[80-446 A.D.] ROMAN RELICS IN BRITAIN The Roman Empire in Britain left widely different results in the southern and in the northern portions of the island. The former became an organised, and in the centre of population a civilised province, in which Latin was spoken by the educated, the arts cultivated, Roman law administered, and Christianity introduced. The latter, with the partial exception of the district south of the wall of Antoninus, remained in the possession of barbarous heathen races, whose customs had altered little since Roman writers described them as similar to, though ruder than, those of the Celts in Gaul before its conquest. No Roman towns existed, and only one of two villas have been found north of York, and quite near to that place. The camp, the altar, the sepulchral monument, possibly a single temple (the mysterious Arthur's Oven or Julius's Hof on the Carron, now destroyed, but described by Boece" and Buchanan" and figured by Camden"), the stations along the wall, the roads with their milestones, a number of coins (chiefly prior to the second century), and a few traces of baths are the only vestiges of Roman occupation in this part of Britain. So completely had Britain passed beyond the serious attention of the emperor of the east that in the beginning of the sixth century Belisarius, Justinian's general, sarcastically offered it to the Goths in exchange for Sicily; while Procopius, the Byzantine historian, has nothing to tell of it except that a wall was built across it by the ancients, the direction of which he supposes to have been from north to south, separating the fruitful and populous east from the barren serpent-haunted western district, and the strange fable that its natives were excused from tribute to the kings of the Franks in return for the service of ferrying the souls of the dead from the mainland to the shores of Britain. THE EARLIEST RACES IN SCOTLAND It is to the Celts, the first known inhabitants of Britain, that our inquiry next turns. This people were not indigenous, but came by sea to Britain. A conjecture, not yet proved, identifies as inhabitants of Britain before the Celts a branch of the race now represented in Europe only by the Basques. Amongst many names of British tribes in Latin writers three occur, two with increasing frequency, as the empire drew near its close-Britons, Picts, and Scots-denoting distinct branches of the Celts. Britain was the Latin name for the larger island and Britons for its inhabitants; Albion, a more ancient title, has left traces in English poetry, and in the old name Alba or Albany for northern Scotland. The Britons in Roman times occupied, if not the whole island, at least as far north as the Forth and Clyde. Their language, British, called later Cymric, survives in modern Welsh and the Breton of Brittany. Cornish, which became extinct in the seventeenth century, was a dialect of the same speech. Its extent northwards is marked by the Cumbraes-the islands of Cymry in the Clyde-and Cumberland, a district originally stretching from the Clyde to the Mersey. The Picts, a Latin name for the northern tribes who preserved longest the custom of painting their bodies, called themselves Cruithne. Their original settlements appear to have been in the Orkneys, the north of Scotland, and the northeast of Ireland-the modern counties of Antrim and Down. They spread in Scotland, before or shortly after the Romans left, as far south as the Pentland Hills, which, like the Pentland Firth, are thought to preserve their name, occupied Fife, and perhaps left a detachment in [80-800 A.D.] Galloway. Often crossing, probably sometimes using, the deserted wall of Hadrian, they caused it to acquire their name-a name of awe to the provincial Britons and their English conquerors. Their language, though Celtic, is still a problem difficult to solve, as so few words have been preserved. Its almost complete absorption in that of the Gaels or Scots suggests that it did not differ widely from theirs, and with this agrees the fact that Columba and his followers had little difficulty in preaching to them, though they sometimes required an interpreter. Some philologists believe it to have been more allied to Cymric, and even to the Cornish variety; but the proof is inconclusive. The Scots came originally to Ireland, one of whose names, from the sixth to the thirteenth century, was Scotia; Scotia Major it was called after part of northern Britain in the eleventh century had acquired the same name. Irish traditions represent the Scots as Milesians from Spain. Their Celtic name Gaidheal, Goidel, or Gael appears more akin to that of the natives of Gaul. They had joined the Picts in their attack on the Roman province in the fourth century, and perhaps had already settlements in the west of Scotland; but the transfer of the name was due to the rise and progress of the tribe called. Dalriad, which migrated from Dalriada in the north of Antrim to Argyll and the Isles in the beginning of the sixth century. Their language, Gaidhelic, was the ancient form of the Irish of Ireland and the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlanders. No clear conclusion has been reached as to the meaning of Briton, Cruithne, Scot, and Gael. The order of the arrival of the three divisions of the Celtic race and the extent of the islands they occupied are uncertain. Beder in the beginning of the eighth century gives the most probable account. "This island at the present time contains five nations, the Angles, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own dialect cultivating one and the same sublime study of divine truth. The Latin tongue by the study of the Scriptures has 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, carried over into Britain, as is reported, from Armorica, possessed themselves of the southern parts. When they had made themselves masters of the greatest part of the island, beginning at the south, the Picts from Scythia, as is reported, putting to sea in a few long ships, were driven by the winds beyond the shores of Britain, and arrived on the northern coast of Ireland, where, finding the nation of the Scots, they begged 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 what to do: we know there is another island not far from ours, to the east, which we often see at a distance, when the days are clear. If you go thither you will obtain a settlement; or, if any should oppose, you shall have our aid.' The Picts accordingly sailing over into Britain began to inhabit the northern part of the island. In process of time Britain, after the Britons and Picts, received a third nation, the Scots, who, migrating from Ireland under their leader Renda, either by fair means or force secured those settlements amongst the Picts which they still possess." This statement in its main points (apart from the country from which the Picts are said to have come) is confirmed by Latin authors, in whose meagre notices the Picts appear before the Scots are mentioned, and both occur later than the Britons; by the legends of the three Celtic races; by the narratives of Gildas and Nennius, the only British Celtic historians, the Irish Annals," and the Pictish Chronicle." It is in harmony with the facts con 8 [350-561 A.D.] tained in the Life of Columba, written in the seventh century, but based on an earlier life, by one of his successors, Cumine, abbot of Iona, who may have seen Columba and must have known persons who had. The northern Britain brought before us in connection with Columba in the latter half of the sixth century is peopled by Cruithne or Picts in the north and central Highlands, and by Scots in Argyll and the Isles; there is a British king ruling the southwest from the rock on the Clyde then known as Alckyth or Alclyde, now Dumbarton; and Saxony, under Northumbrian kings, is the name given to the district south of the Forth, including the eastern Lowlands, where by this time Angles had settled.' The scarcity of Celtic history belonging to Scotland indicates that its tribes were less civilised than their Irish and Welsh kin. THE CONVERSION OF SCOTLAND: THE WORK OF ST. COLUMBA (563 A.D.) It is in the records of the Christian church that we first touch historic ground after the Romans left. Although the legends of Christian superstition are almost as fabulous as those of heathen ignorance, we can follow with reasonable certainty the conversion of the Scottish Celts. Three Celtic saints venerated throughout Scottish history-Ninian, Kentigern, Columba-Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, David, the patron saint of Wales, and Cuthbert, the apostle of Lothian and patron saint of Durham, belonging to the Celtic church, though probably not a Celt, mark the common advance of the Celtic races from heathenism to Christianity between the end of the fourth and the end of the sixth century. The conversion of Scotland in the time of Pope Victor I in the second century is unhistoric, and the legend of St. Rule (Regulus) having brought the relics of St. Andrew in the reign of Constantius from Achaia to St. Andrews, where the Pictish king built a church and endowed lands in his honour, is, if historical at all, antedated by some centuries. There is no proof that amongst the places which the Romans had not reached, but which had accepted Christianity when Tertullian wrote, there was any part of modern Scotland; but, as Christian bishops from Britain without fixed locality begin to appear in the fourth century, possibly the first converts in Scotland had been made before its close. Scotland gave Patrick to Ireland, and Ireland returned the gift in Columba. A rare good fortune has preserved in Adamnan's Life" the tradition of the acts of the greatest Celtic saint of Scotland, and a picture of the monastic Celtic church in the sixth and seventh centuries-an almost solitary fragment of history between the last of the Roman and the first of the Anglo-Saxon historians. Born in 521 at Gartan in Donegal, Columba spent his youth at Moville under Abbot Finian, called the foster-father of the Irish saints from the number of his disciples. Here he was ordained deacon, and, after completing his education, received priest's orders. In 561 he took part in the battle of Culdrevny (in Connaught), when the chiefs of the Hui Neill (Dalriad Scots), his kindred, defeated Diarmid (Diarmait), a king of eastern Ireland. Excommunicated by the synod for his share in the battleaccording to one account fought at his instance-and moved by missionary [So Skene notes "the four kingdoms" of that early period: First, the Scottish Dalriada; second, the kingdom of the Picts; third, the Britons of Strathclyde or Alclyde; fourth, the Angles of Bernicia.] [Scottish history may be emphatically said to begin with Columba's landing in Iona about the year 563. By the great work he achieved Columba fairly takes his place with the founders of nations, who have a niche apart in the annals of mankind.—HUME BROWN.*] [563-597 A.D.] zeal, he crossed two years afterwards the narrow sea which separates Antrim from Argyll with twelve companions and founded the monastery of Iona, on the little island to the west of Mull, given him by his kinsman Conall. The Dalriad Scots, who had settled in the western islands of Scotland and in Lorne early in the sixth century, were already Christians; but Columba soon after visited the Pictish king Brude, the son of Mailochon, whom he converted, and from whom he received a confirmation of Conall's grant. He frequently revisited Ireland and took part in its wars; the militant spirit is strongly marked in his character; but most of his time was devoted to the administration of his monastery of Iona, and to the planting of other churches and religious houses in the neighbouring isles and mainland, till his death in 597. The most celebrated of his disciples were Baithene, his successor as abbot; Machar, to whom the church of Aberdeen traces its origin; Cormac, the navigator, the first missionary to the Orkneys, who perhaps reached the Faroes and Iceland; and Drostan, the founder of the Scottish monastery of Deer. The character of the Celtic church of Columba was, like its mother church in Ireland, modified by migration to a country only in small part Christian. It was a missionary church, not diocesan but monastic, with an abbot who was a presbyter, not a bishop, for its head. It was a form of Christianity fitted to excite the wonder and gain the affection of the heathen amongst whom the monks came, practising as well as preaching the self-denying doctrine of the cross. The religion of the Celts is a shadowy outline on the page of history. Notices of idols are rare. They had not the art necessary for an ideal representation of the human form, though they learned to decorate the rude stone monuments of an earlier age with elaborate tracery. They had no temples. The mysterious circles of massive stones, with no covering but the heavens, may have served for places of worship, as well as memorials of the more illustrious dead. The names of gods are conspicuously absent, though antiquaries trace the worship of the sun in the Beltane fires and other rites; but in the account of their adversaries we read of demons whom they invoked. Divination by rods or twigs, incantations or spells, strange rites connected with the elements of water and of fire, "choice of weather, lucky times, the watching of the voice of birds," are mentioned as amongst the practices of the Druids, a priestly caste revered for superior learning and, if we may accept Caesar as an authority, highly educated. This, rather than fetish or animal worship, appears to have been their cult. Whatever its precise form, this religion made a feeble resistance to the Christian, taught by the monks, with learning drawn from Scripture and some acquaintance with Latin as well as Christian literature, and enforced by the example of a pure life and the hope of a future world. The charms of music and poetry, in which the Celt delighted, were turned to sacred use. Columba was a protector of the bards, himself a bard. It is not with the "screod" our destiny is, Nor with the trunk of a knotted tree, Nor with a "seadan" hand in hand. I adore not the voice of birds, Nor the "screod" nor destiny nor lots in this world, Nor a son nor chance nor woman; My Druid is Christ, the Son of God, Christ, Son of Mary, the Great Abbot, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. [597-642 A.D.] Adamnan relates miracles of Columba scarcely above the level of the practices of the Druids. But superstition is not vanquished by superstition. Celibacy was a protest against the promiscuous intercourse for which Christian fathers condemn the Celts. Fasts and vigils contrasted with the gross, perhaps cannibal, practices still in use. The intense faith in Christ of lives such as Patrick's and Columba's won the victory of the Cross. STRATHCLYDE, DALRIADA, AND CONFLICTS WITH THE FUTURE ENGLAND When we pass to civil history our knowledge is restricted to a list of names and battles; but the labours of recent scholars allow a brief account of the Celtic races from the end of the sixth to their union in the middle of the ninth century, in part hypothetical, yet a great advance on the absolute blank which made historians of the eighteenth century decline the task in despair. The Britons, whose chief king had ruled at Alclyde, were separated from their fellow countrymen, the Cymry in Wales, shortly after Columba's death by the rapid advance of the Anglian kingdom of Northumberland, founded in the middle of the sixth century by Ida of Bamborough. One of his successors, Æthelfrith, struck the blow, completed by the wars of the next king, Eadwin, which severed modern Wales from British Cumbria and Strathclyde. Even Mona, the holy isle of both heathen and Christian Britons, became Anglesea, the island of the Angles. A later incursion towards the end of the century reached Carlisle and separated the kingdom of Alclyde from English Cumbria, and reduced for a short time Strathclyde to a subject province. The decline of the Northumbrian kingdom in the eighth century enabled the kings of Strathclyde to reassert their independence and maintain their rule within a restricted district more nearly answering to the valley of the Clyde, and in Galloway, in which there are some faint indications of a Pictish population, till it was united to the kingdom of Scone by the election of Donald, brother of Constantine II, king of the Scots, to its throne. Of the Scots of Dalriada somewhat more is known. Their history is interwoven with that of the Picts and meets at many points that of the Angles of Northumberland, who during the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century, when their kings were the greatest in Britain, endeavoured to push their boundaries beyond the Forth and the Clyde. The history of this kingdom forms part of that of Scotland during these centuries. It planted in Lothian the seed from which the civilisation of Scotland grew. To an early period of the contest between the Angles and the Britons, and to the country between the Forth and Tweed and Solway, perhaps belong the battles magnified by successive poets who celebrated the hero of British mediæval romance. Whether these battles were really fought in southern Scotland and on the borders, and Arthur's Seat was one of his strongholds, still "unknown is the grave of Arthur." Before Eadwin's death (633) his kingdom extended to the Forth, and the future capital of Scotland received the name of Eadwinsburgh from him in place of the Mynyd Agned and Dunedin of the British and Gaelic Celts. During the reign of Oswald (635-642) the Northumbrians were reconverted by Aidan. Oswald's brother Oswy extended the dominion of Northumberland over a portion of the country of the northern Picts beyond the Forth. In his reign lived Cuthbert, the apostle of Lothian. His name is preserved in St. Cuthbert's church at Edinburgh and in Kirkcudbright. To the same period belong two inscriptions, the earliest records of Anglian speech, one on the |