefly his own words.[67] “That the Picts were actually Celts, and not of Teutonic race, is proved to a demonstration by the names of their kings; of whom a list, undoubtedly genuine from the fifth century downwards, was published by Innes, from a manuscript in the Colbertine library. Some of those appellations are, as far as we know at present, confined to the Pictish sovereigns; but others are well-known Welsh and Gaelic names. They differ, however, slightly in their forms, from their Cymric equivalents; and more decidedly so from the Gaelic ones; and, as far as they go, lead to the supposition that those who bore them spoke a language bearing a remote analogy to the Irish with its cognates, but a pretty close one to the Welsh.

“In the list furnished by Innes the names Maelcon, Elpin, Taran (i.e. thunder), Uven (Owen), Bargoit, are those of personages well known in British history or tradition. Wrgust, which appears as Fergus in the Irish annals, is the Welsh Gwrgust. Talorg, Talorgan, evidently contain the British word Tal, forehead, a common element in proper names; ex. gr. Talhaiarn, Iron Forehead; Taliesin, splendid forehead, &c. Taleurgain would signify in Welsh golden or splendid front. Three kings are represented as sons of Wid, in the Irish annals of Foit or Foith. In Welsh orthography it would be Gwydd, wild; a common name in Brittany at the present day, under the form of Gwez. The names Drust, Drostan, Wrad, Necton (in Bede Naitan), closely resemble the Welsh Trwst, Trwstan, Gwriad, Nwython. It will be sufficient to compare the entire list with the Irish or Highland genealogies, to be convinced that there must have been a material distinction between the two branches. Most of the Pictish names are totally unknown in Irish or Highland history, and the few that are equivalent, such as Angus and Fergus, generally differ in form. The Irish annalists have rather obscured the matter, by transforming those names according to their national system of orthography; but it is remarkable that a list in the ‘Book of Ballymote,’ partly given by Lynch in his ‘Cambrensis Eversus,’ agrees closely with Innes, even preserving the initial w or u where the Gaelic would require f. The philological inferences to be deduced from this document may be thus briefly summed up:--1. The names of the Pictish kings are not Gaelic, the majority of them being totally unknown both in the Irish and Highland dialects, while the few which have Gaelic equivalents decidedly differ from them in form. Cineod (Kenneth) and Domhnall or Donnel, appear to be the only exceptions. 2. Some of them cannot be identified as Welsh; but the greater number are either identical with or resemble known Cymric names; or approach more nearly to Welsh in structure and orthography than to any other known language. 3. There appears nevertheless to have been a distinction, amounting, at all events, to a difference in dialect. The Pictish names beginning with w would in Welsh have gw, as Gwrgust for Wrgust, and so of the rest. There may have been other differences sufficient to justify Bede’s statement that the Pictish language was distinct from the British, which it might very well be without any impeachment of its claim to be reckoned as closely cognate.”

We have already referred to the use made of the Pictish word Peannfahel, preserved by Bede, and to the phrase in Adamnan concerning Columba’s preaching by means of an interpreter. It is contended by the upholders of the Cymric theory that the ancient topographical appellations of the Pictish territory can in general only be explained by the Cymric dialects, one strong point being the number of local names beginning with the Welsh prefix aber, which, according to Chalmers, was in several instances subsequently changed by the Gael into inver. Skene,[68] who felt the force of this argument, tried to get rid of it by contending that aber is essentially a Gaelic word, being compounded of ath, ford, and bior, water. Garnett thinks this explanation utterly gratuitous, and observes that the term may be much more satisfactorily accounted for by a different process. “There are,” he observes,[69] “three words in Welsh denoting a meeting of waters--aber, cynver, and ynver,--respectively compounded of the particles a, denoting juxtaposition, cyn (Lat. con), and yn, with the root ber, flowing, preserved in the Breton verb beri, to flow, and all virtually equivalent to our word confluence. Inver is the only term known in any Gaelic dialect, either as an appellative or in proper names; and not a single local appellation with the prefix aber occurs either in Ireland or the Hebrides, or on the west coast of Scotland. Indeed, the fact that inver was substituted for it after the Gaelic occupation of the Pictish territories, is decisive evidence on the point; for, if aber was a term familiar to the Gael, why should they change it?”

“In Scotland,” says Isaac Taylor,[70] who upholds the Cymric hypothesis, “the invers and abers are distributed in a curious and instructive manner. If we draw a line across the map from a point a little south of Inverary, to one a little north of Aberdeen, we shall find that (with very few exceptions) the invers lie to the north west of the line, and the abers to the south-east of it. This line nearly coincides with the present southern limit of the Gaelic tongue, and probably also with the ancient division between the Picts and Scots. Hence we may conclude that the Picts, a people belonging to the Cymric branch of the Celtic stock, and whose language has now ceased to be anywhere vernacular, occupied the central and eastern districts of Scotland, as far as the Grampians; while the Gadhelic Scots have retained their language, and have given their name to the whole country. The local names prove, moreover, that in Scotland the Cymry did not encroach on the Gael, but the Gael on the Cymry. The intrusive names are invers, which invaded the land of the abers. Thus on the shore of the Frith of Forth we find a few invers among the abers. The Welsh word uchel, high, may also be adduced to prove the Cymric affinities of the Picts. This word does not exist in either the Erse or the Gaelic languages, and yet it appears in the name of the OCHIL HILLS, in Perthshire. Again, the Erse bally, a town, occurs in 2,000 names in Ireland; and, on the other hand, is entirely absent in Wales and Brittany. In Scotland this most characteristic test-word is found frequently in the inver district, while it never appears among the abers. The evidence of these names makes it impossible to deny that the Celts of the Scottish Lowlands must have belonged to the Cymric branch of the Celtic stock.”

We infer from what Mr. Taylor says, that he is of opinion that at one time the language of the whole of the north of Scotland was Cymric, but that the district in which the Scots obtained a settlement afterwards underwent a change of topography. But it is admitted on all hands that the Scottish Dalriada comprehended no more than the modern Argyllshire, extending no farther north than Loch Leven and Loch Linnhe; and that the Irish Scots had little influence on the people or their language to the north-west of the Grampians. Indeed, Skene[71] maintains that this district, in which he places the Northern Picts, was never subjected to the Scots, and that it was only the Southern Picts who latterly came under their sway. Yet we find that the abers here are few and far between, or, indeed, any indications of Cymric possession such as we find in the southern district. Is it possible that the Northern and Southern Picts were representatives of the two great divisions of the Celts,--the former claiming a Gaelic origin, and the latter a Cymric? Perhaps after all the Welsh Triads may in course of time be of some help in the solution of this dark problem, as, according to them, there was more than one Celtic settlement in Scotland before the migration of the Scots. The passages above quoted are, to all appearance, much more favourable to the Gaelic than to the Cymric hypothesis, and have been made much of by Skene and other supporters of that side of the question.

The Cymric origin of the Picts, besides Garnett and Taylor, is supported by such names as Innes, Chalmers, Ritson, Whittaker, Grub, and others.

Pinkerton, it is well known, is the great and unscrupulous upholder of the Gothic origin of the Picts; while the Gaelic theory has for its supporters such writers, of undoubted ability and acuteness, as Skene, E. W. Robertson, Forbes-Leslie, &c. Burton[72] is of opinion that the Highlanders of the present day are the true representatives of the Dalriadic Scots of the West.

We shall, as we have done in the case of the other side, allow the upholders of the Gaelic hypothesis to state for themselves the Gaelic topographical argument. We shall use the words of Colonel Forbes-Leslie, who, in his invaluable work on the “Early Races of Scotland,”[73] says, “The Celtic words Inver and Aber have nearly the same meaning; and the relative position in which they occur in names of places has been employed as if it were a sufficient argument for defining the presence or preponderance of the British or Gaelic Celts in certain districts. In this way Aber, prefixed to names of places, has been urged as adequate proof that the Picts of Caledonia were Celts of the British branch. The value of these and some other words requires examination. Inver is to be found in names of places in Wales. It may possibly be a British word. It certainly is a Gaelic one. Aber, although undoubtedly British, is also Gaelic--compounded of the two words Ath and Bior--and signifying the same as Inver, viz., the confluence of two streams, or the entrance to a river. If the word Aber had been unknown to the Gaelic scholars of modern days, its former existence in that language might have been presumed from the ancient names of places in the districts of Caledonia, where it occurs most frequently, being generally Gaelic and not British.

“Beyond the limits of Caledonia on the south of the Forth and Clyde, but within the boundary of modern Scotland, the word Inver, generally pronounced Inner, is of common occurrence, and bears witness to a Gaelic nomenclature. Thus, Inner or Inverkip, in the county of Renfrew; Innerwell, in the county of Wigton; Innerwick, in the county of Haddington; Innerleithen, in the county of Peebles; Inverleith and Inveresk, in the county of Edinburgh, derive their names from their situation in regard to the rivers Kip, Leithen, Esk, &c. &c.

“From the Moray Frith to the Forth, in the eastern counties of Caledonia, the prefix Inver or Aber is used indiscriminately in contiguous places. At the confluence of lesser streams with the river Dee, in Aberdeenshire, we find Inverey, Abergeldie, Invercauld, Invercanny, Aberdeen. Yet in those counties--viz., Aberdeen, Kincardine, Forfar, Perth, and Fife, in which were situated the capitals, and which were the richest provinces of the southern Picts--the number of names of places beginning with Inver is three times as numerous as those commencing with Aber; there being, in a list taken from land-registers, which do not go farther back than the middle of the sixteenth century, seventy-eight with Inver to twenty-four with Aber. It may, however, be admitted that, although Aber is Gaelic, its use is far more general by Celts of the British tribes; and that the predominance of Inver in the districts north of the Spey, and the intermixture of places the names of which commence with Inver or Aber, not unfrequently used in records of nearly the same date for the same place in the country lying between the Moray and the Solway Friths, is, to a certain extent, evidence of a British element of population extending into Caledonia. The Britons, in earlier times, may have been pressing on to the north by gradual intrusion, and were probably afterwards increased by bodies of exiles escaping from the severity of Roman bondage and the punishment of unsuccessful revolt.

“That names of places containing the words Bal, from Bail, a place or residence, and Ard, a height or rising ground, are so common in Ireland, and comparatively rare, so it is alleged, in Caledonia, has also been used as an argument to prove that the language of the Picts and other Caledonians of the southern and eastern districts was British, not Gaelic. But the foundation of the argument has been assumed, and is easily disproved. It is true that of large towns and places that appear in gazeteers, names commencing with Bal and Ard are not numerous. But in fact such names are extremely common. In the lowlands of Aberdeenshire--that is, in the portion of one county, and in the part of Caledonia farthest removed from the settlements of the intrusive Gaels, viz., the Scots from Ireland--registers of land show upwards of fifty places the names of which commence with Bal, and forty which commence with Ard. In the Pictish territory, from the Moray Frith to the Forth, I soon collected upwards of four hundred names of places beginning with Bal, and upwards of one hundred with Ard; and the number might easily be doubled.”

Mr. E. W. Robertson, one of the latest and ablest upholders of this theory, thinks[74] there is scarcely sufficient evidence to justify any very decided conclusion as to the pre-existence of a Cymric population; and that, whilst it would be unquestionably erroneous to ascribe a Cymric origin to the Picts, the existence of a Celtic element akin to the Cymri, amongst the population of Alban before the arrival of the Gwyddel Ffichti, must remain to a certain extent an open question.

Of all a priori theories that have hitherto been advanced as to how Scotland was likely to have been at first peopled, that of Father Innes, the first writer who investigated the subject thoroughly and critically, appears to us to be the most plausible and natural, although even it is beset with many difficulties. It appears to him more natural and probable that the Caledonian Britons, or Picts, were of the same origin as the Britons of the south; that as these came in originally from the nearest coast of Gaul, as they multiplied in the island, they advanced to the north and settled there, carrying with them the customs and language of the South Britons.[75]

We have thus endeavoured to lay before the reader, as fully as space permits, and as clearly and unprejudicedly as possible, the materials at present existing by means of which to form an opinion on the Pictish question, and the arguments pro and con, mainly in their own words, urged by the partisans of the different theories. It appears to us that the data within reach are far too scanty to justify any one in coming to a settled conclusion, and that we must wait for more light before we can be justified in finally making up our minds on this perplexing subject.[76]

At the present day we find that nearly the whole of the territory said to have been originally occupied by the Picts, is inhabited, and has been for centuries, by a population which in appearance is far more Teutonic than Celtic, and which undoubtedly speaks a broad Teutonic dialect.[77] And even in the district where the Gaelic language has been triumphant for ages, it is acknowledged even by the most devoted partisans of the Gaelic theory, that among the population there is a very considerable intermixture of the Teutonic element. Burton thinks, from a general view of the whole question, that the proportion of the Teutonic race that came into the use of the Gaelic, was much greater than the proportion of the Gaelic that came into the use of the Teutonic or Saxon, and that this may account for the contrasts of physical appearance to be seen in the Highlands.

We certainly have not exhausted the statement of the question, have not stated fully and completely all the points in dispute; nor do we pretend to have given with fulness all the arguments pro and con on the various sides. We have, however, given as much as will enable any ordinary reader to form for himself a fair idea of the present state of the Pictish question, and indicated the sources whence more information may be derived, should any one wish to pursue the subject farther. In the words of the latest and greatest Scottish historian “this brief survey of the great Pictish controversy leaves nothing but a melancholy record of wasted labour and defeated ambition. It has been more fruitless than a polemical or a political dispute, for these leave behind them, either for good or evil, their marks upon the conduct and character of the populations among whom they have raged; while here a vast outlay of learning, ingenuity, enthusiasm, and, it must be added, temper, have left no visible monument but a pile of forbidding volumes, in which should any one who has not studied the matter fundamentally expect to find instructive information, he will assuredly be led into a tangled maze of unintelligible pedantry, from which he will come forth with no impression but a nightmare feeling of hopeless struggle with difficulties.”[78]

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Garnett’s Philological Essays, p. 196.

[25] Agricola xi.

[26] The wall of Antonine.

[27] Dio L. 76, c. 12, as quoted in Ritson’s Annals, p. 11.

[28] Critical Essay, ch. ii.

[29] Highlanders.

[30] Book iii.

[31] “Scotti per diversa vagantes, multa populabantur.” Am. Mar. xxvii. 8.

[32] “---- Nec falso nomine Pictos Edomuit.”

[33] “Venit et extremis legio prætenta Britannis Quæ Scoto dat fræna truci, ferroque notatas Perlegit exangues Scoto moriente figuras.”-- De bello Getico, v. 416.

Thus rendered by Ritson:--

The legion came, o’er distant Britains placed, Which bridles the fierce Scot, and bloodless figures With iron marked, views in the dying Pict.

[34] The name given by the Irish Annalists to the Picts is Cruithne, said by some to mean “variegated.”

[35] The only important exception is Ritson, whose arguments, like those of his opponent Pinkerton, consist mostly of virulent language and vehement assertion.

[36] In Amm. Mar.

[37] It is a curious fact that these latter are, among the peasantry of Scotland, the distinctive characteristics of the Picts or Pechts, who, however, it is not unlikely, may be popularly confounded with the Brownies, especially as, in Perthshire at any rate, they are said always to have done their work while others were asleep.

[38] Skene’s Highlanders, vol. i. p. 2.

[39] L. O. Pike, The English and their Origin, ch. i.

[40] Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. i.

[41] Gildas, 1.

[42] Id., 19.

[43] Gildas, 14.

[44] Highlanders, vol. i. p. 72.

[45] Garnett’s Philological Essays, p. 199.

[46] Adam. ap. Colganum, 1. ii. c. 32.

[47] On the subject in question the recently published Book of Deer cannot be said to afford us any information. It gives a short account of the landing of Columba and a companion at Aberdour in the north of Aberdeenshire, and the founding of a monastery at Deer. But although the entries are in Gaelic, they do not tell us what language Columba spoke, nor whether ‘Bede the Pict,’ the mormaer of Buchan, understood him without an interpreter. The name of the saint--Drostan--whom Columba left behind him to prosecute the work, is Pictish, at any rate not Irish, so that nothing can be inferred from this. Since much of the first part of this book was written, Mr. Skene has advanced the theory, founded partly on four new Pictish words he has managed to discover, that the language of the Picts was neither pure Gaelic nor Cymric, ‘but a sort of low Gaelic dialect partaking largely of Welsh forms.’ This theory is not new, but was distinctly put forth by Dr. Maclauchlan some years ago in his able and learned work, The Early Scottish Church, p. 29: if true, it would certainly satisfy a great many of the demands which any hypothesis on the subject must do.

[48] Bede’s Eccles. Hist., Book 1. c. i.

[49] Nennius 12, Vatican MS.

[50] Critical Essay on Scotland, vol. i. p. 68.

[51] Book i., c. 12.

[52] Inquiry into the Hist. of Scot., vol. i. p. 357, ed. 1814.

[53] Crit. Essay, vol. i. p. 75.

[54] Garnett’s Phil. Essays, p. 198.

[55] Robertson’s Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii. p. 380. Forbes-Leslie’s Early Races of Scotland, vol. i. p 35.

[56] Hist. of Scot., vol. i. p. 187.

[57] Book iii. ch. 4.

[58] Eccl. Hist. of Scot., vol. i. p. 15, &c.

[59] Eccl. Hist. of Scot., vol. i. p. 17.

[60] Davies’ Celtic Researches, p. 155.

[61] Highlanders of Scotland, vol. i. p. 69.

[62] We are indebted for most of the following account to Connellan’s Annals of the Four Masters, p. 367 (note).

[63] See Taylor’s Words and Places, ch. ix.

[64] Pike’s English and their Origin, ch. ii., which contains some shrewd and valuable remarks on the subject of language.

[65] Burton, vol. i. p. 192.

For other instances see Burton’s Scotland, i. p. 196.

[67] Garnett’s Phil. Essays, pp. 197, 198.

[68] Highlanders.

[69] Phil. Essays, p. 200.

[70] Words and Places, p. 246.

[71] Highlanders.

[72] Scotland, vol i. p. 207.

[73] Vol. i. p. 26.

[74] Vol. ii. p. 377.

[75] Essay on Scotland, vol. i. p. 70.

[76] We have already (p. 22) referred to the Gaelo-Cymric theory broached by Dr. Maclauchlan in his Early Scottish Church, and recently adopted by Dr. Skene. Speaking of the distribution of the topographical nomenclature in the Highlands, Dr. Maclauchlan says it indicates one of two things; “either that the one race overpowered the other in the east, and superinduced a new nomenclature over the old throughout the country,--that we have in fact two successive strata of Celtic names, the Gaelic underlying the British, which is by no means impossible; or, what is more likely, that the Pictish people were a people lying midway between the Gael and the Cymri--more Gaelic than the Cymri, and more Cymric than the Gael. This is precisely the character of the old Pictish topography; it is a mixture of Gaelic and Cymric; and if the language of the people was like their topography, it too was a language neither Gaelic nor Cymric, but occupying a middle space between them, indicating the identity of the races at some distant period, although they afterwards became rivals for the possession of the land.” This we think on the whole the most satisfactory theory yet propounded.

[77] We would infer from the recently published Book of Deer, that down at least to the time of David II., the inhabitants were still a Gaelic speaking population; all the entries in that book as to land are in that language.

[78] Burton, vol. i. p. 200.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. A.D. 446-843

Early History--Scottish Settlement--Origin of Scots--Dalriada--Conversion of Picts--Druidism--St. Columba--Iona--Spread of Christianity--Brude and his Successors--Dun-Nechtan--Pictish Wars--Ungus--Contests--Norsemen--Union of Picts and Scots--Scoto-Irish or Dalriads--Lorn, Fergus, Angus and their Successors--Aidan--Contest at Degsastan--Donal Breac--Wars with Irish and Picts--Conal II. and Successors--Ferchar Fada--Selvach and Duncha Beg--Eocha III. unites Dalriada--Muredach--Contests with Picts--Aodh-fin--Eocha IV. or Achaius--Alpin--Kenneth--Union of Picts and Scots--Dalriadic Government--Tanist--Brehon--Laws--Fosterage--Lists of Kings.

As we have already said, the materials for the internal history of the Highlands during the Roman occupation are of the scantiest, nearly all that can be recorded being the struggles of the northern tribes with the Roman invaders, and the incursions of the former and their allies into the territories of the Romanized Britons. Doubtless many events as worthy of record as these, an account of which has been preserved, were during this period being transacted in the northern part of Scotland, and we have seen that many additions, from various quarters, must have been made to the population. However, there are no records extant which enable us to form any distinct notion of the nature of these events, and history cannot be manufactured.

After the departure of the Romans, the provincial Britons of the south of Scotland were completely at the mercy of the Picts as well as the Saxons, who had been invited over by the South Britons to assist them against the northern barbarians. These Saxons, we know, very soon entered into alliance with those whom they came to repel, and between them the Britons south of the friths were eventually driven into the West, where for centuries they appear to have maintained an independent kingdom under the name of Strathclyde, until ultimately they were incorporated with the Scots.[79]

Although both the external and internal history of the Highlands during this period is much better known than in the case of the Roman period, still the materials are exceedingly scanty. Scottish historians, from Fordun and Boece downwards, made it their business to fill up from their own imaginations what is wanting, so that, until the simple-minded but acute Innes put it in its true light, the early history of Scotland was a mass of fable.

Undoubtedly the two most momentous events of this period are the firm settlement in Argyle of a colony of Scots from Ireland and some of the neighbouring isles in 503,[80] and the conversion of the Northern Picts to Christianity by Columba about 563.

At the time of the Roman abandonment of Britain the Picts were under the sway of a king or chieftain named Drust, son of Erp, concerning whom the only record remaining is, that he lived a hundred years and fought a hundred battles. In fact, little is known with certainty of the Pictish history for upwards of one hundred years after the departure of the Romans, although some ancient chronicles afford us lists of Pictish kings or princes, a chronological table of whom, from Drust downwards, will be found at the end of this chapter. The Pictish chronicle contains the names of thirty-six others who are said to have reigned before Drust, but these are generally regarded as almost entirely spurious.

Before proceeding farther with the Pictish history, it may be proper to give a brief account of the settlement of the Irish Scots or Dalriads, as they are frequently called, in the Pictish territory.

The time of the settlement of the Scots in present Scotland was for long a subject of disputation, the early Scottish historians, from a false and unscrupulous patriotism, having pushed it back for many centuries before its actual occurrence. This dispute is now, however, fairly set at rest, there being no foundation for believing that the Scots found their way from Ireland to Scotland earlier than a century or two before the birth of Christ. As we have already seen, we find the first mention of the Scots in Ammianus Marcellinus about the year 360 A.D.; and their name occurs in the same connection frequently afterwards, during the Roman occupation of Scotland. Burton[81] is of opinion that the migration did not take place at any particular time or under any particular leader, but that it was gradual, that the Scots “oozed” out of Ireland upon the western coast of Scotland.

It belongs to the history of Ireland to trace the origin and fix the race of the Scots, to settle the time of their coming into Ireland, and discover whence they came. Some suppose that they migrated originally from Britain to Ireland, while Innes and others bring them either from Scandinavia or Spain, and connect them with the Scyths, asserting that Scot is a mere corruption of Scyth, and dating the settlement at about the commencement of the Christian era. The Irish traditions connect them with a certain Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, and date their coming to Ireland upwards of 1,000 years B.C. E. W. Robertson[82] and others consider them to have been Irish Picts or Cruithne.

Wherever the Scots came from and to whatever race they belong, whether Teutonic or Celtic, they certainly appear not to have been the first settlers in Ireland, and at the time at which they first appear in authentic history occupied a district in Ireland corresponding to Connaught, Leinster, and part of Munster. They were also one of the most powerful of the Irish tribes, seeing that for many centuries Ireland was, after them, called Scotia or Scotland. It is usually said that a particular corner in the north-east of Ireland, about 30 miles in extent, corresponding to the modern county of Antrim, was the kingdom of the particular band of Scots who migrated to Scotland; and that it received its name, Dal-Riada (‘the portion of Riada’), from Carbre-Riada, a leader of the Scots who conquered this particular part, previously inhabited by Cruithne or Irish Picts. Robertson,[83] however, considers all this fable and the kingdom of Dalriada as mythical, Tighernach and the early Irish annalists never applying the name to any other locality than British Dalriada. At all events, this particular district was spoken of by the later chroniclers under the name of Dalriada, there being thus a Dalriada both in Scotland and Ireland.[84] At the time of the migration of the Scots from Ireland to Scotland, they were to all intents and purposes a Celtic race, speaking Trish Gaelic, and had already been converted to Christianity.

The account of the Scottish migration usually given is, that in the year 503 A.D.,[85] a new colony of Dalriads or Dalriadic Scots, under the leadership of Fergus son of Erc, a descendant of Carbre-Riada, along with his brothers Lorn and Angus, left Ireland and settled on the western coast of Argyle and the adjacent islands. “The territories which constituted the petty kingdoms of Dalriada can be pretty well defined. They were bounded on the south by the Frith of Clyde, and they were separated on the east from the Pictish kingdom by the ridge of the great mountain chain called Drumalban. They consisted of four tribes,--the genus or Cinel Lorn, descended from Lorn, the elder of the three brothers; the Cinel Gabran and Cinel Comgall, descended from two sons of Domangart, son of Fergus, the second of the brothers; and the Cinel Angus, descended from the third brother, Angus. The Cinel Comgall inhabited the district formerly called Comgall, now corrupted into Cowall. The Cinel Gabran inhabited what was called the Airgiallas, or the district of Argyle proper, and Kintyre. The Cinel Angus inhabited the islands of Islay and Jura, and the Cinel Lorn, the district of Lorn. Beyond this, on the north, the districts between Lorn and the promontory of Ardnamurchan, i.e., the island of Mull, the district of Morven, Ardgower, and probably part of Lochaber, seem to have formed a sort of debatable ground, the population of which was Pictish, while the Scots had settlements among them. In the centre of the possessions of the Cinel Gabran, at the head of the well-sheltered loch of Crinan, lies the great Moss of Crinan, with the river Add flowing through it. In the centre of the moss, and on the side of the river, rises an isolated rocky hill called Dunadd, the top of which is strongly fortified. This was the capital of Dalriada, and many a stone obelisk in the moss around it bears silent testimony to the contests of which it was the centre. The picturesque position of Dunolly Castle, on a rock at the entrance of the equally sheltered bay of Oban, afforded another fortified summit, which was the chief stronghold of the tribe of Lorn. Of Dunstaffnage, as a royal seat, history knows nothing.”[86]

It would appear that Lorn and Fergus at first reigned jointly, the latter becoming sole monarch on the decease of the former. The succession appears not to have been confined to any particular line, and a disputed succession not unfrequently involved the Scots in civil war.

There is no portion of history so obscure or so perplexing as that of the Scoto-Irish kings, and their tribes, from their first settlement, in the year 503, to their accession to the Pictish throne in 843. Unfortunately no contemporaneous written records appear ever to have existed of that dark period of our annals, and the efforts which the Scotch and Irish antiquaries have made to extricate the truth from the mass of contradictions in which it lies buried, have rather been displays of national prejudice than calm researches by reasonable inquirers. The annals, however, of Tigernach, and of Ulster, along with the brief chronicles and historical documents first brought to light by the industrious Innes, in his Critical Essay, have thrown some glimpses of light on a subject which had long remained in almost total darkness.[87]

The next authentic event of importance that falls to be recorded in connection with the history of the Highlands, is the conversion of the Northern Picts to Christianity, about the year 563. The Southern Picts, i.e. those living to the south and east of the Grampians, were converted by St. Ninian (360-432) about the beginning of the 5th century; but the Northern Picts, until the date above-mentioned, continued Pagans. That there were no Christians among them till that time appears very improbable, considering their close neighbourhood and constant intercourse with the Southern Picts and the Scots of Dalriada; but there can be no doubt that the court and the great bulk of the people adhered to their ancient superstitions.

The religion of the Picts before their conversion is supposed by the majority of writers on this subject to have been that which prevailed in the rest of Britain and in Celtic Gaul, Druidism. The incredulous Burton, however, if we may judge from his History of Scotland,[88] as well as from an article of his in the Edinburgh Review, seems to believe that the whole system of Druidism has been elaborated by the imaginations of modern historians. That the Picts previous to their conversion had a religion, and a religion with what may be called priests and religious services, cannot be doubted, if we may trust Tacitus and Adamnan, the biographer of Columba; the former of whom tells us that, previous to the battle of the Grampians, the union of the various tribes was ratified by solemn rites and sacrifices, and the latter, that Columba’s efforts at conversion were strenuously opposed by the diabolical arts and incantations of the Magi. It appears from Adamnan that fountains were particularly objects of veneration; the superstitious awe with which many fountains and wells are regarded at the present day, being doubtless a remnant of the ancient Pictish religion. Trees, rivers, and lakes, as well as the heavenly bodies, appear also to have been objects of religious regard, and not a few of the customs which exist in Scotland at the present day have been inherited from our Pictish ancestors. Such are many of the rites performed on Hallowe’en, Beltane, Midsummer, &c., and many every-day superstitions still prevalent in the country districts of Scotland.

“Druidism is said to have acknowledged a Supreme Being, whose name was synonymous with the Eastern Baal, and if so, was visibly represented by the sun; and such remnants of the ancient worship as are still traceable in the language of the people, would indicate its having been a species of sun-worship. To this day the four leading points of the compass bear, in the terms which designate them among the Gael, marks of this. The east is ear, like the Latin oriens, from the Gaelic eiridh, ‘to rise;’ the west is iar, ‘after,’ used also as a preposition; the south is deas, and the north tuath; and it is in the use of these terms that the reverence for the solar luminary chiefly appears. Deas, ‘the south,’ is in all circumstances right; it is the right hand, which is easily intelligible, from the relation of that hand to the south when the face looks eastward; and it is expressive of whatever is otherwise right. Deas also means complete, trim, ready; whatever is deas, or southerly, is just as it should be. Tuath, ‘north,’ is the very opposite. Tuathaisd is a ‘stupid fellow;’ Tuathail is ‘wrong’ in every sense: south and north, then, as expressed in the words deiseal and tuathail, are, in the Gaelic language, the representatives of right and wrong. Thus everything that is to move prosperously among many of the Celts, must move sunwise: a boat going to sea must turn sunwise; a man or woman immediately after marriage, must make a turn sunwise. There are relics of fire-worship too; certain days are named from fire-lighting; Beallteine, or ‘the first day of summer,’ and saimhtheine, ‘the first day of winter,’--the former supposed to mean the fire of Baal or Bel, the latter closing the saimhré, or summer period of the year, and bringing in the geamhré, or winter period, are sufficient evidence of this. There are places in Scotland where within the memory of living men the teine eigin, or ‘forced fire,’ was lighted once every year by the rubbing of two pieces of wood together, while every fire in the neighbourhood was extinguished in order that they might be lighted anew from this sacred source.”[89]

Many of the antiquities which are scattered over the north of Scotland, such as stone circles, monoliths, sculptured stones, rocking stones, &c., are very generally supposed to have been connected with religion. From the resemblance of the circles especially, to those which exist in South Britain and in France, it has been supposed that one religion prevailed over these countries. As Druidism is so commonly believed to have prevailed among the Picts as well as among the other inhabitants of Britain, we shall here give a very brief account of that system, chiefly as we find it given in Cæsar.[90] The following is the account given by Cæsar of the character and functions of the Druids:--“They attend to divine worship, perform public and private sacrifices, and expound matters of religion. A great number of youths are gathered round them for the sake of education, and they enjoy the highest honour in that nation; for nearly all public and private quarrels come under their jurisdiction; and when any crime has been committed, when a murder has been perpetrated, when a controversy arises about a legacy, or about landmarks, they are the judges too. They fix rewards and punishments; and should any one, whether a private individual or a public man, disobey their decrees, then they exclude him from the sacrifices. All these Druids have one chief, who enjoys the highest authority amongst them. When he dies, he is succeeded by the member of the order who is most prominent amongst the others, if there be any such single individual; if, however, there are several men equally distinguished, the successor is elected by the Druids. Sometimes they even go to war about this supremacy.

“The Druids take no part in warfare; nor do they pay taxes like the rest of the people; they are exempt from military service, and from all public burdens. Attracted by such rewards, many come to be instructed by their own choice, while others are sent by their parents. They are reported to learn in the school a great number of verses, so that some remain there twenty years. They think it an unhallowed thing to commit their lore to writing, though in the other public and private affairs of life they frequently make use of the Greek alphabet.... Beyond all things, they are desirous to inspire a belief that men’s souls do not perish, but transmigrate after death from one individual to another; and besides, they hold discourses about the stars, about the size of the world and of various countries, about the nature of things, and about the power and might of the immortal gods.”

Among the objects of druidical veneration the oak is said to have been particularly distinguished; for the Druids imagined that there was a supernatural virtue in the wood, in the leaves, in the fruit, and above all in the mistletoe. Hence the oak woods were the first places of their devotion; and the offices of their religion were there performed without any covering but the broad canopy of heaven. The part appropriated for worship was inclosed in a circle, within which was placed a pillar of stone set up under an oak, and sacrifices were offered thereon. The pillars which mark the sites of these places of worship are still to be seen; and so great is the superstitious veneration paid by the country people to these sacred stones, as they are considered, that few persons have ventured to remove them.

Besides the immunities before-mentioned enjoyed by the Druids, they also possessed both civil and criminal jurisdiction, they decided all controversies among states as well as among private persons; and whoever refused to submit to their awards was exposed to the most severe penalties. The sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him; he was debarred all intercourse with his fellow-citizens; his company was universally shunned as profane and dangerous; he was refused the protection of law; and death itself became an acceptable relief from the misery and infamy to which he was exposed.

St. Columba was born in the county of Donegal, in Ireland, in the year 521, and was connected both on his father’s and mother’s side with the Irish royal family. He was carefully educated for the priesthood, and, after having finished his ecclesiastical studies, founded monasteries in various parts of Ireland. The year of his departure from Ireland is, on good authority, ascertained to have been 563, and it is generally said that he fled to save his life, which was in jeopardy on account of a feud in which his relations were involved. Mr. Grub[91] believes that “the love of God and of his brethren was to him a sufficient motive for entering on the great work to which he was called. His immediate objects were the instruction of the subjects of Conal, king of the British Scots, and the conversion of their neighbours the heathen Picts of the North.” In the year 563, when Columba was 42 years of age, he arrived among his kindred on the shores of Argyle, and immediately set himself to fix on a suitable site for a monastery which he meant to erect, from which were to issue forth the apostolic missionaries destined to assist him in the work of conversion, and in which also the youth set apart for the office of the holy ministry were to be educated. St. Columba espied a solitary isle lying apart from the rest of the Hebridean group, near the south-west angle of Mull, then known by the simple name I, whose etymology is doubtful, afterwards changed by Bede into Hy, latinized by the monks into Iova or Iona, and again honoured with the name of I-columb-cil, the island of St. Columba of the church. This island, Conal, who was then king of the Christian Scots of Argyle, presented to Columba, in order that he might erect thereon a monastery for the residence of himself and his disciples. No better station could have been selected than this islet during such barbarous times.

In pursuance of his plan, St. Columba settled with twelve disciples in Hy. “They now,” says Bede, “neither sought, nor loved, anything of this world,”--true traits in the missionary character. For two years did they labour with their own hands erecting huts and building a church of logs and reeds. “The monastery of Iona, like those previously founded by Columba in Ireland, was not a retreat for solitaries whose chief object was to work out their own salvation; it was a great school of Christian education, and was specially designed to prepare and send forth a body of clergy trained to the task of preaching the Gospel among the heathen.”[92] Having established his missionary institution, and having occupied himself for some time in the instruction of his countrymen the Scots of Argyle, the pious Columba set out on his apostolic tour among the Picts, probably in the year 565. At this time Bridei or Brude, whose reign extended from 536 to 586, the son of Mailcon, a powerful and influential prince, reigned over the Northern Picts, and appears also to have had dominion over those of the south. Judging well that if he could succeed in converting Brude, who, when Columba visited him was staying at one of his residences on the banks of the Ness, the arduous task he had undertaken of bringing over the whole nation to the worship of the true God would be more easily accomplished, he first began with the king, and by great patience and perseverance succeeded in converting him.

The first Gaelic entry in the Book of Deer lets us see the great missionary on one of his tours, and describes the founding of an important mission-station which became the centre of instruction for all the surrounding country. The following is the translation given of the Gaelic original:--“Columcille, and Drostán son of Cosgrach, his pupil, came from Hí, as God had shown to them, unto Abbordoboir, and Bede the Pict was mormaer of Buchan before them, and it was he that gave them that town in freedom for ever from mormaer and toisech. They came after that to the other town, and it was pleasing to Columcille because it was full of God’s grace, and he asked of the mormaer, to wit Bede, that he should give it to him; and he did not give it, and a son of his took an illness after [or in consequence of] refusing the clerics, and he was nearly dead [lit. he was dead but if it were a little]. After this the mormaer went to entreat the clerics that they should make prayer for the son, that health should come to him; and he gave in offering to them from Cloch in tiprat to Cloch pette meic Garnait. They made the prayer, and health came to him. After that Columcille gave to Drostán that town, and blessed it, and left as (his) word, ‘Whosoever should come against it, let him not be many-yeared [or] victorious.’ Drostán’s tears came on parting from Columcille. Said Columcille, ‘Let DÉAR be its name henceforward.’”

The Abbordoboir here spoken of is Aberdour on the north coast of Aberdeenshire, and Dear probably occupied the site of what is now Old Deer, about twelve miles inland from Aberdour. There is every reason for believing in the substantial truth of the narrative. The two saints, probably from the banks of the Ness, came to Aberdour and “tarried there for a time and founded a monastery on the land which had been granted them. In later times the parish church of Aberdour was dedicated to St. Drostan.” One would almost be inclined to suppose, from the manner in which the missionaries were apparently received, that Christianity had been heard of there before; possibly Bede the Pictish mormaer had been converted at the court of King Brude, and had invited Columba to pay him a visit in Buchan and plant the gospel among the inhabitants. Possibly St. Ninian, the apostle of the southern Picts, may, during his mission among them, have penetrated as far north as Buchan. On the side of the choir of the old parish church of Turriff, a few miles west of Deer, was found painted the figure of St. Ninian, which was probably as old as the 16th century. At all events, Columba and his companion appear to have been made most welcome in Buchan, and were afforded every facility for prosecuting their sacred work. The above record doubtless gives us a fair notion of Columba’s mode of procedure in prosecuting his self-imposed task of converting the inhabitants of Alba. As was the case in Buchan, he appears to have gone from district to district along with his missionary companions, seen the work of conversion fairly begun, planted a monastery in a suitable place, and left one or more of his disciples as resident missionaries to pursue the work of conversion and keep Christianity alive in the district.[93]

Columba soon had the happiness of seeing the blessings of Christianity diffusing themselves among a people who had hitherto sat in the darkness of paganism. Attended by his disciples he traversed the whole of the Pictish territories, spreading everywhere the light of faith by instructing the people in the truths of the Gospel. To keep up a succession of the teachers of religion, he established, as we have seen, monasteries in every district, and from these issued, for many ages, men of apostolic earnestness, who watered and tended the good seed planted by Columba, and carried it to the remotest parts of the north of Scotland and its islands, so that, in a generation or two after Columba, Christianity became the universal religion. These monasteries or cells were long subject to the Abbey of Iona, and the system of church government which proceeded from that centre was in many respects peculiar, and has given rise to much controversy between presbyterians and episcopalians.

St. Columba died on the 9th of June, 597, after a glorious and well-spent life, thirty-four years of which he had devoted to the instruction of the nation he had converted. His influence was very great with the neighbouring princes, and they often applied to him for advice, and submitted to him their differences, which he frequently settled by his authority. His memory was long held in reverence by the Scots and Caledonians.

Conal, the fifth king of the Scots in Argyle, the kinsman of St. Columba, and under whose auspices he entered on the work of conversion, and to whom it is said he was indebted for Hy, died in 571. His successor Aidan went over to Iona in 574, and was there ordained and inaugurated by the Abbot according to the ceremonial of the liber vitreus, the cover of which is supposed to have been encrusted with crystal.

To return to the history of the Picts, we have already observed that little is known of Pictish history for more than a hundred years after the Roman abdication; and even up to the union of the Picts and Scots, the materials for the history of both are about as scarce as they could possibly be, consisting mostly of meagre chronicles containing the names of kings, the dates of their accession and death, and occasionally the names of battles and of the contending nations. Scotland during this period appears to have been the scene of unceasing war between the Scots, Picts, Britons of Strathclyde, English, and Danes, the two first being continually at strife not only with each other but among themselves. We shall endeavour to give, as clearly and as faithfully as possible, the main reliable facts in the history of the Scots and Picts until the union of these two nations.

The reign of Brude was distinguished by many warlike exploits, but above all, as we have seen, by his conversion and that of his people to Christianity, which indeed formed his greatest glory. His chief contests were with the Scoto-Irish or Dalriads, whom he defeated in 557, and slew Gauran their king. Brude died in 586, and for several ages his successors carried on a petty system of warfare, partly foreign and partly domestic. Passing over a domestic conflict, at Lindores in 621, under Kenneth, son of Luthrin, we must notice the important battle of Dun-Nechtan, fought in 685, between the Picts under Brude, the son of Bili,[94] and the Saxons, under the Northumbrian Egfrid. The Saxon king, it is said, greedy of conquest, attacked the Picts without provocation, and against the advice of his court. Crossing the Forth from Lothian, he entered Strathearn and penetrated through the defiles of the Pictish kingdom, leaving fire and desolation in his train. His career was stopt at Dun-Nechtan, the hill of Nechtan, a hill in the parish of Dunnichen, about the centre of Forfarshire; and by a neighbouring lake, long known by the name of Nechtan’s mere, a short distance east from the town of Forfar, did Egfrid and his Saxons fall before Brude and his exasperated Picts. This was a sad blow to the Northumbrian power; yet the Northumbrians, in 699, under Berht, an able leader, again ventured to try their strength with the Picts, when they were once more defeated by Brude, the son of Dereli, who had recently mounted the Pictish throne.

The wars between the Picts and Northumbrians were succeeded by various contests for power among the Pictish princes, which gave rise to a civil war. Ungus, honoured by the Irish Annalists with the title of great, and Elpin, at the head of their respective partisans, tried their strength at Monacrib, supposed by some to be Moncrieff in Strathearn, in the year 727, when the latter was defeated; and the conflict was renewed at Duncrei (Crieff), when victory declared a second time against Elpin, who was obliged to flee from the hostility of Ungus. Nechtan next tried his strength with Ungus, in 728, at a place called Monacurna by the Annalists--possibly Moncur in the Carse of Gowrie--but he was defeated, and many of his followers perished. Talorgan, the son of Congus, was defeated by Brude, the son of Ungus, in 730, and in the same year the Picts appear to have entered into a treaty of peace with the English nation.

The victorious Ungus commenced hostilities against the Dalriads, or Scoto-Irish, in the year 736, and appears to have got the better of the latter. The Scots were again worsted in another battle in 740 by Ungus, who in the same year repulsed an attack of the Northumbrians under Eadbert. In the year 750 he defeated the Britons of the Cumbrian kingdom in the battle of Cato or Cath-O, in which his brother Talorgan was killed. Ungus, who appears to have been a powerful and able monarch, but whom Bede[95] characterizes as having conducted himself “with bloody wickedness, a tyrant and an executioner,” died about 760. A doubtful victory was gained by Ciniod, or Kenneth, the Pictish king, over Aodh-fin, the Scottish king, in 767. Constantine, having overcome Conall, the son of Tarla, in 789, succeeded him in the throne.[96]

Up to this period the Norsemen from Scandinavia, or the Vikingr, i.e. men of the voes or bays, as they were termed, had confined their ravages to the Baltic; but, in the year 787 they for the first time appeared on the east coast of England. Some years afterwards they found their way to the Caledonian shores, and in 795 made their first attack on Iona, which frequently afterwards, along with the rest of the Hebrides, suffered grievously from their ravages. In 839 the Vikingr entered the Pictish territories. A murderous conflict ensued between them and the Picts under Uen their king, in which both he and his only brother Bran, as well as many of the Pictish chiefs, fell. This event, no doubt, hastened the downfall of the Pictish monarchy; and as the Picts were unable to resist the arms of Kenneth, the Scottish king, he carried into execution, in the year 843, a project he had long entertained, of uniting the Scots and Picts, and placing both crowns on his head. That anything like a total extermination of the Picts took place is now generally discredited, although doubtless there was great slaughter both of princes and people. Skene[97] asserts indeed that it was only the Southern Picts who became subject to Kenneth, the Northern Picts remaining for long afterwards independent of, but sometimes in alliance with, the Scots. This is substantially the opinion of Mr. E. W. Robertson,[98] who says, “the modern shires of Perth, Fife, Stirling, and Dumbarton, with the greater part of the county of Argyle, may be said to have formed the actual Scottish kingdom to which Kenneth succeeded.” The Picts were recognised as a distinct people even in the tenth century, but before the twelfth they lost their characteristic nominal distinction by being amalgamated with the Scots, their conquerors.

The Scoto-Irish after their arrival in Argyle did not long continue under the separate authority of the three brothers, Lorn, Fergus, and Angus. They were said to have been very far advanced in life before leaving Ireland, and the Irish chroniclers assert that St. Patrick gave them his benediction before his death, in the year 493. The statement as to their advanced age derives some support from their speedy demise after they had laid the foundations of their settlements, and of a new dynasty of kings destined to rule over the kingdom of Scotland. Angus was the first who died, leaving a son, Muredach, who succeeded him in the small government of Ila. After the death of Lorn the eldest brother, Fergus, the last survivor, became sole monarch of the Scoto-Irish; but he did not long enjoy the sovereignty, for he died in 506.

Fergus was succeeded by his son Domangart, or Dongardus, who died in 511, after a short but troubled reign of about five years. His two sons Comgal and Gabhran or Gauran, successively enjoyed his authority. Comgal had a peaceful reign of four and twenty years, during which he extended his settlements. He left a son named Conal, but Gauran his brother, notwithstanding, ascended the throne in the year 535 without opposition. Gauran reigned two and twenty years, and, as we have already observed, was slain in a battle with the Picts under Bridei their king.

Conal, the son of Comgal, then succeeded in 557, and closed a reign of fourteen years in 571. It was during his reign that Columba’s mission to the Picts took place. A civil war ensued between Aodhan or Aidan, the son of Gauran, and Duncha or Duncan, the son of Conal, for the vacant crown, the claim to which was decided on the bloody field of Loro or Loco in Kintyre in 575, where Duncha was slain. Aidan, the son of Gauran, had been formally inaugurated by St. Columba in Iona, in 574. In the time of Aidan there were frequent wars between the Dalriads and the English Saxons. Many battles were fought in which the Scots were generally defeated, the principal being that of Degsastan or Dalston near Carlisle, in 603, in which nearly the whole of the Scottish army was defeated. The wars with the Saxons weakened the power of the Dalriads very considerably, and it was not till after a long period of time that they again ventured to meet the Saxons in the field.

During a short season of repose, Aidan, attended by St. Columba, went to the celebrated council of Drum-keat in Ulster, in the year 590. In this council he claimed the principality of Dalriada, the land of his fathers, and obtained an exemption from doing homage to the kings of Ireland, which his ancestors, it would appear, had been accustomed to pay. Aidan died in 605 or 608, at the advanced age of eighty, and was buried In the church of Kil-keran, the ruins of which are still to be seen in the midst of Campbelton.

Aidan was succeeded in the throne by his son Eocha-bui, or the “yellow,” who reigned sixteen years. He carried on war with the Cruithne of Ulster. After him came his brother Kenneth-Cear, or the “left-handed,” who was followed by Ferchar, son of Eogan, of the race of Lorn.

Donal, surnamed breac or freckled, the son of Eocha’-bui, of the race of Gauran, succeeded Ferchar about 637. He was a warlike prince and had distinguished himself in the wars against the Cruithne of Ireland. Congal-Claon, the son of Scanlan, the king of the Cruithne in Ulster, having slain Suibne-Mean, a powerful king of Ireland, was attacked by Domnal II., supreme king of Ireland, who succeeded Suibne, and was defeated in the battle of Duncetheren, in 629. Congal sought refuge in Cantyre, and having persuaded Donal-breac, the kinsman of Domnal, to join him in a war against the latter, they invaded Ireland with a heterogeneous mass of Scoto-Irish, Picts, Britons, and Saxons, commanded by Donal and his brothers. Cealach, the son of Maelcomh, the nephew of the reigning king, and as tanist or heir-apparent, the leader of his army, attacked Donal-breac in the plain of Magh Rath or Moyra in Down, in 637, and completely defeated him after an obstinate and bloody engagement. Congal, the murderer of his sovereign, met his merited fate, and Donal-breac was obliged to secure his own and his army’s safety by a speedy return to Cantyre. St. Columba had always endeavoured to preserve an amicable understanding between the Cruithne of Ulster and the Scoto-Irish, and his injunctions were, that they should live in constant peace; but Donal disregarded the wise advice of the saint, and paid dearly for so doing. He was not more successful in an enterprise against the Picts, having been defeated by them in the battle of Glinne Mairison, Glenmairison, or Glenmoreson, probably in West Lothian,[99] during the year 638. He ended his days at Straith-cairmaic or Strathcarron, possibly in the neighbourhood of Falkirk, by the sword of Hoan or Owen, one of the reguli of Strathcluyd, in the year 642. His son Cathasuidh fell by the same hand in 649.

Conal II., the grandson of Conal I., who was also of the Fergusian race of Congal, next ruled over the tribes of Cantyre and Argyle; but Dungal, of the race of Lorn, having obtained the government of the tribe of Lorn, questioned the right of Conal. He did not, however, carry his pretensions far, for Conal died, in undisturbed possession of his dominions, in 652, after a reign of ten years. To Donal-duin, or the brown, son of Conal, who reigned thirteen years, succeeded Maolduin, his brother, in 665. The family feuds which had long existed between the Fergusian races of Comgal and Tauran, existed in their bitterest state during the reign of Maolduin. Domangart, the son of Donal-breac, was murdered in 672, and Conal, the son of Maolduin, was assassinated in 675.

Ferchar-fada, or the tall, apparently of the race of Lorn, and either the son or grandson of Ferchar, who died in 637, seized the reins of government upon the death of Maolduin. On the death of Ferchar, in 702, the sceptre passed again to the Fergusian race in the person of Eocha’-rineval, remarkable for his Roman nose, the son of Domangart. The reign of this prince was short and unfortunate. His sceptre was seized by Ainbhcealach, the son of Ferchar-fada, who succeeded Eocha’ in 705. He was of an excellent disposition, but after reigning one year, was dethroned by his brother, Selvach, and obliged, in 706, to take refuge in Ireland. Selvach attacked the Britons of Strathcluyd, and gained two successive victories over them, the one at Longecoleth in 710, and the other at the rock of Mionuirc in 716. At the end of twelve years, Ainbhcealach returned from Ireland, to regain a sceptre which his brother had by his cruelties shown himself unworthy to wield, but he perished in the battle of Finglein, perhaps Glen Fyne at the head of Loch Fyne, in 719. Selvach met a more formidable rival in Duncha-beg, who was descended from Fergus, by the line of Congal; he assumed the government of Cantyre and Argail, and confined Selvach to his family settlement of Lorn. These two princes appear to have been fairly matched in disposition and valour, and both exerted themselves for the destruction of one another, thus bringing many miseries upon their tribes. In an attempt which they made to invade the territories of each other in 719 by means of currachs, a naval combat ensued off Airdeanesbi, (probably Ardaness on the coast of Argyle,) in which Selvach was overcome by Duncha; but Selvach was not subdued. The death of Duncha in 721 put an end to his designs; but Eocha’ III., the son of Eocha’-rineval, the successor of Duncha, being as bent on the overthrow of Selvach as his predecessor, continued the war. The rival chiefs met at Irroisfoichne in 727, where a battle was fought, which produced nothing but irritation and distress. This lamentable state of things was put an end to by the death of Selvach in 729. This event enabled Eocha to assume the government of Lorn, and thus the Dalriadan kingdom which had been alternately ruled by chiefs of the houses of Fergus and Lorn became again united under Eocha. He died in 733, after a reign of thirteen years, during nine of which he ruled over Cantyre and Argyle, and four over all the Dalriadic tribes.

Eocha was succeeded in the kingdom by Muredach, the son of Ainbhceallach, of the race of Lorn. His reign was short and unfortunate. In revenge for an act of perfidy committed by Dungal, the son of Selvach, who had carried off Forai or Torai, the daughter of Brude, and the niece of Ungus, the great Pictish king, the latter, in the year 736, led his army from Strathearn, through the passes of the mountains into Lorn, which he wasted with fire and sword. He seized Dunad, in Mid-Lorn, and burned Creic, another fortress in the Ross of Mull, taking Dungal and Feradach, the two sons of Selvach, prisoners. Muredach went in pursuit of his enemy, and having overtaken him at Knock Cairpre, at Calatros, on the shores of the Linne,[100] a battle ensued, in which the Scots were repulsed with great slaughter. Talorgan, the brother of Ungus, commanded the Picts on this occasion, and pursued the flying Scots. In this pursuit Muredach is supposed to have perished, after a reign of three years.

Eogban or Ewan, the son of Muredach, took up the fallen succession in 736, and died in 739, in which year the Dalriadic sceptre was assumed by Aodh-fin, the son of Eocha’ III., and grandson of Eocha’-rineval, descended from the Fergusian race of Gauran. In 740 he measured his strength with the celebrated Ungus; but victory declared for neither, and during the remainder of Ungus’ reign, he did not attempt to renew hostilities. After the death of Ungus, in 761, Aodh-fin declared war against the Picts, whose territories he entered from Upper Lorn, penetrating through the passes of Glenorchy and Breadalbane. In 767 he reached Forteviot, the Pictish capital in Strathearn, where he fought a doubtful battle with Ciniod the Pictish king. Aodh-fin died in 769, after a splendid reign of thirty years.[101]

Fergus II., son of Aodh-fin, succeeded to the sceptre on the demise of his father, and died after an unimportant reign of three years. Selvach II., the son of Eogan, assumed the government in 772. His reign, which lasted twenty-four years, presents nothing very remarkable in history.

A new sovereign of a different lineage, now mounted the throne of the Scots in 796, in the person of Eocha or Auchy, the son of Aodh-fin of the Gauran race. Eocha’ IV. is known also by the latinized appellation of Achaius. The story of the alliance between Achaius and Charlemagne has been shown to be a fable; although it is by no means improbable that he entered into an important treaty with the Picts, by marrying Urgusia, the daughter of Urguis, an alliance which, it is said, enabled his grandson Kenneth afterwards to claim and acquire the Pictish sceptre, in right of Urgusia his grandmother. Eocha died in 826, after a happy and prosperous reign of thirty years. He was succeeded by Dungal, the son of Selvach II., of the race of Lorn, being the last of that powerful family who swayed the Dalriadic sceptre. After a feeble but stormy reign of seven years, he died in 833.

Alpin, the last of the Scoto-Irish kings, and the son of Eocha IV. and of Urgusia, now mounted the throne. He was killed in 836, near the site of Laicht castle, on the ridge which separates Kyle from Galloway. The fiction that Alpin fell in a battle with the Picts, when asserting his right to the Pictish throne, has long been exploded.

In 836 Kenneth, the son of Alpin, succeeded his father. He was a prince of a warlike disposition, and of great vigour of mind and body. He avenged the death of his father by frequent inroads among the people dwelling to the south of the Clyde; but the great glory of his reign consists in his achievements against the Picts, which secured for him and his posterity the Pictish sceptre. The Pictish power had, previous to the period of Kenneth’s accession, been greatly enfeebled by the inroads of the Danish Vikingr; but it was not till after the death of Uven, the Pictish king, in 839, after a distracted reign of three years, that Kenneth made any serious attempt to seize the Pictish diadem. On the accession of Wred, Kenneth, in accordance with the principle of succession said by Bede to have prevailed among the Picts, claimed the Pictish throne in right of Urgusia, his grandmother; Wred died in 842, and after an arduous struggle, Kenneth wrested the sceptre from Bred, his successor, in 843, after he had reigned over the Scots seven years.

Burton[102] thinks there can be no doubt that the two countries were prepared for a fusion whenever a proper opportunity offered, but that this was on account of a matrimonial alliance between the two royal houses cannot with certainty be ascertained.[103] As we have said already, it is extremely improbable that Kenneth gained his supremacy by extermination. The Picts certainly appear to have suffered severe defeat, but the likelihood is that after Kenneth succeeded to the throne, a gradual fusion of the two people took place, so that in course of time they became essentially one, speaking one language, obeying the same laws, and following the same manners and customs. If we knew for certain to what race the Picts belonged, and what language they spoke, it might help us not a little to understand the nature and extent of the amalgamation; but as we know so little about these, and as the chroniclers, in speaking of this event, are so enigmatical and meagre, we are left almost entirely to conjecture. We are certain, at any rate, that from some cause or other, the kings of the Dalriadic Scots, about the middle of the 9th century, obtained supremacy over at least the Southern Picts, who from that time forward ceased to be a separate nation.[104]

The history of the Scoto-Irish kings affords few materials either amusing or instructive; but it was impossible, from the connexion between that history and the events that will follow in detail, to pass it over in silence. The Scoto-Irish tribes appear to have adopted much the same form of government as existed in Ireland at the time of their departure from that kingdom; the sovereignty of which, though nominally under one head, was in reality a pentarchy, which allowed four provincial kings to dispute the monarchy of the fifth. This system was the prolific source of anarchy, assassinations, and civil wars. The Dalriads were constantly kept in a state of intestine commotion and mutual hostility by the pretensions of their rival chiefs, or princes of the three races, who contended with the common sovereign for pre-eminence or exemption. The dlighe-tanaiste, or law of tanistry, which appears to have been generally followed as in Ireland, as well in the succession of kings as in that of chieftains, rather increased than mitigated these disorders; for the claim to rule not being regulated by any fixed law of hereditary succession, but depending upon the capricious will of the tribe, rivals were not found wanting to dispute the rights so conferred. There was always, both in Ireland and in Argyle, an heir presumptive to the Crown chosen, under the name of tanist, who commanded the army during the life of the reigning sovereign, and who succeeded to him after his demise. Budgets, and committees of supply, and taxes, were wholly unknown in those times among the Scots, and the monarch was obliged to support his dignity by voluntary contributions of clothes, cattle, furniture, and other necessaries.

There is reason to believe that tradition supplied the place of written records for many ages after the extinction of the Druidical superstition. Hence among the Scots, traditionary usages and local customs long supplied the place of positive or written laws. It is a mistake to suppose, as some writers have done, that the law consisted in the mere will of the Brehon or judge. The office of Breitheamhuin or Brehon was hereditary, and it is quite natural to infer, that under such a system of jurisprudence, the dictum of the judge might not always comport with what was understood to be the common law or practice; but from thence, to argue that the will of the judge was to be regarded as the law itself, is absurd, and contrary to every idea of justice. As the principle of the rude jurisprudence of the Celtic tribes had for its object the reparation, rather than the prevention of crimes, almost every crime, even of the blackest kind, was commuted by a mulct or payment. Tacitus observes in allusion to this practice, that it was “a temper wholesome to the commonwealth, that homicide and lighter transgressions were settled by the payment of horses or cattle, part to the king or community, part to him or his friends who had been wronged.” The law of Scotland long recognised this system of compensation. The fine was termed, under the Brehon law, eric, which not only signifies a reparation, but also a fine, a ransom, a forfeit. Among the Albanian Scots it was called cro, a term preserved in the Regiam Majestatem, which has a whole chapter showing “the cro of ilk man, how mikil it is.”[105] This law of reparation, according to O’Connor, was first promulgated in Ireland, in the year 164.[106] According to the Regiam Majestatem, the cro of a villain was sixteen cows; of an earl’s son or thane, one hundred; of an earl, one hundred and forty; and that of the king of Scots, one thousand cows, or three thousand oras, that is to say, three oras for every cow.

Besides a share of the fines imposed, the Brehon or judge obtained a piece of arable land for his support. When he administered justice, he used to sit sometimes on the top of a hillock or heap of stones, sometimes on turf, and sometimes even on the middle of a bridge, surrounded by the suitors, who, of course, pleaded their own cause. We have already seen that, under the system of the Druids, the offices of religion, the instruction of youth, and the administration of the laws, were conducted in the open air; and hence the prevalence of the practice alluded to. But this practice was not peculiar to the Druids; for all nations, in the early stages of society, have followed a similar custom. The Tings of the Scandinavians, which consisted of circular enclosures of stone, without any covering, and within which both the judicial and legislative powers were exercised, afford a striking instance of this. According to Pliny,[107] even the Roman Senate first met in the open air, and the sittings of the Court of the Areopagus, at Athens, were so held. The present custom of holding courts of justice in halls is not of very remote antiquity in Scotland, and among the Scoto-Irish, the baron bailie long continued to dispense justice to the baron’s vassals from a moothill or eminence, which was generally on the bank of a river, and near to a religious edifice.

Of the various customs and peculiarities which distinguished the ancient Irish, as well as the Scoto-Irish, none has given rise to greater speculation than that of fosterage; which consisted in the mutual exchange, by different families, of their children for the purpose of being nursed and bred. Even the son of the chief was so entrusted during pupilarity with an inferior member of the clan. An adequate reward was either given or accepted in every case, and the lower orders, to whom the trust was committed, regarded it as an honour rather than a service. “Five hundred kyne and better,” says Campion, “were sometimes given by the Irish to procure the nursing of a great man’s child.” A firm and indissoluble attachment always took place among foster-brothers, and it continues in consequence to be a saying among Highlanders, that “affectionate to a man is a friend, but a foster-brother is as the life-blood of his heart.” Camden observes, that no love in the world is comparable by many degrees to that of foster-brethren in Ireland.[108] The close connexion which the practice of fosterage created between families, while it frequently prevented civil feuds, often led to them. But the strong attachment thus created was not confined to foster-brothers, it also extended to their parents. Spenser relates of the foster-mother to Murrough O’Brien, that, at his execution, she sucked the blood from his head, and bathed her face and breast with it, saying that it was too precious to fall to the earth.

It is unnecessary, at this stage of our labours, to enter upon the subject of clanship; we mean to reserve our observations thereon till we come to the history of the clans, when we shall also notice some peculiarities or traits of the Highlanders not hitherto mentioned. We shall conclude this chapter by giving lists of the Pictish and Scoto-Irish Kings, which are generally regarded as authentic. A great many other names are given by the ancient chroniclers previous to the points at which the following lists commence, but as these are considered as totally untrustworthy, we shall omit them.

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE PICTISH KINGS, CHIEFLY ACCORDING TO THE PICTISH CHRONICLE.

+-------+---------------------------------+---------+--------+-------+ | | | Date of |Duration| Date | |Series.| NAMES AND FILIATIONS. | Access- | of | of | | | | ion. | Reigns.| Death.| +-------+---------------------------------+---------+--------+-------+ | 1 | DRUST, the son of Erp, | | | 451 | | 2 | TALORC, the son of Aniel, | 451 |4 years.| 455 | | 3 | NECTON MORBET, the son of Erp, | 455 | 25 | 480 | | 4 | DREST Gurthinmoch, | 480 | 30 | 510 | | 5 | GALANAU ETELICH, or GALANAN | | | | | | ERELECH, | 510 | 12 | 522 | | 6 | DADREST, | 522 | 1 | 523 | | 7 | DREST, the son of Girom, | 523 | 1 | 524 | | | DREST, the son of Wdrest, with | | | | | | the former, | 524 | 5 | 529 | | | DREST, the son of Girom, alone, | 529 | 5 | 534 | | 8 | GARTNACH, the son of Girom, | 534 | 7 | 541 | | 9 | GEALTRAIM, or CAILTRAIM, the | | | | | | son of Girom, | 541 | 1 | 542 | | 10 | TALORG, the son of Muircholaich,| 542 | 11 | 553 | | 11 | DREST, the son of Munait, | 553 | 1 | 554 | | 12 | GALAM, with Aleph, | 554 | 1 | 555 | | | GALAM, with Bridei, | 555 | 1 | 556 | | 13 | BRIDEI, the son of Mailcon, | 556 | 30 | 586 | | 14 | GARTNAICH, the son of Domelch, | | | | | | or Donald, | 586 | 11 | 597 | | 15 | NECTU, or NECHTAN, the nephew | | | | | | of Verb, | 597 | 20 | 617 | | 16 | CINEOCH, or KENNETH, the son of | | | | | | Luthrin, | 617 | 19 | 636 | | 17 | GARNARD, the son of Wid, | 636 | 4 | 640 | | 18 | BRIDEI, the son of Wid, | 640 | 5 | 645 | | 19 | TALORC, their brother, | 645 | 12 | 657 | | 20 | TALLORCAN, the son of Enfret, | 657 | 4 | 661 | | 21 | GARTNAIT, the son of Donnel, | 661 | 6½ | 667 | | 22 | DREST, his brother, | 667 | 7 | 674 | | 23 | BRIDEI, the son of Bili, | 674 | 21 | 695 | | 24 | TARAN, the son of Entifidich, | 695 | 4 | 699 | | 25 | BRIDEI, the son of Dereli, | 699 | 11 | 710 | | 26 | NECHTON, the son of Dereli, | 710 | 15 | 725 | | 27 | DREST, and Elpin, | 725 | 5 | 730 | | 28 | UNGUS, or ONNUST, the son of | | | | | | Urguist, | 730 | 31 | 761 | | 29 | BRIDEI, the son of Wirguist, | 761 | 2 | 763 | | 30 | CINIOCH, or KENNETH, the son of | | | | | | Wredech, | 763 | 12 | 775 | | 31 | ELPIN, the son of Wroid, | 775 | 3½ | 779 | | 32 | DREST, the son of Talorgan, | 779 | 5 | 784 | | 33 | TALORGAN, the son of Ungus or | | | | | | Angus, | 784 | 2½ | 786 | | 34 | CANAUL, the son of Tarla, | 786 | 5 | 791 | | 35 | CONSTANTINE, the son of | | | | | | Urguist, | 791 | 30 | 821 | | 36 | UNGUS, the son of Urguist, | 821 | 12 | 833 | | 37 | DREST, the son of Constantine, | | | | | | and Talorgan, the son of | | | | | | Wthoil, | 833 | 3 | 836 | | 38 | UUEN, or UVEN, the son of Ungus,| 836 | 3 | 839 | | 39 | WRAD, the son of Bargoit, | 839 | 3 | 842 | | 40 | BRED, or BRIUDI, | 842 | 1 | 843 | +-------+---------------------------------+---------+--------+-------+

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE SCOTO-IRISH KINGS, FROM THE YEAR 503 TO 843.

+-------+---------------------------------+---------+--------+-------+ | | | Date of |Duration| Date | |Series.| NAMES AND FILIATIONS. | Access- | of | of | | | | ion. | Reigns.| Death.| +-------+---------------------------------+---------+--------+-------+ | | | A.D. | Years. | A.D. | | 1 | FERGUS, the son of Erc, | 503 | 3 | 506 | | 2 | DOMANGART, the son of Fergus, | 506 | 5 | 511 | | 3 | COMGAL, the son of Domangart, | 511 | 24 | 535 | | 4 | GAVRAN, the son of Domangart, | 535 | 22 | 557 | | 5 | CONAL, the son of Comgal, | 557 | 14 | 571 | | 6 | AIDAN, the son of Gavran, | 571 | 34 | 605 | | 7 | EOACHA’-Bui, the son of Aidan, | 605 | 16 | 621 | | 8 | KENNETH-Cear, the son of | | | | | | Eoacha’-Bui, | 621 | ¼ | 621 | | 9 | FERCHAR, the son of Eogan, the | | | | | | first of the race of Lorn, | 621 | 16 | 637 | | 10 | DONAL-BREAC, the son of | | | | | | Eoacha’-Bui, | 637 | 5 | 642 | | 11 | CONAL II., the grandson of } | | | | | | Conal I. } | 642 | 10 | 652 | | 12 | DUNGAL reigned some years with} | | | | | | Conal, } | ... | ... | ... | | 13 | DONAL-Duin, the son of Conal, | 652 | 13 | 665 | | 14 | MAOL-Duin, the son of Conal, | 665 | 16 | 681 | | 15 | FERCHAR-Fada, the grandson of | | | | | | Ferchar I., | 681 | 21 | 702 | | 16 | EOACHA’-Rinevel, the son of | | | | | | Domangart, and the grandson | | | | | | of Donal-breac, | 702 | 3 | 705 | | 17 | AINBHCEALACH, the son of | | | | | | Ferchar-fada, | 705 | 1 | 706 | | 18 | SELVACH, the son of }| | | | | | Ferchar-fada, reigned over }| | | | | | Lorn from 706 to 729, }| ... | ... | ... | | 19 | DUNCHA BEG reigned over Cantyre}| | | | | | and Argaill till 720, }| 706 | 27 | 733 | | 20 | EOCHA’ III., the son of }| | | | | | Eoacha’-rinevel, over Cantyre}| | | | | | and Argaill, from 720 to 729;}| | | | | | and also over Lorn from 729 }| | | | | | to 733, }| ... | ... | ... | | 21 | MUREDACH, the son of | | | | | | Ainbhcealach, | 733 | 3 | 736 | | 22 | EOGAN, the son of Muredach, | 736 | 3 | 739 | | 23 | AODH-Fin, the son of Eoacha’ | | | | | | III., | 739 | 30 | 769 | | 24 | FERGUS, the son of Aodh-fin, | 769 | 3 | 772 | | 25 | SELVACH II., the son of Eogan, | 772 | 24 | 796 | | 26 | EOACHA’-Annuine IV., the son of | | | | | | Aodh-fin, | 796 | 30 | 826 | | 27 | DUNGAL, the son of Selvach II., | 826 | 7 | 833 | | 28 | ALPIN, the son of | | | | | | Eoacha’-Annuine IV., | 833 | 3 | 836 | | 29 | KENNETH, the son of Alpin, | 836 | 7 | 843 | +-------+---------------------------------+---------+--------+-------+

It is right to mention that the Albanic Duan omits the names between Ainbhcealach and Dungal (17-27), most of which, however, are contained in the St. Andrews’ list.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] See Innes’s Essay, vol. i.

[80] This is the date commonly given, although Mr. E. W. Robertson makes it 502 on the authority of Tighernach, while O’Donovan (Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 160) makes it 506.

[81] Vol. i. p. 212.

[82] Early Kings, vol. i. p. 5.

[83] Early Kings, vol. ii. p. 305.

[84] At this time, and up at least to the 11th century, present Scotland was known as Albania, Alban, or Alba, the term Scotland or Scotia being generally applied to Ireland, unless where there is some qualifying term, as Nova. Burton thinks it not safe to consider that the word Scot must mean a native of present Scotland, when the period dealt with is earlier than the middle of the 12th century.

[85] Skene in his Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. cx., makes the date to be about 495 or 498.

[86] Skene’s Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. cxiii.

[87] More recently the invaluable labours of E. W. Robertson, Burton, Forbes-Leslie, Joseph Robertson, Grub, Skene, and Maclauchlan, have been the means of putting the history of this period on its proper footing.

[88] Vol. i. ch. vi.

[89] Dr. Maclauchlan’s Early Scottish Church, pp. 32, 33.

[90] Druid is said to be derived from a word meaning ‘oak,’ common to many of the Indo-European tongues.

[91] Eccles. Hist., vol. i. p. 49.

[92] Grub’s Ecc. Hist., vol. i. p. 51.

[93] Book of Deer, Preface. Further details concerning the early Scottish church will be given at the end of this volume.

[94] There is some confusion here; Dr. Maclauchlan places this conflict in the reign of Brude son of Derile, who, according to our list, did not succeed till 699.

[95] Book V. c. 24.

[96] See the Ulster Annals, where an account is given of all these conflicts.

[97] Highlanders, vol. i. p. 65.

[98] Early Kings, vol. i. p. 39.

[99] Skene’s Chron. of Picts and Scots, p. cxv.

[100] Dr. Reeves supposes this to be Culross in Perthshire.--Maclauchlan.

[101] Dr. Skene, in his preface to the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, endeavours to prove, by very plausible reasoning, and by comparison of various lists of kings, that for a century previous to the accession of Kenneth to the Pictish throne, Dalriada was under subjection to the Anglian monarchy, and was ruled by Pictish sovereigns. In an able paper, however, read recently by Dr. Archibald Smith before the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, he shows that Argyleshire was invaded but not subdued by Ungus, king of the Picts, in 736 and 741. Dr. Smith supported his conclusion by reference to passages in the annals of Tigernach, of Ulster, and the Albanic Duan, which seemed to him to give an intelligible and continuous account of regal succession in Dalriada, but afforded no countenance to the theory of Pinkerton of the entire conquest of the Scots in Britain by Ungus, nor to the conclusion Dr. Skene has come to, viz., the complete supremacy of the Picts in the Scottish Dalriada, and the extinction of Dalriada as a Scottish nation from the year 741 to the era of a new Scottish kingdom founded by Kenneth Macalpin in the year 843. On the contrary, he was convinced that Aodh-fionn was the restorer of its full liberty to the crushed section of Lorn, and that he was, at the close of his career, the independent ruler of Dalriada as a Scottish nation.

[102] Scotland, vol. i. p. 329.

[103] See Skene’s preface to Chronicle of Picts and Scots, p. xcviii. et seq., for some curious and ingenious speculation on this point.

[104] We shall take the liberty of quoting here an extract from an able and ingenious paper read by Dr. Skene before the Soc. of Ant., in June 1861, and quoted in Dr. Gordon’s Scotichronicon, p. 83. It will help, we think, to throw a little light on this dark subject, and assist the reader somewhat to understand the nature and extent of the so-called Scottish conquest. “The next legend which bears upon the history of St. Andrews is that of St. Adrian, at 4th March. The best edition of this legend is in the Aberdeen Breviary, and it is as follows:--Adrian was a native of Hungary, and after preaching there for some time, was seized with a desire to preach to other people; and having gathered together a company, he set out ‘ad orientales Scotiæ partes que tunc a Pictis occupabantur,’ i.e., ‘to the eastern parts of Scotland, which were then occupied by the Picts,’--and landed there with 6,606 confessors, clergy, and people, among whom were Glodianus, Gayus, Minanus, Scobrandus, and others, chief priests. These men, with their bishop, Adrian, ‘deleto regno Pictorum,’ i.e., ‘the Pictish kingdom being destroyed,’--did many signs, but afterwards desired to have a residence on the Isle of May. The Danes, who then devastated the whole of Britain, came to the Island, and there slew them. Their martyrdom is said to have taken place in the year 875. It will be observed that they are here said to have settled in the east part of Scotland, opposite the Isle of May, that is in Fife, while the Picts still occupied it; that the Pictish kingdom is then said to have been destroyed; and that their martyrdom took place in 875, thirty years after the Scottish conquest under Kenneth M’Alpin. Their arrival was therefore almost coincident with the Scottish conquest; and the large number said to have come, not the modest twenty-one who arrived with Regulus, but 6,606 confessors, clergy, and people, shows that the traditionary history was really one of an invasion, and leads to the suspicion at once that it was in reality a part of the Scottish occupation of the Pictish kingdom. This suspicion is much strengthened by two corroborative circumstances: 1st, the year 875, when they are said to have been slain by the Danes, falls in the reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth Macalpin, in his fourteenth year, and in this year the Pictish chronicle records a battle between the Danes and the Scots, and adds, that after it, ‘occasi sunt Scotti in Coachcochlum,’ which seems to refer to this very slaughter. 2d. Hector Boëce preserves a different tradition regarding their origin. He says--‘Non desunt qui scribant sanctissimos Christi martyros Hungaros fuisse. Alii ex Scotis Anglisque gregarie collectos’--i.e., ‘Some write that the most holy martyrs of Christ were Hungarians. Others (say) that they were collected from the Scots and English.’ There was therefore a tradition that the clergy slain were not Hungarians, but a body composed of Scotti and Angli. But Hadrian was a bishop; he landed in the east of Fife, within the parochia of S. Regulus, and he is placed at the head of some of the lists of bishops of St. Andrews as first bishop. It was therefore the Church of St. Andrews that then consisted of clergy collected from among the Scotti and the Angli. The Angli probably represented the Church of Acca, and the Scotti those brought in by Adrian. The real signification of this occupation of St. Andrews by Scottish clergy will be apparent when we recollect that the Columban clergy, who had formerly possessed the chief ecclesiastical seats among the Picts, had been expelled in 717, and Anglic clergy introduced--the cause of quarrel being the difference of their usages. Now, the Pictish chronicle states as the main cause of the overthrow of the Pictish kingdom, a century and a half later, this very cause. It says--‘Deus enim eos pro merito suæ malitiæ alienos ac otiosos hæreditate dignatus est facere, quia illi non solum Deum, missam, ac præceptum spreverunt sed et in jure æqualitatis aliis aequi pariter noluerunt.’ I.e., ‘For God, on account of their wickedness, deemed them worthy to be made hereditary strangers and idlers; because they contemned not only God, the mass, and the precept (of the Church), but besides refused to be regarded as on the same equality with others.’ They were overthrown, not only because they despised ‘Deum missam et præceptum,’ but because they would not tolerate the other party. And this great grievance was removed, when St. Andrews appears at the head of the Scottish Church in a solemn Concordat with the king Constantine, when, as the Pictish Chronicle tells us, ‘Constantinus Rex et Cellachus Episcopus leges disciplinasque fidei atque jura ecclesiarum evangeliorum que pariter cum Scottis devoverunt custodiri.’ I.e., ‘King Constantine and Bishop Kellach vowed to preserve the laws and discipline of the faith and the rights of the churches and gospels, equally with the Scots.’ Observe the parallel language of the two passages. In the one, the ‘Picti in jure æqualitatis aliis,’ that is, the Scottish clergy, ‘aequi pariter noluerunt,’ and in the other the King and the Bishop of St. Andrews ‘vowed to preserve the laws and discipline of the faith,’ ‘pariter cum Scottis,’ the thing the Picts would not do. It seems plain, therefore, that the ecclesiastical element entered largely into the Scottish conquest; and a main cause and feature of it was a determination on the part of the Scottish clergy to recover the benefices they had been deprived of. The exact coincidence of this great clerical invasion of the parochia of St. Andrews by ecclesiastics, said by one tradition to have been Scots, and the subsequent position of St. Andrews as the head of the Scottish Church, points strongly to this as the true historic basis of the legend of S. Adrian.”

[105] Lib. ix. c. xxiv.

[106] O’Connor’s Dissert.

[107] Lib. viii. c. 45.

[108] Holland’s Camden, Ireland, p. 116.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IV. A.D. 843-1107

The Norse Invasions--Kenneth--Constantine--Aodh--Grig and Eocha--Donald IV.--Constantine III.--Danes--Battle of Brunanburg--Malcolm I.--Indulph--Duff--Culen--Kenneth III.--Battle of Luncarty--Malcolm II.--Danes--Duncan--Thorfinn, Jarl of Orkney--Macbeth--Battle with Siward--Lulach--Malcolm III. (Ceanmore)--Queen Margaret--Effect of Norwegian Conquest--Donal-bane--Edgar--Norsemen--Influx of Anglo-Saxons--Isolation of Highlands--Table of Kings.

For about two centuries after the union of the two kingdoms, the principal facts to be recorded are the extension of the Scottish dominion southwards beyond the Forth and Clyde, towards the present border, and northwards beyond Inverness, and the fierce contests that took place with the “hardy Norsemen” of Scandinavia and Denmark, who during this period continued not only to pour down upon the coasts and islands of Scotland, but to sway the destinies of the whole of Europe. During this time the history of the Highlands is still to a great extent the history of Scotland, and it was not till about the 12th century that the Highlanders became, strictly speaking, a peculiar people, confined to the territory whose boundaries were indicated in the first chapter, having for their neighbours on the east and south a population of undoubtedly Teutonic origin. The Norse invasions not only kept Scotland in continual commotion at the time, but must have exercised an important influence on its whole history, and contributed a new and vigorous element to its population. These Vikingr, about the end of the 9th century, became so powerful as to be able to establish a separate and independent kingdom in Orkney and the Western Islands, which proved formidable not only to the king of Scotland, but also to the powerful king of Norway. “It is difficult to give them distinctness without risk of error, and it is even hard to decide how far the mark left by these visitors is, on the one hand, the brand of the devastating conqueror; or, on the other hand, the planting among the people then inhabiting Scotland of a high-conditioned race--a race uniting freedom and honesty in spirit with a strong and healthy physical organization. It was in the north that the inroad preserved its most distinctive character, probably from its weight, as most completely overwhelming the original population, whatever they might be; and though, in the histories, the king of Scots appears to rule the northern end of Britain, the territory beyond Inverness and Fort-William had aggregated in some way round a local magnate, who afterwards appears as a Maormor. He was not a viceroy of the king of Norway: and if he was in any way at the order of the King of Scotland, he was not an obedient subordinate.”[109]

Up to the time of Macbeda or Macbeth, the principle of hereditary succession to the throne, from father to son, appears not to have been recognised; the only principle, except force, which seems to have been acted upon being that of collateral succession, brother succeeding to brother, and nephew to uncle. After the time of Macbeth, however, the hereditary principle appears to have come into full force, to have been recognised as that by which alone succession to the throne was to be regulated.

The consolidation of the Scottish and Pictish power under one supreme chief, enabled these nations not only to repel foreign aggression, but afterwards to enlarge their territories beyond the Forth, which had hitherto formed, for many ages, the Pictish boundary on the south.

Although the power of the tribes to the north of the Forth was greatly augmented by the union which had taken place, yet all the genius and warlike energy of Kenneth were necessary to protect him and his people from insult. Ragnor Lodbrog (i.e., Ragnor of the Shaggy Bones,) with his fierce Danes infested the country round the Tay on the one side, and the Strathclyde Britons on the other, wasted the adjoining territories, and burnt Dunblane. Yet Kenneth overcame these embarrassments, and made frequent incursions into the Saxon territories in Lothian, and caused his foes to tremble. After a brilliant and successful reign, Kenneth died at Forteviot, the Pictish capital, 7 miles S.W. of Perth, on the 6th of February, 859, after a reign of twenty-three years. Kenneth, it is said, removed the famous stone which now sustains the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey, from the ancient seat of the Scottish monarchy in Argyle, to Scone. Kenneth (but according to some Constantine, the Pictish king, in 820), built a church at Dunkeld, to which, in 850, he removed the relics of St. Columba from Iona, which at this time was frequently subjected to the ravages of the Norsemen. He is celebrated also as a legislator, but no authentic traces of his laws now appear, the Macalpine laws attributed to the son of Alpin being clearly apocryphal.

The sceptre was assumed by Donald III., son of Alpin. He died in the year 863, after a short reign of four years. It is said he restored the laws of Aodh-fin, the son of Eocha III. They were probably similar to the ancient Brehon laws of Ireland.

Constantine, the son of Kenneth, succeeded his uncle Donald, and soon found himself involved in a dreadful conflict with the Danish pirates. Having, after a contest which lasted half a century, established themselves in Ireland, and obtained secure possession of Dublin, the Vikingr directed their views towards the western coasts of Scotland, which they laid waste. These ravages were afterwards extended to the whole of the eastern coast, and particularly to the shores of the Frith of Forth; but although the invaders were often repulsed, they never ceased to renew their attacks. In the year 881, Constantine, in repelling an attack of the pirates, was slain at a place called Merdo-fatha, or Werdo, probably the present Perth, according to Maclauchlan.

Aodh or Hugh, the fair-haired, succeeded his brother Constantine. His reign was unfortunate, short, and troublesome. Grig, who was Maormor, or chief, of the country between the Dee and the Spey, having become a competitor for the crown, Aodh endeavoured to put him down, but did not succeed; and having been wounded in a battle fought at Strathallan, (or possibly Strathdon,) he was carried to Inverurie, where he died, after lingering two months, having held the sceptre only one year.

Grig now assumed the crown, and, either to secure his possession, or from some other motive, he associated with him in the government Eocha, son of Ku, the British king of Strathclyde, and the grandson, by a daughter, of Kenneth Macalpin. After a reign of eleven years, both Eocha and Grig were forced to abdicate, and gave way to Donald IV., who succeeded them in 893.

During his reign the kingdom was infested by the piratical incursions of the Danes. Although they were defeated by Donald in a bloody action at Collin, said to be on the Tay, near Scone, they returned under Ivar O’Ivar, from Ireland, in the year 904, but were gallantly repulsed, and their leader killed in a threatened attack on Forteviot, by Donald, who unfortunately also perished, after a reign of eleven years. In his reign the kings of present Scotland are no longer called reges Pictorum by the Irish Annalists, but Ri Alban, or kings of Alban; and in the Pictish Chronicle Pictavia gives place to Albania.

Constantine III., the son of Aodh, a prince of a warlike and enterprising character, next followed. He had to sustain, during an unusually long reign, the repeated attacks of the Danes. In one invasion they plundered Dunkeld, and in 908, they attempted to obtain the grand object of their designs, the possession of Forteviot in Strathearn, the Pictish capital; but in this design they were again defeated, and forced to abandon the country. The Danes remained quiet for a few years, but in 918 their fleet entered the Clyde, from Ireland, under the command of Reginald, where they were attacked by the Scots in conjunction with the Northern Saxons, whom the ties of common safety had now united for mutual defence. Reginald is said to have drawn up his Danes in four divisions; the first headed by Godfrey O’Ivar; the second by Earls; the third by Chieftains; and the fourth by Reginald himself, as a reserve. The Scots, with Constantine at their head, made a furious attack on the first three divisions, which they forced to retire. Reginald’s reserve not being available to turn the scale of victory against the Scots, the Danes retreated during the night, and embarked on board their fleet.

After this defeat of the Danes, Constantine enjoyed many years’ repose. A long grudge had existed between him and Æthelstane, son of Edward, the elder, which at last came to an open rupture. Having formed an alliance with several princes, and particularly with Anlof, king of Dublin as well as of Northumberland, and son-in-law of Constantine, the latter collected a large fleet in the year 937, with which he entered the Humber. The hope of plunder had attracted many of the Vikingr to Constantine’s standard, and the sceptre of Æthelstane seemed now to tremble in his hand. But that monarch was fully prepared for the dangers with which he was threatened, and resolved to meet his enemies in battle. After a long, bloody, and obstinate contest at Brunanburg, near the southern shore of the Humber, victory declared for Æthelstane. Prodigies of valour were displayed on both sides, especially by Turketel, the Chancellor of England; by Anlof, and by the son of Constantine, who lost his life. The confederates, after sustaining a heavy loss, sought for safety in their ships. This, and after misfortunes, possibly disgusted Constantine with the vanities of this world, for, in the fortieth year of his reign, he put into practice a resolution which he had formed of resigning his crown and embracing a monastic life. He became Abbot of the Monastery of St. Andrews in 943, and thus ended a long and chequered, but vigorous, and, on the whole, successful reign in a cloister, like Charles V. Towards the end of this reign the term Scotland was applied to this kingdom by the Saxons, a term which before had been given by them to Ireland. Constantine died in 952.

Malcolm I., the son of Donald IV., obtained the abdicated throne. He was a prince of great abilities and prudence, and Edmund of England courted his alliance by ceding Cumbria, then consisting of Cumberland and part of Westmoreland, to him, in the year 945, on condition that he would defend that northern county, and become the ally of Edmund. Edred, the brother and successor of Edmund, accordingly applied for, and obtained the aid of Malcolm against Anlaf, king of Northumberland, whose country, according to the barbarous practice of the times, he wasted, and carried off the people with their cattle. Malcolm, after putting down an insurrection of the Moray-men under Cellach, their Maormor, or chief, whom he slew, was sometime thereafter slain, as is supposed, at Ulurn or Auldearn in Moray, by one of these men, in revenge for the death of his chief.

Indulph, the son of Constantine III., succeeded the murdered monarch in the year 953. He sustained many severe conflicts with the Danes, and ultimately lost his life in 961, after a reign of eight years, in a successful action with these pirates, on the moor which lies to the westward of Cullen.

Duff, the son of Malcolm I., now mounted the throne; but Culen, the son of Indulf, laid claim to the sceptre which his father had wielded. The parties met at Drum Crup (probably Crieff), and, after a doubtful struggle, in which Doncha, the Abbot of Dunkeld, and Dubdou, the Maormor of Athole, the partisans of Culen, lost their lives, victory declared for Duff. But this triumph was of short duration, for Duff was afterwards obliged to retreat from Forteviot into the north, and was assassinated at Forres in the year 965, after a brief and unhappy reign of four years and a half.

Culen, the son of Indulf, succeeded, as a matter of course, to the crown of Duff, which he stained by his vices. He and his brother Eocha were slain in Lothian, in an action with the Britons of Strathclyde in 970, after an inglorious reign of four years and a half. During his reign Edinburgh was captured from the English, this being the first known step in the progress of the gradual extension of the Scottish kingdom between the Forth and the Tweed.[110]

Kenneth III., son of Malcolm I., and brother of Duff, succeeded Culen the same year. He waged a successful war against the Britons of Strathclyde, and annexed their territories to his kingdom. During his reign the Danes meditated an attack upon Forteviot, or Dunkeld, for the purposes of plunder, and, with this view, they sailed up the Tay with a numerous fleet. Kenneth does not appear to have been fully prepared, being probably not aware of the intentions of the enemy; but collecting as many of his chiefs and their followers as the spur of the occasion would allow, he met the Danes at Luncarty, in the vicinity of Perth. Malcolm, the Tanist, prince of Cumberland, it is said, commanded the right wing of the Scottish army; Duncan, the Maormor of Athole, had the charge of the left: and Kenneth, the king, commanded the centre. The Danes with their battle-axes made dreadful havoc, and compelled the Scottish army to give way; but the latter was rallied by the famous Hay, the traditional ancestor of the Kinnoul family, and finally repulsed the Danes, who, as usual, fled to their ships. Burton thinks the battle of Luncarty “a recent invention.”

The defeat of the Danes enabled Kenneth to turn his attention to the domestic concerns of his kingdom. He appears to have directed his thoughts to bring about a complete change in the mode of succession to the crown, in order to perpetuate in and confine the crown to his own descendants. This alteration could not be well accomplished as long as Malcolm, the son of Duff, the Tanist of the kingdom, and prince of Cumberland, stood in the way; and, accordingly, it has been said that Kenneth was the cause of the untimely death of prince Malcolm, who is stated to have been poisoned. It is said that Kenneth got an act passed, that in future the son, or nearest male heir, of the king, should always succeed to the throne; and that in case that son or heir were not of age at the time of the king’s demise, that a person of rank should be chosen Regent of the kingdom, until the minor attained his fourteenth year, when he should assume the reins of government; but whether such a law was really passed on the moot-hill of Scone or not, of which we have no evidence, certain it is that two other princes succeeded to the crown before Malcolm the son of Kenneth. Kenneth, after a reign of twenty-four years, was, it is said, in 994 assassinated at Fettercairn by Finella,[111] the wife of the Maormor of the Mearns, and the daughter of Cunechat, the Maormor of Angus, in revenge for having put her only son to death. It has been thought that till this time the Maormorship of Angus was in some measure independent of the Scottish crown, never having thoroughly yielded to its supremacy, that the death of the young chief took place in course of an effort on the part of Kenneth for its reduction, and that Kenneth himself was on a visit to the quarter at the time of his death, for exacting the usual royal privileges of cain and cuairt, or a certain tax and certain provision for the king and his followers when on a journey, due by the chiefs or landholders of the kingdom.[112]

Constantine IV., son of Culen, succeeded; but his right was disputed by Kenneth, the Grim, i.e. strong, son of Duff. The dispute was decided at Rathveramon, i.e. the castle at the mouth of the Almond, near Perth, where Constantine lost his life in the year 995.

Kenneth IV., the son of Duff, now obtained the sceptre which he had coveted; but he was disturbed in the possession thereof by Malcolm, the son of Kenneth III., heir presumptive to the crown. Malcolm took the field in 1003, and decided his claim to the crown in a bloody battle at Monivaird, in Strathearn, in which Kenneth, after a noble resistance, received a mortal wound.

Malcolm II. now ascended the vacant throne, but was not destined to enjoy repose. At the very beginning of his reign he was defeated at Durham by the army of the Earl of Northumberland, under his son Uchtred, who ordered a selection of good-looking Scotch heads to be stuck on the walls of Durham.

The Danes, who had now obtained a firm footing in England, directed their attention in an especial manner to Scotland, which they were in hopes of subduing. Sigurd, the Earl of Orkney, carried on a harassing and predatory warfare on the shores of the Moray Frith, which he continued even after a matrimonial alliance he formed with Malcolm, by marrying his daughter; but this was no singular trait in the character of a Vikingr, who plundered friends and foes with equal pleasure. The scene of Sigurd’s operations was chosen by his brother northmen for making a descent, which they effected near Speymouth. They carried fire and sword through Moray, and laid siege to the fortress of Nairn, one of the strongest in the north. The Danes were forced to raise the siege for a time, by Malcolm, who encamped his army in a plain near Kilflos or Kinloss. In this position he was attacked by the invaders, and, after a severe action, was forced to retreat, after being seriously wounded.

Malcolm, in 1010, marched north with his army, and encamped at Mortlach. The Danes advanced to meet the Scots, and a dreadful and fierce conflict ensued, the result of which was long dubious. At length the northmen gave way and victory declared for Malcolm. Had the Danes succeeded they would in all probability have obtained as permanent a footing in North Britain as they did in England; but the Scottish kings were determined, at all hazards, never to suffer them to pollute the soil of Scotland by allowing them even the smallest settlement in their dominions. In gratitude to God for his victory, Malcolm endowed a religious house at Mortlach, with its church erected near the scene of action. Maclauchlan, however, maintains that this church was planted by Malcolm Ceanmore.

Many other conflicts are narrated with minute detail by the later chroniclers as having taken place between Malcolm and the Danes, but it is very doubtful how far these are worthy of credit. That Malcolm had enough to do to prevent the Danes from overrunning Scotland and subduing the inhabitants can readily be believed; but as we have few authentic particulars concerning the conflicts which took place, it would serve no purpose to give the imaginary details invented by comparatively recent historians.

Some time after this Malcolm was engaged in a war with the Northumbrians, and, having led his army, in 1018, to Carham, near Werk, on the southern bank of the Tweed, where he was met by Uchtred, the Earl of Northumberland, a desperate battle took place, which was contested with great valour on both sides.[113] The success was doubtful on either side, though Uchtred claimed a victory; but he did not long enjoy the fruits of it, as he was soon thereafter assassinated when on his road to pay obeisance to the great Canute. Endulf, the brother and successor of Uchtred, justly dreading the power of the Scots, was induced to cede Lothian to Malcolm for ever, who, on this occasion, gave oblations to the churches and gifts to the clergy, and they in return transmitted his name to posterity. He was designed, par excellence, by the Latin chroniclers, rex victoriosissimus; by St. Berchan, the Forranach or destroyer.

The last struggle with which Malcolm was threatened, was with the celebrated Canute, who, for some cause or other not properly explained, entered Scotland in the year 1031; but these powerful parties appear not to have come to action. Canute’s expedition appears, from what followed, to have been fitted out to compel Malcolm to do homage for Cumberland, for it is certain that Malcolm engaged to fulfil the conditions on which his predecessors had held that country, and that Canute thereafter returned to England.

But the reign of Malcolm was not only distinguished by foreign wars, but by civil contests between rival chiefs. Finlegh, the Maormor of Ross, and the father of Macbeth, was assassinated in 1020, and about twelve years thereafter, Maolbride, the Maormor of Moray, grandfather of Lulach, was, in revenge for Finlegh’s murder, burnt within his castle, with fifty of his men.

At length, after a splendid reign of thirty years, Malcolm slept with his fathers, and his body was transferred to Iona, and interred with due solemnity among the remains of his predecessors. By some authorities he is said to have been assassinated at Glammis.

Malcolm was undoubtedly a prince of great acquirements. He made many changes and some improvements in the internal policy of his kingdom, and in him religion always found a guardian and protector. But although Malcolm is justly entitled to this praise, he by no means came up to the standard of perfection assigned him by fiction. In his reign Scotland appears to have reached its present boundary on the south, the Tweed, and Strathclyde was incorporated with the rest of the kingdom. Malcolm was the first who was called Rex Scotiæ, and might justly claim to be so designated, seeing that he was the first to hold sway over nearly the whole of present Scotland,--the only portions where his authority appears to have been seriously disputed being those in which the Danes had established themselves.

Duncan, son of Bethoc or Beatrice, daughter of Malcolm II., succeeded his grandfather in the year 1033. “In the extreme north, dominions more extensive than any Jarl of the Orkneys had hitherto acquired, were united under the rule of Thorfinn, Sigurd’s son, whose character and appearance have been thus described:--‘He was stout and strong, but very ugly, severe and cruel, but a very clever man.’ The extensive districts then dependant upon the Moray Maormors were in the possession of the celebrated Macbeth.”[114] Duncan, in 1033, desiring to extend his dominions southwards, attacked Durham, but was forced to retire with considerable loss. His principal struggles, however, were with his powerful kinsman, Thorfinn, whose success was so great that he extended his conquests as far as the Tay. “His men spread over the whole conquered country,” says the Orkneyinga Saga,[115] “and burnt every hamlet and farm, so that not a cot remained. Every man that they found they slew; but the old men and women fled to the deserts and woods, and filled the country with lamentation. Some were driven before the Norwegians and made slaves. After this Earl Thorfinn returned to his ships, subjugating the country everywhere in his progress.” Duncan’s last battle, in which he was defeated, was in the neighbourhood of Burghead, near the Moray Frith; and shortly after this, on the 14th August, 1040, he was assassinated in Bothgowanan,--which, in Gaelic, is said to mean “the smith’s hut,”--by his kinsman the Maormor Macbeda or Macbeth. Duncan had reigned only five years when he was assassinated by Macbeth, leaving two infant sons, Malcolm and Donal, by a sister of Siward, the Earl of Northumberland. The former fled to Cumberland, and the latter took refuge in the Hebrides, on the death of their father.

Macbeth, “snorting with the indigested fumes of the blood of his sovereign,” immediately seized the gory sceptre. As several fictions have been propagated concerning the history and genealogy of Macbeth, we may mention that, according to the most authentic authorities, he was by birth Thane of Ross, and by his marriage with the Lady Gruoch,--who had a claim to the throne, as granddaughter of Kenneth,--became also Thane of Moray, during the minority of Lulach, the infant son of that lady, by her former marriage with Gilcomgain, the Maormor or Thane of Moray. Lady Gruoch was the daughter of Boedhe, son of Kenneth IV.; and thus Macbeth united in his own person many powerful interests which enabled him to take quiet possession of the throne of the murdered sovereign. He, of course, found no difficulty in getting himself inaugurated at Scone, under the protection of the clans of Moray and Ross, and the aid of those who favoured the pretensions of the descendants of Kenneth IV.

Various attempts were made on the part of the partisans of Malcolm, son of Duncan, to dispossess Macbeth of the throne. The most formidable was that of Siward, the powerful Earl of Northumberland, and the relation of Malcolm, who, at the instigation or command of Edward the Confessor, led a numerous army into Scotland in the year 1054. They marched as far north as Dunsinnan, where they were met by Macbeth, who commanded his troops in person. A furious battle ensued, but Macbeth fled from the field after many displays of courage. The Scots lost 3,000 men, and the Saxons 1,500, including Osbert, the son of Siward. Macbeth retired to his fastnesses in the north, and Siward returned to Northumberland; but Malcolm continued the war till the death of Macbeth, who was slain by Macduff, Thane of Fife, in revenge for the cruelties he had inflicted on his family, at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire, in the year 1056, although, according to Skene (Chronicles), it was in August, 1057.

Macbeth was unquestionably a man of great vigour, and well fitted to govern in the age in which he lived; and had it not been for the indelible character bestowed upon him by Shakespere (who probably followed the chronicle of Holinshed), his character might have stood well with posterity. “The deeds which raised Macbeth and his wife to power were not in appearance much worse than others of their day done for similar ends. However he may have gained his power, he exercised it with good repute, according to the reports nearest to his time.”[116] Macbeth, “in a manner sacred to splendid infamy,” is the first king of Scotland whose name appears in the ecclesiastical records as a benefactor of the church, and, it would appear, the first who offered his services to the Bishop of Rome. According to the records of St. Andrews, he made a gift of certain lands to the monastery of Lochleven, and certainly sent money to the poor of Rome, if, indeed, he did not himself make a pilgrimage to the holy city.

After the reign of Macbeth, the former irregular and confusing mode of succession ceased, and the hereditary principle was adopted and acted upon.

Lulach, the great-grandson of Kenneth IV., being supported by the powerful influence of his own family, and that of the deceased monarch, ascended the throne at the age of twenty-five or twenty-six; but his reign lasted only a few months, he having fallen in battle at Essie, in Strathbogie, in defending his crown against Malcolm. The body of Lulach was interred along with that of Macbeth, in Iona, the common sepulchre, for many centuries, of the Scottish kings.

Malcolm III., better known in history by the name of Malcolm Ceanmore, or great head, vindicated his claim to the vacant throne, and was crowned at Scone, 25th April, 1057. His first care was to recompense those who had assisted him in obtaining the sovereignty, and it is said that he created new titles of honour, by substituting earls for thanes; but this has been disputed, and there are really no data from which a certain conclusion can be drawn.

In the year 1059 Malcolm paid a visit to Edward the Confessor, during whose reign he lived on amicable terms with the English; but after the death of that monarch he made a hostile incursion into Northumberland, and wasted the country. He even violated the peace of St. Cuthbert in Holy Island.

William, Duke of Normandy, having overcome Harold in the battle of Hastings, on the 14th October, 1066, Edgar Ætheling saw no hopes of obtaining the crown, and left England along with his mother and sisters, and sought refuge in Scotland. Malcolm, on hearing of the distress of the illustrious strangers, left his royal palace at Dunfermline to meet them, and invited them to Dunfermline, where they were hospitably entertained. Margaret, one of Edgar’s sisters, was a princess of great virtues and accomplishments; and she at once won the heart of Malcolm.

The offer of his hand was accepted, and their nuptials were celebrated with great solemnity and splendour. This queen was a blessing to the king and to the nation, and appears to have well merited the appellation of Saint. There are few females in history who can be compared with Queen Margaret.

It is quite unnecessary, and apart from the object of the present work, to enter into any details of the wars between Malcolm and William the Conqueror, and William Rufus. Suffice it to say that both Malcolm and his eldest son Edward were slain in a battle on the Alne, on the 13th November, 1093, after a reign of thirty-six years. Queen Margaret, who was on her death-bed when this catastrophe occurred, died shortly after she received the intelligence with great composure and resignation to the will of God. Malcolm had six sons, viz., Edward, who was killed along with his father, Edmund, Edgar, Ethelred, Alexander, and David, and two daughters, Maud, who was married to Henry I. of England, and Mary, who married Eustache, Count of Boulogne. Of the sons, Edgar, Alexander, and David, successively came to the crown.

Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, died in 1064, and his extensive possessions in Scotland did not revert to his descendants, but to the native chiefs, who had had the original right to possess them. These chiefs appear to have been independent of the Scottish sovereign, and to have caused him no small amount of trouble. A considerable part of Malcolm’s reign was spent in endeavouring to bring them into subjection, and before his death he had the satisfaction of seeing the whole of Scotland, with perhaps the exception of Orkney, acknowledging him as sole monarch. The Norwegian conquest appears to have effected a most important change in the character of the population and language of the eastern lowlands of the north of Scotland. The original population must in some way have given way to a Norwegian one, and, whatever may have been the original language, we find after this one of a decidedly Teutonic character prevailing in this district, probably introduced along with the Norse population. “In the more mountainous and Highland districts, however, we are warranted in concluding that the effect must have been very different, and that the possession of the country by the Norwegians for thirty years could have exercised as little permanent influence on the population itself, as we are assured by the Saga it did upon the race of their chiefs.

“Previously to this conquest the northern Gaelic race possessed the whole of the north of Scotland, from the western to the eastern sea, and the general change produced by the conquest must have been, that the Gael were for the first time confined within those limits which they have never since exceeded, and that the eastern districts became inhabited by that Gothic race, who have also ever since possessed them.”[117]

On the demise of Malcolm, Donal-bane his brother assumed the government; but Duncan, the son of Malcolm, who had lived many years in England, and held a high military rank under William Rufus, invaded Scotland with a large army of English and Normans, and forced Donal to retire for safety to the Hebrides. Duncan, whom some writers suppose to have been a bastard, and others a legitimate son of Malcolm by a former wife, enjoyed the crown only six months, having been assassinated by Maolpeder, the Maormor of the Mearns, at Menteith, at the instigation, it is believed, of Donal. Duncan left, by his wife Ethreda, daughter of Gospatrick, a son, William, sometimes surnamed Fitz-Duncan.

Donal-bane again seized the sceptre, but he survived Duncan only two years. Edgar Ætheling having assembled an army in England, entered Scotland, and made Donal prisoner in an action which took place in September 1097. He was imprisoned by orders of Edgar, and died at Roscobie in Forfarshire, after having been deprived of his eyesight, according to the usual practice of the age. The series of the pure Scoto-Irish kings may be said to have ended with Donal-bane.

The reign of Edgar, who appears to have been of a gentle and peaceful disposition, is almost devoid of incident, the principal events being the marriage of his sister Matilda to the English Henry, and the wasting and conquest of the Western Islands by Magnus Olaveson and his Norwegians. This last event had but little effect on Scotland proper, as these Islands at that time can hardly be said to have belonged to it. These Norsemen appear to have settled among and mixed with the native inhabitants, and thus to have formed a population, spoken of by the Irish Annalists under the name of Gallgael, “a horde of pirates, plundering on their own account, and under their own leaders, when they were not following the banner of any of the greater sea-kings, whose fleets were powerful enough to sweep the western seas, and exact tribute from the lesser island chieftains.”[118] Edgar died in 1107, and was succeeded by his brother Alexander, whom he enjoined to bestow upon his younger brother David the district of Cumbria.

We have now arrived at an era in our history, when the line of demarcation between the inhabitants of the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland begins to appear, and when, by the influx of a Gothic race into the former, the language of that part of North Britain is completely revolutionized, when a new dynasty or race of sovereigns ascends the throne, and when a great change takes places in the laws and constitution of the kingdom.

Although the Anglo-Saxon colonization of the Lowlands of Scotland does not come exactly within the design of the present work; yet, as forming an important feature in the history of the Lowlands of Scotland, as contradistinguished from the Highlands, a slight notice of it may not be uninteresting.

Shortly after the Roman abdication of North Britain in the year 446, which was soon succeeded by the final departure of the Romans from the British shores, the Saxons, a people of Gothic origin, established themselves upon the Tweed, and afterwards extended their settlements to the Frith of Forth, and to the banks of the Solway and the Clyde. About the beginning of the sixth century the Dalriads, as we have seen, landed in Kintyre and Argyle from the opposite coast of Ireland; and colonized these districts, whence, in the course of little more than two centuries, they overspread the Highlands and western islands, which their descendants have ever since continued to possess. Towards the end of the eighth century, a fresh colony of Scots from Ireland settled in Galloway among the Britons and Saxons, and having overspread the whole of that country, were afterwards joined by detachments of the Scots of Kintyre and Argyle, in connection with whom they peopled that peninsula. Besides these three races, who made permanent settlements in Scotland, the Scandinavians colonized the Orkney and Shetland islands, and also established themselves on the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland, and in the eastern part of the country north of the Frith of Tay.

But notwithstanding these early settlements of the Gothic race, the era of the Saxon colonization of the Lowlands of Scotland is, with more propriety, placed in the reign of Malcolm Ceanmore, who, by his marriage with a Saxon princess, and the protection he gave to the Anglo-Saxon fugitives who sought an asylum in his dominions from the persecutions of William the Conqueror and his Normans, laid the foundations of those great changes which took place in the reigns of his successors. Malcolm, in his warlike incursions into Northumberland and Durham, carried off immense numbers of young men and women, who were to be seen in the reign of David I. in almost every village and house in Scotland. The Gaelic population were quite averse to the settlement of these strangers among them, and it is said that the extravagant mode of living introduced by the Saxon followers of Queen Margaret, was one of the reasons which led to their expulsion from Scotland, in the reign of Donal-bane, who rendered himself popular with his people by this unfriendly act.

This expulsion was, however, soon rendered nugatory, for on the accession of Edgar, the first sovereign of the Scoto-Saxon dynasty, many distinguished Saxon families with their followers settled in Scotland, to the heads of which families the king made grants of land of considerable extent. Few of these foreigners appear to have come into Scotland during the reign of Alexander I., the brother and successor of Edgar; but vast numbers of Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Normans, and Flemings, established themselves in Scotland in the reign of David I. That prince had received his education at the court of Henry I., and had married Maud or Matilda, the only child of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland and Huntingdon, by Judith, niece to William the Conqueror on the mother’s side. This lady had many vassals, and when David came to the throne, in the year 1124, he was followed by a thousand Anglo-Normans, to whom he distributed lands, on which they and their followers settled. Many of the illustrious families in Scotland originated from this source.

Malcolm Ceanmore had, before his accession to the throne, resided for some time in England as a fugitive, under the protection of Edward the Confessor, where he acquired a knowledge of the Saxon language; which language, after his marriage with the princess Margaret, became that of the Scottish court. This circumstance made that language fashionable among the Scottish nobility, in consequence of which and of the Anglo-Saxon colonization under David I., the Gaelic language was altogether superseded in the Lowlands of Scotland in little more than two centuries after the death of Malcolm. A topographical line of demarcation was then fixed as the boundary between the two languages, which has ever since been kept up, and presents one of the most singular phenomena ever observed in the history of philology.

The change of the seat of government by Kenneth, on ascending the Pictish throne, to Abernethy, also followed by the removal of the marble chair, the emblem of sovereignty, from Dunstaffnage to Scone, appears to have occasioned no detriment to the Gaelic population of the Highlands; but when Malcolm Ceanmore transferred his court, about the year 1066, to Dunfermline,--which also became, in place of Iona, the sepulchre of the Scottish kings,--the rays of royal bounty, which had hitherto diffused their protecting and benign influence over the inhabitants of the Highlands, were withdrawn, and left them a prey to anarchy and poverty. “The people,” says General David Stewart, “now beyond the reach of the laws, became turbulent and fierce, revenging in person those wrongs for which the administrators of the laws were too distant and too feeble to afford redress. Thence arose the institution of chiefs, who naturally became the judges and arbiters in the quarrels of their clansmen and followers, and who were surrounded by men devoted to the defence of their rights, their property, and their power; and accordingly the chiefs established within their own territories a jurisdiction almost wholly independent of their liege lord.”

The connection which Malcolm and his successors maintained with England, estranged still farther the Highlanders from the dominion of the sovereign and the laws; and their history, after the population of the Lowlands had merged into and adopted the language of the Anglo-Saxons, presents, with the exception of the wars between rival clans which will be noticed afterwards, nothing remarkable till their first appearance on the military theatre of our national history in the campaigns of Montrose, Dundee, and others.

On the accession of Alexander I., then, Scotland was divided between the Celt and the Saxon, or more strictly speaking, Teuton, pretty much as it is at the present day, the Gaelic population having become gradually confined very nearly to the limits indicated in the first chapter. They never appear, at least until quite recently, to have taken kindly to Teutonic customs and the Teutonic tongue, and resented much the defection of their king in court, in submitting to Saxon innovations. Previous to this the history of the Highlands has been, to a very great extent, the history of Scotland, and even for a considerable time after this, Scotia was applied strictly to the country north of the Forth and Clyde, the district south of that being known by various other names. During and after Edgar’s time, the whole of the country north of the Tweed became more and more a counterpart of England, with its thanes, its earls, and its sheriffs; and even the Highland maormors assumed the title of earl, in deference to the new customs. The Highlanders, however, it is well known, for centuries warred against these Saxon innovations, becoming more and more a peculiar people, being, up till the end of the last century, a perpetual thorn in the flesh of their Saxon rulers and their Saxon fellow-subjects. They have a history of their own, which we deem worthy of narration.[119]

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE SCOTTISH KINGS, FROM 843 TO 1097, ADJUSTED FROM THE BEST AUTHORITIES.

+----------------------------------------+--------+--------+-------+ | |Date of |Duration| | | NAMES OF THE KINGS. |Access- | of | Death.| | | -ion. | Reign. | | +----------------------------------------+--------+--------+-------+ | | A.D. | Years. | A.D. | | KENNETH MACALPINE over the Scots and | | | | | Picts, | 843 | 16 | 859 | | DONAL MACALPIN, | 859 | 4 | 863 | | CONSTANTINE II., son of Kenneth, | 863 | 18 | 881 | | AODH, or HUGH, the son of Kenneth, | 881 | 1 | 882 | | EOCHA, or ACHY, or Grig, jointly, | 882 | 11 | 893 | | DONAL IV., the son of Constantine, | 893 | 11 | 904 | | CONSTANTINE III., the son of Aodh, | 904 | 40 | 944[120] | MALCOLM I., son of Donal IV., | 944 | 9 | 953 | | INDULF, the son of Constantine III., | 953 | 8 | 961 | | DUF, the son of Malcolm I., | 961 | 4½ | 965 | | CULEN, the son of Indulf, | 965 | 4½ | 970 | | KENNETH III., son of Malcolm I., | 970 | 24 | 994 | | CONSTANTINE IV., son of Culen, | 994 | 1½ | 995 | | KENNETH IV., son of Duf, | 995 | 8 | 1003 | | MALCOLM II., son of Kenneth III., | 1003 | 30 | 1033 | | DUNCAN, grandson of Malcolm II., | 1033 | 6 | 1039 | | MACBETH, son of Finlegh, | 1039 | 17 | 1056 | | LULACH, son of Gruoch and Gilcomgain, | 1056 | ½ | 1057 | | MALCOLM III., Ceanmore, son of Duncan, | 1057 | 36⅔ | 1093 | | DONALD BANE, son of Duncan, | 1093 | ½ | 1094 | | DUNCAN II., son of Malcolm III., | 1094 | ½ | 1094 | | DONALD BANE again, | 1094 | 3 | 1097 | | EDGAR, son of Malcolm III., | 1097 | 9 | 1106 | +----------------------------------------+--------+--------+-------+

FOOTNOTES:

[109] Burton’s Scotland, vol. i. p. 354.

[110] Robertson’s Early Kings, vol. i. p. 76.

[111] According to Skene, Finella is a corruption of Finuele or Finole Cunchar, Earl of Angus.--Skene’s Annals of the Picts and Scots, p. cxliv.

[112] Maclauchlan’s Early Scottish Church, p. 306. Robertson’s Scot. under her Early Kings, vol. i. p. 88.

[113] The last we hear of any king or ruler of Strathclyde was one that fought on Malcolm’s side in this battle; and presently afterwards the attenuated state is found, without any conflict, absorbed in the Scots king’s dominions.--Burton, vol. i. p. 367.

[114] Robertson’s Early Kings, vol. i. p. 113.

[115] As quoted by Skene, Highlanders, vol. i. p. 112.

[116] Burton’s Scotland, vol. i. p. 372.

[117] Skene’s Highlanders, vol. i. p. 123.

[118] Early Kings, vol. i. p. 160.

[119] Since the above was written, the Book of Deer has been published; what further information is to be gained from it will be found at the end of this volume.

[120] Abdicated; died 952.

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Chapter II

III. A.D. 446-843

IV. A.D. 843-1107