Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes were numbered beginning afresh with each chapter. They have been resequenced across the entire text for uniqueness. On occasion, notes are referred to in other notes by number. These references have been changed as well.

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.

CELTIC SCOTLAND

Printed by Thomas and Archibald Constable,

FOR

DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH

CELTIC SCOTLAND:
A HISTORY OF
Ancient Alban

BY

WILLIAM F. SKENE, D.C.L., LL.D.

HISTORIOGRAPHER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND.

Volume I.

HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY.

SECOND EDITION.

EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS

1886

All Rights reserved

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The first volume of Celtic Scotland being out of print, the Author has very carefully revised the text, with a view to a new edition; but he has, after mature consideration, found nothing to alter in the views of early Scottish history expressed in it. He has therefore confined himself to correcting obvious mistakes and misprints, and, with these exceptions, this edition is substantially a reprint.

Edinburgh, 27 Inverleith Row,

4th September 1886.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Each volume of this work may be regarded as complete in itself so far as the object of the volume is concerned, and will be issued separately.

The principal aim of the Author in this first volume of Celtic Scotland has been to endeavour to ascertain the true facts of the early civil history. For this purpose the narratives of her early historians afford no available basis. The artificially-constructed system of history first brought into shape by John of Fordun, and elaborated in the more classical text of Hector Boece, must, for the Celtic period of our history, be entirely rejected. To attempt to found a consecutive historical narrative on the scattered notices in the Roman writers and in the Chronicles, which consist merely of lists of kings with the length of their respective reigns, and notices of a few isolated battles, would be merely to produce an unsatisfactory and unreadable book. On the other hand, a succession of general views of the early periods of its history, founded upon a superficial and uncritical use of authorities, or the too readily accepted conclusions of more painstaking writers, however lively and graphic they may be, might furnish very pleasant reading, but would be worthless as a work of authority.

The first thing to be done is to lay a sound foundation by ascertaining, as far as possible, the true facts of the early history, so far as they can be fairly extracted from the more trustworthy authorities. There is, unfortunately, no more difficult task than to substitute the correct ‘sumpsimus’ for the long-cherished and accepted ‘mumpsimus’ of popular historians. All that the Author has attempted in this volume is to show what the most reliable authorities do really tell us of the early annals of the country, divested of the spurious matter of supposititious authors, the fictitious narratives of our early historians, and the rash assumptions of later writers which have been imported into it.

The Author is glad to take this opportunity of acknowledging the valuable assistance which his excellent publisher, Mr. David Douglas, has freely and ungrudgingly given him in carefully revising the proof-sheets. They could have been submitted to no more intelligent supervision.

Edinburgh, 20 Inverleith Row,

1st May 1876.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

BOOK I.

HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.

ADVANCE OF THE ROMANS TO THE FIRTHS OF

FORTH AND CLYDE.

CHAPTER II.

THE ROMAN PROVINCE IN SCOTLAND.

CHAPTER III.

BRITAIN AFTER THE ROMANS.

CHAPTER IV.

ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN

CHAPTER V.

THE FOUR KINGDOMS.

CHAPTER VI.

THE KINGDOM OF SCONE.

CHAPTER VII.

THE KINGDOM OF ALBAN.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA.

CHAPTER IX.

THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA PASSES INTO FEUDAL SCOTLAND.

APPENDIX.

ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS.

INTRODUCTION.

Name of Scotia, or Scotland.

The name of Scotia, or Scotland, whether in its Latin or its Saxon form, was not applied to any part of the territory forming the modern kingdom of Scotland till towards the end of the tenth century.

Prior to that period it was comprised in the general appellation of Britannia, or Britain, by which the whole island was designated in contradistinction to that of Hibernia, or Ireland. That part of the island of Britain which is situated to the north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde seems indeed to have been known to the Romans as early as the first century by the distinctive name of Caledonia,[^[1]] and it also appears to have borne from an early period another appellation, the Celtic form of which was Albu, Alba, or Alban,[^[2]] and its Latin form Albania.

The name of Scotia, however, was exclusively appropriated to the island of Ireland, which was emphatically Scotia, the ‘patria,’ or mother country, of the Scots;[^[3]] and although a colony of that people had established themselves as early as the beginning of the sixth century in the western districts of Scotland, it was not till the tenth century that any part of the present country of Scotland came to be known under that name, nor did it extend over the whole of those districts which formed the later kingdom of the Scots till after the twelfth century.

Ancient extent of the kingdom.

From the tenth to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries the name of Scotia, gradually superseding the older name of Alban, or Albania, was confined to a district nearly corresponding with that part of the Lowlands of Scotland which is situated on the north of the Firth of Forth. The Scotia of these centuries was bounded on the south by the Firth of Forth; on the north by the Moray Firth and river Spey; on the east by the German Ocean; and on the west by the range of mountains which divides the modern county of Perth from that of Argyll. It excluded Lothian, Strathclyde, and Galloway, on the south; the great province of Moravia, or Moray, and that of Cathanesia, or Caithness, on the north; and the region of Argathelia, or Argyll, on the west.

Subsequently the name of Scotia extended over these districts also, and the kingdom by degrees assumed that compact and united form which it ever afterwards exhibited.

The three propositions—1st, That Scotia, prior to the tenth century, was Ireland, and Ireland alone; 2d, That when applied to Scotland it was considered a new name superinduced upon the older designation of Alban or Albania; and 3d, That the Scotia of the three succeeding centuries was limited to the districts between the Forth, the Spey, and Drumalban,—lie at the very threshold of Scottish history.[^[4]]

The history of the name of a country is generally found to afford a very important clue to the leading features in the history of its population. This is remarkably the case with regard to the history of Scotland, and the facts just indicated in connection with the application of its name at different periods throw light upon the corresponding changes in the race and position of its inhabitants. They point to the fact that, prior to the tenth century, none of the small and independent tribes which originally occupied the country, and are ever the characteristic of an early period in their social history, or of the petty kingdoms which succeeded them, were sufficiently powerful and extended, or predominated sufficiently over the others, to give a general name to the country; and they point to a great change in the population of the country and the relative position of these kingdoms to each other in the tenth century, and to the elevation, by some important revolution, of the race of the Scots over the others, whose territory formed a centre round which the formerly independent petty kingdoms now assumed the form of dependent provinces, and from which an influence and authority proceeded that gradually extended the name of Scotia over the whole of the country, and incorporated its provinces into one compact and co-extensive monarchy.

Physical features of the country.

The great natural features of a country so mountainous and intersected by so many arms of the sea as that of Scotland, seem at all times to have influenced its political divisions and the distribution of the various races in its occupation. The original territories of the savage tribes of Caledonia appear to have differed little from those of the petty kingdoms which succeeded them, and the latter as little from the subsequent provinces of the monarchy. The same great leading boundaries, the same natural defences, are throughout found occupying a similar position and exercising a similar influence upon the internal history of the country, while, amidst the numerous fluctuations and changes which affected the position of the northern tribes towards the southern and more civilised kingdoms of Britain, the two ever showed a tendency to settle down upon the great natural bulwarks of the south of Scotland as their mutual boundary, to which, indeed, the independent position of the northern monarchy in no slight degree owed its existence.

Where the great arm of the western sea forming the Solway Firth contracts the island to a comparatively narrow breadth, not exceeding seventy miles, a natural boundary was thus partially formed, which had its influence at the very dawn of Scottish history; but, if during the occupation of the island by the Romans, who placed their trust more in the artificial protection of a rampart guarded by troops, the comparatively level ground in this contracted part of the country presented facilities for such a construction, the great physical bulwark of the Cheviot Hills had an irresistible attraction to fix the boundary eventually between the Solway and the Tweed, where that chain of hills extending between them proved so effectual a defence to the country along the whole of its range, that every hostile entrance into it was made either at the eastern or the western termination of that mountain chain.

Farther north is the still more remarkable natural boundary where the Eastern and the Western Seas penetrate into the country in the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and approach within a comparatively short distance of each other, separating the northern from the southern regions of Scotland by an isthmus not exceeding thirty-five miles in breadth. This was remarked as early as the first Roman invasion of Scotland, when the historian Tacitus observes that these estuaries almost intersect the country, leaving only a narrow neck of land, and that the northern part formed, as it were, another island.[^[5]]

Proceeding farther north, the great series of the mountain ranges, stretching from the south-west to the north-east, present one continuous barrier, intersected indeed by rivers forming narrow and easily defended passes, but exhibiting the appearance of a mighty wall, which separates a wild and mountainous region from the well-watered and fertile plains and straths on the south and east; and, while the latter have been at all times exposed to the vicissitudes of external revolution, and the greatly more important and radical change from the silent progress of natural colonisation, the recesses of the Highlands have ever proved the shelter and protection of the descendants of the older tribes of the country, and the limit to the advance of a stranger population.

MAP
SHEWING
MOUNTAIN CHAINS
W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh & London.

The territory which forms the modern kingdom of Scotland is thus thrown by its leading physical features into three great compartments. First, the districts extending from the Solway, the Cheviots, and the Tweed, on the south, to the Firths of Forth and Clyde on the north; secondly, the low country extending along the east coast from the Forth as far as the Moray Firth, and lying between the sea and the great barrier of the Grampians; and thirdly, the Highland or mountainous region on the north-west.

Mountain chains.

In each of these great districts natural boundaries are again found exercising their influence on the subordinate political divisions. |The Cheviots.| In the first of these great compartments, the lofty range of the Cheviots, which forms the southern boundary and presents a steep face to the north, extends from the Cheviot Hill on the north-east by Carter Fell to Peel Fell on the south-west; and from thence a range of hills, sometimes included in the general name of the Cheviots, separates the district of Liddesdale from that of Teviotdale, and has its highest point in the centre of this part of the island, in a group of hills termed the Lowthers, where the four great rivers of the Tweed, the Clyde, the Annan, and the Nith, take their rise. From thence it extends westward to Loch Ryan, separating the waters which pour their streams into the Solway Firth from those which flow to the north. From the centre of this range a smaller and less remarkable chain of hills branches off, which, running eastward by Soutra and Lammermoor, end at St. Abb’s Head, at the entrance to the Firth of Forth, separating the tributaries of the Tweed from the streams which flow into the Firth of Forth. In the centre of the island, a barren and hilly region divides the districts watered by the rivers flowing into the east sea from those on the west coast.

The same natural boundary which separated the eastern from the western tribes afterwards divided the kingdom of the Strathclyde Britons from that of the Angles; at a subsequent period, the province of Galweia from that of Lodoneia in their most extended sense; and now separates the counties of Lanark, Ayr, and Dumfries from the Lothians and the Merse. Galloway in its limited sense was not more clearly separated by its mountain barrier on the north from Strathclyde, than were the Pictish from the British races by the same chain, and the earlier tribes of the Selgovæ and Novantæ from the Damnii.

In the other two great compartments situated on the north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, two great mountain chains and two large rivers formed the principal landmarks in the early history of the social occupation of these districts. These two principal mountain chains were in fact the great central ridges from which the numerous minor chains proceed, and the rivers flow in opposite directions, forming that aggregate of well-watered glens and rocky defiles which characterise the mountain region of Scotland, till its streams, uniting their waters into larger channels, burst forth through the mountain passes, and flow through the more fertile plains of the Lowlands into the German Ocean.

The Mounth.

The first of these two great mountain chains was known by the name of the Mounth, and extends in nearly a straight line across the island from the Eastern Sea near Aberdeen to the Western Sea at Fort-William, having in its centre and at its western termination the two highest mountains in Great Britain—Ben-na-muich-dubh and Ben Nevis.

Drumalban.

The second great chain, less elevated and massive in its character, but presenting the more picturesque feature of sharp conical summits, crosses the other at right angles, running north and south, and forming the backbone of Scotland—the great wind and water shear, which separates the eastern from the western districts, and the rivers flowing into the German Ocean from those which pour their waters into the Western Sea. It is termed in the early records of Scottish history Dorsum Britanniæ, or Drumalban—the dorsal ridge or backbone of Scotland. It commences in Dumbartonshire, and forms the great separating ridge between the eastern and western waters from south to north, till it terminates in the Ord of Caithness.

These two mountain chains—the Mounth and Drumalban, the one running east and west, the other south and north, and intersecting each other—thus divided the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde into four great districts, two extending along the east coast, and two along the west, while each of the two eastern and western divisions were separated from each other by the Mounth. The two eastern divisions are watered by the two great rivers of the Tay and the Spey and their tributaries, the one flowing south and the other north from these mountain chains. The two western divisions are intersected by those arms of the sea or lochs, which form so peculiar a feature in the West Highlands.

The Grampians.

The lesser mountain ridges which proceed on either side of the Mounth, and separate the various streams which flow into the two great rivers from each other, terminate as the waters enter the plains of the Lowlands, and present the appearance of a great barrier stretching obliquely across each of the two eastern districts and separating the mountain region from the plain; but, although this great barrier has an appearance as if it were a continuous mountain range, and is usually so considered, it is not so in reality, but is formed by the termination of these numerous lesser ridges, and is intersected by the great rivers and their tributaries. This great barrier forms what was subsequently termed the Highland line, and that part of it which extends across the south-eastern district from Loch Lomond to the eastern termination of the Mounth was known under the general but loosely applied name of the Grampians.[^[6]]

Within is a wild and mountainous region full of the most picturesque beauty which the ever-varied combination of mountain, rock, and stream can afford, but adapted only for pasture and hunting, and for the occupation of a people still in the early stage of pastoral and warlike life; while every stream which forces its way from its recesses through this terminating range forms a pass into the interior capable of being easily defended.

Throughout the early history of Scotland these great mountain chains and rivers have always formed important landmarks of the country. If the Mounth is now known as the range of hills which separate the more southern counties of Kincardine, Forfar, and Perth from those of Aberdeen and Inverness on the north, it was not less known to the Venerable Bede, in the eighth century, as the steep and rugged mountains which separate the provinces of the southern from those of the northern Picts.[^[7]] If Drumalban now separates the county of Argyll from that of Perth, it formed equally in the eleventh century the mountain range which separated Arregaithel from Scotia,[^[8]] and at an earlier period the boundary between the Picts and the Scots of Dalriada.[^[9]]

The river Spey, which now separates the counties of Aberdeen and Banff from those of Moray and Nairn, was for three centuries the boundary between Scotia, or Scotland proper, and Moravia, or the great province of Moray. The Tay, which separates the districts of Stratherne and Gowry, formed for half a century the limit of the Anglic conquests in the territory of the Picts, and at the very dawn of our history interposed as formidable a barrier to the progress of the Roman arms. The Forth, which for three centuries was the southern boundary of Scotia, or Scotland proper, during the previous centuries separated the Pictish from the British population.

The debateable lands.

The tract of country in which the frontiers of several independent kingdoms, or the territories in the occupation of tribes of different race, meet, usually forms a species of debateable land, and the transactions which take place within its limits afford in general a key to much of their relative history. Such were the districts extending from the river Tay to the minor range of the Pentland hills and the river Esk, which flows into the Firth of Forth on the south. These districts fall naturally into three divisions. The region extending from the Tay to the river Forth, and containing part of Perthshire, was included in that part of the country to which the name of Alban, and afterwards that of Scotia, was given. The central district between the rivers Forth and Carron consisted of the whole of Stirlingshire and part of Dumbartonshire, and belonged more properly to Strathclyde. The region extending from the Carron to the Pentlands and the river Esk on the south comprised the counties of West and Mid Lothian, and was attached to Northumbria; but all three may be viewed as outlying districts, having a mixed population contributed by the neighbouring races.

Situated in the heart of Scotland, and having around it tribes of different races, and subsequently the four kingdoms of the Picts, the Scots, the Angles, and the Britons, surpassing the other districts in fertility, and possessing those rich carses which are still distinguished as the finest agricultural districts of Scotland, this region was coveted as the chief prize alike by the invaders and the native tribes. The scene of the principal Roman campaigns, it appears throughout the entire course of Scottish history as the main battlefield of contending races and struggling influences. Roman and Barbarian, Gael and Cymry, Scot and Angle, contended for its occupation, and within its limits is formed the ever-shifting boundary between the petty northern kingdoms, till in the memorable ninth century a monarchy was established, of which the founder was a Scot, the chief seat Scone, and that revolution was accomplished, which it is difficult to say whether it was more civil or ecclesiastical in its character, but which finally established the supremacy of the Scottish people over the different races in the country, and led to their gradual combination and more intimate union in the subsequent kingdom of Scotland. The kingdom of the Scots soon extended itself over these central plains. Its monarchs usually had their residence within its limits, and the capital, which had at first been Scone, on the left bank of the Tay, eventually became established at Edinburgh, within a few miles of its southern boundary.

During the few succeeding centuries of Scottish rule, after the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century, it remained limited to the districts bounded by the Forth on the south, the mountain chain called Drumalban on the west, and the Spey on the north. The Scots had rapidly extended their power and influence over the native tribes within these limits; but beyond them (on the north and west) they held an uncertain authority over wild and semi-independent nations, nominally dependencies of the kingdom, but in reality neither owning its authority nor adopting its name.

It was by slow degrees that the peoples beyond these limits were first subjugated and then amalgamated with the original Scottish kingdom; and it was not till the middle of the thirteenth century, when the annexation of the Western Isles by Alexander the Third finally completed the territorial acquisitions of the monarchy, that its name and authority became co-extensive with the utmost limits of the country, and Scotland was consolidated in its utmost extent of territory into one kingdom.

Periods of its history.

The early history of Scotland thus presents itself to the historian in five distinct periods, each possessing a character peculiar to itself.

During the first period of three centuries and a half the native tribes of Scotland were under the influence of the Roman power, at one time struggling for independent existence, at another subject to their authority, and awaking to those impressions of civilisation and of social organisation, the fruits of which they subsequently displayed.

A period of rather longer duration succeeded to the Roman rule, in which the native and foreign races in the country first struggled for the succession to their dominant authority in the island, and then contended among themselves for the possession of its fairest portions.

The third period commences with the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century, and lasted for two centuries and a half, till the Scottish dynasty became extinct in the person of Malcolm the Second.

There then succeeded, during the fourth period, which lasted for a century, a renewed struggle between the different races in the country, which, although the Scoto-Saxon dynasty, uniting through the female line the blood of the Scots and the Saxons, succeeded in seating themselves firmly on the throne, cannot be said to have terminated in the general recognition of their royal authority till the reign of David the First.

The fifth period, consisting of the reigns of David I., Malcolm IV., William the Lion, and Alexander the Second and Third, was characterised by the rapid amalgamation of the different provinces, and the spread of the Saxon race and of the feudal institutions over the whole country, with the exception of the Highlands and Islands, and left the kingdom of Scotland in the position in which we find it when the death of Alexander the Third, in 1286, terminated the last of the native dynasties of her monarchs.

Celtic Scotland.

During the first three periods of her early history, Scotland may be viewed as a purely Celtic kingdom, with a population composed of different branches of the race popularly called Celtic. But during the subsequent periods, though the connection between Scotland with her Celtic population and Lothian with her Anglic inhabitants was at first but slender, her monarchs identified themselves more and more with their Teutonic subjects, with whom the Celtic tribes maintained an ineffectual struggle, and gradually retreated before their increasing power and colonisation, till they became confined to the mountains and western islands. The name of Scot passed over to the English-speaking people, and their language became known as the Scotch; while the Celtic language, formerly known as Scotch, became stamped with the title of Irish.

What may be called the Celtic period of Scottish history has been peculiarly the field of a fabulous narrative of no ordinary perplexity; but while the origin of these fables can be very distinctly traced to the rivalry and ambition of ecclesiastical establishments and church parties, and to the great national controversy excited by the claim of England to a feudal supremacy over Scotland, still each period of its early history will be found not to be without sources of information, slender and meagre as no doubt they are, but possessing indications of substantial truth, from which some perception of its real character can be obtained.

Critical examination of authorities necessary.

Before the early history of any country can be correctly ascertained, there is a preliminary process which must be gone through, and which is quite essential to a sound treatment of the subject; and that is a critical examination of the authorities upon which that history is based. This is especially necessary with regard to the early history of Scotland. The whole of the existing materials for her early history must be collected together and subjected to a critical examination. Those which seem to contain fragments of genuine history must be disentangled from the less trustworthy chronicles which have been tampered with for ecclesiastical or national purposes, and great discrimination exercised in the use of the latter. The purely spurious matter must be entirely rejected. It is by such a process only that we can hope to dispel the fabulous atmosphere which surrounds this period of Scottish history, and attempt to base it upon anything like a genuine foundation.

The first to attempt this task was Thomas Innes, a priest of the Scots College in Paris, who published in 1729 his admirable Essay on the ancient inhabitants of Scotland. In this essay he assailed the fabulous history first put into shape by John of Fordun and elaborated by Hector Boece, and effectually demolished its authority; but he attempted little in the way of reconstruction, and merely printed a few of the short chronicles, upon which he founded, in an appendix.

Lord Hailes, who in 1776 published his Annals of Scotland, from the Accession of Malcolm III., surnamed Canmore, to the Accession of Robert I., abandons this period of Scottish history altogether, with the remark that his Annals ‘commence with the accession of Malcolm Canmore, because the history of Scotland previous to that period is involved in obscurity and fable.’

The first to attempt a reconstruction of this early history was John Pinkerton, who published in 1789 An Enquiry into the History of Scotland preceding the reign of Malcolm III., or the year 1056, including the authentic history of that period. It is unquestionably an essay of much originality and acuteness; and Pinkerton saw the necessity of founding the history of that period upon more trustworthy documents, but they were to a very limited extent accessible to him. The value of the work is greatly impaired by the adoption, to an excessive extent, of a theory of early Teutonic settlements in the country and of the Teutonic origin of the early population, and by an unreasoning prejudice against everything Celtic, which colours and biasses his argument throughout.

Pinkerton was followed in 1807 by George Chalmers, with his more elaborate and systematic work, the Caledonia, based, however, to a great extent upon the less trustworthy class of the early historical documents, which had been tampered with and manipulated for a purpose. He, too, was possessed by a theory which influences his views of the earlier portion of the history throughout; and where John Pinkerton could find nothing but Gothic and the Goths, George Chalmers was equally unable to see anything but Welsh and the Cymry.

In 1828 the first volume of a History of Scotland by Patrick Fraser Tytler appeared, which he continued to the accession of James VI. to the throne of England; but Tytler not only abandons this early part of the history as hopelessly obscure, but also a great part of the field occupied by Hailes in his Annals, and commences his history with the accession of Alexander the Third in 1249.

In 1862 a very valuable contribution to the early history of Scotland was made by the late lamented Mr. E. William Robertson in his Scotland under her Early Kings, in which the attempt is once more made to fill up the early period left untouched by Hailes and Tytler. It is a work of great merit, and exhibits much accurate research and sound judgment.[^[10]]

Such is a short sketch of the attempts which have been made to place the early history of Scotland upon a sound basis, and to substitute a more trustworthy statement of it for the carefully manipulated fictions of Fordun, and the still more fabulous narrative of Hector Boece and his followers, prior to the appearance of Mr. Burton’s elaborate History of Scotland, from Agricola’s Invasion to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection, the first edition of which appeared in 1867, and the second, in which the early part is revised and much altered, in 1873.

These works, however, are all more or less tainted by the same defect, that they have not been founded upon that complete and comprehensive examination of all the existing materials for the history of this early period, and that critical discrimination of their relative value and analysis of their contents, without which any view of this period of the annals of the country must be partial and inexact. They labour, in short, under the twofold defect, first, of an uncritical use of the materials which are authentic; and second, of the combination with these materials of others which are undoubtedly spurious. The early chronicles are referred to as of equal authority, and without reference to the period or circumstances of their production. The text of Fordun’s Chronicle, upon which the history, at least prior to the fourteenth century, must always to a considerable extent be based, is quoted as an original authority, without adverting to the materials he made use of and the mode in which he has adapted them to a fictitious scheme of history; and the additions and alterations of his interpolator Bower are not only founded upon as the statements of Fordun himself, but quoted under his name in preference to his original version of the events.

The author has elsewhere endeavoured to complete the work commenced by Thomas Innes. He has collected together in one volume the whole of the existing chronicles and other memorials of the history of Scotland prior to the appearance of Fordun’s Chronicle, and has subjected them, as well as the work of Fordun, to a critical examination and analysis.[^[11]]

He now proposes to take a farther step in advance, and to attempt in the present work to place the early history of the country upon a sounder basis, and to exhibit Celtic Scotland, so far as these materials enable him to do so, in a clearer and more authentic light. By following their guidance, and giving effect to fair and just inferences from their statements unbiassed by theory or partiality, and subjected to the corrective tests of comparison with those physical records which the country itself presents, it is hoped that it may not be found impossible to make some approximation to the truth, even with regard to the annals of this early period of Scottish history.

It may be said that this task has been rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Burton’s History of Scotland, which commences the narrative with the invasion of Agricola, and claims ‘the two fundamental qualities of a serviceable history—completeness and accuracy;’[^[12]] but, with much appreciation of the merits of Mr. Burton’s work as a whole, the author is afraid that he cannot recognise it as possessing either character, so far as the early part of the history is concerned, and he considers that the ground which the present work is intended to occupy remains still unappropriated.

Spurious authorities.

It remains for him to indicate here at the outset the materials founded upon by the previous writers which he considers of questionable authority, or must reject as entirely spurious.

Among the first to be rejected as entirely spurious is the work attributed to Richard of Cirencester, De situ Britanniæ et Stationum quas Romani ipsi in ea insula ædificaverunt. It was published in 1757 from a MS. said to be discovered at Copenhagen by Charles Julius Bertram, and was at once adopted as genuine. The author at a very early period came to the conclusion that the whole work, including the itineraries, was an impudent forgery, and this has since been so amply demonstrated, and is now so generally admitted, that it is unnecessary to occupy space by proving it.[^[13]] The whole of the Roman part of Pinkerton’s Enquiry and of the elaborate work of Chalmers is tainted by it; and, what is perhaps more to be regretted, the valuable work of General Roy[^[14]] on The Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain, published in 1793. He says in his introduction, ‘From small beginnings it is, however, no unusual thing to be led imperceptibly to engage in more extensive and laborious undertakings, as will easily appear from what follows, for since the discovery of Agricola’s camps, the work of Richard of Cirencester having likewise been found out in Denmark and published to the world, the curious have thereby been furnished with many new lights concerning the Roman history and geography of Britain in general, but more particularly the north part of it,’ and by this unfortunate adoption of the forged work by General Roy, there has been lost to the world, to a great extent, the advantage of the commentary of one so well able to judge of military affairs. Horsley’s valuable work, the Britannia Romana, was fortunately published in 1732 before this imposition was practised on the literary world; but Stuart has not been equally fortunate in his Caledonia Romana, published in 1845, the usefulness of which is greatly impaired by it.

Among the Welsh documents which are usually founded upon as affording materials for the early history of the country, there is one class of documents contained in the Myvyrian Archæology which cannot be accepted as genuine. The principal of these are the so-called Historical Triads, which have been usually quoted as possessing undoubted claims to antiquity under the name of the Welsh Triads; the tale called Hanes Taliessin, or the history of Taliessin; and a collection of papers printed by the Welsh ms. Society, under the title of the Iolo MSS. These all proceeded from Edward Williams, one of the editors of the Myvyrian Archæology published in 1801, and who is better known under the bardic title of Iolo Morganwg. The circumstances under which he produced these documents, or the motives which led him to introduce so much questionable matter into the literature of Wales, it is difficult now to determine; but certain it is that no trace of them is to be found in any authentic source, and that they have given a character to Welsh literature which is much to be deplored. In a former work, the author in reviewing these documents merely said, ‘It is not unreasonable therefore to say that they must be viewed with some suspicion, and that very careful discrimination is required in the use of them.’ He does not hesitate now to reject them as entirely spurious.[^[15]]

It will of course be impossible to write upon the Celtic period of Scottish history without making a large use of Irish materials; and it is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the Irish Annals for this purpose; but these too must be used with some discrimination. The ancient history of Ireland presents the unusual aspect of the minute and detailed annals of reigns and events from a period reaching back to many centuries before the Christian era, the whole of which has been adopted by her historians as genuine. The work of Keating, written in Irish in 1640, a translation of which by Dermod O’Connor was published in 1726, may be taken as a fair representation of it. The earlier part of this history is obviously artificial, and is viewed by recent Irish historians more in the light of legend; but there is nothing whatever in the mode in which the annals of the different reigns are narrated to show where legend terminates and history begins, and there is a tendency among even the soundest writers on Irish history to push the claims of these annals to a historical character beyond the period to which it can reasonably be attached. For the events in Irish history the Annals of the Four Masters are usually quoted. There is a certain convenience in this, as it is the most complete chronicle which Ireland possesses; but it was compiled as late as the seventeenth century, having been commenced in 1632 and finished in 1636. The compilers were four eminent Irish antiquaries, the principal of whom was Michael O’Clery, whence it was termed by Colgan the Annals of the Four Masters. These annals begin with the year of the Deluge, said to be the year of the world 2242, or 2952 years before Christ, and continue in an unbroken series to the year of our Lord 1616. The latter part of the annals are founded upon other documents which are referred to in the preface, and from which they are said to be taken, but the authority for each event is not stated, and some of those recorded are not to be found elsewhere, and are open to suspicion.[^[16]] The earlier part of the annals consists simply of a reduction of the fabulous history of Ireland into the shape of a chronicle, and, except that it is thrown into that form instead of that of a narrative, it does not appear to the author to possess greater claims to be ranked as an authority than the work of Keating. He cannot therefore accept it as an independent authority, nor can he regard the record of events to the fifth century as bearing the character of chronological history in the true sense of the term, though no doubt many of these events may have some foundation in fact.[^[17]]

The older annals stand in a different position. Those of Tighernac, Inisfallen, and the Annals of Ulster, are extremely valuable for the history of Scotland; and, while the latter commence with what may be termed the historic period in the fifth century, the earlier events recorded by Tighernac, who died in the year 1088, may contain some fragments of genuine history.

Plan of the work.

The subject of this work will be most conveniently treated under three separate heads or books.

The first book will deal with the Ethnology and Civil History of the different races which occupied Scotland. In this inquiry, it will be of advantage that we should start with a clear conception of the knowledge which the Romans had of the northern part of the island, and of the exact amount of information as to its state and population which their possession of the southern part of it as a province affords. This will involve a repetition of the oft-told tale of the Roman occupation of Scotland. But this part of the history has been so overloaded with the uncritical use of authorities, the too ready reception of questionable or forged documents, and the injurious but baseless speculations of antiquaries, that we have nearly lost sight of what the contemporary authorities really tell us. Their statements are, no doubt, meagre, and may appear to afford an insufficient foundation for the deductions drawn from them, but they are precise; and it will be found that though they may compress the account of a campaign or a transaction into a few words, yet they had an accurate knowledge of the transactions, the result of which they wished to indicate, and knew well what they were writing about. It will be necessary, therefore, carefully to weigh these short but precise statements, and to place before the reader the state of the early inhabitants of Scotland as the Romans at the time knew them and viewed them, not as what by argument from other premises they can be made to appear.[^[18]]

This will lay the groundwork for an inquiry into their race and language; and an attempt will then be made to trace the history of these different races, their mutual struggle for supremacy, the causes and true character of that revolution which laid the foundation of the Scottish monarchy, and the gradual combination of its various heterogeneous elements into one united kingdom; and thus by a more complete and critical use of its materials, to place the early history of the country, during the Celtic period, upon a sounder basis.

The second book will deal with the Early Celtic Church of Scotland and its influence on the language and culture of the people. The ecclesiastical history of Scotland has shared the same fate with its civil history, and is deeply tainted with the fictitious and artificial system which has perverted both; but the stamp of these fables upon it is less easily removed. It has also had the additional misfortune of having been made the battle-field of polemical controversy. Each historian of the Church has viewed it through the medium of his ecclesiastical prepossessions, and from the standpoint of the Church party to which he belonged. The Episcopal historian feels the necessity of discovering in it his Diocesan Episcopacy, and the partisan of Presbyterian parity considers the principles of his Church involved in maintaining the existence of his early Presbyterian Culdees. One great exception must be made, however, in Dr. Reeves’s admirable edition of Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, which has laid the foundation for a more rational treatment of the history of the early Church in Scotland.

The subject of the third and last book will be the Land and People of Scotland. It will treat of the early land tenures and social condition of its Celtic inhabitants. The publication of the Brehon laws of Ireland now enables us to trace somewhat of the history and character of their early tribal institutions and laws, and of their development in Scotland into those communities represented in the eastern districts by the Thanages, and in the western by the Clan system of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

[1]. See Book i. chap. i. infra.

[2]. It will be seen from the title of this work that the author does not adopt what he ventures to call the pedantic affectation of using the form of Alba instead of Alban. The oldest form of the word is Albu, as that of the name for Ireland was Eriu. Thus, in the oldest Irish Glossary—that of Cormac—we have, sub voce Trifod, ‘Eriu agus Manann agus Albu.’ The inflections are Eriu, G. Erenn, D. Eirinn, A. Erinn. Albu, G. Alban, D. Albain, A. Albain or Albu. In the later Irish documents the forms of Eire and Alba usually occur in the nominative. A nominative form derived from the genitive is, however, also found; and the names of places ending in a vowel seem to have a tendency to fall into this form in current speech. Thus we have Erin for Eiriu or Eire, Alban for Albu or Alba, Arann for Ara, Rathlin for Rechra, etc. In his Irish Glosses, Mr. Whitley Stokes has ‘Eirinnach (gl. Hibernigena), from the old name of this island, which is declined in the Book of Leinster and Lib. Hymn. Nom. herinn (Maelmura Othna’s poem), Dat. dond erinn, Gen. and Acc. herenn (see Fiacc’s hymn. vv. 7, 8, 10, and the Orthain at the end, and the quatrain from Marianus Scotus, Z. 944).’—(Irish Glosses, p. 66.)

The name of Alban occurs in this form in the nominative also in the Prophecy of St. Berchan throughout, as ‘Dia mo lan Alban is Eire’ (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 79); Ba ard Albain chathair bhinn (ib. p. 87); Mescfaidh Albain ima chenn (ib. p. 89); Ba lomlan Albain o a la (ib. p. 91, etc.).

So also the form of Alban appears as the name of Scotland in all the Welsh documents, and the Pictish Chronicle, which is evidently translated from a Gaelic original, has Albania, which must have been formed from Alban.

The affectation of using the form Alba in the English rendering of the name was first introduced by the late Dr. O’Donovan, and has been adopted without much consideration by some Scottish writers; but the late Professor O’Curry, an equally accurate Irish scholar, invariably used the form Alban, and the author prefers retaining this conventional form.

[3]. Haec autem (Hibernia) proprie patria Scotorum est.—Bede, Hist. Ec. B. i. c. i.

[4]. The first proposition is clearly established by the following catena of authorities:—

Sixth Century.

Isidorus Hispalensis. Origines.

Scotia eadem et Ibernia, proxima Britanniae insula.... Unde et Ibernia dicta. Scotia autem quod ab Scotorum gentibus colitur appellata.—Lib. xiv. c. vi.

Theodoric. Vita S. Rumoldi, 1st July.—Surius, tom. vii. p. 563.

Movit hoc ab ortu Ægyptus et India ad occasum alter pene orbis Britannia cum adjacente Scotia. Tota insula Scotiae mirabatur.

Seventh Century.

Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia.

Finitur autem ipsa Britannia a facie septentrionalis (habet) insulam Scotiam.

Iterum in eodem oceano occidentali post ipsam magnam Britanniam ... est insula maxima quae dicitur Ibernia, quae, ut dictum est, et Scotia appellatur.

Adamnanus in vita S. Columbae.

De Scotia ad Britanniam ... enavigavit.—Pref. sec.

In Scotia et in Britannia.—Lib. i. cap. i.

De Scotia ad Britanniam ... adduxit.—Lib. i. cap. xxix.

Per totam nostram Scotiam et omnium totius orbis insularum maximam Britanniam.—Lib. iii. cap. xxiv.

Eighth Century.

Bæda. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.

Haec autem (Hibernia) proprie patria Scottorum est.—Lib. i. cap. i.

Dominis carissimis fratribus episcopis, vel abbatibus per universam Scottiam, Laurentius, Mellitus, et Justus episcopi.—(Letter addressed to ‘Scotti qui Hiberniam insulam Britanniae proximam incolunt.’)—Lib. ii. cap. iv.

Columba presbyter de Scottia venit Brittaniam.—Lib. v. cap. xxiv.

Martyrologium. De Scotia insula venientes. 13th November.

Ninth Century.

Hucbaldus, in vita S. Lebuini.

Britannia oceani insula, interfuso mari a toto orbe divisa ... cui adjacet Scotia sive Hybernia.—Surius, tom. iii. p. 27.

Vita S. Wironis.

Scotia fertilis Sanctorum virorum insula.—Surius, tom. iii. p. 114.

Vita S. Kiliani.

Scotia quae et Hibernia dicitur, insula est maris oceani, foecunda quidem glebis, sed viris Sanctissimis clarior.—Surius, tom. iii. p. 132.

Tenth Century.

Hegesippus. De excidio Hierosolymitano.

Quid attexam Britannias interfuso mari toto orbe divisas, a Romanis in orbem terrarum redactas? Tremuit hos Scotia, quae terris nihil debet.

Secunda Vita S. Patricii, ap. Colgan.

Causa haec erat primae peregrinationis atque adventus ejus in Scotiam.—Tr. Th. p. 12.

Quinta Vita S. Patricii, ap. Colgan.

Scotiam atque Britanniam, Angliam et Normanniam caeterasque gentes insulanorum baptizabis.—Tr. Th. p. 51.

Notkerus Balbulus, in Martyrologio.

v. Id. Junias. In Scotia insula Hibernia depositio S. Columbae, cognomento apud suos Columbkilli.

To which it may be added that King Alfred, in his translation of Orosius, translates the passage, ‘Hibernia, quae a gentibus Scotorum colitur,’ by ‘Ighernia, which we call Scotland.’

For the second proposition we have the following:—

In the Pictish Chronicle the name of Scotia is still applied to Ireland. ‘Scotti in quarta etate Scociam sive Hiberniam obtinuerunt,’ and the only names used for Scotland are Albania and Pictavia. ‘xxx. Brude regnaverunt Hiberniam et Albaniam.’ ‘Danari vastaverunt Pictaviam ad Cluanan et Duncalden.’ ‘Normanni predaverunt Duncalden, omnemque Albaniam.’—Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. 3, 5, 8, 9.

In the following century we have

‘Regnum Scotorum fuit, inter cetera regna

Terrarum, quondam nobile, forte, potens....

Ex Albanacto, trinepote potentis Enee,

Dicitur Albania: littera prisca probat.

A Scota, nata Pharaonis regis Egypti,

Ut veteres tradunt, Scotia nomen habet.’

Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 117.

Illa regio, quae nunc corrupte vocatur Scotia, antiquitus appellabatur Albania.... Nunc vero corrupte vocatur Scotia.—Ib. p. 135.

Albania est, quae modo Scotia vocatur.—Ib. p. 153.

Albania tota, quae modo Scotia vocatur.—Ib. p. 154.

Monarchia totius Albaniae quae nunc Scotia dicitur.—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 209.

That part of the Saxon Chronicle which precedes the death of King Alfred in 901, and according to the best authorities was compiled in his reign, nowhere applies the name of Scotland to North Britain; but in that part of the Chronicle which extends from 925 to 975, and which, if not contemporary, was at least compiled in the latter year, has, in 933, ‘In this year King Æthelstan went into Scotland;’ and in 937, in the contemporary poem on the battle of Brunanburg, Constantine’s people are called Sceotta, and the name applied to Ireland is Yraland.—Saxon Chron., ad an.

The transference of the name of Scotia from Ireland to Scotland seems to have been completed in the eleventh century, for Marianus Scotus, who lived from 1028 to 1081, calls Malcolm the Second, who died 1034, ‘rex Scotiae’ (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 65), and Brian, King of Ireland, ‘rex Hiberniae.’ The author of the Life of St. Cadroë, in the same century, applies the name of Scotia to North Britain (ib. p. 113); while Adam of Bremen, who wrote in 1080, has ‘Hibernia Scottorum patria, quae nunc Irland dicitur’ (De situ Daniae, c. 247).

The third proposition is equally important, and it will be necessary to establish it once for all at the outset. This will appear—First, from the ancient descriptions of Scotland; Secondly, from topographical allusions in the Old Laws and in the Chronicles; and Thirdly, from the names given to the inhabitants of the different provinces.

Under the first head, we find in the tract De situ Albaniae a reference to the ‘montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab Arregaithel,’ or Argyll, and to the Forth, ‘quae regna Scottorum et Anglorum dividit’ (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 135). In the description of Britain (ib. p. 153) the provinces within the limits of Scotland are thus enumerated:—‘Ultra [Tede flumen (or Tweed)], usque ad flumen Forthi magni, scilicet, Loonia et Galweya (Lothian and Galloway) et Albania tota quae modo Scotia vocatur et Morovia (Moray) et omnes insulae occidentales occeani usque ad Norwegiam et usque Daciam, scilicet, Kathenessia Orkaneya Enchegal et Man et Ordas et Gurth et ceterae insulae occidentales occeani circa Norwegiam et Daciam.’ This points to the time when Caithness, Orkney, and the Western Isles were possessed by the Norwegians and Danes, and distinguishes Scotia from Moray, from which it is separated by the Spey, and from the Norwegian and Danish possessions, which included Caithness, Sutherland, Argyll, and the Isles.

In the ‘Brevis Descriptio Scotiae’ (ib. p. 214), the provinces of Tyndale then belonging to Scotland, Lothian and Galloway, are mentioned, and Argyll is omitted.

Under the second head the same provinces are clearly indicated in one of the Laws of King William, ‘De lege que vocatur Claremathan.’ It commences, ‘De catallo furato et calumpniato statuit dominus Rex apud Perth quod in quacunque provincia sit inventum,’ etc. It then refers to them thus, ‘Si ille qui calumpniatus est de catallo furato vel rapto vocat warentum suum aliquem hominem manentem inter Spey et Forth vel inter Drumalban et Forth;’ that is, a district bounded by the Spey, Drumalban, and the Forth. Then we have, ‘Et si quis ultra illas divisas valet in Moravia vel in Ros vel in Katenes vel in Ergadia vel in Kintyre.’ Then we have ‘Ergadia quae pertinet ad Moraviam.’ Then ‘Si calumpniatus vocaverit warentum aliquem in Ergadia quae pertinet ad Scotiam tunc veniat ad comitem Atholie,’ showing that the part of Ergadia next to Athole was said to belong to Scotia as distinguished from Moravia. Then we have, ‘Omnes illi qui ultra Forth manserint in Laudonia vel in Galwodia.’—Acts of Parl. v. i. p. 50.

Ailred distinguishes Laudonia and Calatria (in Stirlingshire) from Scotia when he says, ‘Cum Angliæ victor Willelmus Laodoniam Calatriam Scotiam usque ad Abernith penetraret.’—Ailred de bello apud Standardum.

Ordericus Vitalis equally distinguishes Moravia from Scotia when he says of Angus Comes de Moravia, who rebelled against David I., ‘Scotiam intravit.’—Ord. Vit. p. 702.

Thirdly, the same distinction is maintained in the early notices of the inhabitants of the different provinces. Thus Ailred describes the Scottish army at the battle of the Standard under David I. as consisting of the following bodies of troops:—1st, of Galwenses; 2d, of Cumbrenses et Tevidalenses; 3d, of Laodonenses cum Insulanis et Lavernanis; 4th, of Scoti et Muravenses. The accurate Hailes deduces from this,—‘The Scots, properly so called, were the inhabitants of the tract between the Firth of Forth and the country then called Moray.’—Hailes, An. vol. i. p. 78.

[5]. Nam Clota et Bodotria, diversi maris aestibus per immensum revectae, angusto terrarum spatio dirimuntur: quod tum praesidiis firmabatur: atque omnis propior sinus tenebatur, summotis velut in aliam insulam hostibus.—Tacit. in Vit. Ag., c. 23.

[6]. Hector Boece is the first of our historians who brings this Highland barrier prominently forward as a mountain range. He says, ‘Situs autem hic lacus (Loch Lomond) est ad pedem Grampii montis Pictorum olim Scotorumque regni limitis, qua ab ostiis Deae amnis latera Aberdoniae abluentis mare Germanicum prospectans incurvus asper atque intractabilis (quod et nomen ejus vernaculum Granzebain significat) per mediam Scotiam in alterum mare tendens obvio hoc lacu excipitur sistiturque.’—Ed. 1520, F. vii. 45.

His object was, by identifying this range with the boundary between the Picts and Scots, to extend the territories of the latter, and by applying to it the name of Tacitus’s Mons Grampius he has stamped upon it ever since the appellation of the Grampians. But the older authorities know nothing of the Grampians, and never mention this range of mountains. They only specify the mountain ranges of the Mounth and Drumalban. Thus the Tract de Situ Albaniae (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 135) mentions the ‘mons qui Mound vocatur, qui a mari occidentali usque ad mare orientale extenditur.’ And another description (ib. p. 214) has, ‘Et itaque est quoddam vastum quod vocatur le Mounth, ubi est pessimum passagium sine cibo, longitudinis lx. leucarum et latitudinis xvi. leucarum.’

The other range is frequently mentioned by Adamnan in the seventh century as ‘Dorsum Britanniae,’ and once as ‘Dorsi montes Britannici, quos Pictos et Scotos utrosque disterminant.’ The oldest of the Latin chronicles mention Fergus, the first king of Dalriada, as reigning ‘a monte Drumalban usque ad mare Hiberniae’ (ib. p. 130); and the Tract de Situ Albaniae mentions the ‘montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab Arregaithel.’

As this chain was the great boundary which originally separated the Picts from the Scots of Dalriada, it is essential to a clear understanding of the early history that its real position should not be mistaken, and it is only necessary to examine the passages in which it occurs to see that it was used with precision, and to identify the mountain chain which was meant by it. Much confusion, however, has been thrown into early Scottish history by the loose and arbitrary way in which this name has been applied by modern writers to any great mountain chain which they fancied might represent it, arising merely from a want of accurate acquaintance with the true character of the mountain system of Scotland, and a careless use of authorities. Of modern historians Pinkerton alone has rightly placed the name of Drumalban on the ridge which separates Argyllshire from Perthshire. Mr. Cosmo Innes, in the map in his Scotland in the Middle Ages, places it upon the great range of the Mounth, in which he is followed by Mr. E. W. Robertson, in his Scotland under her Early Kings; and Mr. Burton has made confusion worse confounded by identifying it with “the range now called the Grampians” (Hist. vol. i. p. 15); in this following Boece. Fordun gives an elaborate description of it in his Chronicle, B. ii. c. 7; and Buchanan rightly describes it as the highest part of Breadalban, and clearly indicates it as the ridge separating the east from the west waters, ‘ex eo enim dorso flumina in utrumque mare decurrunt, alia in septentrionem, alia in meridiem.’

The name Dorsum Britanniæ implies that it was part of the ridge which might be called the backbone of Britain, separating the rivers flowing in opposite directions, as the backbone of the body separates the ribs—a definition that never could be applicable to the so-called Grampians. The name of Drum is found, too, attached to the range along the whole course of it. We have Tyndrum and Cairndrum at the part whence the Tay flows; the Drummond hills at the source of the Spey where the range divides Badenoch from Lochaber; Achadrum where it crosses the great glen of Scotland between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy; and Loch Droma where it crosses the valley called the Deary-mor, in Ross-shire, at the head of the river Broom.

[7]. Provinciis septentrionalium Pictorum, hoc est, eis quae arduis atque horrentibus montium jugis ab australibus eorum sunt regionibus sequestratae.—B. iii. c. iv.

[8]. Montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab Arregaithel.—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 135.

[9]. Quos utrosque Dorsi montes Britannici disterminant.—Adamnan, B. ii. c. 47.

[10]. The essays contained in the appendix are of peculiar value, and well deserve the consideration of historians.

[11]. The author has collected the materials prior to Fordun’s Chronicle in the volume of The Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, and other early Memorials of Scottish History, published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury, under the superintendence of the Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, in 1867, and has likewise edited Fordun’s Chronicle for the series of the Scottish Historians. The introductions to these two works contain a critical examination and analysis of these early documents as well as of the chronicle itself. In the Four Ancient Books of Wales, published in 1868, he has subjected the Welsh documents to a similar critical examination.

[12]. Burton’s Hist., vol. i. Preface, p. v.

[13]. It is curious how difficult it is to get rid of the effects of an imposture of this kind, even after it is detected.

Mr. C. H. Pearson is one of those who has most conclusively demonstrated the forgery, and yet in his historical maps of England, published in 1869, he places the Roman provinces of Britain according to an arrangement for which the so-called Richard of Cirencester is the sole authority. Mr. Burton also denounces this work as a forgery (vol. i. p. 61, note); but he elsewhere says, ‘Thus there were Scots in Ireland and Scots in Britain, and a practice arose among British writers of calling the latter Attacotti, which has been explained to mean the hither Scots or Scots of this side’ (vol. i. p. 256). This statement is apparently taken from Pinkerton, who identified the Attacotti with an early settlement of Scots in Argyll solely on the authority of Richard of Cirencester. The opinion is quite untenable, and the etymology preposterous. It was, however, rather unexpected to find Mr. W. Fraser, in a work printed in 1874 (The Lennox), adopting the whole of the spurious matter of the so-called Richard of Cirencester as genuine.

[14]. Roy, Military Ant., p. ix.

[15]. See Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. i. pp. 30-32. In rejecting the Welsh Triads, which have been so extensively used, the author excepts those Triads which are to be found in ancient MSS., such as the Triads of the Horses in the Black Book of Caermarthen; those in the Hengwrt MS. 536, printed in the Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. ii. p. 457; and those in the Red Book of Hergest.

[16]. For instance, the annals record the death of Somhairle MacGillaadomnan Ri Innsigall at 1083. This was Somerled Regulus of Argyll, whose death really took place in 1166, and this entry has probably been inserted at haphazard from some genealogy of the Macdonalds.

[17]. It is usually supposed that true history in Ireland commences with the introduction of Christianity and the mission of St. Patrick, but this date is by no means certain. The author is more inclined to place the separation between those annals which may be depended on as consisting in the main of true history, and those which present the appearance of an artificial construction, into which fragments of history, legendary matter, and fabulous creations, have been interwoven, at the event termed the battle of Ocha, fought in 483. By that battle the dynasty of the Hy Neill was placed on the throne of Ireland. It separates the Pagan kings from the Christian. The marvellous and fanciful events which characterise the previous reigns here drop from the annals, and what follows has an air of probability and reality, and it was undoubtedly viewed as a great era by the older chroniclers; as, for instance, Flann of Bute, who wrote his Synchronisms in 1054, has ‘Forty-three years from the coming of St. Patrick to Erin to the battle of Ocha; twenty years from the battle of Ocha till the children of Erc, son of Echach Muindremair, passed over into Alban.’—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 18.

[18]. The author has explained his views as to the authorities for this period of the history more anxiously, because he does not at all sympathise with Mr. Burton in his view of the authority of Tacitus as an historian, and the character of his narrative. The author is unable to see how the credibility of his narrative is impaired by the fact that his Life of Agricola was not included in the first edition of his works, and was unknown to our historians before Hector Boece. Mr. Burton hardly ventures to question the authenticity of the Life of Agricola. The view he appears to hold, that it was written more as a political manifesto than as a plain historical relation of facts, has been hastily adopted from a school of German critics, whose views have not, however, met with acceptance from the sounder class of them. The author holds the authenticity of the Life of Agricola to be unquestionable, and that its fidelity as a narrative cannot be reasonably assailed; and he considers any argument drawn from the presence or absence of local tradition as to the events it records to be irrelevant, as all genuine tradition of this kind in Scotland has perished under the influence of the immense popularity and general acceptance at the time of Hector Boece’s fabulous history, which has, in fact, created a spurious local tradition all over Scotland.

BOOK I.
HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.
ADVANCE OF THE ROMANS TO THE FIRTHS OF FORTH AND CLYDE.

Early notices of the British Isles.

As early as the sixth century before the Christian era, and while their knowledge of Northern Europe was still very imperfect, the Greeks had already become aware of the existence of the British Isles. This comparatively early knowledge of Britain was derived from the trade in tin, for which there existed at that period an extensive demand in the East. It was imported by sea by the Phœnicians, and by their colony, the Carthaginians, who extended their voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and was subsequently prosecuted as a land trade by their commercial rivals, the Greek colonists of Marseilles.

A Greek poet, writing under the name of Orpheus, but whose real date may be fixed at the sixth century, mentions these remote islands under the name of the Iernian Isles;[^[19]] but in the subsequent century they were known to Herodotus as the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands,[^[20]] a name derived from the chief article of the trade through which all report of their existence was as yet derived.

In the fourth century they are alluded to by Aristotle as two very large islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and, while the name of Britannia was now from henceforth applied, especially by the Greek writers, to the group of islands, of whose number and size but vague notions were still entertained, the two principal islands appear for the first time under the distinctive appellations of Albion and Ierne.[^[21]]

Polybius, in the second century before Christ, likewise alludes to the Britannic Islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to the working of the mines by the inhabitants.[^[22]]

Besides these direct allusions to the British Isles, we have preserved to us by subsequent writers an account of these islands from each of the two sources of information—the Phœnician voyages and the land trade of the Phocæans of Marseilles—in the narratives of the expeditions of Himilco and Pytheas.

Himilco was a Carthaginian who was engaged in the Phœnician maritime trade in the sixth century, and the traditionary account of his voyage is preserved by a comparatively late writer, Festus Rufus Avienus. In his poetical Description of the World, written from the account of Himilco, he mentions the plains of the Britons and the distant Thule, and talks of the sacred isle peopled by the nation of the Hiberni and the adjacent island of the Albiones.[^[23]]

Pytheas was a Massilian. His account of his journey is preserved by the geographer Strabo, and appears to have been received with great distrust. He stated that he had sailed round Spain and the half of Britain; ascertained that the latter was an island; made a voyage of six days to the island of Thule, and then returned. From him Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny derived their information as to the size of the islands, and his statement made known for the first time the names of three promontories—Cantium or Kent, Belerium or Land’s End, and Orcas, or that opposite the Orkneys.[^[24]]

But although the existence of the British Isles was thus known at an early period to the classic writers under specific names, and some slender information acquired through the medium of the early tin trade as to their position and magnitude, it was not till the progress of the Roman arms and their lust of conquest had brought their legions into actual contact with the native population, that any information as to the inhabitants of these islands was obtained.

B.C. 55.
Invasion of Julius Cæsar.

The invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar in the year 55 before the Christian era, although it added no new territory to the already overgrown empire of the Romans, and was probably undertaken more with the view of adding to the military renown of the great commander, for the first time made the Romans acquainted with some of the tribes inhabiting that, to them, distant and almost inaccessible isle, and added distinctness and definiteness to their previously vague conception of its characteristics. Its existence was now not merely a geographical speculation, but a political fact in the estimation of those by whom the destinies of the world were then swayed—an element that might possibly enter into their political combinations.

The conquests of Julius Cæsar in Britain, limited in extent and short-lived in duration, were not followed up. The policy of the subsequent emperors involved the neglect of Britain as an object of conquest; and, while it now assumed a more definite position in the writings of Greek and Roman geographers, they have left us nothing but the names of a few southern tribes and localities which do not concern the object before us, and a statement regarding the general population which is of more significance.

Cæsar sums up his account by telling us that the interior of Britain was inhabited by those who were considered to be indigenous, and the maritime part by those who had passed over from Belgium, the memory of whose emigration was preserved by their new insular possessions bearing the same name with the continental states from which they sprang. He describes the country as very populous, the people as pastoral, but using iron and brass, and the inhabitants of the interior as less civilised than those on the coasts. The former he paints as clothed in skins, and as not resorting to the cultivation of the soil for food, but as dependent upon their cattle and the flesh of animals slain in hunting for subsistence. He ascribes to all those customs which seem to have been peculiar to the Britons. They stained their bodies with woad, which gave them a green colour, from which the Britons were termed ‘Virides’ and ‘Cærulei.’ They had wives in common. They used chariots in war, and Cæsar bears testimony to the bravery with which they defended their woods and rude fortresses, as well as encountered the disciplined Roman troops in the field. He mentions the island Hibernia as less than Britannia by one-half, and about as far from it as the latter is from Gaul, and an island termed ‘Mona’ in the middle of the channel between the two larger islands.[^[25]]

Strabo and Diodorus Siculus have preserved any additional accounts of the inhabitants which the Romans received during the succeeding reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. They describe the Britons as taller than the Gauls, with hair less yellow, and slighter in their persons; and Strabo distinguishes between that portion of them whose manners resembled those of the Gauls and those who were more simple and barbarous, and were unacquainted with agriculture—manifestly the inhabitants of the interior whom Cæsar considered to be indigenous. He describes the peculiarity of their warfare, their use of chariots, and their towns as enclosures made in the forests, with ramparts of hewn trees. He mentions the inhabitants of ‘Ierne’ as more barbarous, regarding whom reports of cannibalism and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes were current.[^[26]] Diodorus gives a more favourable picture of the inhabitants who were considered to be the aborigines of the island, and attributes to them the simple virtues of the pure and early state of society fabled by the poets. He alludes to their use of chariots and their simple huts, and adds to Strabo’s account that they stored the ears of corn under ground. He represents them as simple, frugal, and peaceful in their mode of life. Those near the promontory of Belerion or Land’s End he describes as more civilised, owing to their intercourse with strangers.[^[27]]

Thus all agree in distinguishing between the simple and rude inhabitants of the interior, who were considered to be indigenous, and the more civilised people of the eastern and southern shores who were believed to have passed over from Gaul.

A.D. 43.
Formation of province in reign of Claudius.

It was not till the reign of Claudius that any effectual attempt was renewed to subject the British tribes to the Roman yoke; but the second conquest under that emperor speedily assumed a more permanent character than the first under Julius Cæsar, and the conquered territory was formed into a province of the Roman empire. During this intervening period of nearly a century, we know nothing of the internal history of the population of Britain; but the indications which have reached us of a marked and easily-recognised distinction between two great classes of the inhabitants, and of the progressive immigration of one of them from Belgium, and the analogy of history, lead to the inference that during this period—ample for such a purpose—the stronger and more civilised race must have spread over a larger space of the territory, and the ruder inhabitants of the interior been gradually confined to the wilder regions of the north and west. The name of Britannia having gradually superseded the older appellation of Albion, and the latter, if it is synonymous with Alba or Alban, becoming confined to the wilder regions of the north, lead to the same inference.

As soon as the conquests of the Romans in Britain assumed the form of a province of the empire, all that they possessed in the island was termed ‘Britannia Romana,’ all that was still hostile to them, ‘Britannia Barbara.’ The conquered tribes became the inhabitants of a Roman province, subject to her laws, and sharing in some of her privileges. The tribes beyond the limits of the province were to them ‘Barbari.’ An attention to the application of these terms affords the usual indication of the extent of the Roman province at different times, and, if the history of the more favoured southern portion of the island must find its earliest annals in the Roman provinces of Britain, it is to the ‘Barbari’ we must turn in order to follow the fortunes of the ruder independence of the northern tribes. It will be necessary, therefore, for our purpose, that we should trace the gradual extension of the boundary of the Roman province and the advance of the line of demarcation between what was provincial and what was termed barbarian, till we find the independent tribes of Britain confined within the limits of that portion of the island separated from the rest by the Firths of Forth and Clyde.

It was in the year of our Lord 43, and in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, that the real conquest of Britain commenced under Aulus Plautius, and in seven years after the beginning of the war a part of the island had been reduced by that general and by his successor into the form of a province, and annexed to the Roman empire,—a result to which the valour and military talent of Vespasian, then serving under these generals, and afterwards Emperor, appears mainly to have contributed. In the year 50, under Ostorius, and perhaps his successor, the Roman province appears to have already extended to the Severn on the west, and to the Humber on the north.[^[28]]

Beyond its limits, on the west, were the warlike tribes of the Silures and the Ordovices, against whom the province was defended by a line of forts drawn from the river Sabrina or Severn, to a river, which cannot be identified with certainty, termed by Tacitus the Antona.[^[29]] On the north lay the numerous and widely-extended tribes of the Brigantes, extending across the entire island from the Eastern to the Western Sea, and reaching from the Humber, which separated them from the province on the south, as far north, there seems little reason to doubt, as the Firth of Forth.[^[30]] Beyond the nation of the Brigantes on the north, the Romans as yet knew nothing save that Britain was believed to be an island, and that certain islands termed Orcades[^[31]] lay to the north of it; but the names even of the more northern tribes had not yet reached them.

A.D. 50. War with the Brigantes.

It is to the war with the Brigantes that we must mainly turn, in order to trace the progress of the Roman arms, and the extension of the frontier of the Roman province beyond the Humber. The Romans appear to have come in contact with the Brigantes for the first time in the course of the war carried on by Publius Ostorius, appointed governor of Britain in the year 50. That general had arrived in the island towards the end of summer; and the Barbarians, or those of the Britons still hostile to the Romans, believing he would not undertake a winter campaign, took advantage of his arrival at so late a period of the year to make incursions into the territory subject to Rome. Among these invading tribes were probably the Brigantes; but the general, by a rapid and energetic movement, put the enemy to flight, and it was on this occasion that the province was protected against the western tribes by a chain of forts. Having defeated the powerful nation of the Iceni, who endeavoured to obstruct his purpose by an attack from a different quarter, and who were destined at a subsequent period to place the Roman dominion in Britain in the utmost jeopardy, Ostorius reduced the tribes within the limits of the subjugated territory to entire obedience, and now turned his attention to more aggressive measures against those beyond its boundary.

His first attack was directed against the hostile tribes of the west, and he had penetrated into their mountain territory nearly as far as the sea, when he was obliged to turn his steps towards the north by the threatening aspect of the powerful nation of the Brigantes, whom, however, on this occasion he soon reduced to subjection. Those he found in arms were cut to pieces, and the rest of the nation submitted.

On again turning his steps towards the west, he found the nations of the Silures and Ordovices assembled under the command of the celebrated native chief Caractacus, and a great battle took place, in which the discipline of the Roman troops prevailed over the acknowledged bravery of the natives, even although the latter occupied a well-chosen position of unusual strength. The army of Caractacus was defeated, his wife and daughter taken prisoners, while he himself fled for protection to Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, but that queen, being then at peace with the Romans, delivered him up to them.

On the death of Ostorius, which took place in the same year, Aulus Didius was sent to Britain as the next commander, and under him a more prolonged war with the Brigantes commenced, which throws some light on their internal condition. After the defeat and death of Caractacus, the most distinguished native leader was Venusius, a Brigantian, who belonged to a sept of that nation termed by Tacitus the ‘Jugantes.’[^[32]] He had married Cartismandua, the queen of the whole nation, and, while this marriage subsisted, had remained equally faithful to the Romans. Dissensions, however, arose between them. Venusius was driven from his throne, and his brother, with the rest of his kindred, seized by the queen, who raised Villocatus, his armour-bearer, to her throne and bed. This quarrel led to a civil war between the adherents of Venusius and those of the queen, and this great nation became divided into two factions.[^[33]] That part of the nation which adhered to Venusius, and which there is reason to believe consisted of the more northern tribes, was from that time in active hostility to the Romans. They had attacked Cartismandua, who was only enabled to maintain her position by obtaining the assistance of the Roman army. The short but significant expressions of Tacitus show that the war was not an easy one for the Romans, and that they could do little more than maintain their own ground and the position of their ally.

We hear no more of this war till after that great insurrection of the Roman provincials under Boadicea or Bondiuca, queen of the Iceni, which shook the Roman power in Britain to its foundation, and had nearly resulted in their entire expulsion from the island. A struggle such as the language of the historians shows this to have been must necessarily have been a vital one on both sides; and hence, when the Roman arms eventually prevailed, the result produced a firm consolidation of their power in that part of the island which formed the Roman province. The immediate subject before us—the extension of the Roman power towards the north, and the gradual advance of the northern frontier of the province—renders it unnecessary for us to dwell with any minuteness upon their contests with the native tribes in other quarters. It is sufficient to notice that Veranius succeeded Aulus Didius, but died within the year, and that under Suetonius Paulinus, one of the most distinguished of the Roman commanders in Britain, and the governor by whom the great insurrection of the Iceni was finally quelled, the western tribes were finally brought under the dominion of the Romans.

A.D. 69. War with the Brigantes renewed.

We find the Brigantes again in hostility to the Romans during the government of Vettius Bolanus, which commenced in the year 69. Venusius appears to have maintained an independent position and a hostile attitude towards the Romans throughout, and a lengthened civil war had continued to prevail between his adherents and that part of the nation which remained subject to Cartismandua, and in this war the Romans once more took part under Vettius Bolanus. Venusius was at the head of a powerful army, and the subjects of the queen flocked daily to his standard. Cartismandua was reduced to the last extremity, and invoked the protection of the Romans, who sent troops to her assistance. The war was prosecuted with varied success; many battles were fought; but Venusius succeeded in obtaining the throne of the whole nation.[^[34]] Under Petilius Cerealis, the successor of Vettius Bolanus, who was sent by the Emperor Vespasian to reduce the Brigantes, the war was brought to a conclusion. With the assistance of a powerful army, which struck terror into the natives, he attacked the whole nation of the Brigantes; and, after a struggle, in which various battles were fought and much slaughter took place, he subjected the greater part of the extensive territory in the possession of that powerful nation to the Romans. This conquest was maintained by his successor Julius Frontinus.[^[35]]

It was during this war with the Brigantes, in which the Roman troops had probably frequently approached the more northern portion of their territories, that the Romans became aware of the name of the people who occupied the country beyond them, and acquired some information connected with these more northern and hitherto unknown districts. They now learned the existence of a people to the north of the Brigantes, whom they termed ‘Caledonii Britanni,’ or Caledonian Britons.[^[36]] The Western Sea which bounded them they termed the ‘Caledonius Oceanus.’[^[37]] The war under Vettius Bolanus had, it was supposed, reached the Caledonian plains.[^[38]] On the conclusion of the war the Roman province approached the vicinity of the ‘Sylva Caledonia,’ or Caledonian Forest.[^[39]] They now knew of the ‘Promontorium Caledoniæ,’ or Promontory of Caledonia, by which they must have meant the peninsula of Kintyre. From thence could be seen the islands of the Hebudes, five in number;[^[40]] and they had heard reports of a singular state of society among their inhabitants. It was reported that they knew nothing of the cultivation of the ground, but lived upon fish and milk, which latter implies the possession of herds of cattle. They had, it was said, one king, who was not allowed to possess property, lest it should lead him to avarice and injustice, or a wife, lest a legitimate family should provoke ambition.[^[41]] In short, they learned that there existed among this new people a state of society similar to that which Cæsar reported to have found among the indigenous inhabitants of the interior of Britain. The Orkneys they already knew by report.

The name of Thule was familiar to them as an island whose situation and attributes were entirely the creation of imagination. The geographers knew of it as a remote island in the Northern Ocean, the type of whatever was most northern in the known western world, as the expression Hyperborean had been to the Greeks. The poets applied it as a poetical appellation for that part of Britain which remained inaccessible to the Roman arms, the seat of the recently known Caledonian Britons, and which, from the deep indentation into the country of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the narrow neck of land between them, presented the appearance as if it were, to use the words of Tacitus, another island. The peculiar customs of the ruder Britons are attributed to these inhabitants of the poetic Thule. They are termed ‘Cærulei’ or Green, from the woad with which they stained their bodies; and they are said to have fought in chariots.[^[42]]

A.D. 78. Arrival of Julius Agricola as governor.

Such was the state of Britain, and such the knowledge the Romans now possessed of its northern districts and tribes, when, in the middle of the summer of the year 78, Julius Agricola arrived to take the government of Britain. The frontiers of the Roman province had been extended over the western tribes of Wales, and advanced beyond the Humber to the north, till they embraced the greater part of the territories of the Brigantes, and its northern limit certainly touched upon the Solway Firth in the north-west, while it did not probably fall much short of the Firth of Forth on the north-east. The present southern boundary of Scotland seems to have represented the northern limit of the Roman province at this time, and Agricola was thus the first to carry the Roman arms within the limits of that part of Britain which afterwards constituted the kingdom of Scotland.

Agricola had every circumstance in his favour in commencing his government which could tend to a distinguished result, and the consciousness of this probably led him to desire to add the wild and barren regions of the north to the acquisitions of Rome—a design which could not be justified on any considerations of sound policy, and for which, in encountering natives apparently of a different race, there was little excuse. He had already served under three of the governors of Britain, two of these, Petilius Cerealis and Suetonius Paulinus, among the most distinguished. He was familiar with all the characteristics and peculiarities of a war with the British tribes. He had acquired no small renown for military talent and success, and had given evidence of those enlarged conceptions of policy and views of government which could not but greatly affect the state and progress of the province under his charge.

The appointment of a new governor seems generally to have been a signal to the persevering hostility of the British tribes to strike a blow for their independence, till practical experience of the qualities of their antagonist showed them whether success was likely to attend a prosecution of the war; and accordingly the first year of a new government appears always to have been marked by the insurrection of one or more of the subjugated tribes. On the arrival of Agricola he found the western nation of the Ordovices in open insurrection. The summer was far advanced, and the Roman troops stationed at different quarters expected a cessation of arms during the rest of the year; but, adopting the policy of Suetonius, Agricola at once drew the troops together, and attacking the enemy, the Ordovices were defeated in battle and entirely crushed for the time. Agricola, still having the example of Suetonius before him, followed up his advantage and accomplished what the latter had attempted, the subjugation of the island of Mona or Anglesea.

Peace being restored, Agricola now directed his attention to a better administration of the province, and to the introduction of those measures most likely to lead to the consolidation of the Roman power and the quiet submission of the inhabitants of the province. Justice and moderation were the characteristics of his government. An equal administration of the laws, and the removal of those burdens and exactions which pressed most heavily upon the natives, could not but in time have the desired effect.

A.D. 79. Second Campaign of Agricola; over-runs districts on the Solway.

As soon as the summer of the next year arrived, Agricola proceeded to carry into execution his deliberately-formed plan for the subjugation of the northern tribes who had hitherto maintained their independence, and, indeed, had not as yet come into hostile collision with the Roman power in Britain. He appears to have directed his course towards the Solway Firth, and slowly and steadily penetrated into the wild country which stretches along its northern shore, and brought the tribes which possessed it under subjection.[^[43]] These tribes seem to have formed part of the great nation of the Brigantes, a portion of whose territories had remained unsubdued by his predecessor Petilius Cerealis. He surrounded the subjugated tribes with forts and garrisons, and the remains of the numerous Roman camps and stations, which are still to be seen in this district, comprising the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Wigtown, attest the extent to which he had penetrated through that country and garrisoned it with Roman troops. Between the hills which bound Galloway and Dumfriesshire on the north and the Solway Firth on the south, the remains of Roman works are to be found in abundance from the Annan to the Cree, and surround the mouth of every river which pours its waters into that estuary.[^[44]] The great and extensive nation of the Brigantes was now entirely included within the limits of the Roman province; and Agricola saw before him a barren and hilly region which divided it from the northern tribes, still comparatively unknown except by name to the Romans, and with whom their arms had not yet come in contact.

The following winter was devoted to reducing the turbulent character of the nations recently added to the province to the quiet submission of provincial subjects. The policy adopted was the effectual one of introducing a taste for the habits and pleasures of civilised life. He encouraged them to build temples, courts of justice, and houses of a better description. He took measures for the education of the young. The natives soon began to study the Roman language and to adopt their dress, and by degrees acquired a taste for the luxurious and voluptuous life of the Romans, of which the numerous remains of Roman baths which have been discovered within the limits of the Brigantian territory afford no slight indication.[^[45]]

A.D. 80. Third summer; ravages to the Tay.

The third year introduced Agricola to regions hitherto untrodden by Roman foot. He penetrated with his army through the hilly region which separates the waters pouring their floods into the Solway from those which flow towards the Clyde. He entered a country occupied by ‘new nations,’[^[46]] and ravaged their territories as far as the estuary of the ‘Tavaus’ or Tay. His course appears, so far as we can judge by the remains of the Roman camps, to have been from Annandale to the strath of the river Clyde, through Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire, whence he passed into the vale of Stratherne by the great entrance into the northern districts during the early period of Scottish history—the ford of the Forth at Stirling, and the pass through the range of the Ochills formed by the glen of the river Allan, and reached as far as where the river Tay flows into the estuary of the same name.[^[47]]

The country thus rapidly acquired was secured by forts, which, says the historian, were so admirably placed, that none were either taken or surrendered; and these we can no doubt still recognise in the remains of those strong Roman fortified posts which we find placed opposite the entrance of the principal passes in the Grampians—the stationary camps of Bochastle at the Pass of Leny, Dealgan Ross at Comrie, Fendoch at the pass of the Almond, the camp at the junction of the Almond and the Tay, and the fort at Ardargie. These obviously surround the very territory which Agricola had just overrun, and are well calculated to protect it against the invasions of the natives from the recesses of the mountains, into which the Roman arms could not follow them; while the great camp at Ardoch marks the position of the entire Roman army. In consequence of these posts being thus maintained, the Roman troops retained possession of the newly-acquired territory during the winter.

A.D. 81.
Fourth summer; fortifies the isthmus between Forth and Clyde.

Agricola, with his usual policy, took measures still further to secure the country he had already gained before he attempted to push his conquests farther; and the position of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the comparatively narrow neck of land between these, presented itself to him as so remarkable a natural boundary, that he fixed upon it as the frontier of the future province. The fourth summer was therefore spent in securing this barrier, which he fortified by a chain of posts from the eastern to the western firth.[^[48]] From the shores of the Forth in the neighbourhood of Borrowstounness to Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde, these forts extended westward at intervals of from two to three miles. In front of them stretches what must have been a morass, and on the heights on the opposite side of the valley are a similar range of native hill-forts.

Having thus secured the country he had already overrun, Agricola now prepared for the subjugation of the tribes which lay still farther to the north. The formidable character of this undertaking, even to the experienced Roman general, may be estimated by the cautious and deliberate manner in which he prepared for a great struggle; and in the position in which he then found himself, the conception of such a plan must have required no ordinary power of firm determination. Before him, the more northern regions were protected by a great natural barrier formed by two important arms of the sea, which in any farther advance he must leave behind him. Between these two estuaries he had drawn a line of forts as the formal boundary, for the time, of the province. Beyond them, at the distance of not many miles, were the forts he had placed the year before the last, in which a few of the troops maintained themselves in the precarious possession of a district he acknowledged to be still hostile. On one side the rough line of the Fifeshire coast stretched on the north side of Bodotria, or the Firth of Forth, into the German Ocean. On the other a mountainous region was seen tending towards the Caledonian or Western Ocean; and the northern horizon presented to his view the great range of the so-called Grampians, extending from the vicinity of the Roman stations in one formidable array of mountains towards the north-east as far as the eye could reach. Of the extent of the country beyond them; of the numbers and warlike character of the tribes its recesses concealed; of whether the island still stretched far to the north, or whether he was at no great distance from its northern promontories; of whether its breadth was confined to what he had already experienced, or whether unknown regions, peopled by tribes more warlike than those he had already encountered, stretched far into the Eastern and Western Seas, he as yet knew nothing.

A.D. 82.
Fifth summer; visits Argyll and Kintyre.

His first object, therefore, was to form some estimate of the real character of the undertaking before him. With this view, and in order to ascertain the character of the western side of the country before him, he in the fifth summer crossed the Firth of Clyde with a small body of troops in one vessel, and penetrated through the hostile districts of Cowall and Kintyre till he saw the Western Ocean, with the coast running due north, presenting in the interior one mass of inaccessible mountains, the five islands of the Hebudes, and the blue shores of Ireland dimly rising above the western horizon.[^[49]] The character of the country on the west being thus ascertained, he determined to make his attack by forcing his way through the country on the east, and, fearing a combination of the more northern tribes, he combined the fleet with the army in his operations.

A.D. 83-86.
Three years’ war north of the Forth.

Having crossed the former in the beginning of the sixth summer to explore the harbours on the coast of Fife, he appears to have had his army conveyed across the Bodotria, or Firth of Forth, into the rough peninsula of Fife on the north side of it, and to have gradually, but thoroughly, acquired possession of the country between the Firths of Forth and Tay, while his fleet encircled the coast of Fife, and penetrated into the latter estuary. The appearance of the Roman fleet in the Firth of Tay, making their way, as it were, into the recesses of the country, naturally caused great alarm among the natives; and in order to compel Agricola to abandon his attack on this quarter, they took up arms and assailed the forts which had been placed by him in the country west of the Tay in the third year of his campaigns.

That this movement was well devised appears from the proposal of many in Agricola’s army to abandon the country they had just subdued, and fall back upon the line of forts between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Agricola was at this time probably near the entrance of the river Tay into its estuary, and the large temporary camp on the east bank of the Tay opposite Perth, termed Grassy Walls, may have been his position. Instead of adopting this course, he resolved, trusting to the security of the forts against any attack, to meet the manœuvre of the natives by prosecuting his attack upon the country extending from the east coast north of the Tay to the range of the so-called Grampians; and in order to prevent his army from being surrounded in a difficult country by overwhelming numbers, he marched forward in three divisions.

His course, judging from the view his biographer Tacitus gives of his tactics, must have been nearly in a parallel line with the river Tay—his march being on the east side of it, and the enemy rapidly returning from the west to oppose him. The position of the army in its forward march in three divisions is very apparent in the remains of the Roman camps in this district of the country. There is a group of three in a situation remarkably applicable to his design and his position. The camp at Cupar-Angus, which is farthest to the north of the three, probably contained the main division of the army. Within little more than two miles to the south-east is the camp at Lintrose, termed Campmuir, to cover the country to the east; and as the enemy, he immediately apprehended, were not in that quarter, in it he placed the ninth legion, which was the weakest. At an equal distance on the south-west, and overlooking the river Tay, was another camp, of which a strong post still remains, and which obviously guarded the passage of the river.

The enemy, having learnt this disposition of the Roman army, resolved to make a night attack upon its weakest division, and appear to have crossed the river, passed the main body in the night, and suddenly fallen upon the ninth legion. The camp at Lintrose has only one gate on the side towards the larger camp at Cupar-Angus. On the opposite side the rampart is broken in the centre by the remains of a morass. The enemy forced their way through the gate, having taken the Romans by surprise, and an engagement commenced in the very camp itself, when Agricola, having received information of their march, followed closely upon their track with the swiftest of the horse and foot from the main division of the army, overtook them about daybreak, and attacked them in the rear. The natives were now between two enemies, and a furious engagement ensued, till they forced their way through the morass, and took refuge in the woods and marshes.[^[50]]

The Romans were now as much elated by this successful contact with the enemy as they had before been alarmed, and demanded to be led into the heart of Caledonia. The natives attributed their defeat to the fortunate chance for the Romans of their being hemmed in between two forces, and prepared for a more vigorous struggle the following year. A general confederacy of the northern tribes was formed, and ratified by solemn assemblies and sacrifices, and the two contending parties separated for the winter, prepared for a vital contest when they resumed operations next year. This campaign had lasted for two seasons, and Agricola probably returned to the camp at Grassy Walls for winter quarters.[^[51]]

The third season was destined to determine whether the Romans were to obtain possession of the whole island, or whether the physical difficulties of the mountain regions of the north, and the superior bravery of its inhabitants, were at last to oppose an obstacle to the further advance of the Roman dominion. Agricola commenced the operations of this year by sending his fleet, as soon as summer arrived, down the coast to the north, to operate a diversion by creating alarm and ravaging the country within reach of the ships. He then marched forward with his army nearly on the track of the preceding year, and crossed the river Isla till he reached a hill, called by Tacitus ‘Mons Granpius,’[^[52]] on which the assembled forces of the natives were already encamped under the command of a native chief, Calgacus, whose name is indelibly associated with the great battle which followed.

A.D. 86.
Battle of ‘Mons Granpius.’

On the peninsula formed by the junction of the Isla with the Tay are the remains of a strong and massive vallum, called Cleaven Dyke, extending from the one river to the other, with a small Roman fort at one end, and enclosing a large triangular space capable of containing Agricola’s whole troops, guarded by the rampart in front and by a river on each side. Before the rampart a plain of some size extends to the foot of the Blair Hill, or the mount of battle, the lowest of a succession of elevations which rise from the plain till they attain the full height of the great mountain range of the so-called Grampians; and on the heights above the plain are the remains of a large native encampment, called Buzzard Dykes, capable of containing upwards of 30,000 men.

Certainly no position in Scotland presents features which correspond so remarkably with Tacitus’s description as this, and we may suppose the Roman army to have occupied the peninsula protected by the rampart of the Cleaven Dyke in front, and Calgacus’s native forces to have encamped at Buzzard Dykes. These two great armies would thus remain opposed to each other at the distance of about three miles, the one containing the whole strength of the native tribes still unsubdued, collected from every quarter, and amounting to upwards of 30,000 men in arms, while the youth of the country, and even men in years, were still pouring in, and resolved to stake the fortunes of their wild and barren country upon the issue of one great battle; the other, the Roman army of veteran troops, flushed with past conquests, and confident in the well-proved military talent of their general;—the one on the verge of their mountain country, and defending its recesses, as it were, their last refuge; the other at the termination of the extensive regions they had already won from the Britons, and burning with desire to penetrate still farther, even to the end of the island. Between them lay the Muir of Blair, extending from the rampart at Meikleour to the Hill of Blair. On the east both armies were prevented from extending in that direction, or from outflanking each other, by the river Isla. On the west a succession of morasses, moors, and small lochs extends towards the hills, and in this direction the battle eventually carried itself.[^[53]]

Such was the position of the two armies when the echoes of the wild yells and shouts of the natives, and the glitter of their arms, as their divisions were seen in motion and hurrying to the front, announced to Agricola that they were forming the line of battle. The Roman commander immediately drew out his troops on the plain. In the centre he placed the auxiliary infantry, amounting to about 8000 men, and 3000 horse formed the wings. Behind the main line, and in front of the great vallum or rampart, he stationed the legions, consisting of the veteran Roman soldiers. His object was to fight the battle with the auxiliary troops, among whom were even Britons, and to support them, if necessary, with the Roman troops as a body of reserve.

The native army was ranged upon the rising grounds, and their line as far extended as possible. The first line was stationed on the plains, while the others were ranged in separate lines on the acclivity of the hill behind them. On the plain the chariots and horsemen of the native army rushed about in all directions.

Agricola, fearing from the extended line of the enemy that he might be attacked both in front and flank at the same time, ordered the ranks to form in wider range, at the risk even of weakening his line, and, placing himself in front with his colours, this memorable action commenced by the interchange of missiles at a distance. In order to bring the action to closer quarters, Agricola ordered three Batavian and two Tungrian cohorts to charge the enemy sword in hand. In close combat they proved to be superior to the natives, whose small targets and large unwieldy swords were no match for the vigorous onslaught of the auxiliaries; and having driven back their first line, they were forcing their way up the ascent, when the whole line of the Roman army advanced and charged with such impetuosity as to carry all before them. The natives endeavoured to turn the fate of the battle by their chariots, and dashed with them upon the Roman cavalry, who were driven back and thrown into confusion; but the chariots, becoming mixed with the cavalry, were in their turn thrown into confusion, and were thus rendered ineffectual, as well as by the roughness of the ground.

The reserve of the natives now descended, and endeavoured to outflank the Roman army and attack them in the rear, when Agricola ordered four squadrons of reserve cavalry to advance to the charge. The native troops were repulsed, and being attacked in the rear by the cavalry from the wings, were completely routed, and this concluded the battle. The defeat became general; the natives drew off in a body to the woods and marshes on the west side of the plain. They attempted to check the pursuit by making a last effort and again forming, but Agricola sent some cohorts to the assistance of the pursuers; and, surrounding the ground, while part of the cavalry scoured the more open woods, and part dismounting entered the closer thickets, the native line again broke, and the flight became general, till night put an end to the pursuit.

Such was the great battle at ‘Mons Granpius,’ and such the events of the day as they may be gathered from the concise narrative of a Roman writing of a battle in which the victorious general was his father-in-law. The slaughter on the part of the natives was great, though probably as much overstated, when put at one-third of their whole army, as that of the Romans is under-estimated; and the significant silence of the historian as to the death or capture of Calgacus, or any other of sufficient note to be mentioned, and the admission that the great body of the native army at first drew off in good order, show that it was not the crushing blow which might otherwise be inferred.

On the succeeding day there was no appearance of the enemy; silence all around, desolate hills and the distant smoke of burning dwellings alone met the eye of the victor; but, notwithstanding his success, he evidently felt that, with so difficult a country before him, and a native army probably re-assembling in the recesses of a mountain region, which, if gained, it would manifestly be impossible to retain, and knowing too somewhat better what the great barrier of the so-called Grampians was, both to the invading and the native army, he was in no condition to follow up his advantage. The attempt to subjugate the northern districts was substantially abandoned, and Agricola appears to have crossed the Tay and led his army into the country which he had overrun in the third year, and whose inhabitants are now termed ‘Horesti.’ Having taken hostages from them to prevent their joining the hostile army, he returned to his winter quarters south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde with his troops, while he directed his fleet to proceed along the coast to the north till they had encircled the island.

This voyage the fleet accomplished, coasting round Britain till they reached the Trutulensian harbour in the south, and then returned to their station in the Firth of Forth, giving certain proof of its insular character, and some indication of the extent and nature of the still unsubjugated country. In the course of their voyage they passed and took possession of the ‘Orcades’ or Orkneys in name of the Roman Empire, and they saw the peak of a distant island to the north, which they concluded might be the hitherto mysterious and unvisited Thule. They described as peculiarly remarkable that great feature of Scotland, the long lochs or arms of the sea penetrating into the interior of the country, and winding among its mountains and rocks.

Thus terminated what proved to be Agricola’s last campaign in Britain. Whether he resolved to renew the contest for the possession of the barren region of the north, or had practically abandoned the attempt, we know not, as the jealousy of the Emperor Domitian recalled him, ostensibly for a better command, as soon as this great battle was known in Rome. There is no doubt that he seriously contemplated the subjugation of Ireland and its annexation to the Roman Empire. Had he remained to fulfil this intention, the colour of the future history of these islands might have been materially altered. As it was, the fruit of his successes was lost, and the northern tribes retained their independence. The result of his campaigns was that no permanent impression was made on the country beyond the Tay, the limit of his third year’s progress.

Such is the conception which we think may be fairly formed of Agricola’s campaigns in Scotland, from a careful and attentive consideration of the condensed narrative by Tacitus, taken in combination with an accurate examination of the physical features of the country. They form too important a feature at the very threshold of the history of the country, and have been too much perverted by a careless consideration of the only record we have of them, and the intrusion of extraneous or spurious matter, to be passed over in less detail.

Agricola’s successor, Lucullus, was put to death on a trifling excuse by the tyrant Domitian, and the entire country which had formed the scene of these campaigns since the first appears to have fallen off from Rome and resumed its independent state, the Roman province being again limited to the boundary it possessed on the north when Agricola assumed the government.