1 i 
 
 |i ^ 
 
 ■I : ■ 
 
 n 
 
 
^^\ 
 
 W3^ 
 \ 
 
 1900 
 
HISTORY OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 
 
HISTORY 
 
 SCOTTISH NATION. 
 
 REV. J. A. WYLIE, LL.D., 
 
 ACTHOR OF "history OF PROTESTANTISM," ETC. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 rRE-HISTORIC, DRUIDIC, ROMAN, AND EARLY 
 CHRISTIAN SCOTLAND. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO. 
 
 ANDREW ELLIOT, EDINBURGH. 
 
 18 86. 
 
TO 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 FROM WHOSE RANKS MAINLY HAVE SPRUNG 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHERS AND DIVINES, 
 
 THE POETS, WRITERS, AND MARTYRS, 
 
 WHO HAVE BEEN THE GLORY 
 
 OF THEIR COUNTRY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIRST PEOPLING OF BRITAIN. 
 
 The Phoenicians the first Discoverers of Britain, 1 — They trade with it in Tin, 2 
 — Greatness of Sidon and Tyre partly owing to British Trade, 3 — Triumphal 
 Gates of Shalmanezer, 3 — Tyrian Harbours, and probable size of Tyrian Ships, 
 4 — When and whence came the first Inhabitants of Britain ! 5 — The resting- 
 place of the Ark the starting-point of the enquiry, 5 — Mount Ararat, 6 — The 
 Four gTeat Rivers, 7 — Their courses regulate the Emigration of the Human 
 Family, 7 — The Mountaiu-girdle of the Globe, 7 — Divided by it into a South- 
 ern and Northern World, 8 — For what purpose ? 9 — The Three Fountain- 
 heads of the World's Population, 10 — Ham peoples Egypt, 10 — Shem,'Arabia 
 and Persia, 11 — Migration of Japhet's Descendants, 11 — Two great Path- 
 ways, 11 — The basin of the Mediterranean, 12 — The slopes of the Caucasus 
 running betwixt the Caspian and the Euxine, 12 — The Sons of Japhet 
 travel by both routes, 12 — The one arrives in Britain through the Pillars of 
 Hercules, 13 — The other by the Baltic, 13 — The Journey stamps its imprint 
 on each, 14— Their foot-prints, 15— The Sons of Gomer, or Cymri, the first 
 Inhabitants of Britain, 16. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JOURNEY OF THE KYMRI TO BRITAIN. 
 
 Three guides to the Cradle of the Race, 17— Etymology, Mythology, Folk-lore, 
 18— All three conduct to Iran, 19— The Welsh Triads, 20— Division of the 
 Earth among the Sons of Noah, 22— Nimrod's Tower, 23 -An attempt to 
 establish a Universal Monarchy, 24 —Migration of the bands of Gomer, 25 
 —Their journey to Britain, 25— Nomades, 26 — The pasture-groimds of 
 Europe the nursing-place of Warriors, 27 — Character of the first Settlers, 
 29. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HABITS, HABITATIONS, AND ARTS OF THE FIRST SETTLERS. 
 
 First Settlers bring the essentials of Revelation with them, 30 — The first Ages the 
 Purest, 31 — Log huts of first Dwellers, 32 — Aboriginal Dwellings on banks of 
 Loch Etive, 32 — Picture of the Inmates, 33 — Food, Arts, Garments of the 
 Aborigines, 34 — Weems, description of, 36 -Progress of the Arts, 37 — 
 Beauty of later Home Art, 38 — Growth of Government and early Kings, 39. 
 
Vm CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE STONE AGE. 
 
 The Stone Age coeval with Man, 40— The only record of the first Races, 40— 
 The Cairn on the Moor, 41— The Sleeper within, 41— Glimpse into his 
 Coffin, 41 — Weapons interred with the Warrior, 42— Uses of the Stone Axe, 
 43— Flint Arrow-heads, 44 — Battle in the Stone Age, 44— Mental horizon 
 of the Men of the Stone Age, 46 — The Landscape of the Stone Age, 46. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BRONZE AGE. 
 
 The Celt brings Bronze with him into Britain, 47 — Quickening in all the Arts, 
 47 — First Irruption of the Celts into Europe, 47 — Threaten Athens and 
 Rome, 48 — Europe Known to Herodotus as the land of the Celts, 48 — 
 Nomades but fierce Warriors, 49 — Their Tastes and Character, 49 — Changes 
 consequent on the introduction of Bronze, 50 — In Ship building, 50 — In 
 House building, 51 — In articles of Ornament, 51 — In Domestic Utensils, 52 
 — Cinery Vases, 54 — Burning of the Dead, 55 — Advance in Dress, 55 — In 
 Spinning and Weaving, 56 — In Agriculture, 56— Invention of Bronze of 
 unknown antiquity, 57. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE IRON AGE. 
 
 Uses of Iron, 58 — Power it confers on Man, 59 —First historic traces of Iron in 
 Asia, 59— Noric Swords, 60 — Iron known to Caledonians in Cajsar's day, 60 
 — Comes slowly into Use, 60 — Revolutionises the Art of War, 61 — Em- 
 ployed for Personal Adornment, 62 — Iron Ring Money, 62 — Interred with 
 the Dead, 63 — Changes with Iron, 64 — Advance in Art, in War, in the In- 
 dustries, 65 — The Weaver and Potter, 66 — Grain -stones, 67 — Female Toilet, 
 67 — Banquets and Cuisine of the Iron Age, 68 — Brochs, 69 — Their great 
 number, 69 — What knowledge of a Future State .- 70— Divine Traditions 
 transmitted from Noah, 70 — No Idol or Graven Image dug up in Scottish 
 soil, 71- -Worship of Caledonians less gross than that of the Greeks 
 and Romans, 72 — Inference from mode of Burial, 72 — Valhalla and its De- 
 lights, 73 — Departed Heroes permitted to revisit their Barrow, 73 — A Tryst- 
 ing place with earthly Friends, 74 — Lesson of history, or Earth the picture 
 of Heaven, 74. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DRUIDS — THE SUN-WORSHIP OF ASIA AND CALEDONIA. 
 
 Unwritten History or Testimony of the Barrows and Cairns, 75 — Authenticity 
 and Truth of these Records, 76 — How did the Caledonian Worship ? 77 — 
 Had he any Knowledge of a Supreme Being ? 78 — Testimony of the Stone 
 Circles, 79 — In what Age were they Erected ? 79 — Various Theories, 83 — 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 These Theories considered, 81 — Did the \'iking-s erect them '. Arc they 
 Graveyards ? 82 — Monuments of Early Nations reared to their Gods, 83 — 
 Stone Pillars, 84— Biblical Examples, 84— The First Altars, 85— The [doLs 
 and Idol Groves of Early Canaan, 85 — Kise and Progress of Stone and Sun 
 Woi-ship, 85 — Travels westward and reaches Caledonia, 87 — Stone Circles 
 and Cromlechs of Ancient Moab, 88 — Light thrown by them on the Earlj- 
 Caledonia, 89. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DRUIDS, DEITIES, HIERARCHY, DOCTRINES. 
 
 Religion the most Potential of all Forces, 90 — The Druidic Age as plainly 
 written on the Face of Scotland as the Stone and Iron Ages, 91 — Scottish 
 Druidism imported from the East, 92 — Its Comparative Purity in Early 
 Times, 92 — Testimonies of M. Reynaud, and others, 93 — Druidism, a Branch 
 of Sun Worship, 94 — The Root Ideas of Revelation in all the Idolatries, 95 
 — Explanation, 96 — Identity of the Druidic and Greek Deities, 96 — The 
 Hierarchy of the Druids, 97 — Their Studies in Science and Magic, 97 — The 
 Arch-Druid, 98— Their Political Power, 99 -Their Annual Convention, 
 99— Their Emoluments and Privileges, 100— Their Doctrines, 101— Testi- 
 monies of Ctiesar, Pliny, Tacitus, and Pomponius Mela, 102 — A Supreme 
 Being and a Life to come taught by them, 103 — A Long Initiation 
 demanded of their Disciples, 106— Their Tenets wrapt up in Mystei^, 106. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DRUID's egg — THE MISTLETOE — THE DRUID's SACRIFICE. 
 
 The Druid's Egg known to the Ancients, 108 — Marvellous Process of Production, 
 109— Wonderful Virtues, 109— The Mistletoe, 109— Ceremony of gathering 
 it, 110— Was it to Druid a Symbol of the Saviour ? 110— No ground to think 
 so, 111— Sacrifice of the Druid, 112^ Was it Evangelical or Pagan? 112— 
 Sacrificial Rites, 113 — The High Priest, the Procession, the Victim, 113 — 
 The Three Acts and the Three Lessons in the Sacrifice of the Druid, 114— 
 Universality of the Rite of Sacrifice, 115 — Ex2ilanatiou, 115 — Philosophy of 
 Sacrifice as a Mode of Worship, 116. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE TEMPLES OR STONE CIRCLES OF THE DRUID. 
 
 The Stone Circle the earliest of Temples, 118— No Architectural Grace, 118— 
 In Construction Simple, Rugged, Strong, 119— Stennes in Orkney, 120— 
 A Temple to the Sun-God, 120— Its Antiqiuty, 120— Stonehenge, 120— Its 
 Site and Size, 120— Supposed Description of Stonehenge by Hecattuus, B.C. 
 300, 121— Its Hippodrome, 121— Weird Appearance and OutHne of its 
 History, 122 — Its Dimensions, 122— /'o«///o^', Avebury, 123— Its Genera 
 Arrangements, 123— Its Central Mount, 124— Its Grand Approaches, 124 - 
 Its surrounding Sepulchral Tumuli, 125— Beauty the Characteristic of the 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 txreek TemjDle; Strength and Size that of the Druid, 125 — Mount Nebo a 
 great Dolmen Centre, 126 — Ruins of Dolmens and Stone Circles around 
 MoT\nt Nebo, 126 — Universality of Stone Worship, 128— Human Victims 
 offered by the Druid, 128— Human Sacrifice practised by Greeks and 
 Romans, 129 — " Stones of Remembrance," 130. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE ALTEINS; OR, STONES OF FIRE— BELTANE ; OR, MAY-DAY AND 
 MIDSUMMER FESTIVALS. 
 
 ]\ise of Pagan Mythology, 131 — Footiwfe, Indelibility of Aboriginal Names, 
 131 — Key to Early History of Locality, 132 — Clachan, 132 — Its Meaning, 
 \2>'i—AlteiH, 133— Stone of Fire, 133— The Altein of Old Aberdeen, 134— 
 Tragedies enacted at, 134 — Stone of Listen, 135 — Druidic Ceremonies of 
 30th October, 136 — Extinction of Fire on Hearths, 136 — Rekindled from 
 "Stone of Fire-brands," 137 — Link betwixt Phoenicia and Caledonia, 137 — 
 " Stones of Fire " of Tyre, 138— Beltane, or 1st May, 140— Beltane Rites 
 at Crieff, 140 — At Callander, 141 — Midsummer Fires, 142 — St John's Fires 
 in Ireland, 143 — In France, 144 — Identity of these with the Fires of Moloch, 
 144— The Clocks of the Druid, 145. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 VITRIFIED FORTS — ROCKING-STONES — DRUID's CIRCLE — NO MAN's LAND — 
 DIVINATION — GALLOW HILLS — A YOKE BROKEN. 
 
 Vitrified Forts, 146— Probable ReUcs of Driiidism, 147 — Rocking-Stones, 147— 
 Common to many Countries, 147 — Known to the Egyptians, 148 — Described 
 by Pliny, &c., 148— Judgment Stones, 149— Stone at Boddam, 150— How 
 Placed ? 150— The Druid's Circle, 151— Its Virtue, 152— Surviving Druidic 
 Usages, 152 — The teine eigm, 153— Days on which the Plough was not to be 
 Yoked, 153 — Plots that must not be Cultivated, 153 — Divination practised 
 by the Druids, 154— Laws or " Gallow Hills," 155— Mounts of Di\nna- 
 tion, 155 — Enslavement of the Peoj^le by the Druid, 157 — His Yoke 
 broken, 158. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SCOTLAND AS SEEN BY AGRICOLA AND DESCRIBED BY TACITUS AND 
 HERODIAN, 
 
 History with her Torch, 159— Invasion of England by Ctesar, 159— Startling 
 Reverse, 160— Agricola crosses the Tweed, 161— Penetrates to Fii-th of 
 Forth, 162— Agricola probably accompanied by Tacitus, 162— The Time 
 come for Scotland to be Born, 163— A Marvellous Transformation, 164— 
 Picture of Scotland as seen by Tacitus, 165— Its Moors and Forests, 166— 
 Its Rivers and Pathways, 166— Its Seas, 167. 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CALEDONIAN AS PAINTED BY HERODIAN. 
 
 The Land and the Natives as Painted by Herodian, 170 — Their Armour, 170— 
 Their Bodies Painted or Tattooed, 171— Process of Tattooing, 172— Their 
 Hair, 172— A Contrast, the Scotland of the First Century and the Scotlantl 
 of the Nineteenth, 173. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CALEDONIAN HOUSES — LAKE DWELLINGS. 
 
 Picture of the Scotland of To-day, 174 -The Architecture of Italy and the 
 Architecture of Scotland in the First Century, 175— Not a Stone Edifice in 
 Scotland in Agricola's Day, 176 — First Dwellings in Caledonia an Under- 
 ground Cave, 176— A Hut of Wattles, 177— Lacustrine or Lake DweUings, 
 177 -Method of Construction, 178— Utensils found in them, 178— Rehcs of 
 their Feasts, 178— Second Class of Lake Dwellings, 179— Placed in the Lake, 
 179— Manner of Building, ISO— Venice a Superb Specimen of a Lake Dwell- 
 ing, ISO— Crannog of Lochea, Tarbolton, Ayrshire, 181— Description, 181— 
 Lochar Moss and its Buried Treasures, 182— The Site of Glasgow and its 
 Embedded Canoes, 183— Changes in the Estuaries of the Forth and Tay, 
 183 — The Modem Scotland bigger than the Ancient, 184. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ROMAN PERIOD OF BRITAIN— ENGLAND INVADED BY CESAR, AND 
 SCOTLAND BY AGRICOLA. 
 
 An Unpromising Land, 185 — A yet more Unpromising People, 185 — Roman 
 Invasion, B.C. 55, 187— Fight off Deal, 188— Devastations of the Roman 
 Sword in Britain, 189— Opinion of Tacitus, 189— Csesar withdraws from 
 Britain, 190— Aulus Plutius enters in a.D. 43, 189— The British Chief 
 Caractacus before the Emperor Claudius, 190— Agricola arrives in a.D. 80, 
 191— Character of Agricola, 191— Crosses the Tweed and hews his way to 
 the Forth, 193— The Caledonians and the Legions Face to Face, 194— Line 
 of Forts and Skirmishes, 195— In Thu-d Summer Agricola Traverses Fife to 
 the Tay, 196— In the Fourth, constructs his Line of Forts, 196— In the 
 Fifth, makes an Expedition to the West Coast, 196— Next turns towards the 
 North, 197— His Fleet, 197— Tragic Fate of German Contingent, 198 - 
 Agricola's Hesitations, 198— ISIight Attack on the Roman Camp near Loch- 
 leven, 199— The Caledonian Tribes hold a Convention, 200— They Prepare 
 for War, 200— Soldiers Enrolled and Weapons Forged, 201— If Agricola 
 will not come to the Grampians, the Grampians will go to Agricola, 201. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF MONS GRAMPIUS. 
 
 The Cloud on the North Hills, 202— JIarch of the Roman Army Northward, 
 
 203— First Sight of the Tay, or Ecce Tiherim, 203— Strathmore or Ecce 
 
 C'ampcmum, 203— Where was Moiis Gramplasl 204— At Ardoeh? at Meiglo? 
 
 at Fettercaim^ 204— The Fleet and Discovery of the Orkneys, 205— Tho 
 
Xll COXTENTS. 
 
 Romans approach the Grampians, 205— The Muster of the Caledonians, 
 206— Numbers of the Caledonians and of the Romans, 207— The War 
 Chariots of the Caledonians, 208— Speech of Galgacus to his Soldiers, 209— 
 Speech of Agricola to his Army, 210— Order of Battle, 210— Battle Joined, 
 211 — Disadvantageous Armour of the Caledonians, 211— Fierceness and 
 Carnage of the Fight, 212— Tacitus' Description of the Field, 213— The 
 Caledonians Defeated, 213— Their Bravery, 214— Fhght to their Mountains, 
 214— The Numbers of Fallen on both sides, 214— Night Rejoicings m the 
 Roman Camp, 215— Sights which aiorning Discloses, 215— The Wail among 
 the Grampians, 216— The First of Scotland's Historic Battles, 216— Its 
 Fi-uit, 217 — It begins the long straggle for Scottish Independence, 218 — 
 Agricola retreats southwards, 219. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS AND WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS FROM BRITAIN. 
 
 Northern Boundary of the Empire a moving line, 220— Antonine's Wall betwixt 
 Forth and Clyde, 221— Hadrian's Wall betwixt Tyne and Solway, 222— 
 Boundary again advanced to the Forth, 223— Pushed back to the Solway, 
 224— Severus' Expedition, a.d. 204-224— The Caledonians shun battle, 225 
 — Traps set for the Legions, 225— Hardships of the March, 226— Severus 
 reaches the Cromarty Firth, 226 — Retreats and dies at York, 227 — Rich 
 and magnificent Realms subject to Rome, 227 — Yet not content without the 
 little Britain, 228 — Changes effected by the Roman occupation, 229 — 
 Roads, 230 — Husbandry, 231 — Trade and Commerce, 231— Villas and 
 Towns, 232 — South England a favourite Residence of the Romans, 234 — 
 Law and Literature introduced, 235 — Roman Civilisation swept away, 236. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 
 
 Entrance of two new Powers, 237— Why is the Scotland of to-day not a Land of 
 Painted Men? 238— The Civilisation of Scotland other than that of the 
 nations around it, 239— Its special Type or Characteristic, 239 — A new Life 
 descends on Scotland, 240 — The two necessities, 240 — Conscience or the Moral 
 Sense the measure of a Nation's Liberty, 241— The Model of the Nations, 241 
 — The second century and its facilities for the communcation of Thought, 
 242 — Wide diffusion of Christianity by the end of second century, 242 — 
 Picture of the first Briti.sli Convert to Christianity, 244 — The Pudens and 
 Claudia of Paul's Epistle, 245 — The Pudens and Claudia of Martial's Epi- 
 gram, 246 — Chain of proof that they are the same couple, 246 — Claudia 
 most probably a British Lady, 247 — Proof from Tacitus of the early 
 entrance of Christianity into Britain, 247— Did Paul preach the Gospel in 
 Britain, 248— Contention of Usher and Stillingfleet that he did, 248— Out- 
 line of their argument, 249 — Rapidity of Christianity's spread in the first 
 age, 251 — Tertullian's Testimony, 251 — Earliest Congregations in Britain, 
 252— Converts beyond the Roman Wall, 253 — Prosperity of British Church 
 after Dioclesian's Persection, 255 — British Pastors at Councils of Aries 
 and Sardica, 255— Routes by which Christianity entered Britain, 257 — 
 Britain Christianised by Missionaries from the East, 258 — Testimony of 
 Neander, 259. 
 
CONTEXTS. -Mil 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 
 
 The Caledonian and Scot to form one Race, 262 — The two branches of the 
 Cymric Family, the Scythians and the Gauls, 264 — The early Inhabitants 
 of Britain Cymric, 265 — Additional varieties, 265 — Caesar on the Britons of 
 his day, 266 — Scythia a fountain-head of Nations, 267 — Picture of the 
 Scythians, 267 — Ancient testimonies to the Virtue and Valour of the 
 Scythians, 268 — They overthrow Rome, 269 — Scythia the original cradle 
 of the Scottish Race, 270— Sci/thcv and Scoti, two Names for one Peojile, 270 
 — Journey south over Gei-many and France, 271 — They arrive in Spain, 272 
 — Cross to Ireland, 273 — Division of the Scythic Stream, 273 — The Picts, 
 273 — Their physical Prowess, 274 — Their Mode of Fighting, 275 — Burials, 
 Dress, Food, Feasts, 275 — Their War Songs and Music, 276 — The one 
 extant Pictish Word, 276. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE COMING OF THE SCOTS TO IRELAND. 
 
 The Scots first mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus in end of Fourth Century, 
 279 — An-ive in Ireland probably in the First Century, 279 — The Scots 
 formed the van in the descent of the Gothic Nations, 280— A marked Indi- 
 viduality, 281 — The Inhabitants of Ireland in Patrick's time, 281— Scots 
 give Kings to Ireland, 282— Their Fighting (jualities, 283. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 
 
 First Appearance of the Scots in Scotland, 284 —Join the Picts in Ravaging the 
 Territorj' betwixt the Two Walls, 285— Penetrate to the South of England, 
 286 — Forced back by Theodosius, 287, — A Second Irruption of Pict and 
 Scot, 287 -Again Repulsed, 288— A Third Raid, 288— A Third Repulse, 
 289— Fall of Rome, 289— Miseries of Britain on Departure of the Romans, 
 290— Groans of the Britons, 291— Four Nations in Britain, 292— The 
 Anglo-Saxons, 293— Their Territory extends from Portsmouth to tlie 
 Forth, 294 — ^The Britons, 294— Their Kingdom Stretches from Cornwall to 
 the Clyde, 294— The Picts or Caledonians, 295— Their Kingdom from the 
 Forth to the Pentland Frith, 295— The Scots, 296— Boundaries of their 
 Kingdom, 296— Identical nearly with Argyleshire, 297- -The fSrofia of the 
 Early Centuries, 298— Fergus Mor leads the Scots from Antrim to Cale- 
 donia, 298— The Scottish Settlers Christian, 299— Angus and Loarne, SCO- 
 First Capital of Scots, 300— Early System of Government, 300 —Peace be- 
 tween the Scots and Picts, 302. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 KINDLING OF THE LAAIP OF lONA. 
 
 A Coracle crosses the sea from Ireland, 303— Columba and his Twelve Com- 
 panions, 303— They step ashore on lona, 303— First Survey of the Island, 
 304 — One of the Great Voyages of History, 305— Columba obtains a Grant 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 of the Island, 306— Conversion of King- Bruidi, 307— A Century's Peace in 
 Caledonia, 308— Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England, 309— EngUsh Chris- 
 tianity swept away, 310— A Partition Wall of Heathenism betwixt Scottish 
 and Latin Christianity, 311— lona and Rome, or the Two Principles at the 
 two opposite extremities of Europe, 312 — Work of the Men of lona, 313— 
 Theii- Mission Field Christendom, 313— Brief Sketch of their Mission Tours, 
 314 — Their Dress. Dangers, Bravery, 314. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 BATTLES POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 
 
 Early Light Bearers, 316 — Ninian and Kentigern, 316 — Servanus, 317 — Patrick, 
 317— Columban Institution, 318 — Its Work, Training of Missionaries, and 
 Evangelisation of Scotland, 319 — The School and the Plough, 319— A Spirit 
 of I'eace Breathes over the Land, 320 — King Aidan anointed by Columba, 
 321 — Summary of his Reign, 321 — Ethelfrith of Northumbria Slaughters the 
 Monks of Bangor, 321 — Arrival of Augustine and his Monks in England, 323 
 — WTiat comes out of it, 324 — Oswald of Northumbria finds asylum in 
 Scotland, 325— Sits at the Feet of the Elders of lona, 325— King Edwin 
 Converted to the Roman Rite, 326— His Death in Battle, 326 — Oswald As- 
 cends the Throne of Northumbria, 326 — Sends to lona for Evangelists to 
 Instruct his People, 327 — Aidan sent, 327 — Aidan and the King Evangelise 
 together, 328 — Oswald dies and Oswy ascends the Throne, 328 — Perversion 
 of King Oswy, 329 — He drives the Columban Missionaries out of Northum- 
 bria, 329— War breaks out, 330 -Bloody Battle at Nectan's Mere, 330— It 
 saves lona, 330 — Lindisfarne, or " Holy Island," 331 — Cuthbert of Melrose, 
 332 — His beautiful Life, 332 — Goes to Lindisfarne, 332 — His touching Death- 
 scene, 333 
 
 CHAPTER XXY. 
 
 lOXA AND ROME, OR THE SECOND ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 Calm after Tempest, 334— Two Learned and Wise Princes, 334 — Venerable Bede, 
 334 — Outline of his Life and Labours, 334 — What he Lacks, 335 — Eugene 
 VI. of Scotland, 337— His Learning, 337— The Eighth Century of Scotland 
 Rises in Haze, 337 — Romish Missionaries at the Court of Nectan, King of 
 the Southern Picts, 340 — Questions of Easter and the Tonsure, 341 — Nectan 
 Listens and Submits, 342 — The Clergy who refuse to have their Heads 
 Shorn are driven out, 342 — They find Refuge among the Scots, 343 — 
 War follows, 343 — Nectan Retii-es to a Monastery, 343 — Confusions and 
 Battles, 345. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 UNION OF THE SCOTS AND PICTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 
 
 Inva-sion of the Vikings, 346 — Form of their Ships, 346— Prodigies in the Sky, 
 346— Their Terrible Ravages as described by Simeon, 347— Lindisfarne 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Destroyed, 347 — lona Ravaged, 347— Slaiighteriugs in the Western Isles, 
 347— lona Finally Destroyed, 348— Removed to Kells in Ireland, and 
 Dnnkeld in Scotland, 349— Changes, 349— Fieture of Scotland at Opening of 
 Eighth Century, 349 — Pre-eminent among the European Countries, 349 — 
 War between the Northern and Southern Picts, 350 — The Scots Join the 
 Northern Picts, 350 — These Wars Traced to the Romanizing Monks, 351 — 
 The Various Indications and Proofs of this, 352— Learned Scotsmen in 
 France, 355— Gradual weakening of the Picts, 356 — The Religious Divisions 
 and Wars of the Picts pave the Way for the Ascendancy of the Scots, 356 — 
 Extinction of Royal Line of the Picts, 357— Throne Claimed by Alpin the 
 Scot, 357— Death of Alpin on the Battle-field, 358— His Son Kenneth 
 resumes the War, 359 — Extraordinary Sti-atagem, 359— The Final Battle 
 near Perth, 361— The Scots Victorious, 361 — Kenneth MacAlpin Ascend.^ 
 the Throne, 362— The One Scottish Nation, 362. 
 
HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIRST PEOPLING OF BRITAIN. 
 
 While Alexander was overrunning the world by liis arms, 
 and Greece was enlightening it with her arts, Scotland lay 
 hidden beneath the cloud of barbarism, and had neither 
 name nor place among the nations of the earth.^ Its 
 isolation, however, was not complete and absolute. Cen- 
 turies before the great Macedonian had commenced his 
 victorious career, the adventurous navigators of the Phoe- 
 nician seaboard had explored the darkness of the hyperborean 
 ocean. The first to steer by the pole-star, they boldly 
 adventured where less skilful mariners would have feared 
 to penetrate. Within the hazy confine of the North Sea 
 they descried an island, swathed in a mild if humid air, and 
 disclosing to the eye, behind its frontier screen of chalk 
 cliffs, the pleasing prospect of wooded hills, and far ex- 
 panding meadows, roamed over by numerous herds, and 
 dotted by the frequent wattle-built hamlets of its rude 
 inhabitants. The Phoenicians oft revisited this remote, 
 and to all but themselves unknown shore,- but the en- 
 
 ^ Dion Casius says, Book xxxix., tliat "Britain was unknown to the 
 more ancient of tlie (Sreeks anil Romans. " 
 - Strabo, Lib. iii. 
 
 I. A 
 
2 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 licliing trade which they earned on with it they retained 
 for centnries in their own hands. Their ships might be 
 seen passing out at the "Pillars of Hercules" on voyages 
 of unknown destination, and, after the lapse of months, 
 they Avould return laden with the products of regions, 
 which had found as yet no name on the chart of geo- 
 grapher.^ But the source of this trade they kej^t a secret 
 from the rest of the nations. By and by, however, it began 
 to be rumoured that the fleets seen going and returning 
 on these mysterious voyages traded with an island that lay 
 far to the north, and which was rich in a metal so white and 
 lustrous that it had begun to be used as a substitute for silver. 
 In this capacity it was employed now to lend a meretri- 
 cious glitter to the robe of the courtezan, and now to imj^art 
 a more legitimate splendour to the mantle of the magistrate. 
 In process of time other sea-faring peoj^les, taught by the 
 example of the Pha'nicians to sail by the stars, and to brave 
 the terrors of unknown seas in pursuit of wealth, followed in 
 the track which these early merchants had been the first to 
 open. The tin of Cornwall and of the tScilly Islands, the 
 " Cassiterides " - of the ancients, began to circulate among 
 the nations of Asia Minor, and was not unknown even to the 
 tribes of the Arabian desert. It is interesting to think that 
 Britain had already begun to benefit nations which knew 
 not as yet to pronounce her name. But it was on the 
 Syrian shore, and among the maritime tribes that nestled in 
 the bays of Lebanon, that the main stream of this traffic 
 
 ^ The Phceiiicians had sailed beyond the Straits of Gibraltar befoie 
 Homer's time, (iades (Cadiz) in Spain was founded by them centuries 
 before Carthage. See Huet, Commerce des Anciens. 
 
 - So called by Herodotus, Book iii. 115. It is generally supposed that 
 he used the term vaguely to designate Biitaiu and Ireland. Aristotle 
 calls it Celtic tin, because the Celt,s were the first inhabitants of Europe. 
 Diodorus Siculus informs us that it was the people of Cape Balerium 
 (Cornwall) that digged tlie tin. 
 
FIRST PKOPI.ING OF BRITAIN. 3 
 
 continued to diliiise its various riches. The wealth and 
 power of the Phceiiician state were largely owing to its 
 tiade with Britain. Its capital, Sidon, was nursed by the 
 produce of our mines into early greatness. The site of Home 
 was still a morass ; the cities of Greece were only mean 
 hamlets; the judaces of Babylon were brick-built structures; 
 and Jerusalem Avas but a hill fort ; while Sidon had risen 
 in a splendour and grown to a size that made men speak 
 of her, even in the age of Joshua, as the " Great Sidon." 
 
 Nor was Sidon the only city on that shore that owed its 
 greatness to the remote and barbarous Britain. Tyre,^ the 
 daughter of Sidon, feeding her power at the same distant 
 springs, came ultimately to surpass in wealth, and eclipse in 
 beauty, the mother city. No sublimer ode has come down 
 to us than that which has as its burden the greatness and 
 the fall of Tyre — the number of her ships, the midtitude of 
 her merchants, the splendour of her palaces, the exceeding 
 loftiness of her pomp and pride, and the dark night in 
 which her day of glory was to close. 
 
 The bronze gates set up by Shalmanezer to conmiemorate 
 his triumphs, exhumed but the other day from the ruined 
 mounds of Assyria, present to modern eyes a vivid picture 
 of the greatness of the Phoenician cities. On these gates 
 Tyre is seen seated on her island-rock, encompassed by 
 strong walls, with serrated battlements and flanking towers. 
 A broa<l avenue leads from her gates to the sea. Down this 
 path is being borne her ricli and various merchandise, ^\•llich 
 we see ferried across to the mainland. Ingots of gold and 
 silver, rare woods, curious bowls, precious stones, spices, 
 dyed cloths, embroidered garments, and similar products, 
 
 ^ The priests of the temple of Melcarth tohl Hei-odotus that Tyre was 
 founded at a date that eorresponds with B.C. 2750. Josephus is content 
 with a less high antiquity for this famous seaport, and fixes its rise at r..v. 
 1250. He is prohaltly nearer tiie true date. 
 
4 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 brought from far off lands, form the tribute which we here 
 see laid at the feet of the conqueror Shalmanezer. The 
 monarch in his robes of state, a tiara on his head, stands a 
 little in advance of a brilliant staff of officers and princes, 
 while an attendant eunuch shades him with a richly embroi- 
 dered umbrella from the hot Syrian sun, and a deputation of 
 Tyrian merchants offer him the submission of the now 
 tributary city. This was in the year B.C. 859.^ 
 
 But though the doom foretold by the prophet has long 
 since fallen upon this ancient mistress of the seas, 
 her ruin is not so utter but that we may trace at this 
 day the dimensions of those harbours from which the 
 fleets engaged in the traffic -snth Britain set sail, and 
 where, on their return, they discharged their rich cargoes. 
 The harbours of T^tc, as their ruins, still visible below the 
 waves, show, had an average area of twelve acres. The 
 ports of Sidon Avere of a somewhat larger capacity. Their 
 average area was twenty acres, — so do the scholars of the 
 " Palestine Exploration " tell us. We who are familiar with 
 the " Leviathans " that plow the deep in modern times, 
 cannot but feel surprise at the diminutive size of the craft 
 employed in the Tyrian traffic, as judged of by the limited 
 capacity of the basins in which they unloaded their wares. 
 A modern ironclad would hardly venture into a port of so 
 diminutive a size. But if the ships of Tyre were of small 
 tonnage, so much greater the evidence of the skill and courage 
 of the crews that manned them, and the enterprise of the 
 merchants that sent them forth on such distant voyages. 
 And it is pleasant to reflect that even at that early age, 
 the riches of our mines fonned an important factor in the 
 commercial activity, the artistic taste, and the varied grandeur, 
 
 ^ These gates wei'e discovei'ed by Mr Rassam in the mound of Bello\\-at 
 in 1S77. They are now in the British Museum. 
 
FIUST PEOPLIN(; OF BRITAIN. 5 
 
 ol" wliich the niirrow strip of territory that stretches along 
 on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, beneatli the cHfts 
 of Lebanon, was then the seat.^ 
 
 The pahiiiest era of the Phoenician commerce was from 
 tlie twelfth to the sixth century before Christ. It follows, 
 that Britain, with whom these early merchants traded, was 
 then inhabited, and probably had been so for some consider- 
 able time previous. At what time did the first immigrants 
 arrive on its shore, and from what quarter did they come ? 
 We cannot tell the year, nor even the century, when the 
 first wanderer from across the sea sighted its cliffs, and 
 moored his bark on its strand ; nor can we solve the question 
 touching the first peopling of our island, otherwise than by 
 an approximating process. In a brief discussion of this 
 point, we shall avail ourselves of the guidance furnished by 
 great ethnological principles and facts, as well as of the help 
 given us by historic statements. 
 
 The earliest and most authentic of all histories — for the 
 monumental and historic evidence of the Bible does not 
 lessen but grow with the current of the centuries — tells us 
 that the Ark rested, after the flood, on one of the mountains 
 of Ararat. Here, at the centre of the earth, is placed the 
 second cradle of the human family, and to this point are we 
 to trace up all the migrations of mankind. The Ark might 
 have been set down by the retiring waters on the verge of 
 Asia, or on the remotest boundary of America ; or it might 
 have been floated on currents, or driven by winds fsir into 
 
 1 Numbers xxxi. 22, shows that tin was one of the metals in use among 
 the Syrian nations when tlie tribes entered Canaan ; and Ezekielxxii. 18, 
 20, tells us that it was imported in tlie shii^s of Tyre. 'I'here were only two 
 countries in those ilays where tin could have been obtained— Spain ami 
 England. In the Spanish mines the ore lay deep, and the yield was not 
 over-abundant ; the probability, therefore, is that the main supply of tin 
 for the markets of Phcenicia and the East was brought from Cornwall and 
 the Scilly Islands. 
 
O HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the polar regions. Escaping all these mischances, here, in 
 the central regions of the world, and probably within sight 
 of those plains with Avhich Noah had been familiar before 
 the flood overspread the earth, did the Ark deposit its bur- 
 den. It was the first great providential act towards the 
 human family in post-diluvian times. 
 
 Let us take our stand beside " the world's grey fathers," 
 and survey with them, from the summits where the ark is 
 seen to rest, the singular framework of rivers, mountains, 
 and plains spread out around the spot. The various fortunes 
 and destinies of their descendants lie written before the eyes 
 of the first fathers of mankind on the face of the silent 
 earth ; for undoubted it is that in the geographical arrange- 
 ments of the globe is so far laid the ground-work of the 
 history, political and moral, of its nations. The physical 
 conditions of a region assist insensibly but powerfully in 
 shaj)ing the mental and moral peculiarities of its inhabi- 
 tants, and jirognosticate dimly the events of which any par- 
 ticular region is to become the theatre. The mountain- 
 chains that part kingdoms, the oceans that divide continents 
 by diversifying the climatic influences of the globe, enrich 
 that " one blood " of which all the nations of the earth par- 
 take, and by engendering a difference of temperament and 
 aptitude, and stimulating to a variety of pursuit prepare 
 more variously endowed instrumentalities for the world's 
 work, and impart to history a breadth, a variety, and a 
 grandeur which othenvise would have been lacking to it. 
 
 From this new starting point of the race great natural 
 pathAvays are seen to stretch out in all directions. In the 
 heart of the Armenian mountains, close to the resting place 
 of the ark, four great rivers take their rise, and proceeding 
 thence in divergent covu'ses, flow towards the four quarters 
 of the globe. A tribe or colony in quest of habitations 
 
FIRST PEOPLINU OF JJHITAJN. 7 
 
 iititumnv follows the course of some ,ij;re:it strciiin, secini^ tlie 
 fertility which its waters create along its banks afford pas- 
 ture for their flocks and food for themselves. (Jf the four 
 great rivers which here have their birth, the Euphrates 
 turned off" to the west, and pointed the way to Palestiiu^ 
 and Egypt and Greece. The second of these great streams, 
 the Tigris, sending its floods to the south, and traversing 
 with rapid flow the great plains which lie between the 
 mountains of Armenia and the Persian gulf, would open the 
 road to India and the countries of the East. 
 
 The Araxes and the Phasis, rising on the other side of the 
 mountain-chain which here fomis the water-shed between 
 Asia and Europe, and flowing towards the north, would 
 draw oft', in that direction, no inconsiderable portion of the 
 human tide that Avas now going forth from this central 
 region to people the wilderness, into which, since the flood, 
 the earth had again reverted. The settlers who proceeded 
 along the banks of the Araxes, whose waters fall into the 
 Caspian, would j)eople the northern and north-eastern lauds 
 of Asia. Those Avho took the Phasis as the guide of their 
 exploring footsteps, Mould arrive in due time in the west 
 and north of Europe. By the several roads spread out 
 around their starting-point, do these emigrants journey to 
 those distant and unknown homes where their posterity in 
 after ages are to found kingdoms, build cities, become 
 great in arms, or seek renoAVU in the nobler pursuits of 
 peace. 
 
 But farther, this mountain-girdle, which is drawn round 
 the middle of the globe, and which has two great rivers on 
 either side of it flowing in opposite directions and in diver- 
 gent channels, parts the earth into two grand divisions. It 
 gives us a northern and a southern world. In this striking 
 arrangement we see two stages prepared in anticipation of 
 
8 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 two great dramas, an earlier and a later, to be enacted in 
 after time. The one was destined to introduce, and the 
 other to conchide and crown the business of the world. Let 
 us mark wliat a difference betwixt tlie natural endowments 
 of the two zones, yet how perfect the adaptation of each to 
 the races that Avere to occupy them, and the part these races 
 were to play in the affairs of the world ! 
 
 On the south of the great mountain-chain which bisected 
 Asia and Europe was a world blessed with the happiest 
 physical conditions. The skies were serene, the air was 
 wami, and the soil was molient and fertile. How manifest 
 is it that this favoured region had been prepared mth a 
 special \dew to its occupancy by the early races, whose 
 knowledge of the arts did not enable them meanwhile to 
 construct dwellings such as should suffice to protect them 
 from the cold of a northern sky, and whose skill in husbandry 
 was not enough, as yet, to draw from less fertile soils the 
 necessaries of life in sufficient abundance. In this genial 
 clime the inhabitants could dispense with houses of stone ; a 
 tent of hair-cloth would better meet their wants ; and hardly 
 was it necessary that their exuberant soil should be turned 
 by the plow ; without labour almost it would yield the food 
 of man. Here then was meet dwelling-place for the infancy 
 and youth of the human family ; the brilliant light, the 
 sparkling waters, the gorgeous tints of the sky, and the rich 
 fruitage of field and tree, would combine to quicken the 
 sensibilities and stimulate the imagination of man, and so fit 
 him for those more elegant acquisitions and those lighter 
 labours in which his youth was to be passed. Here the arts 
 of music and painting grew up, and here, too, passion poured 
 itself forth in poetry and song. In these voluptuous climes 
 man perfected his conceptions as regards symmetry of form 
 and melody of speech, and from these ages and lands have 
 
FIRST J'EOPLING OF BIUTAIX. 9 
 
 I'onic to US the incomparable models of statuary, of aivhi- 
 tecture, and of eloquence. 
 
 " Graiis deilit ore rotundo 
 ]\Iusa loqui." 
 
 Xor, even yet, has the glow of morning altogether left the 
 sky of the world. The pure and beautiful ideals which these 
 young races succeeded in perfecting for us still continue to 
 delight. They exert to this day a refining and elevating 
 influence on the whole of life. Our graver thoughts and 
 more matter-of-fact labours wear something of the golden 
 lacquering of these early times. 
 
 On the north of the great mountain-wall which, as we 
 have said, parts the world in two, the ground runs off in a 
 mighty downward slope, diversified by forests and lakes, and 
 furrowed by mountain-chains, and finally teiminates in the 
 steppes of Tartary and the frozen lands of Siberia. This 
 vast descent would conduct man by slow journeys from the 
 genial air and teeming luxuriance of his primeval dwelling 
 to the stony soils, the stunted products, and the biting sky of 
 a northern latitude. The boundless plains spread out on 
 this mighty decline refuse their harvests save to the skill of 
 the hand and the sweat of the brow. In vain the inhabitant 
 holds out his cup to have it filled with the spontaneous 
 bounty of the earth. But if nature has denied to these 
 regions the feathery palm, the odorous gum, and the precious 
 Jewel, she has provided an ample compensation in having 
 ordained that products of infinitely greater price should here 
 be ripened. This zone was to be the training-ground of the 
 hardier races. Here, in their contests with the ruggedness 
 of nature, were they to acipiire the virtues of courage, of 
 perseverance, and of endurance, and by that discipline were 
 they to be prepared to step upon the stage, and take u]) the 
 weightier business of the world, when the earlier races had 
 
10 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 fulfilled their mission, and closed their brief but brilliant 
 career. Here, in a word, on these stern soils, and under 
 these tempestuous skies, was to be set that hardy stock 
 on which the precious grafts of liberty and Christianity 
 were to be implanted in days to come. With the advent 
 of the northern races tlie real business of the world 
 began. 
 
 When Noah comes forth from the Ark we see him accom- 
 panied by three sous — Shem, Ham, and Japhet. These are 
 the three fountain-heads of the world's population. " These 
 are the three sons of Xoah, and of them was the whole earth 
 overspread." i " Peleg," who lived in the fifth generation 
 from Noah, is set up as a great finger-post at the parting of 
 the ways, " for in his days was the earth divided." - And it 
 is strikingly corroborative of the truth of this statement, that 
 after four thousand years, during which climate, migration, 
 and numerous other influences have been acting unceasingly 
 on the species, all tending to deepen the pecidiaiities of race, 
 and to widen the distinctions between nations, the population 
 of the world at this day, by whatever test we try it, whether 
 that of physical characteristic, or by the surer proof of 
 language, is still resolvable into three grand groups, corre- 
 sponding to the three patriarchs of the race, Shem, Ham, 
 and Japhet. 
 
 The descendants of Ham, crossing the narrow bridge be- 
 tween Asia and Africa, the Isthmus of Suez to wit, planted 
 themselves along the banks of the Nile, finding in that rich 
 valley a second plain of Shinar, and in the great river that 
 waters it another Euphrates. Egj^pt is known by its inhabi- 
 tants as the land of JNIizraim to this day. From the black 
 loamy Delta, which reposes so securely betwixt the two great 
 deserts of the Avorld, and which the annual overflow of the 
 Genesis ix. 19. - According to Usher, B.C. 2247. 
 
FIRST PEOPLING OF BRITAIN. 11 
 
 Nile clothes with an eternal luxmiance, Hani spread his 
 swarthy swarms over the African continent. fSheni turned 
 his face towards Arabia and India, and his advancing bands, 
 crossing the Indus and the Ganges, overflowed the vast and 
 fertile plains which are bounded by the lofty llinialyas on 
 the one side, and washed by the Indian Ocean on the other. 
 An illustrious member of the Semitic family was recalled 
 westward to occupy Palestine, where his posterity, as the 
 divinely-appointed priesthood of the world, dwelt apart with 
 a glory all their own. Japhet, crossing the mountainous 
 wall which rose like a vast partition betwixt the north and 
 the south, poured the tide of his numerous and hardy descen- 
 dants down the vast slope of the northern hemisphere over 
 Europe, and the trans-Caucasian regions of Asia, with, at 
 times, a reflex wave that flowed back into the territories of 
 Sheni. Thus was the splendid inheritance of a world divided 
 amongst the three sons of Noah. 
 
 Our main business is to track the migration of the sons of 
 Japhet, and see l)y what route they travelled towards our 
 island. From their starting point in the highlands of Ar- 
 menia, or on the plain of the Euphrates, two great pathways 
 offer themselves, by either of which, or by both, their migrat- 
 ing hordes might reach the shores of the distant Britahi. 
 There is the great hoUow which Nature has scooped out 
 between the giant Atlas and the mountains of the Alps, and 
 which forms the basin of the Mediterranean Sea. Moving 
 westward through this great natural cleft, and dropping 
 colonies on the fair islands, and by the sheltered bays of its 
 delicious shores, they would people in succession the soil of 
 Greece and the countries of Italy and Spain. Pushed on 
 from behind by their ever increasing numbers, or draAvn by 
 the powerful attraction of new habitations, they maintain 
 their slow but inevitable advance across the rugged Pyrenees 
 
12 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and the broad and fertile plains of France. The van of the 
 advancing horde is now in sight of Albion. They can desciy 
 the gleam of its white cliffs across the narrow channel that 
 separates it from the continent ; and passing over, they find 
 a land, wliich, thongh owned as yet by only the beast of prey, 
 offers enough in the various produce of its soil and the hidden 
 treasures of its rocks to reward them for the toil of their 
 long journey and to induce them to make it the final goal of 
 their wanderings. 
 
 By this route, we know, did the clans and tribes springmg 
 from Javan — the lox of the Greeks — travel to the Avest. 
 We trace the footprints of his sons, Elishali, Tarshish, Kittim, 
 and Dodanim all along the northern shore of the jNIediter- 
 ranean, from the Lebanon to the Pyrenees, notably in Greece 
 and Italy, less palpably in Cyprus and Spain, attesting to 
 this day the truth of the Bible's statement, that by them 
 were the " isles of the Gentiles," that is, the western sea- 
 board of Asia Minor and the northern coast of the INIediter- 
 ranean, " peopled." 
 
 Meanwhile, another branch of the great Japhethian family 
 is on its way by slow marches to the northern and western 
 world by another route. This great emigrant host proceeds 
 along the great pathways which have been so tlistinctly 
 traced out by the hand of Nature on the surface of the globe. 
 The Araxes and the Phasis are the guide of their steps. 
 They descend the great slope of northern Asia, and winding 
 round the shores of tlie Euxine, they thread their way through 
 a boundless maze of river and morass, of meadow and forest, 
 and mountain-chain, and stand at length on the shores of 
 that ocean that washes the flats of Holland and the head- 
 lauds of Norway : and thus of the human tide which we see 
 advancing towards our island, which is still lying as the 
 waters of the flood had left it, the one division, flowing along 
 
FIRST PEOPLIXG OF BUITAIN. 13 
 
 througli the ba^<ill of the Meditevraiieaii, finds egress In- the 
 Pillars of Hereulcs, and the other, roUing down the great 
 northern slope of the Cancasian ehain, issues forth at the 
 frozen dooi-s of the Baltie. 
 
 This parting of the emigrant host into two great bands, 
 and the sending of them round to their future home by two 
 different routes, had in it a great moral end. There are 
 woi*se schools for a nation destined for future ser%'ice, than 
 a long and arduous journey on which they have to suffer 
 hunger and brave danger. The horde of slaves that left 
 Egypt of old, having finished their " forty years " in the 
 " great and terrible Anlderness," emei'ged on Canaan a dis- 
 ciplined and courageous nation. The route by which these 
 t\\'o Japhethian bands journeyed to their final possessions, 
 left on each a marked and indelible stamp. The resem- 
 blance between the two at the beginning of their journey, 
 as regards the great features of the Japhethian image, which 
 was common to both, was, we can well imagine, much 
 altered and diversified by the time they had arrived at the 
 end of it, and our country, in consequence, came to be 
 stocked with a race more varied in faculty, richer in genius, 
 and sturdier in intellect than its occupants would probably 
 have been, but for the disciplinary influences to which they 
 were subjected while yet on the road to it. The aborigines 
 of Albion combined the strength of the north with the 
 passion of the south. Of the two great hosts that mingled 
 on its soil, the one, passing under the freezing sky of the 
 Sarmatian plains, and combatting with flood and storm on 
 their way, arrived in their new abode earnest, i)atient, and 
 courageous. The other, coming round by the bright and 
 genial shores of the INIediterranean, wvre lively and volatile, 
 and brimming with rich and lofty impulses. Though sprung 
 of the same stock, they came in tliis way to unite the 
 
14 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 qualities of different races and climes — the gravity of the 
 Occident with the warm and thrilling enthusiasm of the 
 Orient. 
 
 The stream that descended the slopes of the Caucasus, 
 passing betwixt the Caspian and the Euxine, Avould arrive 
 on our eastern sea-board, and people that part of our island 
 which fronts the German Ocean. The other current, which 
 flowed along by the Mediterranean, and turned northward 
 ovei" France and Spain, would have its course directed 
 towards our western coasts. In the different temperaments 
 that mark the population of the two sides of our island, we 
 trace the vestiges of this long and devious peregrination. 
 The strong Teutonic fibre of our eastern sea-board, and the 
 poetic fire that glows in the men of our western mountains, 
 give evidence at this day of various original endo^\^nents in 
 this one population. These mixed qualities are seen work- 
 ing together in the daily life of the people, which exhibits 
 a sustained and fruitful industiy, fed and quickened by a 
 latent enthusiasm. The presence of the two qualities is 
 traceable also in their higher and more artistic pursuits, as, 
 for instance, in their literary productions, which, even when 
 they kindle into the passionate glow of the East, are always 
 seen to have as their substratum that cool and sober reason 
 which is the characteristic of the West. 3Iost of all is this 
 fine union discernible, on those occasions when a great prin- 
 ciple stirs the soul of the nation, and its feelings find vent 
 in an overmastering and dazzling outburst of patriotism. 
 
 We do not know the number of links wliich connected the 
 Patriarch of the Amienian mountains A\'ith that generation 
 of his descendants, who were the first to set foot on the 
 shores of Britain ; but we seem warranted in concluding that 
 Gomer and Ashkenaz were the two great fathers of the first 
 British population. Tlie nomadic liordes that we see descend- 
 
FIRST PEOPI,IX(i OF lUtlTAIN. 15 
 
 ing the vast slope that leads down to the Scaiidiiiinian 
 countries and the coast of the "White Sea, are those of 
 Gomer. This nnich do their footsteps, still traceable, attest. 
 They gave their names to the lands over which their track 
 lay, and these memorials, more durable than written record 
 or even pillar of stone, remain to this day, the ineffaceable 
 mementoes of that primeval immigration by which Europe 
 was peopled. Here is Gomer-land (Germany) lying on their 
 direct route : for this track was far too extensive and fertile 
 not to commend itself to the pennanent occupation of a 
 people on the out-look for new habitations. "The Celts, 
 fnmi the Euxine to the Baltic," says Pinkerton, "were c(nn- 
 monly called Cimiiierii, a name noted in Grecian history and 
 fable ; and from their antiquity so obscure that a Cimmerian 
 darkness dwells upon them. From the ancients Ave learn to 
 a certainty, that they were the same people with the Cimbri, 
 and that they extended from the Bosj^horus Cinnnerius on 
 the Euxine, to the Cimbric Chei-sonese of Denmark, and to 
 the Rhine." ^ The main body of these immigrants would 
 s<[uat down on the soil at each successive halt, and oidy the 
 front rank would be pushed forAAard into the unpeopled 
 wilderness. Their progress, often retarded by scarce pene- 
 trable forest and by swollen river, would be at length con- 
 clusively arrested on the shores of the Xorth Sea ; and yet 
 not finally even there. Passing over in such craft as their 
 skill enabled them to construct — a fleet of canoes, hollowed 
 out of the trunks of oaks, felled in the Genuan forests — they 
 would take possession of Britain, and begin to people a land, 
 till then a region of silence or solitude, untrodden by human 
 foot since the period of the Flood, if not since the era of the 
 cieation. 
 
 The new-comers brought with them the ti'adition of their 
 
 ' Pinkerton, vol. ii. pp. 48, 49. 
 
16 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 descent. They called themselves Cymry or Kymbry. They 
 are the Gimirrai of the Assyrian monuments. The Greeks, 
 adoptmg their own designation, styled them Kimmenoi, and 
 the Latins Cimbrl. Cjiniy is the name by which the abor- 
 igines of Britain have uniformly distinguished themselves 
 from the remotest antiquity up to the present hour ; and 
 their language, which they have retained through all revolu- 
 tions, they have invariably called Cymrdeg, which means the 
 language of the aborigines, or "the language of the first 
 race." ^ " It is reasonable to conclude," says Pinkerton in his 
 learned " Enquiiy into the History of Scotland," " that the 
 north and east of Britain were peopled from Gennany by the 
 Cimbri of the opposite shores, who were the first inhabitants 
 of Scotland, who can be traced, from leaving Cumraig names 
 to rivers and mountains, even in the furthest Hebudes." - 
 
 ^ James's Patriarchal Religion of Britain, p. 13. London, 1836. 
 
 - Pinker. Enquiry, vol, ii. 52. Edin., 1814. Pinkerton appears to 
 make the C'imri and the Celtw one people. The t\\ o were kindred, sprung 
 of the same stock, but the Celtie were preceded by an earlier immigration 
 into Eui'ope (see chap, v., seq.). And these earlier immigrants, and first 
 inhabitants of Britain, we can scarce doubt, were the people whom -we 
 ti'ace up thi'ough the Cimri of the Latins, the Kimmerivi of the (ii'eeks, 
 and the Gimirrai of the Assyrian tablets to the Gomer of the Bible. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JOUKNEY OF THE KYMKl TO BRITAIX. 
 
 There are three guides which we can summon to our aid 
 when we set out in cjuest of the cradle of the tribes, races, 
 and nations tliat people the globe. The first is Philology, 
 or language : the second is Mythology, or worship : and the 
 third is Tradition, or folk-lore. These are three guides that 
 will not lie, and that cannot mislead us. 
 
 As regards the first, no great power of reflection is needed 
 to convince us that in the first age men conversed with one 
 another in a common language ; in other words, that man 
 started with one speech. May not that one si^eech linger 
 somewhere on the earth, slightly changed and modified, it 
 may be, by time and other influences, but still containing 
 the roots and elemental characteristics of those numerous 
 tongues which are diff"used over the earth, and of A^'hicll it is 
 the parent ? This is not a supposition, but a fact. Philology 
 holds in its hand the clue by which it can track all the 
 tongues of the world through the perplexed labyrinth of 
 diverse grannnars, idioms, and dialects, to the one primeval 
 tongue of the race. And when we permit philology to per- 
 fomi its office, it conducts us to the great central plain of 
 Asia, called Iran. The researches of jNIax jNIuller, Sir 
 William Jones, and othei's, appear to have established the 
 fact, that we find the ancestor of all the numerous tongues 
 of the nations, not in the classic languages of Greece and 
 
 I. B 
 
18 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Rome, nor iu the more ancient Semitic, bnt in the speech of 
 the Indo-European races, or Aryans. The Sanscrit possesses 
 the root-affinities, and stands in a common relation to all 
 the languages of the East on the one hand, and the West on 
 the other. It presents its proud claim to be the parent of 
 human tongues, and it identifies Iran as the spot whence 
 the human family was spread abroad. '• After thousands of 
 years," says Mr Dasent, " the language and traditions of 
 those who Avent East, and of those who went "West, bear 
 such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond 
 discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a 
 common stock." 
 
 Let us next attend to the evidence, on the point before 
 us, of the second witness, INIvthology, or worship. The first 
 form of worship — keeping out of view the one divinely 
 appointed form — AAas Xature ANorship. By nature worship 
 we mean the adoration of the Deity through an earthly 
 symbol. The first symbol of the Creator was the sun, and 
 consequently the earliest form of nature worship was sun- 
 Avorship. Where, and in Avhat region of the earth was 
 the first act of sun-worship performed ? All are agreed 
 that this form of worship took its rise in the same 
 region to which philology has already conducted us and 
 identified as the father-land of mankind. On the plains of 
 Shiiiar rose the great tower or temple of Bel, or the Sun. 
 There was the first outbreak of a worship which quickly 
 sjiread over the earth, continually multiplying its rites, 
 and varying its outward forms, becoming ever the more 
 gorgeous but ever the more gross, but exhibiting in every 
 land, and among all peoples, the same seminal characteristics 
 and root-affinities which were embodied in the first act of 
 sun-adoration on the Chaldean plain. Thus a second time 
 we arrive on those great plains on which Ararat looks down. 
 
.lOUlJXKV OF Tllh: KV.MUl TO lUUTAIX. 19 
 
 There is a third witness, and the testimony of this witness 
 i^ to the same effect with that of the former two. There 
 exists a unique body of literature whicli is found floating in 
 the languages of both the East and the West. It is mainly 
 poi)ular, consisting of traditions, fables, and tales, and is 
 commonly styled folk-lore. These Tales bear the stamp of 
 being the creation of a young race : they are bright with tlie 
 colours of romance, and they embody, m the guise of allegory 
 and fable, the maxims of an ancient \\4sdom. Whether it is 
 the Celtic or the Teutonic, the classic or the vernacular 
 tongue, in which we hear these tales rehearsed, they are 
 found to be the same. They have the same groundwork or 
 plot though diifused over the globe. This points to a 
 connnon origin, and in tracing them up to that origin we 
 pass the tongues of modern Europe, we pass the Latin and 
 Greek tongues, we come to the language spoken by the 
 Aryan races of Asia, and there we find the fountain-head of 
 these unique and world-wide tales. This is another link 
 between the East and the West, between the peoples that 
 beheld the " grey dawn " and those on whom the world's 
 " eve " is destined to descend. Such is the witness of these 
 three — Philology, Religion, Tradition. They are the foot- 
 prints which the human family have left on the road by 
 which they have travelled ; and following these traces we are 
 led to Iran, where lived the men who were the first to " till 
 and ear " the soil. 
 
 Thirty years ago it would have required some little coiu'age 
 to mention, unless to repudiate, the authority which we are 
 about to cite. At that time it was fashionable to stand in 
 doubt of the early traditions of all nations. The first 
 chroniclers were believed to display a vein for legend rather 
 than a genius for history. Lacking the critical acumen of 
 the wise moderns, they were supposed to delight in garnish- 
 
20 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 iiig their pages with prodigies and marvels, ratlier tliau 
 storing them with ascertained facts. But this spirit of 
 liistoric scepticism has since been markedly rebuked. The 
 graven tablets dug up from the ruins of Nineveh, the 
 treasures exhumed from the mounds of Babylon, and the 
 secrets of a bygone time with Avhich the explorations on the 
 plain of Troy have made us acquainted, have signally attested 
 the veracity of the early writers, and shown us, that instead 
 of indulging a love of ftible, they exercised a scrupulous 
 regard to fact, and an abstention from poetic adornment for 
 which the world, in these latter days, had not given them 
 credit. The consequence is that the early historians now 
 speak with a justly enhanced authority. This remark is 
 specially true of the sacred writers, and also, to a large 
 extent, of the secular historians. 
 
 We in Great Britain likewise possess the records of an 
 ancient time. These writings have been preserved, not in 
 the dust of the earth, like the written cylinders and graven 
 slabs of the Tigris and the Euphrates valley, but in the 
 sacred repositories of the aboriginal race whose origin they 
 profess to record. We refer to the " AVelsh Triads." These 
 documents are the traditions received from the first settlers, 
 handed down from father to son, and at last committed to 
 writing by the Druids, the priests of the aborigines. They 
 are arranged in groups, and each group consists of three 
 analogous events ; the design of this arrangement obviously 
 being to simplify the narrative and aid the memory. We do 
 not claim for them the authority of history ; we use them 
 solely as throwing a side light on the darkness of that remote 
 age, and as confirmatory, or at least illustrative, as far as it 
 is now possible to understand them, of the sketch we have 
 ventured to trace of the peopling of Europe, and the first 
 settling of Biitain, from the etymological and historic proofs 
 that remain to us. 
 
.loruxEV OK Till; kvmki to ukitaix. 21 
 
 The fourth Triad says : " There are three pillars of the 
 nation of Britain. The first was Hu the Mighty, who 
 hrought the nation of the Kymry first to the isle of Britain ; 
 and they eanie from the summer eountry, whieh is ealled 
 Defrobani (the shores of the Bosphorus), and they eame over 
 the Hazy Sea to the Isle of Britain, and to Armorica (Gaul) 
 where they settled. The other two pillars of the nation of 
 the IvATiiri were Prydain and jVIoelmud, who gave them 
 laws, and established sovereignty among them." 
 
 The fifth Triad says : " There were three social tribes of 
 the Isle of Britain. The first was the tribe of the Kymry 
 who came to the Isle of Britain Avith Hu the Mighty, 
 because he would not possess a eountry and land by fighting 
 and pursuit, but by justice and tranquilHty. The second was 
 the tribe of Lloegrians (the Loire) who came from Gascony ; 
 and they Avere descended from the primitive tribe of the 
 Kymry. The third \\'eve the Brython, \\ho came from 
 Armorica, and who were descended from the primitive tribe 
 of the K}inry, and they had all three the same language and 
 speech." This Triad offers a rough sketch of two migrations 
 which are seen moving towards our island, each by a different 
 route. The one comes over the Hazy Sea (most probably 
 the German Ocean i), and the other from Gaul across the 
 channel. But both are si)rung of the same stock, the 
 Kymri, the descendants of Gonier that first peopled 
 Europe. 
 
 The Triads go on to speak of tAvo subsequent arrivals of 
 settlers by whom the first great immigration into Britain was 
 followed and supplemented. The two later immigrations 
 A\ere doubtless passed on to the remoter, and perhaps as yet, 
 
 ^ Claiidian calls the ocean opposite the Rhine the Cimbric, 
 2 The Duan, says Pinkerton, puts tlie Cumri as first possessors of 
 Albain, anil then the Piks. — II. p. 234. 
 
22 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 uiiinhabitated districts of our countiy. The firet arrivals, it 
 is natural to suppose, would plant themselves in the fertile 
 and grassy plains of England, and would refuse, not without 
 reason, to sun-ender to new-comers lands in which they had 
 already established, by cidtivation, the right of ownership. 
 These last explorers would have to move onward and seek a 
 settlement in the less hospitable and more mountainous 
 regions of Scotland. Those whom we now see arriving in 
 our island, and retiring to the straths and slopes of the 
 Grampians, are probably the ancestors of the men who came 
 aftenvards to bear the name of Caledonians. 
 
 At what period the sons of Gomer — for their migration 
 only does it concern us to trace — took their departure from 
 their original seats in the^ East, no histoiy informs us. It is 
 natural to suppose that before his death Noah gave to his 
 sons no uncertain intimation of how he meant the earth to be 
 parted amongst them, and the quarter of the globe in which 
 they were to seek their several dwellings. As the great 
 Patriarch of mankind he possessed the princedom of the 
 world. This vast sovereignty he could not transmit entire. 
 Like some great monarchs who have lived since his day, he 
 must needs distribute liis power among his successors ; and 
 in this he acted, we cannot doubt, in confonnity Avith the 
 intimations which had been made to him of the will of a yet 
 greater monarch than himself. For we are told that " the 
 Most High di\aded to the nations their inheritance." But 
 rivalships and conflicts would, not unlikely, spring up in con- 
 nection with the distribution of so splendid a possession. 
 Some might be unwilling to go forth into the unknown 
 regions allotted to them, and instead of a long and doubtful 
 journey, would prefer remaining near their original seat. 
 The fiiiitfid hills and well-watered vales of Annenia, and 
 the broad plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, would not be 
 
JOURNEY OF TJIK KY.MHI TO BRITAIN. 2,'} 
 
 easily foreaken for a climate less hospitable and an eartli less 
 bounteous. Noah would judi2;e it expedient, doubtless, that 
 while he was yet alive tlic three Septs into which his 
 descendants were parted should begin tlieir journey each in 
 the dii'ection of its allotted possession. 
 
 Ham must tlirect his steps toward his sandy continent on 
 the West. Japhet must cross the mountains on the Xorth, 
 and seek a home for his posterity under skies less genial 
 than those of Ass}Tia. Shem must turn liis face towards 
 the burning plains of India. To leave their sheltered and 
 now well-cultivated valley for unknown lands whose rugged 
 soils they must begin by subduing, was a prospect far from 
 inviting. The command to go forth seemed a hard one. 
 Tliey would lose the strength which union gives, and be 
 scattered defenceless over the face of tlie earth. And if we 
 read aright the brief record of Genesis, the mandate of 
 Heaven, delivered to mankind through their common Father, 
 that they should disperse and settle the world, met with an 
 open and organised resistance. They broke out into revolt, 
 and in token thereof built their tower on the plain of Sliinar. 
 There is one name that stands out, bold and distinct, in tlie 
 darkness, that hides all his contemporaries ; that even of 
 the leader in this rebellion. Ximrod saw in this strong 
 aversion of the human kind to break up into tribes and dis- 
 perse abroad, a sentiment on which he might rest his project 
 of a universal monarchy. His plan was to keep the human 
 family in one place, and accordingly he encouraged the rear- 
 ing of this enonnous structure, and he consecrated it to the 
 worship of the Sun, or Bel. This tower on tlie plain of 
 Shinar was meant to be the great temple of the world, the 
 shrine at which the unbroken family of man sliould meet 
 and perform their worship, and so realise their unity. The 
 tower was the sjTubol of a double tyranny, that of political 
 
24 HISTORY OF .SCOTLAND. 
 
 despotism and that of religious superstition. The policy of 
 Ninirod was the same with that of many an autocrat since, 
 who has found priestcraft the best ally of ambition, and con- 
 cluded that the surest way to keep a people under his own 
 yoke was first to bend their necks to that of a false god. It 
 was the policy adopted by Jeroboam in an age long posterior, 
 when he set up his golden calves at Dan and Bethel, that 
 the ten tribes might liavc no occasion to resort to Jerusalem 
 to worship, and so be seduced back into their allegiance to 
 the House of David. 
 
 This bold and impious attempt met with speedy and 
 awful discomfiture. "The Lord came down," says the 
 inspired historian, using a form of speech which is commonly 
 employed to indicate, not indeed a bodily or personal appear- 
 ance on the scene, but an occurrence so altogether out of the 
 ordinar}' course ; a catastrophe so unlooked for, and so tre- 
 mendous, that it is felt to be the work of Deity. We can 
 imagine the lightnings and mighty tempests which accom- 
 panied the overthrow of this earliest of idolatrous temples, 
 and centre of what was meant to be a world-wide despotism. 
 There was after this no need to repeat the patriarchal com- 
 mand to go forth. Pursued by strange terrors, men were in 
 haste to flee from a region where the Almighty's authority 
 had been signally defied, and was now as signally vindicated. 
 If Noah outlived this catastrophe, as he had survived an 
 earlier and more awfid one, he now beheld the insurrection 
 against his patriarchal government quelled, and his posterity 
 forced to go forth in three great bodies or colonies to seek in 
 the primeval forests and ^wildernesses of the world each its 
 allotted home. AVe cannot be very wide of the mark if we 
 fix the epoch of this great exodus at about the three 
 hundredth year after the Flood. 
 
 The length of time occupied by the baiuls of Gomer in 
 
JOURNEY OK THK KVMHI TO BRITAIN. 25 
 
 their journey from their starting-point tt) the shores oi' 
 liritiiin would depend not so much on the spaee to he 
 traversed, as on the incidents wliich might arise to facihtate 
 or retard their journey. They had no pioneers to smooth 
 tlieir way, and they could have no chart to guide them o\ cr 
 regions which they themselves were the first to explore. 
 The speed of the single traveller, and even the caravan, is 
 swift and uninterrupted ; the movements of a miUion or two 
 of emigrants are uuAvdeldy and laborious. Their flocks and 
 herds accompany them on their march. They had to cross 
 innumerable rivers, passable only by extemporised bridges, 
 or in canoes scooped hastily out of great oaks felled in the 
 neighbouring forest. They had to traverse swampy plains, 
 hew their way through tangled woods, and struggle through 
 narrow mountain defiles. A march of this sort must neces- 
 sarily be slow. They made long halts, doubtless, in the 
 more fertile regions that lay on their route. In these spots 
 they would practise a little husbandry, and exchange their 
 nomadic habits for the pursuits of a more settled mode of 
 life ; and only, when the place became too narrow for their 
 increasing numbers, would they send forth a new swarm to 
 spy out the wilderness beyond, and find new habitations 
 which would become in turn radiating points whence fresli 
 streams might go forth to people the plains and moun- 
 tains lying around their track. Their progress would 
 exhibit the reverse picture of that presented by the army 
 whose terrible march an insi)ired writer has so graphically 
 described. The locust host of the prophet pursued its way, 
 an Eden before it, a wilderness behind it. It was otherwise 
 with the invading, but peaceful, millions, whose march we 
 are contemplating. Wherever their footsteps passed the 
 barren earth was turned into a garden. It was beauty, not 
 blackness and burning, which lay behind them. They 
 
26 HISTORY OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 advanced to make war upon the desert only. The swampy 
 pool and the black wood disappeared as they went on, and 
 behind them on their track lay smiling fields and the habi- 
 tations of men. 
 
 Forty years sufficed to carry the Goths from the banks of 
 the Danube to the shores of the Atlantic. But their steps 
 Avere quickened by their love of war and their thirst for 
 plunder. No such incentives animated the emigrant horde 
 whose march we are tracing, or urged on their advance. 
 Their movement would bear not a little resemblance to 
 what we see in America and Australia at this day, 
 where there is a gradual but continuous outflow from the 
 centres of population into the wilderness beyond, and the 
 zone of desolation and silence is constantly receding before 
 the face of man. Himdreds of yeai-s — we know not how many 
 — would these early intruders into the silent wastes of the 
 northern hemisphere occupy as they journeyed slowly onward 
 and gave the first touch of ciUtivation to what is now, and 
 has long been, the scene of fair kingdoms and flourishing 
 cities.^ 
 
 The men whom we now see stepping upon our shores are 
 shepherds and hunters. They had learned something in 
 their long journey, but they had forgotten more. That 
 journey had not been conducive to their advance in know- 
 ledge, nor to their refinement in manners. The epithet 
 '' barbarian " was doubtless more apj)licable to them on their 
 arrival at their ucav homes than when they took their 
 departure from their original abodes. Whatever skill in 
 husbandry and the arts they possessed in their native seats, 
 would be diminished, if not well nigh lost in its transmission 
 
 1 "No savages have yet been discovered," says Pinkerton (Vol. II. 
 chap. 1), "over the whole globe, who had no navigation. From the 
 North Pole to the South Pole, where there were men, there were 
 canoes." 
 
JOURNEY OK THE KYMRl TO BRITAIN. 27 
 
 through successive generations in the course of their wander- 
 ing and unsettled life. Their daily combats with the 
 ruggedness of the earth, with the storms of the sky, or with 
 the beast of prey, would brace their bodies and discii)line 
 their courage, but it would at the same time tend to roughen 
 their manners, and impart a tinge of ferocity to their 
 tempers and dispositions. 
 
 Counteractive influences, such as the modern emigrant 
 from the old centres of civilization carries with him into the 
 Anlds of the southern or western world, they had none. We 
 are accustomed to invest the shepherd's life with the hues 
 of poetiy, and we people Arcadia Avith the virtues of 
 simplicity and innocence, but when from this imaginary 
 world we turn to the contemplation of real life wo are 
 rudely aAvakencd from our dream. We are shocked to find 
 bnitality and cruelty where we had pictured to ourselves 
 gentleness and love. It is the pasture grounds of Europe 
 that have sent forth its fiercest warriors. Its nomadic 
 tribes have been its most ruthless desolators. In proof of 
 our assertion we might ai)peal to the portrait which 
 Herodotus draws of the Scythians of his day ; or to the 
 ravaging hordes which issued from the banks of the 
 Boiysthenes, or of the Volga ; or to the sanguinary 
 halberdiers which in later times so often descended from 
 the mountains of the Swiss to spread battle and carnage 
 over the Austrian and Italian plains. The influences which 
 moulded these dwellers amid sheep-cots into warnoi*s and 
 plunderers would operate, though with greatly modified 
 force, on the anny of nomades which we see pursuing their 
 way, century after centuiT, down the great slope which 
 conducts from the highlands of Annenia, and the ranges of 
 the Caucasus, to the shores of the North Sea. They could 
 hardly avoid catching the colour of the savage scenes amid 
 
l2H HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 which their track lay. There are souls to which the gloom 
 of the far-extending forest, the grandeur of the soaring 
 peak, and the darkness of the tempest impart a sentiment 
 of elevation and refinement ; but as regards the generality 
 of mankind^they are but little moved by the grandest of 
 nature's scenes, and are apt to become stern and hard as 
 the rocks amid which they dwell. 
 
 The tendency of these injurious influences on the host 
 whose movement we are tracing would be aggravated by 
 other circumstances inseparable from their condition. They 
 could carry ^^'ith them no magazine of corn. Their daily 
 food would be the flesh of their slaughtered herds, or of the 
 animals caught in the chase. This is a species of diet, as 
 physicians tell us, which is by no means fitted to cool the 
 blood or allay the passions, but rather to inflame the irrita- 
 bility of both. Besides, this host was subjected to a natural 
 process of weeding, in virtue of which only the hardiest and 
 the most daring were sent onward. The less adventurous 
 would remain behind at each halt to be transformed into 
 tillers of the soil, or dressers of the vineyard, and this pro- 
 cess of selection, repeated time after time, would result at 
 last in the creation of a race singularly robust in body and 
 equally indomitable in spirit. And such, doubtless, were 
 the physical and mental characteristics of that band of 
 innnigrants that ultimately stepped upon our shore. They 
 were not like the Scythians of Herodotus, or the Goths of 
 the Roman invasion, or the treacherous and cruel Arab of 
 our own day. They were men occupied in the first great 
 humanizing mission of subduing and cultivating the earth. 
 Battle they had not seen all the way, if we except the con- 
 tests they had to Avage with the forces of nature. Blood 
 they had not shed, save that of bullock or of beast of prey. 
 But if their long journey had schooled them in the peaceable 
 
.lOrHXKV OF THK KY.MRI TO I5K1TAIN'. 20 
 
 virtues of patience and endurance, it had engendered not 
 less a keen relish for their wild freedom, an<l stalwart in 
 frame and strong of heart, they were able and ready t<> 
 defend the independence which had been theirs evei- since 
 the day that they rallied beneath the standard of their 
 great progenitor, and contemning the double yoke of 
 despotism and sun-worship which Nimrod had attempted to 
 impose upon them, turned their faces towar<l the fi-ee lands 
 of the Xorth.^ 
 
 ' "Originally," says Pinkeitnn, "the novtlievn Celts oi- Cumri, wei-e 
 superior to the soiithem or (iael, in strength of miml and body, as the 
 conquests of the former over the latter pi'ove." — Vol. II. p. 49. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HABITS, HABITATIOXS, AND ARTS OF THE FIRST SETTLERS. 
 
 We see these emigrants from the land of Armenia arriving 
 on om* shore, but the moment they pass within the confine 
 of our island the curtain drops behind them, and for ages 
 they are completely hidden from our view. AVhat passed in 
 our country during the centuries that elapsed between the 
 period when it was taken jjossession of by the sons of 
 Gomer and the advent of Ctvsar with his fleet, we can only 
 dubiously conj ecture. 
 
 As regards one important particular, we have tolerable 
 grounds, we apprehend, for the conclusion we are now to 
 state. These emigrants brought with them the essentials of 
 Divine revelation. AVhen they left their original dwelling, 
 the world's first Christianity, the Edenic to wit, had not 
 been wholly obscured by the rising cloud of nature-Avorship. 
 The fii^st idolatrous temple had already been reared, and 
 the earliest form of idolatrous worship, that of the sun 
 and the heavenly bodies, had been instituted ; but the dis- 
 pei-sion which immediately followed had removed the 
 Japhethian emigrants, whom we now see on their way to 
 the far north, from contact with the rites of the rising 
 idolatry, and from those corrupting and darkening influences 
 which acted powerfully, doubtless, on those who remained 
 nearer the seat of the Nimrod instituted Avorship. Besides, 
 the heads of this emigration had conversed with the men 
 who had been in the ark with Noah, and stood beside the 
 
HABITS, HABITATIONS, ANI> AKTS OF FIRST SETTLERS. .'{I 
 
 altar whereon the Coiiiiuoii Father oftcred his first saerifiee 
 to Jehovah after the flood. It is not conceivable that 
 Japhet had joined in the rebellion of Xinirod, or ever 
 worshipped in the great temple on Shinar. From Japhet 
 they had learned the knowledge of the one trne God, and 
 the promise of a Redeemer, who was to appear in after ages, 
 and in some not yet clearly nnderstood way, though dimly 
 foreshadowed in the Wctim on the Patiiarchal Altar, Mas to 
 accomplish a great deliverance for the race. This great 
 Tradition would journey with them, and some rays of the 
 primeval day would shine on the remote shores of Britain. 
 We have been taught to picture the earliest condition of our 
 country as one of unbroken darkness. A calm consideration 
 of the time and circumstances of its first peopling warrants 
 a more cheerfid view. Believing in a God, inWsible and 
 eternal, and knoMdng that He heareth those in every land 
 who pray unto Him, who can tell how many "devout 
 feai*ei*s " of His name there may have been among the first 
 inhabitants of our country ? How many lives may this 
 knowledge have purified, and how many death-beds may it 
 have brightened ! The Patriarchs themselves had not nnich 
 more than was possessed by those whom we behold setting 
 out towards our distant shore. 
 
 Our idea that the earliest ages of all nations were the 
 purest, and that as time passed on mankind receded ever 
 the farther from the knowledge of the tme God and sank 
 ever the deeper into idolatry, is corroborated by the fact that 
 the oldest known Egyptian manuscript, and of course the 
 oldest known manuscript in the world, contains no traces of 
 idolatiy, and does not mention the name of one Egyj^tian 
 god.i 
 
 ^ This is the nianusciipt known to Egyptologists as the Prisse I'apyrus. 
 It was found at Thebes, and is now in the library of Paris. Its autlior 
 
32 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 These settlers found the eUmate of their yew country more 
 temperate — its summers less hot, and its winters less cold — 
 than that of the cohtinental lands over which they had 
 passed on their way thither. Its plains wore a covering of 
 luxuriant grass, and afforded ample pasturage for their flocks 
 and herds. Forests covered the mountain sides, and in 
 places not a few stretched down into the valleys and straths. 
 These would furnish in abundance materials for the con- 
 struction of dwellings, one of the first requisites of the 
 emigrant. The new-comers go about this task in the 
 follomng Avise. They clear a space in the forest, or on the 
 jungly plain, felling the trees with a stone hatchet. On the 
 open area they plant stakes of timber, intertwine them %\dth 
 wattles, and roof them A\ith straw. There rises a little 
 cluster of huts. A Avail of palisades is run around the 
 hamlet to defend it from the beast of prey, for, as yet, 
 human foe they have none to dread. 
 
 In at least one instance, if Ave mistake not, Ave come upon 
 the traces of these aboriginal settlers, and the memorials, 
 disclosed after so long an interA'al, touchingly attest the 
 truth of the picture Ave have draAvn. The relics in question 
 occur as far north as Loch Etive, Argyleshire. Under a 
 black peat moss, on the banks of the loch just named, are 
 found, here and there, patches of stone pavement of an OA'al 
 form. These paA^ements, on being dug doAvn- to, are found 
 strcAved over Avith Avood-ashes, the remains of fires long since 
 extinguished ; and around them lie portions of decayed hazel 
 stakes, the relics of the palisading that once fonned the 
 defences of the encampment. Here stood a cluster of log 
 huts, and at a period so remote that the moss that noAV 
 
 was Ptah-liotep, sou of King 'J'atkara Assa of the Vth dynasty, of 
 Elephantine. It contains moral maxims anil admonitions to the practice 
 of virtue, and most remarkable of all, mentions not one Egyptian god. — ■ 
 ilarkness, Egyptian Life and History, p. 18. 
 
HABITS, HABITATIONS, AND ARTS OF FIRST SETTLERS. 33 
 
 covei*s the site to a depth of eight feet has had time to grow 
 above it.^ It is toucliing to think that in tliese memorials 
 we behold the oldest known " hearths " in Scotland. We 
 picture to ourselves the fomis that sat around their fires. 
 They may not have been just the savages we are so apt to 
 fancy them. They had their joys and their sorrows as we 
 at this day have ours. The human heart is the same 
 whether it beats under a garaient of ox-hide or under a 
 vesture of fine linen. It ever goes back into the past, or 
 forward into the future, in quest of the elements of hope 
 and happiness. These settlers cherished, doubtless, as their 
 most precious treasure, the traditions which their fathers 
 had brought with them from their far-off early home. They 
 will not let them die even in this rude land. And when the 
 winter draws on, and the stonn lowers dark on the hill, and 
 the winds roar in the fir wood, or lash into fuiy the waters 
 of the lake, beside which they have raised their huts, the 
 inmates gather in a circle round their blazing hearth, and 
 the patriarch of the dwelling rehearses to ears attent the 
 traditions of an early day and a distant land. Tales of the 
 flood and of the ark, who knows, may here have had their 
 eloquent reciters and their absorbed listeners. The "glorious 
 hopes" carried to our island by the first pilgrim settlers 
 would be clung to by their descendants. The knowledge 
 of them alone kept their head above the darkness. To part 
 with them was to obliterate by far the brightest traces by 
 which to track their past. But gradually, veiled in legend, 
 or disfigured and darkened by fable, these "hopes" died 
 out, or, rather, were crystallized in the ritual of the Druid. 
 
 The sons of Gomer, who erected these frail structures on 
 the shores of Loch Etive, were probably coeval with the 
 sons of Ham, who were the first builders of the pyramids on 
 ^ Wilson, Pre-hkloric Annals of Scotland, p. 76, Edin. 1851. 
 
 I. C 
 
34 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the banks of the Nile. The monuments of the workers in 
 granite, thanks to the durability of the material, still remain 
 to us. The perishable edifices of the workers in wattle and 
 sod have also been preserved by the kindly moss which, 
 growing with the centuries, at last covered them up for the 
 benefit of future ages. We can now compare them with 
 the huts in which their brethren of the Gomer race, on the 
 other side of the Geniian Ocean, were found still living, in 
 times not so very remote. Simple, indeed, in both style 
 and material, was the architecture of these Cymric houses, 
 whether on Gennan plain or on Scottish moor. A circular 
 row of wooden piles fonned their wall. The roof was of 
 straw ; the fire was kindled on the stone floor, and the 
 smoke made its escape by an opening left for that purpose 
 in the centre of the roof. 
 
 The habits of the inmates were simple. They were com- 
 pelled to accommodate their life to the conditions of the 
 country in which they found themselves. A humid atmos- 
 phere, the necessary accompaniment of a swampy soil, would 
 darken the sky with a frequent haze, and diminish the sun's 
 power to ripen the grain. Corn they did not grow. Their 
 long devotion to the shepherd's life had made them un- 
 familiar with the art of tillage. What of the husbandman's 
 skill they had known and practised in their ancestral homes 
 had been unlearned on their long journey. It hardly matters, 
 for their wants are supplied by the milk of their flocks, 
 by the game in which their forests abound, and the fish 
 with which their rivers are stocked, which they spear with 
 sharpened stakes. Their hardihood is maintained by the 
 daily combats in which they are compelled to engage with 
 the beast of prey. The weapons wdth which they do battle 
 against these depredators of their herds, and, at times, 
 assailants of their villages, are simple indeed. The club, 
 
HABITS, HABITATIONS, AND ARTS OF FIRST SETTLERS. 35 
 
 the stone hatchet, the bow, the spear tipped with flint or 
 bone, the snare, the shng, are tlie instruments they wiekl, 
 being the only ones then known to them. 
 
 Invention sleeps when the wants of man are few. 
 Necessity rouses the dormant faculties, and impels to the 
 cultivation of the arts, slow and tardy at the best. It is 
 easier transforming the shepherd into a warrior than training 
 him into an artizan ; the wild freedom of the hills is not 
 easily cast off for the minute diligence and close application 
 of the workshop. Yet were there handicrafts which these 
 pilgrim-shepherds were compelled to learn. We find them 
 expert at canoe-building. They had had frequent occasion 
 to practise this art on their long journey, and the friths and 
 lakes of their new home were too numerous to pemiit their 
 skill in this important department to rust. New needs as 
 they arise prompt to new devices. A tent may suffice as a 
 dwelling on the plains of Asia, but not on the bleak Cale- 
 donian moor. The inhabitants of the latter must dig a 
 chamber in the earth, or erect a hut above ground of dry 
 sods, or of unhewn stones, would they protect themselves 
 from the rains and frost. Gamients of some sort they must 
 needs have ; for though some historians have pourtrayed the 
 Caledonian as running nude on his mountains, or covering 
 his person with paint instead of raiment, we submit that 
 this was incompatible mth existence amid the snow and ice 
 of a Scottish winter. A succession of rigorous seasons, 
 such as are incident to our high latitude, would have wound 
 up the drama of the race before it had well begun, and 
 instead of flourishing in stalwart vigour for centuries, the 
 Caledonian would have perished from the land, and left it 
 as desolate and silent as when he first set foot on it. It is 
 the historian, we suspect, who has painted. 
 
 If the Caledonian dispensed with clothing, it was only at 
 
36 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 times. He stript himself that he might give greater agility 
 to his hmbs when he chased the roe, or greater terror to his 
 visage when he grappled with his enemy in battle ; or he 
 disencumbered himself to wade his marshes and swim his 
 rivers. Raiment he not only needed, but raiment of a very 
 substantial kind. The hoar frosts of Caledonia were so 
 famous as to be heard of at Rome, and the light fabrics 
 woven on the looms of later days would have afforded but 
 small protection from the haars and icy blasts of the then 
 Scotland. 
 
 The skin of sheep or the hide of ox formed a substantial 
 and comfortable garment for the native. This was his 
 winter covering. The stitching of it together taught him a 
 little tailoring. He used a needle of bone with a sinew for 
 a thread. His summer robe was lighter, and, moreover, 
 admitted of a little gaiety in the way of colour, which would 
 bring out in bright relief the figure of the wearer as he was 
 seen moving athwart brown moor or blue hill. This was 
 fabricated from the wool of his flock or the hair of his goats. 
 The manufacture of these homely stuffs initiated the Cale- 
 donian into the useful arts of carding, si)inniug, and 
 wea\'ing. 
 
 The aboriginal dwellings merit a more particular descrip- 
 tion. They are commonly kno^^^l by the name of weems. 
 These weems have been discovered in groups in almost 
 eveiy county of Scotland, more particularly in Aberdeen- 
 shire, in Buchan, in Forfarshire, and even in the wildest 
 districts of the Highlands. They are nearly as common 
 as the sepulchral cairn. Generally the surface of the 
 ground gives no clue to the existence of these underground 
 dwellings. The moor or heath looks perfectly level and 
 unbroken, and the traveller may pass and repass a hundred 
 times without once suspecting that underneath his feet are 
 
HABITS, HABITATIOXS, AXD ARTS OF FIRST SETTLERS. 37 
 
 houses that were constructed thousands of years ago, still 
 containing the implements and utensils of the men who 
 lived in them — the quernes in which they ground their corn, 
 the bones and horns of the animals they hunted, the relics of 
 their meal, and the ashes of the fire on which they cooked it. 
 These weems in their construction show both ingenuity 
 and labour. Those found in Aberdeenshire are built of 
 blocks of granite more than six feet long. They vary, of 
 course, in their details, but the general style and structure 
 are alike in all of them. Some of these subterranean abodes 
 are upwards of thirty feet long, and from eight to nine feet 
 wide. The walls converge as they rise, and the roof is 
 fonned in the same way as in the cyclopean edifices of early 
 Greece and the colossal temples of Mexico and Yucatan, 
 whose builders would appear to have been ignorant of the 
 principle of the arch. The great slabs have been made to 
 overlap each other ; the intervening space is reduced at 
 each successive row, and at last the opening a-top is so 
 narrowed as to be covered in by a single block, and the 
 vault completed. Not unfrequently small side chambers 
 are attached to the main chamber. These are entered by 
 passages not above three feet in height, and as a proof of 
 the ineflBciency of the tools with which these primitive 
 builders worked, the stones in the wall forming the partition 
 between the two chambers, though placed flush in the side 
 which presents itself to the great chamber, project their 
 narrow ends in the side turned to the small apartment. 
 The workmen e\'idently lacked metal tools to dress and 
 smooth the stones. If one may judge from the indications 
 in the case of the best preserved of these weems, the door- 
 way was formed of two upright slabs ; the width between 
 being sufficient for the occupant to glide in, and by a slant- 
 ing passage find his way to the chamber below. It was in 
 
38 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 many cases the only opening, and sensed the purpose of 
 door, window, and chimney all in one. In some instances, 
 however, a small aperture is found at the farther end, which 
 might give egress to the smoke, or permit the entrance of a 
 little light.^ On the approach of an enemy, the entire 
 population of a district would make a rush to these narrow 
 apertures, and vanish as quickly and noiselessly as if the 
 earth had swallowed them up, or they had melted into thin 
 air, leaving the intruder partly amazed and partly awed by 
 their sudden and complete disappearance. 
 
 These underground massy halls were the winter abodes 
 of their biulders. Once safely below, a little fire to dispel 
 the darkness, their larder replenished from the spoils of 
 the chase or the produce of the flock, they would make a 
 shift to get through the long mouths, and would not be 
 greatly incommoded by the fiercest storms that raged above 
 ground. But we can imagine how glad and joyous the 
 occupants woidd be when the wdnter drew to a close, and 
 spring filled the air with its sweetness, and the beauty of 
 the first green was seen on strath and wood, and the early 
 floweret looked forth, to exchange these dreary vaidts in 
 the earth for the huts above ground, built of turf and the 
 branches of trees, in which they were wont to pass the warm 
 days of their brief summer. 
 
 When at last, after centuries had passed by, the Phcenician 
 navigator, penetrating the recesses of the North Sea, moored 
 his bark beneath the white cliff's of Albion, or under the dark 
 rocks of Caledonia, the ingenuity and resource of the natives 
 were quickened afresh. The Invention of the Caledonian 
 was set to work to create new fomis of art which might 
 tempt the distant trader to re-\4sit his barbarous shore. 
 New artistic designs, some of them of rare ingenuity and 
 ^ Wilson, Pre-historic Annals of Scotland, pp. 78-84, Edin. 1851. 
 
HABITS, HABITATIONS, AXD ARTS OF FIRST SETTLERS. 39 
 
 exquisite beauty, arose iu au after-age ou our soil, all of 
 them native to the land. Shut in by their four seas, these 
 early artists had no foreign models to copy from. Never- 
 theless, though they had studied in no school of design, and 
 despite the farther disadvantage under which they laboured 
 of being but ill-served by the tools with which they worked, 
 the products of their home-born art surprise and delight us 
 by their purity, their ingenuity, theii- elegance, and the finish 
 of the workmanship. More graceful designs were not to 
 have been seen in the famous studios of Phoenicia, or even 
 in the more celebrated workshops of Greece. 
 
 As their numbers grew other necessities dawned upon 
 them. The pilgrim-bond, so strong when they arrived in 
 the countiy, now began to be relaxed and to lose its hold. 
 They felt the need of laws and of a stronger authority than 
 the Parental to govern them. First came the chief, whose 
 rule extended over a tribe. When quarrels broke out 
 between tribe and tribe, a higher authority still — a chief 
 of chiefs — was felt to be needed for the government of the 
 community, and the administration of the laws. Now came 
 the king. This brings us to that long procession of august 
 personages which Fordoun and Boethius make to defile past 
 us, and which they dignify with the title of monarchs. These 
 far-off" and dimly-seen potentates may not be mere shadows 
 after all ; they may have had an actual existence, and 
 exercised a rude sovereignty in those obscure times ; but it 
 does not concern us to establish their historic identity, 
 and celebrate over again the glory of those valorous and 
 worthy exploits which they have been made to perform on 
 the battle-field, and which, doubtless, if ever they were 
 achieved, received due laud from the age in which they 
 were done. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE STOXE AGE. 
 
 Let us come closer to these British aborigines. They have 
 no knowledge of letters. They had set out from their 
 original homes before the invention of the alphabet. They 
 have brought with them the implements of the shepherd 
 and of the hunter, and in the foresight of danger they have 
 provided themselves with some mde weapons of defence, 
 such as the club and the stone hatchet, but they are wholly 
 ignorant of the art of conversing with posterity, and of 
 communicating to the ages to come a knowledge of what 
 they were, and what they did. Tliis parts them from our 
 ken even more completely than the wild sea around their 
 island sundered them from their contemporaries, and it may 
 seem bootless, therefore, to pursue them into the thick 
 darkness into which they have passed. And yet the labour 
 of such inquiry will not be altogether thrown away. These 
 ancient men have left behind them traces which enable us 
 to reproduce, in outline, the manner of life which they led, 
 much as the Arab of the desert can tell from the footprints 
 of the traveller on the sand to what tribe he belonged, 
 whether he carried a burden, and the days or weeks that 
 have elapsed since he passed that way. The characters 
 which we are now to essay to read are inscribed on no page 
 of book, they are written on the soil of the countiy ; never- 
 theless, they bear sm-e testimony regarding the men to whom 
 
THE STONE AGE. 41 
 
 they belong, and the study of them will disclose to us some- 
 thing, at least, of what went on in our dark land before 
 history arrived with her torch to dispel its night. 
 
 We begin vnth the stone age. We know not when this 
 age opened or when it closed, and it is bootless to enquire. 
 Viewing the matter generally, the stone age was coeval 
 with man. All around him were the stones of the field. 
 They were his natural weapons, especially of attack, and he 
 must have continued to make use of them till he came into 
 possession of a better material for the fabrication of his 
 implements and tools. This was not till the arrival of 
 bronze, a date which it is impossible to fix. These great 
 discoveries were made before history had begun to note the 
 steps of human progress, and therefore we are here able to 
 speak not of time but of sequences. We are not, however, 
 to conclude that all nations began their career with the 
 stone age. There was one family of mankind which retained 
 the traditional knowledge of the metals, but the colateral 
 branches of that family, when they wandered away from 
 their original seat, lost the art of extracting and smelting 
 the ore, and had to begin their upward career on the low 
 level of the stone age. Let us hear what archeology has to 
 say of our countiy on this head. 
 
 On yonder moor is a cairn. It was there at the dawn of 
 history ; how long before we do not know. It has seen, 
 probably, as many centuries as have passed over the 
 pyramids. Its simplicity of stiTicture has fitted it even 
 better to ^\'ithstand the tear and wear of the elements than 
 those mountainous masses which still rear their hoar forms 
 in the valley of the Nile ; and it has more sacredly guarded 
 the treasures committed to its keeping than have the proud 
 mausolca of the Pharaohs. Let us open it, and see whether 
 it does not contain some record of a long forgotten past. 
 
42 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 We dig clown into it, and light upon a stone coffin. We 
 oj^en the Hd of the rude sarcophagus. There, resting in the 
 same grave in which weeping warriors laid him four thousand 
 or more years ago, is the skeleton of one who was, doubtless, 
 of note and rank in his day. We can imagine the blows 
 that great arm-bone would deal when it was clothed with 
 sinew and flesh, and the fate that would await the luckless 
 antagonist who should encounter its owner on the battle- 
 field. This ancient sleeper, whom we have so rudely dis- 
 turbed in his dark chamber, may have sui-passed in stature 
 and strength the average Caledonian of his day,^ but even 
 granting this, he enables us to guess the physical endow- 
 ments of a race which could send forth such stalwart, if 
 exceptional, specimens to assist in clearing the forest or 
 subduing the rugged glebe, or fighting the battles of clan or 
 of country. 
 
 We open this coffin as we would a book, and we scan its 
 contents with the same engrossing interest with which we 
 devour the j)rinted volume which tells of some newly- 
 discovered and far-off countiy. But Ave have not yet read 
 all that is written in this ancient tome. We turn to its 
 next page. The weapons of the warrior have been interred 
 in the same rude cist with himself. Here, lying by his side, 
 is his stone battle-axe. Its once tough wooden handle is 
 now only a bit of rotten timber. On its stone head, how- 
 ever, time has been able to effect no change : it is compact 
 and hard as when last carried into battle. This stone axe 
 is a silent but significant witness touching the age in which 
 its OA\nier lived. No one would have gone into battle aimed 
 only with an implement of stone if he could have provided 
 
 ^ A cairn on the moor above Ardoch when opened was found to contain 
 a cist in which was the skeleton of a man seven feet long. Sir John 
 Sinclair, Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. viii. p. 497 ; Wilson, Pre- 
 historic Annals, p. 64, Edin. 1851. 
 
THE STONE AGE. 43 
 
 himself with a weapon of iron, or of other metal. But 
 weapon of iron the occupant of this cist had none. He 
 fought as best he could with such weapons as his age 
 supplied him with, making strength of ami, doubtless, 
 compensate for what was lacking in his weapon. The 
 mference is clear. There was an age when iron was 
 unknown in Scotland, and when implements of all kinds 
 were made of stone. 
 
 There is a close resemblance bet^vixt the battle-axes dug 
 out of the cairns and tumuli of om- country and those 
 fabricated by the savages of the South Sea Islands not 
 longer ago than a little prior to the last age. It is not 
 necessary that we should suppose that the latter worked 
 upon the models furnished by our ancestors of savage times. 
 The constructive powers of man in a savage state are always 
 found working in the same rugged groove, and hence the re- 
 semblance between the two though parted by thousands of 
 years. All his implements, peaceful and warlike, did man 
 then fabricate of stone. With an axe of stone he cut down 
 the oak ; with an axe of stone he hollowed out the canoe ; 
 with an axe of stone he drove into the gi-ound the stakes of 
 his rude habitation ; with an axe of stone he slaughtered the 
 ox on which he was to feast ; and mth an axe of stone he 
 laid low his enemy on the battle-field, or himself bit the 
 dust by a blow from the same weapon. It was the stone 
 AGE, the first march on the road to civilization. 
 
 The harder stones were used in the fabrication of the 
 hea^^er instruments. It was of no use going into battle 
 with a weapon which would fiy in splinters after dealing a 
 few blows. The stone used in the manufacture of the 
 battle-axe was that known as green-stone. But the lighter 
 weapons, and in particular the projectiles, were fiishioned 
 out of flmt. A mass of flint was split up in flakes, the 
 
44 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 flakes were chipped into the form of arrow-heads, and were 
 fitted on to a cane, and made fast by a ribbon of skin. 
 These flint arrow-heads proved rather formidable missiles. 
 Shot by a strong hand from a well-strung bow, they brought 
 down the roe as he bounded tlu*ough the forest, or laid the 
 warrior prostrate on the field. These flints were capable of 
 recei\ing an edge of great sharpness. Flint knives were 
 made use of by both the Hebrews and the Egyptians in 
 their religious rites, in those especially where a clean incision 
 had to be made, as in the process of embahning and other 
 ceremonies. The hieroglyphics on the Egyptian obelisks are 
 supposed to have been cut by flint knives. The granite in 
 which the hieroglyphics were graven is too hard to have 
 been operated upon by bronze or iron, and the Egyptians 
 were not acquainted with steel. 
 
 These arrow-heads buried in the soil are often turned up 
 at this day in dozens by the spade or the plough, showing 
 how prevalent was their use in early times, and for a very 
 considerable period. They suggest curious thoughts touch- 
 ing the artists that so deftly shaped them, and the men who 
 turned them to so good account in the chase or in the fight. 
 Were these ancient warriors to look up from their cairns and 
 stone cists, how astonished would they be to mark the 
 difference bet^nxt theu simj^le missiles and the formidable 
 projectiles — the breech-loaders, the guns, the mortars, and 
 various artillery — ^^ath which the moderns decide their 
 quarrels. 
 
 In some localities these flints are gathered in a heap, as if 
 they had fallen in a shower, and lay as they fell till the 
 plough uncovered them. This accumulation of weapons 
 tells a tale of forgotten warfare. When we dig in the moor 
 of Culloden, or in the field of Waterloo, and exhume the 
 broken shells, the round shot, the swords, and other memorials 
 
THE STONE AGE. 45 
 
 of battle which so plentifully exist in these soils, we say, 
 and would say, though no record existed of the carnage 
 fonnerly enacted on the spot, here armies must have met, 
 and here furious battle must have been waged. And so, 
 when we gaze on these long-buried flints laid bare by 
 the plough, we are forcibly carried back to a day in our 
 country's unrecorded past, when uncouth warriors, with 
 matted locks, painted limbs, and eyes gleaming with the 
 fire of battle, gathered here to decide some weighty point 
 of tribal dissension, and awaken the echoes of the lonely 
 hills ^^^[th their wild war-whoop, and the crash of their 
 stone axes. 
 
 Let us look a moment with the eyes of these men, and 
 view the world as it was seen by them. What a narrow 
 horizon begirt them all round ! History had never unrolled 
 to their eye her storied page, and beyond the genealogy of 
 their chief, which they had heard their senachies rehearse, 
 they knew little of what had happened in the world till 
 they themselves came into it. In front they were shut in 
 by a near and thick darkness. The moor on which they 
 dwelt was their world. The chase or the battle was the 
 business of their lives ; and to die at last by the side of 
 their chieftain in some gi'eat tribal conflict, and have their 
 bones inurned in the same sepulchral mound, was the 
 supreme object of their ambition. Their range of know- 
 ledge and enjoyment was only a little less contracted than 
 that of the beasts that perish. AVhat a change M'hcn know- 
 ledge lit her lamp, and the barbarian, loosed from the 
 handbreadth of earth to which he had been chained, could 
 make the cu-cuit of the globe, and the circuit of the cen- 
 tm-ies, and draw the elements of his happiness from all the 
 realms of space, and from all the ages of time ! 
 
 Let us ascend an eminence and take a survey of the 
 
46 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 landscape of this age. It looks to the eye a vast shaggy 
 wood, crossed by sedgy rivers, dotted by black tarns, and 
 broken by rocky cliffs and ridges. Here and there a gleam 
 of gold tells where a patch of grain is ripening, and the 
 ascending wTcath of blue smoke reveals the wattle-worked 
 homestead that nestles in the forest. We visit one of these 
 clearings. We find the hamlet within its staked enclosure. 
 The inhabitants, some in linen, for they grow a little flax, 
 others in skins, are variously occupied. Some are cutting 
 wood with stone axes of wonderful sharpness, or sawing it 
 with pieces of notched flint, or splitting it up by means of a 
 stone wedge. Others are ftibricating spear-shafts, arrow- 
 heads, or scraping skins, or polishing celts, or carving 
 implements out of bone and antler. Outside the huts 
 the women are grinding the corn with pestle and mortar 
 — for the hand quern has not yet been invented — and 
 cooking the meal on the fire, or they are spinning thread 
 with spindle and distaff", to be woven into cloth on a 
 rude loom. Perchance some are engaged moulding with 
 the hand vessels of clay. It is verily but the infancy of 
 the arts, but we here behold the foundation on which 
 have been built the miglity industries that now occupy 
 our poj^ulations. 
 
 Outside the stockade that runs round the hamlet are 
 flocks of sheep, herds of goats, troops of horses, and 
 droves of short-horned cattle. Numerous hogs scour tlie 
 clearing in search of roots, tended by swine herds and 
 defended by large dogs against the bears, wolves, and 
 foxes that infest the forest that forms the environment 
 of the homestead.^ Such is the picture the clearing 
 presents. 
 
 ^ " Early Man in Britain," by W. Boyd Dawkins, p. 272, Lond. 1880. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE BRONZE AGE. 
 
 The tall, ftiir-haired, round-headed Celt brought the know- 
 ledge of bronze with him into Britain. Man made a vast 
 stride Avhen he passed from stone to metal. With that 
 transition came an instant and rapid advance all along the 
 line of ci\'ilization. The art of war was the first to feel the 
 quickening influence of the new instrument with which man 
 was now armed. His weapons were no longer of stone but 
 of bronze ; and although this is every way an inferior metal 
 to that by which it was to be succeeded, iron, to wit, it was 
 immeasurably superior to stone, and accordingly victory 
 remained with the warrior who entered the field amied with 
 sword, and axe, and dagger, all of bronze. This wrought 
 a revolution in the military art not unlike that which the 
 invention of gunpowder in an after-age brought Avith it. 
 
 When we speak of the Celts, and the gift they conferred 
 on the nations of the West, let us pause a moment to note 
 their origin and career. They are known in history by three 
 names — the CelUv, the Galatce, and the Galli. Their 
 irruption from their primeval home in Central Asia was the 
 terror of the age in which it took place. In the fourth 
 century before Christ, after some considerable halt, they 
 resumed their migration westwards in ovenvhclming numbers 
 and resistless force. They scaled the barrier of the Alps, 
 rushed down on Italy, gave the towns of Etruria to sack, 
 
48 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 defeated the Roman armies in battle, and pm'sued their 
 victorious march to the gates of Rome, where they butchered 
 the senators in the Capitol, and had well nigh strangled the 
 Great Republic in its infancy. Another division of these 
 slaughtering and marauding hordes took the direction of 
 Greece, and threatened to overcloud with their barbarism 
 that renowned seat of Philosophy and Art. It was with the 
 utmost diificulty that they were repulsed, and Athens saved. 
 The legions of the first Cffisar, after nine bloody campaigns, 
 broke the strength of the Galli ; but it was not till the days 
 of the second Cajsar that all danger from them was past, 
 and that Rome could breathe freely. 
 
 This is the first appearance of the Celts in history ; but it 
 is undoubted that long before this, at a period of unknown 
 antiquity, they had begun to migrate from the East, and to 
 mingle largely with the Cinnneric nations which had pre- 
 ceded them in their march westwards. The whole of 
 Europe, fi-om the border of Scythia to the PiUars of 
 Hercules, was known to Herodotus as the Land of the Celts. 
 Their sudden and fm-ious descent on Italy and Greece was 
 probably owing to the pressure of some other people, Scythic 
 or Teutonic, that began to act upon them, putting them 
 again in motion, and sending them surging over the gi'eat 
 mountains that flanked their westward march. Their pro- 
 lific swarms largely mixed themselves with the Iberians of 
 Spain, the Cimri around the German Ocean, and the abori- 
 gines of Britain, and generally formed the gi'eat bulk of the 
 population west of the Rhine and the Alps. 
 
 They were a pastoral people. To till the ground they held 
 a mean occupation, and one that was below the dignity of a 
 Celt. But if they disdained or neglected the plough, they 
 knew how to wield the sword. They were fierce warriors. 
 Even Sallust confesses that they bore off the prize from the 
 
THE BRONZE AGE. 40 
 
 Romans themselves in feats of arms. Compared with the 
 legions, they were but poorly equipped — an ill-tempered 
 sword, a dagger, and a lance wei-e their weap(ms — though 
 they far excelled the Britons, whoiu they found, when they 
 first came into contact with them, doing their fighting with 
 Aveapons of stone. They delighted in garments of showy 
 colours, M'hich they not unfrequently threw off when they 
 engaged in combat. The character of the Celts was 
 strangely and most antithetically mixed. It presented a 
 combination of the best and the worst qualities. They were 
 eager to learn, they were quick of apprehension, they were 
 very impressible, they were impulsive and impetuous, l)ut 
 they were unstable, lacking in perseverance, easily dis- 
 couraged by reverses, and it was their ill fortune to mar 
 their greatest enteqjrises by the discords and quarrels into 
 which they Avere continually falling among themselves. The - 
 picture draA\ni of them by Cato the censor has been true of 
 them in all ages of their history. " Gaul, for the most part," 
 said he, " pursues two things most perseveringly — war and 
 talking cleverly." ^ 
 
 Such were the people Avho brought the knowledge of 
 bronze into Britain. Hewing their way through a popula- 
 tion armed only with implements of stone, the intruders 
 taught the Caledonian by dear experience to avail himself of 
 the advantage offered by the new material. This was the 
 first fruit that gi*ew out of their invasion. But the Celts 
 were destined to render, in an after-age, a far higher service 
 to the nations of the West than any we see them performing 
 on occasion of their first appearance in Europe. But they 
 had first to undergo other vicissitudes and migrations. They 
 had to be dislodged from great part of that vast European 
 area of which they had held for a while exclusive possession. 
 1 Smith, Ancient Ilidory, iii. 259-270. Lond. 18G8. 
 
 I. D 
 
50 HISTORY OF SCOTLA^'D. 
 
 They must flee before the sword with which they had chased 
 others : they must be parted into separate bodies, shifted 
 about and driven into corners ; they must, in particular, 
 mingle their blood with that of the Caledonian and the Scot, 
 imparting to these races something of their o^\ti fire, and 
 receiving back something of the strength and resoluteness of 
 these other. The faith which they had left behind them in 
 their Aryan home, then only in the simplicity of its early 
 dawn, will break upon them in the AVest, in the full, clear 
 light of Christianity ; this will open to them new channels 
 for their acti^^ties and energies, and then they will crown 
 themselves with nobler victories than they have won hereto- 
 fore. Instead of unsettling kingdoms by the sword, it will 
 now be their only ambition to build them up by diff"using 
 amongst them the light of knowledge, the benefits of art, 
 and the blessings of Christianity. There awaits the Celts in 
 the future, as we shall sec at a subsequent stage of our 
 history, the glorious task of leading in the evangelisation of 
 the West. 
 
 But this is an event as yet far distant, and we return to 
 our task of tracing, as dimly recorded in our sepulchral 
 barrows and cairns, the changes in our national life conse- 
 quent on the introduction of bronze. The first of man's 
 pursuits to feel the influence of the new metal was war, as 
 we have said. And, accordingly, when we open the cists and 
 cairns of that ancient world, there is the sword, and there 
 are the other instruments of battle, all of bronze. But in its 
 evolutions and applications, bronze was found to benefit the 
 arts of peace even more than it quickened the work of 
 human slaughter. The art of shipbuilding took a stride. 
 From earliest time man had sailed the seas, at least he had 
 crept along their shores, but in how humble a craft ! a boat 
 of wicker work, covered with skin, or a canoe hollowed, by 
 
THE BROXZE AGE. 51 
 
 means of fire or a stone hatchet, out of a single trvuik ; but 
 now he begins to cross frith and loch in a boat built of 
 l)lank. His vessels, though still diminutive, are now more 
 sea-worthy. He can more safely extend his voyages. He 
 can cross the narrow seas around his island, carrying with 
 him, mayhap, a few of the products of his soil, which per- 
 chance his neighbours may need, and which he exchanges in 
 barter for such things as his own country does not produce. 
 Thus the tides of commerce begin to circulate, though as 
 yet their pulse is feeble and slow. 
 
 There is an advance, too, in the art of house-building. A 
 chamber in the earth, or a hut of tuif and twigs above 
 ground, had heretofore contented the Caledonian, Avho 
 bravely met with hardihood and endurance the inclemencies 
 which he knew not otherwise to master. But now, in the 
 bronze age, he erects for himself a dwelling of stone. His 
 habitation as yet can boast of no architectural grace, for his 
 tools are still imperfect, and his masonry is of the rudest 
 t^-pe ; but his ingenuity and labour make up for what is 
 lacking in his art or in his implements, and now his hut 
 of wattles is forsaken for a stone house, and his stronghold 
 underneath the ground is exchanged for strengths, or castles 
 of dry stone, exceedingly sombre in their exterior, but 
 cunningly planned within, which now begin to dot the 
 face of the country. 
 
 A farther consequence of the introduction of bronze was 
 the development of a taste for personal ornament. The love 
 of finery is an instinct operative even in the sa^■agc. Our 
 ancestors of unrecorded time were not without this passion, 
 or the means of gratifying it. The beauties of those days 
 rejoiced in their bead necklaces and bracelets. These Avere 
 farmed of various materials — bone, horn, jet, the finer sort of 
 stones, and frequently of sea-shells, perforated, and strung 
 
52 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 upon a sinew or vegetable fibre. Beads of glass have in 
 some instances been discovered in the cists and tumuli of 
 the stone period, the importation probably of some wander- 
 ing trader, from the far-off shore of Phoenicia. But when 
 we come to the cists of the bronze age, we find them more 
 amply replenished with articles of personal ornament than 
 those of the foregoing period. These, moreover, are of 
 costlier material, and, as we should expect, they are more 
 elegant in form, and more skilful in workmanship. As 
 among the ancients so Av-ith the primitive Britons, neck- 
 ornaments seem to have been the most highly prized ; for 
 collars abound among the treasures of the cist. The 
 other members of the body had their due share, however. 
 There were pendants for the ears, clasps for the amis, rings 
 for the finger, and anklets for the legs. Nor was this love 
 of ornament confined to the females of the period. As is 
 the case among all savage nations, it was hardly less strongly 
 developed among the gentlemen of Caledonia than among 
 the ladies. The archaeologist finds not unfi'equently in the 
 cist of the chieftain and warrior, lying alongside his 
 skeleton, the ornaments which graced his person, as Avell as 
 the sword and spear that served him in the battle. Among 
 female ornaments, necklaces have been discovered, consisting 
 of alternate beads of jet and amber. The native origin of 
 these articles is placed beyond doubt by the fact that they 
 totally differ from the Aiiglo-Roman or classic remains, and 
 that they are found in the earliest tombs, dug long ere foot 
 of Roman had touched the soil. 
 
 A yet gi'eater obligation did Scottish civilization owe to 
 bronze when it introduced, as it now did, a superior and more 
 serviceable class of domestic utensils. Hitherto culinaiy 
 vessels and table-dishes had been of stone or clay rudely 
 fashioned. These would fall into disuse on the advent of 
 
THE BRONZE AGE. 53 
 
 bronze. The natives had now access to a material of wliicli 
 to fashion vessels, possessing not only greater durability, but 
 susceptible also of greater variety of form and greater grace 
 of decoration. The articles of bronze — cups, tripods, kettles, 
 and cauldrons — dug up from underneath our mosses, show 
 that the Caledonian was not slow to appreciate the advan- 
 tages which bronze put within his reach, that he set himself 
 to acquire the art of working in it, and that he succeeded in 
 producing utensils of greater utility and of superior beauty 
 to any that he or his fathers had known. His table had a 
 grace which had been absent from it till now. He felt a 
 pardonable pride, doubtless, as he beheld it garnished ^vith 
 vessels of precious material and curious workmanship. A 
 king might sit at his board. Nor did the matter end there. 
 The art refined the artificer. The Caledonian workman 
 came under the humanising influence of a sense of beauty. 
 As time went on his genius expanded, and the deftness of 
 his hand increased. Every new creation of symmetry or 
 of grace as it unfolded itself under his eye gave him a 
 new inspiration, and not only prompted the desire, but 
 imparted the ability to suq^ass all his former efforts by 
 something better still — some yet rarer pattern, some yet 
 lovelier fomi. Thus grew up the Celtic art. The time of 
 its efflorescence was not yet come — was far distant. But 
 when at length that period arrives, and Celtic art is per- 
 fected, it is found to challenge a place all its own among 
 the arts of the world. From the simplest elements it 
 evolved effects of the most exquisite grace and beauty. It 
 was unique. Celtic hands only knew to create it, and on 
 none but Celtic soil did it flourish. 
 
 It is natural to suppose that for some time after the 
 introduction of bronze the supply of the metal was limited, 
 and its cost correspondingly high. In these circumstances 
 
54 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 vessels of stone aud claj would continue some little time in 
 use, along with those of the new manufacture. The finds in 
 the bogs and cists of our countiy verify this conjecture. 
 The two kinds of vessels are found in bogs and pits in 
 miscellaneous heaps, showing that the worker in clay and 
 stone was not instantaneously superseded by the worker in 
 bronze. Not only did his occupation continue, but from 
 this time his art was vastly improved. He profited, doubt- 
 less, by the metallic patterns to which he had now access, 
 and he learned to impart to his stone arts and implements 
 something of the symmetiy and grace which characterised 
 the new creations in bronze. It is now that we come on 
 traces of the potter's wheel ; as later on of the turning 
 lathe. The clay vessels of the period are no longer moulded 
 rudely by the hand, they have a regularity and elegance of 
 shape which the hand could not bestow, and which must 
 have been given them by machhiery. This is particularly 
 the case as regards the cinery vases, which are found in the 
 cists and cairns of the bronze period : many of them are 
 si^ecially graceful. The appearance of urns containing the 
 ashes of the dead in this age, and not till this age, is signifi- 
 cant as betokening the entrance of a new race and of new 
 customs, if not of new beliefs. The inhumation of the body 
 was, beyond doubt, the earliest mode of sepulture in our 
 country. Its first inhabitants had brought this custom with 
 them from their eastern home, and continued to practise it, 
 and, accordingly, in the very oldest cairns and cists the 
 skeleton is found laid out at its full length, and one conse- 
 quence of its long entombment is that on the opening of the 
 cist, and the admission of air, the bones fall in dust and the 
 skeleton disappears under the gaze. But in the bronze age 
 there is a change : this most ancient and patriarchal method 
 of burial is discontinued. The presence of the cinery vase 
 
THE BRONZE AGE. 55 
 
 i:i the grave shows tliat the body was first burned, and then 
 the ashes were collected and put into an urn. This treat- 
 ment of the dead has classic example to recommend it. 
 Every one knows that the Greeks and Romans placed the 
 bodies of their departed warriors and philosophers on the 
 funeral pyre. Homer has grandly sung the burning of the 
 bodies of Hector and Patroclus on the plain of Troy : the 
 kindling of the pile over-night, the quenching of the flames 
 at dawn with libations of wine, and the raising over the 
 inurned ashes of the deceased heroes that mighty tumulus 
 that still attracts the gaze of the traveller as he voyages 
 along that shore. But despite the halo which these high 
 classic examples throw around the funeral pyre, we revolt 
 from it. It shocks the reverence which clings even to the 
 bodies of those Avhom we have revered and loved while they 
 were alive. From these grand obsequies on the Trojan 
 plain we turn with a feeling of relief to the simple yet 
 dignified scene in the Palestinian vale, where the Hebrew 
 Patriarch is seen following his dead to hide it out of his 
 sight in the chambers of the earth. This mode of sepulture, 
 that is, by incremation, would seem to have been only 
 temporary. When we come later down the cinery urns 
 disappear from the gi-aves, and we are permitted to conclude 
 that the Caledonians ceased to light the funeral pyre, and 
 reverted in their disposal of their dead to the more ancient 
 and certainly more seemly rite of laying them in the earth.^ 
 
 With bronze, too, came a marked improvement on the 
 dress of the natives. Their clothing hitherto had alternated 
 betwixt a coat of fur, which was worn in winter, and a 
 garment of linen, which formed their summer attire. The 
 former cost them little trouble, save what it took to hunt 
 
 'Wilson, Pre-Mstoric AnnaU of Scotland, Chap, v., vi., vii. Edin. 
 1851. 
 
56 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 the boar or other beast of prey and compel him to give up 
 his skin for the use of his captor. The latter they wove from 
 the little flax which they had learned to cultivate. But they 
 needed a stuff more suitable for clothing in a moist and 
 variable climate than either the hide of ox or the light fabric 
 of linen. A woollen garment was what they wanted as 
 intermediate betwixt one of fur and one of flax. But in 
 the stone age it does not appear that they knew to Aveave 
 wool into cloth. Probably their implements were at fault. 
 But the arrival of bronze got them over the difficidty. It 
 supplied them with finer tools, and now an advance takes 
 place in the arts of spinning and weaving. They had now 
 less need to rob the bear of his skin, or slaughter the ox for 
 his hide. The wool of their flocks would furnish a gannent 
 more suitable for most purposes than even these. Accord- 
 ingly, woollen cloth now begins to make its appearance. 
 And from this time we can imagine the Caledonian, when 
 he went a-field, wrapping himself in his woollen plaid, or 
 donning his woollen cloak and caj), while his legs are en- 
 cased in leather, and his feet are thrust into sandals of skin. 
 But it is in the agriculture of the country that the main 
 change that followed the introduction of bronze is seen. 
 The stone axe, mth its edge so easily blunted, made the 
 process of clearing the forest a slow and laborious one. 
 The oaks and firs that covered Scotland yielded to the axe 
 only after long and painful blows, and it was with immense 
 toil that a small patch was redeemed for pasture, or for 
 growing a little grain. In truth, the clearances were mostly 
 effected by the agency of fire. But when bronze made its 
 appearance the Caledonian became master of the great 
 forests that environed and hemmed him in. His pasturages 
 stretched out wider and Avider ; the golden grain was seen 
 where the dark wood had waved. The beasts of prey 
 
THE BRONZE AGE. 57 
 
 decreased, their covert being cut down. If the hunter had 
 now less scope for the exercise of the chase, and his venison 
 began in consequence to grow scarce, he could make up for 
 the lack of that food in which he delights by a freer use of 
 the flesh of his flocks and herds. There came to be no lack 
 of corn and milk ; and the morasses beginning to be drained, 
 not only was the face of the country beautified, but the air 
 above it became drier and more salubrious. Such is the 
 evidence furnished by the contents of the refuse-heaps of 
 the bronze age, found in caves, in barrows, in lake-dwellings, 
 and in ancient burial-places. ^ 
 
 It is the admixture of tiu with copper that gives us bronze. 
 Copper is one of the most abundant of the higher metals, 
 but it is also one of the softest, but when alloyed with tin 
 in the proportion of from a tenth to a twelfth per cent., 
 copper acquires the hardness requisite to fit it for all the 
 purposes to which bronze was put. And as this is the pro- 
 portion found in the bronze relics Avhich have been dug 
 up in the various countries, it is thence inferred that bronze 
 was diff'used from one centre, and that centre in Asia Minor. 
 Brass is a later and different metal. It is the admixture of 
 zinc with copper, and is not found in use till we come down 
 to the rise of the Roman empire.-^ The invention of bronze 
 carries us back to an unknown antiquity. 
 
 1 See Dawkin's "Early Man in Bi-itain," chap, xxi., for the works 
 from which the above facts are gleaned, and on which the deductions stated 
 in tlie text are founded. 
 
 - Anderson's " Scotland in the Pagan Times and the Iron Age," p. 223. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE IRON AGE. 
 
 The iron age is a sort of twilight between the utter night of 
 the stone and bronze periods and the morning of histoiT. 
 Of all the metals iron is by far the most useful. This 
 superiority it owes to its greater hardness, which permits, 
 especially w^hen converted into steel, tools to be made of it 
 which are equally adapted for the most delicate operations 
 and the roughest labours. With iron we can trace the 
 finest line on the precious stone, or hew a pathway into 
 the bowels of the mountain. When man came into posses- 
 sion of this metal, he wielded that one of all the material 
 instmmentalities which was the fittest to give him the 
 mastery of the globe. Man could now till the earth, quarry 
 the rock, dig into the mine, clear the forest, build cities, and 
 enclose them within impregnable ramparts. But what, 
 perhaps, most pleased the Caledonian of that age was that 
 lie could now ride forth to battle in his war chariot, brandish- 
 ing his flashing weapons, and blazing in a coat of mail. 
 
 But if the first result of the introduction of iron, as in the 
 case of bronze, was the dismal one of increased battle- 
 carnage, aftertimes were to bring a compensation for this 
 initial evil in the indefinite multiplication of the resources 
 of art. The half- trained savage, as he busies liimself smelt- 
 ing the ore and hammering the metal to forge therewith an 
 instrument of slaughter, little dreams that he is in reality a 
 
THE IRON AGE. 59 
 
 pioneer of peace. And yet it is so. He is making proof of 
 a substance whose many unrivalled properties need only to 
 be known to convince man that he now holds in his hand 
 an instrument of such potency that compared with it Thor's 
 famous hammer was but a reed. When the qualities of iron 
 shall have been tested and ascertained, man will be able 
 to harness and set working in his service the mighty forces 
 of steam and electricity. And when this has come to pass, 
 the savage shall have gro^\Ti into a sovereign with not an 
 element in earth, in sea, or in air, which is not his willing 
 subject and servant. The mountain will part asunder to 
 give him passage, the billows of the Atlantic will support 
 his steps, and the lightnings will run on his errands to the 
 ends of the earth. 
 
 In Asia, it is probable, was the discovery made that iron- 
 stone is an ore, and can be smelted and wrought like the 
 more ductile bronze. At all events, it is in that quarter of 
 the world that we come upon the first historic traces of this 
 metal. The Homeric heroes are seen fighting with weapons 
 of bronze and of iron. The dream of Nebuchadnezzar makes 
 it undoubted that iron was known in Chaldea in his day. 
 This metal formed an important part of the colossal figure 
 that stood before the king in his sleep.^ From the ancient 
 centres — Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia — iron slowly made 
 its way westward. Hesiod (b.c. 850) tells us that in his 
 day it had superseded bronze among the Greeks. The 
 
 ^ It is curious to mark that the order in which the four metals are 
 arranged in the image of Nebuchadnezzar is the same with that, gene- 
 rally speaking, of their discovery and prevalent use in the world. In the 
 image the head of gold came first ; next the breast and arms of silver ; 
 then the belly and thighs of brass ; and fourth, the legs of iron. In the 
 earliest days gold was the most plentiful metal, though, from its great 
 softness, of little practical use. It is found frec^uently with the bronze in 
 our cists, and recent explorations in the plain of Troy attest its gi'eat 
 abundance in that age. Next comes silver, though scarce, and repre- 
 
60 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Aryan races, which were the first to settle in Europe, were 
 ignorant of metals. Not so the Celtic which succeeded 
 them. They excelled in the metallurgic arts, and if not the 
 first teachers of the Romans in them, they greatly advanced 
 their knowledge and proficiency. The Norici, a Celtic 
 tribe, inhabiting near the Danube, and to whom is ascribed 
 the art of converting iron into steel, are believed to have 
 supplied the Romans with iron weapons in their life and 
 death struggle with Carthage. In the days of Augustus, a 
 Noric sword was as famous at Rome as a "Damascus blade" 
 or an "Andrew Ferrara" in after times. From the INIediter- 
 ranean iron travelled into northern Europe by the ordinary 
 channels of commerce, and finally made its appearance in 
 Britain. The Caledonians were, doubtless, at first dependent 
 on the southern nations for their supply, but only for a time, 
 for their country abounds in iron ore ; and from the day 
 that they learned the art of smelting, they were wholly 
 independent of their neighbours for their supply of this 
 useful metal. In the days of Ca3sar the native mines 
 yielded, we know, enough for the needs of the inhabitants. 
 Their implements and weapons were now of iron ; their 
 personal ornaments were fanned of the same metal, along 
 with bronze, which, though noAv dismissed from the service 
 of the arts, was still retained in the business of personal 
 ornamentation. 
 
 The change which iron brought with it in the arts and 
 uses of life, was neither so sudden nor so radical as that 
 which was attendant on the introduction of bronze. It was 
 not to be expected that it would. The transition from 
 
 sented by the short-lived kingdom of Medo-Persia. Third comes tlie 
 period of bronze and brass, as exemplified in the powerful brazen-coated 
 Greeks. And fourth comes the iron kingdom of Rome. These four 
 metals came into use and dominancy in the same order in which they are 
 seen in the image. The historic eras are, the golden, tlie silvern, the 
 brazen, the iron. 
 
THE IROX AGE. 61 
 
 bronze to iron was not by any means so great as that from 
 stane to bronze. The change now effected was simply a 
 change from an inferior metal to a higher. jVIany of the 
 purposes sen'ecl by iron had been served by bronze, thougii 
 not so well. Custom and prejudice were on the side of the 
 older metal. The savage would be slow to discard the tools 
 which had served him aforetime, or to cast aside the orna- 
 ments in wdiich he had taken no little pride, and wiiich he 
 might even deem more fitting than those, so lacking in 
 glitter, as ornaments of iron. Besides, iron at first was 
 doubtless the more costly. Though the most abundant of 
 all the metals, its ore is the most difficult to smelt. It fuses 
 only under an intense heat. But its greater utility at last 
 carried the day and brought it into general use, first of all 
 on the field of battle. Self-preservation being the first law 
 of nature, man will always make choice of the best material 
 witliin his reach for the weapons with which he defends 
 himself. The bronze sword was adapted only for attack. 
 The w^arrior who was armed with it could deal a thrust, but 
 he could not parry the return blow. His sword of cast 
 bronze was apt to shiver like glass. It was useless as a 
 weapon of fence. This revolutionised the battle-field ; and 
 we begin to find the record of that revolution in the cists 
 and cairns. The leaf-shaped bronze sword disappears, and 
 the iron brand comes in its room. The shape of the weapon, 
 too, is different. The sword has now a guarded handle. It 
 is clear that the warrior used it to parry the blow of his 
 antagonist as well as deal a thrust, and this necessitated 
 some contrivance for guarding his sword-hand.^ 
 
 From the battle-field, and the dreadful work there re- 
 quired of it, iron passed into the kindlier and lovelier uses 
 of social and domestic life. And for some of the uses to 
 1 Wilson, Pre-lmloric Annals ; Dawkiiis, Eaiiij Man, 
 
62 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 which it was now put, iron would seem to be but little 
 adapted, as, for instance, that of personal adornment. The 
 modern beauty would think iron a poor substitute for gold 
 in the matter of jewellery, and would feel nothing but hor- 
 ror in the prospect of appearing at the concert or in the ball- 
 room as the horse appears in the battle, harnessed in iron. 
 But not so her sisters of two or three thousand years ago. 
 They deemed that their charms had not justice done them 
 unless they were set off in iron bracelets, iron anklets, and 
 other trinkets of the same unlovely metal. Even their lords, 
 who were hardly less enamoured of personal ornaments 
 than their ladies, wore, Herodian tells us, their iron neck- 
 collars and iron girdles as proudly as Roman his insignia 
 of the finest gold ; another proof, by the Avay, of the 
 adage that there is no disputing about matters of taste. 
 This much, however, can be said for the Caledonian, even 
 that the metal was novel, that it was probably rare and 
 costly, and therefore was deemed precious. Nor was the 
 Caledonian done with these things Avhen he died. He took 
 them with him to the grave, that he might appear in a man- 
 ner befitting his rank in the spirit world. He would wear 
 them in Odin's Hall. 
 
 Iron, too, was used in the coinage of our country. The 
 current money of our island in those days consisted in good 
 part of iron coined into small rings. So Caesar informs us. 
 Iron money has this advantage over gold, it better resists 
 the tear and wear of use ; and this may have recommended 
 it to the Caledonians. We can imagine our ancestors going 
 a-marketing provided with a score or two of these little iron 
 rings. The Caledonian wishes to pro\dde himself with a 
 skin coat, or a plaid of the newest pattern and brightest 
 colovu's, or a hand-guarded iron sword, for flint arrow-heads 
 and bronze-tipped spears are now antiquated ; or he would 
 
THE IRON AGE. G3 
 
 like to grace hi.s table with a drinking-cup, or a bowl, or 
 other utensil turned on the wheel ; or he aspires to present 
 his better-half with a bracelet or a finger-ring, and having 
 counted the cost and found that he is master of the requisite 
 nuniljer of iron rings, he sets off to effect the purchase. 
 The seller hands over the goods and takes the rings in pay- 
 ment ; thej are current money with the merchant. We 
 moderns like to combine the beautiful with the useful even 
 in these every-day matters. It gratifies our loyalty as well 
 as our taste to see the image of our sovereign, bright and 
 gracious, every time we handle her coin. The Caledonian 
 did not understand such subtle sentimentalities. The iron 
 rings he traded with bore neither image nor superscription. 
 They did his turn in the market nevertheless, and he was 
 therewith content. 
 
 A gold coinage appears to have been not altogether un- 
 known even then. " Little doubt is now entertained by our 
 best numismatists," says Wilson, " that the coins of Comius, 
 and others of an earlier date than Cnnobeline, or the first 
 Roman invasion, include native British mintage. There is no 
 question at any rate that they circulated as freely in Britain 
 as in Gaul, and have been found in considerable quantities 
 in many parts of the island. The iron or bronze or copper 
 ling money of the first century must therefore be presumed 
 as only analogous to our modern copper c:)inage, and not 
 as the sole barbarous substitute for a minted circulating 
 medium." 
 
 These rings, in some cases, at least, were interred with 
 the dead, despite the saying of Scripture that we bring 
 nothing with us into the world and shall carry nothing out 
 of it. The departing in these ages carried with them the 
 money with which they had traded in the markets of earth, 
 1 Wilson, P re-lu6toric Annals, pp. 353, 354. 
 
64 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 or what portion of it their friends judged necessary. Here 
 it is beside them in their graves, doubtless, in the idea that 
 in some way or other it would be serviceable in the world 
 beyond. The porter at the gate of Valhalla might be the 
 more quick to open if he had the prospect of a gratuity. 
 And the man to whom he gave admission — unless, indeed, 
 this new world was altogether unlike the one from which he 
 had come — would be all the more welcome that he was 
 known to be not without assets, and might help his friends 
 at a pinch. But not to dogmatise about the theory that 
 underlay these burial ceremonies, the feet is undoubted that 
 these little rings are found in the graves and cists of that 
 ancient time lying alongside the skeleton of their former 
 owner. The discovery, however, makes us little the wiser. 
 The great enemy of iron is rust. The hardest of all the 
 metals, it more quickly succumbs to corrosion than any of 
 the others. The ring money found in the old graves cannot 
 be described, because it cannot be handled and examined. 
 It is found, on the opening of the tomb, to be nothing but 
 a circlet of bro^^Ti rust. The thin gold ornaments dug up 
 at jNIycena?, and now in the museum {\t Athens, are as old, 
 at least, as our ring money, and yet they can be seen and 
 handled at this day. Xot so the iron coinage of our fore- 
 fathers. Xot unfrequently does it happen, when their 
 graves are opened, that the small rings remain visible for 
 a few minutes, and then, along with their companion 
 skeleton, dissolve in ashes. 
 
 The cists and graves testify to the new face that began to 
 appear on our northern and barbarous country on the comhig 
 of iron. With it the streaks of the historic daAvn begin to 
 be seen on the horizon. The isolation of the land is now 
 well nigh at an end. The Britons in the south are seen 
 crossing and recrossiu-r the channel in frequent intercourse 
 
THK IRON AGE. ().'> 
 
 ^^'ith theii* neighbours and kinsfolk the BclgiV. The arts 
 draw them together. They understand one another's speech. 
 The coinage of the two nations passes from hand to hand on 
 both sides of the sea. The tides of commerce flow more 
 freely. The pulse of trade is quickened. State necessities, 
 too, draw them to each other, and tend to cement tlieir 
 friendship. Rome is advancing northward, and wherever 
 she comes she imposes her yoke, and the Britons, desirous, 
 no doubt, of keeping the danger from their own door, send 
 secret assistance to the Belga3 in resisting the advances of 
 then' great enemy. The influences which this contact and 
 commingling make operative in the south of the island ex- 
 tend into the north, bringing there^vdth a certain refinement 
 to the Caledonian, and multiplying the resources of his art, 
 of which we begin to find traces in that only writing he lias 
 left behind him — his cairns and cists, to wit. His art-designs 
 are better defined, and also more graceful. He has better 
 material to work with, and he does better work. He is 
 gathering round him new appliances both for use and for 
 ornament, and may now be said to stand on the level which 
 the nations of Asia had reached five centuries before, or, it 
 may be, earlier. His fighting equipage is now complete. 
 He appears on the battlefield iu his war-chariot ; and when 
 his battles come to an end, he takes it with him to the 
 grave. For when we uncover his barrow, there are the 
 iron wheels that were wont to career over the field, carrying 
 dismay into the hostile ranks, resting in darkness — at peace, 
 like the skeleton alongside. There, too, is his shield with 
 its iron rim and studs, together with his sword, the prey, 
 all of them, of the same devouring rust, but telling their 
 tale, all the same, of bloody conflicts long since over. We 
 have a glimpse, too, into the boudoirs of the period. AVc 
 see the beauty performing her toilet with the helj) of a 
 
 E 
 
G6 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 polished iron mirror; for when we open her cist, there, 
 resting by her side, in the dark land, is the identical mirror 
 in which she was wont to contemplate the image of her 
 beauty when she lived beneath the sun ; and there, too, are 
 the trinkets of gold, of amber, and of other material which 
 she wore above ground, and which she has taken with her 
 as credentials of the rank she is entitled to claim in the 
 world into which she has now passed.^ 
 
 Of the thrifts and industries practised in the Scotland of 
 those days, we have memorials not a few treasured up, un- 
 wittingly, long ago for our instruction in this latter age. 
 Let us bestow a glance upon them. We have seen how 
 the Caledonian could build, sagaciously planting his winter 
 house far do^vn in the warm earth, and his summer retreat 
 of twigs hard by in the open air. Now that he is in pos- 
 session of iron tools, many improvements, doubtless, take 
 place in the accommodation and furnishings of his hut. 
 But he knows also to weave. The loom of that age, like 
 its plough, was of the simplest construction, existing only 
 in its rudiments. It survives, however, in the cairns and 
 cists — the great storehouse of pre-historic records — and with 
 it specimens of the cloth woven upon it. Here is the 
 long-handed, short-toothed comb with which the thread, 
 having been passed through the warp, Avas driven home. 
 This, and the beam to which the threads were fastened, 
 formed the loom. In the tumuli are found portions of cloth 
 of a quality far from contemptible, and sometimes of bright 
 and even beautiful colours. To create such fabrics on so 
 rude a loom, argues both deftness and taste on the part of 
 the workman. To pass from the weaver of the iron age to 
 the potter, we trace, too, an advance in his art. The cups 
 
 1 Wilson, Pre-historic Annals of Scotland, ii. 146; Thurnam Davis, 
 Crania Britannica, Partxii.; Greenwell, Ancient British Barrows, p. 450. 
 
THE IRON AGE. 0/ 
 
 and vases dug up arc more elegantly shaped, and by means 
 of a few wa^^ng lines, have a simple but graeeful decoration 
 given them. The art of glazing pottery — the colour com- 
 monly being green — has now been found out. From the 
 potter's wheel we come to an instrument of still greater 
 importance in domestic life. The grain-stones are now laid 
 aside, and the quern has come in their room. May we not 
 infer from this that a greater breadth of corn has now began 
 to be grown, and that the natives depend more on the field 
 than on the chase for their subsistence, and may have regaled 
 themselves on the same dish that may yet be seen on the 
 breakfast tables of our own day. Nor are the cists silent 
 respecting so humble an actor on the scene as the dog. The 
 attendant of man in all stages of his career, we know that 
 he followed the steps and looked up into the face of the 
 Caledonian, savage though he was, for here the bones of 
 dog and master lie together in the same grave. And 
 when the Caledonian was no longer a savage, though still 
 a barbarian, he had broken to his use, and attached to 
 his person and service, a yet nobler animal — the horse, to 
 wit. For here, in the same barrow, beside the bones of 
 the warrior, lie those of the steed that bore him into the 
 battle, and mayhap carried him safely out of it. He shares 
 the honour as he shared the perils of his master. 
 
 Nor did beauty in those days, any more than in ours, 
 neglect the labours or disdain the aids of the toilet. Here 
 are the whalebone combs, the bone and iron pins, and the 
 articles of gold and amber and jet, which were employed in 
 the arranging of the hair and the adorning of the person. 
 These remain, but — such is the irony of time — the channs 
 they helped to set off have long since faded. The men of 
 those days, too, made merry on occasion. Here are the 
 drinking-cups, the goblets, and the vases that figured at their 
 
68 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 banquets, once bright and sparkling, but uoav encrusted witli 
 the rust of two thousand years and more. In vain we ques- 
 tion these witnesses of tlie long past carousals touching the 
 liquor that filled them, and the warriors and knights that 
 sat round the board and quaffed it, while the song of bard 
 or the tale of palmer mingled in the loud din of the ban- 
 quetting-hall. The climate of Scotland did not favour then, 
 any more than in our day, the cultivation of the vine ; but 
 when denied the juice of the grape, man has seldom been 
 at a loss to find a substitute, and commonly a more potent 
 one. Our ancestors, like the Germans, regaled themselves 
 on a beverage brewed from a mixture of barley and honey, 
 termed mead ; and, though stronger than the simple wines 
 of southern lands, it was greatly less so than the potent 
 drinks with which the art of distillation has since supplied 
 their descendants. 
 
 The cuisine of the Caledonians of that period was far 
 from perfect. But, if their food was cooked in homely 
 fashion, it was varied and nutritious, as the long preserved 
 relics of their feasts testify. The museum at Bulak shows 
 us on what luxuries the Egyptians of four thousand years 
 ago resraled themselves. The buried hearthstones of our 
 country show us the dainties on Avhich the Scottish contem- 
 poraries of these old Egyptians were used to feed. The 
 Avheat-fields of Manitoba and Transylvania had not been 
 opened to them. To the ^4neyards of Oporto and Bur- 
 gundy they had no access. Of the tea and coffee planta- 
 tions of China and Java they did not even dream. 
 But their own island, little as had as yet been done to 
 develop its resoiuces, amply supplied their wants. They 
 could furnish their boards from the cereals of their straths, 
 the wild berries of their Avoods, the fish of their rivers, the 
 milk and flesh of their herds, and the venison of their moors 
 
THK IHOX AGE. 09 
 
 aiHl iiiouiitiiins. There is not a brocli in Orkney that docs 
 not contain the remains of the rein or red deer. The red 
 deer does not exist in Orkney at this day ; the animal con- 
 tinued down to about the twelfth century. 
 
 A marked feature in the Scottish landscape of those days 
 was the broch. The broch Avas pecidiar to Scotland ; not 
 a single instance of this sort of structm-e is to be found out 
 of the country. The brochs were places of strength, and 
 they tell of hostile visits to which Scotland was then liable, 
 and which made it necessaiy for its inhabitants to provide 
 for their safety. The brochs were built of dry stones ; mark 
 of tool is not to be seen upon them; nevertheless, their 
 materials, though neither hewn nor embedded in mortar 
 or lime, fit in perfectly, and make their walls compact and 
 solid. When danger approached, we can imagine the whole 
 inhabitants of a district leaving the oj^en country and crowd- 
 ing into the broch with their goods, and finding complete 
 protection Avithin their strong enclosure. They were circular 
 ramparts, in short, planted thick in some places — the districts, 
 doubtless, most liable to incursion — and they must have 
 given a fortified look to the land. Their average height 
 was 50 feet, their diameter 40, and the thickness of theu* 
 wall from 12 to 15 feet. Their door was on the ground 
 level, but, for obvious reasons, unusually narrow and low. 
 It was little over 3 feet in height and 2 in width. They 
 were open to the sky within. Their thick wall was honey- 
 combed Avith chambers, placed row aboA^e roAV, Avith a stair 
 ascending Avithin, and giA^ing access to the circular chambers. 
 Their AvindoAA'S looked into the area of the broch ; their 
 exteriors presented only an unbroken mass of building. In 
 some instances they Avere provided Avith a Avell and a drain. 
 There is not noAv one entire broch in Scotland, but their 
 ruins are numerous. Not fcAver than 370 have been traced 
 
70 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 in the country, mostly to the north of the Caledonian valley. 
 More may have existed at one time, but their ruins have 
 disappeared. The construction of these fabrics, so perfectly 
 adapted to their purpose, argues a considerable amount of 
 architectural skill on the part of their builders, and also a 
 certain advance m civilization. The discoveiy of Roman 
 coins, and the red glazed pottery of Roman manufacture in 
 these brochs, indicate their existence and use down to the 
 occupation of the southern part of Britain by the Romans. 
 
 There remains one point of great moment. What know- 
 ledge did the inhabitants of Scotland of that age possess of 
 a Su^jreme Being and a future state ? Tliis is the inner 
 principle of ciWlization, and, dissociated from it, no cixiliza- 
 tion is of much value, seeing it lacks the capability of being 
 carried higher than a certain stage, or of lasting beyond a 
 xerj brief period. What hold was this jirinciple acquiring 
 on our ancestors ? AVe have only general considerations to 
 guide us here. 
 
 Noah, before sending his sons forth to people his vast 
 dominions, doubtless communicated to them, as we have 
 said above, those Divine traditions which were their best 
 inheritance, and which the posterity of Seth had carried 
 down from Eden. He taught them the spirituality and 
 unity of God ; the institution of the Sabbath and marriage 
 — the two foundation-stones of society ; the fall of man, the 
 promise of a Saviour, and the rite of sacrifice. These great 
 doctrines they were to carry with them in their several 
 dispersions, and teach to their sons. As one who had come 
 up out of the waters of the deluge — the grave of a world — 
 the words of Noah, spoken on the morrow of that tremendous 
 catastrophe, would deeply impress themselves on the minds 
 of his sons, and would remain for some considerable time, 
 distinct and clear, in the memory and knowledge of their 
 
THE IRON AGE. 71 
 
 posterity. How long they did so we have no means of 
 certainly knomng. Without a written record, and left 
 solely to oral transmission, these doctrines, so simple and 
 grand, and fully apprehended by Noah's immediate de- 
 scendants, would gradually come to be corrupted by addi- 
 tions, and obscured by allegoiy and legend. We know it 
 to have been so as a fact. Hence the world of heathen 
 mythology which grew up, and grafted itself on the men 
 and events recorded in early Scripture. When the tenth or 
 twentieth generation of the men who had sat at the feet of 
 the great Patriarch arrived on the shores of Britain, it is 
 natural to suppose that parts of the primeval revelation were 
 lost, and that what of it Avas preserved was greatly obscured. 
 But in the darkest eras of our country, as we shall afterwards 
 see, the rites of worship were publicly observed. And 
 A\dth worship there are necessarily associated two ideas — a 
 Supreme Being, and a life to come. 
 
 There is one fact which throws a pleasing light on these 
 remote times of our country — No idol or graven image has 
 ever been dug up in our soil. The cists and cairns of our 
 moors contain the implements of the hunter and of the 
 warrior, but no traces of the image-maker — no gods of 
 wood and stone. The museums of Egj'pt are stocked by 
 the thousand AA-ith the gods her inhabitants worshipped in 
 old time, and scarce can we cast up a shovelful of earth in 
 Cyprus, but we find in it some memorial of pagan idolatry. 
 In the lands of Italy, of Greece, of Assyria, and of India, 
 long-buried deities are ever and anon cropping up and 
 showing themselves in the light of day, but no such pheno- 
 menon has ever occurred on the soil of Scotland. Ancient 
 Caledonia woiUd seem, by some means or other, to have 
 been preserved from a taint which had polluted almost 
 every other land. Relics of all sorts have been found in 
 
72 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 our soil, but never idol of British manufacture ; nor is one 
 such to be seen in any of our museums. " The relics," says 
 WUson, " recovered from the sepulchral mounds of the great 
 valley of the Mississippi, as well as in the regions of Mexico 
 and Yucatan, display numerous indications of imitative 
 skill. The same is observable in the arts of various tribes 
 of Africa, Polynesia, and of other modern races in an equally 
 primitive state. What is to be specially noted in connection 
 with this is, that both in the ancient and modern examples 
 the imitative arts accompany the existence of idols, and the 
 abundant evidences of an idolatrous worship. So far as we 
 know, the converse holds true in relation to the primitive 
 British races, and as a marked importance is justly attached 
 to the contrasting creeds and modes of worship and policy 
 of the Allophylian and Aryan nations, I venture to throw 
 out this suggestion as not unworthy of farther considera- 
 tion." ^ 
 
 jNIay we not infer from a circumstance so anomalous 
 and striking that the ancient Briton had not lapsed into 
 the gross polytheism to which the Greeks and Romans 
 abandoned themselves. Lying off the highway of the world, 
 and shut in by their four seas, they would seem to have 
 been exempt, to a large extent, from the corrupting influ- 
 ences which acted so powerfully on the classic nations 
 around the Mediterranean. They stood in " the old paths," 
 while the latter, yielding to an idealistic and passionate 
 temperament, plunged headlong into a devotion which at 
 length crowded their cities with temples and altars, and 
 covered their valleys and hills mth gods and goddesses in 
 stone. 
 
 We do not lay much stress — although some lay a great 
 deal — upon the mode of burial practised by the ancient 
 
 ^ Wilson, P re-historic Annals, pp. 341, 342. 
 
THE IKON AUE. 7'^ 
 
 Briton as a means of spelling out his creed. His weapons 
 v/ere interred along with the warrior, "Why?" it has 
 been asked. " Because," it has been answered, " it was 
 an article of his belief that he would need them in the 
 spirit world." In times still later, the war horse of the 
 chief, his favourite hound, his attendants in the chase, or 
 his followers on the battlefield, were all interred in company, 
 that all might together resume, in a future life, the occupa- 
 tions and amusements in which they had been wont to 
 exercise themselves in this. With fleetei' foot would they 
 chase the roe and hunt the boar. With even keener delight 
 would they mingle in the strife of battle, and as on earth, 
 so again in the world beyond, they would forget the toil of 
 the chase and the peiil of the conflict in the symposicC of the 
 celestial halls. 
 
 It was not within the gates of Valhalla only that the 
 departed warrior was permitted to taste these supreme joys. 
 Between him and the world in which he had passed his 
 fomier existence, there was fixed no impassable gulf, and he 
 had it in his power to return for a space to earth, and vary 
 the delights of the upper sky ^vitli occasional pastime under 
 " the pale glimpses of the moon." Popular belief pictured 
 the spectral warrior mounted on spectral steed, returning 
 from the halls of Odin and entering his sepulchral barrow 
 and becoming for a while its inhabitant. There, joined by 
 those with whom he had fought, and hunted, and revelled, 
 and whose bones lay in the same funereal chamber with his 
 own, he Avould renew those carousals with which it had 
 been his wont to close a day of battle or of chase during 
 the period of his mortal life. The tumulus or barrow was 
 sacred to his memor}'. His spirit was believed to haunt it, 
 and might on occasion hold fellowship with surviving rela- 
 tions and friends who chose to visit him in it. The Avife 
 
74 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 would enter it and lie down by the side of her dead lord, in 
 the idea of having communion \vith him, or she would bring 
 meat and drink to regale him, which she would place in 
 little cups provided for the purpose. Helge, one of the 
 heroes of the Edda, returned from the hall of Odin on 
 horseback, and entered his tumulus accompanied by a troop 
 of horsemen. There his wife visited him, and for some time 
 kept him company in his grave. This superstitious idea 
 protected these barrows from demolition, and to it is owing 
 the preservation of so many of them, forming as they do 
 the only contemporaneous and authentic record we possess 
 of the age to Avhich they belong. On the advent of Chris- 
 tianity, burial with "grave-goods" ceased. 
 
 It is one of the lessons of history that unaided man, 
 whatever his stage of ci\ilization, always paints the life to 
 come in colours borrowed from the life that now is. His 
 heaven is the picture of earth. It is a freshened, brightened, 
 glorified life which he promises himself, but still, in its 
 essentials and substance, an earthly life. The thinking of 
 the mightiest among the Greeks on the question of the life 
 that is to come, moved, after all, in the same low groove mth 
 that of our early forefathers. The philosopher of Athens, 
 when dying, fancied himself departing to another Academe, 
 where the same subtle speculations, and the same intellectual 
 combats, which had ministered so much pleasurable excite- 
 ment to him in the Porch or in the Grove, would be resumed, 
 with this difference, that there his powers would be im- 
 mensely refined and in\'igorated, and consequently should 
 have attendant on their exercise a far higher and purer 
 happiness than he had ever tasted here. The idea of a new 
 nature, with occupations and pleasures fitted to that new 
 nature, was an idea unknown alike to the Greek and to the 
 barbarian. It is a doctrine revealed in the Bible alone. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DRUIDS — THE SUN WORSHIP OF ASIA AND 
 CALEDONIA. 
 
 We have travelled back thirty or forty centuries, and dug 
 up the early Scottish world which, all the while, was lying 
 entombed in our barrows and cairns. The historian of a 
 former day never thought of looking into these ancient 
 repositories, and hearing what they had to tell resijecting 
 the doings of a long past time. He obeyed, as he thought, 
 a high authority, when he refused to entertain the hope of 
 finding " knowledge or device in the grave." He knew of 
 no record save a written one, and so turning to ancient 
 chronicles, he accepted the picture which some pious father 
 had painted in the twilight of his monastery, as the true 
 and genuine image of the ancient world. He was all the 
 while unaware that what he was in quest of was lying close 
 at hand — in fact, under his feet. In yonder barrow, which 
 he had passed and repassed an hundred times, but never 
 once paused to inspect, was that same old world embalmed, 
 and waiting through the long centuries to come forth and 
 reveal the secrets of ancient time to the men of a later and 
 more civilized age. 
 
 It is to this record we have turned. It is hardly possible 
 that there should be deception or mistake in the picture. 
 In truth it is no picture, it is the thing itself. It is that 
 veritable world in all its barbarism : its battles, its boai- 
 
76 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 hunts, its rude handicrafts, its earth-dug dwellings, its huts 
 of wattled osiers plastered with mud, its feasts, its burials 
 — in short, the men with all the scenery of their lives around 
 them. It is not tradition speaking to us through the fallible 
 voice of a hundred or more generations ; the infonuation 
 comes direct, we receive it at first hand. For while the 
 centuries have been revolving, and outside that tumulus 
 races have been changing, and djTiasties passing away, 
 changes there have been none on the world within that 
 tumulus, the ages have there stood stiU, and as regards the 
 validity and certainty of the e^•idence it furnishes, it is all 
 the same, as if we had opened that barrow on the morrow 
 immediately succeeding the day on which it was raised and 
 closed in. 
 
 From the barrow and the cist, where the history of the 
 Caledonian is written in the weapons mth which he fought 
 and the tools with which he worked, we turn to another 
 chapter in his history, one partly written and partly monu- 
 mental. We have seen the Caledonian on his battlefields in 
 the first age slaughtering or being slaughtered ^^^th his stone 
 axe ; in the next, plunging at his foe with his bronze sword; 
 in the third, riding into battle in his iron chariot, and hewing 
 down his foes with a sword of the same metal. We have 
 seen him essaying the more profitable labours of art ; first 
 moulding the clay with his hand, not caring how unshapely 
 his vessel if it served its purpose, then turaing it on the 
 wheel, and taking a pride in the symmetry and beauty of 
 the cup out of which he drank. We have traced, too, his 
 progress in dress : at first he is content to envelope himself 
 in fur of fox or skin of deer, but by and by he aspires to be 
 diff"erently clad from the animals he pursues in the chase. 
 With a stone whorle and spindle he converts flax into 
 thread ; and when the metals come to the assistance of his 
 
THE DRUIDS — SUX WORSHII> OF ASIA AND CALEDONIA. 77 
 
 ait, lie spins wool, and clothes himself with a garaicnt of 
 that texture. Probably some visitor from the Phoenician 
 shore, where the art is well understood, initiates him into 
 the process of dyeinj?, and now his moors are illumined by 
 the bright and glowing- colours of the Caledonian tartan. 
 We have seen his banquets and his funeral arrangements ; 
 but there is one chapter of his histoiy we have not yet 
 opened. How did the Caledonian worship ? 
 
 There must all the while have been gro\v^ng up at the 
 heart of that barbarous world a higher life. Human society, 
 however debased and barbarous, is ever at the core moral. 
 Feeble, exceedingly feeble, its pidse may be, so feeble as to 
 be scarge perceptible, but that piUse never can totally cease. 
 For the moral sense of society is no acquired quality, it was 
 given it by the law of its creation. But how can its moral 
 consciousness be developed, unless in some rite, or system 
 of rites, by wliich it gives expression to its sense of a Being 
 above itself ^ By what rite, or system of rites, did the early 
 Caledonian indicate his knowledge — vague, shado^v}-, and 
 undefined it may have been — of a Supreme Being ? Let us 
 observe him as he worships, we shall have a truer knowledge 
 of him, not of his art or his bravery merely, but of himself, 
 his thoughts and feelings, than when we see him chipping 
 arroAV heads, or tipping the spear with stone or bronze for 
 the chase or the battle. 
 
 We have abundant evidence, both monumental and 
 historic, that the C^iledonian worshipped, and not only so, 
 but that his worship Avas purer than tliat of most early 
 nations, and purer even than that of some contemporary 
 nations who were fiir higher in the scale of civilization. 
 Fetichism appears never to have defiled our country. Our 
 barrows and cists contain no such figures, grotesque, hideous 
 and horrible, as are objects of worship to some savage nations 
 
78 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 in our own day. We find no trace that such deities or 
 demons were ever adored or dreaded by our early ancestors. 
 The bestial idolatry of Egypt had not reached them. Their 
 religious level appears to have been higher even than that 
 of the Greeks and Romans. For, as we have said, by the 
 side of the skeleton that three thousand years ago was a 
 living man, there lies no image or god graven in stone, or in 
 silver, or in bronze. Had such been in use by the men who 
 sleep in these ancient cists, they would infallibly have been 
 found in their graves. Around the dead man we discover 
 that entu'e order of things amid which he lived : his battle- 
 weapons, the trophies of the chase, the cups, clay or bronze, 
 that graced his table, and brimed at his banquets ; the 
 trinkets of stone or of jet that he wore on his person, all 
 are around him in the grave ; but one thing is lacking, and, 
 curious enough, it is that one thing which we should before- 
 hand have made ourselves most sure of finding there, and 
 which, had it formed part of the system amid which he 
 lived, would infallibly have been there — the objects of his 
 worship even. That the dead should sleep with their stone 
 axe or their bronze sword by their side, and yet not seek to 
 hallow their cist and guard their rest by the image of their 
 god, is strange indeed. Yet so it is. We are driven, there- 
 fore, to the conclusion that the early Caledonians had no 
 notion of a Supreme Being, in short, were atheists, or that 
 their conceptions of God were higher and more spiritual than 
 those entertained by many contemporaneous peoples. 
 
 It is the latter conclusion which is undoubtedly the true 
 one. The Caledonian saw a Being above himself, All- 
 powerful and Eternal. He had brought this great idea 
 with him from his Aryan home, or rather — for that idea is 
 not astricted to locality, or found only where man first 
 began his career — it is the corner-stone of his constitution. 
 
THE DRUIDS — SUN WORSHIP OF ASLS. AND CALEDONIA. /S) 
 
 and equally indestructible, and accordingly he instituted 
 rites in honour of that Being, and reared, with his barbarian 
 hands, structures, rough, huge, majestic, in which to perfomi 
 these rites. This is a point which recent archaeological 
 discoveries in many and far-sundered lands have placed 
 beyond dispute, and it enables us to pass to a very im- 
 portant phase of our country's early history — the Druidic, 
 to Avdt. 
 
 Among the vestiges of a remote time that linger on the 
 ftice of our country, none are more remarkable than the tall 
 upright stones, ranged in circle, and the broad, massy hori- 
 zontal slabs, resting table-wise on supports, that are so 
 frequently met with on our moors and hill-sides, and some- 
 times in the depth of our forests. To both learned and 
 unlearned these unique and mysterious erections are objects 
 of curiosity and interest. The questions they suggest are, 
 In what age were they set up, and what purpose were they 
 meant to serve ? Immemorial tradition connects them ^^^th 
 the religious rites of the earliest inhabitants of Scotland, 
 and teaches us to see in them the first temples in which our 
 fathers worshipped. Till lately, the universal belief regard- 
 ing these singular erections was in accordance with the 
 immemorial tradition. It was no more doubted that these 
 great stones, ranged in solemn circle, filling the mind of the 
 spectator with a vague awe, had been set up with a view to 
 worship, than it was doubted that the stone hammer and 
 axe, their contemporaries, had been fashioned with a ^'iew 
 to battle. But in more recent times opinion on this point 
 has shifted. The theory that referred these structures to a 
 far-off time, and which saw in them the work of men 
 unskilled in art but reverent of spirit, began, some half 
 century ago, to be discredited. We were told that we were 
 ascribing to them an antiquity far too high, and that we 
 
80 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ought to seek for their origin in an age much nearer our 
 o^vn. 
 
 The period of the Vikings was fixed upon as that whicli 
 first saw these monuments hft up their tall, uncouth, and 
 solemn shapes on the moors of Scotland. The northern 
 marauders reared them in honour of their god. So it has 
 been said. Devout and pious men must these sea robbers 
 liave been, seeing they were intent on converting to the 
 faith of Woden the men whose goods they harried and 
 whose blood they spilt. Wc had not thought that their 
 incursions partook so largely an evangelistic character. But 
 there are difficulties neither few nor easily surmounted in 
 the way of accepting this theory. How is it that the few 
 centuries which have passed since their erection have been 
 able to impart to these columns the appearance of so 
 man^llous an age ? We have monuments at least four 
 thousand years old which arc not so time-worn and hoary. 
 Moreover, if their origin lies Avithin historic times, why is 
 there no record or reference to their setting up ? Why do 
 we not read that such and such a Viking, having Avon a 
 glorious victory, constructed a magnificent ring of monolitlis 
 on the Caledonian moor in honour of the god by whose help 
 his arms had triumphed ? And why, in fine, do the surface 
 of these columns bear no mark of hammer or chisel, seeing 
 iron tools were not unknoAMi in the age of the Vikings ? 
 But it is needless to combat an opinion which has no 
 inherent probability, and which has now scarce a suj^portcr. 
 Om* dolmens and stone circles Avcre grey Avitli age before 
 keel of Northman had touched our shore, or NorAvegian 
 roA'er had dyed our soil Avith blood, AA'hether ours or his 
 oAvn. 
 
 Yet another theory has been broached to account for 
 the existence of monuments so unique in point of rugged 
 
TMK DRUIDS — SrX WOHSIIU' OF ASIA AND C'AIJ:D()X1A. HI 
 
 grandeur, and so unlike any that arc known certainly to 
 belong to liistoric times. There are archajologists of out- 
 day who will have it that they are graveyards. They are the 
 niausolca of a barbarous age in which sleep the dead of a 
 long-forgotten past : chieftains of note and warriors of 
 renown, but whose names have gone into utter oblivion. 
 This is a theory only a little less improbable than that on 
 which Ave have been commenting. Where, we ask, are the 
 signs and tokens that they are sepulchres ? Are they placed 
 near city, or seat of population, as we shoidd expect a 
 great cemetery to be ? On the contrary, they are found 
 in the solitudes and wildernesses of our land, in spots not 
 then, nor ever likely to become, the scene of populous life. 
 It may indeed be said that these remote and solitary s])ots 
 were chosen on purpose, that prince and Avarrior nn'ght 
 sleep apart in lonely grandeur amid silence undisturbed. 
 Then, why were these supposed mausolea constructed on so 
 vast a scale ? A few feet of earth will suffice for the 
 greatest monarch, and as regards a funeral pile to draAV the 
 eye to his resting-place, a cairn like those that rise on our 
 northern moors, or a tumulus like that which towers on the 
 plain of Troy, or a mountain of stone like that beneath 
 which Cheops sleeps, Avill serve the purpose for better than 
 an open ring of monoUths enclosing some himdred or so 
 of acres. We nmst sm-ely grant to the builders of these 
 structures some reasonable sense of fitness. Or if it again 
 be urged that these places were meant to afford burial not 
 to a few men of note only, but to the nmltitudc, then, 
 we ask. Did the thinly-peopled Orkney require a graveyard 
 on the scale of the circles of Bogar and Stennes ? Or did 
 the England of that day demand a necropolis of a size so 
 vast as Stonehengc and Avebury ? 
 
 And then, too, Avhere are the memorials of the d(;a(l 
 
 I. P 
 
82 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 supposed to have been interred in these ancient graveyards ? 
 When we dig into the barrow or the cairn, we are at no 
 loss as to their character and design. Their contents make 
 it clear that they were meant to be receptacles of the dead ; 
 for there to this day is the skeleton of the chieftain or 
 warrior who was committed to its keeping, and along with 
 their leader, it may be, the bones of the men who fell 
 fighting around him, and now sleep in a common tomb. 
 But when we search around the Cyclopean monoliths on the 
 plain of Stonehenge, or the wilds of Stennes, we fail to 
 discover relic or memorial of the dead. We light on nothing 
 to show that bier of prince or of peasant was ever borne 
 within their precincts ; nothing, at least, to show that the 
 dead of a nation, great and small, and not for one genera- 
 tion only, but for many, were brought hither and interred, 
 as must have been the case, if they were national burying- 
 places. 
 
 It is the fact, no doubt, that, in some instances, explorers 
 have found the remains of mortality beneath or adjoining 
 these stones. But this is just what we should expect. If 
 these structures bore a sacred character, and were the scene 
 of religious rites, as we believe them to have been, what so 
 likely as that men of note should wish to lie within their 
 hallowed enclosure, and that the wish, in some cases, should 
 be acceded to. But these few solitary graves only strengthen 
 our contention that these places were temples, not grave- 
 yards. For if these exceptional burials still attest themselves 
 by the presence of stone cists with their mouldering contents, 
 why should there not be traces also of that great nudtitude 
 of burials which must have taken place here, if they were 
 public receptacles for the dead ? Why have the few been 
 preserved, while the majority have disappeared? In fact, 
 many of these stone circles and cromlechs stand on a bed of 
 
THK DIU'IDS — SrX WORSHIP OF ASIA AXD CALEDONIA. 83 
 
 rock, ^^■llcl•e grave never could have been dug, or the dead 
 interred. 
 
 Moreover, is it not a fact universally true of all early 
 nations, that their first great monuments were reared not 
 in memory of their dead, but in reverence of their deities? 
 They honoured the departed warrior by piling over his 
 remains a heap of stones, the height of the cairn corres- 
 ponding to the rank of the deceased : their conmion dead 
 they disposed of with less ceremony. In short, they did not 
 need public graveyards ; their earliest buildings were altars, 
 or sacred towers. The tower on the plain of Shinar, the 
 earliest monument of which we read, being an instance in 
 point. ^ We may adduce, also, in corroboration of our 
 assertion, the colossal temples of Egypt and India, and the 
 less immense, but more beauteous, fanes of Greece and Italy. 
 They were not mausolea, but shrines. The race started with 
 the idea of the Deity strong in them, and it was their delight 
 to expend the appliances of their labour and the resources 
 of their skill in rearing structures that might be worthy of 
 Him. The proudest of their edifices, those that challenged 
 admiration the most by their size, or by their strength, or by 
 their glory, rose not in honour of their dead, not even in 
 honour of their kings, but in adoration of their gods. This 
 
 ^ The dwellers on the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates reared towers 
 of from 500 to 700 feet in height for astro-theological uses. Some they 
 dedicated to the sun, others to tlie moon, or to the seven planets. These 
 towers were of brick, sun-dried or burned, and cemented with bitumen. 
 The builders began by rearing a high and solid platform. On this basis 
 they erected a series of receding towers, rising storey on storey to the 
 height we have indicated. In the upper chamber was placed sometimes 
 an image of the god for whose worship the tower was raised ; at other 
 times it was occupied by a priestess. The ruins of these earliest temples 
 still remain in the mighty mounds that rise on tliat great plain, and 
 which mark the site of its earliest cities. Our ancestors did the best they 
 could to imitate these structures l)y piling up an altar of huge blocks, 
 and drawing round it a grand circle of tall, sliaggy coUunns. — See Smith 
 and Hy ae' a Babylonia ; Rawlinsou's Ancient Monarchies, vol. i. 
 
84 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 fact, so universal as to amount to a law, authenticates the 
 tradition which connects the grandest of our early fabrics 
 with the sei-vice of our early worship. 
 
 The oldest of our monuments are stones set on end, and 
 standing singly, or in groups. All savage nations are seen 
 rearing such memorials ; they are their first attempts to 
 communicate with posteiity. Some event has happened 
 deemed by them of importance, and which they wish, there- 
 fore, should be known to those who are to come after them. 
 How shall they hand it down to posterity ? They have not 
 yet acquired the art of committing transactions to writing : 
 they know not to engrave or to paint : but they have 
 simpler and readier methods. They set up a tall stone on 
 the spot where the occurrence took place. Father tells to 
 son the stoiy of the pillar. It is a public and perpetual 
 memorial of the fact ; for should the tempest throw it do^^^l, 
 pious hands will set it up again, that the event committed 
 to its keeping may not fall into oblivion. 
 
 In the pages of the Bible, especially in its earlier pages, 
 we meet mth numerous traces of this custom. It was thus 
 the patriarchs marked whatever was most eventful and 
 memorable in their lives. Jacob sealed the vow which he 
 made to the august Being who was seen by him in his 
 dream, by setting up a stone on the spot when the morning- 
 broke, and anointing it ^Wth oil. The covenant betwixt the 
 same patriarch and Laban, made on the summit of Gilead, 
 instead of being ^Titten and attested by the signatures of 
 the contracting parties, had, as its sole record, a cairn on 
 the top of the mount. Twelve stones, rough as when taken 
 from the bed of the river, rose on the banks of the Jordan 
 as the perpetual witnesses of that miraculous act which 
 opened to the Tribes the gates of the Land of Promise. At 
 times the column of stone rose as a trophy of ^-ictory, and at 
 
THK DRUIDS — SUX WORSHIP OF ASL.V AND CALEDONIA. HiJ 
 
 other times as a symbol of personal or domestic sorrow. 
 Wlien Jacob laid his Rachel in the grave, he set up a pillar 
 to mark the spot. By this simple act, the stricken man 
 signified his desire that his descendants in days to come 
 should mourn with him in a sorrow, the shadow of which 
 was destined to hang around him till he reached the grave. 
 And well, as we know, did that pillar fulfil its trust; for 
 there was not an Israelite but knew where Rachel slept, nor 
 ever passed her tomb without rehearsing the touching story 
 of her death. 
 
 Simple blocks of unhewn stone were the earliest altars. 
 Such were the altars, doubtless, which Abraham, and after 
 him his son and grandson, built on the scene of their 
 successive encampments as they journeyed through Pales- 
 tine. Man in the earliest ages had no tools with which to 
 quarry the rock ; but the agencies of nature came to his 
 assistance. The tempest, or the lightning, or the shock of 
 earthquake, or simply the winter's frosts, tore up the strata, 
 and made it ready for his use, whatever the purpose to 
 which he meant to devote it, whether the record of a vow, 
 or the seal of a covenant, or the trophy of a ^'ictory, or the 
 symbol of grief. But of all uses to which stones were put 
 in the early ages, none was more common than the religious 
 <me. They were shrines at which worship was performed. 
 In the instances that have already come before us, the pillar 
 simply indicated the spot hallowed by some special appear- 
 ance, and henceforth set apart as the place where the family 
 or the tribe was to assemble, at stated times, to worshii^ 
 Jehovah. When the knowledge of the true God waxed 
 dim, the Sun was installed as his Vicar,^ and worshipped 
 
 ' (irivet quotes an Accadean (the earliest race) liturgy, in wliicli 
 Merodach is called, " I am he who walks before Ea — I am the warrior, 
 the eldest son of Ea — the messenger." This is strikingly like the language 
 of one who claims to stand before (lod in tlie way of being His vicegerent 
 
86 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 as the Power who daily called the world out of darkness, 
 and yearly awoke the vitalities and powers of nature. 
 Towers or temples now rose to the sun and his goodly 
 train of secondary gods, the moon, and the seven planets, or 
 "seven lights of the world." The more ci^^Hzed nations 
 embellished the centres of their idol worship with gi-eat 
 magnificence of art, but ruder nations, having neither the 
 skill nor the matenals for the construction of such splendid 
 temples, were content to rear humbler shrines. They took 
 a tall stone, unhewn and uncouth, as the tempest or the 
 earthquake had torn it from the strata, and setting it on 
 end, and consecrating it as the representative of the sun, or 
 of some deified hero, they made it the rallying point and 
 centre of their worship. Descending yet a stage lower, the 
 stone so set up was no longer a mere stone like its fellows 
 in the quany, having neither more nor less mtue than they ; 
 it was now a consecrated pillar, and, as such, was filled A^dth 
 the spu'it and potency, to some degree at least, of the god 
 whom it represented. Worship at the stone passed easily, 
 naturally, and speedily into ^^•orship of the stone. Lower 
 still, and now it was believed that these stones were in- 
 habited by a race of genii, or inferior gods, to whom had 
 been given power over the destinies of men, and whom, 
 therefore, it was the interest of man to propitiate by offer- 
 ings and sacrifices. And thus it is that we find the worship 
 of stones one of the earliest fonns of idolatry, and one of the 
 most A\ndely-spread and universally practised. Palestine 
 bristled throughout Av-ith these demon-stones when the 
 Israelites entered it. Hardly a hill-top without its cluster 
 of monoliths, or grove without its altar of unhewn, massy 
 
 or vicar. This would seem to indicate that idolatry crept in at first, not 
 by a direct denial of the true God, but by a claim on the part of a class, 
 or more probably a single usurper, to ■wield the power of God, and to act 
 in His room. 
 
THE DRUIDS — SUN WORSHIP OF ASIA AND CAT.EDONIA. ilj 
 
 block, on which fires burned in honour of the Sun or Bel, 
 or human victims bled in propitiation of the deity who was 
 believed to haunt the place. Hence the command to the 
 Israelites to break down and utterly destroy these hateful 
 and horrible objects, and to cleanse their land by sweeping 
 from off its surface the last vestiges of an idolatry so foul 
 and bloody. The specification of these idolatrous objects 
 is very minute, and might equally apply to the Druidic 
 shrines of Caledonia. It includes the menhir, or single 
 stone pillar, and the altar-dolmen, as well as the graven 
 image. Over both the Divine injunction suspended the 
 same doom — entire and utter demolition.^ Their stone 
 pillars were to be demolished, their graven images of gold 
 were to be battered and broken with the hammer, their 
 wooden deities hewn with the axe, their sacrificial dolmens 
 overturned, and the gi-oves in which these demon-altars had 
 stood were to be burned with fire. It is the very picture of 
 Scotland some thousand years later; and hence the fallen 
 menhirs, the broken and ragged stone circles, and the over- 
 turned and moss-groA^Ti dolmens that strew the face of our 
 country, — the ruins which a once flourishing superstition has 
 left behind it to attest its former prevalence and dominancy 
 in our island. 
 
 This form of worship came to Scotland from the far east. 
 We trace it by the footprints it leaves behind it as it 
 journeys westward. It accompanied, probably, not the 
 first, but the second great wave of immigi'ation which 
 poured itself forth from the great birthplace of nations 
 in Central Asia. East and west we behold this mighty 
 system extending its dark shadow, and enveloping all lands. 
 For though it has now passed away, at least in the names 
 and rites it then sanctioned and made obligatory, it has left 
 * See Lev. xxvi. 1. 
 
88 mSTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 its roots in the supposed mystic virtue of rites, images, and 
 holy places, as well as in the rude Cyclopean monuments 
 which it set up, and which, after enduring the shock of the 
 tempest and the ^^olence of thousands of years, still show 
 their gigantic fragments cumbering the soil of almost all 
 countries. Yonder, in the far east, on the mountains of 
 India, we descry the menhir, the ancestor of the obelisk. 
 Tribes that knew no other art knew to rear the stone 
 column in honour of the sun. Rude stone monuments are 
 found in the hills of the Ganges, and in the heart of Africa ; 
 on the plains of Persia, and amid the mountains of Spain ; 
 in the countries bordering on the Dead Sea, and on the 
 shores of the Euxine and the Baltic. They are found in 
 Tuscany and in Orkney. We lose trace of them among the 
 negro races. Their builders, it is supposed, were sprung of 
 an early Asiatic stock, which preceded the Aryan and 
 Semitic races, and flourished in the pre-historic stone and 
 bronze ages, and whose migration westward into Europe 
 can be traced by etymological as well as monumental proofs." 
 The Land of Moab bristles from valley to mountain-top 
 A\ith menhirs, stone circles, and cromlechs, offering at this 
 day the very spectacle which some of our moors present. 
 The Phoenician plain afforded a magnificent theatre for 
 this worship where it was fed by the riches of an opulent 
 commerce, and embellished by the skill of a consummate 
 art. Westward along either shore of the Mediterranean 
 these idol-altars flamed. Travelling beyond the Pillars of 
 Hercules, this system tm*ned northwards, and extending 
 along the western shores of Europe — then the farthest 
 known West — it ultimately reached our island. Here graft- 
 ing itself upon an earlier and purer system, it reared, with 
 barbarous strength and rude pomp, its great cromlechs, and 
 
 J Conder, Heth. and Moah, p. 196. Loud., 1883. 
 
Tin: DHUIDS — SUN WOKSHII* OF ASIA AND CALEDONIA. 5!!) 
 
 its circles of tall, shaggy columns, and tanglit to the men 
 of Caledonia the names of new deities, and the practice of 
 new rites. 
 
 We have thonght it necessary thus to trace at some length 
 the early rise and eastern origin of this form of worship, 
 because it throws light on the history of our country, and on 
 its oldest existing monuments. It enables us to guess at 
 the time when these monuments were erected, and it leaves 
 hardly a doubt as regards their character and use. They 
 were reared for worship. They form a part of that great 
 system of sun-worship which sprung up soon after the flood, 
 and which, with essential unity, but great variety of names 
 and forais, travelled over the earth, and set up its altars, 
 and taught the practice of its foul and cruel rites in every 
 land and to every people. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DRUIDS — THEIR RELIGION, DEITIES, HIERARCHY, 
 DOCTRINES. 
 
 It is delightful to watch the first buddings of art and the 
 first kindlings of patriotism, and see in these the gi-eat 
 imperishable elements in man — in even savage man — assert- 
 ing themselves, and fighting their way upward through the 
 darkness of savage life into the light of ci^ihsation. But 
 there is a power which is still more potential as regards the 
 development of society than either art or liberty, for it is the 
 nurse of both. Its di^^ne touch awakens them into life, and 
 not only puts them in motion, but guides them along the 
 road that leads to their supreme goal. To watch the ex- 
 panding sphere and the gro^^ang mfluence of this power is a 
 tiiily delightful and profitable study. Religion is the glory 
 of man and the crown of the State. This can be said, how- 
 ever, of but one religion, that even which, ha\"ing its origin 
 neither in man nor on the world on which he dwells, but 
 descending from a sphere infinitely above both, sits apart, 
 and refuses to o^vn either equality or kindred with the crowd 
 of spiu-ious faiths that surround it. These others, though 
 classed in the category of religions, may blast rather than 
 bless society. Their power in this respect will depend on 
 the degree in which they retain the essential elements of 
 that one religion which is divine. Had the Caledonians a 
 
THE DRUIDS — RELIGION : DEITIES : HIERARCHY, ETC. 91 
 
 religion, and what was it ? A history of Scotland Avith this 
 great question left out would be a husk with the kernel 
 lacking — a skeleton of dry facts but with no soul under 
 " the cold ribs of death." 
 
 We have already said that the Caledonians had a religion, 
 and that that religion Avas Druidism. It must, however, be 
 acknowledged that the religion of early Caledonia is a point 
 on which all are not agreed. Some go the length of main- 
 taining that the Caledonian had no religion at all : that 
 altar he never set up, and that god he never worshipped, 
 but all life long went onward, never once lifting his eye to 
 heaven, in a night of black atheism. A dismal past, truly ! 
 but happily we are under no necessity to accept it as the 
 actual past of our country. To maintain, as some have 
 done, that the Druids are an entirely fabulous class of men, 
 like the Fairies, Kelpies, and similar beings with which 
 superstition peopled our moors and lochs, is a bold position 
 in the presence of the numerous and palpable footprints 
 which the Druid has left behind him. In truth, the 
 Druidic age is as plainly written on the face of Scotland as 
 the stone age, and the bronze age, and the iron age. Oui- 
 cairns and cists do not furnish more convincing e\adence as 
 to the tools mth which the Caledonian worked, and the 
 weapons with which he fought, than the stone fanes, the 
 ruins of which dot the moors and hills of our country, 
 testify to a time when the creed of the Druid was dominant 
 in our land, and the Caledonian worshipped accordingly. 
 Besides the names attached to numerous localities clearly 
 connecting them with the Druidic religion, tlie traces of 
 its ancient rites still lingering in the social customs of the 
 people, and keeping their place though all knowledge of 
 their origin and meaning has been lost, present us with in- 
 disputable proofs of the former existence of a powerful but 
 
92 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 now fallen Druidic hierarchy. These footprints of the Diiiid 
 wlQ come more fully under our notice at a subsequent stage. 
 
 But farther, we hold, on the fundamental principles of 
 man's nature, that the profession of downright atheism is 
 impossible to a savage or barbarous people. Such a thing 
 can only take place in a nation that has made certain 
 advances in what it deems enlightenment, and has so for 
 cultivated the faculty of reason as to be able to make this 
 woful abuse of it. One must have eyes before he can be 
 subject to the illusion of the mirage, and in like manner one 
 must have considerable practice in the science of sophistry 
 before he can be able to reason himself into a position so 
 irrational as that there is no God. Atheists arc not born, 
 but made. 
 
 Did Druidism spring up on the soil of Scotland, or was it 
 imported from some other and remote region ? This is the 
 first question. We have already more than hinted our 
 belief that Druidism — we mean the system, not the name — 
 arose in a very early age, and had its birth in the primeval 
 seat of mankind. Druidism is a more venerable system than 
 the paganism of Italy, or the polytheism of Greece. It 
 had a less gross admixture of nature worship, and it was 
 more abstract and spiritual. Druidism Avas an elder branch 
 of sun-worship which arose in Chaldea. Leaving its eastern 
 birthplace at an early period, and travelling northward, 
 where for ages it occupied an isolated position, it had no 
 opportunity of studying the newest fashions of sun-worship, 
 and it consequently retained till a late period its comparative 
 simplicity and purity. Such is our idea, and that idea has 
 of late received strong corroboration from the inscribed 
 tablets and hieroglyphic records which have been dug up in 
 the buried cities of Assyria and Chaldea. And to the same 
 conclusion do all the recent philosophical investigations 
 
Tin: DHUIDS — REl.KHON : DKITIKS : HIEUAHCIIV, KTC. 9A 
 
 which have been made into tliis creed tend. Reynaud, in 
 France maintains that "the ancient Drnids were tlie first 
 clearly to teach the doctrine of the sonl's immortality, and 
 that they had originally as high conceptions of the Deity as 
 the Jews themselves. If they afterwards encouraged the 
 worship of subordinate deities, it Avas," he says, "for the 
 purpose of reconciling Druidism to that class of uneducated 
 minds for which the cultus of demi-gods and angels has 
 more attraction than the woi-shi}) of the Unseen One." ^ 
 
 The countrAiiian of Reynaud, JNI. Amedee Thieriy, who has 
 subjected the religions of ancient Gaul to analytical and 
 philosophical enquiry, comes to substantially the same con- 
 clusion. He finds traces of two distinct religions in ancient 
 Gaid. One resembled the polytheism of the Greeks. The 
 other was a kind of metaphysical pantheism, resembling the 
 religions of some eastern nations. The latter appeared to 
 him to be the foundation of Druidism, and had been brought 
 into the country by the C}nuric Gauls when they entered it 
 under their leader Hu or Hesus, deified after his death.- In 
 other words, this writer, with whom agrees the historian 
 Martin, finds, as the result of his enquiries, that Druidism 
 comes from the East, that in its earlier stages it was a com- 
 paratively abstract and spiritual system, but in its later days 
 became mixed in the West with the nature worship of the 
 Greeks, its votaries adoring deified heroes as representing 
 the sun, as also stonns, groves, fountains, and streams ; 
 taking these natural agencies for the action of the invisible 
 spirits that resided in them. Pinkcrton, though he wrote 
 before the polytheisms had been tracked to their original 
 birthplace, could not help being struck with the oriental 
 
 '■ Reynaud, UEfprit de la Gaiile; Encijclopceilia Briffinnica , vol. vii., Otii 
 Eel., article " Di-uidisni." 
 
 - AmC'dee Thierry, Histotre des Oauloi-^ Iiiicy. Brit., vol. vii., article 
 " Druidism." 
 
94 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 features borne by Druidism, and ascribed to it an eastern 
 origin. He says briefly but emphatically, "Druidism was 
 palpably Phoenician." ^ Had he gone farther cast he would 
 have come still nearer the truth. 
 
 Bel (sun-worship) was, in sooth, the prodigal son who 
 left his father's house and travelled into far countries, under 
 various disguises and amid great diversity of fortune. The 
 wanderer changed his name and his garb to suit the genius 
 of every people, and aspired to be accepted as the true 
 son of the Great Father over all the earth. As he 
 passed from land to land, he accommodated himself to the 
 predominating tastes and passions of the peoples among 
 whom he successively found a home. Idolatry was philo- 
 sophical and abstract among the Orientals. It was darkly 
 mysterious, but boundlessly voluptuous among the Egyptians. 
 It came to the Greeks in the garb of poetry and beauty. 
 Among the warUke Romans it marched at the head of their 
 armies, delighting in the clash of arms and the shout of them 
 that overcome. Among the Caledonians it affected a severe 
 simplicity and majesty, as befitted the people and the cloud- 
 capped mountains which were their dwelling. It was the 
 real Proteus who assumed a new name and a new shape in 
 each new land. And as the consequence of these endless 
 transformations, its votaries in one country strove with its 
 votaries in another for the supremacy of their several deities, 
 blindly mistaking for rivals those who all the while were hi 
 truth but one. " Religion," says James, " assumed almost 
 in every country a different name, in consequence of 
 the difference of language which everywhere prevailed. 
 Among the ancient Hindoos it was called ' Brachmanism,' 
 and its ministers ' Brachmans ' ; among the Chaldeans 
 'Wisdom,' and its ministers 'wise men'; among the Per- 
 
 1 Pinkeiton. Enquiry into the History of Scotland , i. 17. 
 
THK DRUIDS — KELIGIOX : DEITIES: HIERARCHY, ETC. 9o 
 
 sians ' JMagism,' and its ininisters ' Magi ' ; among the 
 (jri'ceks ' Priestliood,' and its ministers ' priests ' ; among 
 the ancient Gauls and Britons ' Druidism/ and its ministers 
 'Druids'; — all synonymous tenns, implying 'wisdom and 
 wise men, priesthood and priests.' " ^ This was the link 
 Avhicli united the Scotland of those ages with the far-ott' 
 Chaldea, this overshadowing idolatry, to wit, which made its 
 deities, though under different names, be adored all round 
 the earth — in the temples of Babylon and the fanes of Egypt, 
 in the shrines of Greece and the Pantheon of Rome, in the 
 woods of Germany and the oak forests of Scotland. 
 
 This essential oneness of the false religions accounts for the 
 fact, otherwise inexplicable, that in all of them we find more 
 , than mere naturalism. The idolatries are not, out and out, 
 the institution of man, they all embody conceptions above 
 man, and, like man himself, exhibit amid the ruins of their 
 fall some of the grand uneffaced features of their glorious 
 original. They all contain, though to no real practical pur- 
 pose, the ideas of sin, of expiation, of forgiveness, and of 
 
 ^ James' Patriarchal Religion of Britain, p. 34. Lond. , 1836. 
 
 As regards the etymology of the word Druid, tlie author, instead of 
 offering any opinion of his own, is glad to be able to quote the higli 
 authority of Don. Mackinnon, Esq., Professor of Celtic Languages, His- 
 tory, and Literature in the University of Edinburgli. That gentleman 
 has favoured the author with a note on the subject, which it gives him 
 much pleasure to insert here : — 
 
 " I think tliere is no doubt that ' Druid ' is connected with and derived 
 from the root that gives 5pus, 5ev5pov, dopv, in Greek; drus, 'wood,' in 
 Sanskrit; tree in English ; doire, a 'gi'ove,' and darach, 'oak,' in Caelic. 
 
 " That the word came, perhaps after the fall of the system, to mean a 
 ' wise man ' is undoubted. Jannes and Jambres (2 Tim. iii. 8) are called 
 * Druids ' in an Irish gloss of the 8th century ; in an old hymn our 
 .Saviour is called a Druid ; in the early translation of the Scriptui-es the 
 'wise men' are Druids (Matt. ii. 1). 
 
 "In our modern language ' Druidlieachd,' i.e., 'Druidism,' is nuigie, 
 sorcery, witchcraft. Instead of saying 'Druid' means 'wise man,' I 
 would say the word is derived from the word for ' an oak,' which, as you 
 point out, figured so largely in their worship. It came in Celtic litcratuiu; 
 to mean a ' wise man,' a ' magus,' a ' sorcerer.' " 
 
96 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 purification. This is owing to no unanimous consent or 
 happy coincidence of thought on the part of widely dispersed 
 tribes ; the fact is sokible only on the theory of the origination 
 of all the idolatries in a common source, and their propagation 
 from a common centre. These doctrines could no ways have 
 gro^^Ti up in the field of naturalism ; they are, as history and 
 etymology attest, the traces, sadly obscured, of what was 
 once more clearly seen, and more firmly grasped by the race. 
 They are at once the twilight lights of a departing day ; and 
 are the morning tints of a coming one. 
 
 Were the gods of Druidism one or many ? This is 
 the next question, and the answer to it must depend 
 upon the stage of Druidism to which it applies. In the 
 course of its existence of from one to two thousand years, 
 Druidism must have undergone not a few modifications, 
 and all of them for the Avorse. In its early stage it had 
 but one Deity, doubtless, whom, ho^^•ever, it worshipped 
 through the Sun as His symbol, or thi'ough Baal, the 
 Chaldean representative of the Sun. In its latter stages 
 it aspired to be like the nations with whom it had noAV 
 begun to mingle. Ca3sar, the first to describe the Druids, 
 paints their pantheon in a way that makes it bear no distant 
 resemblance to the Olympus of the Greeks. The Druidic 
 gods, it is true, have other names than those under which 
 the Greek deities were knoAvn, but they have the same attri- 
 butes and functions, and we have but little difficulty in 
 recognising the same deity under his Celtic appellative, who 
 figures in the Greek pantheon under a more classic cognomen. 
 In the Teutates of the Druids Ca?sar found Mercury, the 
 god of letters and eloquence. In Belenus or Bel he saw a 
 likeness to Apollo, the god of the sun. In Tar'anis, which is 
 Celtic for thunder, he found Jupiter the thunderer. And in 
 Hu or Hesus he thought he could detect Mars.^ The Cale- 
 
 1 Cresar, Bell. Gall. vi. 17. 
 
THE DRUIDS — RELIGION : DEITIES : HIERARCHY, ETC, 97 
 
 Joiiiaiis luul 110 Olympus, lifting its liead above the clouds, on 
 which to enthrone their deities ; they could offer them only 
 their bare moors, and their dark oak forests. There they 
 built them temples of unhewn stone, and bowed down in 
 adomtion unto them. 
 
 The hierarchy of the Druids formed a numerous and 
 powerful body. The priests were divided, Caesar tells us, 
 into three classes. There was, first, the Chroniclers, who 
 registered events and, in especial, gave attention to the 
 king, that his worthy acts might be handed down with 
 lustre unimpaired to the ages to come. There was, second, 
 the Bards, who celebrated in verse the exploits of the 
 battlefield, and sang in fitting strains the praises of heroes. 
 Then, third, came the Priests, the most numerous and influ- 
 ential of the Druidic body. They presided over the sacri- 
 fices, but to this main function they added a host of multi- 
 farious pursuits and duties.^ They were the depositories of 
 letters and learning, and had a great reputation for vast and 
 profound knowledge. The estimate of that age, however, 
 our o^v^l may not be prepared to accept, unless with very 
 considerable modification. They were students of science, 
 more especially of astronomy and geometry, in which they 
 were said to have been deeply versed. The astronomy 
 of those days was mainly judicial astrology : though there 
 can be no question that the early Chaldeans made great 
 attainments in pure astronomy, and recent discoveries in 
 Babylonia have given back to the Chaldean astronomers an 
 honour which has hitherto been assigned to the Egyptians, 
 that, even, of detennining and naming the constellations of 
 
 ^ These three orders are said to have been distingiiislied by the differ- 
 ent colours of their (besses : tlie chroniclers wore blue, the bards green, 
 and the priests wliite — none but a priest durst appear in white. See 
 Myrick's Costunips of the Ancwnt Britons; Dr Giles's Hidorij of the Ancient 
 Brilonn : Wood's Ancient British Church. 
 
 I. G 
 
98 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the zodiac. In geometry the Dniids were so greatly skilled 
 as to be able, it is said, to measure the magnitude of the 
 earth. At least they had enough geometry to settle dis- 
 putes touching the boundaries of properties. They searched 
 into the virtues of herbs, and by this useful study qualified 
 themselves for the practice of the heahng art. They were 
 the interpreters of omens — a branch of knowledge so seduc- 
 tive that their class in no land has been able to refrain from 
 meddlhig with it. Their divination was founded mainly on 
 their sacrifices. They narrowly watched the victim, some- 
 times a human one, as he received the blow from the sacri- 
 ficial knife, and drew their auguries from the direction in 
 which he fell, to the right or to the left, the squirting of his 
 blood, and the contortions of his limbs. 
 
 At the head of the priesthood Avas an arch-Druid.^ The 
 post was one of high dignity and great authority. Being an 
 object of ambition and of emolument, the office was eagerly 
 sought after. It was decided by a plurality of votes, and 
 the person chosen to fiU it held it for life. The rivalships 
 and quarrels to which the election to this great post gave 
 rise were sometimes so \iolent and furious that the sword 
 had to be called in before the priest on whom the choice had 
 fallen could mount the Druidic throne. The official dress of 
 the arch-Druid was of sjiecial magnificence and splendour. 
 "He was clothed in a stole of vu'gin-white, over a closer 
 robe of the same fastened by a girdle on which appeared the 
 crystal of augury cased in gold. Round his neck was the 
 breastplate of judgment. Below the breastplate was sus- 
 pended the Glain Neidr, or serpent's jewel. On his head he 
 had a tiara of gold. On each of two fingers of his right 
 hand he wore a ring ; one plain, and the other the chain 
 ring of divination." - 
 
 1 Cffisar, Bell. Gall., vi. 14. 
 
 ^Nasli, Taliesin : the Bards and I)rnul» of Britain, p. 15. Loud,, 185?. 
 
THE DRUIDS — KELIGIOX : DEITIEK : HIERARCHY, ETC. 99 
 
 The Druids acted as judges. By this union of the judicial 
 and tlie sacerdotal offices they vastly increased their in- 
 fluence and authority. A tumulus, closely adjoining their 
 stone circle, or even "within it, served for their tribunal. At 
 other times they would erect their judgment seat beneath 
 the boughs of some great oak, and when the people came 
 up to sacrifice, or gathered to the festivals, they had the 
 farther privilege, if so they wished, of having their causes 
 heard and decided. The Druids were also, to a large 
 extent, the legislators of the nation. Their position, their 
 character, and, above all, their superior intelligence, enabled 
 them easily to monopolise the direction of public affairs, and 
 to become the \irtual rulers of tlie country. No great 
 measure could be undertaken without their approval. They 
 were the counsellors of the king. With their advice he 
 made peace or he made war. If he chose to act contrary to 
 their counsel it was at his own peril. It behoved him to le 
 wary in all his dealings with a class of men who enjoyed 
 such consideration in the eyes of the vulgai', and whose 
 power was believed to stretch into the supernatural sphere, 
 and might, if their pride was wounded or their interests 
 touched, visit the country with plague, or tempest, or famine, 
 or other calamity. So powerful was the control Avhich the 
 Druids wielded, Caisar informs us, that they would arrest 
 armies on their march to the battlefield. Nay, even when 
 rank stood confronting rank with levelled spears and swords 
 unsheathed, if the Druids stepped in betwixt the hostile 
 lines, and commanded peace, the combatants, though burning 
 to engage, instantly sheathed their weapons and left the field. 
 
 The Druids held an annual general assembly for the regu- 
 lation of their affairs. This convocation, Caesar informs us, 
 was held in the territory of the Carnutes in Gaul, by which 
 Dreux, north of the Loire, is most probably meant. Their 
 
100 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 places of rendezvous was a consecrated grove. Whether 
 delegates attended from Caledonia we are not informed. It 
 is not likely that they did, seeing the Scottish Druids re- 
 garded themselves as an earlier and purer branch of the 
 great Druidic family, and were not likely to own submission 
 to a body meeting beyond seas. They had their own con- 
 vocation doubtless on their o^^^l soil, and framed their own 
 laws for the guidance of then* affairs. The convention at 
 Dreux, besides enacting general decrees binding on all their 
 confraternities throughout Gaul, gave audience to any who 
 had private suits and controversies to prosecute before them. 
 It was understood that all who submitted their quarrels to their 
 arbitrament bound themselves to bow to their decision. The 
 court Avas armed with terrible powers for enforcing its judg- 
 ment. If any resisted he was smitten wdth excommunication. 
 This penalty stript the man of everything. It placed him 
 beyond the pale of all natural and social as well as ecclesias- 
 tical rights. No one durst speak to him or render him the 
 least help, even to the extent of giving him a morsel of 
 bread, or a cup of water, or even a light. His extremity 
 was du'c, and alternative he had none, save to submit to 
 Druidic authority, or be crushed by Druidic vengeance. 
 
 This powerful class enjoyed, moreover, large and special 
 immunities. AVhether a national provision was made for 
 them does not appear. They hardly needed such, consider- 
 ing the wealth which must have flowed in upon them from 
 a variety of sources. " Their endowment," says YeowelV 
 " was five free acres of land," Anthout making it clear 
 whether it was each individual Druid or each fraternity that 
 was so endowed. They are said to have imposed a tax on 
 each plough in the parish in which they ofliciated as priests.' 
 
 ^ Yeowell, Chronicles of the British Church, London, 1S47. 
 - Ibid. 
 
TIIK DRUIDS — religion: DEITIES: HIERARCHY, ETC. lOl 
 
 They were the judges, physicians, and teachers of their 
 nation, besides being the dispensers of the sacred rites ; and 
 it is not easy to beheve that all these functions were void of 
 emolument. The Druids enjoyed, besides, other and very 
 special privileges. Their persons were held inviolable. They 
 could pass through the territories of hostile tribes without 
 dreading or receiving harm. His white robe was protection 
 enough to the Druid. When he journeyed he was welcomed 
 at every table, and when night fell he could enter any door 
 and sleep under any roof. He was exempt from land tax. 
 He was never required to gird himself with sword or risk 
 life on the battlefield. He Avas not obliged to toil at the 
 plough, or the spade, or the loom. He left these necessaiy 
 labours to others. " They contributed," says Toland, though 
 the sentence, after what we have said, vvill be felt to be too 
 sweeping — " They contributed nothing to the State but 
 charms." 
 
 It is a question not less important than any of the pre- 
 ceding, What were the doctrines that fomied the creed of 
 Diiiidism ? We can answer only doubtfully. Not a sera}) 
 of writing has come down to us from hand of Druid ; and 
 ill the absence of all information at first hand touching their 
 tenets, we are compelled to be content with the fragmentary 
 notices which Ciesar and Pliny and Tacitus and Pomponius 
 Mela and others have been pleased to give us. These are 
 not exactly the pens from which we would expect a full and 
 accurate account of Druidic theology. These writers but 
 pause in the midst of weightier matters to bestow a glance 
 on what they deemed a curious if not barbarous subject. 
 With every disposition to be accurate, we may well doubt 
 their ability to be so. But we must accept their statements 
 or confess that we know nothing of the creed of Druidism. 
 <Jn the more prominent doctrines — especially those discussed 
 
102 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXI). 
 
 ill the schools of tlieu- own country — these writers could 
 hardly be mistaken, and with their hints we may venture 
 on an attempt to reconstruct the framework, or rather, we 
 ought to say, exhume the skeleton of Druidic theology from 
 its grave of two thousand years. 
 
 Philosophy begins at man ; the starting point of theology 
 is God. What were the notions of the Druids respecting 
 the first and highest of all Beings ? From all we can gather, 
 they cherished worthier and more exalted ideas of the 
 Supreme than the other peoples of their day. They brought 
 with them from the East, and would seem to have long pre- 
 sened, the great idea of one Supreme Being, infinite, eternal, 
 and omnipotent, the maker of all things, and the disposer of 
 all events, who might be conceived of by the mind, but of 
 whom no likeness could be fashioned by the hand. Such is 
 the account transmitted to us by Pliny,^ and his statement 
 is corroborated by Tacitus, who says, that " they do not 
 confine their deities within buildings, nor represent them by 
 any likeness to the human form. They merely consecrate 
 bowers and groves, and designate by the names of gods 
 that mysterious essence which they behold only in the 
 spirit of adoration." 2 It is farther authenticated by the 
 negative testimony of om* cainis and cists. In these, as 
 we have already said, no image of God, no likeness of the 
 Invisible has hitherto been found. This fact is striking, espe- 
 cially when the state of things in Egypt and Greece is taken 
 into account, and is explicable only on the supposition that 
 the Caledonians abstained from making images of the object 
 of their worship, and clung to the nobler and more spiritual 
 conceptions of their early ancestors. 
 
 Some doubt is thrown on this, however, by the statement 
 
 ^ Plinii, Nat. Hist. , lib. xvi. cap. 44. 
 - Tac. Trib. Ger. c. 9. 
 
Tin: DKi'ins — religion: deities: iiierarchv, etc. 103 
 
 of Ct«sar already <| noted, tliat the Druids worshipped a 
 phirality of gods. His words were spoken with an imme- 
 diate reference to the Druids in Gaul. The Druidism of 
 Britain, he admits, was not exactly of tlie same type ; it was 
 ))urer. Xor does it follow from Caesar's statement that the 
 liritish Druids made images of their gods, even granting that 
 they had now come to worship the Supreme under a variety 
 of names. In Ca3sar's day the more abstract and spiritual 
 Druidism of an early time had come to be mixed and debased 
 both in Gaul and Britain with the polytheistic notions of the 
 Greeks. The light of primeval revelation which the first 
 immigrants brought with them, imperfect from the first, 
 had ftided age after age, as was inevitable where there was 
 no ^\^■itten record, and where the memorials of the primitive 
 faith were connnitted solely to tradition. And though pre- 
 served longer in a state of purity in Britain than anywhere 
 else, those who now inhabited our island cherished less 
 wortliy notions of the Deity, and were more polytheistic in 
 their worship than the men whom the first transport fleet of 
 canoes had carried across to its shore. 
 
 That they believed in the immortality of the soul, and 
 consequently in a state of existence beyond the grave, we 
 have the explicit testimony of Pomponius Mela. And he 
 assigns the motive which led the priests to inculcate this 
 doctrine on the people, the hope even that it would inspire 
 them Avith courage on the battlefield. His words are, 
 *' There is one thing they teach their disciples, which also 
 has been disclosed to the common people, in order to render 
 them more brave and fearless ; even that the soul is immortal, 
 and that there is another life after death." ^ The testimony 
 
 ' Unum ex iis qu;f prwcipiunt, in viilgus cffluxit, videlicet lit forent ad 
 bella nieliores, a'tenias esse aniinas, vitaiaqiie alteram ad manes. Pom- 
 ponii Melte, De Situ Oibis, Libri Ties, cap. 2, Ludg. Batav., 1696. 
 
104 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of Caesar on tlie point is to the same effect. The soul's 
 immortality, and a life to come, in which every worthy and 
 valorous deed shall receive reward, forms, he tells us, part 
 of the teaching of the Druids. And he notes, too, its 
 salutary influence in heightening the courage of the warriors 
 by remo\'ing the fear of death as the end of existence. 
 There was no such certain belief on this point in the country 
 of the great Roman, and the teaching of the Athenian sages 
 was, too, less clear and definite touching a life after death. 
 But a doctrine unknown, or but dimly seen in the noon of 
 Greek and Roman ci^^lization, was fully apprehended in the 
 barbaric night of the remote Britain. To this extent the 
 Druidism of Caledonia surpassed the paganisms of classic 
 lands, and to the extent in which it excelled them did it 
 approximate primeval revelation. 
 
 The Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls 
 has been attributed to the Druids, but on no sufficient 
 evidence. Transplanted from the hot valley of the Nile to 
 the scarcely less genial air of Athens, that tenet might flourish 
 in Greece, but hardly in the bleak climate of Caledonia. In 
 fact, the doctrine of the future life as a scene of rewards and 
 punishments, and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, 
 are hardly compatible, and could scarce be received as 
 articles of belief by the same people. If in the life to come 
 the hero was to receive honour and the coward to meet 
 merited disgrace, was it not essential that both should retain 
 their identity ? If they should change their shaj^es and 
 become, or appear to become, other beings, might not some 
 confusion arise in the allotment of rewards ? AYliat was to 
 hinder the coward running off" with the honours of the hero, 
 and the hero being subjected to the stigma of the coward ? 
 Besides Pomponius INlela, in his few pregnant sentences on 
 the Druids, communicates a piece of infoniiation touching a 
 
THE DRUIDS — R?:LIGI0X : DEITIES I HIERARCHY, ETC. 105 
 
 curious burial custom of theirs, which is certainly at variance 
 ivitli tlie beHcf tliat souls, after deatli, migrate into other 
 forms Avith a total forgetfulness of all that passed in their 
 previous state of existence. He tells us that when they 
 inurned the ashes of their dead they buried along with them 
 tlieir books of account and the hand notes of the moneys 
 tliey had lent when alive, but which had not been repaid 
 them by their debtors, that they might have the means of 
 prosecuting their claim in the world beyond the grave. ^ 
 They were clearly not of opinion that death pays all debts. 
 But if they accepted the doctrine of transmigration as a 
 truth, it was idle to take with them to the grave the accounts 
 of their undischarged acceptances ; for, amongst the multi- 
 tude of shapes into any one of which the debtor might 
 chance to be metamorphosed, how was it possible for the 
 creditor to discover and identify him, so as to compel him to 
 discharge the obligations which he had shirked in the upper 
 world ? On the theory of transmigration the thing was 
 hopeless. 
 
 This is all that we can with certainty make out as regards 
 the religious beliefs of the Druid. And, granting that all 
 this is true, how little, after all, does it amount to ! He is 
 sure of but tAvo things, a Being, eternal and omnipotent, and 
 an existence beyond the grave, also eternal. But these two 
 awful truths bring crowding into his mind a thousand 
 anxious enquiries, not one of which he can answer. He has 
 no means of knowing with what dispositions the great Being 
 above him regards him, and so he cannot tell what his own 
 eternal lot and destiny shall be. The two lights in his sky 
 are enough, and only enough, to show him the ftithomless 
 
 ' Itaque cum niortuis cremant ac defodiunt apta viventibus olim. 
 Negotiorum ratio etiam et exactio credit! deferebatur ad inferos 
 erantqxie qui se in rogos suorum, veliit una victuri, libenter immitterent. 
 Pom. Mel., lib. iii. cap. 2. 
 
106 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 night that encompasses him on all sides, but not his way 
 through it. Travel in thought, or strain his vision as he 
 may through the appalling succession of ages, eternity rising 
 behind eteniity, it is still night, black night, and he never 
 comes to streak of morning, or to golden gleam as from the 
 half opened gates of a world beyond these ages of darkness. 
 Such was Druidism in its best days. 
 
 In what an air of mystery and wisdom did the Druid 
 wrap up the little that he knew ! He abstained from put- 
 ing his system into writing, and communicated it only 
 orally to select disciples, whom he mthdrew into caves and 
 the solitude of dark forests ; and there, only after long years 
 of study, in the course of which their minds were prepared 
 for the sublime revelation to be imparted to them, did he 
 initiate them into the highest mysteries of his system.^ This 
 retreat and secrecy he affected, doubtless, not only to guard 
 his sacred tenets from the knowledge of the ^allgar, but to 
 aid the imagination in representing to itself how aA\'fid and 
 sublime a thing Druidism was, when its last and profoundest 
 doctrines could be whispered only in the bowels of the earth, 
 or the deepest shades of the forest, and to none save to 
 minds trained, purified, and strengthened for the final dis- 
 closure, and so conducted step by step to those sublime 
 heights which it might have been dangerous and impious 
 to approach more quickly. Had the Druid made the 
 experiment of reducing his system to writing, and stating it 
 in 2)lain words and definite propositions, he would have seen, 
 and others too would have seen, that his vaunted knowledge 
 might have been contained ^^^thin narrow limits indeed — 
 compressed into a nut shell. 
 
 When the intercourse between our island and Phoenicia 
 
 ^ Docent multa noblissimos gentis clam et diu vicennis annis in specn, 
 lit in abditis saltibiis. Pom, Mel., lib. iii. cap, 2. 
 
TiiK DRUin.s — rki.kjion: deities: hierarchy, etc. 10/ 
 
 niul Ureece sprang up and became more frequent, the golden 
 age of British Druidism began to decline. It was natural 
 that the eastern trader should bring vrith him the newest 
 fashions from these noted theatres of paganism, and should 
 strive to teach the unsophisticated islanders a more aesthetic 
 ritual. And yet there is no evidence that the change 
 effected was great. The British Druid fought shy of tliese 
 foreign novelties, and continued to walk in the " old paths ; " 
 and Ca?sar, long after, found the system flourishing here in a 
 purity and perfection unknown to it in other lands, which 
 made it be looked upon as a product pecuhar to Britain, and 
 fonning a model and standard for Druidism everywhere else. 
 Those in Gaul Avho wished to be more perfectly initiated into 
 its mysteries than was possible in their own countiy, crossed 
 the sea to what tliey believed to be its birthplace, and 
 there " drank at the well of Druidism undefiled." ^ 
 1 Be Bello GalUco, lib. vi. cap. 14. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DRUID's egg THE MISTLETOE — THE DRUID's 
 
 SACRIFICE. 
 
 We have essayed to reproduce the theology of the Druids so 
 far as we can glean it from the fragmentary notices of the 
 classic writers. Had these writers been of the number of 
 its inner disciples, and sat at the feet of Druid in dark cave 
 or in gloom of oak forest, we should have known more of 
 the tenets of those venerable teachers who might be seen in 
 former ages traversing, in long white robes, the same fields 
 and highways which are now trodden by ourselves. Instead 
 of a meagre outline we might have had a full body of Druidic 
 divinity transmitted to us. And yet it might not have been 
 so. We shrewdly suspect that we are in possession of all 
 the truths which Druidism contained, and that what we lack 
 is only the shadowy sublimities in which they were wrapped 
 up, and which, by removing them beyond the sphere of clear 
 and definite comprehension, made them imposing. 
 
 From the theology of Druidism we pass to its worship 
 and rites. Some of these rites were curious, others were 
 picturesque, and others were repulsive and horrible. Of the 
 first, the curious, but not less credulous than curious, was 
 the Druid's egg. This egg appears to have been an object 
 of some interest to the ancients, seeing they speak of it, and 
 some of them aver having actually seen and handled it. 
 
THE URUID's EUG — THE :MISTLET0E, ETC. 109 
 
 Of tlie number who have specially described it is Pliny. If 
 half of what is related of this egg be true, it must be to us, 
 as it was to the ancients, an object of no little wonder. It 
 Avas fomied of the scum of serpents. As the snakes twisted 
 and writhed in a tangled knot, the egg, produced in some 
 mysterious way, was seen to emerge fi'om the foaming mass 
 of vipers, and float upward into the air.^ It was caught by 
 the priests while in the act of falling. The Druid who 
 found himself the fortunate possessor of this invaluable 
 treasm"e took instant measures to prevent being stript of 
 it almost as soon as he had secured it. Tlu'owing himself 
 upon a horse that was kept waiting for him, he galloped oft", 
 pui'sued by the snakes, nor halted till he had got on the 
 other side of the first running water to which his flight 
 brought him. His pursuers were stopped by the stream ; 
 they had power to follow him no farther. The egg was his. 
 It was an inexhaustible magazine of virtues, a storehouse of 
 mighty forces, all of them at his command, aijd endoAving its 
 happy possessor with the enviable but somewhat dangerous 
 attribute, so liable to be abused, one should think, of obtain- 
 ing almost all he might desire, and of doing nearly all that 
 he pleased. Of those who have testified to liaAnng seen this 
 egg, we do not know one who Avas witness to its birth, or 
 was prepared to speak to the extraordinary circumstances 
 said to accompany its production, or the wonderful deeds 
 performed, or that might have been performed, by the Druid 
 who was so fortunate as to get it into his keeping. 
 
 The stoiy of the mistletoe is less curious but more credible. 
 The mistletoe grew upon the oak, the sacred tree of the 
 Druids. The mighty parent trunk, its tender offshoot chng- 
 ing to it, with its ever-green leaves and its bunches of 
 yellow flowers, was a thing of beauty. But what made it 
 
 ' riiiiii, J^'at. Hist., lib. iii. c 12, xvi. 44. 
 
110 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 SO pleasing m the eyes of Druid was uot its loveliness, but 
 its significance. The mistletoe was the emblem of one of the 
 more recondite mysteries of his creed. Its finding was an 
 occasion of gi-eat joy, and the ceremony of gathering it wore 
 the sunny aii' of poetiy, reminding one of some of the festi- 
 vals of ancient Greece, of which it had the gaiety but not 
 the voluptuousness. The mistletoe — the child of his sacred 
 tree — the Druid held in high veneration, and the severing of 
 it from the parent oak Avas gone about with much solemnity. 
 It was gathered on the sixth day of the moon. A procession 
 was formed, and walked slowly to the oak on which the 
 mistletoe gi'cw : a priest in white robes climbed the tree, and 
 cutting away the plant with a golden sickle, he let it drop 
 into a white sheet held underneath, for it might not touch 
 the ground without losing its \-irtue. The sacrifice of two 
 milk-white bulls concluded the ceremony. 
 
 The reverence in which the Druids held the mistletoe, and 
 the ceremonies connected with it, have led to the formation 
 of some veiT extravagant theories respecting this system, as 
 if it was almost, if not altogether, an evangelical one. 
 While some will have it that the night of the ancient Cale- 
 donia was unbroken by a single ray from the great source of 
 DiA-ine revelation, there are others who are equally con- 
 fident that Caledonia was nearly as brightly illuminated as 
 Judea itself, and place the priesthood of the Druids only a 
 little way below the priesthood of the Hebrews.^ These last 
 find in the ritual of the mistletoe an amount of Christian 
 doctrine and evangelical sentiment which we are very far 
 from being able to see in it, and which we believe the 
 Druids themselves did not see in it. Then- views, however, 
 
 ' Religion of Ancient Britain historically considered. London, 1846 ; 
 Yeowell, Chronicles of the Ancient British Church. London, 1847 ; Kash, 
 Taliesin, pp. 12, 13. London, 1858. 
 
THE DRUIDS KdG — THE MISTLETOE, ETC. 1 1 1 
 
 have been set forth \\ith great plausibility, and it may be 
 right, therefore, that we give a few moments to the statement 
 of them. 
 
 The Druids named the mistletoe the " Heal- All ; " and 
 they made it, according to the theory of which we speak, 
 the emblem of the Great Healer who was to appear on the 
 earth at a later day, and by his sovereign interposition cure 
 all our ills. The oak, out of which the mistletoe sprang, 
 was held to represent the Almighty Father, eternal, self- 
 existent, defying all assaidts, and li\ing through all time. 
 From him was to come the "Branch" foretold by the 
 prophets of Israel, and sung of also by the poets of classic 
 antiquity. Virgil, speaking of this plant, calls it the "golden 
 branch," and says, that " by its efficacious powers alone 
 could we return from the realms below." Homer, too, 
 makes mention of the "golden rod or branch." Above 
 these doubtful utterances, a far greater voice is heard pre- 
 dicting the advent of the INIessiah, and saluting him as the 
 " branch," " the rod from the stem of Jesse," the " plant of 
 renown." The Druids, catching up and prolonging the 
 strain of the inspired prophet, hail the coming deliverer, 
 and adopt the mistletoe as his symbol ; they see in this 
 plant, as it clings to the great oak, the figure of one who 
 was to spring from an eternal stock, and who was to grow 
 up as a tender plant, full of heavenly virtue, the desired of 
 all nations, and by whose efficacious death man was to 
 return from the realms of the grave. Such is tlie evangehcal 
 garb the system of Druidism has been made to wear. 
 
 Most pleasing would it be to be able to put a little Bible 
 light into these dark mysteries. Most pleasing assuredly 
 would it be to think that our fathers heard in these legends 
 the voices of the prophets, and saw in these rites the day of a 
 coming Sa\T0ur. A new and more touching interest would 
 
112 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 gather round their sleeping places on moor and hill-side. 
 But we cannot conceal from ourselves that these notions 
 lack footing in historic fact ; and neither do they receive 
 countenance fi'om a critical analysis of the system. Witliout 
 the key of the prophets we should not have so unlocked the 
 arcana of Druidism, and without the lamp of the apostles 
 Ave should never have seen such evangelical things in it. 
 The fact is, we bring these evangelical meanings to Druidism, 
 we do not find them in it. Druidism was the worship of 
 the fire — the worship of Baal. Still it was better for Scot- 
 land that Dniidism should be, than that it should not be. 
 It was a link between man and the world above him. It 
 kept the conscience from falling into the sleep of death ; it 
 maintained alive a feeble sense of guilt and the need of 
 expiation, and to that extent it prepared the way for a better 
 system, and a more sovereign remedy for the many maladies 
 of the human soul than ever grew on oak of Druid, 
 
 As the great symbol in Druidism was the mistletoe, so the 
 central act in its worship was sacrifice. Here, again, we 
 approximate in point of form the diAanely appointed worship 
 of the Hebrews. In common with the whole heathen 
 world, the Druids connected the idea of expiation with their 
 sacrifices. They offered them to propitiate the Deity. 
 Nevertheless their sacrifices were pagan not evangelical. 
 The victim on the altar of the Druid was itself the projjitia- 
 tion ; the victim on the Jewish altar was the type, and 
 nothing but the type, of that propitiation. The Hebrew 
 looked beyond his sacrifice to the divine \ictim typefied and 
 promised by it, and whose blood alone could expiate and 
 cleanse. Of this divine victim we have no proof that the 
 Druid knew anything, beyond sharing, it may be, in tlie 
 vague and uncertain expectation which then filled the world 
 of the coming of a Great One who was to introduce a new 
 
Tin: DRUIDS KGG — THE MISTLETOE, ETC. 113 
 
 a ul happier age, which should make that " golden morn- 
 iijg " of which the poets sang, be forgotten in the greater 
 splendour of the world's noon. Beyond these vague hopes, 
 tlie priests of Druidism had no settled beliefs or opinions, 
 and to their own sacrifices did they attribute exclusively 
 that power to propitiate, which, of all the sacrifices of all 
 the ages belonged to but one sacrifice, and that a sacrifice as 
 yet in the distance. 
 
 It is long since the baleful fires of Druid were seen on 
 our hill-tops. A purer light has since arisen in the sky of 
 Scotland. But we are able to recall the scene which for 
 ages continued to be witnessed in our land. Like all false 
 religions, the spirit of Druidism was terror, and we can 
 imagine the awe it inspired in the minds of men over whom 
 it had been its pleasure for ages to hang the threefold cloud 
 ( )f ignorance, superstition, and serfdom. 
 
 The festival has come round, and this day the fires are to 
 1)0 lighted, and the sacrifice is to be offered on the " high 
 place." The procession has been marshalled. At its head 
 walks the high-priest, a venerable and imposing figure, in 
 his long-flowing robes of white.^ His train is swelled by 
 <jther priests, also attired in w^hite, who follow, leading the 
 animal destined for sacrifice. It is the best and choicest of 
 its kind ; for only such is it fit to lay upon the altar. It is a 
 bullock, or a sheep, or a goat, or, it may be, other animal. 
 It has been previously examined with the greatest care, lest, 
 peradventure, there should be about it defect, or maim, or 
 fault of any sort. It has been found "without blemish," we 
 shall suppose, and now it is crowned with flowers, and led 
 away to be slain. As the procession moves onward, songs are 
 sung by the attendant bards. The multitudes that throng 
 round the priests and the victim perform dances as the pro- 
 1 Toland, Hint, of the Druids, p. 69. Lond, 1726. 
 
 I. H 
 
114 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 cession, with slow and solemn steps, climbs the sacred 
 momit. The height has been gained, and priests and 
 victim and worshippers sweep in at the open portal of the 
 stone circle, and gather round the massy block in the centre, 
 on which " no tool of iron has been lift up," and on which 
 the sacrifice is to be immolated. The more solemn rites are 
 now to proceed ; let us mark them. 
 
 The priest, in his robes of snowy whiteness, takes his 
 stand at the altar. He lays his hand solemnly upon the 
 head of the animal which he is about to oiFer in sacrifice. 
 In this posture — his hand on the sacrifice — he prays. In 
 his prayer he makes a confession of sin, his own, and that of 
 all who claim a part in the sacrifice. These transgressions 
 he lays — such is his intention— on the victim, on whose 
 flower-crowned head his hand is rested. It is now separated 
 — devoted — for even the Druid feels that vnth sin is bound 
 up doom, and that on whomsoever the one is laid the other 
 lies also. Wine and frankincense are freely used in the 
 ceremony of devotement. Set free from human ownership, 
 the animal is now given to the deity. In what way ? Is it 
 dismissed to range the mountains as no man's property ? 
 No : bound with cords, it is laid on the altar ; its blood is 
 poured on the earth, its flesh is given to the fire, its life is 
 offered to God. 
 
 Such was the worship of the Druid. It consisted of three 
 great acts. First, the laying of his offence on the victim. 
 Second, the offering up of the life of that victim. Third, 
 the expiation, as he beheved, thereby effected. The three 
 principles which underlie these three acts look out upon us 
 with unequivocal and unmistakeable distinctness. We can 
 neither misunderstand nor misinter^jret them. We do not 
 say that the three principles were full and clear to the eye 
 of Druid in his deep darkness. But though he had become 
 
THE DRUID's egg THE MISTLETOE, ETC. 115 
 
 unable to read them, that no more proves that they were 
 void of significance and taught no truth, than the inability 
 of the barbarian to understand a foreign tongue or a dead 
 language proves that its writings express no intelligible 
 ideas, and that it never could have been the vehicle of 
 thought. We leave its meaning to be interpreted by the 
 men to whom it was a li\ing language. So in respect to 
 these rites, we look at them in the light of their first institu- 
 tion, and we place ourselves in the position of those to whom 
 they were, so to speak, a li\ing language, and when we do so 
 the three doctrines that shine out upon us from the sacrificial 
 rites of the Druid are the doctrine of the Fall, the doctrine of 
 a substitutionary Victim, and the doctrine of Expiation and 
 Forgiveness. Such is the testimony borne by the altars of 
 the Druid to the three earliest facts in human history, and 
 the three fundamental doctrines of revealed religion. 
 
 How came the Druids to worship by sacrifice? No 
 philosophy is sounder than that which, following up these 
 traces, arrives at the conclusion of an original revelation, of 
 which this is the remote and dim reflection. Sacrifice is 
 no mere Druidic rite, transacted nowhere save in the oak 
 forests of Scotland. A consensus of all nations had adopted 
 sacrifice as the method of worship, and wherever we go, 
 backward into histoi-y, or abroad over the earth, to ages the 
 most remote, and to lands the farthest removed from each 
 other, we find the altar set up and the victim bleeding upon 
 it. Strange and amazing it is that the nations of the earth, 
 the most polished as well as the most barbarous, the Greek 
 with liis passionate love of beauty, and the untutored and 
 realistic Goth, should with one consent unite in a worship, 
 the main characteristics of which are klood and deatu. 
 Who told man that the Almighty delights to " eat the flesh 
 of bulls and drink the blood of goats " ? Left to the prompt- 
 
116 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ings of his own instincts, this method of worship is the last 
 which man would have chosen. From what he knew of the 
 Creator from nature, he would have judged that of all modes 
 of worship this would prove the most unacceptable, and 
 woidd even be abhorrent. "What ! " he would have reasoned, 
 " shall He who has spread loveliness with so lavish a hand 
 over all creation ; who has taught the morning to break in 
 silvery beauty and the evening to set in golden glory ; who 
 clothes the mountain in purple, dyes the clouds in vermillion, 
 and strews the earth with flowers — shall He take pleasure in 
 a sanctuary hung in gloom, nay, filled with horrors, or 
 delight in an altar loaded with ghastly carcases and stream- 
 ing with the blood of slaughtered victims ? " So did the first- 
 born of men reason ; and in accordance with what he judged 
 fit and right in the matter, he brought no bleeding lamb, 
 he laid upon the altar instead an offering of new-gathered 
 flowers and fruits. And so would the race have worshipped 
 to this day but for some early and decisive check which 
 crossed their inclinations and taught them that it was not 
 only idle but even perilous to come before the Diety, save 
 with blood, and to offer to Him ought but life. 
 
 Apart from the idea of an original divine appointment, 
 there is no fact of history, and no phenomenon of the 
 human mind more inexplicable than this consensus of the 
 nations in the rite of sacrifice. A problem so strange did 
 not escape the observation of the wise men of the heathen 
 world ; but their efforts to solve it were utterly abortive. 
 To those of the moderns who refuse to look at the inspired 
 explanation of this phenomenon, it remains as abstruse and 
 dark as it was to the ancients. 
 
 These red prints — these altars and victims — which we 
 trace down the ages, and all round the earth, what are 
 they ? They are the foot-prints which have been left by 
 
THE DRUId's egg — THE MISTLETOE, ETC. 117 
 
 the soul of man. They are like the etymological and 
 archaaological traces, which the early races have left on the 
 countries which they inhabited, and which so surely attest 
 the fact of their presence at a former era in the regions 
 where these traces occur. So of these moral traces. They 
 could no more have imprinted themselves upon the mind of 
 the species apart from causes adequate to their production, 
 than the etymological and archseological ones could have 
 Avritten themselves upon the soil of a country, without its 
 previous occupation by certain races. These moral vestiges 
 lay a foundation for philosophical deduction, quite as solid 
 as that which the other lay for historic and ethnical con- 
 clusions. They form a chain by which we ascend to the 
 fountain-head of history. We have in them the most in- 
 dubitable attestation of the great fact of the fall. We have 
 its historic imprint made visible to us in the sense of guilt, 
 so deep, so inextinguishable, and so universal, which that 
 primal act of transgression has left on the conscience of the 
 world, and which has transformed worship, in every age, 
 and among every people, from an act of thanksgiving into 
 an act of propitiation. This is the world's confession that it 
 has sinned : it is the cry of the human soul for pardon. 
 
 We have death in tlie worship of man ; we have guilt 
 in the conscience of man : and these two facts compel us to 
 infer the existence of a third great fact, without which the 
 first two are inexplicable, even sin in the history of man. 
 No other solution can even philosophy accept. 
 
OHxVPTER X. 
 
 THE TEMPLES OR STONE CIRCLES OF THE DRUID. 
 
 From the worship of Dmidism we pass to the structures in 
 which it was performed. These were so unlike the temples 
 of later ages that we hesitate to apply to them the same 
 name, or to rank them in the same class of edifices. Tlie 
 whole idea of their construction was borrowed from eastern 
 lands and from patriarchal times. The models on which they 
 were reared had come into existence before architecture had 
 grown into a science, or had taught men to build walls of 
 solid masoniy, or hang the lofty roof on tall massy column. 
 In the temple of the Druid no richly coloured light streamed 
 in through mullioned oriel, and no pillared and sculptured 
 portico, or gate of brass, gave entrance to the long train of 
 white-robed priests, as they swept in, leading to the altar 
 the flower-crowned sacrifice. But if these graces were lack- 
 ing in Dmidic structures, they possessed others in some 
 respects even more in harmony with their character as re- 
 ligious edifices. They had a rough, unadorned grandeur 
 which made them more truly imposing than many a fane 
 which boasts the glory of Byzantme grace or of Gothic 
 majesty. If the simplest, they were notwithstanding among 
 the strongest of aU the fabrics of man's rearing. They have 
 outlasted races and empires, nay, the very deities in whose 
 honour they were set up. And while the pyramids, which 
 it cost millions of money and millions of lives to build, are 
 
THE TEMPLES OR STONE CIRCLES OF THE DRUID. 119 
 
 bowing to the earth, or have wholly vanished from it, these 
 simple stones still stand erect on field and moor, and link 
 us in these western parts with the world's morning and the 
 first races of men. 
 
 We have three examples of these, the earliest of British 
 fanes, in a state of tolerable preservation : Stennes, Stone- 
 henge, and Avebuiy. All these are partially in ruins, but 
 enough remains to show us the mode of their construction 
 and to give us an idea of their magnitude and grandeur 
 when they were entire, while the fiict that they have sur- 
 vived, though only in fragmentary condition, to our day, 
 sufficiently attests their amazing and unsm'passed strength. 
 Xothing could be simpler than the plan of their construction. 
 They consisted of single stones, rough and shaggy, as when 
 dug out of the earth, or when taken from the quarry, set on 
 end, and ranged in a circle, each stone a little way apart 
 from the other. Tlie area which they enclosed was conse- 
 crated gi'ound, and in the centre of it was the altar, an 
 enormous block of stone.^ The chisel had not approached 
 those great blocks ; ornament and grace then builders knew 
 not and indeed cared not to give them. We look in vain 
 for carving or inscription upon them. They were the work 
 of an illiterate age. They possess but one quality, but that 
 is the quality which of all others the barbarian most 
 appreciates — size, colossal size. 
 
 The description of these structures belongs to the archte- 
 ologist, and hardly falls within the province of the historian. 
 The latter has to do with them only as they shed light on 
 the social and religious condition of the people, among 
 whom and by whom they were reared. At Stennes, in Ork- 
 
 1 In Craigmaddie, Stirlingshire, is an enormous Druidical altar or dol- 
 man ; the top-stone is eighteen feet in length, and three or four feet in 
 thickness. It rests on two perpendicular stones placed triangularly to 
 one another. It is believed to be the largest in Scotland. 
 
120 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ney there are two circles, the larger, called Brogar, consistinu- 
 originally, it is believed, of sixty stones, of which only 
 thirteen remain erect, and ten lie overturned ; the smaller 
 being a half circle. The greater circle was a temple to 
 Baal, or the sun-god, while the smaller was dedicated to 
 the moon. Others see in the smaller a court of judicature. 
 The Druids, adding the office of judges to their functions as 
 priests, generally set up their courts hard by their temples. 
 The Norse rovers of the ninth century found these circles 
 standing when they took possession of the island, for the 
 spot is referred to under the name of Steinsness by Olaf 
 Trygresson, when recording the slaughter of Earl Havard 
 (970). Designating the spot by its most remarkable feature, 
 the Norsemen called it, in their own language, the Stiens- 
 ness — that is, the Ness of the Stones — the Stones' ness. 
 
 Stonehenge^ is the second greatest stone circle that 
 remains to us. It stands on the open plain of Salisbury, 
 with no bulky object near it to mar its effect by dwarfing its 
 apparent size. It must be ^'isited before its weird splend- 
 our can be truly judged. The length of the tallest stone is 
 21 feet; the number of stones still erect is 140; and the 
 diameter of the circle which they form is 106 feet. The 
 circle appears to have had a coping, or corona, of headstones, 
 but nearly aU of these are now displaced. Henry of Hunt- 
 ingdon, writing in the twelfth centuiy, calls Stonehengc 
 one of the four wonders of England. It was old even in his 
 
 ^ An Anglo-Saxon name, borrowed from one of the features of the 
 monument, the imposts, or "hanging stones" which are denoted by henge. 
 "The ancient or Cymric name," says, Gidley, "appears to have been 
 Gwaith Emrys, divine, or immortal." An ancient coin of Tyre has on it 
 two stone pillars with the inscription, "Ambrosiae petra;," ambrosial 
 stones. Stukeley quotes Camden as speaking of a remarkable stone near 
 Penzance, Cornwall, called Main Ambre, or the ambrosial stone. It was 
 destroyed by Cromwell's soldiers. The ancient name of Stonehenge is 
 preserved probably in the neighbouring town of Amesbury. 
 
THE TEMPLES OR STONE CIRCLES OF THE DRUID. 121 
 
 day, for he confesses that he knew nothing of its origin, or 
 of the means by which such stupendous cohimns had been 
 set up. 
 
 Diodorus Siculus quotes a passage from Hecataeus of 
 Abdera, who lived B.C. 300, and wrote a history of the 
 Hyperboreans, or people of the farthest north. Speaking of 
 an island the size of Sicily, lying opposite the coast of Gaul, 
 and which he characterises as grassy and fertile, Hecataeus 
 says, "The men of the island are, as it were, priests of 
 Apollo, daily singing his hymns and praises, and highly hon- 
 ouring him. They say, moreover, that in it there is a great 
 forest, and a goodly temple of Apollo, which is round and 
 beautified with many rich gifts and ornaments." ^ Mr 
 Davies, author of the " Celtic Researches," reasonably con- 
 cludes that the island here spoken of is Britain, and the 
 temple in which harpers sang daily the praises of Apollo is 
 Stonehenge and the Druids. If so, Stonehenge was in ex- 
 istence B.C. 300. And this supposition is strengthened by 
 Pindar, the Greek lyric poet, who speaks of " the Assembly 
 met to view public games of the Hyperboreans." - It was 
 the custom of the ancients to celebrate games and races on 
 the high festivals of their gods ; and that they did so at 
 Stonehenge when the people assembled for sacrifice is ren- 
 dered almost certain by the discovery of Dr Stukeley (1723) 
 of a " cursus," or hippodrome, half a mile north of Stone- 
 henge, about 10,000 feet in length, and 350 feet in width. 
 It runs east and west, and is lined by two parallel ditches. 
 At the west end is a curve for the chariots to turn, and on 
 the east a mound where the principal men might view the 
 contest, and the judge award the prizes to the victors. 
 
 These stones have a weird spell to which the imagination 
 not unwillingly surrenders itself. Standing on the bare, 
 1 Diod. Sic, lib. iii. c. 13. - Find. Pyth. x. 30. 
 
122 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXU. 
 
 solitary plain, they suggest the idea of a Parliament of 
 Cyclops met to discuss some knotty point of the stone age ; 
 for mth that age, doubtless, are they coeval. As the 
 centuries flow past, new races and new arts spring up at 
 their feet, still they keep their place and form part of the 
 British world of to-day. They saw the Celtse arrive and 
 bring with them the bronze age. They were standing here 
 when Caisar and his legions stepped upon our shore. Their 
 tall forms were seen on that plain when One greater than 
 Csesar walked our earth. They saw the Romans depart, 
 and the Angles and Saxons rush in and redden the laud ^\^th 
 cruel slaughter. They heard the great shout of the Gothic 
 nations when Rome was overturned. They saw the sceptre 
 of England handed over from the Saxon to the Norman, 
 They have waited here, fixed and changeless, while a long 
 line of great kings — the Johns, the Edwards, the Heniys, 
 of our history — have been mounting the throne in succession 
 and guiding the destinies of Britain. And now they be- 
 hold the little isle in which they first lifted up their heads 
 become the centre of a world-wide empire, and the sceptre 
 of its august ruler — the daughter of a hundred monarchs — 
 stretched over realms which extend from the rising to the 
 setting sun, and far to the south imder skies which are 
 nightly lighted up with the glories of the Southern Cross. 
 Such are some of the mighty memories which cluster round 
 these old stones. To see them morning by morning, freshen- 
 ing their rugged forms in the radiance of the opening day, 
 and to watch them at eve solemnly and majestically with- 
 drawing themselves into the dusk and cloud of night, is to 
 feel something of the awe with which they inspired our 
 forefathers of three thousand years ago.^ 
 
 ^ ' ' Stonehenge itself is enclosed by a double mound or ditch, circular in 
 form ; and there is an avenue or approach leading from the north-east ; 
 
THE TEMPLES OR STONE CIRCLES OP THE DRUID. 123 
 
 But wonderful as Stoneheuge is, it is eclipsed by the 
 grandeur of Aveburv. According to the remark of Aubrey 
 two hundred years ago, and quoted by Sir Richard Colt 
 Hoarc, " Avebury does as much exceed in greatness the so- 
 i-enowned Stonehenge as cathedral does a parish church." 
 
 A vast earthen rampart or mound sweeps round the site 
 of this rude but majestic fane. Inside this mound is a fosse 
 or ditch, and the perpendicular height in some places from 
 the bottom of the fosse to the top of the mound is 80 feet. 
 Half-way up the mound, on its inner side, is a broad ledge, 
 running round the entire circle, on which the spectators 
 could seat themselves by hundreds of thousands and witness 
 the rites which were celebrated on the level floor, 28 acres 
 in extent, which the vallum and rampart enclosed and over- 
 looked. Just within the fosse was a second rampart of 
 great stones, set on end, and sweeping round the entire 
 area, stone parted from stone by an average interval of 27 
 feet. The row consisted of an hundred stones of from 1 7 to 
 
 and bounded on each side by a similar mound or ditch. The outer mound 
 is 15 feet high, the ditch nearly 30 feet broad, the whole 1009 feet in cir- 
 cumference, and the avenue 594 yards long. The whole fabric consists of 2 
 circles and 2 ovals. The outer circle is about 108 feet in diameter, con- 
 sisting, when entire, of 60 stones, 30 uprights, and 30 imposts, of which 
 remain only 24 uprights, 17 standing and 7 down, 3^ feet asunder, and 8 
 imposts. The smaller circle is somewhat more than 8 feet from the in- 
 side of the outer one, and consisted of about 30 smaller stones, of which 
 only 19 remain, and 11 standing. The walk between these two circles is 
 300 feet in circumference. At the upper end of the adytum is the altar, 
 a large slab of blue coarse marble, 20 inches thick, 16 feet long, and 4 
 broad : pressed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen 
 upon it. The whole number of stones when the structure was complete 
 is calculated to have been about 140. The heads of oxen, deer, and other 
 beasts have been found on digging in and about Stonehenge, and human 
 bodies have also been discovered in the circumjacent barrows." — Encyclo- 
 pedia Britannica, vol. xx. p. 709, eighth edition, Edin., 1860. "At the 
 summer solstice tlie sun would be seen by one standing on the altar stone 
 to rise over the summit of the bowing stone." — Stonehenge, Rev. L. 
 Gidley, p. 49, Lond., 1873. 
 
124 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 20 feet in height, not one of which had known chisel or 
 hammer. To give them firm hold of the earth they were 
 sunk to a depth of 10 feet, making the actual length of the 
 stone about 30 feet. There are remains of an inner row, 
 shomng that this encompassing circle of grand monoliths 
 was double. The diameter of the area enclosed by the fosse 
 is 1200 feet, and of that enclosed by the great outer mound 
 1400 feet.i 
 
 In the centre of the area rises a beautiful little artificial 
 hill of which we shall presently speak. On each side of this 
 mount, and equally distant from it, stood a double con- 
 centric stone circle, formed of the same columnar masses as 
 the great outer ring, presenting us with two small fanes 
 enclosed within the gi-eat fane. The outer ring of these two 
 little fanes contains thirty, and the inner twelve pillars, and the 
 diameters of the rings were respectively 270 feet and 166 feet. 
 
 The conical mount in the centre is 125 feet high. 
 Seldom disturbed by foot it has a covering of the freshest 
 and loveliest verdure. It is wholly composed of earth, with 
 an area at the top of 100 feet, and 500 at the base. Dr 
 Stukeley says that in his time (1740) its height was 170 feet. 
 It was ringed with stone pillars at the base. What its use 
 was, whether an altar or a judgment-seat, it is now impos- 
 sible to say. 
 
 This grand temple, with its fourfold circumvallation and 
 its inner sanctuaries, is approached by two grand pathways 
 which sweep on with a slight cui-ve (the one from the north- 
 east and the other from the north-west) for upwards of a 
 mile. These approaches are spacious, thousands might 
 journey along them without jostling, their breadth being not 
 less than 45 feet, and they are lined throughout with a grand 
 balustrade of pillars. They remind one of those grand 
 
 1 Bust., p. 116. 
 
THE TEMPLES OR STONE CIRCLES OF THE DRUIDS. 125 
 
 avenues of sphinxes that lead up to the great temples of 
 ancient Egypt ; and doubtless the impression they made on 
 the Druidic worshipper as he drew nigh the grand shrine, 
 was not less solemn than that which the marvels of Edfou 
 made on the mind of the Coptic devotee ; for what impresses 
 the barbarian most is not artistic grace, but colossal size. 
 Tt was when the Romans had passed the climax of their 
 civilisation, and begun to decline once more towards barbar- 
 ism, that, despising the Athenian models, they began to rear 
 piles remarkable mainly for their stupendous magnitude. 
 
 All round the level plain on which these monuments 
 occur swell up the ridges or low heights of Avebury. These 
 little hills are dotted thickly over with sepulchral tumuli. 
 If the great temple which is enclosed by this zone of graves 
 be one of our earliest cathedrals, as in a sort it no doubt is, 
 may we not, in the well-nigh obliterated sepulchres around 
 it, see one of the earliest graveyards of our country ? Here 
 king and priest, warrior and bard mingle their dust, and 
 sleep together. They have gone down into a land of " deep 
 forgetfulness," for even Tradition has grown weary of her 
 task, and has long since ceased to repeat their names and tell 
 the story of the exploits which doubtless made these names, 
 however forgotten now, famous in their day. 
 
 In comparison with these cyclopean structures, which it 
 required only strength, not art, to rear, the grandest temples 
 of Greece and Italy, on which science had lavished her 
 skill, and wealth her treasures, were but as toys. The 
 special charm of the (ireek temple was beauty : majesty was 
 the more commanding attribute of the Druidic fane. The 
 snow-white marble, the fluted column, with its gi'aceful 
 volutes and sculptured pediment, the airy grace which 
 clothed it like sun-light, was a thing to fascinate and delight, 
 but in proportion as it did so it conflicted with the spirit of 
 
126 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 devotion, and lessened the reverence of the worehipper. 
 The stone circle of the Druid, severe, sombre, vast, its 
 roof the open heavens, was a thing to engender awe, and 
 concentrate, not distract the mind. In our judgment our 
 barbarian forefathers had a truer apprehension of the sort 
 of structure in wliich to worship the INIaker of the earth and 
 heavens than the Greeks and Romans had. 
 
 We have already stated our dehberate and settled con- 
 viction that these monuments were reared for a religious 
 pui-pose, in short are the earliest fanes ever set up on Scot- 
 tish or British soil. But the recent discovery of a grand 
 dolmen-centre in the land of Moab offers new and, we think, 
 conclusive proof in support of our opinion. This discovery, 
 moreover, sheds a new and most interesting light on the 
 early history of Scotland, and corroborates the accoimt we 
 have given touching its first settlers, as coming from Eastern 
 lands, and bringing with them this earliest of the forms of 
 worship, while yet in a state of comparative purity. 
 
 Xo reader of the Old Testament needs to be told of the 
 interest that invests jNIount Nebo, or to have recalled to his 
 mind the memorable occasion on which that hill was en- 
 girdled with altars and seen to blaze M-ith sacrificial fires. 
 Recent discoveries in that locality ^^^^dly recall the whole 
 scene as depicted on the sacred page. The scholars of the 
 " Palestine Exploration," enjoying a leisure for investigation 
 which ordinaiy travellers cannot command, have discovered 
 not fewer than 700 dolmens, standing or overturned, in the 
 ten'itory east of the Jordan. With these were mingled the 
 remains of stone circles. This multitude of ruined shrines 
 in one territoiy may well astonish us, and yet it is probable 
 that these are only a few out of that great host of similar 
 monuments with which that whole region bristled in 
 former days. One shudders when he thinks of the abyss 
 
THE TEMPLES OR STOXE CIRCLES OF THE DRUID. 127 
 
 ill wliicli the inhabitants were sunk, as attested by these 
 relics of a woi'ship at once lewd and bloody. These monu- 
 ments appear to have been equally numerous on the west of 
 the Jordan before the entrance of tlie Israelites into Pales- 
 tine, and if their ruins are there more rarely met with it is 
 OAving to the Di\'ine injunction laid on Joshua to utterly de- 
 stroy these erections and cleanse the land from the fearfully 
 demoralising and debasing practices to which they gave birth. 
 
 Mount Nebo, in the land of Moab, was an object of 
 special interest for examination on the part of the members 
 of the '' Palestine Exploration " expedition. " Close 
 beside the knob of the mountain they saw," says Captain 
 Conder, " a dolmen standing perfect and unshaken." They 
 found other dolmens on the southern slope of the mountain ; 
 and on the west side of Nebo, yet another a little way 
 below the " field of Zophim." This latter lies overtm'ued. 
 There is, moreover, a rude stone circle on the southern slope 
 of the mountain.^ Around this very hiU-top did Balak rear 
 seven altars, thrice told ; may not these be their remains ? 
 Here stood " Balaam with the king and princes of INloab 
 beside him," and while the smoke of the sacrifices ascended 
 into heaven, and the dolmen tables ran red with the blood of 
 the slain bullocks, the " son of Beor " looked down on the 
 city of black tents in the gorge at his feet, and obeying an 
 impulse by which his own inclination and wishes were over- 
 Ijorne, he broke out into a lofty strain of prophetic blessing 
 where he had hoped to pour forth a torrent of scatliing male- 
 dictions. 
 
 This is the holy place of jNIoab, and these are the altars of 
 Baal. But in shape, in size, in the method of tlieir construc- 
 tion, in short, in every particular, they are the exact resem- 
 blances of the Druidic remains of Scotland. There arc races 
 
 ' Conder, Neth and Moab, pp. 147, 14D. 
 
128 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 which even at this day raise such structures in connection 
 with religious uses. The tribes of the Khassia hills, the 
 remains of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of India, still continue 
 to erect menhirs.^ The Arabs worshipped stones before the 
 days of Mohammed : and no tmveller can pass through 
 Palestine without having his attention arrested by fields 
 dotted all over with little pyramids of stones, the humble 
 imitations of those statelier monuments which fonner ages 
 reared for a sacred purpose. The Khonds of Eastern India, 
 the remains of the Dravidians, still employ circles in con- 
 nection with their worship of the rising sun. They offer at 
 times human sacrifices. This was a common though horrible 
 practice of the Baal worshipper of ancient days. He deemed 
 his altar specially honoured when he laid upon it a human 
 victim. Above the blood of bullock his diety dehghted, he 
 believed, in the blood of man. 
 
 The Druids were of opinion that the higher the victim the 
 greater its power to make expiation. On this theory the 
 sacrifice of a human victim was of all others the most effica- 
 cious and the most acceptable to the deity. They therefore 
 on occasion offered such, as Cassar and others assure us. 
 It is easy to see what a fearful efi"ect this would havo in 
 hardening the heart, and leading to waste and destruction of 
 human life. Lucan tells us that in the forests the stone 
 altars of the Druids were so thick, and the sacrifices so 
 numerous, that the oaks were crimson Avith the blood. 
 AVheu a great man made atonement it was often with a 
 human victim. Such, however, was generally selected from 
 condemned criminals ; but when these were not to be had, a 
 victim was procured for the altar by purchase, or other 
 means. Moloch turned the hearts of his worshippers to 
 stone. In Caledonia, as in Judea, the mother shed no tear 
 
 ^ Conder, Hetli and Moah, p. 200. 
 
THE TEMPLES OR STOXE CIKCLES OF THE DRUID. 129 
 
 when she threw her babe upon the burnmg pile, nor did the 
 father_^utter groan when he offered liis son to the knife of 
 the Druid. Sigh or tear would have tarnished the glory of 
 the sacrifice.^ 
 
 Xor was a single victim enough for the Druid's altar. He 
 constructed, on occasion, castles of wicker-work, and filling 
 their niches with young children, whose shrieks he drowned 
 in the noise of his musical instruments, he kindled the pile, 
 and offered up all in one moiu'nfid and dreadful hetaconib. 
 But human sacrifices are not the reproach of barbarous 
 races to the exclusion of civilized peoples. It was - not the 
 ^loabite and Druidic altar only that flowed with the blood 
 of man. These ghastly holocausts were seen among the 
 Greeks and Romans, and that, too, in their most enlightened 
 age. The same city that was the centre of ancient com- 
 merce was also the theatre of human sacrifices. The altars 
 of Phcenicia — whence Greece borrowed her letters and arts — 
 smoked -v^ath the bodies of infants immolated to JNIoloch. 
 At Carthage a child was yearly offered in sacrifice, and the 
 custom was continued down to the days of the pro-consid 
 Tiberias, who hanged the priests on the trees of their ovni 
 sacred grove. The rite of human sacrifice was not abolished 
 at Rome, according to Pliny, till B.C. 8/. Idolatry at the 
 core is the same in all ages and among every people. It 
 is a thing of untameable malignity, and unsatiable blood- 
 thu-stiuess. Despite of arts and letters, and conquest, and 
 all counteracting influences, it hardens the heart, that 
 fountain of life and death, and slowly but ine^'itably 
 barbarises society. What a difference bet^vixt the circle of 
 unhewn stones on the Caledonian moor and the marble 
 
 ^ Speaking of the sacrifices of the Druids, Ciusar says, " Quod pro vita 
 honiinis nisi vita hominis reddatur." And Tacitus says that the first 
 care of the Romans in Britain was " to destroy those groves and woods 
 Mhich the Druids had polluted witli so many human victims." 
 I. I 
 
130 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 temples of Greece ! what a difFereiice betwixt the uiiadomecl 
 ritual perfoniied in the one, and the graceful and gorgeous 
 ceremonial exhibited in the other ! but whatever the people, 
 whether painted barbarians or lettered Greeks, and what- 
 ever the shrine, whether a fane of unchiselled blocks, or a 
 temple of snovz-white marble, idolatry, refusing to be 
 modified, was the same malignant, cruel, and murderous 
 thing in the one as in the other. It was invincibly and 
 eternally at war with the pure affections and the upward 
 aspirations of man. It converted its priests into man- 
 slayers, and made the mother the murderess of her own 
 offspring. 
 
 Of the old pre-historic stones that linger on moor or in 
 forest of om* countiT, we do not affirm that all are remains of 
 religious or Druidic structures. Some may mark the site of 
 battles, others may signalise the spot where a warrior or 
 chief was inteiTed, and others may have been set up to 
 commemorate some important event in the histoiy of a clan 
 or of a family. These are like the memorial-stones of the 
 Patriarchal and Jewish history. But whatever the original 
 use and purpose of these venerable monuments, they have 
 now become, all of them, in very deed, " stones of remem- 
 brance," and the sight of them may well move us to thank- 
 fulness that the " day-spring " has risen on the night of our 
 country, and that the advent of Christianity, by reveahng 
 the " one great sacrifice," has abolished for ever the sacri- 
 fice of the Druid. 
 
CHAPTER XT. 
 
 THE " ALTEINS OR STONES OF FIRE BELTINE OR 
 
 MAY-DAY AND MIDSUMMER FESTIVALS.^ 
 
 The names which the first settlers of a country give to the 
 particular localities which they occupy, are not mere brands, 
 they are significant appellatives. Such were the names of 
 the ancient Palestine. They expressed some quality or 
 incident connected with the town or valley or mountain 
 which bore them, and despite the many masters into whose 
 possession that land has since passed, and the diverse races 
 that have successively peopled it, the aboriginal names 
 still chng to its cities and villages though now in ruins. It 
 is the same with Scotland. Its first inhabitants gave names 
 in their vernacular to the localities where they reared their 
 
 ^ We liave no intention of constructing a genealogical tree of the gods. 
 Pagan mythology is a truly labyrintliic subject. What is the use of ex- 
 pending time and labour in tracing the genealogy and relationships of a 
 class of beings that never existed, and which are the pure invention of 
 the priests and poets of pagan times ? It is true, doubtless, that these 
 deities never existed, but the belli'/ of their existence exei'cised for ages a 
 powerful and fearfully demoralising influence on almost all the nations of 
 the earth. Their ceremonies, moreover, were interwoven with the life 
 and history of the nations, and so furnish light, not unfrequeutly, Ijy 
 which we are able to explain the past, and to account for the present. 
 Not unworthily, therefore, nor uselessly, have some great scholars devoted 
 their life to researches into this suljject. To give even the briefest sum- 
 mary of what they have written on the gods and goddesses of antiquity is 
 here impossible. We mention only a few leading facts — the bare outline 
 of the mythological tree — to enable the reader to understand the allusions 
 in the text. It is agreed on all hands that the first form of idolatry was 
 the worship of the sun and moon. These were adored as the types of the 
 
132 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Avattled dwellings or dug their underground abodes. There 
 have since come new peoples to mix with the ancient popu- 
 lation of the land, and new tongues to displace the original 
 speech of its inhabitants, nevertheless the names given to 
 hamlet and village in olden times are, in numerous instances, 
 the names by which they continue to be known at this day ; 
 and these names carry in them the key which unlocks the 
 early history of the place to which they are affixed. Some 
 of these names are simply the footprints of the Druid. 
 
 Of these footprints one of the most noted is the term 
 clachan. Clachan is a Gaelic word signifying stones. 
 From this, which is its primary meaning, it came to denote, 
 secondarily, a stone erection, and, in especial, a stone erec- 
 tion for religious observances. Gaelic lexicographers define 
 " Clachan " to be " a village or hamlet in which a parish 
 church is situate." ^ Before a hamlet could be promoted to 
 the dignity of a clachan it was required of it that it should 
 possess two things — a stone fabric and a place of public 
 worshij). But the curious thing is that in many of these 
 clachans there is not now, nor ever was, a j)arish chm-ch or 
 place of Christian worship of any sort. And farther, these 
 
 power and attributes of the Supreme Being. The first seat of this wor- 
 ship was Chaldea. In process of time the Sun came to have his type or 
 representative on earth, to whom divine honours were paid. This was 
 the founder or monarch of Babylon, who was M'orshipped under the title 
 of Bel or Baal, wliich signifies the supreme lord. Baal became the 
 supreme god to all the pagan nations, but under a different name in the 
 variovis countries. He was worshipped as Baal by all the Semitic nations 
 — the Assyrians, Arabians, Hittites, Phcenicians, &c. By the Greeks he 
 was adored as Zeus, and by the Romans as Jupiter, Apollo, Saturn ; that 
 these are names of the same god has been shown by Selden, " De Dis Syriis, " 
 cap. i. p. 123. The wife of Baal was named Beltis, which is the feminine 
 form of the word. She was the Rhea of the Assyrians, the Istar of the 
 Persians, the Astarte and Ashtaroth of the Syrians and Phoenicians, the 
 Venus of the Greeks and Romans. Her worship was widely prevalent. 
 The Jews at times offered cakes to her as the ' ' Queen of Heaven. " 
 
 ^ Drs M'Leod and Dewar, Diet, of Gael. Lang. Word "Clachan." 
 Glasgow, 1831. 
 
THE " ALTEIXS " OR STONES OF FIRE, ETC. 133 
 
 hamlets have held the rank of dachan from a date when 
 there was not a stone house in them, and their inhabitants 
 dwelt in mud huts, or in ftibrics of wattles. Hoav, then, 
 came they by their name of dachan or "stones," when they 
 had neither parish church nor stone house. Simply in this 
 way, and only in this way can the name be accounted for, 
 that they had a "stone circle," w^liich was their parish 
 church, inasmuch as they assembled in it for the celebration 
 of the rites of Druidism. Hence to go to the " stones " and 
 to go to worship came to mean the same thing. " Going to 
 and from church," says Dr Jamieson, "and going to and 
 from the clachan are j)hrases used synonymously." ^ Even till 
 recently this was a usual form of speech in the Highlands, 
 and is probably in use in some parts still. Thus has 
 Druidism left its traces in the language of the people as in 
 the names of localities. 
 
 Altein is another of these footprints. Altein is a name 
 given to certain stones or rocks found in many districts of 
 Scotland, and which are remarkable for their great size, and 
 the reverence in which they are held by the populace, from 
 the tradition that they played an important part in the 
 mysteries transacted in former days. Altein is a compound 
 word — al, a stone, and teine, fire, and so it signifies "the 
 stone of fire." It is corrupted sometimes into Alten, Altens, 
 and Hilton. One of these alteins, or " stones of fire," is 
 found in the neighbourhood of Old Aberdeen. It is termed 
 the " Hilton Stone," and stands a mile west of the cathedral, 
 upon what have always been church lands. It is a truly 
 magnificent column of granite, rhomboidal in form, each of 
 its sides a yard in breadth, and measuring from base to top 
 10 feet. The religious use to which it was destined is cer- 
 tified by the near proximity of two stone circles, each thirty 
 
 1 Jamieson, Hid. of tlie. Culdees, p. 27. 
 
134 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 yards in diameter, and ha\dng, when entire, eighteen granite 
 columns. The eastern circle remained untouched till 1830. 
 Spared so long by tempests and other and worse agents of 
 destniction, it was demolished in the year just named, and 
 its monoliths broken up and utilised as building materials. 
 The western circle, too, has all but vanished. It is represented 
 at this day by but two stones, standmg, doubtless, in the 
 position in which Druid placed them long ages ago. When 
 entire, these two gi'anite circles, with the grand rhomboidal 
 "stone of fire" standing betwixt them, woidd form a toler- 
 ably complete Diaiidic establishment ; and thence, not im- 
 probably, was borrowed the name of the neighboming 
 cathecbal city, which is often spoken of as the Altein-e-Aber- 
 deen, or, to render the Gaelic appellatives into modern ver- 
 nacular, the stone of fire at the city on the mouth of the black 
 river} Were the dead of seventy generations ago, wliich 
 sleep in the neighboming churchyards, to look up, they would 
 describe for us the scenes that were wont to be enacted 
 here, and in which they bore their part. They would paint 
 the eager upturned faces of the crowd that pressed around 
 this " altein " expectant of the fire which, as they believed, 
 was to fall upon it out of heaven. And not less vi\-idly 
 would they picture the yet greater crowds, that, on high 
 festival days, gathered round these " stone circles," and 
 looked on in silent awe, while the white-robed Druid was 
 going through his rites at the central dolmen. Victim after 
 \'ictim is led forward and slain — mayhap in the number is 
 babe of some poor mother in the crowd, who seeks by this 
 cruel and horrid deed to expiate her sin — and now the 
 
 ^ Not auld town of Aberdeen, but altein-e-Aberdeen. "We never," 
 says Mr Rust {Druidism Exhumed, pp. 50-57), " say Altein-e-Edinburgh, 
 or even Aulton o' Edinburgh, but auld toun o' Edinburgh. The two 
 words aidd and ioicn are never abbreviated into the compound altein or 
 aidton." 
 
THE "aLTEIXS" or STONES OF FIRE, ETC. 135 
 
 altar streams with blood, besmeared are hands and robe 
 ■.)f officiating priest, and gory prints speckle the grassy plot 
 which the granite monoliths enclose. The sound of the rude 
 instruments waxes yet louder, till at last their noise dro^\^lS 
 the cries of the victim, and the smoke of the sacrifices rises 
 into the sky and hangs its murky wreaths like a black canopy 
 above the landscape. 
 
 Altiens are met with in various parts of Scotland. Every 
 locality to which such name is affixed, is marked by its 
 great rock-like stone, on Avhich the fire of Druid was wont 
 to blaze in days long past. Here Druid no longer kindles 
 his fire, but the stone remains as if to bear its testimony 
 to the beliefs and usages of old times. There is the lia- 
 teine, or stone of fire, in the parish of Belhelvie, corrupted 
 into Leyton. A few miles to the west of Edinbm'gh is 
 the parish of Liston. The name has a similar deriva- 
 tion and has undergone a similar corruption as Leyton 
 and Alton. Liston is at once the compound and the cor- 
 ruption of Lias-teine, and being rendered from the Gaelic 
 into the vernacular, signifies the " stone of firebrands." Thus 
 translated, the name opens a vista into far back ages. It 
 recalls the ceremonies of that eventful night, October 30th, 
 on which, as Druidic ordinance enjoined, the fire of every 
 hearth in Scotland, without one exception, had to be 
 extinguished, and the inhabitants of its various districts 
 were to repair to their several " stone of firebrands," at 
 which, on payment of a certain specified sum, they would 
 receive from the hands of officiating Druid a torch kindled 
 at his sacred fire, to carry back to their homes, and therewith 
 rekindle their extinguished hearths. 
 
 The stone of Liston,^ at which this ceremony Avas wont to 
 
 ^ Ihe term ton (town) may have been added to Us or Uos by the Scotch 
 when the Gaelic meaning of the word was forgotten. 
 
13G HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 be enacted, is nine feet and a half in height. It is to be seen 
 in a field a little to the east of the mansion-honse of old Lis- 
 ton, not far from the stone circle and dyke "svhich surround 
 the mound called " Huly Hill." Other and more exciting 
 scenes has this quiet neighbourhood ^A^itnessed than the 
 ordmary rm-al occupations that engross its inhabitants in 
 our day. Here Druid has left the print of his foot, and it 
 is not difficult, and it may not be unprofitable, to recall the 
 scenes in which he was here pleased to display the extent 
 of his power and the mysteries of his craft, year after year, 
 through long centuries. 
 
 The day has again come round. It draws towards 
 evening, the last gleam of sunlight has faded on the sum- 
 mits of the Pentlands, and the shadows begin to lengthen 
 and thicken on the plain at their feet. The gloom is deepened 
 by reason of the absence of those numerous lights which 
 are wont, on other evenings, to flicker out from dwelling and 
 casement on the departure of the day. No lamp must this 
 night bm-n, no hearth must this night blaze : for so has 
 Druid commanded. And that command has been faith- 
 fully obeyed. In eveiy house the inmates have extinguished 
 the brands on their hearth and carefully trodden out the last 
 embers. But it is not in the parish of Liston only that eveiy 
 fire has been extinguished in obedience to Druidic authority. 
 The command is obligatory on every house in Scotland. 
 Not a hearth in all the land is there that is not this night 
 cold and black ; nor dare it be rekindled till first the 
 Druid, by his powerful intercessions, has brought fire from 
 heaven. Then only may the kindly glow again brighten 
 hearth and dwelling. 
 
 And now comes the more solemn part of the proceedings. 
 From all the hamlets and dwellings around the inhabitants 
 sallv forth and wend their way in the dusk of the evening, 
 
THE "aLTEINS" or STONES OF FIRE, ETC. 137 
 
 across meadow and stubble-field, or along rural lane, towards 
 chat part of the plain where stands the " altein," or stone of 
 firebrands. They carry torches in their hands, if so be, by 
 favour of Druid, they may return -with them lighted. They 
 gather round the sacred stone, and await in awe the mys- 
 teries that are about to be enacted. A little knot of Druids 
 have preceded them thither, and stand close around the 
 " pillar of firebrands." All is dark, — dark around the stone 
 as throughout the whole region. Anon the silence in the 
 crowd is broken by a voice which is heard rising in prayer. 
 It is that of a priest who beseeches Baal to show his accept- 
 ance of his worshippers by sending down fire to kindle anew 
 their hearths. He cries yet louder, all the priests joining in 
 the sui^pHcation, and lo ! suddenly, a bright and mysterious 
 light is seen to shoot up from the " altein." The flame has 
 come down from heaven : so do the priests assure the awe- 
 struck crowd. Their god is propitious : he has answered 
 by fire. The multitude hail the omen with shouts and 
 rejoicings. 
 
 And now the people press forward around the " altein," 
 and holding out their torches, kindle them at the sacred 
 flame, and bear them in triumph to their several homes. 
 Long lines of twinkling lights may be seen in the darkness 
 moving in the direction of the various villages and cottages, 
 and in a little space every hearth is again ablaze. From every 
 casement the cheerful ray streams out upon the night, and 
 the whole region is once more lighted up with the new 
 holy fire. 
 
 These " stones of fire " form a connecting link between the 
 early Caledonia and the ancient Phaniicia. Of tliis latter 
 country, the pioneer, and to a large extent the instructress 
 of the ancient Caledonians in the mysteries of fire-worship, 
 the capital. Tyre, was as distinguished for its idolatry as 
 
138 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 for its commerce ; and if it transmitted the alphabetic letters 
 invented in Chaldea and Eg}'pt to the western world, it 
 transmitted not less to the Westerns the deities of Asia. 
 These were but second-hand gods, though set forth by the 
 Phoenicians as if they had been the di\^ne aborigines of 
 their famous coast ; for the gods and goddesses of paganism 
 start up in different coimtries with other names. Here 
 Ashtaroth was born rising on her shell from the blue deep. 
 Here her star or thunderbolt fell on the island, which after- 
 wards became the seat of Tyi"e, and that city never forgot 
 what it owed to her who had given so miraculous a con- 
 secration to its soil. Here Hercules, a local Adonis, reigned 
 supreme. His dog it was that fished up the first murex 
 from the sea, its mouth purpled with the dye. Here 
 Adonis, killed by the wild boar as he hunted in the Lebanon 
 glen, was mourned by Ashtaroth, the Phoenician Yeuus ; 
 and here rejoicings were yearly held in honour of the awak- 
 ening of Adonis, the Phcenician Tammuz. These festivals 
 of mourning and rejoicing were not restricted to the Phoen- 
 ician shore, they crept into the nighbouring countiy of Judea ; 
 hence the women whom Ezekiel saw in the temple " weep- 
 ing for Tammuz." And here, too, as we have said, rose the 
 altein. 
 
 The fire-pillars that blazed at the foot of Lebanon burned 
 in honour of the same gods as those that lighted up the 
 straths of Caledonia. Ezekiel speaks of the " stones of fire " 
 of Tyre, and his description enables us to trace the same 
 ceremonies at the Phoenician alteins as we find enacted at 
 the Scottish ones. 
 
 When kindled, on the 30th of October, the Druid kept his 
 "altein" alive all the year through till the 30th October 
 again came round. It was then extinguished for a brief 
 
THE "aLTEINS" or STONES OF FIRE, ETC. 139 
 
 sJDace, in order that a new gift of fire might be bestowed by 
 his god. And as was the custom of the Scottish Druid, so, 
 too, was that of the Phoenician Magus. His fires were kept 
 burning, night and day, all the year round. Ezekiel depicts 
 Tyre as " w^alking up and down in the midst of the stones 
 of fire." For what jiurpose ? To trim them and keep them 
 alive, lest should they be suffered to go out, the gods in 
 whose honour they burned might take offence, and \asit the 
 State with calamity. They were guardian fires, and, while 
 they shone, the glory of T}Te was safe, and her rich mer- 
 chandise, spread over many seas, was guarded from tempest 
 and shipwreck. Compassed about by these guardian fires, 
 her invincible defence as she deemed them. Tyre believed 
 herself secure against overthrow ; but the prophet foretold 
 that destruction would find entrance nevertheless, and the 
 crowning feature in the prophecy — so full of magnificence 
 and teiTor — of her fall, is the extinction of these " alteins," 
 or fires ^ — " I will destroy thee, covering cherub, from the 
 midst of the stones of fire." - 
 
 The words of Ezekiel throw light on what was done in old 
 time on the moors of Scotland. They pierce the darkness 
 of long past time, and show us the ceremonies enacted at 
 the " alteins " and " stone circles " of Caledonia bv our fore- 
 
 1 Ezekiel, xxviii. 14, IG. 
 
 " Plicenicia was a chief seat of fix-e-worsliip. The Phcenicians came 
 direct from the primitive seat of this worship, and made tlieir new coun- 
 try a second Chaldea. Herodotus says that they passed over from the 
 Persian Gulf to the shore of the Mediterranean. The Kaft, says Conder, 
 which are known from the bilingual decree of Canopus to be tlie Phceni- 
 cians, appear on the Egj'ptian monuments as the neighbours of the 
 Hittites, as early as the I4th century B.C. The term Phcenicians means 
 Lowlanders, They were so named in contrast to the Giblites, wlio oc- 
 cupied the mountain, and were spoken of as mountaineei'S. Tliey were 
 the founders of Carthage, Cadiz, Marseilles. The fishers on Lake Men- 
 zaleli, Port Said, and the Neapolitans are believed to be descended from 
 them. 
 
140 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 fathers of three thousand years ago. Hardly can a doubt 
 remain that the " alteins " of early Scotland, and the " fire- 
 stones" of Phoenicia, were identical as regards their character 
 and use. We behold the same priests standing by them, 
 and the same rites performed at them. Both were altars to 
 Baal, or Moloch, or the Sun-god. In both countries their 
 ruins still remain, though the baleful fires that so often 
 blazed upon them have been long extinct. In Scotland a 
 better light has arisen in their room. On the Phoenician 
 shore the night, alas ! still holds sway ; and though there 
 Astarte is no longer worshipped, she has bequeathed her 
 " crescent " as the symbol of a new faith equally false, and 
 even more barbarous. 
 
 The great days, or holy seasons of the Druid, still retain 
 their place in our almanacs, and have a shadowy celebra- 
 tion in the observances of our peasantry, at least in some 
 parts of the country'. The 1st of May was wont to be 
 known as Beltane, and to this day figures in our almanacs 
 under this name. It is a festival of Druidic times, and 
 its observance has not wholly ceased even yet. In the 
 neighbourhood of Crieff there are the remains of a Druidic 
 stone-circle, where a number of men and women were 
 wont to assemble every year on the 1st of ]May. "They 
 light a fire in the centre," says a witness and narrator 
 of the ceremonies ; " each person puts a bit of oat cake 
 in a shepherd's bonnet : they all sit down, and draw 
 blindfold a piece from the bonnet. One piece has been 
 previously blackened, and whoever gets that piece has to 
 jump through the fire in the centre of the circle, and pay 
 a forfeit. This is in fact a part of the ancient worship of 
 Baal. Formerly the person on whom the lot fell was burned 
 as a sacrifice. Now, i)assing through the fire represents 
 
THE " ALTEINS " OR STONES OF FIRE, ETC. 141 
 
 tlie burning, and tlic payment of a forfeit redeems the 
 victim."^ 
 
 The rites of this festival, as practised in the district of 
 Callander in the end of last century, have been described to 
 us in yet fuller detail by the Rev. John Robertson, minister 
 of that parish. 
 
 " Upon the first day of jNIay," says Mr Robertson, " which 
 is called Bel tan, or Bal-tein day, all the boys in a township 
 or hamlet meet on the moors. They cut a table in the green 
 sod, of a round figure, by casting a trench in the ground of 
 such circumference as to hold the whole company. They 
 kindle a fire, and dress a repast of eggs and milk in the 
 consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, 
 which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the 
 custard is eaten up, tliey divide the cake into so many 
 portions, as similar as possible to one another in size and 
 shape as there are persons in the company. They daub 
 one of these portions all over with charcoal, until it be 
 perfectly black. They put all the bits of the cake into a 
 bonnet. Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He 
 who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit. Whoever 
 draws the black bit, is the devoted person who is to be 
 sacrificed to Bcml, whose favour they mean to implore, in 
 rendering the year productive in sustenance for man and 
 beast. There is little doubt of these inhuman sacrifices 
 having been once offered in this country, as well as in the 
 east, although they now pass from the act of sacrificing, and 
 
 ' So did Lady Baird, on whose property stood the circle, assure the late 
 Lord John Scott, from whom the Rev. Alex. Hislop of Arbroath had the 
 anecdote. See "The Two Babylons," by Rev. A. Hislop, p. 148, Edin., 
 1862, When we mention this work, we do it no more than justice to 
 say that it is one of vast erudition on the subject it discusses. It merits 
 the study of all who wisli to understand the structure and genius of 
 pagan mythology with reference to Papal wox'ship. 
 
142 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 only compel the devoted persou to leap three times through 
 the flames, with which the ceremonies of this festival are 
 closed." Mr Robertson adds other facts in which we can 
 clearly trace the rites of sun-worship. "When," says he, 
 "a highlander goes to bathe, or to drink waters out of a 
 consecrated fountain, he must always approach by going 
 round the place, from east to tcest on the south side, in 
 imitation of the apparent diurnal motion of the sun. When 
 the dead are laid in the earth, the grave is approached by 
 going round in the same manner. The bride is conducted 
 to her future spouse in the presence of the minister, and the 
 glass goes round a company in the course of the sun. This 
 is called, in Gaelic, going round the right or the liicJci/ 
 way." 1 
 
 Kext comes Midsummer. Then again the Druid lighted 
 his fires. Alike on the Chaldean plain and on the moor- 
 lands of Caledonia, the summer solstice was a notable and 
 sacred season. In Assyria the midsummer fires blazed in 
 honour of the return from the dead of Adonis or Tammuz.- 
 
 ^ Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xi., pp. 620, 621. Edin. 1794. 
 
 Beltane. We are happy to be able to insert the following note kindly 
 sent us by the accomplished Professor of " Celtic Languages and Litera- 
 ture " in the University of Edinburgh : — 
 
 " Beltain — beltane (Bealltainn in modem Gaelic). The attribution to 
 Baal, whether scientific or not, is very old. 
 
 " The earliest explanation of the meaning of the word known to me is 
 that given in Cormac's Glossary (edited by O'Donovan & Stokes, Calcutta, 
 1868) (Cormac, 831-903, was prince and bishop of Cashel) — ' Belltaine, 
 i.e. bil-tene, i.e. lucky fii-e, i.e. two fires which Druids used to make with 
 gi'eat incantations, and they used to bring cattle [as a safeguard] against 
 the diseases of each year to those fires.'" 
 
 ^ There are some who find the bccsis of the whole of the pagan my- 
 thology in the early history of the race as recorded in the first pages of 
 the Bible. The deities of paganism, they hold, are the patriarchs and 
 fathers of mankind exalted to gods, and worshipped under other names 
 (see Bochart), and the traditions, allegories, and mythical narrations 
 respecting them, are disguised or veiled accounts of the services they 
 rendered to their descendants. They hold, too, that the Creation, 
 
THE "altp:ins" or stoxes of fire, etc. 143 
 
 In Scotland this festival was celebrated with more iiuiiie- 
 diate reference to the harvest, which Baal the sun-god was 
 invoked to bless and rii^en. " These midsummer fires and 
 sacrifices," says Toland, " were to obtain a blessing on the 
 fruits of the earth, now becoming ready for gathering, and 
 the last day of October as a thanksgiving for the harvest. . . . 
 It was customary for the lord of the place, or his son, or 
 some other person of distinction, to take the entrails of the 
 sacrificed animals in his hands, and walking barefoot over 
 the coals thrice, after the flames had ceased, to carry them 
 straight to the Druid, who waited in a whole skin at the 
 altar. If the nobleman escaped harmless it was reckoned a 
 good omen, welcomed with loud acclamations ; but if he 
 received any hurt, it was deemed unlucky, both to the com- 
 munity and himself." "Thus have I seen," adds Toland, 
 " the people running and leaping through the St John's fires 
 in Ireland — the same midsunnner festival — and not only 
 proud of passing unsinged, but, as if it were some kind of 
 lustration, thinking themselves in an especial manner blest 
 by the ceremony." ^ It is not in the cities of Phoenicia, nor 
 in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom only, that we see men 
 
 tlie Fall, the Deluge, the promise of a Redeemer, and even His death and 
 resurrection, are all set forth and exhibited under the mythical veils 
 which priests and poets have woven around these doctrines and facts. 
 Ingenious and elaborate interpretations have been given of the heathen 
 mythology on these lines. The recent discoveries in Assyria, which show 
 that the early post-diluvian races had a fragmentary traditionary know- 
 ledge of the creation, the fall, and the deluge agreeing in substance with 
 the Biljle, lends some countenance to this theory, and shows that pagan 
 mythology may not be wholly the product of the craft of priests, and the 
 fancy of poets. But if these things be mythical representations of the 
 great facts of inspired history, and the great doctrines of revelation, they 
 are exhilntions which mystify, invert, desecrate, and utterly darken the 
 facts and doctrines exhibited, and not only do they frustrate the end for 
 which these doctrines were given, but they are charged with a meaning 
 and spirit which make them work out the very o^jposite end. 
 1 Toland, The Druids, pp. 107, 112. 
 
144 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 passing through the fire to Baal ; we behold the same ordeal 
 undergone on the soil of our own country, and doubtless 
 in the same belief, even, that in these fires resided a divine 
 efficacy, and that those who passed through them were 
 purified and made holy. 
 
 Chambers infonns us, in his Picture of Scotland,^ that a 
 fair is held regularly at Peebles on the first Wednesday of 
 May, called the Beltaine Fair. It has come in the room of 
 the feast of the sun. "To this hour," says Toland (1/20), 
 "the 1st of May is by the original Irish called La Bealtinc, 
 or the day of Belan's fair." - " These last," INIay and Mid- 
 summer eve, says Owen (1743), "are still continued in 
 Wales without knoA\dng why, but that they found it the 
 custom of their ancestors ; " as are those on Midsummer eve 
 " by the Roman Catholics of Ireland," says Toland, " making 
 them in all their grounds, and carrying flaming brands about 
 their cornfields." " This they do," adds he, " likewise all 
 over France, and in some of the Scottish isles." ^ The 
 custom oi passing through the fire was also obsen^ed in these 
 countries. "Two fires," says Toland, "were kindled on 
 May eve in eveiy village of the nation, as well as throughout 
 all Gaul, as well as in Britain, Ireland, and the adjoining 
 lesser islands, betAveen which fires the men and the beasts to 
 be sacrificed were to pass. One of the fires was on the earn, 
 another on the ground. Hence the proverb amongst the 
 people, when speaking of being in a strait betwixt two, of 
 their being between Bel's two fires." * " The more ignorant 
 Irish," says Ledwich, " still drive their cattle through these 
 fires as an eff'ectual means of prescr\4ng them from future 
 accidents." The identity of these rites with those practised 
 in Phoenicia, and in Judea in its degenerate age, and in 
 lands lying still farther to the east, cannot be mistaken. 
 
 1 Vol. i. ITS. Edin., 1S27. - Toland, pp. 101, 103. 
 
 abid, p. 107. 'Ibid, p. 104. 
 
THE "ALTEINS" ok STONES OP FIKE, ETC. 145 
 
 As the iniclsiimiucr festival was one of tlic more impor- 
 tant of the Druidic observances, care was taken that it 
 should be kept punctually as to time. Outside the stone 
 circle it was usual to set up a single upright pillar. This 
 was termed the pointer, and its design was to indicate the 
 arrival of the sunnner solstice. It stood on the north-east 
 of the circle, and to one standing iu the centre of the ring, 
 and looking along the line of the pointer its top would 
 appear to touch that point in the horizon where the sun 
 would be seen to rise on the 22nd of June. When this 
 happened the Druid knew that the moment was come to 
 kindle his midsummer fires. At Avebury the pointer still 
 remains. So, too, at Stennes in Orkney. In Upper Galilee, 
 as we have already said, the white top of Hermon indicates 
 the point of sunrise at midsummer to one standing in the 
 centre of the stone-circles to the west of Tel-el-Kady, the 
 ancient Dan. These stones were the clocks of the Druid : 
 they measured for him the march of the seasons, and enabled 
 him to observe as great exactitude in the kindling of his 
 fires and the celebration of his festivals as the sun — the 
 god in whose honour his sacrifices were offered — in his 
 annual march along the pathway of the zodiac. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 VITRIFIED FORTS ROCKING-STONES — DRUID's CIRCLE 
 
 NO man's land — DIVINATION GALLOW-HILLS — A 
 
 YOKE BROKEN. 
 
 In our vitrified forts, too, it is possible that we behold a 
 relic of the times and observances of Driiidism. This is the 
 likeliest solution of a problem Avhich, after many attempts, 
 still remains unsolved. We know that on a certain night 
 of the year immense bonfires were kindled on the more 
 conspicuous of our hill tops, and the whole countiy from one 
 end to the other, was lit up with the blaze of these pyres. 
 The intense heat of such immense masses of wood as were 
 consumed on these sites year by year through a series of 
 centuries, must, in process of time have converted the stones 
 and rocks on which they were kindled into a vitrified mass. 
 The idea that these vitrifactions were forts is barely 
 admissible. They occur, with a few exceptions, on moun- 
 tains which possess no strategical quality, and which were not 
 likely to have been selected in any great plan of national 
 fortification, supposing the natives capable of forming such a 
 scheme of military defence. The undoubted hill-fortresses 
 of Scotland may be traced by hundreds in their still existing 
 remains, but these are of a character wholly different from 
 the antiquities of which we are now speaking. The site 
 selected for their erection was some hill of moderate height, 
 standing forward from the chain of mountains that swept 
 along behind it and which overlooked the wide plains and 
 
VITRIFIED FORTS — ROCKING-STONP^S, ETC. 147 
 
 far-extending straths which hiy spread out in front. The 
 builders of these strengths, whoever they were, did not 
 seek to fuse tlie materials with which they worked 
 into a solid mass, they were content to draw around 
 the mountain-tops, which they fortified, a series of con- 
 centric walls, broad and strong, constructed of loose stones, 
 with ample space betwixt each circular rampart for the 
 troops to mana3uvre. The vitrifactions, on the other hand, 
 are scattered over our mountainous districts, with no strate- 
 gical link binding them together, and in the absence of 
 any conceivable use to be served by them, which would com- 
 pensate for the toil of dragging up their materials to the 
 elevated sites where they^are found, the annual occm-rence 
 of a religious observance which, year by year, dm-ing a very 
 lengthened period, rekindled on the same spot immense 
 bonfires, presents us with by much the likeliest solution of 
 their origin. 
 
 Other vestiges of this early and now fallen superstition are 
 scattered over the face of the country, and a glance at these 
 may help to bring back the image of the time, and strengthen 
 the proof, if it needs further strengthening, that Druidism 
 once dominated in Scotland. Among the more prominent 
 of these are the rocking stones, so termed because the slight- 
 est application of force sufficed to set them a vibrating. 
 They were huge unhewn rocks, weighing from thirty to fifty 
 tons, hoisted up and placed on the top of another rock, 
 equal to the burden, and so nicely poised as to move at the 
 touch of the finger. 
 
 The rocking-stonc is not a megalithic curiosity known only 
 to Scotland. It is met with in England and Ireland, and in 
 countries lying far beyond tlie British seas. When we travel 
 back in time we find mention made of it by writers who 
 flourished twenty centuries ago. Camden speaks of one in 
 
148 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Pembrokeshire, Wales, on a sea-cliiF, within half a mile of 
 St David's. It is so large, that, says Owen, his infoniiant, 
 " I presume it may exceed the draught of an hundred oxen." 
 It is " mounted upon divers other stones, about a yard in 
 height ; it is so equally poised that a man may shake it 
 with one finger," ^ Perhaps the most remarkable is that in 
 Cornwall, called '' the Logan Stone," at Treryn Castle, in 
 the parish of St Levan. It is supposed to weigh ninety 
 tons, yet is so balanced on an immense pile of rocks that 
 " one indi\'idual, by placing his back to it, can move it to 
 and fro easily."^ Rocking-stones are found in Ireland as 
 weU as in Cornwall and Wales. Toland regards them as 
 part of the mechanism of Druidism, and so do almost all 
 who have occasion to speak of them whether in ancient or 
 in modern times. 
 
 " It was usual," says Byraut, " among the Egyptians to 
 place one vast stone above another for a religious memorial, 
 so equally poised, that the least external force, nay, a breath 
 of ^vind, would sometimes make them \ibrate."^ Nor did 
 these stones escape the notice of Pliny. " Near Harpasa, 
 a town of Asia," says he, " there stands a dreadful rock, 
 moveable with one finger, the same immoveable -with 
 the whole body." The motion of so large a body on 
 the application of so shght a force, Photius in his life of 
 Isidore, tells us, formed the subject of some curious discus- 
 sions. Some attributed the vibrations of the stone to divine 
 power, but others saw in them only the workings of a 
 demon.* It does not surprise us to find a class of men so 
 astute as the priests of Druidism quick to perceive the use 
 
 1 Camden's BrUannia, vol. ii. p. 520, Loud. 17S9. 
 ^ Stockdale's Excursions in Cornwall, p. 69. 
 
 ' Bryant, A)ial. Mythol., vol. iii., apud Moore, Hist, of Ireland, p. .'10, 
 Lend. 1835. 
 
 * Vita Isidori, apud Pliotium, in Moore's Ireland, p. 39. 
 
VITRIFIED FORTS — ROCKIXG-STONES, ETC. 149 
 
 to wliich these stones might be tunied in the way of support- 
 ing their system. The man conscious of guilt when he saw 
 the ponderous mass begin to quiver and tremble the moment 
 lie laid his finger upon it, mistaking the mechanical prin- 
 ciple, of which he was ignorant, for the presence of the 
 deity to whom his crime was known, would feel constrained 
 to confess his sin. 
 
 These stones were termed also Judgment Stones. They 
 were, in fact, the Urim and Thummim of the Druid. They 
 could not be worn on the breast like the oracle of the Jew- 
 ish priesthood, they were set up in the glen or on the moor 
 and were had recourse to for a divine decision in matters too 
 hard for the detennination of a human judge. If one was 
 suspected of treason, or other crime, and there were neither 
 witnesses nor proof to convict him, he was led into the pres- 
 ence of this dumb, awful judge, in whose breast of adamant 
 w^as locked up the secret of his innocence or his guilt, and 
 according to the response of the oracle, so was the award of 
 doom. If the stone moved when the suspect touched it, he 
 was declared innocent ; if it remained obdurately fixed and 
 motionless, alas ! for the unhappy man, his guilt was held 
 to be indubitably established. A judge with neither eyes 
 to see, nor ears to hear, but in whom dwelt a divinity from 
 which no secrets were hidden, had condenmed him. From 
 that verdict there was no appeal ; as was wont to be said of 
 another judge, whose decisions were received as the emana- 
 tions of divine and infallible knowdedge, so was it said of the 
 Druidic Infallibility. 
 
 " Peter has spoken, tlie cause is decided." 
 
 " Behold yon huge 
 And unhewn sphere of living adamant 
 Which, poised by magic, rests its central weight 
 On yonder pointed rock ; firm as it seems, 
 Such is its strange and virtuous property, 
 
150 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch • 
 
 Of him whose breast is j^ure ; but to a traitor, 
 Tho' even a gianf s prowess nerved his arm, 
 It stands as fixed as Snowdon." 
 
 A rocking-stone was a quarry iu itself, and such stones 
 were dealt mth as such in process of time ; that is, they 
 were broken up, aud dweUing-houses and farm-steadings 
 were built out of the materials which they so abundantly 
 supplied, and hence, though anciently these rocking-stoues 
 were common they are now rare. There was a " rocking " 
 or "judgment" stone at Ardiffery near Boddani. Half a 
 centuiy ago it still existed, and called up images of unhappy 
 persons standing before it, awaiting, in trembling and terror, 
 their doom. It has now vanished, doubtless under the fore- 
 hammer of the builder. It lives only in the pages of a local 
 antiquaiy, who describes it as he saw it sixty years ago. " In 
 walking up this soUtaiy glen (Boddam) you come in contact 
 with a very large stone of unhewn granite, and whose dimen- 
 sions are (as measm-ed in May 1819), 37 feet in circumfer- 
 ence and 27 feet over it, . . . It is placed upon several 
 small blocks of granite, so as to free it entirely from the 
 ground, which must e^'idently have been done by the hands of 
 men. As there are evident marks of fire close by it, I have 
 every reason to beheve it to have been accounted sacred, and 
 a place of worshij) of the ancient Druids." ^ 
 
 By what means these great stones were placed in the 
 position in which we find them is a problem which remains 
 to this day a mystery. The combined strength of a whole 
 parish would hardly have sufficed, one should think, to 
 accompHsh such a feat. It is i^lain that the Druids knew 
 the art of the engineer as well as the science of the 
 astronomer, and possessed appliances for combining, ac- 
 
 ^ BucJian, Annals of Peterhead, p. 42. 
 
VITRIFIED FORTS — ROCKING-STONES, ETC. 151 
 
 cuiiiiilatiiig, aud applying force in the transportation of 
 heavy bodies far beyond what we commonly credit them 
 with. They knew the nses before they knew the principles 
 of the mechanical powers, and hence such machines as 
 pulleys, cranes, and inclined planes have been in practice 
 from tune immemorial. They could yoke hundreds of oxen, 
 or thousands of men to the car on which these immense 
 masses were conveyed from the spot where they were dug 
 up to the spot where they were to stand ; but having 
 dragged them thither, how were these enomious blocks to 
 be lifted into the air ? hung, as it were, on a needle's point, 
 and so evenly balanced as to vibrate at the gentlest touch ? 
 This would have taxed the resources, and it might be 
 baffled the skill of the mechanist of the present day. 
 And yet, the natives of Scotland could accomplish this feat 
 three thousand years ago ! When one thinks of this one is 
 tempted to half believe that the builders of these mighty 
 structures, which war, tempest, and time have not been able 
 even yet utterly to demolish, did indeed possess the magical 
 powei-s to which they laid claim. The only magic with 
 which they wrought was knowledge ; but is it wonderful 
 that the untaught multitude mistook a skill and craft that 
 Avere so far above their comprehension, aud which they saw 
 perfonning prodigies, for a knowledge wholly supernatural, 
 and, in the awe and terror thus inspired, were willing to 
 accept the manipulations of the Druid for the intimations of 
 the Deity ? 
 
 The Druid's favourite figure was the circle — another link 
 between Scottish Druidism and the world-wide system of 
 Sun worship. Two things have come down to us from the 
 earliest ages as the most perfect of their kind, seven amongst 
 numbers, and the circle amongst figures. A certain mystic 
 potency was supposed to reside in both. When we turn to 
 
152 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the all-prevalent system of sun worship we see at once how 
 this belief arose. Biinsen tells us that the circle Avas the 
 s}iiibol of the sun.^ It came thus to be the canonical and 
 orthodox fomi of all buildings reared for his worship. 
 Wherever we come on the remains of these structures, 
 Avhether in Asia or Europe, they are seen to be circular. As 
 the jNIagus performed his incantations within his circle, 
 traced, it might be, on the ground wdth his staff, so the 
 Druid, when he performed his worship, stood within his 
 ring of Cyclopean stones. The spell of the magician was 
 more i)oteut, and the worship of the Druid was more accept- 
 able when done within this chamied enclosure. Nor was it 
 their religious edifices only that were so constructed ; almost 
 all their erections were regidated as to shape by their belief 
 that there Avas in the circle a sacred efficacy. From their 
 barrows on the moor to their dAvelling-houses, all were 
 circular. The well-known Pict's house was a circle. And 
 when these huts formed a brough or hamlet, they were so 
 arranged as to form a series of circles. Of this a curious 
 specimen is still to be seen in the north of England. On the 
 slope of a hill in Northumberland, about six miles south of 
 the Tweed, in a district abounding in stone remains of a 
 Druiclic character, is a little city in Avhich no man has d^velt 
 these long centuries. As it has been described to us by 
 eye-mtnesses, it is a congeries of circular huts, arranged in 
 streets, aU of Avhich form cu'cles having a common centre. 
 
 We have ah-eady spoken of the great days of the Druid, 
 AA'hich even so late as the seventeenth centuiy were observed 
 with the old pagan honours by a large portion of the Scot- 
 tish peasantry ; nor has their observance wholly ceased even 
 in our day. Fires Avere extinguished and rekindled, arts of divi- 
 nation Avere practised, and other ceremonies of Druidic times 
 
 ' Biinsen's Egypt, vol. i., pp. .5.35, 537. 
 
VITRIFIED FORTS — R0CKING-ST0NE8, ETC. 15.'} 
 
 Avei'c i)crfoi-iiicd, though in many cases all knowledge of the 
 origin aud design of these observances had been lost. " In 
 many parts of the Scottish highlands," says Dr Maclachlan, 
 " there are spots round Avhich the dead are borne sunwise 
 in their jjrogress toward the place of sepulture ; all these 
 being relics not of a Christian but of a pagan age, and an 
 age in which the sun was an object of worship." " There 
 are places in Scotland where within the memory of living 
 man the teine eigiii, or ' forced fire,' was lighted once every 
 year by the rubbing of two pieces of wood together, while 
 eveiy fire in the neighbourhood was extinguished in order 
 that they might be lighted anew from this sacred source." ^ 
 
 It was accounted unla^vdFul to yoke the plow or to engage 
 in any of the duties of ordinary labour on these festival days ; 
 such seasons were passed in idleness, or were devoted to 
 the practice of magical arts. There were, moreover, in 
 various parts of the country, plots of land consecrated to 
 the gods of Druidism, and sacredly guarded from all pol- 
 lution of spade or plough. Such fields were termed, " the 
 good man's land and the guid man's fauld." No one dared 
 cultivate them for fear of incurring the wrath of the powerful 
 and terribly vengeful imps of Druidism. They lay untilled 
 from century to century, and were viewed with mysterious 
 awe as the trysting-place of familiar spirits, who were 
 supposed to be ^Wiling and able to disclose the secrets of 
 futurity to anyone wdio had the courage to meet them on 
 their OAAai i^ropcr territory. So prevalent were these things 
 that we find the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 
 of 1649 appointing a large Commission of their number to 
 take steps for discouraging and suppressing these super- 
 stitious practices. We trace the action of the Commission 
 in the consequent procedure of several of the Kirk Sessions. 
 
 1 Rev. Dr Maclachlan, Earli/ ScoitUk Church, i^j). .33, 34, Ediii. 18GG. 
 
154 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 These courts summoned delinquents before them and enjoined 
 on them the cultivation of fields which had not been turned 
 by the plow from immemorial time, and they required of 
 farmers that they should yoke their carts on the sacred 
 festival of Yule, and of housewives that they should keep 
 their hearth-fire burning on Beltane as on other days. 
 
 Arrogance is an unfailing characteristic of all false priest- 
 hoods. To be able to open the human breast and read 
 what is passing therein has not contented such pretenders ; 
 they have claimed to open the portals of the future and 
 foretell events yet to come. Every idolatry has its Vatican 
 or mount of divination. There is an instinctive and inerad- 
 icable belief in the race that He to whom the events of to- 
 morrow and the events of a thousand years hence are 
 alike clearly known, can, when great ends are to be served, 
 make known to man what is to come to pass hereafter. It 
 is a shallow philosophy that rejects the doctrine of prophecy 
 in its predictive form. The second great Father of the 
 world, before he died, gathered his children, then an undivi- 
 ded and unbroken family around him, and showed them 
 Avhat shoidd befall them in the latter days. The race started 
 on their path with this prophecy burning like a light, and 
 carried it with them in their several dispersions. Their 
 belief in it grew stronger as, age by age, they saw it ful- 
 filling itself in their various fortunes ; and though the diWne 
 gift, after the dispersion, remained only with the family of 
 Seth — the worshippers of the true God — all nations laid 
 claim to prophecy, and all priesthoods professed to exercise 
 it. The Druids of Britain challenged this gift not less than 
 the vnse men of Chaldea, the Magi of Persia, and the priests 
 of Greece. The earliest of our writings, which are the 
 archaeological ones, attest the fonner prevalence in Scotland 
 of this, as well as of all the other forms of divination and 
 soothsaying. 
 
NITKIFIEO FOIITS — ROCKIXCJ-STOXES, ETC. 155 
 
 By the hell) of these archajological lights avc can still 
 identify many of those " high places " to which the Druid 
 went up, that there he might have the future unveiled to 
 himself, and be able to unveil it to others. The " Laws " and 
 " Gallow-hills " scattered here and there all over our country 
 attest by the name they bear that here were the di\ining 
 places of the priests of the Scottish Baal. The name comes 
 from a Gaelic word, gea-lia, which signifies " The Sorcery 
 Stone," 1 now corrupted into galloiv. The Gaelic words gea 
 (sorcery), and lia (a stone) enter into a variety of combina- 
 tions, and appear in many altered forms, but wherever we 
 light upon them as the names of places we there behold the 
 Druidic brand still unefFaced, though affixed so long ago, 
 and most surely indicating that we are treading on what 
 was once holy ground, and in times remote witnessed the 
 vigils of the astrologer and the incantations of the sooth- 
 sayer. It must be noted as confirmatory of this etymological 
 mterpretation, that these Imvs and galloiv-hills have the com- 
 mon accompaniment of a neighbourhood abounding in 
 Druidic remains — pillar-stones or remains of circles. 
 
 The popular belief regarding these laws and gaUoiv-hUh 
 is that in other days they were places of judgment and of 
 execution, — in short, that here stood the gallows. But this 
 is to mistake the etymological meaning of the name. The 
 term is not gallows-hill and gallows-gate, but gallow- 
 liill and gallow-gate. It is the Celtic gea-lla, and not the 
 English A-ernacular, gallotcs, which is but of yesterday, com- 
 pared with the olden and venerable word which has been 
 corrupted into a sound so like that it has been mistaken for 
 it. The name was affixed to these places long before the 
 gallows had come into use as an instrument of capital pun- 
 ishment, and sentence of death was carried out on the crim- 
 ^ Rust, DruidUm Exhumed, p. G3. 
 
156 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 inal by the stone weapon, or by the yet more dreadful agency 
 of fire. 
 
 In no laud, if ancient writers are to be believed, did div- 
 ination more flourish than in the Britain of the Druid. No, 
 not in Chaldea, where this unholy art arose ; nor in Egypt, 
 where it had a second youth ; nor in Greece, where stood 
 the world-renowmed oracle of Delphi, nor even at Rome 
 where flourished the college of augurs. The sooth-sayers of 
 Britain were had in not less honour, their oaks were deemed 
 not less sacred, and their oracles were listened to with not 
 less reverence than were the utterances of the same power- 
 fid fraternity in classic countries. Xay, it would seem that 
 nowhere did their credit stand so high as in Britain. The 
 testimony of Phny is very explicit. Speaking of ]Magism, 
 by which the ancients meant a knowledge of the future, he 
 says, " In Britain at this day it is highly honoured, where 
 the people are so wholly devoted to it, with all reverence 
 and religious observance of ceremonies, that one would think 
 the Persians first learned all their magic from them.'i So 
 great was the fame of the British diviners that the Roman 
 emperors sometimes consulted them. They rivalled, if they 
 did not eclipse the Gi'eek Pythoness, and the Roman augur, 
 at least in the homage that waited on them in their own 
 country, and the respect and submission which they extorted 
 from all who visited the island. 
 
 The rites which they practised to compel the future to 
 disclose itself to their eye, were similar to those which their 
 brethren abroad — partners in the same dark craft — employed 
 for the same end. They watched the sacrifices, and from the 
 appearance of the entrails divined the good or ill fortune of 
 the off'erer. They drew auguries from the flight of birds, 
 from the cry of foAvls, from the appearance of plants, as also 
 
 ^ Plin. Nat. Bis., lib. xxx. c. i. 
 
VlTRIl-Ii:!) FOHTS — ROCKING STONES, ETC. 15/ 
 
 from the dniwing of lots, and the observation of omens, such 
 as tempests and comets. To these comparatively harmless 
 methods they are said to have added one horrible rite. They 
 took a man, most commonly a criminal, and dealing him a 
 blow above the diaphragm, they slew him at a single stroke, 
 and drew their vaticinations from the posture in which he 
 fell, and the con\idsions he underwent in dying. So does 
 Diodorus Sicidns relate.^ To these arts they added, it is 
 probable, a little sleight of hand ; and, moreover, possessing 
 considerable skill in medicine, in mechanics, and in astron- 
 omy, it is reasonable to suppose that they made use of their 
 sujierior knowledge to do things, which to the uninstructed 
 and credulous would appear possible only by the aid of super- 
 natural power. His unbounded pretensions being met by 
 the unbounded credence of his votaries, the Druid foretold 
 the issue of battles, the defeat or triumph of heroes, the 
 calamities or blessings that awaited nations — in short, the 
 good or ill success of whatever enterprise of a private or of 
 a public kind, might hapj)en to be on hand. 
 
 A truly formidable power it was with which the art of 
 divination armed the Druid. The people among whom he 
 practised his auguries, and who accorded him the most un- 
 bounded faith as the possessor of the terrible attributes to 
 wliich he laid claim, could never very clearly distinguish, we 
 may well believe, between the power to foretell the future, 
 and the power to fix the complexion and character of the 
 future. The prediction of flood, or tempest, or earthquake, 
 or other dire elemental convulsion, and the power to evoke 
 and direct these terrible chastisements, were, doubtless, in 
 their imagination, very much mixed up together. They 
 had no clear conceptions of the limits of this mysterious 
 power ; or whether indeed, it had boundaries at all. He 
 ' Dio. Siculus, lib. V. c. 35. 
 
158 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 who could read the stars, for aught they knew, might be 
 able to stay them in their courses, and compel them to 
 do his pleasure. If he should command the ocean to 
 leave its bed and drown their dwelhngs, would not its 
 waters obey him? If he should summon the tempest, 
 would it not awake at his call ? Or if he should lift up his 
 voice to the clouds, would they not straightway rain their 
 hailstones and hurl their thunderbolts upon the disobedient ? 
 They saw the Druid, with all the forces, visible and in- 
 visible, of nature ready to be marshalled at his bidding 
 against all who should dare to disobey or offend him. 
 What a miserable vassalage ! and from that vassalage there 
 was no escape. The earth was but a wide prison, peopled 
 throughout with invisible agents, countless in number, and 
 malign in spirit, whose only employment and dehght were to 
 torment the race of man. Nature itself groaned " travailing 
 in pain " under the bondage of this corruption, and waited 
 in " earnest expectation," for the coming of Christianity that 
 it might be brought into the liberty of a purer system. And 
 when at length the Gospel came, and broke the divining 
 rod of the Druid, and purged out the gross defilement of 
 those vengeful deities with Avhich he had peopled earth and 
 air, sea and sky, and tumbled their dark empire — to believer 
 in Druidism no imaginary one — into ruin, what a glorious 
 and blessed emancipation ! — not to man only, but also to the 
 earth on which he dwelt. If, as some historians say, wail- 
 ings were heard to issue from the shrines and oracles of 
 paganism, when the cry went forth and resounded along the 
 shores of every island and continent, " great Pan is dead," 
 well might songs and shoutings arise from the Britons when 
 they felt their ancient yoke falHng from off' their neck, and 
 the thick gloom in which they had so long sat, giving place 
 to the morning light of a better day. 
 
CHAPTER XITI. 
 
 SCOTLAND AS SEKX BY AGRICOLA AND DESCRIBED BY 
 TACITUS AND HERODIAN. 
 
 After long ages — how many we do not know, for they 
 reach back into the primeval night, and offer us nothing to 
 guide our hesitating steps but the dubious memorials which 
 the poor barbarian has left behind him in cairn and cist — we 
 gladly welcome the rising of the light of history. It is a 
 Roman hand that carries the torch that first illumines oiu* 
 sky, and reveals the face of our country to us. Time has 
 not yet come to its " fulness," nor has the world's grand 
 epoch taken place, yet here on the coast of England is the 
 Roman fleet searching along the shores of Kent for a place 
 of anchorage and disembarkation. The invasion is led by 
 the great Julius in person. That remarkable man, uniting 
 letters with arms, touches no spot of earth on which he does 
 not shed light ; alas ! also inflict devastation. He has just 
 set foot on a new shore, and he feels the curiosity of the 
 discoverer as well as the lust of the invader and concjueror. 
 We see him, on the evening after the battle, retiring to his 
 tent, or to his ship, and noting down, in traces rapid and 
 brief, but destined to be ineffaceable, whatever had fiillen 
 under his own observation, or had been reported to liim by 
 others, respecting the appearance of the country, and the 
 manners, opinions, and condition of the barbarians on whose 
 shore he had just hurled his legions. 
 
160 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 It is verily no pleasant or flattering picture to which the 
 pen of Caesar introduces us. And the darkness of that 
 pictui'e is deepened by the sharp contrast which so strongly 
 suggests itself betwixt the country of the writer, then just 
 touching the acme of its literary and warlike glory, and 
 the poor country which his pen seeks to pourtray. That 
 contrast has since that day been most strikingly reversed. 
 But if civilisation and empire have transferred their seat 
 from the country of the polished writer and invincible con- 
 queror to that of the skin-clothed man, on whose neck 
 Ave see Rome now imposing her yoke, we behold in this no 
 proof, though some might regard it as such, of the fickleness 
 of fortune, and the instability of power and grandeur. 
 
 This change of place on the part of the two countries, 
 looked at bcloAV the surface, is, on the contrary, a conspicu- 
 ous monument of the stedfast and unchangeable working of 
 those laws and forces that determine whether a nation is to go 
 forward or to fiiU back — fonvard to empire or backward into 
 slavery. Nations may -snn battles, or achieve great triumphs 
 in art, but there is a mightier power in the world than either 
 arms or arts, though the Roman knew it not, and statesmen 
 still make but small account of it ; and in the stupendous 
 revolution of which we have spoken we trace simply the 
 working of this Power : a power compared with which the 
 strength of the Roman legions was but as weakness : a 
 power, moreover, that croAvns itself Anth far other victories 
 than those which the mistress of the ancient world was wont 
 to celebrate with such magnificence of pomp and haughtiness 
 of spirit, on her Capitol. 
 
 It is England rather than Scotland which the invasion of 
 Ca?sar brings into \iew. No foot of Roman soldier, so far 
 as is known, had yet been set doA\Ti on Scottish soil. Slowly 
 the Roman eagle made its way northward into Caledonia, 
 
SCOTLAND AS SEEN BY AGRICOLA, ETC. 161 
 
 as if it feared to approach those great mountains, dark Avdth 
 tempests, which nature had placed there as if to form the last 
 impregnable defence of a liberty wliicli Rome was devour- 
 ing. It was in the year 55 B.C. tliat Julius Caesar invaded 
 Britain ; but it was not till about one hundred and thirty-five 
 years after this, that is, in the year 80 of our era, that Agricola, 
 leading his legions across the Tweed, brought Scotland for 
 the first time into contact with Rome. All England by this 
 time was comprehended within the limits of the empire, and 
 had become a Roman province. It was dotted with Roman 
 camps, and studded with Roman cities, in which both 
 foreigners and natives were living the life of Italy under a 
 northern sky. England, in a word, was already very 
 thoroughly permeated by those refining but emasculating 
 influences of which Rome was the centre, and which she 
 studied to diffuse in all her provinces as a means of recon- 
 ciling to her yoke, and of retaining under her sceptre, those 
 countries which her sword had subjugated. But as yet 
 Scotland was untouched by these insidious and enfeebling 
 influences. Roman luxury had not relaxed its barbaric 
 vigour, nor had Roman power tamed its spirit, or curtailed 
 its wild independence. But now its subjugation was begun. 
 The task of conquering it, however, Agricola found a 
 difficult one. Scotland was not to be so speedily subdued, 
 nor so securely retained, as the level country of England. 
 The forests were more dense, the swamps more impenetrable, 
 and the mountain strengths more formidable on the north of 
 the Tweed than in the southern country. The natives, more- 
 over, less readily accepted defeat, and though routed and 
 dispersed in battle, they would again renew the attack with 
 revived desperation and in augmented numbers. But 
 Roman discipline and perseverance at last surmounted these 
 obstacles, though neither wholly nor permanently. The 
 
 I. L 
 
162 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 legions hewed their way into the country, scattering or 
 crashing every living thing that opposed their progress. 
 Advancing fi'om stream to stream, and from one mountain 
 range to another, guarding the passes behind him with 
 camps, erecting forts of observation and defence on the hill 
 tops, throwing bridges across rivers, and laying down lines 
 of roads through forest and moor, and ever presenting a 
 stern front to the natives, who kept retreating before him, 
 unless when at times surprised and slaughtered by his 
 soldiers, Agricola held on his way till at last he stood on 
 the shores of the Fkth of Forth. Here, in sight of the 
 north hills, the conqueror halted, and dramng a chain of 
 forts across the country fi-om the Forth to the Clyde to repel 
 the attack, or shut out the irruption of the natives still 
 numerous in the countiy beyond, the Roman general fixed 
 here for the time the boundary of the now overgro^ni empire 
 of Rome. His future progress northward, and the sanguin- 
 ary battles it cost him to make good this advance, will fall to 
 be narrated in subsequent chapters. Meanwhile let us 
 pause and look around on the country and the people amid 
 which the triumphs of Agiicola have placed both him and 
 us. 
 
 Happily for us, in the invasion of Scotland under Juhus 
 Agricola, as in the previous invasion of England under 
 Julius Caesar, letters and arms were once more conjoined. 
 Not, however, as before, in the same person, although in the 
 same expedition. Along mth this Roman general came his 
 son-in-law, Tacitus, the great historian.^ While the soldier, 
 
 1 The author has assumed that Tacitus accompanied his father-in-law to 
 Britain. This impression, amounting to almost certainty, was produced 
 by his perusal of the " Life of Agricola." In describing the country and 
 its inhabitants, Tacitus takes the attitude of an eye-witness. When he 
 speaks of those parts to which Agiicola and the legions did not penetrate, 
 he gives us the testimony of others, using the phrase, " they represent," 
 
SCOTLAND AS SEEX 15 V AGRICOLA, ETC. 163 
 
 with keen eye scrutinised the strategic points of the countrj', 
 and determined the movement of the legions, the historian, 
 equally alert, noted down the more prominent and remark- 
 able characteristics of the new region into which they had 
 come, and the peculiar quahties and appearance of the race 
 among which they found themselves. The touches of a 
 feebler pen, especially when engaged on a country so obscure 
 as Scotland then was, would have speedily faded into utter 
 oblivion. The picture produced by the genius of Tacitus, 
 posterity has taken care to preserve. It is vivid, but not 
 complete or full. To see Scotland as it disclosed itself to 
 the eyes of the two great Romans, it is necessary to fill in the 
 bold outline of the great master with the fragmentary and 
 casual glimpses which we obtain from the pen of other 
 writers, chiefly those which flourished subsequent to the time 
 of Tacitus. 
 
 There is a time for countries as for men to be born. Till 
 that time had come to Scotland, the country lay shrouded 
 in night ; but now the hour had arrived when the world 
 had need of this land lying far off in the darkness and storms 
 of the Northern Ocean. Jerusalem had newly fallen. The 
 Seer of Patmos was closing the canon of Inspiration. The 
 
 but he drops the phrase when he has occasion to speak of what he him- 
 self must have seen, on the supposition that he accompanied the army into 
 Scotland. Referring to former writers who had treated of Britain, he 
 says, "I shall describe anew on the evidence of facts." Moreover, his 
 sketches abound in minute and graphic traits, the picture of the battle- 
 field at the foot of the Grampians, for instance, such as would linger in 
 the memory and flow from the pen of only an eye-witness. Since forming 
 this opinion, the author has been confirmed in it by discovering that Dr 
 Leonard Schmitz had come to tlie same conclusion, and on much the same 
 grounds. "In a.d. 78 lie (Tacitus) married the daughter of Agricola," 
 says he, "and as in the same year the latter proceeded to Britain, it is 
 not unlikely that Tacitus may liave accompanied him ; for in some parts 
 of the life of Agricola he shows a knowledge of the country which could 
 scarcely have been acquired witliout seeing it." — A History of Latin 
 Literature, by Leonard Schmitz, LL.D., p. 1G7, Lond. 1877. 
 
1G4 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 light, which had been waxing in brightness ever since its 
 first kindhng in the morning of time, was now perfected^as 
 a revelation or system of truth. It needed to be placed 
 where it could be seen, and where the nations might be 
 able to walk in its radiance. Providence had notified by a 
 terrible event that henceforth it was not to occupy its old 
 site. The city where, till now, it had been enshrined, had 
 been cast down with tragic horror, and the Jews, whose 
 glory it had been that they were the keepers of the " holy 
 oracles," were deposed from their great function, and scattered 
 to the four quarters of heaven. The philosophy of Greece, 
 after shedding a false brilliance over that fair land for cen- 
 turies, had gone out in darkness, never more to be rekindled. 
 And with the failure of Greek philosophy all the wisdom of 
 the pre\'ious ages had failed as the true guide of men to hap- 
 piness ; for the schools of Chaldea, of Egypt, of Phoenicia, and 
 of all the earth, had emptied their intellectual treasures into 
 the schools of Greece, that, through Athens, as the embodi- 
 ment of the world's wisdom, they might make trial to the 
 utmost of what the wisdom of man could do. The answer 
 was a people emasculated and sensuous, and a state enslaved 
 and fallen. Rome, whose name filled the earth, and whose 
 sword had subjugated it, was reeling under the number of 
 her victories, and was fated to sink under the more enormous 
 burden of her ambition and her crimes, and to pull down 
 with her into the ruin of corruption a wisdom not of this 
 world, so far as it had been committed to her keeping. It 
 was at this hour of impending terrible revolution that a 
 new country was summoned out of the darkness to be 
 in Christian times what Judea had been in early days — a 
 lamp of light to the world. Agricola had gone forth on 
 the errand of Ca?sar, as he believed. He sought only to 
 illustrate the greatness of Rome by adding yet another 
 
SCOTLAND AS SEEX BY AGRICOLA, ETC. 1 G5 
 
 country to her already too vast dominions. But in truth 
 he was doing the bidding of a greater than Ciesar, who 
 had commissioned him to search in the North Sea, for away 
 from tlic pride of learning and the pomp of empire, for a 
 savage land and a barbarous people, where Christianity 
 might build up from its foundations an empire of more dur- 
 able estate and truer glory than that which Rome had suc- 
 ceeded in rearing after ages of intrigue and toil and blood. 
 Neither learning nor the sword could claim any share in the 
 brilliant achievement now to be witnessed in oiu' solitary and 
 barbarous isle. The work would here be seen to be entirely 
 the doing of Christianity, and would remain a monument of 
 its power to the ages to come. With Agricola, we have 
 said, comes the historian of the age, whose pen alone could 
 do justice to the wild country, and di'aw such a picture of it 
 as the world would keep for ever in its eye, and measure 
 by it the transformation the country was about to undergo, 
 and confess that only one power known to man was able to 
 have effected a change so marvellously vast, brilliant, and 
 beneficent. 
 
 Let us mark it well. The Scotland of the age of Tacitus 
 rises on the sight ringed with breakers — "lashed," says the 
 historian, " with the billows of a prodigious sea ! " Here it 
 is upheaved in great mountains, there it sinks into deep and 
 far-retreating straths, and there it opens out into broad plains 
 never turned by the plough, and where neither is sower to be 
 seen in the molient spring, nor reaper in the mellow autumn. 
 The clothing of the surface is various. Here it wears a 
 covering of brown moor, there of shaggy wood. The places 
 not covered by heath or forest lie drowned mostly in reedy 
 swamps and sullen marshes. The sea enters the land by 
 numerous creeks. Arms of ocean intersect the country, and 
 run in silvery lines far into the interior, up dusky glen, and 
 
166 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 round the base of dark, rocky mountain, their bright gleam im- 
 parting a softening touch to the rugged scenery. The tides flow 
 and ebb along these firths. The rushing floods poured along 
 these narrow channels by the ocean's pressm-e, so unlike the 
 gentle risings and fallings of the Mediterranean, are a source 
 of wonder to the Romans, who speak, in rhetorical phrase, 
 of the tossing and foaming waters as presenting the picture 
 of a sea-tempest in the heart of the quiet country.^ 
 
 Tlie forests are of Katm-e's planting. To nature, too, has 
 been committed the task of rearing them. They have grown 
 wild from primeval time. Their trunks stand close together, 
 their branches overlap and intenveave, and the gloom under- 
 neath their matted and tangled boughs is almost like that of 
 night. If any of these great trunks lie overturned, it is the 
 \vinter'8 tempest, not the axe, that has laid them low ; 
 scarce a branch has been lopped off". In their dark recesses 
 lodge bears, wolves, boars, and other beasts of prey, which 
 find secure and peaceful liiding in their labyrinths and mazes, 
 which even the barbarian hardly knows or dares to track. 
 
 To the rivers has been extended the same exemption from 
 man's control wliich the forests so amply enjoy. The tor- 
 rents wander at will in the channels which nature has 
 dug for them. Xo embankment regulates their current or 
 restrains their overflow ; and when the skies of winter let 
 fall their contents, the brooks are converted into raging cata- 
 racts and the rivers expand into lakes. The devastation 
 they work where they burst their bounds gives but small 
 concern to the natives, for hardly are there any cornfields to 
 drown, although it may happen now and then that a herd of 
 cattle, of the old Caledonian breed, are caught in the rising 
 waters and swept off in the flood. 
 
 Pathways there are none, save the hunter's or the shep- 
 
 ^ Tacit., Vif. Agric, cap. 10. 
 
SCOTLAND AS SEEN BY AGRICOLA, ETC. 1C7 
 
 herd's track, which may be seen winding capriciously over 
 hill or across heathy strath, and losing itself in the far-off 
 hazy edge of moorland. No bridge gives passage to the way- 
 farer over the stream. When the snows melt, or the autumnal 
 rains descend, and the waters are swollen, the traveller 
 swims the flood or wades the ford, and goes on his way over 
 black bog or trackless moor. The roads which are one day 
 to afford the means of communication betwixt the territory 
 of tribe and tribe, and hnk hamlet to hamlet, await the 
 coming of a future age with its necessities and arts. They 
 are not needed in tliis, for the hunter disdains their use, and 
 the trader has not yet fomid his way to a land where there 
 is neither taste to appreciate nor money to pm'chase his 
 wares. 
 
 The seas around the coast are even more solitary than the 
 land. Seldom or never is the white gleam of sail seen upon 
 them. They are vexed with frequent tempests, which, 
 descending upon them from the north, raise then- waters 
 in mountainous masses, and hurl them against the shore as 
 if they would drown the land ; and even when the tempest 
 has spent its fury and the billows again subside, it is not to 
 sparkle gaily in the light like the seas of southern climes, 
 but to he sullen and dark, as if they still harboured their 
 angry mood, and but waited an opportunity of renewing the 
 war against the gi'eat rocks that guard the coast. In the 
 long line of its rockbound shore, no beacon light shines ouf 
 to guide the mariner, and no harbour opens amid the waves 
 to give shelter to his vessel, which, driven by the winds, 
 reels onward to ine\itable shipwreck. To these very real 
 and formidable dangers, the imagination of the mariner 
 added others, which were only the more alarming that they 
 were vague and unknown. Rumour spoke of the region as 
 overhung by pei-petual darkness, and abounding in unknown 
 
168 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 perils and monsters of dreadful shape ; and when the navi- 
 gator found himself drawing nigh this haunted shore, he put 
 his helm about and bore away to other and safer coasts. 
 " If we trust the description of Procopius, Scotland was the 
 real infernal region of the ancients, to which the souls of the 
 dead passed in Charon's boat from the opposite shore of 
 Germany ; and where, of course, Ulysses must have gone to 
 converse with them." ^ 
 
 " From earth a night 
 There of dim clouds ascends, and doubtful light." 
 
 Such was the Scotland which presented itself to the eyes 
 of its first invaders, Agricola and Tacitus. What an intense 
 earth-greed must have possessed the Roman when he coveted 
 this poor country ! 
 
 ^ Pinkerton, Enquiry into the History of Scotland, vol. ii. 50. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CALEDONIANS AS PAINTED BY HERODIAN. 
 
 We advance to a yet darker feature of our country in its 
 first beginnings. The inhabitant was as untamed as his 
 rugged land. Those who occupied the southern half of our 
 island, where, as the fruits of the earlier Roman invasion, a 
 considerable cultivation of the soil was already to be seen, 
 were known by the name of Britons. Those who inhabited 
 the northern division, the men who roamed over the bleak 
 moors and dark hills we have described, were called Cale- 
 donians or Picts.^ The Scots — the contingent thrown in to 
 attemper the general population, and give to it its pre- 
 dominant quality, if not its numerical strength — had not yet 
 arrived in a country which was to bear their name in after 
 ages. The Greek historian Herodian, who has given to our 
 early ancestors a place in his sketches of the campaigns 
 of Severus, may have unduly deepened the shades of his 
 picture. He never was in Britain, and coidd relate only 
 what others told him of the country and the people. But 
 his descriptions may safely be taken as the portraiture of the 
 Caledonian current at Rome in the age of the Emperor 
 Severus. Herodian paints the men of Caledonia as going 
 naked, only encircling their necks and bellies with iron rings, 
 as others array themselves in ornaments of gold. 
 
 Their country, he tells us, abounded in swamps, and the 
 
 ^ " That the Caledonians and Piks were one and the same people is now 
 universally allowed." — Pinkerton, i. , 105. 
 
170 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 vapours exhaled from these miry places by the heat filled 
 the air with a. continual murkiness. The natives traversed 
 their bogs, wading up to the neck in mud, wholly regardless 
 of the discomfort and defilement of person to which they 
 subjected themselves. They had no raiment to soil, and a 
 plunge into the first stream would cleanse their persons. 
 Battle was to them a delight, and the greater the carnage 
 the higher their satisfaction. Helmet and habergeon were 
 unknown to them ; protection for their persons they sought 
 none, save a narrow shield of wicker-work covered with 
 cow-hide. They carried no weapon into the fight but a 
 javelin or lance, and a sword girded on their naked loins.^ 
 Their bravery, their contempt of danger, and their reckless- 
 ness of life, made them no despicable antagonists, even to 
 the legions of Rome. Their fiight was sometimes more 
 fatal to the enemy than their attack. The barbarian, bur- 
 dened only with his few simple accoutrements, skimmed the 
 surface of the quaking bog with agility and safety, and was 
 soon out of reach of his j)ursuers, while the Roman soldier, 
 weighed down by his heavy armour, sank in the morass and 
 was held fast, till his comrades came to extricate him, or the 
 foe he was chasing returned to slaughter him. Herodian 
 can hardly conceal his chagrin that these untrained and un- 
 clothed warriors should have adopted a mode of fighting so 
 alien to all the established usages of war, and which placed 
 their opponents in so many points at a disadvantage. It 
 was hardly to be expected that the Caledonians would con- 
 sult the convenience of their haughty invaders or give them- 
 
 1 " The primitive Celtic dress," says Pinkerton, "was only a skin thrown 
 over the shoulder, and a piece of cloth tied round the middle. Gildas 
 mentions the last as the dress of the Scots or Irish in his time." — Vol. ii. 
 p. 144. 
 
 Herodian says, " Tantum scuto angusto lanceaque contenti, prceterea 
 gladio nudis coiiioribus dependente." Lib. iii. 26S. 
 
THE CALEDONIANS AS PAINTED BY HERODLVN. 1/1 
 
 selves the least conccni whether their mode of defence 
 agreed with or crossed the usages of Rome.^ 
 
 Their appearance, as Herodian has depicted it, must have 
 been uncouth in the extreme. Hardly have we courage to 
 look cahulj at the apparition which his pen has conjured 
 up. We are fain to persuade ourselves that the historian 
 has given the rein to his imagination, and produced a 
 picture such as would grace his pages rather than one that 
 would find its likeness on the moors of Caledonia. And yet 
 there must have been some foundation for the statement, 
 otherwise it would not have been so publicly made by 
 ^n'iters of name, and in an age when it was so easy to test 
 its truth. The Caledonians were in the habit, so Herodian 
 assures us, of tatooing their bodies, after the fashion of the 
 Xew Zealanders and the American Indians of our own day.^ 
 What we would have accounted a disfigurement they reckoned 
 an embellishment. It cost them no little pains, and some 
 suffering to boot, to effect this ingenious metamorphosis of 
 their persons. By means of a hot iron the Caledonian im- 
 printed upon his limbs the figures of such animals as he was 
 most familiar with, or as he chose to make the symbols or 
 intei-preters of his predominating dispositions, much as the 
 
 ^ Herodlani Historia Cum Angeli PolUiani mterpretathne lat'ina, Vin- 
 docini, 1665, lib. iii. p. 266-268. Neque enim vestis usum cognoveriiiit, sed 
 ventrem atque cervicem ferro incingunt : ornamentum id esse, ac divitia- 
 ruiii argumentum existimantes, perinde ut aiiruni cffitei'i barbari. 
 
 - The statement of Herodian that the Caledonians painted their bodies, 
 acquires contirmation from the well known passage in Claudian : — 
 
 " Ille leves Mauros, nee falso nomine Pictos, 
 Edomuit." 
 " He the fleet Moor subdued ; and painted Pict 
 Not falsely named. " 
 And again — 
 
 " Ferroque notatas, 
 Perlegit exanimes Picto moriente figxiras." 
 
 " They on the bodies of the dying Picts 
 Saw the rude figures, iron-graved. " 
 
172 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 knight of our own day blazons on his shield the figures which 
 are most suggestive of the virtues or qualities he is emulous 
 of being thought to possess. The parts of the body touched 
 by the hot iron were rubbed over with the juice of the plant 
 called woad, and this brought out in blue the figures which 
 the iron had imprinted upon the person. We can imagine 
 the barbarian, after completing this strange adornment, sur- 
 veying himself Avith no little pride, and thinking how for- 
 midable he should look in the eyes of his enemy, blazing all 
 over with the shapes of monstrous and terrible animals. 
 Before going into battle he was careful, we are told, to 
 deepen the colour of these wild figures in order to heighten 
 the terrors of his appearance.^ 
 
 Besides tliis curious emblazoning, worn on the person, and 
 not after the more convenient fashion of modern times, on 
 the shield, one other circumstance helped to make their as- 
 pect savage and terrible. This was their manner of disi)os- 
 ing of their hair. Their locks, dark and matted, hung down, 
 shading their faces and clustering on their shoulders. This 
 arrangement served in some sort as a \dzor. It may have 
 stood them in some stead on occasion, but it would tend to 
 hide the fire of their eye, and so diminish the terror of their 
 countenance, unless, indeed, when the wind blew aside their 
 locks, or the action of battle momentarily parted them, and then 
 their faces, burning in fury, would gleam out upon the foe.^ 
 
 Strange looking personages, indeed, must these forefathers 
 of ours have been, if their first historians have not done them 
 
 ^ Herodiani Hlstoria, lib. iii. 267. Quin ipsa notaiit corpora pictura 
 varia et omnifariam formis animaliiim quocirca iie indunntur quidem, 
 videlicet pictiiram coi-poris ne adoperiant. Sunt aiiteni belliciosissima 
 gens at:pe audissima ctedis. 
 
 - It does not appear that the name Pict was an ancient one, or long 
 continued. It probably came from the Romans. Finding the Caledonian 
 warriors figured over with these strange devices, they would naturally 
 speak of them as x>icti, or painted men. 
 
THE CALEDOXIAXS AS PAINTED BY HERODIAX. IJ.'i 
 
 injustice. Blue men, figured all over from head to heel 
 Avitli the representations of horses, bullocks, wolves, and 
 foxes ; traversing their wilds with foot almost as swift as 
 that of the roe and deer which they chased ; stalking by the 
 shore of their lakes and their seas in the pride of barbarian 
 independence, disdaining to plow or weave, to dig or plant, 
 their loins begirt with skin of wolf, their long hair streaming 
 in the wind, their dark features brightening with keen 
 delight when the chase was to begin, or kindling with the 
 fire of a yet fiercer joy when battle was to be joined. Were 
 these uncouth progenitors to look up from their resting- 
 places on lonely moor or underneath gray cairn, it is hard to 
 say which would be the more astonished — we or they ? We 
 to see the men who went before us, they to behold the men 
 who have come after them : we to behold the Scotland of 
 the first century, they to see — striking contrast — the Scotland 
 of the nineteenth ! 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CALEDONIAN HOUSES — LAKE DWELLINGS. 
 
 Let us at this stage bestow a rapid glance on the dwellings 
 of the inhabitants of Scotland during the first centuries of 
 our era. The retrospect on which we now enter ^\dll bring 
 under the eye a very different state of things from that exist- 
 ing at this day, and ^Wll exhibit as great a contrast between 
 the new periods of our countij's history in this particular, as 
 that seen in the details which have just passed under our 
 review. 
 
 The Scotland of the nineteenth century is perhaps the 
 most perfect country on the globe. We do not say that it 
 is the grandest : it is the most complete. It combines 
 within its narrow limits every variety of landscape — river, 
 lake, ocean, frith, arable plain, the flourishing wood, the 
 dark hill. It has thronged cities, lonely moors where browse 
 the antlered herd, crags where the eagle builds her nest, 
 and summits so lofty that, in certain seasons, the white gleam 
 of the snow is seen upon them all the summer through. 
 Gathered here into narrow space are all the natural beauties 
 which the traveller must elsewhere seek for over vast areas. 
 This is not a judgment springing from a too fond love of 
 country, and an eye unfamihar with the scenery of other, 
 and what are sometimes called fairer lands. It is a conclu- 
 sion which has been deUberately come to after a comparison, 
 by personal observation, of Scotland ^vith nearly all the 
 
CALEDONLVN HOUSES — LAKE DWELLINGS. 1/5 
 
 countries of Europe, with, too, the more famous of the lands 
 of Asia, and with some of those of Africa. Without being 
 unjust to these countries, we are entitled to affinn that the 
 landscapes of Scotland have a quiet grace, a picturesque 
 beauty, and a delightful gradation of scenery, from the 
 homely up to the romantic and the grand, not to be met 
 with within the same limits in European or Asiatic countries. 
 But these endowments and attractions are the gift of nature, 
 and the only share man has had in them is that he has 
 helped to develop them by a careful and skilful cultivation 
 of the soil. Not so those other attractions to which we 
 now turn. These are more purely the production of man, 
 and so form a more definite measure of the advance of the 
 inhabitants. 
 
 It is the Scotland of the first century to which we return 
 — that which was startled by the news of Agricola's invasion. 
 What a difference bet^vixt the edifices of the land from which 
 Agricola had come and those of the country in which he was 
 now arrived. The former was then in its glory. The echoes of 
 the footsteps of the great Cassar, and the eloquent accents of 
 Cicero yet lingered amid its temples and statues. The golden 
 house of Nero crowned the Palatine. The Pantheon, with 
 its roof of burnished bronze, had not yet lost its pristine 
 grandeur. The little temple of Vesta, the matchless grace 
 of which twenty centuries have not been able wholly to 
 efface, rose like a white blossom in marble on the banks of 
 the Tiber. The titanic pile of the Colosseum Avas slowly 
 rising, storey on storey, to its completion. Many a senatorial 
 villa and classic temple gleamed out along the Apennines ; 
 and scattered over the plains at their feet were towns and 
 villages without number. Scarcely was there crag or foun- 
 tain in all that fair land which the art of Greece, working in 
 the marble of Italy, had not adorned with statue or shrine, 
 
176 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 or crowned vrith other architectural glory. Such was the 
 land which the Roman general had left. How different that 
 into which he had come ! 
 
 At the period of which we sjieak there was not a stone 
 edifice in all Scotland. None are known to have then existed, 
 for there are no architectural remains Avhich date so far back 
 as before the age of Agricola. The first masonry the Cale- 
 donians saw most probably was the line of Roman wall 
 which stretched across betmxt the Forth and the Clyde. 
 Whether they took their first lesson in stone-buildmg from 
 it we do not know. There were already, and had been 
 before Ca?sar's time, stone structures in their countiy ; but 
 these were reared in connection with their religion, and were 
 of the same rude and simple kind with the memorial pillars 
 and stone altars which the natives of those lands whence 
 they had come, and whose rites they had brought with them, 
 set up for worship ; for history shows that the first labours, 
 of man in the department of stone-building is in connection 
 with religion. He finds for his own dwelling a tent, or a 
 cave, or a chamber in the earth, but he erects his altar above 
 ground, and performs his rites in the face of the sun. Such 
 rude temples there were already in Scotland, of which we 
 have already spoken. But though the Caledonians, by some 
 marvellous and as yet unexplained contrivance, demanding 
 skill as well as strength, were able to set up immense blocks 
 as altars of sacrifice, their art did not teach them to construct 
 dwellings for themselves. 
 
 Of what sort, then, were the habitations of the early Cale- 
 donians ? They must needs have shelter from the elements, 
 and they must needs have a place of retreat in which to sleep 
 at night. Their abodes, in sooth, were not greatly superior 
 to those of the animals which they pursued on their mountains. 
 They dug holes in the ground, and in times of war, or during 
 
CALEDONIAN HOUSES — LAKE DWELLINGS. 177 
 
 the cold of winter, they bunowcd in tliese subterranean dwell- 
 ings, as did the Germans of the same age. In times of 
 peace, or in the fine weather of summer, they left their 
 cave in the earth, and lived above ground in rude habita- 
 tions constructed of wattles and mud, and thatched with 
 reeds or straw, of which we have spoken in a former chapter. 
 From these humble beginnings rose the Scottish cities of the 
 present day. While the capitals of Asia and of other lands 
 have been slowly descending from sj)lendour to ruin, and are 
 now little better than mounds of rubbish, the cities of Scot- 
 land, in the same interval, have been rising from the wigwam 
 on the moor, with the cold mist creeping round it, to the 
 queenly metropolis that nestles at the foot of its great rock, 
 which rises crowned with its grey castle, "a poem in stone," 
 looking down on the silveiy bosom of the Forth, and the 
 rich plains of the Lothians. 
 
 . Besides the habitations we have described, the underground 
 cave and the structure of wattles with its roof of thatch, there 
 was another class of dwellings which were common in Scot- 
 land. They mark, it is probable, a second stage in the 
 humble architecture of early Scotland, seeing their construc- 
 tion displays a little more ingenuity and mechanical art than 
 the rude structures that preceded them. These are known 
 as lacustrine or lake dwellings, being found on the shores of 
 lakes. This peculiar class of habitations is common to Scot- 
 land, with other countries of northern Europe, more especially 
 Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. They are the memorials, 
 we are disposed to think, of unsettled times. The swampy 
 groinid on which they stood, and the cold air of the lake that 
 overhung them, nuist have made them unhealthy as places of 
 human habitation, and we can hardly see what could tempt 
 the natives to select such sites, unless the presence of danger, 
 which would make the facilities of defence and escape the 
 
 I. M 
 
178 HISTORY OF scotla^;d. 
 
 first consideration in the choice of a place of abode. In the 
 case of sudden attack, the occupants could cut the passage 
 that connected them with the shore, and insulate their 
 dwelling ; and if this did not secure their safety, they could 
 plunge into the waters of the lake, or escape in their 
 canoes. 
 
 Abundant materials for the construction of these dwell- 
 ings were ready to hand. Their builders, shouldering their 
 stone hatchet, or their bronze axe, repaired to the nearest 
 wood, and cut down the trees fittest for their purpose. 
 Dragging the trunks to the lake, they drove in rows of 
 piles, partly on the shore, and partly in the water, and lay- 
 ing the timbers crosswise on the top of the piles, they 
 formed a floor a few feet above the surface of the lake. 
 Over this first flooring they laid a second, consisting of a 
 layer of stones, or a paving of flags. This permitted a fire 
 — a welcome arrangement in so damp and comfortless a 
 dwelling — to be kindled, and a little necessary cooking to 
 be done. When we dig down through the soil and turf 
 which have accumulated above these abodes of an ancient 
 time and an ancient people, and lay bare their remains, we 
 find the signs of their former human occupancy clearly 
 traceable in the ashes and charred wood which lie in heaps 
 in the middle of their floors. Mixed with these long extin- 
 guished embers are the bones of the horse, the ox, the sheep, 
 the deer, and other animals, the flesh of which seiTcd the 
 inhabitants for food. Hand querns are also found, which 
 testify to a little cultivation of the soil, and the use of fari- 
 naceous food at their meals. 
 
 Among other fragments of these banquets of two thou- 
 sand years ago, are a few culinary utensils. Some of these 
 are of clay, others of stone. Plenty, rather than elegance, 
 doubtless reigned at these entertainments, yet the presence 
 
CALEDONIAN HOUSKS — I,AKi: DWHI.MNCJS. 179 
 
 of these simple vessels shows tluit a little care had begun to 
 I'e taken in the preparation of the viands, and that the 
 meals eaten at these tables were not confined to one dish 
 only. Xor was the adornment of the person altogether 
 overlooked. We trace, even in these rude abodes, the pre- 
 sence and pride of female beauty in the little trinkets, such 
 as beads of flint and bronze, which turn up at this day in 
 these ancient heaps of debris. Some of these articles are of 
 Roman workmanship, showing that lake dwellings con- 
 tinued in use down to a comparatively late period. It only 
 remains to be mentioned, that in the floor of these lacus- 
 trine abodes, which stood overlapping the margin of the 
 lake, it was not uncommon to cut a small opening, some- 
 thing like a trap door, through which the fish, as they 
 swam underneath, could be speared and caught, and so a 
 not unwelcome addition made to the dainties of the table. 
 
 There was yet another class of lake dwellings of a supe- 
 rior order known to the Scotland of those days. These dis- 
 tinctly point to times of danger, and show that the desire of 
 safety was a predominant feeling in the selection of these 
 extraordinary retreats. The lake dwellings of which w^e are 
 now to speak, stood not on the bank, but in the lake itself, 
 at some considerable distance from shore, having the 
 water round and round, broad and deep, and serving as a 
 moat for their defence. The inmates had access to the 
 land by a long narrow pathway of planks, resting on stakes. 
 This pathway or bridge could be cut on the approach of 
 <langer, much as the drawbridge of a castle is lifted in the 
 face of an enemy. When the Caledonians would construct 
 a lacustrine abode of this sort, they selected a low island, or 
 sandbank, covered by the lake to no great dei)th, and pro- 
 ceeded to set up their structure in the following wise. They 
 first enclosed the site with a row of strong stakes. Out- 
 
180 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 side this paling they constructed a breastwork of timbeiv 
 consisting of great oak beams, hiid horizontally, and ha^'ing 
 upright stakes mortised into them. Great rounded trunks 
 of trees, piled upon the others, and kept in position by the 
 upright stakes, rose like stone rampart round castle, and 
 completed the fortifications of these lake citadels, which 
 must have been of no contemptible strength. 
 
 Within the area enclosed by this wooden rampart was 
 laid first a flooring of logs. Over this were put beams of 
 oak, and to give a yet more solid footing to those who 
 lived aboard these places, half castle, half ship, and adapt 
 the floor to their every purpose, there came last of all a 
 pavement of flat stones. On this upper covering was placed 
 the hearth. The walls that rose on these foundations have 
 long since disappeared, but there can be no doubt that they 
 were composed of the same materials, and built up with the 
 same care, which was bestowed on the substructions. The 
 oak forest, as we have said, was the quarry to which the 
 builders of those days had recourse. To fell a tree was an 
 easy matter compared with excavating a block. Had their 
 knowledge of art, or the tools with A\hich they worked en- 
 abled them, they would doubtless have reared their lake 
 dwellings of stone. There are such lacustrine fabrics. The 
 same emergency has compelled men to the adoption, in his- 
 toric times, of the same expedient to w^hich these rude people 
 in far-off" ages had recourse. Instead of a Scotch or a Swiss 
 lake, let us take the shallows of the Adriatic. Venice is a 
 superb example of a lacustrine dwelling. The terror of the 
 advancing Goths drove the population of the north of Italy to 
 seek a refuge in the mud flats at the head of the Adriatic Sea. 
 There they built them a city. Its founders, however, chose, 
 not the oak, but the marble with which to construct their 
 lacustrine palaces, and though Venice still keeps its head 
 
CALEDONIAN HOUSES — LAKE l)WELLIN(iS. 181 
 
 above the iiiiul of the Adriatic, it is as really a lacustrine 
 creation as any of the buried lake dwellings of Scotland. 
 
 The most perfect specimen of a lake dwelling, or crannog, 
 which as yet has come to light in our country, is that of 
 Lochlea, near Tarbolton, Ayrshire. It was excavated in 1879. 
 About forty years before this time the surface of the loch hav- 
 ing been lowered by drainage, the site of the crannog became 
 visible in summer time as a small island about seventy-five 
 yards from the southern shore. On a second drainage taking 
 place, the piles of which the crannog was constructed showed 
 their heads in a circle of about twenty-five yards in diameter. 
 Running round them there was found, on excavating, a breast- 
 work of stakes and oak beams, in the manner we have al- 
 ready described, as usual in such structures. Within was a 
 flooring of rough planks resting on transverse beams of oak. 
 These were covered atop, near the centre, with a pavement 
 of flat stones, which had been used as a hearth. The goodly 
 <limensions of the fire-place is suggestive of abundance of 
 good cheer, and of numerous retainers or guests. The castle 
 was no henuitage. If such luxuries as grew beyond seas 
 were not to be seen in it, it was amply stored, doubtless, 
 with such fare as Avas supplied from the lake in which it 
 .stood, and the pastures and woods that lined the shore. 
 
 This central apartment — the kitchen and dining-room in 
 one, for the meal was probably eaten in the same chamber 
 in which it was cooked — was farther enclosed by a circle of 
 upright piles, and these by an outer circle connected with 
 the fonner by transverse beams, forming a strong breastwork 
 all round the central pavement. INIixed with the ashes on 
 the hearth were found the bones of the usual animals, to- 
 gether with instruments of deer-horn, querns, wooden dishes, 
 spindle whorls, and numerous iron implements and weapons, 
 such as spear-heads, knives, dirks, a wood-cutter's saw, a 
 
182 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXl). 
 
 mortise-chisel, and similar articles. A long row of stakes, 
 running landwards, showed that a gangway existed by which 
 the inmates could hold communication with the shore. This 
 gangway could be cut with scarce more labour, and in nearly 
 as brief a space, as it takes to lift a drawbridge, and when 
 thus severed, the castle was completely insulated. We have 
 been contemplating the remains of structures older, probably, 
 than the foundations of Rome. 
 
 Most touching it is to read these simple records of a world 
 which has so utterly passed away — not a world that existed 
 in some far-off region, but one that flourished on the veiy 
 soil on which we are daily treading, and under the same sky 
 beneath which our modem life is carried on. Our country 
 is a book written all over ^dth antique tales, of loves and 
 hates, of banquets and battles, which were acted and ended 
 before those of which Homer sang were begun, Xot a 
 league can Ave journey, not an acre can we turn up, but we 
 light on another and yet another fragment of this hoary, 
 weather-worn, yet veritable chronicle of the olden land and 
 the olden men. 
 
 Beneath the dark surface of Lochar moss lie embedded 
 the skiffs in which the aborigines were wont to traverse 
 its waters — oak-trunks scooped out into canoes by means 
 of fire and a stone hatchet.^ On the banks of the Clyde 
 the tiny ships of these " ancient mariners " have been dug 
 up in great numbers. A stranded canoe was found beneath 
 old St Enoch's, Glasgow. Another was dug up at the 
 cross. Others have been exhumed in other quarters of 
 the city, still farther from the present bed of the river. 
 This ancient craft — how different from the iron-clads to be 
 seen at this day on the Clyde ! — are of various sizes, from six 
 feet in length by two in Avidth to eighteen feet by six. In 
 
 1 Wilson, Preldstork Scotland, pp. 30-40. Edin. 1S51. 
 
CALKDONIAX HOUSES — LAKK DWKLLIXGS. MVA 
 
 those days the Wcaters of the Clyde, instead of flowing be- 
 tween the stone quays, which now confine them, spread out 
 into a noble estuary, from five to ten feet in depth, covering 
 the site of the city, and when the west winds prevailed, lash- 
 ing with their waves the base of the hill on which now stands 
 the cathedral. It looks a wild dream, and yet it is an in- 
 dubitably attested ftict that fleets of canoes once careered 
 where the streets and churches and business marts of Glas- 
 gow are now spread forth, and no inconsiderable part of the 
 connnerce of the empire is transacted in our day. 
 
 The same magical changes have been Avrought along the 
 banks of our other estuaries and rivers. The ocean over- 
 flowed the carse lands of Stirling and Falkirk, in an age 
 long past, and the Avhale gambolled Avhere now the plough- 
 man is seen tracing his furrow in the rich soil. In the same 
 district the yellow corn waves every autunm over buried 
 canoes and the skeletons of sea monsters Avith harpoons 
 of deerhorn beside them. In the face of the cliff" that 
 bounds the carse on the north, at an elevation to which the 
 tide never rises in our day, is still visible the iron ring to 
 which the fisherman made fast his boat at eve. A broad 
 ocean-frith, bounded by straight lines, struck far up into the 
 countiy where now the Forth picturesquely winds through 
 hamlets and orchards and corn-fields. The valley of the Tay 
 has undergone similar changes, the result of the upheaval of 
 the land, and the consequent lowering of the sea-level around 
 our shores, and of the retreat of the ocean from our estuaries. 
 Hills that once rose steeply fi-om the waters of our friths, have 
 now a belt of delightful plain at their feet, with homesteads 
 and church steeples rising above their woods. The domain 
 of the finny tribes, still sufficiently ample, has been some- 
 what curtailed thereby, but the acquisition is a valuable one 
 to the inhabitants of the land. The portions thus gifted to 
 
184 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Scotland by old ocean arc among the best corn-prodncing and 
 fruit-bearing soils which she possesses. It is farther to be 
 noted that the gift was a late one. The early Caledonian, if 
 we may judge from the signs we have indicated, did not 
 possess these lands. They came after his day, a little while 
 before the advent of civilised man, for he only could pro- 
 fitably use them. It follows that we have a larger and also 
 a richer Scotland than our ancestors knew. For in addition 
 to the moors and mountains, which, though comparatively 
 barren, the Caledonian, nevertheless, dearly loved and battled 
 for with a stout heart and a stalwart arm, as the patriotic 
 struggle we are now to relate will clearly show, we at this 
 day possess many thousands of acres of carsc lands, which 
 not only contribute largely to fill our barns, but delight the 
 eye, seeing they fomi our softest and sweetest landscapes. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 KOMAX PERIOD OF BRITAIN — EXGLAXD IXVADED BY 
 C^SAR, AXD SCOTLAXI) BY AGRICOLA. 
 
 Such as wc have described it had Scotland been from 
 immemorial time. How impossible at that hour to have 
 formed a true augury of its future ! To a visitor from the 
 polished and storied East, what a dismal picture would 
 both the men and the country have presented ! A laud 
 savage and untameable beyond all the lands of earth ! 
 Its air thick with tempest : its surface a bleak expanse of 
 bog and heath and dark forest : a wild sea rolling in upon 
 its harbourless shore : and its inhabitants of aspect even 
 more repulsive than their country : their bodies tatooed all 
 over : their loins begirt with the hide of wolf : their matted 
 locks darkening their faces : brandishing the javelin with 
 <lexterity, but disdaining all knowledge of the plough or 
 spade, and scorning acquaintance with any useful art. 
 Here, would the visitor have exclaimed, is a land doomed to 
 irretrievable barbarism ! Here is a race whose lot it is to be 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water to the rest of the 
 mitions ! How astonished would such visitor have been if 
 told that a day would come when this barbarous land would 
 be one of the lights of the world — a fountain of purer know- 
 ledge than ever emanated from Greece, and a seat of wider 
 [)<)wcr than Rome wielded, even when she called herself, 
 
18G HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and was called by others, the mistress of the world. But 
 not as summer cloud settles on mountain top does glory 
 descend on a nation. It must agonize before it is crowned. 
 A severe discipline, prolonged through centuries, must 
 Scotland undergo, before it can be worthy of so great a 
 destiny. 
 
 Xot for some time did its preparation for its great future 
 begin. Defended by a stormy strait, and not less by the vague 
 rumours that invested the lonely isle with something of 
 mystery and horror, the fii'st settlers in Britain were long 
 left in undisturbed possession of their countiy. Xo one 
 thought it Avorth his while to invade their quiet, or rob 
 them of their wild independence. The wafiiors who were 
 overrunning the world, intent on higher conquests, dis- 
 dained to turn aside to a little country where there were no 
 Avealthy cities to spoil, no richly cultivated fields to rob, and 
 where there was just as little fame as wealth to reward the 
 arms of the conqueror. The Mede, the Persian, the INIacc- 
 donian had successively passed it over. Not so the fourtli 
 great conquering power that arose in the earth. Impelled 
 by that insatiable thirst of dominion which was implanted 
 by Providence for its own high ends, the Roman eagle sa-w 
 and ahghtcd upon our shores. Henceforward our country 
 belongs to history. 
 
 Julius Cffisar had frequent occasion to be in Gaul. When 
 residing in Paris, he had heard tell, doubtless, of a wild coun- 
 try in the North Sea that lay only some two hours' sail from 
 the coast of France. It was visited by few, save the adven- 
 turous merchants of Gaul, and traders fi'om the Levant, who 
 exchanged with the natives the products of the East for the 
 tin of the Cornish mines. It is even possible, when war or 
 negotiation called him to the coast, that Juhus may have 
 8cen, in a fevourable state of the atmostphere, the chalk 
 
HO.^IAX PKHIOI) OF UlUTAIX, ETC. 187 
 
 cliffs of that island gleaming white across the narrow channel 
 that parted it from the Continent. For Roman to see a spot 
 of earth of which Rome was not mistress, was to have the 
 tormenting thirst of conquest and occupation straightway 
 aAvakened in him. This island, which rose before him in 
 the blue sea, Caesar resolved to add to the list of countries 
 Avhich had already received the yoke of Rome. Fitting out 
 a fleet of eighty vessels, he crossed the Channel, and arrived 
 before Dover. This was in the year 55 B.C. 
 
 Rumom-s of impending invasion had preceded the fleet 
 across the strait. And now the rumour had become a reality. 
 There were the dreaded galleys of invincible Rome lining 
 then* coast. Straightway a forest of barbarian spears bristled 
 along the cliff's that overhung the shore, and thousands of 
 dark faces scowled defiance down upon the invaders. Did 
 they know that the Power to which they offered battle was 
 the same which had conquered the earth ? We can fancy a 
 little disdain kindling in the eye of Caesar when he saw tlie 
 poor barbarians mshing headlong upon the bosses of Rome's 
 buckler. Be this as it may, the great warrior showed un- 
 usual hesitation in launching his legions upon the barbar- 
 ous shore to which he had led them. Though little accus- 
 tomed to pause in the face of danger, Casar judged it pru- 
 dent, in sight of the cliffs and the spears that topped them, 
 to seek a more approachable part of the coast as a point 
 of disembarkation. He gave orders to his fleet to move 
 up channel. 
 
 But the fleet limbs of the Britons carried them along the 
 shore faster than the ships could sail eastward. When the 
 galleys halted off" the flats at Deal, Caesar saw, to his dismay, 
 that the cloud which had lowered over the cliffs of Dover 
 had shifted, and now hung ominously over that part of the 
 coast where his fleet was moored. A vast and various) v 
 
188 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 armed host, consisting of war chariots, cavahy and foot 
 soldiers, stood prepared to resist the hmding of the invader. 
 To seize this barbarous shore, Ca?sar saw, would prove a 
 harder task than he had reckoned upon. His soldiers, clad in 
 heavy armour, woidd have to struggle with the fierce and 
 fearless natives in the sea, and would fight at great disad- 
 vantage. AVliile he delayed to give the word to land, the 
 standard-bearer of the tenth legion, by a bold action, decided 
 the fortune of the day. Leaping into the water, he called on 
 the men to follow their eagle. Instantly a torrent of warriors, 
 twelve thousand in number, poured down the sides of their 
 vessels, their armour gleaming in the westering sun of an 
 early September day. The Britons, burning A\dth fury, 
 rushed into the tide to oppose their advance. A desperate 
 grapple ensued betwixt the two. The waves were dyed 
 with blood. Many a Briton and Roman went down together 
 in the sea, locked in deadly embrace. But the heavy mass and 
 stubborn valour of the Roman legionaries bore back the un- 
 disciplined hordes of the British, and before the sun had 
 gone down, the invaders had made good their footing on 
 shore. Britain was now linked to Rome. 
 
 Slowly the Roman eagle made its way into the interior of 
 the country. That poAver which had trodden down the 
 nations like the mire in the streets, encountered a fiercer re- 
 sistance in our island than it had experienced in some coun- 
 tries, the inhabitants of which, more perfectly trained to arms, 
 might have been expected to have met the aggi'cssor with a 
 stouter opposition. Ca3sar had invaded Britain, but it could 
 not be said that he had conquered it, much less that lie 
 occupied it. It mattered little to win victories in a country 
 where the conqueror was master of the ground only on M'hich 
 the battle had been fought, and which he might, the next 
 day, have to recover by/orce of arms. Only to the Thames 
 
ROMAN PERIOD OF UKITAIX, ETC, 1!{!) 
 
 were the Romans able to hew their way into the hind. The 
 corn whicli was now ripe m the fields, and the bullocks that 
 -fed in the nieadoA\s, sui)plied the legions with food. They 
 cut broad pathways through the forests to facilitate their 
 advance. To guard against surprise, they cleared out the 
 wood-built villages and towns that nestled in the forest 
 glades or on the open plain. The palisades of timber that 
 enclosed them went down at the stroke of the Roman axe. 
 The brand and the sword did the rest. It was a horrible 
 business. An hour or so, and a smoking heap of ashes, 
 soaked with bluod, alone remained to show where the Briton 
 had dwelt, and where his young barbarians had played. In 
 the words of Tacitus, " they made a solitude and called it 
 peace." After a year of this inglorious warfare, Caesar grew 
 tired of it, and turned his face towards his own land. Great 
 changes were impending at Rome. The republic was about 
 to pass into the empire ; the arms of the legions were needed 
 at home, and the Romans were to taste something of the 
 slavery which they had inflicted on others. On a day in 
 September, before the equinoctial storms had set in, Caisar 
 embarked his soldiers, and set sail across the Channel. It 
 was ten o'clock at night, and the darkness soon hid from his 
 eye that shore to which he had made his first approach just 
 a year before, and which he Avas now leaving never more 
 to return. " The deified Julius," says Tacitus, " though he 
 scared the natives by a successful engagement, and took 
 possession of the siiore, can be considered merely to have 
 discovered, but not appropriated, the island for posterity." ' 
 
 After this, Britain had rest from Roman invasion for the 
 space of ninety-eight years. But if the mailed legionary was 
 not seen in the land all that while, the Italian merchant 
 found his way hither and settled in its cities, Caesar having. 
 
 ' Tacitus, I'ila Ayrkoln-. c. 1.'.. 
 
190 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXU. 
 
 shown the country to him. Now began to be seen on our 
 soil the early blossoms of commerce, and the first buddings 
 of art. This was a little compensation for the year's calam- 
 ities which the country had endured from the Roman sword. 
 The reigns of Augustus, of Tiberius, and of Caligula followed, 
 and passed in peace. But our country's discipline was not 
 yet at an end — it was only at its commencement. In the 
 time of the emperor Claudius an effort was made on a greater 
 scale than before to subjugate the countiy. In a.d. 43, 
 Aulus Plutius was sent to Britain at the head of an army of 
 50,000 men. He entered the country unopposed. He 
 fought numerous battles, and in the end carried the Roman 
 amis and the Roman yoke from the Straits of Dover to the 
 Tweed. The campaign, which had for its issue the subjuga- 
 tion of England, threw, at the same time, a gleam of glory 
 upon the nation. 
 
 When we look back we can discern, through the obscurity 
 of the many centuries which have since elapsed, the colossal 
 figure of the British leader and patriot, Caractacus. This 
 hero, barbarian though he was, nobly stood up against the 
 master of the world for the independence of his native land. 
 He was worsted in the patriotic struggle, but he manifested 
 in defeat, as in the conflict that preceded it, a magnanimity 
 of soul w^hich contrasted grandly with the essential littleness 
 of the man Avho had vanquished him. By the strength of 
 the legions, Caractacus was finally driven into the mountains 
 of Wales. Being captured, he was carried in chains to 
 Rome, and exhibited to the servile mob of the capital, along 
 with his w'ife and daughters, in a triumphal procession. 
 He strode onward along the Via Sacra, wearing his chains 
 as Caesar might have worn his purple. When the procession 
 was over, the captive prince was conducted to the palace on 
 the Palatine, and presented to the emperor. Caractacus is 
 
HOMAX 1M:UI()I) of BRITAIN, ETC. 191 
 
 said to have given vent to his wonder, as well he might, that 
 one who was so sunijituously housed, and whom so many 
 fair and mighty realms called master, should have envied 
 him his hut in his far-off native wilds. The dignity with 
 which he bore himself in the imperial presence won the res- 
 pect of Claudius, and he ordered his chains to be struck off. 
 J3id the emperor know, when he gazed on the British chief, 
 that he stood face to face with the representative of that 
 empire which in future days was to succeed his own, and by 
 the beneficence, not less than the vastness of its sway, fi\r 
 eclipse it ? 
 
 As yet, not a legionary had crossed the Tweed : not an 
 acre of soil did Rome possess in Scotland. Another half 
 century was to j^ass away before the march of the Roman 
 anns should reach the northern country. The year a.d. 80 
 was to open a new era to Caledonia. That remote and 
 mountainous land was now to make acquaintance with a 
 power, which, ere it touched our soil, had carried invasion 
 and conquest into almost all quarters of the habitable globe. 
 Scotland was among the last of the countries which was 
 destined to submit her neck to the yoke of that haughty 
 mistress Avhose own arm, palsied by political and moral 
 corruption, was about to let fall the sceptre of the world. 
 
 The general who carried the Roman sword into Scotland, 
 Julius Agricola, was one of the ablest and also one of the 
 most clement which Rome had sent fortli on the conquest 
 of Britain. He combined the qualities of the statesman 
 with those of the soldier, and retained by Avisdom what he 
 won by valour. Tacitus paints him as a model of military 
 virtue. He was trained to the knowledge of affairs by 
 service in various grades and on many fields. He never 
 shirked hardship or danger. He welcomed labour as joy- 
 fully as other men do rest. He displayed great intrepidity 
 
192 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 in perfomiing the services assigned him, and equal modesty 
 in speaking of them. Thus he escaped jealousy and attained 
 renown. He shunned pageantry and scorned pleasures, and 
 used his high post, not for his OAvn aggrandisement, but the 
 gi'eater profit of the state. Vigilant, he kncAv all that went 
 on, and while he rewarded merit, he punished only the 
 graver faults. If at any time he dealt the enemy a heavy 
 \Ao\y, he followed it up with offers of peace : thus he was 
 at once severe and conciliatory.^ Such was the man who 
 now came to subjugate Scotland to the Roman obedience. 
 But when avc reflect that this portrait was draAvn by the pen 
 of his son-in-law, we may be disposed perhaps to make 
 allowance for a little unconscious exaggeration on the part 
 of the liistorian. But after all deductions, Agricola stood 
 far above the average Roman of his day. 
 
 By this time England was included witliin the pale of 
 Rome. But this did not satisfy the imperial government. 
 The southern province was not secure so long as the more 
 warlike north remained unconquered : the tempest would 
 ever be gathering on the great mountains and rushing down 
 with destructive fury on the lowlands. Every successive 
 Roman governor who entered Britain had it as his special 
 task and his highest ambition, to conduct the legions to the 
 extreme northern verge of Caledonia, wherever that might 
 be, and affix to his name the much coveted designation of 
 Britannicus. Agricola, of course, came cherishing the same 
 hope which had inspired all his predecessors. Unless he 
 accomplished this conquest he accomplished nothing. He 
 was at the head of a powerful and well-disciplined host ; he 
 was versed in the command of armies ; he was to meet half- 
 anned barbarians, whose jealousies and rivalships made 
 them even more oj)en to attack than their wretched military 
 
 ' Tacitus, I'/V. Afjric, c. 4, 5, 8. 
 
ROMAN PKRIOI) OF lUUTAIN, KTC. lO.'J 
 
 equipments. It wuh no unreasonable expectation, therefore, 
 rhat when he went back to Rome it would be to tell that 
 now at last the limit of the empire on the north was the 
 polar wave. His quarrel lacked but one element of success : 
 it had no foundation in justice. 
 
 Before turning his face towards Scotland, he took every 
 precaution lest revolt should spring up behind him. He 
 conciliated the southern Britons by equalising and lighten- 
 ing the hea\7 taxes which his predecessors had imposed 
 upon them. He strove to draw their activities away from 
 arms, and divert them into channels of industry. He em- 
 bellished their country with temples and towns. He educated 
 the sons of the chieftains in the accomplishments and arts of 
 Italy, and the British youth now began to use the Roman 
 tongue, and to wear the Roman toga. In these soft indulg- 
 ences they forgot the hardy exercises of the field. There is a 
 strong undertone of contempt in the words of Tacitus when 
 he describes these changes. " Baths, piazzas, and sumptuous 
 feasts," he says, " were called by the ignorant people ' civilisa- 
 tion.' They were in reality the elements of slavery." ^ 
 
 Having made all safe in his rear, Agricola began his 
 march towards the North. His route lay along the eastern 
 side of the island. We gather from his historian that he 
 signalised the beginning of his march with a stroke of arms. 
 A border tribe, the Ordovices, who had been troublesome to 
 his legions, he punished with extermination. The terror of 
 the blow would travel faster than his standards, and help to 
 open their way. Even before crossing the Tweed he had a 
 presage of the unfamiliar land to which he was advancing 
 in the mountain ridges and deep narrow gidlies of what is 
 now known as Northumberland. And even after he had 
 crossed the Tweed, he did not all at once come in contact 
 
 1 Tacitus, Vit. A'jric, c. 20, 21. 
 
194 HISTOKV OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 with tlie true Caledonian fierceness. He .had to tight witli 
 the country rather than with the natives. And no better 
 ally could the natives have had. Their country, while it 
 offered shelter to themselves, threw manifold difficulties in 
 the way of the invader. The hills, the rocky glens, the 
 woods, and the morasses were so many ambushes where the 
 Caledonian might lurk, and at any hour of the day or night, 
 spring upon the Romans, entangled in the bog, or caught in 
 the defile. And having delivered their assault, they could 
 evade pursuit and defy attack, by a speedy reti'cat to the 
 fastnesses known only to themselves. The Roman general 
 saw that the task he had midertaken was one that would 
 test to the uttennost the endurance and bravery of his troops, 
 and exercise all his own wariness and skill. But he dared 
 not turn back before barbarians. He must keep his face 
 turned toward that unknown north, Avhere the Roman eagle 
 had never yet been seen, and to which, therefore, Agricola 
 the more longed to point its flight. Those who submitted 
 experienced a ready clemency : those who opposed had to 
 endure a terrible chastisement. The red prints which the 
 conqueror left behind him, and the terrible rumour that tra- 
 velled in front of him, opened his way into the land, and 
 without fighting a single battle he reached the summit of 
 the Lammernioors, whence he looked down on the plains of 
 the Lothians and the waters of the Firth of Forth. 
 
 Here was convenient halting place. Xature herself, by 
 drawing a strongly marked line across the country, appeared 
 to say that here Agricola should stop. Two great arms of 
 the sea, the one issuing from the eastern and the other from 
 the western ocean, ran far into the land, cutting the island 
 well nigh in two, and forming, as it were, a southern and a 
 northern Scotland. By joining the two seas by a line of for- 
 tresses, Agricola would be able to protect the country behind 
 
KO.MAX I'KKIOI) Ol' I5K1IAIX, KTC. 1 9.'» 
 
 Iiini, now sjibjeet to Iiis anus, ami guard against surprise or 
 irruption from the yet uncomjuered territory in front. 
 Accordingly he constructed, as we liave ah'cady said, a 
 chain of forts, running from east to west, beginning at hov- 
 rowstouness on the Forth, and ending at Bowling Bay, neai* 
 Dumbarton, on the ( 'lydc. Agricola put garrisons in these 
 forts. They were the first tracing out of that ram])art which 
 was erected subsequently t)n the same tract, and which came 
 to be known as the Wall of Antonine. 
 
 The great hills which from this point might be seen tower- 
 ing up in the northern sky, warned Agricola that should he 
 attempt to extend the limits of the empire in that direction, 
 he would encoimter far more tremendous obstacles than 
 those over which he had had to fight his way to reach the 
 point where he now stood. And the Caledonians, Avhen 
 they reflected on the strength of the power whose soldiers 
 scowled defiance upon them from their forts, might have 
 remained content with the freedom of their mountains, and 
 their exemption from a yoke now borne by their southern 
 neighbours. But considerations of prudence did not weigh 
 with either side. The Caledonians grew impatient to 
 recover what of their soil they had lost, and the Romans 
 began to covet what of the country they did not yet ])ossess. 
 Prowling hordes stole down from the highlands of Stirling- 
 shire and Perthshire to espy the weak points in the Ronum 
 entrenchment, and take advantage of them. The soldiers in 
 the forts were ke])t continually upon the alert. Their eye 
 must never be ofi" those hills in the distance, which any 
 moment might send forth from their glens a torrent of 
 warriors, to force their line with sudden and headlong rush, 
 and carry slaughter and devastation into the country beyond 
 it. The thi-ee years that followed the construction of the 
 rampart were full of surprises, of skirmishes, and battles, 
 
196 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 which often left the groiiud on which they were fought, 
 as thickly covered with the bodies of Roman dead as with 
 the corpses of the slaughtered Caledonians. 
 
 The third year of his stay enabled Agricola to enlarge his 
 acquaintance with the country and its tribes. Transporting 
 his army across the Forth he traversed Fife to the banks of 
 the Tay. The exjiedition left its inglorious traces in huts 
 burned, harvests ravaged to feed the legions, and spots 
 red with the marks of recent skirmish. Tacitus says that 
 " the tribes were devastated." He does not say that they 
 were conquered. In truth, Agricola himself confessed that 
 the expedition was abortive, when next summer — the fourth 
 — he proceeded to construct his famous line of forts, between 
 the Forth and the Clyde, by which, as the historian remarks^ 
 he " removed the enemy, as it were, into another island." 
 
 In the fifth siunmer, Agricola turned his arms against the 
 tribes of the Argyleshire hills, or scattered along the Ayr- 
 shire coast. AVhat provocation they had given, or what ad- 
 vantage he could reap from slaughtering them, it is hard to 
 say. It enabled him, however, to report at Rome that he 
 was master of the lonely rocks and gloomy mountains of the 
 western sea-board. The real motive of his western raid, 
 Tacitus hints, was the hope of crossing the sea to Ireland. 
 That island was large. Its soil and climate ^\ere excellent. 
 It had numerous harbours, the resort of merchants. It 
 would be an easy concjuest : a single legion, Agricola reckoned, 
 would suffice to subdue it. It lay between Britain and 
 Spain, for the geograi)hy of the age was not exact, and its 
 occupation would help to consolidate the empire ; and, adds 
 Tacitus, with sarcastic bitterness, " remove the spectacle of 
 liberty from the sight of the Britons." ^ 
 
 Meanwhile the eye of Briton did not need to look so 
 
 1 Tacitius Vif. A<jrir., c. 24. 
 
HOMAN I'KHIOI) OF liHIPAlX, KTC. 1 i)7 
 
 far as across tlie Irisli Channel for the odious spectacle of 
 liberty. That Iiatcful sight was close at hand. The im- 
 perial Eaiclc, liaviug ventured on a short flisjlit to tlie banks of 
 the Tay, had again retired witliin the lines of the Forth, 
 leaving the great hills of northern Caledonia, with the free 
 and fierce tribes tliat inhabited them, untouched by the 
 Roman yoke. Ireland must stand over till the legions had 
 finished with Britain. Agricola again took up the thread of 
 his Caledonian expedition, interrupted for a season by his 
 western episode. He advanced warily, step by step, like 
 one who gi-opes his wax in a difficult country and amid 
 foes of unknown numbers and force. The roads were en- 
 filaded ; every wood was suspected as a possible lurking 
 ])lace ; an anny of half-naked warriors might any moment 
 start up on the hill-side, or be vomited forth from the ravine. 
 There came rumours of uprisings from the Grampians. A 
 conquest Avhich appeared so easy when viewed from the 
 <listance of Rome, Avas seen to be full of hazards and diffi- 
 culties when looked at on the spot. 
 
 Agricola called the fleet to his aid, issuing orders that it 
 should operate along ^vith his land forces, and be ready at 
 any moment to render assistance to the legions. He made 
 liis galleys sail up the firths, in the hope that a sight so un- 
 usual might strike terror into the barbarians, and fill their 
 imaginations with the idea that his ships could sail over 
 mountains — to use Cromwell's phrase, borrowed from Cor- 
 nelius Nepos — as well as over seas. He explored the har- 
 bours on the coast, but was careful to enjoin the fleet never 
 to move so far off as to lose sight of the land anny. The 
 ships faithfully obeyed the orders of their general, keeping 
 so close in that the marines, as Tacitus informs us, often 
 came ashore to visit their conu'ades in the camp, and while 
 all three, infantry, cavalry, and marines, caroused together, 
 
198 TIIHTOllY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 they would entertain one another with tales of the valiant 
 deeds they had done antl the wonderful adventures which 
 had befallen them in this strange land ; " now the ' wilds of 
 the mountain and forest,' now the ' hardships of the storm 
 and the billows,' here the ' land and the enemy,' there the 
 ' subject ocean,' were compared with the exaggeration natu- 
 ral to soldiers." ^ So passed the sixth summer of the Roman 
 stay in Caledonia. 
 
 Season followed season, and the conquest of northern 
 Britain was not yet accomphshed. It is evident that the 
 Roman commander feared to strike a decisive blow. His 
 historian does not admit this in so many words, but the real 
 state of matters is plain from his statement, that " the 
 native tribes assailed the forts'_ and spread terror by acting 
 on the offensive ; and the timid, with the appearance of 
 being prudent persons, advised a retreat behind the Bodotria 
 (Forth), and to evacuate the country rather than be expelled." 
 The outlook at that moment was decidedly gloomy for the 
 invaders. Xor did an incident which occurred just then help 
 to brighten it. A cohort of Usipii, levied in Germany, was 
 brought over to assist the legions. Not liking the country 
 or the service, it would seem, they broke into nmtiny, mas- 
 sacred the centurion and Roman soldiers which had been 
 incorporated with them in order to their being drilled, and 
 again embarked in their galleys and put to sea. A tragic 
 fate Avas in store for them on the ocean. AYithout ])ilot or 
 chart, they were driven hither and thither at the mercy of 
 the waves. When their provisions failed, they assuaged the 
 pangs of hunger by feeding on the flesh of those of their 
 comrades whom the inexorable lot adjudged to that revolt- 
 ing use. The survivors, after passing through these horrors, 
 were captured by the Frisians and sold as slaves. 
 
 ' 'Jacitu.s, Vit. Ai/ric, c. 25. 
 
I{0MAN ri;UI(»l) OK I51MTAIN, lOTC. 11)1> 
 
 The same summer, the seventh if wc rightly gather, would 
 liave brought with it another and even greater disaster to 
 the Roman arms, if a timely discovery had not warded oft" 
 the blow. The ninth legion lay encamped within two miles 
 of Loch Leven, and the Caledonians, in whose eyes the 
 prestige of the Romans was waning, resolved to test their 
 invincibility by forcing upon them the wager of battle. 
 They planned a night attack on their entrenchment. When 
 the evening fell, veiling the waters of the loch, and the 
 summit of the neighbouring Lomond, there was neither 
 sight nor sound of enemy. But when the darkness had 
 fully set in, the Caledonians mustered, and stole in silence 
 upon the sleeping camp. Striking down the sentinel, 
 they forced the gateway, poured in in a torrent, and threw 
 themselves with fearful suddenness and violence upon the 
 soldiers. The darkness of night hid the fierce struggle 
 betwixt Caledonian and Roman. In the consternation that 
 reigned a terrible slaughter was being enacted in the camp. 
 Xot a Roman would have seen the dawn, had not Agricola, 
 informed of what was going on by his scouts, sent his light 
 troops at their utmost speed, to save his legion before it 
 should be exterminated. He himself followed with the 
 legionaries. The shouts of the troops, now arrived at the 
 entrance of the entrenchments, and the gleam of the 
 standards in the early light, made the Caledonians aware 
 that succours had been sent the Romans, and that they w^ere 
 now being assailed in the rear. So far from feeling panic, 
 they turned and confronted the newly arrived troo])s, and the 
 gateway became the scene of a terrific struggle. The exit 
 was beginning to be blocked up with the bodies of the 
 slain. But the Caledonians, bravely continuing the fight, 
 forced their way out with no great loss, through living and 
 dead, and made their escape to their bogs and fastnesses. 
 
200 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The Romans, who had narrowly escaped what would have 
 been a calamity and disgrace, claimed this affair as a \ictory. 
 The Caledonians, on their part, gathered heart and hope 
 from the incident. It showed them that the Roman was 
 not the channed invincible warrior their fears had painted 
 him, and that it was possible even yet to cast the invader 
 out of their country, or if he should refuse to quit it, to 
 make it his burial-place, and preserve for their sons the 
 freedom which their fathers had transmitted to themselves. 
 The wisdom and method with which they proceeded to make 
 arrangements for continuing their defence were not a little 
 remarkable. They sent messengers through all their moun- 
 tains with invitations to the clans to meet and confer touch- 
 ing the position of affairs. We gather from the historian of 
 the campaign that the summons met a universal and willing 
 response. The tribes assembled, probably by their delegates, 
 though their place of meeting is not known. The question 
 debated was, of course, submission or war ? If they should 
 resolve on submission the way was easy : easy at its begin- 
 ning, the bitterness would come in the end. But if they 
 should resolve to continue the struggle, they nnist wage it 
 with united arms. If they should stand apart, tribe from 
 tribe, their great enemy would devour them piece-meal. 
 Their only chance of ^dctory, and with victory escape from 
 slaveiy, lay in their union. This policy, at once so obvious 
 and so iin})erative, was adopted. The Caledonians agreed to 
 merge the interest of chief and clan in the mightier interest 
 of country. They buried their feuds, and clans that never 
 met before save to shed each other's blood, now met to 
 embrace and march in united phalanx against the foe. They 
 liad learned that they nuist first conquer themselves would 
 they hope to conquer the Romans. The outcome of all was 
 the formation of a grand confederacy, to which the priests 
 
KOjrAN I'KKIOI) OF I'.ISITAIX, KTC. 2(H 
 
 added tlic sanctions of relii^ion l)y the oft*crin,i>; of ])ul)lic 
 sacrifices. With a not iinsvni})athetic pen does Tacitus 
 lecord briefly these toncliing ai'iangenients on tlic part of 
 this remnant of the nations tt) withstand a power which had 
 ovcrnin the world. 
 
 ^Var being resolved upon, they vigorously set about the 
 adoption of measures for its successful prosecution. We 
 trace in these the superintendence of a mind not unac- 
 <iuainted Avith military tactics. Some of the Caledonians 
 had gone south to assist the Britons Avhcn the Romans 
 invaded them, fearing, as .John ^lajor has (piiiintly put it, 
 that " if the Romans should dine with the Britons, they 
 would sup wdth the Scots and Picts." ^ In theii- English 
 campaigns they had acquired a knowledge of strateg}' which 
 stood them in good service noAv. They removed their wives 
 and little ones, and doubtless also their old men, to places 
 of security. They enrolled and armed the youth. They 
 repaired their mountain barriers. They arranged the 
 number of spears Avhich each tribe should place on the Held 
 when the day of their great final stand should arrive." 
 
 Their mountains were alive throughout with the din of 
 preparations. Every glen rung with the stroke of the crafts- 
 man's hannner. The iron war-chariots were being got 
 ready, swords scoured and sharpened, arrows pointed, and 
 flint heads chipped by the thousand. In short, and to 
 express it in a familiar modern phrase, " the heather was 
 on fire," and if Agricola will not come to the " Gram- 
 })ians," the " Grampians" will go to Agricola. 
 
 ' Timebant eniiu onines ne si Biitoiiibus Romani prandeient, cum 
 Scotis et Pictis cttnarent. — Hintorla Majoris Britannice, per Joaimeui 
 Majorem, cap. 12, 3d ed., Edin., 1740. 
 
 - Tacitus, VU. A[/ric., c. 27-29. 
 
CHAPTER XYII. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF MOXS GRAMPIUS. 
 
 Agkicola was aware that a storm was gathering on the 
 north hills. Intelligenee had been communicated to him that 
 embassies were passing betwixt tribe and tribe, that chief- 
 tains formerly at feud were now knit together in bonds of 
 amity, that thirty thousand armed men were now available, 
 and still recruits were pouring into the native camp, that a 
 combination of the states had been formed, blessed by the 
 priests, and that the Caledonians, their fierce and warlike 
 enthusiasm roused to the highest pitch, Mere prepared to 
 stake all on a supreme effort for freedom. 
 
 This cloud in the north, which Avas growing bigger every 
 hour, made the Roman connnandor not a little uneasy. He 
 had now been seven years in Britain, but the Roman arms 
 had been unable to advance beyond the line of the Forth. 
 For five years they had remained stationary. The legions 
 had i)assed the summer in skirmishes, reaping the inglorious 
 troi)hies of villages burned, and their inhabitants slaugh- 
 tered. The tempests of the northern sky had furnished 
 them with an excuse for resting in camp during winter, an<l 
 refreshing themselves after the toils of the summer cam- 
 paign. Agricola saw that he could no longer make the war 
 an affair of skirmishes. He must attempt operations on a 
 larger scale. He must strike a blow for the subjugation of 
 
THK UATTLE OF MOXS GUAMI'lTS. 203 
 
 the whole of CVilodonia, othcnvise he should find himself 
 o^■erpo^vered bv iiunibers and be driven out of the country^ 
 
 Accordinfyly, fonninii; his army into three <livisions, and 
 commanding his fleet to cruise on the coast, and strike terror 
 by devastating the parts within its reach, he began his march 
 to the north. He traversed the territory lying betwixt the 
 Forth and the Tay, without, so far as appears, seeing the 
 enemy or meeting opposition. As the legions climbed Mon- 
 creifF Hill— for it lay upon their route — they had theu' first 
 view of the valley of the Tay. As they beheld the strath 
 running far to the north, with the Tay issuing from the 
 bosom of the distant Grampians, much as the Tiber appears 
 to do from the Sabines to one looking from the Capitol at 
 Rome, the soldiers burst out in the exclamation, so often attri- 
 buted to them since, " Ecce Tiherim ! " For the valley of the 
 Tay, in its general arrangements of city, river, and mountains, 
 is the valley of the Tiber over again — but without its sky. 
 There is this one other point of difference betwixt the two. 
 The Tay rolls along in a crystal clearness, which the Tiber, 
 as it issues from Etrurian fountain, and sweeps onward 
 through the Clitumnus vale with " yellow wave," might well 
 envy. 
 
 Beyond the Tay, stretching almost from side to side of 
 Scotland, is the '' Great Strath," bounded on the south by 
 the Sidlaws — soft as Apennine — and walled in on the nortli 
 by the lofty Grampians. Across this plain lay the march 
 of the legions. The Romans might a second time have 
 exclaimed, " Ecce Cainpanlam" for the region they were 
 now traversing, the modern Strathmorc, in the vastness of its 
 open bosom, and the magnificence of its mountain boundary, 
 may not unworthily be compared with the great champaign 
 aiound the eternal city — another Campania, but without its 
 
 ' 'I'acitus, Vit. Anne, e. 20. 
 
204 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 " Rome," and also without that ricli garuiturc of Patrician 
 villa and olive-grove which clothed the Italian plain in the 
 <lays of the Romans. Somewhere on the northern boundary 
 of this great Strath, where the level ground merges with the 
 liills, at a place Avhich Tacitus designates " Mons Grampius," 
 the Caledonians had assemhled their forces, and there waited 
 for Agricola in the resolution of offering him battle. The 
 historian does not identify the locality where this first great 
 Scottish battle Avas fought, beyond placing it at the foot of 
 the (Grampian chain. It has been the subject of many con- 
 jectures since. The long line of country, extending from the 
 Tay to the shores of the Gcnnan Ocean, has been anxiously 
 but fruitlessly searched, if haply a spot coidd be found that 
 fulfils all the conditions of the famous " INIons." Some 
 have found this battlefield, as they believed, at Ardoch, on 
 the north slope of the Ochils, near Dunblane. Their reason 
 for fixing on a spot so far from the Grampian chain is that 
 at Ardoch there occurs the most perfect example of a Roman 
 camp that is to be seen in all Scotland : an excellent reason 
 for concluding that the Romans were here, but no proof that 
 Iiere they engaged the Caledonians. Besides, the stay of a 
 night, or even of a few nights, would hardly have resulted in 
 the construction of entrenchments, which, after eighteen 
 centuries, would be found so complete and beautiful as are 
 the Roman remains at Ardoch. 
 
 Others have found the site of this famous battle on the 
 l)lain betwixt Meigle and Dunkeld, near the foot of the 
 mountains. Others place the 3Ions Grampius of the histo- 
 rian far to the eastward at Fettercaim above Laurence- 
 kirk. There the Grampians swell up into lofty rolling 
 masses, and by a long descent merge into the plain. The 
 supporters of this view rest it mainly on the statement of 
 tlie historian, that the battle was fought in the sight of the 
 
TIIK J5ATTLE OF MONS (iRAMIMUS. 20') 
 
 sliips. This, however, is rather the infcrenee of" historians 
 than the statement of Tacitus, wlio only says that the fleet 
 kept pace with the advance of tlie army. The ships couhl 
 not have been in sight at either of the first two mentioned 
 places, iiidess, indeed, the fleet had sailed up the Tay. But 
 if the action took place toward the eastern extremity of the 
 (Grampian chain, the Genuan Sea would be on the right flank 
 of the Roman army, and ships moored off the shore would 
 be quite in sight. Agricola had given ordei-s for the fleet to 
 sail along the coast northwards, keeping e(]ual pace with the 
 progress of his troops on land, to give, if need were, mutual 
 succour. After the battle the army fell back, as we shall 
 see, on its line of fortresses, but the ships held on their way 
 to the north, and entering the Pentland Firth, sailed west- 
 ward into the Atlantic. The discovery that followed 
 belongs to peace rather than to war. 
 
 " By Agricola 's order," says Tacitus, '"the Ivomau fleet 
 sailed round the northern point, and made tlic flrst certain dis- 
 covery that l^ritain was an island. The cluster of isles called 
 the Orcades, till then wholly unknown, was in this expedi- 
 tion added to the R(mian empire. Thule, which had lain 
 concealed in the gloom of winter and a depth of eternal 
 snows, was also seen by our navigators." ^ 
 
 Every hour the tide of war was rolling nearer to the foot 
 of the great mountains. From the tops of their frontier 
 hills the Caledonians looked down on the great strath at 
 
 ' Tacitus here expressly attiniis that this was the first discovery of the 
 Orcades, or Orkney Ishuids. There is some reason, liowevev, to think 
 that he was mistaken. Kutropius and Orosins say that Claudius not only 
 suljdued a number of British })rinces, hnt that he discovered the Orcades. 
 An inscribed tablet from the palace of Uarberini, Rome, seems to confirm 
 this, when it si)eaks of Claudius as the discoverer of several barbarous 
 nations. The ])robability is that the Orkneys were first discovci'ed in the 
 time and manner that P]utropius and Orosins say, but that islands so re- 
 mote and insignificant, \\ere lost siglit of, and all knowledge of their dis- 
 covery lost by Agricola's day. 
 
206 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 tlieir feet, and watched the progress of the armed host 
 across it. GoodHer sight, yet one more terrible, had never 
 before greeted their eyes. They had seen their clans go 
 forth to battle, aimed with the simple weapons which their 
 limited knowledge of art had taught them to fabricate. 
 But here was wiir in all the panoply and pomp with which 
 Rome, in the noon of her power, was accustomed to carry it 
 on. Here were her cohorts, marshalled under then- ensigns 
 and eagles, clad in panoply of mail, the gleam of their brazen 
 shields lighting up the moors through which their track 
 lay with an unusual but terrible splendour. To the Cale- 
 donians how inscrutable the motive which had brought 
 these men from a country whose plains poured out corn and 
 whose hills were purple with the grape, to the very ends 
 of the earth, to a land of nakedness and hunger, where 
 no glory was to be avou by conquest, and no profit was to be 
 reaped from possession ! But whatever the motives or hopes 
 of the invaders, to the Caledonian, his brown moors and 
 naked hills were dear, and he was prepared to defend them 
 to the last drop of his blood. The signal is given from the 
 hill-top that the enemy is near. It flashes quickly along the 
 whole Grampian chain, from where Ben More lifts its giant 
 head in the west, to where the range sinks into the German 
 Sea on the east. 
 
 The summons finds the warrior tribes not unprepared. 
 From the shore of dark lake, from the recesses of deep glen, 
 from moor and wood, the sons of the mountain hurry forth 
 to meet and measure swords with the invaders of their native 
 land. Gathering in marshalled ranks on the plain, their great 
 hills towering behind them, they stand face to face with the 
 legions of Rome. The chief takes his place at the head of 
 his tribe. For lacking control, and left to itself, the Avild 
 valour of the mountains, like the tempests that gather and 
 
THE UATTLK OF .AFOXS (J HA,M I'lUS. 207 
 
 buret oil their summits, would have dashed itself against tlie 
 niail-ehid phalanxes, and been annihilated. The supreme 
 eominand of the confederate (^^aledonian tribes was assumed 
 by a leader whom history has handed down to us by the name 
 of Galgacus. The pen of Tacitus has ascribed to him the glory 
 of valour and the virtue of patriotism. A stout and patriotic 
 heart he must in very deed have possessed, to stand up 
 at the head of his half-naked warriors against the conquerors 
 of the world, and do battle for the dark mountains and 
 heathery straths in his rear, and which Avere all that was 
 now left him of his once free native land. This first of 
 Scottish heroes — the pioneer of the Wallace and the Bi'uce 
 of an after-age — appears for a moment, and passes almost 
 entirely out of view. We hear little of him after the liattle 
 in which he lost victory but not honour. 
 
 The Caledonian army was thirty thousand strong. So 
 does Tacitus say, repeating, probably, the rough guess of his 
 father-in-law Agricola. The Romans were twenty-six thou- 
 sand ; and their number would be known to a man. Xuni- 
 erically the two hosts were not very unequally matched ; but 
 in point of discipline, and especially of equipments, the over- 
 whelming superiority lay with the l^omans ; and when one 
 thought of the vast disparity between the two armies in this 
 respect, it was not difficult to forecast the nature of the 
 tidings which would fly fast and for through glen and strath 
 at the close of the day. INEeanwhile, the muster for battle 
 goes on with spirit. The Caledonians will go back to their 
 hills {IS victors, or they will die on the moor on which tliey 
 stand. 
 
 There is an open space betwixt the two armies, and the 
 Caledonians take advantage of it, before battle is joined, to 
 show off their war chariots in presence of the Romans. It 
 is an early and eastern mode of fighting, which one hardly 
 
'20H HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 expects to find practised in Agricola's day, at the foot of the 
 Grampians. Yet so it was. The Caledonians fight after 
 the same fashion as the heroes before Troy. They fight as 
 did the five kings of Syria when they crossed Mount Her- 
 mon in their war chariots, and assembled by the waters of 
 Merom, to do battle with Joshua. The country is rough : 
 probably there are no roads : but the nature of the surface 
 has been taken into account in the construction of these 
 cars. The wheel is a disk of metal, it is fixed on a re- 
 volving axle-tree, and the seat is placed between the two 
 wheels. The machine, skilfully handled, could be driven 
 with great rapidity over uneven ground, with but small risk 
 of being upset. The chariots flashed to and fro in the open 
 ground in presence of the armies, the chief acting as char- 
 ioteer, and the combatants seated in the car. To see their 
 sharp, naked scythes projecting from the axle and glittering in 
 the sun, one could imagine with a shuddei- the red furrow 
 they would plough in the packed ranks of battle, driven 
 swiftly over the field. But in actual fight these Avar chariots 
 lost much of their terrors. A thrust of the sword or of the 
 spear brought the steeds, to which they were yoked, to the 
 ground, and the chariot with its apparatus of slaughter 
 lay stranded on the battlefield. The Roman soldiers, it is 
 probable, contemplated this exhibition with more of curiosity 
 than of dismay. They had encountered these engines of 
 destruction in eastern campaigns, and knew that they were 
 not altogether so formidable as they looked. 
 
 It Avas the recognised duty of the historian in those days 
 not to pemiit battle to be joined till first the leaders on both 
 sides had, in fitting phrase, harangued their troops. Taci- 
 tus gives us the speeches delivered on this occasion by Agri- 
 cola to the legions, and by Galgacus to the Caledonians. 
 He does not state in what language the latter spake, or avIio 
 
THE BATTLE OF MOXS GRAMPIUS. 209 
 
 reported and interpreted his words to him, but nothing 
 L'ould be finer or more fitting than the speech of the bar- 
 barian leader to his soldiers. In terse, yet bui-ning words, 
 Galgacus denounces tiie ambition of Rome, and paints the 
 miserable condition of the nations enslaved to her yoke : 
 a condition, he adds, which they, the noblest of all the 
 Britons, had never beheld, much less undergone.^ " There 
 is now no nation beyond us," continues the Caledonian 
 leader, "nothing save the billows and the rocks, and the 
 Romans, still more savage, whose tyranny you will in vain 
 appease by submission and concession. The devastators of 
 the earth, when the land has failed to suffice their universal 
 ravages, they explore even the ocean. If an enemy be 
 wealthy, they are covetous ; if he be poor, they become am- 
 bitious. Neither East nor West has contented them. 
 Alone, of all men, they covet with equal rapacity the rich 
 and the needy. Plunder, murder, and robber}, under false 
 pretences they call ' empire,' and when they make a wilder- 
 ness, they call it 'peace.'" 2 
 
 Tacitus himself might have pronounced this oration in the 
 Forum. He could not in terser phrase or in more burning 
 words have denounced the crimes of an empire which, built 
 up in blood, was spreading effeminacy and serfdom over 
 the earth. And had he ventured on so scathing a denuncia- 
 tion, the nations, east and west, would have clanked their 
 chains in sympathetic response. But not a syllable of all 
 this durst any one at that hour have uttered at Rome. If 
 spoken but in a whisper, its echoes would speedily have 
 reached the ear of the gloomy Domitian in the Palatine, and 
 before the sound of the last Mords had died away, the head 
 of the speaker would have rolled on the floor of the IMamer- 
 
 ^ " Nobiliseimi totius Britannia;." 
 ' Tacitus, Vit. Aijric, c. 30-32. 
 
 I. O 
 
210 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 tine. Tacitus, therefore, puts the speech into the mouth of 
 Galgacus, and thunders it forth to the world from the foot 
 of the Grampians. 
 
 Agricola also addressed his soldiers. His speech was 
 that of a general who contends for conquest alone. It is 
 more remarkable for the topics which are left out than for 
 those which the speaker introduces and dwells upon. It 
 was hardly possible for the Roman soldier to feel the senti- 
 ment of patriotism. He fought not for country but for the 
 world — for his empire embraced the world — and this object 
 Av^as far too vast and vague to awaken or sustain patriotism : 
 and Agricola made no appeal to a feeling which he knew 
 did not exist m his soldiers. The uppermost idea in the 
 mind of a Roman, and the phrase that came readiest to 
 his lips, was the greatness and glory of Rome. It was this 
 that formed the key-note of Agricola's address to his army. 
 He flatters their pride, by glancing back on the toils of their 
 past marches, so patiently borne, and the glory of their many 
 Aictories, so bravely won. He next turns to the battle about 
 to be joined, and holds out the hope of victory by a con- 
 sideration not very complimentary, one should think, to 
 their courage, even that the bravest of the Caledonians were 
 now in the grave, slain by the Roman sword, and that 
 there remained only the feeble and the timid ; one great day 
 more, and the perils of the campaign would be ended, and 
 the limits of the empire would be completed by the inclusion 
 of the territoi-y on the north of the hills at the foot of which 
 they stood, and which was now almost the only portion of 
 the habitable globe over which Rome did not sway her 
 sceptre. The speech, Tacitus adds, fired the soldiers, and 
 they flew at once to arms.^ 
 
 The two armies were now draA\Ti up in order of battle. 
 
 1 Tacit., Vit. Agric, c. 33, 34. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONS GRAMPIUS. 2 1 1 
 
 Agricola foniied his soldiers into two lines. The first con- 
 sisted of auxiliary infantry, with three thousand horse dis- 
 posed as wings. The second line was formed of the Roman 
 legionaries, the flower of his army ; for it was a maxim of 
 the Romans in their wars to expose theii* foreign troops to 
 the brunt of battle, and w^hile lavish of the blood of the 
 mercenary, to be sparing of that of the Roman soldier. It 
 Avas a proud boast when a general could say that he had 
 Avon a battle without the loss of so much as one native life. 
 The main body of the Caledonian army was dra\^^l up on the 
 plain in front of the Romans. The reserves were stationed 
 on the heights behind, rising row on row, and overlooking 
 the scene of action. They were to w^atch the progress of the 
 battle, and, at the critical moment, rush down and decide 
 the fortune of the day. 
 
 At its commencement the battle was -waged from a distance. 
 The Caledonians let fly showers of flint arrow-heads, and the 
 Romans repUed by a discharge of their missiles, which, how- 
 ever, were less effective than the "dense volleys" of the 
 enemy. Galled by the shower of flints, the Romans were 
 losing in the fight. When Agricola perceived that his men 
 were gi\ing way, he ordered three cohorts of Batavians and 
 two of Tungrians to close with the foe and bring the 
 encounter to the sword. The Caledonians met them, shouting 
 their war-ciy, but the change in the battle placed them at 
 great disadvantage. They carried long swords, the down- 
 ward stroke of which did terrible execution, but at close 
 quarters the length of the weai)on made it unser\iceable. 
 It got entangled and could not be easily raised to deal a 
 second stroke, and having no point it was useless to thrust 
 wdth. His little round shield, moreover, left great part 
 of the body of the Caledonian exposed to the weapon of his 
 adversary. What made the conditions of the fight more 
 
212 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 unfavourable for the Caledonian, was that the amiour of 
 the Roman legionary was admirably adapted for a hand to 
 hand encounter. He always carried into battle a short, sharp 
 .sword ; he covered his person with a large oblong shield, and 
 when the Caledonian approached him with his long SAvord, 
 the Roman received the weapon in its murderous descent on 
 the rim of his brazen buckler, and before his adversary had 
 time to repeat the blow, he had despatched him with his 
 sharp dagger-like sword. From the moment that the fight 
 became a close one, the chances were against the native 
 army : for what availed the brawny hand of the Caledonian 
 when the weapon that filled it was so ill adapted to its 
 work. That was no equal combat in which half-armed and 
 half-naked men contended with mailed legionaries, whose 
 daily work was battle, and who fought Avith what we should 
 now style "weapons of precision." 
 
 The fight was fierce and sanguinary, and Avent on hour 
 after hour. The BataAuans, dashing the knobs of their buck- 
 lers in the faces of the Caledonians, and stabbing them with 
 their short SAVords, forced them back over the dead-encum- 
 bered plain towards the hills. Other cohorts, catching the 
 fuiy of the Batavians, rushed to that part of the field, and 
 throAving themselves on the ranks of the hill men, and strik- 
 ing with SAVord and buckler, increased the butchery. Press- 
 ing forward in their eagerness for victory, they bore to the 
 earth, and left in their rear, numbers Avho had received no hurt 
 from the sword. To increase the confusion, the chariots be- 
 came entangled Avith the masses of fighting infantry, and the 
 affrighted horses, left Avithout charioteers, careered Avildly 
 over the field, their terrible scythes moAving doAvn friend and 
 foe along their blood-marked track.^ 
 
 The reserves posted on the heights had been quiet obser- 
 
 ^ Tac, [It. Afjric, c. 36. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONS GRASIPIUS. 21.'^ 
 
 vers of the fight so far. But now thej rushed (lo\vii witli 
 intent to outflank the Romans and assail them on the rear. 
 If they had been able to execute their mana3uvi*e, they might 
 even yet have retrieved the fortunes of the day. But Agri- 
 coUx had foreseen and provided against this contingency. 
 Four battalions of cavalry, kept in reserve till this moment, 
 met them as they advanced, and put them to rout. And now 
 the Roman general had recourse to the same stratagem which 
 the Caledonians had attempted against himself. He ordered 
 the Avings of the van to push forward past the flanks of the 
 Caledonian host, and fall upon its rear, thus enclosing it 
 before and behind with walls of steel. " And now," says the 
 historian of the battle, " a strange and aw^ul scene presented 
 itself on the open plain. They pursued, they stabbed, they 
 made prisoners, and ever as a new relay of captives was 
 brought in, the former batch was put to the sword. Here a 
 company of armed men would be seen in flight, there unarmed 
 natives, not knowing Avhat they did, would charge the foe 
 and rush upon death. Weapons and bodies and mangled 
 limbs lay everywhere, and the ground ran blood." ^ 
 
 The day was lost. Overpowered and broken, the Cale- 
 donians now began to leave the field, where they had so stoutly 
 resisted, but where further resistance was vain. The soaked 
 plain behind them, steaming with fresh, warm gore, and 
 dotted with ghastly heaps of stiffened corpses, of bodies still 
 palpitating with life, of dissevered limbs, broken swords, 
 shivered lances, and the multifarious wreck of battle, show- 
 ing where the fiercest struggles had taken place, was an 
 awful monument of the bravery of the men who had dared to 
 battle with Rome for country and liberty. " Barbarians ! " 
 So did the Romans call the men whose corpses lay strewed 
 upon the red moor. It might be so, yet their haughty foe 
 1 Tac, Vit. Agrlc, c. 37. 
 
214 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 could not withhold from them the tribute of heroism and the 
 higher praise of patriotism. 
 
 There are few now who mil have much difficulty in decid- 
 ing which of the two, the barbarian of the Grampians, or the 
 imperial slayer from the banks of the Tiber, was the nobler 
 being. Those who could make such a stand for their fathers' 
 graves and their children's homes, showed that they had 
 elements in them which needed only to be disciplined and 
 developed to take the place in the world now occupied by 
 those who were trampliag them down as if they were the 
 vilest and most worthless of the nations. Had Agricola en- 
 countered on the south of the Tweed anything like the ob- 
 stinate valour that met him on this moor, neither he nor his 
 soldiers would ever have got mthin sight of those mountains, 
 at the base of which they offered this smoking holocaust to 
 Rome. 
 
 The flight of the Caledonians was now general. They 
 could flee but in one direction, to their great hills even, the 
 woods and glens of which offered them escapte from the sword 
 of their cruel foe. The Romans followed them, but they were 
 severely punished for their temerity ; for the fugitives would 
 turn suddenly at times on detached parties of their pursuers, 
 and cut them off". Xight fell, and the darkness put an end 
 to the carnage on both sides, the Romans desisting from the 
 pursuit, and the survivors of the Caledonian host making 
 their way without fui-ther molestation to their momitaiu fast- 
 nesses. Tacitus says that they left ten thousand dead on the 
 field and in the flight, and that the loss of the Romans was 
 three hundred and forty men.^ The difference of numbers is 
 startling, even making allowance for the great inferiority of 
 weapons on the part of the Caledonians, and we have great 
 difficulty in beUeving that the numbers have not been dimin- 
 
 1 Tac, Vit. Agric, c. 37. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONS GRA3IPIUS. 215 
 
 ished on the side of the victors. In a hand-to-hand en- 
 counter, histing for many hours, it could hardly be that the 
 loss was so unequal. The Caledonian dead would, of course, 
 not be counted, but only roughly guessed at ; but if half 
 the number the historian says lay on the field, what a 
 trophy, ghastly yet noble, of the resolution and devotion of 
 the natives, and, alas ! what a sumptuous banquet for the 
 wolves of the woods and the eagles of the hills ! 
 
 Agricola and his men passed the night on the battlefield. 
 The general was not able to assure himself that the victoiy 
 was his, or that the battle might not have to be renewed on 
 the morrow. With ten thousand of the enemy dead around 
 him, and his own army comparatively intact, one would 
 have thought that he would have felt more at his ease. 
 But the terror of the Caledonians was still upon him. But 
 if the general was anxious, his soldiers were not so. Tacitus 
 tells us that the camp was a scene of jubilation. The 
 victory had brought the soldiers store of booty, and as 
 regards the horrors around them, they were accustomed to 
 such sights, and had learned to regard them with indiffer- 
 ence. Nevertheless, despite the elation of the camp, the 
 historian hints that the hours of the night were made doleful 
 with " the mingled lamentations of men and women," who 
 stole back to the field to search for and carry off their dead 
 or wounded relatives. With the first gleam of daAvn on the 
 summit of the Grampians, these mourners desisted from 
 their melancholy task, and vanished. When day fully broke, 
 " it disclosed," says the historian, " more broadly the 
 features of the victory : the silence of desolation all round, 
 the lonely hills, the smoking ruins in the distance, and no 
 human being visible to the scouts." ^ 
 
 The silence that brooded round Agricola's camp, so em- 
 
 ' Tac, Vit. Agric, c. 38. 
 
216 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 phaticallj marked by the historian, was deep, doubtless, and 
 it would be felt to be all the deeper by contrast with the 
 shouts, the clash of arms, and the shrieks of terror or of pain 
 \vith which it had rung the day before. Now that terrible 
 noise had subsided into a yet more terrible stillness. The 
 dead were at rest. The wounded ! had they, too, ceased to 
 moan ? And the wolves, that already scented the corpses, 
 were they, too, creeping stealthily down from the hills, and 
 gathering in silence round the feast the Roman sword had 
 prepared for them ? But what of the shiehngs on moor 
 and edge of loch, or by mountain torrent, from which these 
 stalwart forms had come, that now lay still and stark on 
 this field of death ? Was there silence, too, in these dwell- 
 ings ? Alas ! loud and bitter must have been the wail of 
 mother and wife in the glens and straths of the great moun- 
 tains, when, instead of the loved ones for whose return they 
 waited, there came tidings of the great slaughter. But that 
 cry of agony and woe was too far off to be heard by Agricola, 
 and too far off to startle the ear of the Avearer of the purple 
 at Rome. 
 
 This was the first of the historic battles of Scotland, and 
 it is interesting to reflect that it has been described to us by 
 the pen of the prince of Roman historians.^ Of the many 
 fields stricken on Scottish soil during the eighteen centuries 
 that have since elapsed, few have been so bloody as this 
 
 ^ We had almost said the first of war correspondents — a class which 
 has^sprung up in our own day, and Avhich, at great risk and toil, liav^e 
 made us so familiar with what goes on on battlefields, and whose minute, 
 graphic, and often brilliant descriptions, achieved in circumstances of 
 great difficulty, are not unworthy of their great pioneer. We may also 
 be perniitted to express our surprise that Scottish historians should 
 have passed over this great battle so liglitly, or have so little perceived 
 the influence it had on Scotland for centuries after, so that now, 
 for the first time, have the full details of it been laid before the English 
 reader. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONS GRiVSIPIUS. 217 
 
 one. But this blood was uot shed in vain : it bore fruit in 
 the centuries that followed. The ruthless slaughter of that 
 day burned into the soul of the Caledonians a sense of 
 wrong, and a hatred of the Roman name, which made it im- 
 possible it should ever be repeated by Roman sword. Its 
 remembrance nerved them to resistance, and not unsuccess- 
 ful resistance, in the campaigns of Severus. A mightier 
 host — it was more than double the number of Agiicola's 
 — did that emperor lead against them. He had come, too, 
 after great preparations, and with the firm detemiination to 
 subdue them. But the dark day at the foot of the Gram- 
 pians was still fresh in theu* memory, and nothing daunted 
 by the mailed legions, and the terrible threats of Severus, 
 who oflfered them the bitter alternative of submission to the 
 Roman yoke, or extermination by the Roman sword, they 
 concerted their plans, and patient as well as fierce, "wise as 
 well as brave, they perseveringly carried them out, and in 
 the end completely baffled the invader. The land he had 
 come to subdue became the grave of his army. 
 
 And farther, the triumph of Agricola — won after this bloody 
 fashion — taught a great and much needed lesson to the Cale- 
 donians, and started them upon a new career. When the 
 Roman fleet appeared on their coast, and the Roman army 
 marched into their country, they were fermenting and consum- 
 ing in the miserable and inglorious quarrels of tribe. The 
 apparition of this terrible Power woke them up to a sense of 
 their madness and danger. They saw that the cause of 
 country was greater than the cause of tribe. They hushed 
 the din of their wretched rivalries and petty feuds, and 
 reserved their blood for worthier contests and nobler aims. 
 Tlie sight of the legions did not appal them ; it but sobered 
 and united them ; it evoked the instinctive fierceness and 
 valour of the race, and they rose up, no longer an assem- 
 
218 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 blage of claus, but a nation, and, uniting their hearts and 
 their arms, they stood for their country against an enemy of 
 tremendous strength, and of pitiless as boundless ambition. 
 It was in this field, at the foot of the Grampians, that the 
 cause of Scotland's independence received its first baptism. 
 
 Since that day the great struggle has never wholly gone 
 to sleep. Its career has been checkered. It has seen not a 
 few dark years, and even some dark centuries ; nevertheless 
 it has lived, and gone onward, though not always at a uni- 
 form rate of progress. After the Roman there have arisen 
 other opponents with which it has had to do battle. It has 
 had, too, to transfer its combats to other arenas besides 
 that of the stricken field, and wage its war with other 
 weapons than the sword. It has been called to fight in 
 Parliaments, to wrestle in the cabinets of kings, to contend 
 in synods and assemblies, and to suffer glorious death on 
 the scaffold and at the stake. But in all varieties of fortune, 
 in the sunshine of success or in the darkness of temporary 
 defeat, it has never parted with the hope of victory, and has 
 ever demeaned itself as befits a cause which is that of eternal 
 righteousness, and which has wider interests bound up with 
 it than those that exclusively appertain to the little country 
 in which it has been waged. Looking back from the 
 advanced stage which the long conflict has now reached, 
 we can see that the " first straik of the fight " was given on 
 that purple moor at the foot of the Grampians — purple, not 
 with the bloom of its heather, but with the blood of its 
 children, poured out in torrents by the Roman sword. 
 
 Agricola did not venture on following the Caledonians 
 into their mountains. He had had sufficient experience of 
 their fighting qualities on the plain, and he could not tell 
 how it might fare with his soldiers should he pursue into 
 the fastness of the Grampians, tribes so fierce and war- 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONS GRAJIPIUS. 219 
 
 like, and which, though defeated, were not crushed. He 
 led back his army by slow marches within the chain of for- 
 tresses which stretched betwixt the Forth and the Clyde. 
 
 This was now the eighth year that Agricola had been in 
 Britain, and yet how little progress had he made in the work 
 of subjugating Scotland ! Instead of advancing boldly into 
 the land, he lingers summer after summer on its border, 
 under the shelter of his forts. Nothing could be a stronger 
 proof of the stout resistance which his legions encountered, 
 and the fear with which the fierce and warlike tribes of the 
 country had insj)ired him. He had undertaken a task 
 evidently which he had not strength to accomplish. For a 
 moment, and only for a moment, had the Roman eagle 
 soared as far northward as to the foot of the Grampians, 
 to leave there the print of its talons in blood, and again 
 turn southwards, and seek security within the line of its 
 forts. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS, AXD WITHDRAWAL OF R0:MANS 
 FROM BRITAIN. 
 
 To follow the tide of the imperial conquests in Britain in its 
 every flow and ebb is no part of our plan. A mightier power 
 than the Roman entered our country about this time, the 
 early conquests of which we msh we could clearly trace and 
 minutely chronicle ; but its footsteps are in silence, and mean- 
 while we must give our attention to a power whose battles 
 are with " confused noise," and its victories with " garments 
 rolled in blood." It is the fortune of the Roman arms in 
 Britain now to advance, and now to recede. The frontier of 
 the empire is never for more than a few years on end stationary 
 and fixed. It is a mo\ing line. Now it runs between the 
 Tyne and the Solway, coinciding pretty nearly with ^^hat is 
 now the " Border," and including the England of our day, 
 Northumberland excepted, a county which, from the rugged- 
 ness and picturesqueness of its surface, seems rather to claim 
 affinity ^vith the northern land. And anon, the line that 
 bounds the empire is pushed onwai'd to the Firth of Forth 
 and is made to embrace the southern shires of the modern 
 Scotland. We have seen the attempt of Agricola to cany it 
 even farther to the north, but that attempt was foiled by 
 men whose valour was the better half of their annour. Here, 
 then, is the extreme northern verge of the Roman world, and 
 here we can imagine the sentinel going his rounds, his atten- 
 
EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 221 
 
 tion di^'ided betwixt the prowling native hordes outside the 
 wall and the play of light and shade on the green Ochils in 
 the distance, a happier man than Domitian, who, though 
 master of an empire which touched the Xile and the Euphrates 
 on the south, and the shores of the Forth on the north, dared 
 not stir across the threshold of his palace for fear of the 
 dagger. 
 
 Soon after his battle, Agricola was called to Rome to re- 
 ceive from his dark and jealous master the double gift of 
 thanks and a cup of poison. His line of forts was converted 
 into a continuous fortification, probably about a.d. 189. It 
 formed a triple rampart, consisting of earthen or tmf wall, of 
 broad ditch, and military road, thirty-six miles in length. 
 The wall ran along in the middle, and was twenty feet high. 
 It had the ditch on its outward or north side, forty feet wide 
 and twenty deep. The causeway, or military road, was on 
 the inward side. At every two miles throughout its whole 
 extent rose a tower by which intelligence could be signalled 
 from end to end with a speed not greatly below that of the 
 modem telegraph. Antoninus Pius being emperor, the work 
 bore his name, though constructed by his lieutenant, Lollius 
 Urbicus. After eighteen centuries, traces of Antoninus's wall 
 still remain in the form of grassy mounds ; and the traveller 
 by rail betwixt the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow has the 
 satisfaction of thinking that he is being carried along on the 
 almost identical line that formed the northern boundaiy of 
 the greatest of ancient empires, over the forgotten site of 
 Roman camps and towns, and the resting-place of many a 
 now nameless warrior. 
 
 Within less than thirty years from the battle of Mons 
 Grampius, we find the north Britons again gathering in 
 force, descending like a cloud on Agricola's line of forts, 
 driving the Romans before them, and recovering the terri- 
 
222 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 tory which the invader had wrested from its original occu- 
 pants to subject it to Rome. Again the boundary of the 
 empire has receded to the Solway. Here an arrangement of 
 sea and land, not unsimilar to that which farther north had 
 attracted the military eye of Agricola, offered itself to the 
 leader of this renewed invasion, and of this a similar advan- 
 tage was taken. The Emperor Hadrian, about a.d. 120, 
 built a wall between the Tyne and the Solway, seventy 
 miles in length, again joining the eastern and western seas. 
 Hadrian's wall was vastly stronger than Agricola's fortifica- 
 tions ; it was of solid masonry, laid down in courses of 
 great and carefully hewn blocks of freestone, strengthened 
 with square massy towers at short distances, in which garrisons 
 were lodged, and defended on the side towards Scotland by 
 a broad ditch, while within, on the English side, ran succes- 
 sive parallel rows of earthen ramparts. Onward it went, 
 straight as an arrow, turning aside for no inequality of 
 ground, climbing the brow of the loftiest eminence, and 
 again, by steep and rapid descent, seeking the valley. It 
 was a prodigious undertaking ; lofty and broad, like battle- 
 ments of city — indeed, of superfluous strength — and 
 finished almost like wall of palace. Its magnificent re- 
 mains impress with wonder the beholder at this day, sug- 
 gesting, as they do, the many millions that must have been 
 lavished upon it, the hundreds of thousands of men em- 
 ployed in rearing it, and the engineering skill that super- 
 intended the whole. How much must Rome have respected, 
 not to say feared, the valour of those barbarians against 
 whom she erected this mighty bulwark ! and how much 
 must she have prized those provinces which she was care- 
 fid to defend at a cost so immense, and with labour so 
 prodigious ! 
 
 But Rome could not abide within this limit. The fortifi- 
 
EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS, — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 223 
 
 cation of Hadrian was not to be a final boundary ; it was 
 only a temporary halting place, a convenient base whence 
 Rome might conquer northwards. And soon that insatiable 
 hunger of sea and land, which animated the mistress of the 
 world, began again to stir within her. Antoninus Pius had 
 now assumed the purple. Not content Avith the now well- 
 cultivated meadow-lands of England, he began to covet the 
 country of moorland and mountain that stretched away to 
 the north from Hadrian's wall. By dint of fighting, he again 
 advanced the Roman dominion to the old line of Agricola, 
 and once more the sentinels of Rome took up their position 
 on the shores of the Forth and the Clyde, and their eagles 
 were again within the shadow of the great mountains. 
 Antonine strengthened the new frontier by converting, in 
 the manner we have already said, Agricola's line of forts into 
 a regular fortification, and at the same time he attempted to 
 carry out, by means of military forts and camps, a semi- 
 occupancy of the country on the north as far as to the foot 
 of the Grampians. 
 
 But the near approach of the Romans to these hills 
 awakened anew the tempest which had only slumbered. 
 Patriotism may bum as strongly in the breast of the bar- 
 barian as in that of the cii'ilised man, though it may not bo 
 able to express itself so finely ; and one must grant that the 
 love of liberty and of country, mingled with and ennobled 
 that thirst for vengeance which animated the fierce and 
 warlike tribes which noAV rushed down from their mountains 
 to raise the cry of battle against a power which, mistress 
 though she was of the fairest kingdoms on the globe, had 
 sought them out at the end of the earth to put her yoke 
 upon their neck. 
 
 The legionaries retired before the stomi that rolled down 
 upon them from the hills. They fell back to Antonine's 
 
224 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 wall at the Forth. The barbarian host followed them 
 thither, their numbers increasing doubtless as they advanced. 
 Even the fortification the legionaries foimd untenable against 
 the fierceness of northern assault, and they had to retreat 
 to the stronger and more southern wall of Hadrian. Again 
 the limits of the empire are rolled back to the Solway. 
 
 It was now the year a.d. 204. The reigning emperor, 
 Severus, incensed by these repeated affronts to the power of 
 Rome offered by barbarians, resolved on striking a blow 
 which should quell, once for all, the insurrections of these 
 northern tribes, and annex all Britain for ever to the empire. 
 In order to this, he raised an army, which he led in person, 
 so intent was he on the accomplishment of his design. An 
 old man — he Avas now sixty — racked with gout, and unable 
 to keep the saddle, he made himself be carried in a litter at 
 the head of his soldiers.^ He entered Scotland with an 
 army of from fifty to a hundred thousand men. The Cale- 
 donians did not venture battle. This mailed and disciplined 
 host which followed Severus was odds too great to be met 
 in the open field. They remembered the slaughter which 
 Agricola had inflicted upon them with half that number of 
 soldiers a century ago, and they profited by the lesson. 
 They sought to deprecate the wrath of the gouty old 
 emperor by meeting him at Hadrian's wall mtli offers of 
 peace. Their terms were scornfully rejected. They must 
 first taste the vengeance of Rome, and know of what a 
 crime they had been guilty when they rose in insurrection 
 against her. Severus gave orders to have the roads cleared, 
 the bridges repaired, and every obstruction removed out of 
 the way of his troops. Thus began their march northwards. 
 
 1 Herodian says — Senex, et morbo articular! laborans : tanta autem 
 animi virtute quanta nemo (unquam) vel juveuum. Igiter iter ingressus 
 lectica plurimum vehebatur, nulloque cessabat loco. — Herod. Hist., lib. 
 iii. p. 265. 
 
EXPEDITIOX OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 225 
 
 Around them, day after day, as they advanced into the land, 
 were silent moors and gloomy forests, but inhabitants there 
 were none that were visible. The Romans eagerly courted 
 battle, the Caledonians as eagerly avoided it. But the 
 legions soon began to feel that the enemy, though invisible, 
 was never far away. The Caledonians, concealed in their 
 numerous ambushes, which the woody and marshy country 
 afforded them, and secure in their mountain fastnesses, left 
 their powerful invader to wage unprofitable war mth the 
 pathless forests, the naked rocks, and the fierce tempests of 
 the great mountains. If the natives ventured from their 
 lurking-places, it was only to fall on his flank and rear, and 
 after cutting off" his detached parties, to vanish once more in 
 the friendly mist or in the dark wood. 
 
 They contrived to make their very herds bear their part 
 in this great national struggle. The food magazines of the 
 Romans were getting low. The Caledonians made them 
 welcome to replenish their exhausted stores from bare moor 
 or haunt of wild boar in wood or thicket, if they were 
 able ; but they had taken care that no supplies shoidd they 
 glean from field or barnyard. They had not sowed that the 
 Roman might eat. Ziphiline, in his abridgment of Dion 
 Cassius, tells us that at times they would leave a few head 
 of cattle, as if by oversight, in the way of the legions. It 
 was a tempting bait to hungry soldiers. They would rush 
 upon the beeves, but as they were making meriy over their 
 prize, and in the act of bearing it off, a band of ambushed 
 Caledonians would start up, fall upon the spoilers, and handle 
 them so severely, that it was rare that even one escaped to 
 carry tidings of the trap into which they had fallen. The 
 snare was sure to be set for their comrades on the morrow. 
 The misery the Romans endured was extreme. Worn out 
 ^\•ith their march through bogs and woods, they sank on the 
 
 I. p 
 
226 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 earth, begging their fellows to kill them that they might not 
 die by the hands of the Caledonians. 
 
 Continuing lus march in this fashion, triumphant over 
 woods, moors, rocks, and hills, everj^thing, in short, but 
 the natives, Severus traversed the chain of the Gram- 
 pians, descended on Strathspey, and at last reached 
 the shores of the Moray Firth. His army encountered, 
 in their route, hardships tenfold greater than would 
 have been those of the most fiercely contested battle. 
 They had to hew their way with the axe through dense 
 forests, they had to bridge rivers, and -with spade and pick 
 extemporise roads over wild mountains. In these exhaust- 
 ing toils, to which were added the frost and snows of winter, 
 fifty thousand men, it is said, perished. Even here, on this 
 northern shore, Severus had not reached the extremity of this 
 wild land. He could descry, rising on his startled sight, 
 still further to the north, the precipices that line the coast of 
 Caithness, and the great mountains that rise in the interior 
 of Sutherlandshire. And as regarded the natives, whom he 
 sought to conquer, he had driven them into hiding, but he 
 had not compelled them to submission. The emperor waited 
 here on the southern shore of the Cromarty Firth, uncertain 
 whether to retreat or to go forward, and his stay was so pro- 
 longed that it gave him opportunity to mark the long light 
 of the days in summer, and the equally long darkness of the 
 winter nights. 
 
 At length Severus, breaking up his encampment, set out 
 on his return journey. The Caledonians, feeling that each 
 day's march brought them a new enlargement and liberty, 
 were careful to put no obstruction in the path of the retreat- 
 ing host. The emperor halted at York, and there he received 
 tidings that startled and enraged him. The whole north was 
 in insurrection behind them. How would this inglorious 
 eampaign tell at Rome ? An army wasted, but no conquest 
 
EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 227 
 
 achieved ! No train of captives, and no waggons laden with 
 rich spoil had he to lead along the Via Sacra, and evoke the 
 plaudits of the populace when he should re-enter the capital ! 
 Only the wolves of Badenoch fed with Roman flesh ! It 
 had been foretold that Rome he should never more see ; 
 and it required no gift of prophecy to presage that a sickly 
 and gouty old man like Severus would never retiu-n from a 
 campaign prosecuted amid the mists and snows of Caledonia. 
 The master of the world had failed to make himself master 
 of Scotland. The emperor died at York in a.d. 211, as he 
 was planning a terrible revenge upon tribes whose crime was 
 that they had dared, " at the extremities of the earth and of 
 liberty," — to make use of the words which Tacitus puts into 
 the mouth of Galgacus — to assert their independence at the 
 cost of the glory of Rome. 
 
 From the hour that Severus breathed his last, the Roman 
 dominion in Britain steadily declined. The evil days had 
 come upon Rome herself. Tom by faction, and weakened by 
 profligacy at her centre, attacked on her extremities by the 
 natives of Germany and Scythia, she had to gather in' her 
 armies, in order to repel that ever-increasing host of assail- 
 ants whose vengeance she had provoked by her oppression, 
 and whose cupidity she had awakened by her riches. After 
 an occupancy of well-nigh five centuries, the Romans, in 
 A.D. 414, quitted our shores, never more to return. 
 
 It was passing strange that the mistress of the world should 
 so intently covet our remote and rugged isle. Her sceptre was 
 swayed overthefairestrealmsand the richest kingdoms of earth. 
 Egypt was hers ; she stored her granaries and fed her populace 
 Avith the harvests of the Delta and the com of the Nile. 
 The wealthy cities of Asia Minor, replenished with the vari- 
 ous elegances and luxuries of art and connnercc, were hers. 
 Hers were the dates and spices of Arabia ; the coral and the 
 
228 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 pearls of the Indian seas ; the ebony of Ethiopia ; the gold, 
 the silver, the iron, and the tin of Spain ; the fruits and 
 wines of France ; the timber and hides of Germany : in short, 
 eveiything which tree or field, river or ocean, yielded between 
 the Euphrates and the Atlantic, for hers was the ample and 
 fertile territory which in foraier days owned the sway of the 
 ancient Babylon. More precious treasures by far than any 
 which the soil produces, or the handicraft of man creates, did 
 she possess. Greece had laboured, and Rome had entered 
 into her labours. What was the wealth of the mine or of 
 the mart compared with the intellectual treasures — the think- 
 ing of the greatest sages of the heathen world — which had 
 descended to her as a peerless heritage ! And yet, as if it 
 had been nothing to possess a world, so long as she lacked 
 the little Scotland, she strove for centuries to seize and hold 
 that diminutive territory. For this end she freely lavished 
 her blood and treasure. She sent great armies to subjugate 
 it, and these, as we have seen, were at times led by the 
 emperor in person ; and when insurrection threatened to 
 deprive her of her conquests in this remote quarter, yet 
 greater armies did she send to make sure her hold upon 
 them. Such attractions had our heath-clad, storm-swept, 
 and sea-engirdled country in the eyes of her who was " Lady 
 of Kingdoms." This is out of the common course, and can- 
 not be explained on the ordinary principles of ambition. The 
 hand of Providence is here. Our island had been chosen to 
 act a great part in the future ; it was to become a fountain 
 of loftier and purer influences than any that ever emanated 
 from the Roman capitol, or the Greek acropolis; and it 
 pleased ProAddence to employ the sword to begin our educa- 
 tion for our high destiny. 
 
 We behold the Romans quitting our shores. What bene- 
 fits do they leave behind them ? The Roman occupancy, it 
 
EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 229 
 
 is to be taken into account, lasted nearly five hundred years ; 
 that is, about as long as since the battle of Bannockburn to the 
 present hour. Such was the duration of the Roman period 
 in southern Britain. Its length in Scotland was somewhat 
 shorter, being only about three centuries and a half, and its 
 area only a comparatively narrow strip of the country. In 
 either case there was sufficient time to allow of great changes. 
 And great changes did take place. The face of the country 
 ^^•as changed ; the manners and dwellings of the people were 
 changed; arts and literature, cities and city life were introduced, 
 especially into that part of Britain which forms the modern 
 England. In what is now Scotland, the action of the Romans 
 was less continuous, their frontier oscillating between the 
 Forth and the Solway, and the impression they made on 
 Northern Britain was less marked. The men of the hills did 
 not so readily respond to the strong touch of the Roman hand 
 as did their neighbours, who occupied the soft meadows and 
 breathed the milder air of the south. 
 
 To secm-e their hold on the country the conquerors found 
 it necessary to cut down woods, drain marshes, and con- 
 stmct roads and bridges. Their roads were great under- 
 takings ; they were the links that knit the most distant 
 provinces to the capital. Starting from the golden mile- 
 stone of Augustus, in the capitol, they traversed the empire 
 in all directions : this running off towards sun-rise, that 
 stretching away towards the western sea ; this turning 
 towards the ton-id south, and that towards the frozen north. 
 These roads were solidly made, as befitted an empire that 
 deemed itself eternal. Their bed was filled in with successive 
 layers of gravel and stones, and they were finished atop 
 T\dth large hewn blocks of tufa, so smooth that the luxurious 
 Roman found no inconvenience in driving along upon them 
 in a carriage without springs. The tempests, the earth- 
 
230 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 quakes, and the wars of two thousand years have not 
 entirely obliterated them. Vestiges of the Roman roads, in 
 a wonderful state of preservation, are to be seen at this day, 
 not in Italy only, but in almost all countries that once 
 formed part of the empire of Rome. 
 
 The great road that ran northwards to Britain terminated 
 at Boulogne. Resuming, on the English side of the Channel, 
 on the shore of Kent, it held a straight course to London. 
 From London it ran northwards like a white ribbon 
 stretched across the green land, rising and falling as it 
 passed on from mountain-top to mountain-top. Trodden by 
 the myriad feet of centuiies, and ploughed by the torrents of 
 two thousand winters, it can yet be traced, with numerous 
 breaks, on the face of the countiy, and is known as " Wat- 
 ling Street." This great road was continued into Scotland. 
 Crossing the valley of the Tyne near Hexham, it ran on by 
 Jedburgh, skirted the Eildon Hills, traversed the Pentlands, 
 and taking a westward slant to Cramond, held on its course 
 to Camelon, on the Roman wall. This was not the only line 
 of communication which the Romans maintained in Scot- 
 land. A second road started from near CarHsle, and running 
 on by Langton, it was prolonged to the western extremity 
 of Antonine's wall, near Old Kilpatrick, Dumbartonshire. 
 Nor were Camelon and Old Kilpatrick the terminating 
 points of the Roman roads in Scotland. The invaders had 
 frequent occasion to act on the north of the Forth and of 
 the Tay, and needed highways for the passage of their 
 armies. The strath of the Earn, and the valley of Strath- 
 more were traversed by Roman roads, which ran on till they 
 touched the Grampians. This gi'eat chain seemed a natural 
 boundary, setting limits to the engineering operations as 
 well as to the militaiy conquests of the Roman power ; the 
 solitaiy instance of Severus excepted. What a contrast 
 
EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 231 
 
 between the dreary and silent wilds amid which these roads 
 drew to an end, and the pomp and luxury, the trophies of 
 conquest and the sjTiibols of empire which crowded the 
 Forum, Avhere they took their rise ! We can imagine the 
 Caledonian, as he crosses them in the chase, pausing for a 
 moment to call up the contrast, which, after all, he could 
 but dimly realise. 
 
 The Romans, moreover, encouraged husbandry. England 
 was greatly greener and fairer in the last centuries of their 
 occupancy than when Caesar first touched its shore. Its 
 naturally rich soil responded to the hand of the Roman far- 
 mer in abundant han'ests. Its corn now began to be carried 
 across the Channel and sold in the markets of France. 
 Scotland, it is probable, with a less fertile soil, did not mark 
 an equal agricultural advance. Nevertheless, with so prac- 
 tical a people as the Romans in it for more than three cen- 
 turies, it could not be but that rows of fruit-trees now 
 cheered the spring with their rich blossoms, and broad corn- 
 fields gladdened the eye in autumn with the gold of their 
 ripened grain, where aforetime had been brown moor or dark 
 wood. The sixth legion continued to be stationed at York 
 for three hundred years, and the soil around that ancient 
 city is, to this day, the better for their residence. Roman 
 remains, too, are often dug up in it — altars, images, pottery, 
 and even fragments of Roman furniture. 
 
 The trade and commerce of Britain did not owe their 
 beginning to the Romans, but doubtless they received a great 
 impulse fi'om them. The tin of Cornwall drew the Phoenic- 
 ians first of all to our shores, and these early merchants gave 
 us our first lessons in commerce. In exchange for the ore 
 of our mines, the Phoenicians bartered the fruits of the East, 
 and doubtless also the curious and costly articles wrought 
 on its looms, and in the workshops of Asia. They paid for 
 
232 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 what they carried away, at times in coin, but more commonly 
 in rich robes, in cutlery, and in weapons for war. The war 
 chariots in which Csesar found the natives of Britain taking 
 the field are just as likely to have been brought across 
 the sea, in the large Phoenician vessels, as to have been 
 manufactured in the country. The spirit of trade thus awak- 
 ened at the south-western extremity of our island would 
 soon spread along the shore, extend inland, and finally 
 centre in the capital, which bore the same name it does at 
 this day. The Romans called it Augusta, but viewing the 
 new name as but the livery of the conqueror, it dropped it 
 and resumed the old British appellation of London. Taci- 
 tus ^ makes mention of London, describing it as a city 
 renowned for the multitude of its merchants, and the extent 
 of its commerce. But though they did not originate, the 
 Romans greatly stimulated the commercial and trading 
 operations of the early Britons. The arts they introduced, 
 and the greater wealth that followed : the richer haiTcsts, the 
 consequence of an improved industry, the more numerous 
 exports the Briton now carried to the foreign market, and, 
 above all, the roads with which the conquerors opened up 
 the country, administered stimulants to trade, and furnished 
 facilities for its prosecution, which till then had been un- 
 known in Britain. 
 
 The Romans were great builders as well as great road 
 makers. The wall of Hadrian remains, even in its ruins, an 
 imperishable monument of what they could plan and exe- 
 cute in this way. Besides the great works undertaken for 
 military purposes, they were the founders of towns and the 
 builders of villas. This holds true mainly of England. 
 Beyond the Forth the barbarian remained master of his 
 
 ^ Londinum copia negotiatorum et commeatum maxime celebre. —Tacit. 
 Ann., xiv. 33. 
 
EXPEDITIOX OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL, OF ROMANS. 233 
 
 nioors, and repelled mth scorn the touch of that imperious 
 hand which sought to refine, but which sought also to enslave. 
 Yet the Caledonian was not able wholly to keep out the 
 subtle and permeating spirit of progress which Rome brought 
 with her. It is calculated that there were forty-six military 
 stations and twenty-eight large cities between Inverness 
 and London.! j^ jj^ost cases towns grew up around the 
 militaiy stations, just as in the middle ages burghs sprung 
 into existence beside the baron's castle ; the inhabitants 
 being naturally desirous of planting their dwellings where 
 they had most chance of protection. These towns Avere 
 most numerous along the line of the two walls. In the belt 
 of country traced out between the T}'ne and the Solway by 
 Hadrian's rampart, there would seem to have been about 
 a score of to^Mis, great and small. These, judging from their 
 remains, contained theatres, temples, and baths, such as the 
 Romans were wont to frequent in their own country in quest 
 of relaxation and amusement. On the line of the northern 
 wall a considerable Roman population existed. There was 
 a large Roman town at Camelon, in the neighbourhood of 
 Falkirk, and another at Castlecary, where was also a Roman 
 station, right through the centre of which now runs the 
 railway. 
 
 In the south of England, Roman villas and towns were 
 frequent. Several of the latter have been disentombed of 
 late years. One of the latest to be laid bare was the Roman 
 town at Wycomb, six miles east of Cheltenham, at the 
 Coltswold hills, near the sources of the Thames. On the 
 soil being removed, an almost entire town disclosed itself, the 
 seat of an activity and life long extinct. The line of streets 
 and the arrangement of the town were plainly \isible. The 
 foundations showed where private dwellings or where pub- 
 » Cosmo Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 42, Edin. I860. 
 
234 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 lie edifices had stood. There was all that could minister to 
 the luxury and the amusement of the citizen : baths, amphi- 
 theatres for his entertainment, temples for his devotion, and 
 a tomb to receive him Avhen dead. The tesselated pavement 
 remained in many places ; much buried money, including 
 coins of all the emperors, was dug up on the site. Emblem 
 of the men who used it, this treasure, prized dearly once, and 
 kept bright and shining, passing rapidly from hand to hand, 
 had long since been abandoned to rust, and trodden imder 
 foot, and has ceased to have part or lot in the business of 
 the world. 
 
 The numerous remains of Roman villas which have been 
 discovered in England we take as a certain indication that 
 the Italian gentleman of that age, in many instances, chose 
 south Britain as a place of residence in preference to his 
 native laud. Nor is it surprising that he should do so, for 
 England, even the England of that day, had some attrac- 
 tions which Italy could not boast. Few countries in the 
 world can compete, in point of soft and beautiful scenery, 
 with the tract lying between Worcester and Bristol. There 
 swellings more graceful, woods more umbrageous, and richer 
 pastures than are to be found in Italy, regale the eye. The 
 air temperate, the fields green all the summer through, no 
 severe alternations of heat and cold as in Italy, the milk and 
 butter delicious, the " roast " such as England only can show, 
 the spring-time how pleasant ! the air loaded with the odours 
 that exhaled from the blossoms of the numerous fruit trees ; 
 even the dog-days tolerable ; autumn, with its clear, crisp 
 au", wooing one a-field ; the dwelling embellished with the 
 elegances of Italian art, and the library table covered with the 
 productions of the Italian muse ; it is difficult to discover 
 why the self-expatriated Roman should not find life just as 
 enjoyable in England as at home, and, if he loved quiet, 
 
EXPEDITION OF SEVERUS. — WITHDRAWAL OF ROMANS. 235 
 
 perhaps a little more enjoyable. In the meadows of the Trent 
 and the Avon, he was far removed from the tmmoil and in- 
 trigue \vith which faction was now filling Italy. York, and the 
 country around it, seem to have had not a few charms for 
 the Romans. It was a favourite resort of theirs, and even 
 to this day there is a Roman air, an imperial halo, as it 
 Avere, round that old city. There Constantine, the first 
 Christian emperor, was born, and there Constantius Chlorus 
 lived and died. 
 
 It only remains to specify, as the final benefit bestowed 
 by our invaders, the introduction of the law and literature of 
 Rome. For the wild justice of the native chiefs there was 
 now substituted the regulated and equitable procedure of 
 the Roman code. In the calm, passionless judge who occu- 
 pied the tribunal, and who saw the cause but not the parties 
 before him, the Briton was able to see the difference, in 
 some degree, between law as a principle, and law as a mere 
 force. The Roman tribunal became the open door through 
 which he obtained a glimpse into an ethical world which 
 had hitherto been veiled to him. His belief in the right, 
 and his resolve to practise it, would be strengthened. This 
 was a greater, because a deeper, and more lasting benefit 
 than any direct and immediate advantages, though these 
 were great, which flowed from a righteous administration. 
 Some of the towns were privileged with municipal govern- 
 ment, and thus Avas gradually created a sense of corporate 
 rights. Xot a few of the youth of Britain began to study 
 the literature and to speak the polished tongue of Rome. 
 They were henceforth conscious, doubtless, of a subtle but 
 powerful influence revolutionising their whole intellectual 
 being, and imparting a capacity for pleasures of a more 
 refined and exquisite nature than any they had tasted 
 heretofore. 
 
236 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that when the five centuries of their 
 occupancy came to an end, and the Romans bade a final 
 adieu to our country, they left behind them, in then roads, 
 in their tribunals, in their municipal corporations, in their 
 marts and channels of commerce, domestic and foreign, and 
 in the mental discipline of their literature, not only the entire 
 framework of civilisation, as it then existed in the empire 
 itself, — a civilisation which, as we shall see, was aftei-wards 
 wholly swept away, — but what was far better, a young but 
 pure Christianity which was destined to form the basis of 
 the ultimate and endming civilisation of Britain. When 
 that civilisation which Rome imparted had, like a too early 
 blossom, or an imtimely birth, perished and been forgotten, 
 that which the Gospel gave lived and flourished in the 
 expanding power and growing prosperity of the country. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 
 
 We pause in this rapid narration of events to take note of 
 the entrance of two mighty forces into Britain. These two 
 powers were to find in our country the main theatre of their 
 development, as well as a centre of propagation and a basis 
 of action upon the nations of the world. So intimate is the 
 alliance betA^axt them, and so reciprocal the help they tender 
 to each other, that they may he regarded as not twain, but 
 one. These two forces are Religion and Liberty. Their 
 rise, and their steady, onward progress, till at last they cul- 
 minate in the creation of a State which exhibits to the world 
 the model of a more perfect liberty than it has seen anywhere 
 else, is one of the most delightful studies to which history can 
 address herself, and one of the most ennobling spectacles on 
 which one's attention can be fixed. To recount the kings that 
 fleet past us, as if they were so many shadows, and of whom 
 some, it may be, are simply the creations of the chronicler's 
 pen ; to describe in stately rhetoric the feuds that con\'ulsed 
 barbarous ages, and paint the battles in which the men of 
 those times delighted to shed one another's blood, were a 
 task which would bring with it much labour to the ^^Titcr, and 
 but small profit to the reader. History has a much higher 
 function. It is, or ought to be, occupied mainly with the life 
 of a nation. And by the life of a nation is meant that pre- 
 dominating intellectual and moral quality which gives it cor- 
 
238 HISTORY OF SCOTLAXD. 
 
 porate identity and substantive being, and in \-irtue of which 
 it performs its allotted share of the world's work, and tenders 
 its special contribution towards the accomplishment of the 
 grand plan of Him who has assigned to each of the nations 
 its time, and its place, and its mission. 
 
 Two thousand years ago, Scotland was a land of painted 
 men. Why is it not a land of i^ainted men still ? Why is it 
 at this day a land of civilised men ? What has taken 
 the darkness from the face of the savage, quenched the 
 demon-fire in his eye, and kindled there the light of intelli- 
 gence and kindliness ? " Twenty centuries," some will say, 
 deeming it a sufficient explanation of the amazing transfor- 
 mation Scotland has undergone, "twenty centuries have 
 passed since the day when Pict and Scot roamed their moors 
 as savages ; and it is impossible that these many ages should 
 pass over them and leave them unchanged." This is an 
 explanation that deceives us A^'ith a show of meaning which 
 it does not contain. The same twenty centuries have passed 
 over the Zulus of Africa, and at the end of them they are 
 precisely where they were at the beginning. Not a foot- 
 breadth have they advanced. The first explanation only calls 
 for a second. AVhy have the twenty centuries, which have 
 proved themselves such powerful civilising agencies in Scot- 
 land, shown themselves so devoid of all civilising power in 
 Africa ? jNIore than time and opportunity is needed for pro- 
 gress. The principle and the capacity of progress must first 
 be implanted. It may be said that Scotland, surrounded 
 with the civihsations of Europe, could hardly fail receiving 
 an impulse fi"om without, and becoming inoculated %vith the 
 principles that were stirring in its neighbourhood ; whereas 
 Zululand lay remote and isolated. There was nothing to 
 give it a start. This might be accepted as the solution so 
 far, were it the fact that the civilisation of Scotland is simply 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 239 
 
 a copy of the civilisation of its neighbours. But it is not so. 
 It is a ci\dlisation which is peculiar to Scotland, and is 
 unique among the civilisations of the world. It has sj)rung 
 up on its o^ni soil ; it is of a higher type, and has given to 
 the people among whom it has taken root and developed a 
 strongly-marked and shaiply-defined individuality of national 
 life — a richer and broader life, ever ready to expand and 
 overflow, yet ever ready to call back its current within the 
 embankments of right and law. 
 
 We trace progress in the stone age, we trace progress in 
 the bronze age, especially do we trace progress in the iron 
 age ; but the civilisation of these epochs is not the civilisa- 
 tion of the Scotland of to-day. Xor would the civilisation 
 of those eras ever have risen into the same type with the 
 Scottish civilisation of our own era, however much it might 
 have improved the Scots as cultivators, or as artizans, or as 
 soldiers. It would have left them barbarians at the core, 
 liable to be dominated at times by the beast within them ; 
 and to break out into those awfid excesses which ever and 
 anon defomi the fair and tranquil surface of Oriental civili- 
 sations, and of some civilisations nearer home. The civilisa- 
 tion of Scotland is not ajsthetics, it is not art, it is not 
 science, it is not even law ; it is diviner than these. It is 
 conscience. 
 
 How came it ? An influence descended on our wild 
 countr}' when no man was aware. It came unheard amid 
 the din caused by the conflict of Roman with Briton. It 
 found for itself a home in the hearts of the people, and from 
 this deep seat it began to work outwards. It changed first 
 of all, not the land, but the men who inhabited it ; not their 
 faces, but their hearts ; extinguishing with quiet but omni- 
 potent touch, the passions that raged there, and planting in 
 their room feelings altogetlier new. From this day fonvard 
 
240 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 there was a new race in the country. There had been 
 breathed into its sons a new moral life, and all who partook 
 of that new life became one, being knit together by a 
 stronger bond than the " one blood," even the " one heart." 
 The tribes and the races which had hitherto parted Scotland 
 amongst them, now began to be fused into one nation. Of 
 these " stones of the wilderness," to use the metaphor of the 
 Great Teacher, this power raised up " children to Abraham." 
 Or, in plain language, out of Picts and Scots it formed, in 
 process of time, j mists and legislators, philosophers and 
 orators, champions of liberty and martyrs for the truth. 
 
 This new" life created two great necessities. The first 
 necessity was liberty. The man who was inspired by this 
 new life must be free ; for the life must needs act according 
 to the laws of its nature, otherwise it must cease to exist. 
 The second necessity was law — freedom under rule. The 
 new life being moral, brought with it a moral sense, in other 
 words, conscience. But conscience does not more impera- 
 tively demand that it be free from human control than it 
 demands to be free to obey divine authority. These two 
 necessities — contradictory in appearance, but entirely har- 
 monious in their working — conferred on the individual to 
 whom this new life came the capacity for freedom, by com- 
 bining therewith the capacity for obedience. That capacity 
 passed over with the individual into the state. The nation felt 
 the same need of liberty as the individuals composing it, and 
 it felt equally mth them the obligation to use this liberty 
 within those great landmarks which the new life which had 
 originated the necessity for it had reared around it. The first 
 and fundamental virtue of a nation is obedience. Obedience 
 is essential not simply to the welfare, but to the existence of 
 society. But the one faculty capable of rendering obedience 
 is conscience. Where there is no conscience there can be no 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 241 
 
 obedience. Society may be lield down or held together by 
 force, but that is not obedience. But conscience being the 
 strongest power in man, and by consequence the strongest 
 power in society, can be governed only by the strongest or 
 highest authority — that is, by the Divine ; but in order to 
 render obedience to the Divine authority it must be eman- 
 cipated from the undue interference of human authority. 
 Hence it is that the two things, order and liberty, are bound 
 up together. They who cannot obey cannot be fi*ee. And 
 thus it is that the moral sense or conscience of a nation 
 must, in every instance, be the measure of its liberty. The 
 one can be neither more nor less than the other. Not lesfi, 
 because less would constitute an invasion upon the domain 
 which conscience claims as its own. And not inore, because 
 more would be equally a trespass upou the domain where 
 law reigns : a breaking through the limits which the moral 
 sense has set to the exercise of liberty. 
 
 It is because these too necessities — the necessity for order 
 and the necessity for freedom — have been so fully developed 
 and so evenly balanced in Scotland, that this country has 
 attained so perfect and symmetrical a liberty, deeply founded 
 in a sense of law, buttressed by intelligence, and crowning 
 itself with noble achievement. Therefore, of all historical 
 studies, that of Scotland is the most instnictive. It is emi- 
 nently so at this hour when the nations are in a state of 
 transition, and are looking out for models. Where in all 
 history is there a finer example or better school ? We are 
 here taken dowTi to where the first springs of national 
 liberty have their rise. We are here shown tiiat the creation 
 of a moral sense is the deepest foundation-stone of States, 
 if they aspire to become great. Arms, arts, science, law, 
 liberty, in their order, but first conscience. 
 
 Let us follow the entrance of the new life into our country 
 
 I. Q 
 
242 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 SO far as the dim aud fragmentary traces it has left in history 
 enable us to do so. 
 
 From what we know of the state of the Avorld at the 
 beginning of our era, we conclude that Christianity would, in 
 no long time, reach the boundary of the Roman Empire, and 
 even the barbarous tribes beyond it. The deep slumber of 
 the Pagan world had been broken. There was a universal 
 expectation among the nations that a great personage was to 
 appear, who was to give a new touch to humanity, and recall 
 it from the tomb to which it seemed hastening. There were 
 facilities for intercourse and the rapid communication of 
 thought such as no former age had enjoyed. Armies were 
 coming and going to the ends of the earth. Many of the 
 subordinate officers in the Roman legions were converts to 
 the Gospel, and soldiers of Jesus not less than of Ca?sar. 
 The merchants of the wealthy cities of Asia j\Iinor were dili- 
 gently seeking out new channels for their commerce. The 
 flourishing trade carried on betwixt the Levant and Britain 
 had found new routes over the Alps in addition to the ancient 
 road by the Pillars of Hercules. The wealthy traders of 
 Ephesus, Corinth, Antioch, and other cities, the seats of 
 flourishing churches, as well as of skilfid craftsmen, often 
 visited Rome, and at times extended their journey to Gaul, 
 and crossing the Cliannel to Britain, went on to London, 
 a city even then well known to merchants. Among these 
 Wsitors were, doubtless, some earnest and zealous Christians 
 who were intent on higher objects than gain, and who woiUd 
 gladly avail themselves of the opportunity now put in their 
 power of communicating the " great tidings " to those A\ith 
 whom they came in contact. Trade and war opened the 
 way of the Gospel into many countries. It followed the 
 victories of Trajan beyond the Danube into Eastern Europe. 
 ^* At this epoch " (close of second century), says Philip 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 243 
 
 Smith, " there is !ji:oocl reason to believe that the faith of 
 Christ had been reeeived in everv province of the Roman 
 Empire, from the Tigris to the Rhine, and even in Britain, 
 and from tlie Danube and the Euxine to Ethiopia and the 
 Lvbiaii desert ; that it had spread over a considerable portion 
 of the Parthean Empire, and tlie remoter regions of the East ; 
 and that it had been carried beyond the Roman frontiers to 
 the barbarous tribes of Europe." ^ 
 
 It follows that some considerable' time beft)re the Roman 
 eagle had taken its final departure from Britain, the dove, 
 with the olive branch of the Gospel, had lighted upon our 
 shores. The first footsteps of Christianity are recorded in the 
 book of '* Acts," and following the track of its first mission- 
 aries, as there recorded, we are led over the various countries 
 of Asia ]Minor, across the Egean, and onward to the two 
 great capitals of Europe — Athens and Rome. But there the 
 history leaves us. We cannot gather from the inspired 
 record that apostolic feet ever touched our remote shores. 
 If we would follow Christianity to Britain, we must seek 
 other guides. Secular historians, engrossed with other matters, 
 have found no time to chronicle the progress of a kingdom, 
 the nature of Avhich they did not understand, and the future 
 greatness of which they could not foresee. Their allusions 
 to Christianity are only incitlental, often depreciatory, and 
 at times bitterly hostile. Even Tacitus has no other name 
 to give it than "a pernicious superstition." Still their brief 
 and uncomplimentary references enable us to infer that the 
 ( iospel entered our country at an early period ; but in what 
 year, or who was its first missionary, or who, of all the 
 Britons, was the first to embrace it and to be baptized in the 
 name of Christ, we have no information. One would like to 
 
 ' Thfi HiMory of tin- Christian Chnrch, by I'liilip Smith, B.A., p. 78. 
 Loml. 1884. 
 
244 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 trace the links of that chain which led to a result at the 
 moment apparently so trivial, but in its consequences so un- 
 sj)eakably important and grand, as the conversion of our poor 
 country. Who would have thought of enrolling the de- 
 spised and barbarous Britain, in the brilliant procession of 
 cities and kingdoms then crowding to the feet of the " Cruci- 
 fied" — Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Carthage? Who would 
 have presumed to add the name of our little country to that of 
 these four great trophies of the Cross, much less foreseen that 
 one day it would be accounted the greatest trophy of the 
 five ? The Gospel will receive lustre from the philosophy of 
 the Greek ; it will derive prestige and help from the arms of 
 the Roman ; but what can the painted Briton do for it ? 
 But the Gospel came not to borrow aid, but to give it. 
 The philosophy of Greece, no more than the barbarism of 
 Scotland, coidd help the Gospel till first the Gospel had 
 helped it. But tliis was a truth not then understood ; and 
 so Britain entered the pale of Christian states with hardly a 
 line from any historian of the period to notify the fact or tell 
 posterity when it occurred. 
 
 But though we know not who was the first of the nation 
 of the Britons to forsake the altars of the Druid and to pray 
 in the name of Jesus, our imagination can picture the scene. 
 We see the skin-clothed man withdra^\'ing from his tribe, 
 forgetting the excitements of the chase and of the battle, and 
 seating himself at the feet of the missionary. Entranced by 
 the story of the Cross, he drinks in the words so new and 
 strange, and he asks to be told them again and again. He 
 listens till the ruggedness of his nature is melted, and the 
 tears are seen coursing down his cheeks. What a power to 
 subdue is shown to lie in that simple story ! The barbarian 
 hears it, and he is a barbarian no longer. He rises up from 
 the feet of the missionary, another heart within him, and a 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 245 
 
 new world around him. He has been raised all at once into 
 a higher sphere than that of mere civilisation. He straight- 
 way becomes a member of a holy society, and from that 
 moment his name stands enrolled in a citizenship more illus- 
 trious than that of Athens or of Rome. No wisdom known 
 to Greece, no power wielded by Rome, could have so changed 
 the man and lifted him up to where he looks down not only 
 upon his former barbarism, to which he can never more 
 return, but even upon the lettered and polished civilisations 
 of the world, which till now had looked down upon him. 
 
 But though we know neither the day nor the hour when 
 the Gospel entered Britain, there is a vast amount of proof 
 for the supposition that it entered early. There is a great 
 concurrence of testimony — scattered allusions in the classic 
 writers, and numerous direct statements in the Christ- 
 ian fathers — all going to show that in the course of a few 
 decades after the crucifixion, the "great tidings" had reached 
 the extremities of the Roman world, and had passed beyond 
 them. The nations had become, in a sense, of one language, 
 and the world, in a sense, but one country, by the network of 
 roads constructed for the passage of the legions, and which 
 opened easy intercourse and communication from Damascus 
 to Cadiz, and from the Tigris to the Tweed. Along these 
 highways sped the heralds of Christianity, conquering in 
 years nations it had taken Rome centuries to subdue. 
 
 The first indication we have that the Christian day had 
 broken in Britain is of a touching kind. It comes from the 
 prison of Paul, and is contained in the last lines his pen 
 ever traced. Writing to Timothy, the aged apostle, now 
 waiting martyrdom, sends from Rome the salutations of 
 Pudens and Claudia ^ to his former companion and fellow- 
 labourer. Who are these two whose names Paul inscribes 
 
 1 -2 Tim. iv. L'l. 
 
246 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 in his letter and lays down his pen for ever ? Pudens is the 
 son of a Roman senator, and Claudia is his wife. But of 
 what country was the lady ? It cannot be affirmed as an 
 established fact, but there is strong grounds for belie^^ng 
 that she was a Briton, and the daughter of a British king. 
 The proofs that strongly lead to this conclusion are as 
 follows. First, Martial has left us two epigrams, written at 
 Rome at a date coinciding with Paul's last imprisonment, 
 in the first of which he celebrates the marriage of a Roman 
 of rank, named Pudens, with a foreign lady named Claudia. 
 In the latter epigram, he tells us that this Claudia was a 
 Briton. So far the information of INIartial. Xext comes 
 Tacitus, who mentions that certain territories in the south of 
 Britain were ceded to King Cogidunus as a reward for his 
 stedfast allegiance to Rome.^ This occurred while Tiberius 
 Claudius was emperor. But third, in 1/23 a marble was 
 dug up at Chichester, with an inscription in which mention 
 is made of a British king, who bore the title of Tiberius 
 Claudius Cogidubnus. In the same inscription occurs the 
 name of Pudens. According to a usage prevalent among 
 the Romans, the daughter of this king would be named 
 Claudia. Here we have a remarkable concatenation. It is 
 made up of very diverse parts, and these parts come from 
 very opposite quarters, yet they all perfectly fit in together, 
 and form a consistent body of proof First, we have the 
 Pudens and Claudia of Paul's letter ; next, we have the 
 Pudens and Claudia of Martial's first epigram. Then comes 
 his second, telling us that Claudia was a Briton. Next we 
 have the casual statement of the Roman historian, that in 
 the reign of Claudius there was a king in south Britain named 
 Cogidunus, a favourite with the emperor. And last of all 
 comes the marble slab exhumed in England in the eighteenth 
 
 ' Vita Agrkoke, c. 14. 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 247 
 
 century, Avith the names of Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus and 
 Pudens upon it ; tlie link bet^vcen King Claudius and Pudens 
 being, most probably, the marriage which Martial celebrates 
 betwixt Pudens and a British lady of the name of Claudia, 
 the very name which the daughter of King Cogidubnus 
 must have borne. These facts shut us up to the conclusion 
 cither that there were two couples named Pudens and 
 Claudia living at Rome at the date of Paul's last imprison- 
 ment, and that both couples moved in the circle of the 
 Roman aristocracy, or that the Pudens and Claudia of 
 Paul's Epistle to Timothy and the Pudens and Claudia of 
 Martial's epigrams were the same persons. The last alter- 
 native appears to us by much the more probable. How 
 interesting to think that we shoidd have at least one British 
 name on the page of the New Testament, and that of a 
 lady who has won the praise of the noblest constancy in 
 Christian friendship. When others forsook the apostle, 
 scared away by the shadow of that doom which was now 
 gathering over him, this daughter of Britain stood his friend 
 to the last, and was neither ashamed of the chain of Paul 
 nor terrified by the wrath of Nero.^ The incident gave 
 happy augury of what Britain would become when the day 
 now breaking in its sky should have fully opened upon it. 
 
 The next notice which we meet with of British Christ- 
 ianity is on the page of Tacitus, It is of a like kind with 
 the preceding, and strengthens it. The historian tells us 
 that Pomponia Gra?cina, a noble lady, the wife of Aulus 
 Plutius, who returned from Britain to receive a triumph at 
 Rome, was accused of having embraced a " foreign supersti- 
 tion." This reference can hardly be to anything else than to 
 Christianity. For this is the word which Tacitus usually 
 
 1 J. Williams, ISI.A., Claudia and Pudens, Lond. 1848 ; Conybeare and 
 Howson, Life and Writings of St Paul, p. 780. 
 
248 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 employs to denote the Christian religion. No other rehgion 
 would then have formed matter of accusation against any 
 one. Every other religion was at that time tolerated at 
 Rome, and the deities of all nations were admitted into the 
 Pantheon, side by side with the gods of the empire. There 
 was but one faith which it was a crime to profess, and but 
 one worship which was stigmatised as superstition, and that 
 was Christianity. This, in all probability, was the " foreign 
 superstition " of which this noble lady was accused : she 
 had brought it A^th her from Britain, and if our infer- 
 ence be correct, the Gospel had reached our shores before 
 A.I). 56, while Paul and others of the apostles were still 
 alive. 
 
 There is historic evidence in existence amounting to a 
 presumption that the Apostle Paul made a journey to 
 Britain and there preached the Gospel. It is true that 
 recent ecclesiastical historians have dismissed this idea as 
 one hardly deserving consideration ; but the evidence that 
 satisfied Usher and Stilliugfleet is not to be lightly set aside. 
 In the course of his long life and his incessant journeyings, 
 Paul doubtless crossed seas and visited countries which have 
 received no mention in the brief narrative of his missionary 
 travels in the "Acts." We trace briefly the chain of testimony, 
 leaving to the reader his owti conclusions. The supposition 
 that Britain was one of the unnamed countries to which the 
 apostle's labours extended, takes its rise in Paul's own de- 
 clared intention to visit Spain. ^ Next comes the testimony 
 of Paul's fellow-labourer, Clemens Romanus. He, of all 
 men, best knew the extent of the apostle's travels. Clement 
 says that Paul, in preaching the Gospel, went to the " ut- 
 most bounds of the West." ~ This, replies Dr Hales, is a 
 rhetorical expression. But those who regard Paul as the 
 
 ' Rom. XV. 24. -' Epi., to T€pfj.a r-qs Svaeuis. 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 249 
 
 pioneer of the Gospel in Britain contend that " the utmost 
 I'ounds of tlie West" is the usual designation of Britain 
 among the early Christian fathers, and that tlie " West " 
 was a general term comprehending .Spain, Gaul, and Britain. 
 Theodoret, for example, speaks of the inhabitants of Spain, 
 Gaul, and Britain as dwelling in the utmost bounds of the 
 West. Xicephorus, speaking of the progi-ess of the Gospel, 
 says that it " has reached the western ocean, and the British 
 islands have been evangelised." Other passages are adduced 
 by Stillingfleet to show how common it is to include Britain 
 in the " utmost bounds of the West," and that the phrase is 
 not rhetorical but descriptive.^ 
 
 In the second century (a.d. 179), Iren^us speaks of 
 Christianity as ha^'ing been spread to the utmost bounds of 
 the earth by the apostles and their disciples, and particiUarly 
 specifies the churches planted in Spain and among the 
 Celtic nations. By the Keltaj, Irenseus had in his eye, most 
 probably, the people of Gaul and Britain.- In the end of 
 the second and beginning of the third century (a.d. 193-220), 
 Tertidlian commemorates Sj^ain and the places in Britain in- 
 accessible to the Roman arms among the countries conquered 
 by the Gospel.^ In the fourth centuiy (a.d. 270-340), Euse- 
 bius says that some of the apostles " passed over the ocean 
 to the British Isles." And Jerome, in the same centurj' 
 (a.d. 329-420), says that the apostle who did so Avas Paul, 
 who, after his imprisonment, went to Spain, and thence 
 passing over the ocean, preached the Gospel in the ivestern 
 parts^ Those who believe that by " western parts " Jerome 
 meant Britain, found upon the passage in his epistle to 
 Marcella in which he speaks of *' the Britains, who live 
 
 ' Origines Britan, p. .38. ^ Irenoeus, lib. i. cap. 2 and 3. 
 
 • Tert., Adversus JiuIcbok, cap. 7. 
 
 •* De Script. Eccles., and in Amos, cap. 5. 
 
SaO HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 apart from our world, if they go on pilgrimage, will leave the 
 western parts and seek Jerusalem."' ^ 
 
 In the fifth century (423-4G0), Theodoret bears his testi- 
 mony to the fact that Paul, after his release from his first 
 imprisonment at Rome, carried out his long meditated pur- 
 pose of visiting Spain, and thence earned the light of the 
 Gospel to other nations.- He states also that Paul brought 
 salvation to the islands that lie in the ocean.'^ By " the 
 islands that lie in the ocean," Chrysostom understands Theo- 
 doret to mean the British islands, and so, too, does Cave in 
 his " Life of St Paul." The ocean was put in contradistinc- 
 tion to the Mediterranean, the sea of the ancients. It is 
 now generally admitted that Paul spent two years (64-6G) 
 in Sjjain betwixt his two imprisonments at Rome.^ From 
 Cape Finisterre to the coast of South Wales is no great 
 extent of sea. The apostle was used to longer voyages ; 
 and there would be no difficulty in obtaining a passage 
 in one of the many trading vessels employed in that navi- 
 gation. 
 
 The reader may not be prepared to concur with Usher 
 and Stilling-fleet in thinking that these testimonies are conclu- 
 sive as to Paul's personal ministry in Britain. He may still 
 hold it a doubtful point. But he will admit, we think, that 
 these testimonies estabhsh the fact that it was Paul who 
 planted Christianity in Spain, and that, of all the members 
 of the apostolic college, it was this apostle, eminently, who 
 laid the foundations of the Western Church. There are 
 messages which may be enhanced by the dignity of the 
 messenger. But the Gospel is not capable of being so mag- 
 nified. It matters not whether it was an apostle or a 
 
 ^ Epist. ad Marcellam, p. 128. - In 2nd Ep. ad Tim. iv. 17. 
 
 ^ Tom. i. In Psalm cxvi. 
 
 * Conybeare and Howson, Life and Epistlen of St Paul, p. 746, Lond., 
 1870. 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 251 
 
 deaconess, like Plurbe, who first carried it t<t our island. 
 We must be permitted to say, moreover, that it is not 
 British writers, but early fathers of the Eastern and Western 
 Church who have claimed as the first preacher of Christi- 
 anity in our country, one of apostolic rank.^ 
 
 The rapidity with which the Gospel spread in the first age 
 is what we have had no second experience of. In all history 
 there is no other example of a revolution so great accom- 
 plished in so short a time. The nearest approach to it is the 
 Reforaiation in the sixteenth century, which, in the course 
 of fifty years, spread over Europe, and had enrolled the 
 half of its nations beneath its standard. But even that 
 movement was slow and laborious compared with the rapid 
 onward march of Christianity at the beginning of our era. 
 No figure can express the celerity of its triumphant advance 
 through the cities, provinces, and nations of an empire which 
 was the world, but the figure under which its Divine Founder 
 had foretold its conquests, even the lightning which suddenly 
 darts forth from the cloud, and in one moment fills east and 
 west Avitli its blaze. For no sooner had the apostles and the 
 disciples begun to proclaim the Gospel, till lo ! the earth, in 
 a manner, Avas lightened with its glory. Let us listen to 
 Tertullian. The language may be that of the rhetorician, but 
 the statements are those of open, undeniable truth and fact, 
 other^vise the orator, instead of compelling the conviction 
 and acknowledgment of those whom he addressed, and 
 serving the cause for which he made his appeal, would have 
 drawn upon himself the contempt and laughter of his hearers, 
 and lowered, instead of raising, Christianity in the eyes of 
 men. "W^e are but of yesterday," he says, "yet we fill all 
 
 1 For a full and learned discussion of this point see Tracts on the Origin 
 and Independence of the Ancient British Church , by the Bishop of St 
 David's, Lond., 1815. 
 
252 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 places of your dominions, your cities, islands, castles, cor- 
 jjorations, councils, armies, tribes, the palace, senate, and 
 courts of judicature ; we have left to the heathen only their 
 temples. We are able and ready to fight, but we yield om'- 
 selves to be killed for our religion. Had we a mind to re- 
 venge ourselves, we are numerous enough to take up arms, 
 having adherents not in this or that province, but in all 
 quarters of the world. Nay, should we agree to quit our 
 homes, what a loss would our exodus be to the empire ! The 
 world would be amazed to see the solitude we should leave 
 behind us. You would then have more enemies than friends, 
 for now almost all your friends and best citizens are Chris- 
 tians. It would be more than a sufficient revenge to us that 
 your city, if we were gone, would be an empty possession of 
 luiclean spirits. Therefore Christianity is not to be reckoned 
 a pest to your cities, but a benefit ; nor ought we to be ac- 
 counted enemies to mankind, but only adversaries of human 
 errors." These were eloquent and weighty words, nor can 
 we doubt that they were true, seeing they were no harangue 
 spoken to a popular and syiupathising assembly, but a formal 
 and earnest appeal in behalf of his brethren to the Roman 
 governors.^ But if such was the power of Christianity at the 
 centre, we may imagine the rapidity and force with which 
 tlie waves of its influence were then propagating themselves 
 all throughout the empire, and amongst the barbarous tribes 
 in the regions beyond, and Britain amongst the rest. 
 
 This early dawn of the Christian day in our country is 
 borne testimony to by numerous historians. Eusebius says 
 that " the faith of Christ began to be preached in the Roman 
 part of Britain even in the apostles' times." ^ Gildas, the 
 oldest of British historians, places this in the reign of Nero. 
 
 ' Apology, chap, xxxvii. p. 46 ; and to Scapula, Deputy of Africa, chap, 
 xxvi. p. 92. 
 - Euseb., Prceparat. Evanjel. lib. iii. c. 7. 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 253 
 
 Doubtless the disciples of the Gospel were then few in niun- 
 l)er, and in humble station. We can look for no organised 
 clmrch at that early stage. Those who had received the 
 faith, fed upon it in secret, hardly daring to avow it, it 
 may be, amid the troubles of the times, and the ignorance 
 and barbarism of their country, but when the wall of Anton- 
 ine was built, and the government of the Romans was ex- 
 tended to the Forth, and a comparatively settled order of 
 things was established, there followed, Bede informs us, a 
 corresponding extension of the Gospel, which had anothei- 
 period of revival and growth about a century later, under 
 Marcus Aurelius.^ In these comj)aratively tranquil days the 
 disciples would begin to show themselves openly; they 
 would draw to one another ; the Christian legionary and the 
 native convert would blend their voices in the same psalm, 
 would kneel together in the same prayer, and thus small 
 communities or churches would spring up in Britain by the 
 same gradual and natural process by which the campagna 
 around Rome was at that very time being covered with 
 societies of believing men. Those of their number whom 
 they deemed the fittest for the post they would appoint to 
 preside in their worship, and when it happened that the 
 little flock was \dsited by an ordained pastor, he would con- 
 firm their choice of instructor, and give the object of it more 
 formal admission into office. 
 
 The wall of Antonine, which, as the reader knows, ex- 
 tended betwixt the firths of Forth and Clyde, set limits to the 
 empire, but it could not bound the progress of the Gospel. 
 In A.D. 196 we find that the day has fairly risen on Scotland. 
 It is Tertullian who so unmistakably announces that the 
 last watch of the long night was paHt, and that the morning 
 had come. In that year this fatiier published his treatise 
 ^ Bede, Histi Eccles., lib. i. c. 4. 
 
254 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND., 
 
 against the Jews, and in it, while arguing ^vith them that 
 Jesus is the Messiah on the ground that in Him had'been ful- 
 filled what the psalm foretold, even, that " the uttermost ends 
 of the earth would be given him for his possession," he adduces 
 it as an undeniable fact that " those parts of Britain which 
 Caesar could not conquer have been subdued to Christ." ^ 
 So, then, we behold the Christian missionary passing the 
 sentinel on the Roman wall, the limit where the legions were 
 compelled to halt, going on his way and penetrating the 
 moors and mountains beyond, and spreading the triumphs 
 of the Cross among the Caledonians of the north. Origen 
 says of his time (a.d. 212), " the land of Britain has received 
 the religion of Christ." These averments have the greater 
 weight from the circumstance that they occur not in rhetori- 
 cal but in controversial works, where every fact was sure to 
 be sifted, and if in the least doubtful, was certain to be 
 challenged. We know of no contradiction that ever was 
 given to any of these statements. 
 
 A century after (a.d. 302) came the persecution under 
 Dioclesian, which pushed Christianity outwaids beyond its 
 former limits. Of all the terrible tempests that burst upon 
 the early church, this was the most fi'ightful. It raged with 
 a \-iolence which threatened for a while to leave not one dis- 
 ciple of the Gospel alive, nor a single vestige of Christianity 
 upon the face of the earth. Hundreds of thousands of con- 
 fessors perished by every kind of cruel death ; the flourish- 
 ing churches of Asia and Africa Avere laid in ruins. The 
 destmctive sweep of that tempest was felt in Britain. The 
 previous nine persecutions had not touched our shore, but 
 this, the tenth and greatest, smote it with terrible force. 
 •' By this persecution," says Gildas, " the churches were 
 thrown down, and all the books of the Holy Scriptures that 
 
 ' Contra Jtuhco.s, cap. vii- 
 
CHRISTIANITY EXTERS BRITAIN. J.").") 
 
 could be found were burned in the streets, and the chosen 
 priests of the flock of our Lord, with the innocent slieep, 
 murdered ; so as in some parts of the province no footsteps 
 of tlie Christian rehgion did apjDear." ^ 
 
 Of the Christians, some sought refuge in caves and woods ; 
 but many fled beyond the wall of Antonine, where they 
 found among the Picts the safety denied them within the 
 empire. Their presence gave additional strength to the 
 Christianity of these northern regions. The storm passed ; 
 with Constantine came a period of peace, the sanctuaries 
 which had been destroyed were rebuilt ; from the blood of 
 the martyrs sprang a numerous army of confessors, and the 
 consequence was that in Britain, as in lands where the blow 
 had fallen Avith more crushing force, and the ruin was more 
 complete, the Christian Church rose stronger than ever, and 
 filled limits Avider than before. We may accept as the 
 tokens of its prosperity the historic fact, that three of its 
 chief pastors were present in the council of Aries, a.d. 314. 
 This council was summoned by Constantine, and the three 
 British pastors who took their seats in it, were Eboreus, from 
 the city of York ; Restitutus, from the city of London ; and 
 Adelfius, from the city of Caerleon. The last was accom- 
 panied by a deacon. The Chronicle that records the fact 
 gives the delegates the name of bishoj), but is silent regard- 
 ing the extent of their dioceses, the powers of their jurisdic- 
 tion, and the mode in which they were deputed to the 
 council. A church just emerging from a terrible persecution 
 was not likely to concern itself about rich sees and lofty 
 titles for its ministers. Words change their meaning, and 
 titles expressive of liigh office and great magnificence in one 
 age, may, in another, especially in a thinly-peopled and semi- 
 barbarous country as England then was, designate only the 
 ' Gillies, Hist. CvL, bk. i. chap. 1. 
 
256 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 humblest rank, and the most limited powers. The three 
 British bishops of the Aries Council were, in all probabihty, 
 the simple shepherds of single flocks, each in his own city. 
 It is observable that they brought with them a deacon but 
 no presbyter ; an omission for which it is not easy to account, 
 save on the >upposition that they themselves were presby- 
 ters, and that in the British Church of those days the same 
 simple classification obtained as in the Philippiau Church, 
 where the only distinction among the clergy was that of 
 " the bishops and deacons." We trace the continued exist- 
 ence of the British Church, and her recognition by the sister 
 churches of the empire, in the presence of three British 
 bishops in the subsequent Council of Sardica (a.d. 347). 
 But we fail to trace any increase of influence and wealth ou 
 the part of the British pastors, for the three " bishops " who 
 served in the Council of Sardica were so poor that they 
 were indebted for their maintenance, during the period of 
 their attendance, to the public exchequer, and had to endure 
 the gibes of their southern brethren, who had already begun 
 to ape the state of grandees of the empire. 
 
 Certain writers of the legendary school have affirmed that 
 Britain sat in darkness till Rome, compassionating our dole- 
 ful plight, was pleased to send the light to us, and that it 
 was the monk Augustine, the missionary of Pope Gregory, 
 who, in A.T). 596, first kindled the lamp of the Gospel in our 
 island. The inference, of course, is that we are bound in 
 all coming time to follow the guidance of her who was the 
 first to lead us into the right road. The facts we have 
 stated show how little foundation there is for that fond 
 boast. Four hundred years before Augustine set foot on 
 our soil, there had been Christians and a Christian Church 
 in Britain. The fact is attested by a chain of e\'idence so 
 conclusive as to leave not a shadow of doubt upon the point. 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 257 
 
 When tliose fathers, whose testimony we have quoted, wrote, 
 the condition of the remote Britain was well known : the 
 legions were continually going and returning ; the shii)s of 
 the Levant were constantly voyaging to and fro, and had the 
 land been still Pagan, and the altar of the Druid still standing 
 in it, the first legionary, or the first ship that returned 
 from Britain, would have proclaimed the fact, that in that 
 land, said to have its Christian sanctuaries and its Christian 
 congregations, there was as yet neither church nor disciple ; 
 and what would the consequence have been ? Undoubtedly, 
 the opponents of Christianity, so watchful and malignant, 
 would speedily have silenced its apologists by convicting 
 them of the crime of propping up their cause by false- 
 hoods. The Christian fathers maintained openly in their 
 writings that the light of the Gospel had travelled as far as 
 to Britain, and that from the mountains of the farthest north 
 had come back echoes of the song sung at midnight in the 
 vale of Bethlehem, and not one of the many vigilant and 
 bitter enemies of Christianity dared to contradict them. 
 Founding on the silence of foe, as well as on the testimony 
 of friend, we conclude that there were disciples of the Gospel 
 in Britain certainly by the middle of the second century, 
 and probably before the end of the first. 
 
 It remains to be asked by what route did the first " light- 
 bearer " arrive on our shore ? Starting from Italy, did he 
 cross the Alps, and traverse France ? Or setting out from the 
 Levant, did he sail through the Pillars of Hercules, and coast 
 along by Spain ? By whatever road the herald travelled, 
 or in whatever guise, whether that of the soldier, or of 
 the merchant, or of the missionary, thrice blessed the feet 
 that first carried thither the " good news ! " There were 
 tliree channels, apart from direct missionary agency, by 
 which the Gospel may have entered our land. It may 
 
 I. R 
 
258 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 have come to us in the ships employed in the commerce 
 carried on betwixt Britain and Phoenicia. Or the legions 
 who came to conquer our country for Ca3sar may have 
 brought thither tidings of one who was greater than Caesar 
 — a Sa^•iour as well as a King. Or Britain may have been 
 evangelised by its own sons. Its natives were beginning to 
 be drafted off to serve in Italy and Greece, and on their 
 return to their native land, what so natural as that they 
 should inform their countrymen of what they had heard or 
 seen of new and strange abroad. It is not necessary that 
 we should suppose that by one only of these channels did 
 the waters of life enter our country. It is much more pro- 
 bable that they flowed into our land by all three. Let us 
 look at them again. 
 
 Had we taken om- stand on St Michael's INIount, off the 
 coast of Cornwall, any time during the first and second cen- 
 turies of our era, we should have seen, approaching from the 
 south, long lines of ships steering in the direction of the 
 English shore. In these bottoms the tin of the Cornisli 
 mines was transported to the Levant. The crews that 
 manned these vessels were from the trading towns of Phoe- 
 nicia, and the seaports of Egj^^t and Greece, the very regions 
 where the Gospel was then being preached, and where con- 
 gregations were being formed. Aboard these ships were, 
 doubtless, disciples of the Gospel, and it is not conceivable 
 that they would visit this dark land and traffic with its 
 natives without seeking to dispel their ignorance by speaking 
 to them of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of 
 Nazareth. Thus would they convey to our shore a richer 
 treasure than any they carried away from it. What greatly 
 strengthens this view is the fact that our early Christianity 
 bore unmistakably the stamp of the East. The great church 
 festival of those days was Easter, and the manner in which 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 259 
 
 this observance was kept was the main point of distinction 
 between the Eastern and the Western churches. The Church 
 of Asia Minor observed Easter according to a mode of 
 reckoning which made the festival fall on the fourteenth day 
 of the month, whatever the day of the week. The Church 
 of Italy, on the other hand, obsen^ed Easter by a mode of 
 reckoning which made the feast always fall on a Sabbath, 
 whatever day of the month that might chance to be. The 
 Christians of Britain, following another custom than that of 
 Italy, always observed Easter on the fourteenth day of the 
 month. On this great testing question they were rided by 
 the authority of the Eastern Chm-ch, and in this they plainly 
 showed that their first christianisatiou came not from the 
 city of the Cajsars, but from that land which was the cradle 
 of the Gospel and the scene of the ministry of the apostles. 
 
 Among the historical authorities who have traced British 
 Christianity not to a Latin but an Eastern source, we can 
 rank the great name of Neander. After setting aside the 
 legend of King Lucius, this historian goes on to say, " The 
 peculiarity of the later British Church is evidence against its 
 origin fi'om Rome ; for in many ritual matters it departed 
 from the usage of the Roman Chm-ch, and agreed much more 
 nearly ^^4th the churches of Asia Minor. It withstood for a 
 long time the authority of the Romish papacy. This circum- 
 stance would seem to indicate that the Britons had received 
 their Christianity either immediately, or through Gaul, from 
 Asia Minor — a thing quite possible and easy, by means of 
 the commercial intercourse. The later Anglo-Saxons, who 
 opposed the spirit of ecclesiastical independence among the 
 Britons, and endeavoured to establish the Church supremacy 
 of Rome, were unifomily inclined to trace back the church 
 establishments to a Roman origin, from which effort many 
 false legends might have arisen." ^ 
 
 ^ Neander, General Church History, vol. i. p. 117. 
 
'260 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 But there is no inconsistency in supposing that, along with 
 the traders and mariners on board the Phoenician ships, who, 
 doubtless, were om- first teachers, the Roman legionaries bore 
 a j)art, though a subordinate part, in dispelling the darkness 
 which had so long brooded over our land. Troops were con- 
 tinually arri\dng from Italy during these centuries, and among 
 them, doubtless, were some, probably many converts of 
 Christianity, for by this time there were numerous disciples 
 of the Saviom" in the armies of Rome. These, we may be- 
 lieve, would show an equal zeal to subdue the country to 
 Christ which their fellow-soldiers displayed in conquering it 
 for Ca?sar, and they would talk of that of which their own 
 heart was full with the poor natives with whom it chanced 
 to them to mingle in the camp or in the city, and with whom, 
 it may be, they sat in converse at eventide on the wall which 
 bounded the empue of Ctesar, though not that of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 And, as we have hinted, there was a tliird channel 
 through which the message of life may have extended to our 
 country. When the Briton or the Caledonian returned, at 
 the end of his militaiy service, from Italy, or from the more 
 distant fields of Asia Minor, nothing more wonderful had he 
 to cany back than the story of the " crucified." Of all the 
 wondei-s he had to recount, and which he had witnessed 
 abroad — Rome, then in its piime — the temples of Greece, as 
 yet untouched by decay — the monuments of Egypt, not yet 
 bowed do\\Ti with age — all sank into insignificance com- 
 pared with that of the Cross — the Tree on Calvary, on which 
 the God-man had accomplished the world's redemption. 
 We see the worn and scarred veteran rehearsing the amazing 
 tidings to the circle of eager and entranced listeners gathered 
 round him, tiU their hearts begin to burn, and they become, 
 in their turn, preachers of the good news to others, their 
 
CHRISTIANITY ENTERS BRITAIN. 261 
 
 countrymen. Thus would the Gospel spread. By its own 
 divine energy it opened barbarous hearts, unlocked the fast- 
 nesses of our countiy, penetrating where the eagles of Rome 
 had feared to enter, replaced the stone circle of the Druid 
 with holier sanctuaries, and his obscene rites with sweeter 
 sacrifices, and, in process of time, the foreign mariner, 
 voyaging on our coast, instead of the horrid war-whoop of 
 tribe battling with tribe, which had aforetime stunned his 
 ear, was now regaled by the " melody of joy and praise " 
 which, borne on the evening breeze, came wafted towards 
 him over the waters. Justly did the fathers of the primitive 
 church regard the conversion of Britain as a signal fidfilment 
 of ancient prophecy, and one of the most convincing proofs 
 of the Gosjiel's power ; for after the painted savages of Cale- 
 donia, what barbarism could not the Gospel tame ? what 
 darkness coidd it not illuminate ? Although little could 
 these fathers foresee that the day now breaking on the 
 mountains of this poor land would gather brightness from 
 age to age, till at last other and far distant skies would be 
 filled with its refluent liorht. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 
 
 The drama iu Scotland opens before the arrival of the main 
 actors in it. The Scots had not yet appeared in the country, 
 nor was there at this time a Scotland in existence — that is, 
 a country passing under that name. But it does not there- 
 fore follow that the recital w^ e have given is aside from the 
 main stoiy, or that the events we have detailed refer to a 
 race wholly distinct from that which forms the Scottish 
 nation of the present hour. On the contrary, the men with 
 whom the Romans maintained so arduous a warfare, and 
 whose country the masters of the world were able only 
 partially to subdue, contributed their blood and bravery to 
 form that heroic race which, in a subsequent age, fought 
 under the standards of Bruce, and which, in a still later age, 
 rallied to the nobler battle for freedom wliich w^as led by 
 Knox. In order to the formation of that race, there must 
 be the accession of new elements, and there must also be 
 the engrafting of finer qualities, but all this is seen to take 
 place upon the aboriginal stock. There is no rooting out of 
 the old trunk, no planting of a new tree. The old root — 
 the top rising continually higher, and the branches spread- 
 ing ever ^vider around — which had hold of the ground when 
 Agricola crossed the Tweed with his legions, and which 
 refused to be torn up, even by the iron of Rome, remained 
 fixed in the soil, and still stands rooted in it. 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 263 
 
 But what was destined to form the main constituent in 
 the nationality now in process of formation had not yet 
 arrived, and for the coming of the Scots, preparation had to 
 be made both in the country they were to occupy, and on 
 the race with which they were to be mingled, and which 
 they were to impregnate with their higher qualities. We 
 iiave seen what manner of country Caledonia was when 
 history first raises the curtain and permits us a sight of 
 it ; and we have seen, too, what manner of men they were 
 who inhabited it. Countiy and inhabitant alike present 
 themselves before us in all the rudeness and savageness of 
 nature. The fomier is scarred and broken, upheaved in 
 sterile mountains, or laid down in swampy plains by the long 
 continued action of volcanic fires, and the stonns of countless 
 winters, the only agents which as yet have moulded it ; and 
 the latter is deformed by the play of ignoble passions and 
 familiarity mth rude and violent pursuits ; and yet in both, 
 are latent capabilities far beyond what the keenest observer 
 might have guessed to be present, and which wait only the 
 hour of development. Dreary as is the aspect of the country 
 — a far extending \asta of marsh and woodland, shut in by a 
 wall of rocky mountain, and the sun able only at times to 
 struggle through its thick air ; yet its frame-work is such, 
 that the hand of culture and skill may contrive to create in 
 it landscapes more picturesque, and to fashion it as a whole 
 into a more perfect and complete comitry than perhaps is to 
 be met with in any other corner of Europe. And as regards 
 the natives who know only as yet to paint their bodies, to 
 brandish the spear, to hunt the boar, and to shout their war- 
 whoop as they join battle with the foe, they furnish a hardy 
 and vigorous stock which, when its native robustness shall 
 have been tempered by an engrafting of the nobler quali- 
 
264 HISTORY OF scotla:^d. 
 
 ties of knowledge and patriotism, may one day yield fruits 
 which will delight the world. 
 
 It is necessary here to cast a glance back on that great 
 movement of the early nations, which resulted in the second 
 peopling of the earth. This will enable us to guess at the 
 relation of the Scots to the other branches of mankind, and 
 assign them their true place in the genealogical tree of the 
 world. We have followed, in the early chapters of our his- 
 tory, the great wave of population, which, rising in the 
 mountains of Armenia, and flowing northward betwixt the 
 Euxine and the Caspian, rolled down the slopes of the Cau- 
 casus, and finally touched the shores of Britain. We know 
 only the beginning and the end of this great march, but that 
 enables us \\ith certainty to infer much of what lay between. 
 When history returns to the scene, reinforced by the light of 
 archeology and etymology, we can discern that this great 
 people, though divided into numerous septs, are sprung of 
 the same stock, the Gomeric — the same that set out ages 
 before from the heights of Armenia. 
 
 This great Cimric family, which needed no inconsiderable 
 part of the northern hemisphere to accommodate its prolific 
 swaniis, was again divided into two great septs or clans. 
 We drop out of view the numerous smaller tribes, each occupy- 
 ing its own little territory, and each bearing its special name, 
 of which these two great divisions of the Cimric race were 
 composed. The mention of them would but confuse our 
 aim, which is to present a general outline of the ethnical 
 arrangement of Europe, say from one thousand to five hun- 
 dred years B.C., in order to reach the native region of the 
 Scots, and fix the particular branch of the great ancestral 
 tree on which they grew. The one Cimric family are divided 
 into the northern and southern. The northern, who inhabit 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 265 
 
 from the shores of the German Ocean to the confines of Asia, 
 and beyond, are known by tlie general name of Scythians.* 
 The southern, who dwell in Belgium and France, and overflow 
 — for their lauds were fertile — into the mountains of S^vitzer- 
 land and the north of Spain, were the Gauls. Both peoples, 
 as Tacitus informs us, spoke the same language, though dif- 
 fering shghtly in dialect, and that language was the Gallic or 
 Celtic. 
 
 In process of time the memory of their common parentage 
 was lost, and the tribes or nations of later formation, the 
 Scytliians aud the Gauls, began to weigh heavily upon 
 the earlier Cimric races, by whom the various countries 
 of Europe — empty till their arrival — had been peopled. 
 The Scythic or Gallic masses began to shift about, and gra- 
 vitate to larger or more fertile territories, and the result of 
 this pressure was to become mixed with their neighbours, 
 and in some instances to displace them, and occupy in 
 their room. It was thus that Britain, whose population 
 till now was the early Cimric, received into it three new 
 varieties, the Gaul, the Pict, and the Scot. There exists 
 abundant evidence to show that all the inhabitants of 
 Britain, from this early period onward, were all sprung from 
 the same stock, though they arrived in our island by differ- 
 ent routes, and are known by different names. There is a 
 remarkable agreement on this point among the writers of 
 highest antiquity and of greatest weight. And their testi- 
 mony is corroborated by the evidence arising from substan- 
 tial identity of language and similarity of religious rites. 
 The ancient Bretons, who were most probably the early 
 Cimric settlers, for the Cimri are found in Britain a thou- 
 sand years before Christ ; and the Picts, the same people 
 
 1 " The ancients," says Stiabo, " commonly called the northern people 
 Scythes," — Strabo, lib. xi. 
 
266 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 with the Caledonians ; the Belg^, or Gauls, in the south 
 of England ; and the Scots, in the west Highlands, were 
 but four several branches from the same root, and that root 
 Gallic or Celtic.^ 
 
 The three quarters whence came the three importations 
 by which the aboriginal population of Britain was partly 
 mixed and partly displaced, were Germany, Gaul, and Spain. 
 When Cajsar invaded Britain, he tells us that he found the 
 inhabitants of the south of England, Belgic, that is, the 
 Galh. He concluded, and concluded rightly, from the strong 
 similarity betwixt the population of the south of England and 
 the great nation of the Gauls on the hither shores of what 
 are now known as France, Belgium, and Holland, and their 
 substantial identity in speech, in manners, in their style of 
 building, and in their mode of fighting, that the fomier Avere 
 a colony from across the Channel, which the hope of plunder 
 had dra^vn into Britain, and the rich pastures and milder 
 climate of their new country retained in it. Tacitus, writing 
 a century later, agrees in this opinion. And Bede, in the 
 eighth century of om* era, adds his testimony, when speaking 
 of the same people ; he says, " They were Celts, and came 
 from Armorica," that is, Britany. 
 
 Cajsar, moreover, made mquiiy touching the sort of people 
 that occupied the interior of the island, but could learn 
 nothing of them. There were no written records, no tradi- 
 tions, and no monuments to throw light on then* origin. He 
 could tell neither the time when they arrived in Britain, nor 
 the country whence they came, and in these circumstances 
 
 ^ SvLch is the conclusion at which Buchanan arrives, after an exhaiistis-e 
 examination of all existing Greek and Latin authorities, together with 
 the early English chroniclers, and though Pinkerton demurs some- 
 what to Buchanan's conclusion, it has not been seriously disturbed, 
 niuch less ov^erthrown, and may now be said to be all but universally 
 acquiesced in 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 207 
 
 lie had recouree to the Greek idea, even that they were 
 aborigines, that is, men sprung from the soil on which they 
 lived. 
 
 We now turn our eyes in another quarter. Our main in- 
 terest centres in that multitudinous horde which have foimd 
 a dwelling beneath the northern Bear, and who go under the 
 general name of Scythians. "The original principle of 
 motion," observes Gibbon, "was concealed in the remote 
 countries of the north." It is not difficult to discover the 
 latent cause to which the historian refers, and which has 
 given birth to the numerous emigrations, at times destruc- 
 tive, and at times beneficent, which the north has sent forth. 
 It converted the vast tract of land in Europe vaguely de- 
 scribed as Scythia, extending from the Euxine to the shores 
 of the Rhine, into a fountain-head of nations.^ The snow- 
 stonns and icy winds of that region made it the nursing- 
 ground of hardy constitutions, and of adventurous and valour- 
 ous spu'its. Jornandes calls it the " workshop of nations." ^ 
 Its inhabitants were strong of arm and keen of eye ; they 
 were bold riders and dexterous bowmen. Their occupation 
 was shepherds, but to the patient labourers of the fold they 
 added the active exercises of the chase. They maintained 
 their vigour, and perfected their courage and skill, by daily 
 combats with the angry wild boar, or the not less ferocious 
 tiger, ever ready to spring upon them from the thicket. 
 And thus, though no two modes of life appear to lie farther 
 apart than the pastoral and the military, all experience has 
 demonstrated that the hardihood and patience learned in the 
 one is an admirable training for the endurance and daring 
 required in the other, and that nothing is easier than to 
 
 ' Tacitus and Pompouius ^lela call this vast tract Germany, and make 
 it include all the northern nations of Europe to the Arctic Ocean, Strabo, 
 Diodorus, Pliny, and, after them, Bede, speak of it as Scythia. 
 
 -' Jornandes, De Rebus Giticis, lib. i. cap. 4. 
 
268 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 transform the shepherd into the Avarrior. The terrible 
 phalanxes which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
 did battle, at times as the allies, and at times as the enemies 
 of Austria, were drawn from among the herdsmen of the 
 Alps ; and in our own day, in the British army, the regi- 
 ments most distinguished for their heroism are those which 
 have been recruited from the sheep-walks of Sutherlandshire. 
 Scythia, a land of shepherds, became a school of war, and a 
 camp of soldiers. 
 
 If we are to believe the Greek writers, this people were as 
 distinguished for their strength of understanding as for their 
 vigour of body. Dio bears his testimony to their intelli- 
 gence. Thucydides says that the Scythians in point of valour 
 and wisdom were the first of nations.^ And Herodotus 
 testifies that they were both learned and mse.^ The names 
 still survive of individuals among them eminent in law, in 
 medicine, in philosophy, and in poetry. As regards their 
 courage, let their enemies testify. When no Roman could 
 be found to lead the annies of the empire in its last struggles 
 for existence, two generals of this nation, Stilicho, a 
 Vandal, and Belisarius, of Thrace, by their intrepidity and 
 valour delayed for a short space, they could not prevent, the 
 fall of Rome. In that age it was to Scythia, not to Italy, 
 that men might turn in the hope of finding the virtues of 
 temperance, of fortitude, of hospitality and humanity. 
 
 It is true, no doubt, that Scythia has come to be equiva- 
 lent, in the vulgar apprehension, to Barbaric. But, as has 
 been well observed, " their enemies have been their histor- 
 ians." There are some to whom virtue in a garment of 
 Scythian fur will appear barbarism, and vice in the spangled 
 robes of dissolute Italy, civihsation. The Scythians fonned 
 a main element in that Gothic inundation which, when the 
 
 1 Thucyd., lib. ii. cap. 21. - Herod., lib. iv. cap. 46. 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 269 
 
 " original principle of motion, which was concealed in the 
 countries of the north," had attained its perfect development, 
 and the cup of Rome was full, rolled down upon the eftemi- 
 nate empire and crushed it. And though we have no Avish 
 to diminish the terrors, the sufferings, and the agonies of 
 that awful time, it may yet be doubted whether the sack 
 and burning and slaughter which accompanied the overthrow 
 of the empire by the Goths was nearly so great as the butcher- 
 ings and blood-sheddings, the holocausts of cities, and tribes, 
 and nations, by means of which Rome had, in a former 
 age, effected the conquest of the world. It was partial dis- 
 placement, not total extermination which the Goths inflicted. 
 The victors mingled with the vanquished, and soon became 
 one people mtli them. They did not destroy with blind 
 barbaric rage ; on the contrary, they spared much which they 
 deemed tasteful in architecture, wise in legislation, and 
 good in institutions. In that invasion, it is true, there were 
 leaders of terrible name, for the mention of Attila and his 
 Huns still thrills us, and it is also true that the progress of 
 the northern arms was marked by some scenes which are to 
 be ranked amongst the darkest in history ; yet, as Pinkerton 
 has observed, the preservation of " the language of Italy, 
 France, and Spain, which is mere Latin corrupted by time, 
 sufficiently shows that very few of the old inhabitants 
 perished." " The Romans," he adds, " often shed more 
 blood in one war than the Goths in conquering the Roman 
 empire." ^ 
 
 In pursuing our argument, we have been carried past that 
 point in our narrative where the Scots make their first 
 appearance, not indeed as yet as a distinct nationality, for 
 they still lie embedded in the great Scythic mass, and have 
 
 ^ Pinkerton, Dissertation on the Origin and Frogress of the Scythians, or 
 Gotlis, Preface, xi. 
 
270 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 not been blocked out, and made to stand apart on the 
 human stage. We must turn back some centuries. Prior 
 to the general outbreak of the Scythic nations by which the 
 Roman empire was overthrown, smaller emigrations had 
 gone forth from this prolific source of young and hardy races. 
 About five hundred years before Christ, according to ancient 
 writers, the Scythians began to press upon the Cimbri, or 
 Celts, and pushing them before them, compelled them to fall 
 back into the western parts of Europe, which they had been 
 the first to people. One of these adventurous bands, by a 
 long and circuitous route, found its way to Scotland. Al- 
 most all ancient testimony points to Scythia as the original 
 cradle of the Scottish race. 
 
 And first, as to the name Scots. Though, as Innes ^ ob- 
 serves, it is not met with till the third century, it can hardly 
 be questioned that it is the same as Scyths. There is a 
 resemblance betwixt ScythtE and Scoti, and only a difference 
 in the pronunciation according to the different accent of the 
 several peoples that spoke of them. Thus as Gethi, Get/ii- 
 cus, are the same as Gothi, Gothkus, so also from Scyth(r, 
 Scythicus, come Scoti, Scoticus. Gildas, in the sixth century,'-^ 
 and Nennius in the ninth, use the names Scythce and Scoti 
 for the same people. 
 
 King Alfred, in his translation of Bede, and other writers 
 of that time, use Scytisc for Scottish, so that Scyt and Scot 
 were sjiionymous. Several of the classic writers do the 
 same thing, making use of Scythia and Scotia, and Scyth 
 and Scot alternately. The Irish writers uniformly say that 
 the Scots were Scythians, and Nennius tells us the same 
 thinf.^ Ware confirms this origin of the nation when he 
 shows that Scythce and Scoti were but different names for 
 
 ^ limes, vol. ii. 536, Loml. 1729. ^ Gildcas, cap. 15. 
 
 ^ Piukertou, ii. 46. 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 271 
 
 the same people, and that both are called Scutten by the 
 Germans.^ The two names, Scythe and Scot, signify the 
 same thing — an archer or bowman. The Welsh, as Camden 
 observes, call both Scythians and Scots by the term Y-Scot. 
 And from them the Romans, who now began to encounter 
 them on the battle-field, called them Scoti. 
 
 We see the colony of shepherds and hunters setting 
 out from their northern dwelling uncertain where their 
 journey may end. They do not, like other emigrants, leave 
 home and country behind them. Their tent is their home, 
 and their camp is their coimtry, and around them are their 
 associates, their herds and flocks, and their whole possessions. 
 Every few days' march places them under fairer skies, and 
 in the midst of richer pastures. They seek, if haply they may 
 find, a country which has not yet been taken possession of, 
 and where they may have room to follow the same wandering 
 and pastoral life they have led in the north. On their route 
 lies Germany. In that age it is little better than a vast 
 forest. They thread its woody mazes, they swim its rivers, 
 and make an occasional short halt in its woody glades. Its 
 sea-coast is cleared, but is already occupied by earlier emi- 
 grants. They must go onward, but neither in the regions 
 beyond do they find permanent settlements. The lagunes of 
 the Rhine have not yet been drained, nor have the dykes 
 of Holland been built to restrain the waves of the North Sea 
 which overflow where, in a future age, meadows with their 
 kine, and fair cities with their thriving populations are to be 
 seen. 
 
 The Scythic host go on still towards the south. They are 
 now in the territory of the Belgai. A vast champaign 
 country ; its surface, which is made up of woods, grazings, 
 cultivated fields, and towns, stretches onwards to the Alps. 
 
 ' Pinkerton, ii. 49. 
 
272 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The emigrauts which we beheld leaving Scythia have 
 been buried on the way, and the bands we now see wander- 
 ing hither and thither amid the rivers, forests, and vine- 
 lands of Gaul are their sons of the second or third genem- 
 tiou. The richer soil on which they now tread, invites them 
 to become cultivators and strike permanent root, but the dis- 
 position to wander is still strong in them, and the Belga? are 
 no ways enchanted with the prospect of having as neigh- 
 bours these children of the north, who can play the warrior 
 as well as the shepherd, and who may one day become their 
 masters. They may pass through Gaul, but they cannot 
 remain in it. 
 
 From this point two routes are open to them. They may 
 traverse the Pyrenees and descend on Spain, or they may 
 cross the sea and enter Ireland. Shoidd they adopt the first, 
 there is ample room for their swarms on that magnificent and 
 fertile expanse, which stretches along at the foot of the 
 Pn'cnees, now known as the plains of Castile ; or, if that 
 tract is claimed by earlier comers, they can turn to the vast 
 and goodly mountain-chain that runs along on its northern 
 edge, pushing its bold, towering masses far into the Atlantic, 
 now known as Cape Finisterre. There they may follo^^' the 
 pursuits which had occupied them in their primeval home. 
 The valleys will afford pasturage for theu- flocks, and they can 
 hunt the boar in their woods and rocks. Or, if they should 
 duect their march on Ireland, they will find a thinly-peopled 
 island ready to receive them, ^Wth a milder air than northern 
 Gaul, and richer pastures, which the midsummer heats do 
 not burn up. 
 
 The common tradition is, that they came round by Spain. 
 Their stay in that country woidd seem not to have been long. 
 The Iberia of that day was the battle-ground of the Cartha- 
 genians and the Romans, and the Scythic colony, or Scots, 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 273 
 
 for we must begin to call them by the name, whicli they 
 were afterwards to bear, quitted a laud that was full of 
 broils and miseiy, and crossed the sea to Ireland. Hardy 
 and warlike, they fought their way from the south to the 
 north of the island, and there, growing into a numerous 
 people, they sent across a large colony, or, rather, succes- 
 sive colonies, to Scotland, which laid the foundations of the 
 Scottish nation. 
 
 We have followed, as above, the course of those emigrants 
 which, describing a compass by Gaul and Spain and Ireland, 
 ultimately entered Scotland on the west. From them springs 
 the line proper of the Scottish nation. But some consider- 
 able time before their arrival, a body of kindred people had 
 entered Scotland on its eastern side. The great Scythic 
 stream floA^dng southward would seem to have parted on its 
 way, and the diverging cm*rent, taking a westward course, 
 crossed from Jutland to our shores ; or, it may be, this last 
 was an independent migration, originating in the same pro- 
 lific region, and set in motion by the same propelling prin- 
 ciple as the migration of which we have spoken. TraveUing 
 by a shorter route, they anticipated the others, and appeared 
 in Scotland, probably about three hundred years before 
 Christ. Nennius says that the Picts came to Orkney nine 
 hundred years after Eli, which would fix their arrival in our 
 island at the period we have mentioned, and would make it 
 contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the supposed entrance 
 of the BelgiB into soutliern Britain.^ 
 
 ' Innes [Crit. Essay, vol. i. p. 47) makes the Picts a detacliment of the 
 Belgse, and brings them from Gaul. There is nothing in this inuonsistent 
 with the view given in the text. They were not Cymric, but Celtic, and 
 were, probably, the second grand immigration which reached our shores, 
 coming either by way of Gaul, or across the German Ocean. The Picts 
 are first mentioned by Eumenius in his panegyric on Constantiiis, a.d. 
 297, then by Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century. They appear, 
 too, in the verse of Claudian, i)r Skene, in his "Four Ancient Books of 
 
274 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Tacitus, who is the first to meution them by the name of 
 Caledonians, gives it as his opinion that they were of German 
 oiigin.i And Bede says that they came from Scythia, the 
 vague appellation, as we have said, of northern Europe. 
 Though of Scythian origin, and therefore the kindi*ed of the 
 Scots, they do not make their appearance in history under 
 that name, but as Picts or Caledonians. The fonner name 
 they received most probably from their custom of painting or 
 tattooing their bodies, after the manner of certain tribes iu- 
 habitiug about the parts from which they had come.- Dis- 
 placing the ancient Cymric inhabitants, or, what is more 
 probable, mingling with them, they came to occupy the 
 eastern half of Scotland. 
 
 They brought with them to our island the northern iron. 
 Xursed amid the icy blasts of Scythia, the rains and frosts of 
 Caledonia did not dismay them. They were wild, hardy, 
 brave. Their swift foot and sure eye bore them in safety 
 over the treacherous bog, and through the gloomy, trackless 
 wood. They were addicted to the chase, as the relics of 
 their feasts attest. They were terrible in battle. They met 
 Agricola at the foot of their own Grampians, and conducted 
 
 Wales," says, " The inferences to be drawn from tradition clearly range 
 the Picts as a people with the Gaelic division of the great Celtic race." 
 lu the sixth century the Picts of Buchan were of the same race as the 
 Scots of Down. 
 
 ^ Tacit., Vit. Agric, c. 11. 
 
 - The Geloni in Thrace, Virgil informs us, were accustomed so to adorn 
 themselves. And Claudiau, speaking of them (lib. i.), says, " Membraque 
 qui ferro gaudit pinxisse, Geloniis." 
 
 " And the Geloni who delight 
 Their hardy limbs with iron to imprint." 
 The same poet mentions the Getas in Thrace as ornamenting their bodies 
 in a like fashion. Other Gothic tribes did the same. When the Romans 
 built their wall across the island, it is probable that of the natives whom 
 it parted in two, all on the south, under the sway of Rome, ceased to paint 
 their bodies, while those on the north continued the practice, and so were 
 specially denominated Picts. 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 275 
 
 themselves in such a manner as fully to satisfy his legions of 
 their intrepidity and skill in war. 
 
 They rushed on the foe in their chariots. To their early 
 predecessors, the Cymri, the war-car was unknown. We 
 trace in this an advance in the arts. They joined battle 
 with a shout : they grappled with the enemy at close quar- 
 ters, and while covering themselvss with their small, round 
 shields, they strove to pull their antagonist from his horse or 
 his car, with their long hooks, and despatch him with their 
 swords. Their common dead they buried : their great men 
 they honoured by burning, selecting the most odorous of 
 then* woods for his funeral pile. The ashes were put into 
 an earthen urn, and the barrow thrown up was in propor- 
 tion to the rank of the chief whose remains it covered. 
 
 Their dress was a skin thrown over their shoulders, and a 
 cloth tied round their loins. The Roman writers, who saw 
 them only in summer, speak of them as going naked. It is 
 possible that even their scanty winter clothing they deemed 
 an encumbrance in the warmer months, and went abroad in 
 their bare skin, the rich fanciful picturings on which were 
 to them as a garment ; — a more modest attire, after all, than 
 the transparent robes in which the Roman beauties of the 
 period were beginning to array themselves. Their power 
 of enduring hunger was great. They could subsist for days 
 on the roots that were readiest to hand. But when they 
 feasted, their voracity made amends for the rigour of their pre- 
 vious abstinence. They mustered in rows along the four sides 
 of their great hall, their chief in the middle. The board 
 groaned under whole carcases of roast boar, reindeer, horses, 
 and oxen. To this substantial fare, freely partaken of, 
 was added a pot of goodly dimensions, brimful of mead or 
 beer, from which the guests drank as oft and as deeply as 
 they pleased, using for this purpose cups made of horn. 
 
276 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Then came the song of the bards, celebrating the last fought 
 battle, and bestowing fitting praise on the heroes who had 
 fallen in it. It was loud, wild, passionate, and highly 
 metaj)horical, but the better adapted on that account to 
 delight an audience no ways critical. 
 
 The tiger and other beasts of prey have their combats and 
 their \actories, but they never celebrate their wars in verse. 
 Their conflicts never rise above the low groove of mere 
 animal passion and brute rage. Not so man : not so even 
 barbarian man. With his combats there always mingle in 
 some degree mental and moral sentiments. It is these, 
 when the strife is over, and the animal passions have sub- 
 sided, that vent themselves in song. Hence war, with all its 
 miseries, is, in rude ages, an educating and elevating process. 
 The beasts fight for food or to gratify their rage, and never 
 get beyond these sordid objects. The lion is not a more 
 chivalrous combatant to-day than he was a thousand years 
 ago. He but caters for his cubs, or he ravens for himself. 
 Man fights, first, to display his prowess, next he combats 
 for his clan, and finally he does battle for countiy and 
 liberty, all the while the brute instinct in him is weakening, 
 and the higher faculties are developing apace, and embrac- 
 ing in their aims still grander objects. Of the songs of love 
 and war sung on these occasions, and they were many 
 doubtless, not one remains. The very language of the Picts 
 has perished. Only one word has come down to us, pre- 
 served by Bede, Peanfuhel} It is thought to mean "the 
 
 1 So was it when Sir Walter wrote the " Antiquary." Since that time 
 there has been discovered a considerable number of Pictish words. The 
 phonetic changes in these exhibit Pictish as occupying an intermediate 
 place betwixt Cymric and Gaelic. Dr Skene thinks that Cymric and 
 Gaelic has each a high and low dialect, like high and low Gei'man, and 
 that Pictish was a low Gaelic dialect. — Forbes' Life of St Ninian ; His- 
 torians of Scotland, vol. v. p. 277 ; Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, 
 p. 138. 
 
THE CRADLE OF THE SCOTS. 277 
 
 head of the wall, " that is, the eastern end of Antonine's wall, 
 and to be identical in site with the modern town of Kencil. 
 The universal language of Europe at that day was the Celtic 
 in its various dialects, and it is probable that the speech of 
 the Picts differed only slightly from that of the Scots, the 
 Welsh, and the Gauls. It is hardly necessary to add that 
 the religion of the Pict was Druidism, and that he repaired 
 to the oak wood and the stone circle to worship. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE SCOTS. 
 
 In the previous chapter we traced the progress of the Scots 
 from Scythia, that " workshop of nations," to Ireland. 
 There can he no doubt regarding their starting point ; but 
 there is some variety of opinion touching the route by which 
 they travelled. They may have crossed from the Cymric 
 Chersonesus, and passing betwixt the mainland of Scotland 
 and the Orkneys, entered Ireland on the north. Or they 
 may have taken the longer and more circuitous road by 
 Gaul and Spain. There is a concurrence of early Irish tradi- 
 tion in favour of the latter route, and in deference to that 
 tradition we have adopted it as that by which these 
 Scythic emigrants travelled. But it is of more importance 
 to enquire, at what time did the Scots arrive in Ireland ? 
 
 Some have placed their advent so early as the tenth or 
 twelfth century before Christ. This opinion has neither 
 proof nor probability to support it. If the Scots were in 
 Ireland ten centuries or even five centuries before the Christ- 
 ian era, how comes it that of the historians and geographers 
 that speak of Ireland, not one mentions the name of the 
 Scots till the third or fourth century ? Ptolemy, the geo- 
 grapher, in the second century, enumerates some score of 
 diflferent races as inhabiting Ireland, but the Scot is not of 
 the number. Csesar, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Mela, 
 Tacitus, Pliny, though they mention Ireland, know nothing 
 
THE COMING OF THE SCOTS. 279 
 
 of the Scots. The name by which the country was then 
 known among the writers who speak of it, was Hibernia, 
 [erne, or Britannia Minor ; and they had no name for 
 its inhabitants save Hyherni and Hyherioinv. The first 
 ^vliter in whose pages the term Scoti appears is Ammianus 
 MarcelHnus in the end of the fourth century, and he speaks 
 of them as a peoj^le who had been wanderers through 
 diverse countries, and who even yet were hardly settled 
 down in their new homes.^ Having made their appearance, 
 the Scots do not again pass out of view. On the contrary, 
 they continue to make their presence in Ireland felt, as they 
 do also in the country on the hither side of the Irish 
 Channel ; and hardly is there a writer of any eminence in 
 the ages that follow who has not occasion to speak of them. 
 Claudian, Jerome, Orosius, Gildas, all make mention of the 
 Scots. This is wholly unaccountable on the supposition 
 that this people had been resident in Ireland for twelve or 
 thirteen centuries, but it perfectly accords with the theory 
 that makes their arrival to fall at the beginning of the 
 Christian era, or soon thereafter. As spoken of by their 
 first historians, the Scots have about them the air of a new 
 people. They are of hardier fibre than the soft and peace- 
 loving aborigines among whom they have come to dwell, but 
 with whom they do not mix. Ammianus hints that the dis- 
 position to roam was still strong in them, and already, before 
 they have well established themselves in their new abodes, 
 they are on the outlook for larger territories, and have their 
 curraghs ready to pass over and explore the land, whose 
 blue mountain-tops they can descry on the other side of the 
 narrow sea. 
 
 The world was then on the eve of one of its greatest revo- 
 lutions. The north was about to open its gates and send 
 
 ^ Amian. Marcel., lib. 27. Scoti per divarsa vaganies. 
 
280 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 forth its numerous hardy races to overflow and occupy the 
 fertile lands of the south. The manhood of the Greeks and 
 Romans was extinct. There was neither piety in their 
 temples, nor virtue in their homes. The Senate was with- 
 out patriotism, and the camp without courage. A univei'sal 
 dissolution of moral principle had set in, and society lay over- 
 whelmed. Unless the world was to stand still or perish, new 
 races must be brought upon the stage. The Frank was to 
 be planted in Gaul, the Goth was to inherit Spain, the Van- 
 dal was to have possessions in Africa, and the Astrogoth 
 and Lombard were to pitch their tents in Italy. Of all tliis 
 offspring of the fruitful north, it is a historic fact that the 
 Scot was the first born. He occupied the van in this great 
 procession of nations which we see about to begin their 
 march to the south : for he was the first to leave his 
 northern home and set out in quest of a new country. He 
 arrived too early on the scene to fare well in this new parti- 
 tion of Europe, for Rome was still strong, and kept the 
 gates of her fairest provinces closed against the northern 
 hordes. Had he come later, when the empire was more 
 enfeebled, the Scot might have been able to choose his lot 
 amid the corn-lauds of Spain, or the vineyards of Italy, like 
 the Goths, the Huns, and other swanns who followed him. 
 As it was, he was constrained to turn northwards, and fix 
 his abode under the humid skies of lerne, and amid the 
 heath-clad mountains of Caledonia. Nevertheless his was 
 the better part. If the inheritance assigned him lay at the 
 extremity of Europe, and looked rugged and barren, com- 
 pared with the happier allotments of others, it brought 
 with it a countervailing advantage, which was worth, ten 
 times over, all possible attractions of soil and climate. It 
 made him all the more able to maintain his liberty and his 
 faith. A new and deeper slavery was preparing for the 
 
THE COMING OF THE SCOTS. 281 
 
 nations. The Scot, standing afar off, was the last to come 
 under tlie yoke of the second Rome, and among the first to 
 escape from it. 
 
 As we dimly desciy him on his first appearance in Ireland, 
 the Scot has about him a marked individuality. He is seen 
 mo^^ng about, a man of iron among figures of clay. His 
 arrival brings the country into historic light. He takes upon 
 himself the burden of ruling the land, and he infuses some- 
 thing of his own spirit into the natives. The aborigines 
 appear to have been a submissive and nnwarlike people, who 
 occupied themselves in tending their herds of cattle and 
 swine amid their woods and bogs. Such at least would 
 seem to have been the report brought of them to Agricola. 
 The Roman general had been able to do little more than 
 stand his ground before the Caledonians at the foot of the 
 Grampians, with the Roman army in force, and yet he under- 
 took, with a single legion and a few bodies of auxiliaries, to 
 subdue and occupy Ireland.^ Plainly Agricola recognised a 
 vast difference betwixt the spirit of the men on this side of 
 the Irish Channel and on that. And such do the aborigines 
 of lerne appear, as seen in the earliest Irish writings which 
 we possess. We refer to the " Confessions of Patrick." ^ 
 Being the autobiography of Patrick, and not the history of 
 Ireland, it is only side-glimpses which it gives us of the in- 
 liabitants of the country ; but these are full of interest, and 
 amply bear out all that we have said regarding the character 
 and relative position of the two races then inhabiting Ireland, 
 the Hiberni and the Scott. There is seen to be a marked 
 
 ^ Tacitus, Vit. Ayrlc, c. 24. 
 
 - Confesslo S. Patric'd. We shall have frequent occasion to refer to 
 this work at a subsequent stage of our history. All that we deem it need- 
 ful to say of it here i«, tliat it was written by himself in the fifth century, 
 and first p.ublished by Ware from very ancient MS., and its authenticity 
 is acknowledged by all the learned. 
 
282 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 distinction between the two. The Scots are the military 
 class ; they are the nobles. So does Patrick style them 
 when he has occasion to speak of them in his " Confession," 
 and also in his letter to the Irish chieftain, Coroticus. But 
 his language is different when he has occasion to refer to the 
 aboriginal inhabitants. The latter are spoken of as the 
 connnonalty, the sons of the soil,^ a quiet, yielding, and 
 inoffensive people, dwelling carelessly in their pleasant 
 insular abode, plowing their fields, reaping their harvests, 
 skilled in the rearing of cattle and swine, but inexperienced 
 in the art of war, from the sight of which their situation 
 happily removed them ; yet destined, a few centuries later, 
 to attain the fame of learning, and then Ireland would shine 
 in a glory which would attract to its shore the youth of 
 Europe, to drink in the wisdom of its schools. 
 
 Very different is that other people who now make their 
 apjDearance, and whose career is destined to be so eventful. 
 It is in Ireland that we first meet them. But lerne is not 
 their native soil. They have arrived in it, Ammianus Mar- 
 cellinus tells us, after long wandering through many coun- 
 tries, and, doubtless, divers perils. They give kings to their 
 adopted land. They send an armed expedition across the 
 Channel, to aid the Picts in overrunning the Provincials, 
 and driving back the Romans. They are constantly finding 
 work for the legions which guard the frontiers of the now 
 tottering emjiire. Now it is the Scots that conquer, and 
 now it is the Romans, and the belt of country between the 
 two walls becomes the scene of many a bloody fray. They 
 go back again to Ireland, but soon they return in strength to 
 Scotland, and settle down in it as if they felt that for better 
 
 ^ Patrick often uses Scoti and Rejjuli as equivalent terms. To the 
 term Scotttis he adds often the word nohilis ; whereas he has no other ap- 
 pellative for the native Irish but Hyherione, or Hyberni gencv, the common 
 people. Both Bolland and Tillemont take notice of this distinction. 
 
THE COMING OF THE SCOTS. 283 
 
 for woi-se this must be the future land of the Scots. They 
 still cherish their warlike spirit, and are on the outlook for a 
 foe. The Roman has vanished from Britain, but the Saxon 
 has come in. The Scots unite their arms with the Picts, 
 and push back the new intruder. At length the two form 
 one people. The northern rover now appears on their shore, 
 but it is only to find a grave. The barrows on the northern 
 and western coasts of our island, where sleep the Viking 
 and his followers, " slain with the sword of the Scot," show 
 that their prowess had not suffered decay. The Dane 
 had conquered the Saxon, but he cannot prevail against the 
 Scot. For ages the nation maintains its independence in a 
 countiy which some would have deemed not worth possessing, 
 and which more would have deemed not worth invading, but 
 which nevertheless was the object of repeated attack on the 
 part of its powerful neighbours, but with no other result 
 than to renew from age to age, and to work into the soul of 
 its people, the love of country, and the passion of liberty. In 
 this summaiy of the Scottish people we have gone a few 
 centuries forward, and must now retrace our steps. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 
 
 The Scots make their first appearance on the stage of 
 British history in the year a.d. 360. At this date they did 
 not own an acre o land out of Ireland, and they had as yet 
 planted no colony on the Caledonian side of the Channel. 
 Ulster was still the headquarters of their race, and the sway 
 over them was exercised by princes of the renowned line of 
 the Hy Xial. But in the above year we see them crossing 
 the sea, and for the first time, so far as is known to history, 
 setting foot on the shore of their futm-e home, not as colonists, 
 but only in the character of strangers, or rather of mihtary 
 adventurers. On this side the Channel they promise 
 themselves larger scope for the restless and warlike spirit 
 that stiiTcd so strongly within them. The Caledonians are 
 still dwelling amid their old hills, but now they have come 
 to be known by the name of Picts. The new name, how- 
 ever, has wrought in them no change of sentiment towards 
 the Romans, or effaced the remembrance of the cruelties 
 they suffered at their hands. The Picts, that is the Cale- 
 donians, still cherish the hatred which the terrible campaigns 
 of Agricola and Severus burned into them, and the grooving 
 embarrassments of the empire present at this moment a 
 tempting opportunity of vengeance, of which they are not 
 slow to avail themselves. They welcome, perhaps they in- 
 vite these hardy fighters, the Scots, to wit, from across the 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 285 
 
 Irish Channel. Store of booty, the excitement of battle, 
 and, after the fight, pleasant allotments in the conquered 
 land, were the inducements, doubtless, held forth by the 
 Caledonians to the Scots of Ulster to join them in a raid 
 upon the enfeebled and dispirited garrisons cantoned along 
 the Roman wall. The whole earth was rising against Rome, 
 the North and the East were in motion, why should they let 
 the hour pass Avithout calling their old enemy to a reckon- 
 ing for their fathers' blood ? It was the quarrel of Scot 
 not less than of Pict, for should the tottering empire recover 
 its strength, what coidd they expect but that Rome woidd 
 come back upon them with her scheme of universal empu'c 
 to be set up in the midst of an enslaved earth. The Scots 
 must not promise themselves exemption in the Irish Sea, or 
 think that there they were beyond the reach of this all- 
 embracing tyranny. Rome would find them out in their 
 isle, hitherto inviolate, and they should have to wear her 
 chain with the rest of the nations. 
 
 Perhaps these considerations of policy were not needed. 
 To the Scot, mth his keen spirit and sharp sword, it may be 
 that adventure and battle were inducement enough. But 
 whatever the motive which drew them across the Irish 
 Channel, here are the Scots fighting side by side with the 
 Picts against their common foe, the Romans. The theatre 
 on which we find the allied host slaughtering and burning- 
 is the wide district lying betwixt the two walls, that of 
 Antonine on the Forth, and that of Hadrian on the Solway. 
 The inhabitants of that intermediate territory had come to 
 be a mixed race, made up of Briton and Roman, Avith per- 
 haps a few strangei-s of Caledonian, that is, Pictish blood, who 
 had stolen down from the region of the Grampians to settle 
 in the pleasant vales of this more fertile and picturesque 
 land. Tills mongrel population passed under the general 
 
286 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 name of Meatte, and afterwards when the Scots came to 
 mingle with them, and still farther diversify their blood, they 
 were sometimes spoken of as Attacotti.^ Lyiug between the 
 Roman and Caledonian provinces of Britain, they were ex- 
 posed to assaults on both sides. It was from the north that 
 the present storm burst upon them. Besides the grudge 
 which both Scot and Pict bore the men of this district as 
 the subjects of the Roman power, the region offered special 
 attractions to the marauder. It had for a long time — with 
 frequent inteiTals of lapse, however — been in possession of the 
 Romans, and was now redeemed from barrenness. But its 
 blooming cultivation speedily withered beneath the feet of 
 the invaders. We see the allied host of Pict and Scot 
 bursting over the northern wall, never a strong defence, and 
 now weaker than ever — driving away or slaying the natives, 
 and planting themselves down in their fields and dwellings. 
 The success of the spoilers drew them on into the good land 
 beyond. There was neither spirit in the Britons, nor power 
 in their Roman protectors to check the ravages of this wild 
 host. Onward they swept, giving free licence to their 
 swords and full scope to their rapaciousness, till they had 
 reached a line south of London. Here this pitiful work 
 was at length put a stop to for the time. Theodosius, es- 
 teemed the best general of his age, and the father of a line 
 of emperors, was despatched against them from the Contin- 
 ent with an army, a.d. 309.^ On arriving, he found that all 
 that had been left to Rome in Britain was a narrow strip 
 along its southern coast. Homesteads in ashes, fields pillaged, 
 terror everywhere, showed who, for the time, were masters 
 of the country, from the foot of the Grampians to almost the 
 English Channel. Theodosius, on arriving, found Kent 
 
 1 Attacotti bellicosa hominuni natio— JjftWwaM Marc, xxvii. 8. 
 - Ammian Marcel., lib. xxviii. c. 8. 
 
TI[E PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 28/ 
 
 swarming with tlie northern hordes, and had to fight his way 
 to Augusta, " an okl town," observes Ammianus Marcellinus, 
 " formerly named London." Roman discipline prevailed 
 over the wild fury of the invading tribes. The northern 
 tempest was driven back to its native birthplace. The 
 Roman dominion was re-established, and the limits of the 
 empire were once more extended as far north as to the 
 Forth. The territoiy lying between the two walls was 
 erected into a Roman province, and named in honour of the 
 reigning emperor Valentia. It was a short-lived principality, 
 for the Romans retiring from Britain soon after, the name, 
 which was the badge of subjection, fell into disuse when the 
 legions departed. It is curious to mark that the Scots, 
 when they first come before us, are seen battling with Rome. 
 How often in after years were these two powers fated to 
 come into conflict, though not precisely after the same 
 fashion in which we here behold this little band of vagrant 
 warriors measuring swords Avith the mistress of the world ? 
 
 The weakness of the empire was too marked, and hei- 
 British provinces were too tempting to permit the spirit of 
 invasion long to sleep. In a.d. 384, just fifteen years after 
 Theodosius had re-extended the Roman government in 
 north Britain to the old line of Antonine, the Scots and Picts 
 are again seen in arms ; again they swami over the northern 
 wall, and again they rush down like an inundation, carrying 
 slaughter and devastation throughout the ill-starred territory 
 that intervenes betwixt the Roman power on the south, 
 which is waxing feebler every year, and the continually 
 growing mass of warlike barbarism which presses upon them 
 on the north. The intervals that divided the episodes of 
 invasion were becoming shorter, and every new raid was 
 being attended with more calamity and bloodshed than 
 the one that had preceded it. On this occasion, the region 
 
288 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 itself yielded a contingent to swell the army of plunderers. 
 The Meatte and Attaeotti were becoming disaffected to the 
 Romans ; their invaders had sown the seeds of revolt 
 amongst them ; and they possibly judged that should they 
 cast in their lot with the Picts and Scots, their condition 
 would be less miserable than if they retained their allegi- 
 ance to a power which had become unable to defend either 
 their lives or theii* heritages. They had the alternative of 
 plundering or of being plundered. They did not long hesi- 
 tate. Seizing brand and torch, they threw themselves into 
 the stream of marauders, and went on with them to slay and 
 bum. The few veterans left on the wall of Hadrian looked 
 down with dismay on this multifarious horde, surging at 
 the foot of their feeble rampart. They might as well have 
 thought of keeping out the sea when the tide is coming in, 
 as of preventing their irruption into the province they had 
 been appointed to guard. The hostile tribes scaled the wall 
 and rushed down in a torrent, or flood rather, on the rich 
 holms and corn-lands of England. The Romans again came 
 to the help of the afflicted provincials, and driving back the 
 invaders, gave them another short respite from rapine and 
 slaughter. 
 
 Rome, which had so long fought for gloiy, was now fight- 
 ing for existence, and the overburdened empire would have 
 relieved itself by abandoning Britain, had it not been that 
 it needed its revenue to replenish its exchequer, drained by 
 the numerous annies it was compelled to maintain to quell 
 the insurrections on its frontier. But now the Picts and 
 Scots were gleaning more from Britain than its Roman 
 masters, and the time evidently was near when the ]1ro^^nce 
 would be left to defend itself. One effort more, however, 
 did the expiring empire make on behalf of its wretched 
 subjects. Again the barbarian host had gathered in aug- 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 289 
 
 meuted muubcrji and fiercer audacity. Again tliey were 
 seen dashing over the Roman walls and spreading like an 
 inundation over the territory occupied by the provincial 
 Britons. The torment of the land was great, and its crj' 
 for assistance was loud. This induced Stilicho, the vigorous 
 minister of the effeminate Honorius, in a.d. 400, to respond 
 with help. The country was once more cleared by the sword 
 of the legionaries, and the Picts and Scots being driven out, 
 the frontier of the empire, so often effaced and so often 
 traced out anew, was once more drawn along the ancient 
 line of Antonine's wall. It was supei-fluous labour. The 
 hour had almost come when the wall would be levelled, 
 never again to be rebuilt. In anticipation of their near 
 departure from Britain, the Romans repaired the breaches 
 in the rampart, and otherwise strengthened it, and having 
 performed this last friendly office to the Britons, they took 
 leave of them, committing the wall to their keeping, with 
 some friendly advice to the effect that as henceforth they 
 should have to rely upon themselves for protection against 
 their troublesome neighbours, it would be their wisdom to 
 cultivate a little hardihood and courage, and not lean on an 
 empire which, having now to fight for its seat and capital 
 in Italy, was in no condition to lavish either money or 
 soldiers on the defence of its distant provinces. 
 
 Meanwhile, heavier cares began to press upon Stilicho, 
 the minister who was heroically struggling to uphold a fall- 
 ing empire. Civil war within and barbarian insurrection 
 without, gave token to Rome that the horrors of her over- 
 throw would be great as her territory had been wide, and 
 the darkness of her night deep, as the splendours of her noon 
 had been brilliant. The ancient terror had departed from 
 her name ; her legions had lost their old discipline and 
 bravery ; one man alone, energetic, upright, and patriotic, 
 
 I. T 
 
290 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 strove to redeem from ineffable and universal contempt the 
 venal, debauched, and cowardly crowd that inherited the 
 names and bore the titles, but lacked the \irtues of Rome's 
 ancient patricians. In the distant and unknowTi regions of 
 Scythia, storm after stonn was gathering and rolling up 
 against the empire. The legions on Hadrian's wall, in the 
 far north, were recalled in this hour of extremity. The gar- 
 risons of the Rhine were withdra^\Ti; and the Gothic hordes, 
 swarming across that river, rushed through the passes of the 
 Julian Alps to assail her which had so often sent her legions 
 through the same passes on a like errand. Italy, which 
 now disclosed her fruitful face to their greedy eyes, did but 
 the more enflame the courage of these terrible warriors. The 
 youthful and luxurious Honorius fled in terror from his 
 palace of jNIilan, at the approach of Alaric. The victory of 
 Stilicho on the bloody field of Pollentia (a.d. 403), only de- 
 layed for a short while the catastrophe of the empire. It 
 was one man against nations. Xo skill, no braveiy could 
 suffice against odds so tremendous. The north continued to 
 send forth through its open gates horde after horde. Rome 
 fell : and with her fall darkness descended upon the world. 
 The volume of Holy Writ alone can supply us with adequate 
 imagery to depict the confusions and horrors of that aA\'ful 
 time : " The sun became black as sackcloth of hair," " the 
 stars of heaven fell unto the earth," " and the day shone not." 
 On the extinction of the Roman dominion in Britain it is 
 not surprising that our country should fall back into the 
 darkness in which it had been sunk before the arrival of 
 Julius Cajsar. Dissevered from the Western world, mixing 
 itself in no way with the afftiirs of the struggling nations 
 around it, it passes out of sight. For a full centuiT it is lost. 
 Did Britain, retired within her four seas, enjoy security and 
 quiet, while the nations of the Continent were enduring the 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. :21)1 
 
 throes of a revolution unexampled before or since in the his- 
 tory of the world ? Among the last indications of its condi- 
 tion, just before the curtain drops upon it, is the despair- 
 ing cry of the aboriginal Britons to the Romans for help 
 against the barbarians. The document to which we refer is 
 the well-known letter of the Britons to ^Etius, the Roman 
 governor in Gaul, which has been preserved by Bede. 
 Never was more pathetic supplication addressed to ruler. 
 " To iEtius," say they, " thrice consul, the groans of the 
 Britons, The barbarians drive us to the sea — the sea throws 
 us back on the swords of the barbarians. We have, alas ! no 
 choice left us but the wretched one of being drowned or 
 butchered." Tliis lamentable cry leaves us in no doubt 
 what the country's fate was during this unhistoric century. 
 It was a century full of wretchedness and horror. The Picts, 
 Scots, and Attacotti, and ultimately other tribes from beyond 
 the German Sea, breaking over Hadrian's wall, on which not 
 a single legionary now kept guard, swept on into the heart of 
 the fair land, hardly encountering any resistance, slaying, spoil- 
 ing, and burning, in short, enacting within the narrow limits 
 of our island, the same upturnings and cruelties which the 
 Goths, the Huns, and so many other barbarous nations were 
 perpetrating at that time on the wider theatre of Europe. 
 
 The truth is, that the government of the Romans, which 
 worked so beneficially at the beginning for Britain, became 
 destructive in the end. The tendency of despotism is to 
 grow ever the more crushing. The Roman tyranny, after a 
 continuance of five centuries, produced a Britain of spiritless 
 men. Denied all local government, and held in serfdom, 
 they had no heart either to cultivate or to fight for a coun- 
 try which was not theirs, but their masters'. When the 
 Romans withdrew, they were virtually without a king. 
 There remained neither order nor industry in the land. The 
 
292 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 consequence of their neglect to plough and sow was a mighty 
 famine. Hunger drove them to resume the pursuits of agri- 
 culture. After its rest, the earth brought forth plenteously ; 
 but the ovei'floA\ing harvest brought down upon them their 
 old enemies the Picts, who emptied their barns as fast as 
 they filled them. It was from the depth of this manifold 
 misery that the Britons uttered their " groan " to iEtius. 
 But the Roman governor could only give them the counsel 
 which had already been tendered them : " Take courage, and 
 fight your own battle." This is one of the few distinct 
 historic incidents of that unrecorded time. 
 
 When these silent years, wdth all their untold sufferings, 
 draw to an end, vast political and social changes are seen to 
 have taken place in Scotland. Here, then, at this well-de- 
 fined epoch of our countiy's liistory, we resume our narrative. 
 
 Britain, on again emerging into view, has a settled look, 
 instead of landmarks perpetually shifting, and tribes always 
 on the move, our island has become the dwelling-place of 
 four nations — the Britons, the Picts, the Scots, and the 
 Saxons — each in the main content to abide within definite 
 limits. It will help us to realise the Britain of that age, and 
 the relative position of the four nations that occupied it, if 
 we shall figure to ourselves an oblong area, with a line 
 drawn through its centre from north to south, a second line 
 drawn from east to west, and cutting the former at right 
 angles, and so di^^ding the area into four compartments. In 
 each of these four distinct and separate compartments is a 
 nation. In the north-eastern division are the Picts, and in 
 the north-western the Scots ; in the south-eastern are the 
 Anglo-Saxons, and in the south-western the Britons. This 
 is a rough outline of the Britain of the sixth century. Let 
 us go over the groimd a second time, tracing out a little 
 more precisely the boundaries of these four nations. 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 293 
 
 We stand beside the cradle of a great power : a future, 
 wliich the boldest imagination would not then have dared to 
 picture, is here just beginning. If the birth-place of great 
 rivers strike the mind ^v^th a certain awe, how much more 
 the fountain-heads of nations destined to arrive at imperial 
 s^vay. The command had now gone forth with regard to 
 Rome, '' Remove the diadem ! " How astonished would she 
 have been had she been told at this hour, "Here is your 
 successor." Yet so it was eventually to be. The lesson has 
 often been taught the world, but, perhaps, never more strik- 
 ingly so than in this instance, that " what is destined to be 
 great must begin by being small." 
 
 Of the four nations which had partitioned Britain amongst 
 them with their swords, we begin with the Anglo-Saxons. 
 This was a j)eople from the other side of the German Sea. 
 They occupied the low country lying along the coast of North 
 Germany, beginning at the Rhine. Their original seats were 
 Holstein, Schleswig, Jutland, and the islands at the mouth 
 of the Elbe, and their transference across the sea to the 
 English shore, which was effected in successive bands or 
 expeditions, took place in the middle of the fifth century, 
 and continued during gi*eat part of the following one. Gildas 
 and Nennius, the earliest British ^viiters, have recorded their 
 aiTival in our country, with substantial truth doubtless, but 
 it may be also with some admixture of fable. They say that 
 they were invited over by the Britons, who beheld with 
 alann and terror, their Roman defenders being now gone, the 
 Pictish swarms gathering on their northern frontier. The 
 Saxons crossed the sea at the first as allies, but in the end, and 
 mainly, as invaders. They had heard tell that the Romans had 
 quitted Britain, or were preparing to do so, and they hoped 
 to serve themselves heirs, with their swords, to the fruitful 
 land the legions were leaving. Their own country was 
 
294 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 penurious and infertile. In order to subsist, they were com- 
 pelled to betake themselves to the ocean and prey upon its 
 commerce. In these circumstances it was not unnatural that 
 they should wish to possess a country which lay so near to 
 them, and the wealth of which would so well reward the 
 trouble of conquest. The invading host was made up of 
 three tribes, the Angles, the Jutes, and the Frisians, to 
 which is given the general name of Saxons, but all three be- 
 longed to a common race, laboured under common disadvan- 
 tages, and addicted themselves to common pursuits ; in short, 
 they were sea-pirates, and, it is unnecessary to add, hardy and 
 adventurous. They are said, by the writers to whom we 
 have referred, to have followed the standard of two famous 
 leaders, Hengista and Horsa. They advanced, driving the 
 Britons before them, who would seem to have been much 
 enervated by their long subjection to the Roman power, and 
 unable to make any successful resistance. The vanquished 
 Britons retired into the west and north-west of England, 
 where we shall find them forming a distinct kingdom by them- 
 selves. The boundaries of the Saxons in Britain extended 
 from the Wash south to Portsmouth. Future conquests, as 
 we shall see, enlarged their dominion on the north at one 
 time as far as to the shores of the Firth of Forth, infusing 
 the Anglian element into the shires of Lothian and Berwick, 
 which is still found in that population. 
 
 The new kingdom of the Britoxs lay along the west 
 coast of the island, extending from Cornwall, and running 
 northward by Wales, the counties of Westmoreland and 
 Cumberland, and onwards to the Clyde. The capital of this 
 kingdom was the strongly fortified position on the rock 
 Alcluith, the Dumbarton of to-day. On the east the forest 
 of Ettrick divided between them and the Angles who dwelt 
 from the Tyne to the Forth. The ancient boundary between 
 
THE PL.VXTIXG OF THE SCOTTISH XATIOX. 295 
 
 these two pcj^^lcs can still be traced on the face of the 
 country in the remains of the huge eartlien dyke, known as 
 the Catrail, which, beginning near Gahxshiels, holds on its 
 course over the mountainous land till it ends at Peel hill in 
 the south of Liddesdale. The Britons were of Celtic origin; 
 no history records their arrival in the country ; the Romans 
 found them in it when they invaded it. But early as their 
 coming must have been, they were preceded by a still 
 earlier race. So do the sepulchral monuments of England 
 testify. 
 
 The PiCTS, or Caledonians, are the third in order. Speak- 
 ing generally, they occupied the whole eastern half of Scotland 
 from the Forth to the Pentland Firth. They dwelt within 
 ■well-defined boundaries, their limits being the German Sea 
 on the east, and on the west the towering ridge of the 
 Argyllshire and Perthshire mountains, a chain of hills to 
 which was given the name of Drumalban. Tacitus describes 
 them as " large limbed and red-haired." They wxre at first 
 ranged in fourteen independent tribes ; latterly they came to 
 be grouped into two great bodies, the Southern and the 
 Northern Picts, so called according as they dwelt on this or 
 on the hither side of that great mountain chain which, 
 running from Lochabar to Stonehaven, parted their terri- 
 tories. In the latter half of the sixth centuiy they embraced 
 Christianity, and became united into one nation under a 
 powerful king. 
 
 Ample and goodly were the territories of the Picts. 
 Theirs were the corn-lands of Fife ; theirs was the rich 
 carse of the Tay ; theirs w^as Strathmore, the queen of 
 Scottish plains, which spreads out its amj^le and fertile 
 bosom between the Sidlaws on the south, and the towering 
 bulwark of the Grampians on the north ; theirs were the 
 wooded and picturesque valleys which the Dee and 
 the Don water; theirs was the plain of ]\Ioray, blessed 
 
296 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 A\ath the climate of Devonshire ; theirs the rich grassy 
 straths of Ross-shire ; theirs the gigantic platform of moor- 
 land and mountain, with its not infertile border, which 
 constitutes the counties of Caithness and Sutherland. 
 Rounding Cape Wrath, theirs were the giant headlands, 
 with the islands dispersed at their feet, which nature would 
 seem to have placed here as a bulwark against the great 
 surges of the Atlantic, as they come rolling up before the 
 tempest from the far-off shore of a then undiscovered world. 
 In a word, theirs was nearly all that was worth possessmg 
 in Scotland, the Lothians excepted. 
 
 We turn last of all to the Scots. They were as yet 
 strangers in the land to which they were aftenvards to give 
 an imperishable name. Of all the four nations, the posses- 
 sions of the Scots were the most diminutive and the least 
 fertile. The corner of Scotland which they had appropri- 
 ated, appeared a mere assemblage of rocky mountains, parted 
 by arms of the sea, liable to be deluged by torrents of rain, 
 and obscured by frequent mists. An inhospitable land it 
 must have seemed, compared with the rich and level country 
 of Ulster, from which they had come. Either they were 
 straitened in their former home, or abridged in their dearly- 
 prized independence, or they were inspired by the love of 
 adventure, and cherished the confident hope of becoming in 
 the end of the day the lords of this new land, when, forsak- 
 ing the green shores of Loch Neah and the fertile plains of 
 Antrim, they chose for then- dwelling this region of gloomy hills. 
 
 The limits of the Scots were strongly marked. On the 
 south their boundaiy was the Firth of Clyde. On the east 
 it was the long and lofty mountain chain termed Drum- 
 alban, the " dorsal ridge of Britain," as Adamuan, the 
 biographer of St Columba, terms it. These hills are, in fact, 
 the watershed of the district, parting the rivers that flow to 
 the west from those that flow to the east, as at this day they 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 29/ 
 
 part the counties of Argjll and Perth. At a point in the 
 Drunialban chain — the precise point it is impossible to say, 
 but as fi\r to the northward as to inckide the Crinan Moss — 
 the boundary line struck westwards through Moi-vem, and 
 climbing the shoulder of Ben More in Mull, it came out at 
 the Atlantic. So petty w^as the Scotland of that day. It 
 comprehended Kintyre, Cowall, Lorn, and the islands of 
 Islay, Jura, Colonsay, and lona — names w^hich remain the 
 ineffaceable imprints of the chiefs who led thither the first 
 Scottish occupants of this soil. 
 
 We have traced the narrow boundaries — identical almost 
 mtli those of the modern county of Argyll — which then 
 enclosed the kingdom and nation of the Scots ; this brings 
 us to a more important question, AVhence came the people 
 whom we now see planting themselves amid the fiords and 
 rocky promontories of south Argjll ? All agree in saying, 
 They came from Ireland. The early chronicler, whose guide 
 is tradition, and the modern historian, who walks by the 
 light of ascertained facts, tested by ethnological and physio- 
 logical proofs, are at one here. They show us a little band 
 of colonists crossing the narrow strait that divides the north 
 of Ireland from the ]Mull of Kintyre, in their leathern 
 coracles, under the leadership of Fergus ]Mor, son of Ere. 
 This was in a.d. 502. From what more remote country they 
 came originally, we have already sho\vn. We now join their 
 company where history brings us acquainted mth them as a 
 settled people, and that is in that part of Ireland which now 
 forms the county of Antrim. At some remote period, not 
 now ascertainable, a body of wanderers had arrived in the 
 north of Ireland. About the time that Rome was laying 
 the first stone of her capital in the marshes of the Tiber, this 
 people, it may be, were establishing themselves on the shores of 
 LochXeah, or clustering around the basaltic cliflfs of the Giant's 
 
298 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Causeway. In course of time one of their number had the in 
 fluence or the art to make himself be elected king. The name 
 of this chief was Riadha ; his sons succeeded him in the 
 government ; and those over whom they reigned were called 
 Dalriads, from the name of the founder of the d}Tiasty, and 
 the territoiy which they occupied came to be known as Dal- 
 riada. This is the territory which figures as Scotia in the 
 pages of the chroniclers ; for it is always to be remembered 
 that when the early historians speak of Scotland, it is the 
 Irish Dalriada, in other words, the present county of Antrim, 
 which they have in their eye. The name Scotia began to be 
 of more general application, and to be given to the whole of 
 Ireland. It was not till the tenth centuiy that the name of 
 Scotland was applied to the country on this side the channel, 
 that is, to the Scotland of to-day. 
 
 It was a descendant of this early king of Ulster who, 
 according to the testimony of the oldest Irish chronicler, 
 Abbot Tighernac, led a body of these Dalriads or Scots from 
 Antrim, across the channel, to find for them new homes 
 amid the friths and mountains to the south of Loch Linnhe. 
 The name of this chieftain, we have said, was Fergus Mor. 
 Thus was founded a new Dalriada, and we now behold a 
 Scotia on both sides of the Irish Channel.^ The capital of 
 the new Dalriada, or hither Scotland, was situated at the 
 head of Loch Crinan. In the middle of w^hat is now the 
 great Moss of Crinan rises an isolated hill. On its top are 
 the vestiges of former fortifications of great strength, Avhile 
 the w^astes around are stre^^ii A^'itll a miscellaneous debris of 
 stones and cairns. These remains are supposed to mark the 
 site of the earliest capital of the early Scotland. It stood 
 on the banks of the Add, a streamlet that stiU ^vinds through 
 the morass ; hence its name, Dunadd. 
 
 » Tigh., 502-574. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 130. Adam., Vit. Colitm. 
 (Reeves), App. 2, p. 435. Bed., Eccl. Hist., lib, iii,, c. 3. 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE SCOTTISH NATION. 299 
 
 This iufaut colony carried in its bosom a seed of great 
 power. These Dahiads, whom we see crossing the sea in 
 their modest wherries, were Christians. Their Christianity, 
 we grant, may have been very elementary. It had not been 
 built up into system by the learning of the exegete and the 
 labours of the commentator ; it was the simple faith of the 
 early ages, and w^ould not be expected to furnish those bright 
 examples of evangelical virtue which may be looked for 
 where a fuller knowledge is enjoyed, and where, conse- 
 quently, the influence of the truth is greater. To whom 
 little is given, from him little will be demanded. But 
 between a people under the influence of Christianity, though 
 only partially so, and a people sunk in the practices of 
 heathenism, as were the Pictish populations around these 
 new settlers, there will ever be found a mighty intellectual 
 and moral diff'erence. This difference was seen to exist in 
 the present instance. Naturally hardy and brave, with a 
 noble independence of spirit, these settlers brought with 
 them yet higher qualities, even such as are engendered by 
 that living faith which they had embraced. There was hence- 
 forth a divine force acting in Scotland. The seed of the new 
 life, it is tnie, had been deposited in only a corner of the 
 country. It had been entrusted to the guardianship of but a 
 little community, but it took root in the soil ; it germinated, 
 it sprang up, and every year it spread wider through the 
 land. It had a fair spring-time in the ministry of the 
 Culdees. Under the missionaries of lona, this young \'ine 
 began to shoot forth its branches so widely, as to touch the 
 xVlps on the one side, and the shores of Iceland on the other. 
 But that goodly tree ^vas destined to be visited by furious 
 tempests before attaining its full stature. A winter inter- 
 vened : its boughs were rifled ; its trunk was stripped bare ; 
 
300 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 but, despite these ravages, its root still remained in the 
 ground. When the sixteenth century came, a plenteous 
 dew from above descended upon it, and awoke into mightier 
 energy than ever the life that lingered in the old trunk. 
 The sapling of the Culdean era became the giant of the 
 Knoxian period. 
 
 Fergus Mor, when he crossed from Antrim to what is now 
 the fScottish shore, was accompanied by his two brothers, 
 Angus and Loame. They were the fathers of three tribes, 
 termed " the three powerfuls of Dalriada," among whom the 
 new Dalriada was partitioned. Cowall and KintjTe fell to 
 the lot of the descendants of the great-grandson of Fergus, 
 Comgall by name, and that name, slightly altered, we can 
 still recognise in the " Cowall " of to-day. The islands of 
 Jura and Islay formed the possessions of the descendants of 
 Angus. They had the sea for their border ; and their terri- 
 tories were neither infertile nor wanting in picturesqueness 
 of landscaj)e, the fine outlines, and the rich purple colourings 
 of the mountains of the former island in particular often 
 tempting the tourist of to-day across the troubled strait that 
 separates it from the mainland. To the descendants of 
 Loarne was assigned the district that still bears the name, 
 scarcely altered, of their ancestors. In a central position, 
 between the territories of Cowall and Lom, was placed, as 
 we have already said, the capital of the little state, Dunadd.^ 
 
 Each tribe was subject to the immediate authority of its 
 chief. While owning the limited claims of chieftainship, the 
 tribes recognised at the same time the superior and larger 
 authority of the king, who exercised sway over the whole 
 confederacy. The sovereignty among the early Scots was 
 not confined to a single family, in which it descended as a 
 hereditary possession. Each tribe, in its turn, supplied an 
 1 Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. i. p. 229. 
 
THE PLANTING OP THE SCOTTISH NATION. 'M)l 
 
 occupant for the throne when it became vacant. At first the 
 prerogative of furnishing a king was divided betwixt the 
 tribe of Comgall and the tribe of Fergus, afterwards it 
 came to be shared between the two tribes of Com- 
 gall and Loarne. It was in accordance with the Irish 
 law of Tanistry that the sovereign power passed thus 
 alternately from the one tribe to the other. This divi- 
 sion into tribes became, in after days, a source of frequent 
 calamity. AYhen these tribes came to be split up into others, 
 and the nation was parted into numerous subdivisions or 
 clans, feuds often sprang up touching the boundaries of their 
 respective territories, and furious battles Avere fought over 
 the question of who should possess this tract of barren moor, 
 or who should call himself the owner of that mountain, whose 
 rocky soil and steep sides bade defiance to the operations of 
 the plough. 
 
 The fortunes of the Scots of Dalriada had their ebb and 
 flow ; but though chequered, their affairs were in the main 
 progi'essive. They lived at peace with their powerful neigh- 
 bours the Picts, and they reaped the benefit of this wise 
 policy in a century of almost unbroken prosperity and pro- 
 gress. During this, the happiest period of their early annals, 
 they built up their country into a compact and, viewing it 
 in relation to the tribes bordering upon them, powerful state. 
 Set free from the exacting and impoverishing demands of 
 war, they were at hbcrty to concentrate their energies on 
 bringing their territory under tillage, so far as its mountain- 
 ous character permitted. The area which their boundaries 
 enclosed was a narrow one, but they strove to augment its 
 fertility with the plough rather than to extend its limits by 
 the sword. Better, they judged, a rich though small, than a 
 great but barren domain. 
 
 Their petty kingdom was shut in at almost all points by 
 
302 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the far amj^ler possessions of the Picts. The territory of 
 that warlike people ran up along the entire eastern boun- 
 dary of the Scots, and then sweeping round on the north, 
 it descended along the shore, and partially enclosed them 
 on the west, leaving open only the short line of the Clyde, 
 and the seaboard looking towards Ireland. Scottish Dalriada 
 lay in the embraces, as it were, of Pictland. The Picts, as 
 the more numerous and the more powerful people, might, if 
 they had had a mind, driven the colonists into the sea or 
 across the channel. They did, indeed, soon after their settle- 
 ment, make some attempts to dislodge them, but whether they 
 thought these new neighbours too few and too insignificant 
 to be at pains to expel them, or whether they deemed their 
 mountains not worth the trouble of subjugating, or whether 
 they encountered a stouter resistance than they had reckoned 
 upon, it is now hard to say ; but one thing is certain, the 
 Scots kept their ground, and refused to withdraw or rectify 
 their frontier in presence of the Picts. There would have 
 ensued, in all probability, a series of raids and fights between 
 the two nations, which would have occasioned great eff'usion 
 of blood, and left no record save the cairns that would have 
 dotted the moors and the hill-sides, but for the occurrence of 
 an event which powerfully influenced the relations of the 
 two peoples, and formed so beneficent a bond between 
 them, that for a hundred years thereafter never was Pict seen 
 fighting against Scot, nor Scot against Pict, nor did either 
 covet a foot-breadth of the territory of the other, nor was 
 there battle or bloodshed between the two nations.^ Let us 
 turn to that event. 
 
 ' Skene, vol. i. 270. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 KINDLING OF THE LAMP OF lONA. 
 
 One day, about half a century after Fergus Mov and his 
 two brothers had crossed the channel to find for themselves 
 and their companions new homes amid the blue lakes and 
 the heath-clad hills of Argjdlshire, a solitary coracle might be 
 seen approaching the Scottish shore. As the tiny craft rose 
 and sank on the swell of the Atlantic, nor token nor badge of 
 any sort was discernible from which one might infer the rank 
 of those on board, or guess the errand on which they were 
 bound. No pennon floats at the mast-head of the little 
 ship, no blazoned shield, is hung out at its bows : humbler 
 wherry never crossed the sea. It draws near : it is rowed 
 into a little shingly bay that opens amid the rocks of lona, 
 and now its occupants drop the oar and make ready to 
 disembark. As they step on shore, one after one, we can 
 count them. They are thirteen in all; a little company, 
 verily ! and then their garb, how plain ! their air, how void 
 of assumption ; and yet there is a lo\'ing look and a conscious 
 dignity in their faces which bespeak them more than they 
 seem, and make it manifest that they have crossed the sea 
 on an errand of peace and blessing. There is, moreover, 
 about one of the number that which reveals the mastei-, and 
 in the deportment of the others is that which befits the 
 character of scholars and disciples ; but disciples that follow 
 not from authority, but from reverence and affection. 
 
;304 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The ripple of the calm sea on the pebbly beach, so 
 musical and soft, as the feet of these venerable men touch 
 the ^hore of the little island, sounds in the Sabbath-stillness 
 like a hymn of greeting. We see the newly-arrived strangers 
 cross the narrow strij) of meadow that lines the bay, and we 
 hear their voices in sweet converse as they proceed to 
 explore the island. One of their number, lea\'ing the group, 
 climbs with slow steps the little hills and seeks the 
 highest point. Ha\dng gained the summit, he halts and 
 looks around him. Islet, and narrow firth, and long line of 
 rocky coast, with the mountain-tops of INIull, and the western 
 ocean stretching away to unknown regions, lie spread out 
 beneath the warm beams of a Whitsuntide sun. The 
 tranquil, loving gaze which the venerable man bestows on 
 the scene falls like a benediction on land and sea. His 
 survey finished, he comes back to his companions. The 
 strangers have had then* first sight of their future home. 
 Here, they well know, there await them long years of 
 privation and toil, for they have come to work for the 
 emancipation of Pictland. But here, they also know, there 
 await them glorious triumphs. And the thought of these 
 triumphs kindles the light of a deep joy in their eyes : not the 
 fierce light that burns in the eye of conqueror, for not mth 
 the sword are their victories to be won : the faces of these 
 men glow with the serene light that shines in a higher 
 sphere. " Break out into singing, ye dark mountains," we 
 hear them say, " for fairer morning than ever yet gilded your 
 summits is about to break upon you. And ye woods, clap 
 your hands ; for no longer shall Druid make your recesses 
 horrible with his sacrifices, or crimson your oaks with the 
 blood of his A-ictims. We come to cleanse your glades from 
 deep pollution and make your solitudes vocal with songs. 
 Hearken ye islands of the western sea : listen ye shores, ye 
 
KINDLING OF THE LAMP OF lONA. 305 
 
 heath-clad phiins, ye bhie hills of the ancient Caledonia: Fallen 
 i.s Druid : Broken is his yoke : Your redemption is come." 
 
 The passage of this osier-built craft, with its vener- 
 able freight, across the Irish Channel, is one of the great 
 voyages of history. From the moment its keel touched 
 our strand we date the commencement of a new era to 
 Scotland, and also to lands far away, beyond the limits of 
 that little country on which we see these voyagers planting 
 their first footsteps. 
 
 The arrival of Columba and his fellow-labourers — the 
 second founders of the Scottish nation — is deserving of more 
 space than we have here given it. Our aim at this stage is 
 hastily to note that event as one in a chain of causes which 
 powerfully contributed to place the relations of the Scots and 
 Picts on a right footing : first, by inspiring both nations 
 with a common sentiment ; second, by imparting to both the 
 latent capacity of fighting the battles of freedom and religion ; 
 and thirdly, by leading on the country to its first great land- 
 ing place, namely, the union of the two peoples under one 
 crown, and the consolidation of a land partitioned among 
 independent clans, weakened by rivalries, and torn by tribal 
 feuds, into one powerful state. At its proper place, which 
 will soon occur, we shall dwell more at length, and vdih 
 fuller enumeration of incident, on the arrival of Columba on 
 the Island of lona, and the vast consequences that grew out 
 of that event. Meanwhile we wish to pass rapidly on to the 
 era of the union of the two crowns, without lingering over 
 the intei'vening transactions, or wasting our time with the 
 phantom kings that occupied the Scottish and Pictish 
 thrones — if we may dignify these paltry seats by such lofty 
 tenns — or the battles in which they so freely shed the blood 
 of their subjects : occurrences of a class whicli, though each, 
 doubtless, contributed its modicum of influence to make 
 
 I. u 
 
306 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Scotland what it is, and what it has since done, or may yet 
 do, nevertheless merit only the most general narration, and 
 were we to attempt a minute and lengthy recital regarding 
 kings of uncouth name, and battles where the slaughter 
 was as great as it was useless, and which, moreover, are en- 
 compassed by such a mythical haze, the reader, if he did not 
 turn away, would forget the story as soon as he had finished 
 its perusal. " The amials of the Dalriads," says Mr Robert- 
 son, " are totally devoid of interest before the reign of Conal, 
 fourth in succession from Fergus Mor, who, by the shelter he 
 afforded to the exiled Abbot of Durrow, furthered the con- 
 version of the northern Picts to Christianity." ^ 
 
 Two years did Columba expend in erecting buildings and 
 framing rules for the regulation of the brotherhood over 
 which he presided, and now he was ready to begin the great 
 evangelistic campaign for which he had crossed the Channel. 
 He made a commencement in his own neighbourhood. The 
 Pictland of that day, from the Grampians northwards, 
 was sunk in the gross and cruel superstition of Druidism. 
 Thither, therefore, did the great missionary of lona direct 
 his steps (a.d. 5G5). He obtained an interview with the 
 Pictish king, Bruidi, son of Malcolm, at his Dun or castle, 
 on the banks of the Ness, near where the river issues from 
 its parent loch. The barbarian monarch took the mission- 
 ary into his cabinet, and shut the door behind him. The 
 conversation that passed — the objections that Bruidi may 
 have urged, and the reasonings and explanations with which 
 Columba was able to remove his difficulties, we do not 
 know. The issue only is known to us. When the door of 
 the royal closet opened, and the king and the mission- 
 ary walked forth, Bruidi declared himself a convert to 
 
 ^ Scotland under her early Kings, vol. i- p- 6, Edin. 1862. 
 
KIXDLINCJ OP THE LAMP OF lONA. 30/ 
 
 Clinstianity. The Piotisli king had become a Christian 
 sovereign.^ 
 
 In those days the conversion of a king was the conversion 
 of his people, for no subject ever dreamed that he had a 
 right to be of a faith different from that of his prince. 
 King Bruidi, in liis closet, had renounced Druidism and 
 embraced Christianity. With him the .v iiole nation of the 
 northern Picts had passed from l.ie altars of Baal to the 
 Christian rite. They were no longer a pagan people. 80 
 did the age account it. But Columba did not bow to the 
 maxims of his age. He knew that no rescript from cabinet 
 of monarch could rend the veil of darkness on the intellects 
 and hearts of a people. Light from the book of Heaven 
 only could do this ; and the chief value of Bruidi's conver- 
 sion, doubtless, in Columba's eyes, lay in that it opened the 
 gates of his kingdom to the entrance of the light-bearers. 
 Columba made haste to send thither the missionaries of lona. 
 Opening the Book of Life, they taught the Picts therefrom the 
 story of the Cross. The sacrifice of the Druid was forsaken : 
 his stone circle fell into ruin, and in its room rose the 
 <I!hristian sanctuary. Schools were planted, and the youth 
 educated. The darkness of an ancient barbarism gave 
 way before the twin civilising powers of Christianity and 
 letters. 
 
 Before this time, as we shall afterwards see, the southern 
 Picts had embraced the Gospel. The northern portion of 
 the nation, however, had still continued pagan ; the chain 
 of the Grampians being the boundary between that part of 
 the kingdom on which the light had arisen, and that where 
 the darkness still brooded. But now the whole country to 
 the shores of the Pentland Firth, as the results of Columba's 
 
 1 Tighernac, 563; Bed., Hist. Ecd., lib. iii. c. 4, 5, 2G ; Adam., Vlt. 
 Colum., lib. i. c. 37. 
 
308 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 efforts, had become j)rofessecllv Christian. Another watch of 
 the long night was past. 
 
 With the conversion of the Picts came important political 
 and social changes — consolidation at home and j)eace be- 
 yond the fi'ontier. Pagan Pictland had been blotted out. 
 It was as if the chain of the Grampians had been levelled. 
 In the suppression of a pestiferous superstition a source of 
 irritation and division had been extinguished, and the whole 
 nation noAV met around one altar. But this was not aU. 
 The most friendly relations were established between the 
 Picts and the Scots. From the day that the missionaries 
 of lona had been seen crossing Drumalban no warlike host 
 had mustered on the banks of the Spey, or on the moors of 
 Ross-shire ; and no cry to arms had sounded along the 
 shores of Loch Awe, or awoke the echoes of the mountains 
 of Dalriada. The hates and passions which set nations at 
 Miriance had been trodden out, and the sword rested in its 
 sheath for many a long year thereafter. " During the entire 
 period of a century and a half which elapsed since the 
 northern Picts Avere converted to Christianity by the preach- 
 ing of Saint Columba," says Mr Skene, " there is hardly to 
 be found the record of a single battle between them and the 
 Scots of Dalriada." ^ 
 
 AVe must avert our eyes for a moment from Scotland and 
 fix them on a country which has not yet come to be known by 
 the name of England, but is soon to be so. Here we are met 
 by a very different spectacle from that which we have just 
 been contemplating. In North Britain a lamp of singular 
 brightness is seen to shine out in the darkness, and hostile 
 tribes are beheld walking in its light and dwelling together 
 in peace. While this is taking place in the north, in the 
 south an ancient people are suddenly plunged into all the 
 
 ^ Celtic Scotland, vol. i. p. 266, Edin. 1876. 
 
KIXDLING OF THE LAMP OF lOXA. 3(){) 
 
 horrors of barbarian war. There seems, at first sight, but 
 small relation between the peaceful labours of the Columban 
 brotherhood at the one end of our island, and the furious 
 tempests which are seen to devastate it at its other extremity. 
 But no event in history stands alone, and sometimes events 
 most dissimilar in their outward form are closely connected 
 in their inward relations. The kindling of the lamp of lona, 
 as regards both the hour when, and the spot where, it Avas 
 lit, has a close reference to the terrible revolution which at 
 this same epoch was being accomplished in southern Britain. 
 We must bestow a momentary glance on that revolution. 
 
 The light of Christianity, as we have seen, broke on 
 England not later than the middle of the second century. 
 We trace its continued existence through the third and 
 fom-th centuries by the presence of British pastors in the 
 Councils of the age. But the Christianity which the dis- 
 ciples of the apostles had planted in South Britain, and 
 which had withstood the terrible tempest of the Dioclesian 
 persecution, was fated to disappear before the yet fiercer 
 storms that were about to burst upon it from the north. Or 
 should it sun^ive, in any feeble measure, it would be only in 
 those remote corners of the land, such as Wales and the 
 kingdom of Strathclyde, where a feeble remnant of the 
 ancient Britons, saved from the sword, were to find hiding 
 from the face of their cruel invaders. We shall not repeat 
 the often told story of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. The 
 Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles were invited over by the 
 Britons, now abandoned by the Romans, to repel the Picts 
 and Scots, whose inroads had become incessant. They came 
 and did their work ; but the Britons had soon more reason 
 to be afraid of their new allies than of their old enemies. 
 Their deUverers had cleared the land not for the Britons but 
 for themselves. Entering by the Isle of Thanet, they held 
 
310 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 opeu the door, and troop after troop of fierce warriors 
 from the same prolific sea-board rushed across to swell the 
 Anglo-Saxon bands already in the country. Starting with 
 the conquest of East Kent (a.d. 449), they advanced west- 
 ward and nortlnvard into the very heart of the land, fighting 
 battle after battle, following up sanguinary battle with still 
 more sanguinary massacre, and those whom it was their 
 pleasure not to kill they reduced into slavery. It was a war 
 not of conquest but of extermination. Of all the provinces 
 of the Avorld-wide empire of Rome, now overrun by Goth and 
 Vandal and Hun, and enduring the miseries of fire and sword, 
 not one was so terribly scourged, or so entirely revolutionised, 
 as the province of Britain. Here the ancient inhabitants 
 were exterminated, and the new races took sole possession 
 of the country. The two remote districts we have already 
 named excepted, England was now occupied by the Anglo- 
 Saxon race from the German Sea to the mountains of Wales 
 on the west, and from the shores of the English Channel to 
 the Forth on the north. So fell the Roman province of 
 Britain ; and with it would have fallen the ancient Caledonia, 
 and Scotland, whether name or people, would have found no 
 place among the nations, but for the stubborn resistance of 
 its inhabitants to Agricola and Severus. 
 
 But along with the expulsion of the Britons from a 
 country which they had occupied for five, and it may be ten 
 centuries, before our era, there came an entire change of 
 religion. Their conquerors were pagans. The gods whom 
 the Anglo-Saxons worshipped were Wooden and Thor. 
 Their hatred of the Christian faith was greater even than 
 that of the Germanic tribes that overturned the empire, for 
 the latter permitted themselves to be conquered by those 
 whom they had vanquished with their swords when they 
 consented to be led to the baptismal font and conducted 
 
KINDLING OF THE LAMP OF ION A. 311 
 
 within the pale of the Christian church. But not so the 
 Anglo-Saxons. Contemning the gods of the Britons, they 
 mercilessly slaughtered the clergy, razed the churches, and 
 on their site erected temples to Thor. England was again a 
 l)agan land. 
 
 It is the bearing of this unexpected and mysterious occur- 
 rence on Scotland that it chiefly concerns us to note. What 
 is it we behold ? It is the early Christian day of England 
 overtaken by sudden eclipse, and a wall of heathenism 
 drawn between Scotland and continental Europe. For a 
 brief space, Scotland is a second time isolated from the rest 
 of the w^orld. For what purpose ? Evidently that the pure 
 o^•angelism of lona may be shielded from the now corrupt 
 Christianity of the Western Church. Ere t .is time the tide 
 of declension in that church had begun to flow. But now 
 it was vastly accelerated by the admission of the northern 
 nations within the Christian pa'c. These nations were 
 leceived without undergoing any instruction in the faith, 
 and without evidencing any renewal of nature or any refor- 
 mation of manners. The church, within whose open gates 
 Avc behold them passing with all their superstitions, incor- 
 porated their rites into her worship, and even erected a 
 Christian Valhalla for the reception of their deities.^ Instead 
 of lifting them up, she stepped down to them. How 
 changed the church of the seventh century from the church 
 of the second ! Her pastors had grown into princes ; a 
 brotherhood had been converted into a hierarchy, the mem- 
 
 ' This is confessed by the Benedictine monks in the Histoire Litteraire 
 de la France, torn, iii., Introduc, pp. 8, 11, 13. Gregory the Great, in 
 the orders given to the Anglo-Saxons, permits them to offer the same 
 sacrifice to the saints on their respective holidays they had been accus- 
 tomed to offer to their gods. Epist., lib. xL, Ixxvi., p. 1176, torn ii. 
 App. edit. Benedict. See also Wilkins' Concilia Matjnce Britannicr, torn, 
 i. p. 18. Chateaubriand (Ettul. Hist.) and M. Beugnot admit the same 
 thing. 
 
312 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 bers of which stood in graduated ranks round a centre 
 which was liker the throne of a monarch than the chair of a 
 minister of the Gospel. The spirit of the first Rome had 
 entered into the second. " Conquest " was her cry, even as 
 it had been that of her predecessor. She sought to reduce 
 all nations to her obedience. And in that age it was not 
 difficult to make such conquests as she coveted ; and had 
 the road been open into Caledonia, had no such partition 
 wall as this new-sprung paganism in south Britain barred 
 her way, she might have advanced her standards farther into 
 the north than the first Rome had been able to do. The 
 feeble Christianity of south Britain would have been an 
 easy conquest to her art, her missionaries, her pompous rites. 
 Instead of obstructing, it would have facilitated her advance 
 on lona, where she would have replaced the Bible with 
 Tradition, and the doctrine of Columba with the teaching 
 of her Pontiff. But the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, 
 and the darkness that ensued, delayed her advance into the 
 ancient land of the Scots and the Picts for two centuries. 
 
 But lona stands related — a relation of contrast and anta- 
 gonism — to an event of even greater consequence than the 
 sudden irruption of Anglo-Saxon paganism into Britain. 
 About the same time that Conal, king of the Scottish Dal- 
 riada, was giving lona to Columba (a.d. 563), that he might 
 there kindle a lamp of evangelical light, the emperor Phocas 
 was giving Rome (a.d. 606) to Bishop Boniface, that in the 
 old city of the Cjesars he might consolidate the papal power, 
 and set up his throne as the Vicar of Christ. The contem- 
 poraneousness of these two events, though far separated in 
 point of space — for the whole of Europe well nigh lies 
 between — attests the ordination of Him who is the creator 
 both of the light and of the darkness. At the same epoch 
 we behold the day breaking at the one extremity of Europe, 
 
KINDLING OF THE LAJIP OF lONA. 313 
 
 and at the ojipositc we see the night beginning to descend. 
 From Rome the shadow continues to creep northward. It 
 threatens the world with universal night. But in the oppo- 
 site quarter of the sky the day all the while is steadily 
 waxing, and Ave know that the light will conquer. The 
 nations are mshing to and fro ; the seats of ancient and 
 powerful kings are being overturned, but here, at the 
 extremity of the earth, shut in from the great winds that 
 are shaking the world, there is found a little territory 
 where the evangelical lamp may burn in the calm, and 
 where for nearly two centuries it continued to diffuse its 
 brightness. 
 
 The men of lona were not dreamy enthusiasts, but ener- 
 getic workers ; and the work they did was such as the 
 times needed. lona was more than an evangelical church, 
 it was an active propaganda. It was a training school of mis- 
 sionaries ; for lona, like Rome, aimed at making conquests, 
 though conquests of a different sort, and it was here that 
 soldiers were provided for canning on the war. The plans 
 of this mission-church were wide. Her own country had of 
 course the first claim upon her ; and no long time elapsed 
 till churches were planted in numerous districts of Scotland, 
 supplied with pastors from the theological school of lona, 
 where the text-book of study was the volume of Holy Writ. 
 Before Columba died, he had the satisfaction of thinking 
 that the ancient Caledonia, for even in his time it had not 
 come to be known by the name of Scotland, might be 
 regarded, both north and south of the Grampians, as a 
 Christian country. The Druidic darkness had not indeed 
 been entirely dispelled, but there were now few districts in 
 which the light had not been kindled. 
 
 But the labours of these evangelists were not restricted to 
 Caledonia. The mission-field of lona was Christendom. 
 
314 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Surveying Europe from their rock in the western sea, they 
 saw the cloud of paganism coming up from the south and 
 projecting its dark shadow over lands once enlightened with 
 the truth, Rome, instead of combating was, they saw, 
 courting the rising superstition, and unless lona should 
 throw itself into the breach there would be none to fight this 
 battle of a beleaguered Christianity. Columba was now in 
 his grave : but his spirit lived. The fame of his institution 
 was extending year by year, and hundreds of youth, athirst 
 for knowledge, di^^ne and human, were crowding from the 
 Continent to sit at the feet of its doctors. When their 
 studies were finished, and " the hands of the elders of 
 lona had been laid upon their head," they returned to their 
 native land to communicate to their countrymen what they 
 had learned in this famous school of the Avest. The youth 
 of Caledonia and of Ireland, too, enrolled themselves among' 
 its pupils, and when duly qualified they swelled the mission 
 bands which from this renowned isle travelled far and wide, 
 spreading the evangelical doctrine. They attacked the 
 darkness of England, carrying the olive branch to those who 
 had offered only the sword to the Britons. Crossing th& 
 Channel they might be seen, staff in hand, and wearing long 
 woollen garments, traversing France, the Vosges, the Alps, 
 and the northern plains of Italy. They pursued their 
 labours, surrounded by the manifold distractions and miseries 
 of the time — plague, battle, fanatic mobs, barbarous tribes, 
 and the wolves of the deserts and the woods. Turning to the 
 north, they traversed Germany. They were not content 
 that the dry land should be the limit of their missionary 
 tours. Enil)arking in their leathern coracles, they launched 
 out on the unknoAvn seas of the north, and sought out the 
 islands that lie beneath the star of the pole, that they might 
 proclaim to their inhabitants the message of the Great 
 
KINDLING OF THE LAMP OF lONA. 315 
 
 Fatlicr. No age has witnessed greater zeal and intrepidity. 
 The countries they visited were more inaccessible to them 
 than India and China are to us, and the labour and peril 
 attendant on their missionary tours were unspeakably greater 
 than tliosc which the missionary of our day, unless in very 
 exceptional cases, has to encounter. The details of this 
 great movement will come before us at a future stage. We 
 note it briefly here as a step in our country's progress. For 
 undoubtedly the Christianity that emanated from Zona was 
 one of the main forces that acted on the "rude and un- 
 digested " masses of the then Scotland. It cemented Scot 
 and Pict, and of the two peoples made in due time one 
 nation. This was the first great landing-place of our 
 country. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 
 
 CoLUMBA is not the first light-bearer who appeared amid 
 the darkness of Caledonia. He had pioneers as early as 
 the second century. But history has found no place on her 
 page for the humble names of the men who first carried the 
 message of Heaven to our shores. In the fourth and fifth 
 centuries there were evangelists among the southern Picts, 
 who may be regarded also as predecessors of the great mis- 
 sionary. An hundred and fifty years before the light of lona 
 was kindled, a Christian sanctuary rose on the promontory of 
 Whithern ; and the gleam of its white walls greeted the 
 eyes of the mariner as he steered his vessel amid the tides 
 of the Irish Channel towards the Scottish shore. This was 
 the scene of the ministry of Ninian, who strove to diffuse 
 the evangelical light along the shores of the Solway, and 
 over the wilds of Galloway. When Ninian rested from his 
 labours, there appeared, in the same region, Kentigern, or, 
 as he is sometimes called, St ]Mungo. His memory still 
 sm'\'ives in the West of Scotland, where, humble and court- 
 eous, he evangelised, and where he is popularly revered as 
 the father of a long line of pastors, which have been the 
 glory of a city whose cathedral church bears his name. To 
 this age, too, belongs Palladius. Of him we know little 
 beyond the name. He has left no distinct foot-prints, and 
 his story belongs to legend quite as much as to history. 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 317 
 
 Servaims was aiiotlier of these early pioneers. He estab- 
 lished his hermitage on the north shore of the Forth, at the 
 point where the waters of the firth, issuing through the 
 strait at Queensferry, expand into an inland lake, encireled 
 by banks of picturesque beauty. He is said in latter life to 
 have travelled as far as to Orkney, preaching the " crucified " 
 at the very threshold of the high sanctuary of Druidism, 
 whose rugged grandeur lent dignity, as its ruins now impart 
 an air of melancholy to those northern wilds. There is 
 another name we must include in this roll of early Scotch 
 evangelists. That name is Patrick. True, the scene of his 
 labours was not the land of his birth. Nevertheless it was 
 Scotland that in the end reaped the largest benefit from the 
 achievements of her illustrious son. In our judgment, 
 Patrick was the greatest of all the reformers which arose in 
 the church of Britain before Wickliffe, not even excepting 
 Columba, for the mission of the latter to lona was a reflex 
 wave of the great movement which Patrick set on foot on 
 the other side of the Channel. In boldness, in popular 
 power, in elasticity of mind, in freedom of action, and in the 
 grasp with which he laid hold of Divine truth, he resembles 
 rather the refonners of the sixteenth centmy, than the men 
 of his early day, whose light was dim, and who seldom per- 
 mitted themselves a wider range in their evangelistic efforts 
 than the maxims and canons of their age prescribed. But 
 the subject of Patrick is a large one, and place will be 
 found for it afterwards. 
 
 The men of whom we have spoken, the evangelists of the 
 fifth century, Patrick excepted, were, no doubt, men of 
 genuine piety, of ardent zeal, and of holy life ; but they were 
 men of small build, and moved in a narrow groove. They 
 were lights in their several localities, and the age owed 
 them much, but they stood apart and lacked the appliances 
 
318 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 which organisatiou would have furnished them with for 
 making their influence wider than the sphere of their personal 
 effort, and more lasting than the term of their natural life. 
 To them the Gospel was not a kingdom — the figure under 
 which its Divine Founder had set it forth, it was a life, a holy 
 life ; but their piety had a strong tendency to run into ascetic- 
 ism, and asceticism is often but another form of self-right- 
 eousness. There is abundant evidence that these men had 
 their own share in the weaknesses and superstitions of their 
 age, and there could not be a greater mistake than to speak 
 of them as the giants of an early time, who were sprung of 
 a virgin soil, the virtues of which, having since waxed old 
 and feeble, can no longer produce as aforetime, and there- 
 fore it is vain to look for men of the same lofty stature now 
 as were seen upon the earth in those days. The truth is, 
 that these men Avere not above but below their successors. 
 Nevertheless they towered above their contemporaries, and 
 their names deseiTC, and will receive, the reverence of 
 Scotchmen in every coming age, as the lights of a dark 
 time, and the pioneers of a better day, inasmuch as they 
 were among the first to tame the rudeness and instruct 
 the ignorance of their country. 
 
 The first attempt on a large scale to Christianise Scotland 
 was that of Columba. He was no solitary worker, but the 
 centre of a propaganda. Around him were twelve compan- 
 ions, who had drunk into his spirit, and had voluntarily 
 placed themselves under his rule, the better to carry out the 
 great enterprise to which he and they had become bound by 
 a common consecration. This organisation was consonant 
 with the methods of the age, and was the only fonu of 
 €hurch-life which the circumstances of Columba made poss- 
 ible. He stood in the midst of his fellow-labourers, not as 
 a master among his servants, but as a father amongst his 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 31 i) 
 
 family. The prcliiniiiaiics settled, the work was begun 
 in earnest. It consisted of two parts : first, the training of 
 missionaries ; for the httle staff on lona was not sufficient 
 to do the service at head-quarters, and at the same time 
 occupy the mission fickls of the mainkmd. The second was 
 the actual evangelisation of the country by personal visits. 
 As yet no Christian missioiiaiy, so far as is known, had 
 crossed the Grampians. We trace a feeble dawn in the 
 south, but not a ray had penetrated the thick darkness that 
 still shrouded northern Scotland. Columba, as we have seen, 
 was the first in person to venture into that region over which, 
 till his coming, the Druid had reigned supreme. The door 
 which Columba had opened he succeeded in keeping open. 
 Band after band of missionaries, from the feet of the elders 
 of lona, poured in and took possession of the land. Follow- 
 ing the course of the rivers on the banks of which the thin 
 poj)ulation of that day was mostly located, the evangelists 
 kindled the light in numerous districts, both highland and 
 lowland. That light was a new life in the hearts which 
 received it. There was a sweetness in the hut of the Cale- 
 donian, and a brightness in the faces of his children, till then 
 unknown. He flung down sword and lance, and seized hold 
 of mattock and plough, and soon a blooming cultivation 
 clothed valley and strath. After the church came the school. 
 Letters and arts grew up beneath the shelter of Christianity. 
 Columba had enriched the world by calling a new civilisa- 
 tion out of barbarism. One fruitful century — from the 
 middle of the sixth to the middle of the seventh — had 
 sufficed to enrol a new nation under the banners of know- 
 ledge and liberty. As if the limits of Caledonia were too 
 naiTOw, these light-bearers carried their torch into England 
 in the south, and Ireland on the west, and for a century and 
 a half lona continued to be looked up to as the mother 
 
320 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 church by institutions which followed her rule and owned 
 her sway in all the three kingdoms. 
 
 We have already said that a century of comparative quiet 
 followed the first kindling of the hght on the Rock of lona. 
 With its rays a spirit of peace seemed to breathe over the 
 land. Animosities died out, feuds were forgotten, and 
 battle ceased between Pict and Scot. This calm was the 
 more remarkable, inasmuch as outside the borders of Cale- 
 donia the fiercest stonns of barbarian war had been let 
 loose on the world. England was in the throes of the 
 Anglo-Saxon invasion ; the sky of Europe, from side to side, 
 was dark with northern tempests ; around the lamp of lona 
 alone the storm slept. The solution is not far to seek. It 
 was lona that had chained the winds in this northern land, 
 where before they Avere seldom at rest. Columba was the 
 friend of both the Pictish and the Scottish monarchs — both 
 were now converts to Christianity, and their joint consent 
 had been given to the planting of his institution at a point 
 that was intermediate as regards the territories of both. 
 His purity and nobility of character made him be looked 
 up to by both kings ; his counsel was often sought, and his 
 adAace, doubtless, was always thrown into the scale of peace. 
 His sagacity would anticipate, and his meekness would com- 
 pose, quarrels before they came to the arbitrament of the 
 sword. Besides, every branch institution that Avas planted 
 in either the Pictish or the Scottish kingdom was a new 
 bond of amity between the two peoples ; an additional 
 pledge of peace. But it is not in a day that the passion of 
 war is to be rooted out of the heart of a nation ; and though 
 at this period there is no recorded outbreak betwixt the 
 Scots and Picts, the sword did not entirely rest. Both 
 peoples indulged themselves with an occasional raid into the 
 neighbouring territories of the Britons of Strathclyde and 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 321 
 
 the xVugles of the Lothiaiis, and had to suffer the unavoid- 
 able penalties of retaliation. 
 
 It is now that the kings of Scotland — the little Dalriada 
 — come out of the dubious light in which they are hidden 
 before the days of Columba, and that the work of tracing 
 the transactions of their reign becomes a not altogether un- 
 grateful task. Conal, king of the Scots, gifted, as we have 
 said, the little island to the great missionary ; Bruidi, king 
 of the northern Picts, most probably concurring. D^^ng 
 three years after (a.d. 566), he was succeeded by his brother 
 Kinnatell, who, old and sickly, reigned only a few months. 
 After him came Aidan. Before his accession, Aidan had 
 entered the INIonastery of lona, and put himself under the 
 tuition of Columba ; and when he mounted the throne the 
 abbot - missionary anointed him as king, charging both 
 monarch and people, says Buchanan, " to remain stedfast in 
 the pure worship of God, as they valued His blessing and 
 dreaded His chastisement." A clearer historic light falls on 
 the reign of Aidan than on that of any Scottish monarch 
 before the union of the Picts and Scots. We have it 
 on the concurrent testimony of Tighernac and the '' Saxon 
 Chronicle," as well as of Adamnan, that he was endowed 
 ■\\ath princely qualities, that his policy was wise, and that 
 his reign on the whole was prosperous. His first labours 
 were undertaken for the internal pacification of his kingdom. 
 He made an expedition against the robbers of Galloway, 
 punished and suppressed them. He held conventions of his 
 Estates. He renewed an old league formerly existing with 
 the Britons. He strengthened himself on all sides ; but the 
 England of the day was too full of broils, confusions, and 
 battles, to make it easy for even the most peace-loving 
 ruler to escape entanglements, and keep war from his 
 borders. 
 
 J. X 
 
322 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The throne of Northumbria, at that time the most power- 
 ful kingdom of the Heptarchy, was filled by Ethelfiith. 
 His teiTitories extended from the Humber to the Forth, and 
 from the rock of Bamborough, across the chalk downs of 
 York, westward to the border of Wales, in which the Saxon 
 sword had cooped up the Britons. The restless ambition of 
 the pagan Ethelfiith made him the terror of his neighbours. 
 Seized with the lust of extending his dominions, he led 
 his army against the Britons, whose kingdom extended 
 from the Clyde to the Dee. CadAvallo, their king, demanded 
 of Aidan, who had renewed with him the league mentioned 
 above, that he should send him help. He obeyed the sum- 
 mons and sent him a contingent. Meamvhile the terrible 
 Ethelfi-ith held on his way to Chester. The inhabitants 
 trembled as he approached. Twelve hundred and fifty 
 monks belonging to the Monasteiy of Bangor, after prepar- 
 ing themselves by a three days' fast, came forth and posted 
 themselves bet^^'ixt the city and the Northumbrian army. 
 Kneeling on the ground and extending their arms to heaven, 
 they besought help of God. The heathen Ethelfrith, observ- 
 ing them in that unusual attitude, asked who they were, 
 and what they did. Being told that they were praying, he 
 answered, " Bear they arms or not, they fight against us 
 when they pray to their God." In the rout that followed, 
 twelve hundred of these British clerics were slain. The 
 Scotch contingent, carrying arms, suffered less than the poor 
 monks, who were butchered mthout striking a blow.^ 
 
 A more fatal field for Aidan and the Scots was that of 
 Da^gsastan, fought a few years later. It was a terrible blow 
 to the Britons of Cumbria and Strathclyde as well. The 
 engagement was a bloody one ; the allied host of Briton and 
 
 1 Extinctos in ea pugiia feruiit de his qui ad orandum venerunt viros cir- 
 citer mille ducentos. — Beda, lib. ii. cap. 2. 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 323 
 
 Scot was completely overthrown, and the power of Ethelfrith 
 more fimily established than ever, and his name made a word 
 of terror, both on the Forth and on the Clyde. About the 
 same time that Aidan sustained this defeat he received in- 
 telligence that Columba was no more. The death of his 
 faithful counsellor affected the king even more than the 
 loss of the battle. Unable to bear up under these accumu- 
 lated misfortunes, he retired, Fordun informs us, to Kintyre, 
 and died about the age of eighty. 
 
 When Aidan went to the tomb, the line of the Scottish 
 kings becomes again only dimly traceable. But if the royal 
 house falls into the backgi-ound, the Institution of lona, 
 though Columba was now in the grave, comes to the front, 
 and for a full century after the death of its founder, stands 
 full in view, shining with a light undimmed, and working 
 on the country with power undiminished. 
 
 lona was the heart of Caledonia. It was the nurse of the 
 nation. It met the successive generations of Scotchmen, as 
 they stepped upon the stage, and taking them by the hand, 
 lifted them up to a higher platform ; and when the sons 
 succeeded their fathers, it started them on the higher level 
 to which it had raised their progenitors. Thus, storey on 
 storey, as it were, it built up, steadily and solidly, the social 
 pyramid. As an illustration of the duality that is often 
 observable in the world's affairs, at that very time an event 
 of precisely the opposite significance was taking place at the 
 other extremity of the island. Augustine and his monks 
 from Rome were entering England (a.d. 597) by the very 
 door by which Hengista and his warriors had entered it a 
 centuiy before — the Isle of Thanet. The pomp that marked 
 the advent of Augustine and his forty-one attendants is in 
 striking contrast to the quiet and unostentatious arrival of 
 Columba and his twelve companions on the shores of lona. 
 
324 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Preceded by a tall silver cross, on which was suspended an 
 image of Christ, and chanting their Latin hymns, the mission- 
 aries of Gregory marched in triumphal procession to the 
 oak beneath which Ethelbert, King of Kent, had appointed 
 to receive them. The interview with the pagan king, held 
 in the open au', for fear of magic, resulted in the grant of the 
 ruinous chapel of Durovem for their woi-ship. On the site of 
 this old fabric, once a church of the Britons, there stands at 
 this day the stately pile of Canterbury. Despite that these 
 two occmTences are parted by the whole length of Britain, 
 there is a close relation betwixt them. Augustine and his 
 monks stand over against Columba and his elders. It may 
 seem to be one and the same faith that is being planted at 
 this epoch at the two extremities of our island ; and we do not 
 deny that in this mission host there may have been some 
 sincere lovers of the Gospel honestly bent on the conversion 
 of the pagan Saxons. But this band comes from one who 
 has begun to scatter tares in the field, and the intentions 
 and wishes of the sower, be they ever so earnest and good, 
 cannot prevent the seed flung from his hand bearing fruit 
 after its kind. The moment when that seed is deposited in 
 the earth is not the time to prognosticate what will certainly 
 come out of it. We must wait till the tree has grown and 
 its fruits have ripened, and then we shall be able to judge 
 betwixt seed and seed. When we unroll the sixth and the 
 thirteenth centuries, and hang up the two side by side, we find 
 that it is a contrasted picture which they exhibit. In the 
 sixth centmy the legate of Pope Gregory is seen bowing low 
 before King Ethelbert, and accepting thankfully the gift of 
 an old ruinous building for his worship. In the thirteenth 
 centuiy it is King John who is seen kneeling in the dust 
 before the legate of Pope Innocent, and laying crown 
 and kingdom at his feet. The seed planted in the sixth 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 325 
 
 century has become a tree in the tliirteenth, and this is 
 its fi-uit. 
 
 When we return to lona, it is to experience a surprise. 
 Among the scholars, from many lands, seated at the feet of 
 the elders, and drinking in the doctrine of the sacred volume, 
 is a pupil, of all others the last we should have looked to 
 find here. He is of royal lineage, but not more distinguished 
 by birth than he is for his loving disposition, his diligence, 
 his reverence for his teachers, and his readiness to share 
 with his fellows the labours of the field as well as the studies 
 of the school. Who is this youth ? He is the son of the 
 cruel, ambitious and blood-thirsty King of Northumbria, the 
 pagan Ethelfrith. Ethelfrith has been slain in battle in 617. 
 Edwin has seized his throne and kingdom ; his children, 
 chased from their native land, have found asylum among the 
 Scots, and the youth before us is Oswald, the eldest son of 
 the fallen monarch. We shall again meet him. Meanwhile 
 Edwin, whom we now behold on the throne of Ethelfrith, 
 gave a new glory to the English race. His success in war 
 raised Xorthumbria to the first rank in the Heptarchy, and 
 made its sovereign over-lord of its seven kingdoms. He dis- 
 played not less genius in governing than bravery in fighting. 
 He made security and quiet prevail from end to end of 
 his realm, which reached from Kent to the shores of the 
 Forth, where he has left a monument of his reign in a city 
 that bears his name, and is now the capital of Scotland. 
 
 Ethelbert, King of Kent, gave Edwin his daughter to 
 Avife. With his bride came Paulinus, one of the mission- 
 aries of Augustine, " whose tall, stooping form, slender 
 aquiline nose, and black hair, falling round a thin, worn face, 
 were long remembered in the North." ^ There followed fre- 
 quent discussions at court betwixt the two faiths — that of 
 
 ^ Green, Hklory of the Enr/Hsh People, ix 19, Lond. 1875. 
 
326 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Woden, and that of Rome. These discussions resulted in 
 the baptism of Ed^vin. The conversion of the King of 
 !N"orthumbria woke up the slumbering zeal of the worshippers 
 of Thor. A strong reaction set in on the side of the old 
 paganism. The converts of Augustine, though somewhat 
 numerous, had not strength to stem the tide. Augustine 
 was now dead, and of the bishops whom he had appointed 
 to carry on his mission in England, all fled save one, leaving 
 their flocks to face the gathering stonn as best they could. 
 Penda, the pagan Iving of Mercia, stood forth as the cham- 
 pion of the Thunderer, his zeal for his ancestral gods being 
 quickened, doubtless, by the prospect of thro^^dng off" the 
 lordship of Ed^^^n and recovering the independence of his 
 kingdom. The quarrel soon came to the battle-field. The 
 two armies met at Hatfield, a.d. 633. Edwin was slain in 
 the fight, and \4ctory remained with Penda. 
 
 Tidings soon reached Oswald, the son of Ethelfrith, in 
 the quiet retreat of lona, of what had happened on the 
 battle-field of Hatfield. The young scholar had given his 
 heart to his Saviour by a real conversion. All the more was 
 he prepared for the task to which the fall of Edwin summoned 
 him. He panted to kindle in Northumbria the fire that 
 burned at lona, but in order to this he must first seat him- 
 self on the throne of his ancestors. Inheriting the courage 
 though not the paganism of his father Ethelfrith, he set out 
 for his native land, and gathering round him a small but 
 resolute band of Northumbrians, he began the struggle for 
 the throne. The distractions into which Northumbria had 
 been thrown by the fall of Ed^^an favoured his eutei'prise. 
 Planting with his own hands the Cross as his standard on 
 the field on which the decisive battle was about to be fought, 
 and kneehng with his soldiers in prayer before beginning the 
 fight, he joined battle with the enemy, and when it was 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 327 
 
 ended he found himself master of the field and of the throne 
 of Nortlmmbria (a.d. 634). Oswald's reign of nine years 
 was a glorious one. To the bravery of his father Ethelfrith, 
 and the ^Wsdom and magnanimity of Edwin, he added a 
 grace wliich neither possessed, but which alone gives the 
 consummating touch to character — genuine piety. Nor- 
 thumbria speedily rose to the pre-eminence it held under 
 Edwin in the new England. 
 
 We have seen that it was good for Oswald that, instead 
 of being on the throne of Northumbria, he was sitting all 
 these years at the feet of the elders of lona. We are now 
 to see that it was good also for his subjects. A little space 
 sufficed to allay the tumults amid which he had ascended 
 the throne, and then Oswald turned to what he meant 
 should be the great labour of his life, and the crowning 
 glory of his reign. He longed to communicate to his people 
 the knowledge wdiich had illuminated his own mind. The 
 bulk of the Northumbrians were still worshippers of Thor. 
 The Christianity which Gregory had sent them through 
 Augustine, had not j)ower in it to cast out their pagan 
 beliefs, and dethrone their ancestral deities. Oswald turned 
 to the north for a Christianity drawn from an apostolic 
 source and instinct with divine fire. He sent to the elders 
 of lona, begging them to send a missionary to preach the 
 Gospel to his subjects. They sent him a brother of the 
 name of Corman. The choice was not a happy one. 
 Corman was an austere man, who would reap before he 
 had well sowed. He soon returned, saying that so barbar- 
 ous and stubborn a people were not to be converted. 
 " Was it milk or strong meat you gave them?" enquired a 
 young brother sitting near, and conveying by the question as 
 much reproof as a sweet and gracious voice could express. 
 All eyes were turned on the questioner. " Brother, you 
 
328 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 must go to the jjagans of Nortlmmbria," said they all at 
 the same moment. Aidaii, for so was his name, joyfully 
 accepted the mission. He was straightway appointed to 
 the charge, Bede tells us, adding, that " Segenius, abbot 
 and jjreshyter, presided at his ordination." ^ 
 
 Bishoj) Aidan, as Bede calls him, whom we now see 
 ordained by Presbyter Segenius, and sent to King Oswald, 
 had a wide diocese. He had all Northumbria, and as much 
 beyond as he could overtake. But a fellow-labourer came 
 to his side in the cultivation of this large field : and that 
 fellow-labourer was no less than the King of Northumbria. 
 Oswald and Aidan made their missionary tours in company, 
 the missionary preaching and the king acting as interpreter.- 
 Never was there a more beautiful exemplification of the 
 fine saying of Lord Bacon, " Kings are the shepherds of 
 their people." Ultimately there arose a second lona on the 
 coast of Northumberland, in the Monastery of Lindisfarne, 
 or Holy Island. The missionaries that issued from it, the 
 lands they visited, chasing before them the pagan darkness, 
 and kindling the light of the Christian revelation, belong to 
 the Celtic evangelisation of the seventh and eighth centm'ies, 
 which will find a place farther on. 
 
 There was peace betmxt Northumbria and Scotland all 
 the days of Oswald. That noble and gracious monarch was 
 too sensible of what he owed to the elders of lona, in shel- 
 tering his youth and opening to him the springs of Di\'ine 
 knowledge, ever to think of invading their country. But 
 when Oswald was succeeded on the throne by his brother 
 Oswy, the relations betwixt the two nations began to be 
 strained. The preponderating power of Northumbria 
 
 1 Aydaniis accepto gradu episcopatus quo tempore eodem monasterio 
 Segenius abbas et presbyter prsefviit. — Beda, lib. iii. cap. v. 
 - Beda, lib. iii. cap. 3. 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 329 
 
 pressed heavily upon all its neighbours, the Scots and Picts 
 included. The latter wished to recover from the Northum- 
 brian monarch the Pictish provinces on the south of the 
 Forth, though they refrained from pressing their demands to 
 open rupture. But religious aftronts came to embitter the 
 feeling growing out of political wrongs. Wilfrid, a young 
 Northumbrian, educated at Rome, and a zealous devotee of 
 the Latin rite, appeared at the court of Osw}', and began to 
 proselytise in the interests of the Pontiff. Crafty and am- 
 bitious, exjiert alike at i)lanning an intrigue or conducting a 
 controversy, he succeeded, after several conferences and 
 disputations, the famous Synod of Whitby among the rest 
 (064), in inducing the king and his court to renounce their 
 allegiance to the church of lona and transfer it to the Bishop 
 of Rome.^ As the first fruits of Oswy's perversion, the 
 Scotch missionaries were driven out of his dominions. By 
 this time Aidan was dead ; but Colman and Finan had been 
 sent in his room from the Presbyters of the Western Seas. 
 The enforced return of the missionaries to their own coimtiy 
 was felt as an affront by the Picts and Scots, and intensified 
 the feelings rankling in their hearts, and engendered by 
 other causes. Nevertheless, during the lifetime of Oswy, the 
 peace remained unbroken. At this period a plague desolated 
 all Europe, " such as has never been recorded by the most 
 ancient historians ; the Scots and Picts alone are said to 
 have escaped." " 
 
 Oswy dying in C70, he was succeeded on the throne by 
 l*]gfrid, and now the stonn which had lowered so long burst. 
 With " the doves of lona " peace would seem to have taken 
 Hight from the realm of Northumbria. The reign of the new 
 king was little else than a continual succession of wars, in 
 
 1 Wilkins, Concilia, p. 37 ; Beda, lib. iii. cap. 25. 
 - Buclian., IJist., lib. v. cap. 55. 
 
330 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the midst of which Rome worked unceasingly to consolidate 
 in England her ecclesiastical supremacy, ever the founda- 
 tion of her political dominancy. First, the Scots and Picts 
 broke in to regain their independence, but the attempt was 
 premature. Next, Egfrid turned westward, invaded Gallo- 
 way, and drove the Britons out of Cumbria, annexing the 
 district, of which CarHsle was the chief city, to the domin- 
 ions of Northumbria, and enriching the IVIonastery of Lindis- 
 fame, from which the Columban missionaries had already 
 been expelled, with j)art of the spoils. His success in arms 
 having brought him to the shores of the western sea, Egfrid 
 crossed the Channel and invaded Ireland. The Irish of that 
 day were cultivating, not arms, but letters, especially divine 
 letters. They were reaping the harvest which Patrick had 
 sowed, and their schools were the glory of their country, 
 and the light of Europe. But their church was not of 
 Roman planting, and their nation found no favour in the 
 eyes of the Northumbrian king. He ravaged their sea-board, 
 and would have carried his ruthless devastations into the 
 interior had not the peaceful Irish, stung into sudden pas- 
 sion, taken arms and driven him out of their country. He 
 next turned northward on an expedition from which he was 
 never to return. At the head of a mighty army he crossed 
 the Forth. The Picts x^ursued the same strategy to entrap 
 Egfrid by wliich their ancestors had baffled Agricola. They 
 drew him, by a feigned retreat, on through Fife, and across 
 the Tay, and into Angus, luring him nearer and nearer 
 the mountains. Pursuing a flying foe, as he believed, he 
 marched on to the spot where the Pictish army waited 
 for him in ambush. The place was Lin Garan, or Nectan's 
 Mere, a small lake in the parish of Dunnichen, Forfarshire. 
 The battle that ensued was decisive (685). Egfrid lay dead 
 on the field, and around him, in ghastly array, lay the corpses 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 331 
 
 of his nobles and fighting men.^ A few fugitives, escaping 
 from the field, carried to Northumbria tidings which too 
 sadly realised the presentiment of evil which weighed upon 
 the hearts of his subjects when they saw their king setting 
 out. The woes denounced by the Irish pastors, as he sailed 
 away from their ravaged coast, had in very deed fallen 
 upon the unhappy monarch. The consequences of the 
 battle were important. The fetters of the Scots and Picts 
 were efl'ectually broken. Never again, Nennius tells us, was 
 Northumbrian tax-gatherer seen in their territory. From 
 the height of its fame as a military power, Northumbria fell, 
 never more to regain its supremacy. The Xorthumbro- 
 Roman bishopric, which had been established at Abercorn 
 on the southern bank of the Forth, was s^vept away by 
 the same victory which wrested the Lothians from the 
 sceptre of the Northumbrian kings, and its bishop, Trum- 
 wine, fled, panic stricken, on receipt of the news from 
 Nectan's Mere, nor halted till he was within the walls of 
 Whitby. This bishopric was an advanced post in the army 
 of aggression which was marching slowly upon lona with 
 intent of garrisoning that evangelical citadel with Roman 
 monks, or razing it to the ground. The lesser Institution of 
 Lindisfarne had been captured, and was now being worked 
 in the interests of Rome ; but the ^'ictol•y was not com- 
 jDlete so long as the parent institution retained its indei^end- 
 ence. Had Egfrid triumphed at Nectan's Mere, the extinc- 
 tion of lona as an evangelical school would have speedily 
 followed : its teachers would have been diiven out as those 
 of Lindisfarne had already been. But the defeat of the 
 king gave it a respite, and for half a century longer it 
 remained a fountain of Divine knowledge to the Picts and 
 
 ^ Biichan., Hiit. of Scot., lib. v. cap. 56; Robertson, Early Kings of 
 Scot. vol. i. p. 12. 
 
332 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Scots, and to lands beyond the sea. The blood spilt on this 
 Pictish moor was not in vain. 
 
 Nectan's Mere killed others besides those whom the Picts 
 slew on the field A\Tith the sword, and history sometimes 
 imparts its finishing touch to a national disaster by singling 
 out an indiWdual woe. At the time of the battle the good 
 Cuthbert was bishop at Lindisfarue, or Holy Island, and 
 waited tremblingly for news from the battle-field. When 
 tidings came that king and araiy lay cold on that fatal 
 moor, the aged Cuthbert sickened and died. The cir- 
 cumstances of his last days have a deep pathos. Cuthbert 
 was born at the southern foot of the Lammemioors. Medi- 
 tative from childhood, when he grew up he entered the 
 ^Monastery of INIelrose, a branch of that of lona. Daily he 
 wandered by the banks of the Tweed and the Teviot, in- 
 structing aU he met, whether young or old, in the truths of 
 Holy Writ. He climbed the hills and talked mth the 
 shepherds, as they tended their flocks amid the Che\dots ; 
 he crossed the wide moors, where the silence seemed holy, 
 and entered the lonely huts with the message of life. The 
 fame of his sanctity spread through aU the region. Happy 
 would it have been for Cuthbert if his last years had been 
 passed amid these peaceful scenes, and in the pursuit of 
 these pious labours. But it was fated to be other^vise. 
 King Oswy, as we have seen, at the Council of Whitby, de- 
 clared in favour of Latin Christianity. The Columban monks 
 were expelled from Holy Island. " Ichabod " was written 
 upon the walls of the monasteiy. And now the question 
 came to be, where could one be found of so great repute for 
 piety, that his appointment as Bishop of Lindisfarne would 
 bring back the glory that had departed. Cuthbert was 
 sought out and installed in the office. Disgusted with the 
 atmosphere of intrigue and selfishness which he here 
 
BATTLES, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. '^^'^ 
 
 breathed, lie fled from the monastery and built himself ^ 
 hermitage on the mainland. He was dragged from his 
 retreat, and brought back to his post in the island. He 
 had not long returned till the crushing news of the death of 
 the king at Xectan's ^Nlere, and the consequent distractions 
 of Northumbria, came upon him and broke his heart. He 
 retired to his hermitage on the mainland to die. They who 
 watched at his dying bed agreed to notify by signal to the 
 monks on the island the moment of his departure. They would 
 place a candle in the window of the hut in which he lay. One 
 of the brotherhood, stationed on the tower of the monastery, 
 remained on the outlook. At last the eventful moment 
 came. Peacefully Cuthbert drew his last breath. The 
 faithfiU attendant by his bedside rushed to the window with 
 a light. The pale gleam, carrying the fatal tidings, shot 
 across the narrow belt of sea that parted the island from the 
 mainland. It Avas caught by the watchful eye of the monk 
 on the tower. Hurrying down to the chapel, where his 
 brethren were assembled, he announced to them that their 
 bishop was no more, just as it happened to them to be 
 chanting, with dirge-like voices, the mournful words of the 
 sixtieth Psalm, " God, thou hast cast us off, thou 
 hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased. Thou hast 
 shewed thy peojile hard things, thou hast made us to drink 
 the Avine of astonishment." 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 lONA AXl) ROME ; OR, THE SECOND ROMAN IN\"ASION. 
 
 After these commotions the three nations — the Northum- 
 brians, the Piets, and the Scots — settled down into what 
 might be temied, in that era of world-wide revolution, tran- 
 quillity. Xcctan's Mere — the Flodden of the seventh cen- 
 tury — had adjusted and sweetened the relations betwixt all 
 three. The humiliating defeat on the Pictish moor had 
 purged Xorthmnbria of its ambition, and made it content to 
 abide within narrower limits. The Picts had recovered 
 their corn lands on the south of the Forth. The Scots of 
 Dahiada were no longer struck at through the side of 
 Galloway with the Northumbrian spear ; and the C}'mric 
 Britons were allowed to possess in peace the vale of Strath- 
 clvde, all that was now left them, Wales excepted, of a 
 country once wholly their own. The Lamp of the North, 
 the Latin corps having been arrested in its covert advance to 
 inflict eclipse or extinction upon it, continued to burn and 
 to diffuse, among the two nations of the Picts and Scots, its 
 vivifying and healing influences. Of all the instrumentalities 
 which combined to lift up the country, this was the first and 
 greatest, and pre-eminently so. Without it the rest would 
 have been powerless to subdue the barbarism of the people. 
 The touch of lona had in it a plastic power that was omni- 
 potent. It planted a conscience in the breast of the savage ; 
 and conscience is the first thing to sweeten the bitterness of 
 
lONA AND ROME ; OK, THE SECOXD ROJLVN INA'ASIOX. 335 
 
 humanity, by curbing its selfishness and passion. Every 
 decade that Lamp continued to burn was an inestimable 
 gain, not only to the country in which it shone, but to every 
 land to which its rays extended. 
 
 At that juncture, moreover, two princes, exceptionally 
 enlightened and wise, exercised sway over the two nations 
 of Northumbria and the Scottish Dalriada. This helped to 
 deepen the peace that happily prevailed, and prolong the 
 period of its duration. Egfrid, who had fallen in the great 
 battle ^\^th the Picts, was succeeded by his brother Alfred. 
 The Alfred whom Ave now see mounting the throne of 
 Xorthumbria is not to be confounded with the Alfred of the 
 uinth century, whose name has come down to us across the 
 ten intervening ages in the pure glory of leader in the Divine 
 work of Bible translation. Nevertheless this earlier Alfred 
 Avas a learned and magnanimous prince. Eschewing the 
 war path, in Avhicli his brother had found only destruction, 
 he sought in the pursuit of peace and letters the glory of his 
 reign and the Avelfare of his subjects. It was now that 
 English literature had its spring-time, and ventured to put 
 forth its earliest buds, though the air was not as yet genial 
 enough to expand them into blossom. It was under this 
 king that Bede — the venerable Bede, as we uoav style him — 
 the father of English ecclesiastical history, flourished. He 
 lived in the convent of Jarrow, and spent his whole life in 
 the tranquO grandeur of study. His fame for learning drew 
 round him six hundred scholars, to whom he ministered 
 daily instructions. His school rose into great repute, rival- 
 ling those earlier seminaries in Ireland, which had been the 
 glory of a former age. Now that their light was waning, the 
 school of Bede was beginning to take their place in the eyes 
 of the nations of the West. His life was one of unbroken 
 labour; he was monk, schoolmaster, and historian all in one; 
 
336 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 upwards of forty volumes from his pen, on all the sciences, 
 as his age knew them, are the monument of his prodigious 
 industry. His favourite study was Holy Scripture ; and his 
 last labour, as is well known, was the translation of John's 
 Gospel ; the last line was dictated with his last breath, and 
 written down by a young scribe with the last ray of eve — 
 Bede and the day setting together, but the one as sure to 
 reappear as the other, and to have dark night turned into 
 glorious morning. 
 
 But tmth compels us to add that the great scholar and 
 devout Christian did not wholly escape the blight which the 
 Latin Church, ten years before he was born, at the Conference 
 of Whitby, had begun to inflict on England. The shadow of 
 Rome was upon him. But for this how much clearer would 
 have been his vision, and how much wider his sympathies ! 
 He speaks lovingly, it is true, of the Columban missionaries 
 who came to enlighten the pagans of Northumbria : he 
 awards them the praise of humility and piety, and lauds the 
 exemplary diligence with which they travelled from village to 
 village instructing the ignorant ; but one thing was lacking 
 to their perfection, the Roman tonsure even. It was hard 
 for those who had not received the mark of the bishop of 
 Rome to enter into the kingdom of heaven. So Bede 
 thought. Nor has he a word of condemnation for the cruel 
 slaughter by the pagan Ethelfrith, instigated by the Romanis- 
 ing party of the twelve hundred clergy of Bangor who had 
 stood up for the independence of the British church by 
 refusing to have their heads shorn by the agent of Pope 
 Gregory's missionary. The same cause abridged the good 
 flowing from his labours after he was gone. When the great 
 Alfred arose in the middle of the next century, he found that 
 the goodly promise of the school of Jarrow had come to 
 nothing. It had been mown by the sword of the Dane, who 
 
lONA AXD ROJEE ; OR, THE SECOND ROMAN INVASION. 33/ 
 
 descended on the coast of England after Bede's death ; but 
 its premature cxtmction had been mainly caused by the 
 breath from the cemeteries of ancient paganism on the 
 banks of the Tiber, now creeping over England. Christian 
 ])roducts cannot flourish in the air of the grave. The pious 
 king, without very clearly percei\ang what had wrought the 
 ruin he lamented, sought how he might remedy it. He 
 began working on the lines of Bede, but his own labours, in 
 their turn, crumbled into dust in the same poisonous air 
 which had blighted those of the monk of Jarrow, and which, 
 so far from being purified and healed, became, century after 
 century, only the more deadly and killing. 
 
 It so happened at that epoch (about 090) that there was, 
 as we have already said, a scholar on the throne of Scot- 
 land also. He figures in the list of our early kings as 
 Eugene the sixth. Congeniality of taste and study cemented 
 the bonds of friendship between him and Alfred of Northum- 
 bria. Accordingly, during their reigns, there was peace be- 
 twixt their kingdoms. " Both kings," says Buchanan, 
 " were profound scholars, according to the literature of the 
 times, especially in theology." ^ Fordun, speaking of the 
 Scottish king, says, " He was, for those times, a learned 
 prince, being educated under Adamnan, abbot of Icolm- 
 Kill." Fordun affirms of Alfred of Northumbria also, that he 
 was trained in the INIonastery of lona ; a not improbable 
 occurrence, seeing his youth was passed in adversity, and at 
 a distance from the Northumbrian court. The western 
 world of that day may be divided into three great zones in 
 respect of knowledge. There was a broad and dark belt in 
 the middle space, and on cither side a zone of light. The 
 Gothic nations had brought night with them into Europe, 
 extinguishing the lamps of ancient learning, and obscuring 
 
 ^ Bucliaiiaii, lib. v. cap. 57. 
 I. Y 
 
338 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 those of the Christian faith before they were well kindled. 
 On the south, science, art, and philosophy flourished among 
 the Saracenic nations — a distinction which they owed to 
 their possession of the writings of the Greeks and of the 
 eastern nations, which strengthened their minds and stimu- 
 lated their inventive facidties. On the north of the central 
 zone was, too, an illuminated region, in which sacred letters 
 especially were studied. It owed its light to its possession 
 of a Book of all others the most powerful in quickening and 
 enriching the mind and expanding the soul. In the southern 
 region the light was scientific and artistic solely. In the 
 northern it partook largely of the humanistic and moral 
 element, and the ci^•ilisation based on it was therefore 
 deeper and more varied. We can give full credit, therefore, 
 to Fordun and Buchanan when they tell us that in the North, 
 scholars were to be found, not only in the church and school, 
 but even on the throne itself. 
 
 The reign of Eugene VI. of Scotland lasted ten years. 
 The peace bet^vixt him and the king of Xorthumbria was 
 profound. His relations vrith. his neighbours the Picts, 
 whose kingdom had become of late very powerfid by the 
 accession of the Lothians, so as greatly to overshadow the 
 little Dalriada, were less satisfactory and at times critical ; 
 but the occasional quarrels that threatened the peace 
 betAdxt them were adjusted without the intervention of a 
 pitched battle. Ever as either king put his hand on his 
 sword's hilt, a voice was heard from Icolmkill in the 
 interests of peace, before the weapon could be unsheathed 
 or blood spilt. 
 
 The eighth century of our country rises in a hazy light, 
 and that haze overhangs it to its close. Its kings, Scottish 
 and Pictisli, pass before us without indi^^duality, and there- 
 fore without interest. Doubtless some of them, perhaps 
 
lOXA AND UOME ; OU, THE SECOND UOMAN INVASION. 'Xi\^ 
 
 many, were worthy princes, and did wortliy deeds, but they 
 have failed to find a historian who was able to do 
 more than cite their names and say of a particular king, 
 that he fought so many battles, reigned so many years, and 
 died. It does not follow that these kings lived in vain. 
 Not one of them but helped to make Scotland what it is ; 
 each brought his stone to the building ; although now it is 
 impossible to assign his stone to the individual king, or 
 award the measure of praise due to him for placing it there, 
 and contributing thereby to the solidity and grandeur of the 
 edifice. 
 
 It is with events, rather than men, that our history has 
 to do, and fi'om the shadowy x)otentates of Dalriada — for 
 the Scotland of the eighth century was still enclosed within 
 the narrow boundary of the Clyde and the Drumalban 
 chain — we turn to a transaction which we see taking place 
 on the larger stage of the Scotland of the future, known 
 as yet as Pictland. The occurrence we are about to 
 narrate did not receive great attention or awaken much 
 alarm at the time — the loss of a battle Avould have 
 occasioned more — but its consequences did not die out for 
 nine centuries. We have already animadverted on the 
 extraordinary eagerness of the first Rome to occupy Britain. 
 The second Rome was not less eager and persistent in her 
 attempts to seize our country. The imperial legions had 
 hardly left our soil till the feet of an army of monks were 
 planted upon it. The bm-den of the mission of these foreign 
 propagandists was the supremacy of the Roman See, and 
 the authority of the ecclesiastical constitutions. The badge 
 of submission to these two powers, on the part of the con- 
 vert, was the Roman tonsure on his crown, the same whicli 
 distinguished or dignified the priests of Isis and Osiris. 
 The Columban missiojiarics labouring in Northumbria did 
 
340 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 not object to have their heads shorn after any pattern that 
 seemed good in the eyes of the monks of Augnstine. It 
 was a matter of indifference to them what form the tonsure 
 took, whether a circle, or a square, or a triangle. What 
 they objected to was the yoke thereby imposed upon their 
 conscience. The tonsure in the form proposed — the coronal, 
 to wit — was the badge of subjection to a strange bishop, and 
 of the reception of constitutions which they had not 
 examined, and which, for aught they knew, might contain 
 things contrary to Holy Scripture. Would not this new 
 obedience be a manifest renunciation of their prior vow to 
 their owti church, and especially to the Word of God as the 
 supreme and infallible standard of faith and duty ? They 
 would virtually perjure themselves. It was the sheerest 
 tyranny to exact such a thing ; and compliance Avould 
 have been cowardice and treachery. The Columban 
 missionaries resolutely stood their ground. Mindful of the 
 honour of lona, on which theu* submission would have 
 entailed disgrace, and mindful, too, of the honour of their 
 brethren, on whose integrity their fall would have brought 
 suspicion, they chose to quit their adopted country and the 
 work they were so zealously and successfully prosecuting in 
 it, rather than submit their heads to the scissors of Rome in 
 token of passing under the crook of the shepherd of the Tiber. 
 Finan, Colman, and their brethren disappeared fi'oni the 
 halls of Lindisfarne and the mission-walks of Northumbria, 
 and their place was taken by men whose heads bore the 
 orthodox tonsure, but whose words were strange. By this 
 victory the Latin pale was extended to Edinburgh and the 
 Forth, the farthest limit of the old empire. 
 
 But the chief of that church was not content that this 
 should be the final boundary of his spiritual dominions. 
 Beyond that limit there burned in the northern sky a star 
 
lOXA AND ROME ; OR, THE SECOND ROMAN INVASION. 341 
 
 of apostolic brightness, and till its light should be extin- 
 guished he deemed that his own kingdom was not secure. 
 The order was now issued to march on lona. Accordingly, 
 in the second decade of the eighth century (about 717), we 
 find the Italian monks at the court of Nectan Macderiloi, 
 king of the Picts, and there setting on foot the same 
 manoeuvres which had resulted in the Roman victory at 
 Whitby half a century before. Nectau, on a certain day, 
 assembled the nobles of his court at Restenet, Forfarshire, 
 and gave audience to the papal envoy and his attendants. 
 Nectan and his people, according to the envoy, whose name 
 is said to have been Boniface, were sunk in three deplorable 
 heresies. They celebrated Easter on the wrong day ; their 
 clerg}' lacked the true tonsure ; and their churches were not 
 so constructed as to permit of an efficacious administration 
 of the Christian rites. The Picts were in peril of losing 
 their salvation by indulging in these gross and wicked 
 courses. They might be ever so well instructed in the 
 doctrines of the faith, but to what avail when they sinned 
 so grievously in the all-important matter of form ? What 
 benefit could they hope to receive through Christ's death, 
 unless they commemorated His passion on the anniversaiy 
 of the day on which it was endured ? And what power to 
 convert could possibly be possessed by a clergy whose cro^ais 
 were not shorn, or not shorn in the orthodox fashion ? Was 
 it not immense presumption in Nectan and his Picts to set 
 themselves, in these vital matters, in opposition to the whole 
 of Western Christendom ? Was he not cutting off" himself 
 and his people thereby from the body of the church and 
 from the channels of grace, for what grace could the Eucharist 
 contain if celebrated on the wrong day, or by a heretically- 
 tonsured clergy ? These were pertinent interrogatories, and 
 Nectan felt that there was great weight in the arguments 
 
342 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 which they implied. The Christian system, he saw, had been 
 wonderfully simplified ! All its doctrines were here gathered 
 into the one great doctrine of the Eucharist, and all the 
 duties of the Christian life were comprehended and summed 
 up in the one cardinal virtue of keeping Easter on the right 
 day of the moon. It was not the Bible but the Calendar 
 that must be Nectan's guide. It was not the one anointed 
 priest in the heavens to whom he was to lift his eyes, it was 
 a tonsured priesthood on earth which Avas to be to him 
 and his people the fountain of grace. So did Boniface 
 teach him. 
 
 In an evil hour for himself and his kingdom the Pictish 
 monarch pennitted himself to be persuaded by Boniface. 
 Nee tan exchanged the Gospel which Columba had preached 
 to his predecessor, Bruidi, for the sweeter doctrine and the 
 easier jokfi, as he believed it, of Rome. He issued an edict 
 from the " Hill of Faith," at Scone, appointing Easter to be 
 observed henceforward on the day fixed in the calendar of 
 the Roman Church, and commanding all the clergy of his 
 dominions to receive the coronal tonsure. To complete the 
 reformation of his kingdom, Nectan sent to Ceolfred, abbot 
 of Wearmouth, for architects skilled to build churches so 
 constructed as that all that was said, and especially all that 
 was done in them, might be efficacious. The ecclesiastical 
 revolution was now complete. The three instrumentalities 
 by which Nectan had eff'ected his new reformation were the 
 calendar, the scissors, and the architects ! ^ 
 
 The first fruit of the new faith was persecution. The 
 Columban clergy were required to have their heads shorn 
 in the orthodox way, and from this time forward to take their 
 instructions, not from lona, but from Rome. On their non- 
 
 ' Bede, Eccl. Hist., bk. v. c. 21 ; Skene, bk. i. c. 6 ; Robertson, Early 
 Kings, vol. i. p. 9, 10, 
 
lOXA AXD \WSIU ; 01?, THE 8EC0XD KOREAN INVASION. M'.^ 
 
 conipliaiicc they were straightway separated from their flocks 
 and driven across Driunalban into the Scottish kingdom of 
 Dalriada, where the lamp of lona still continued to bm*n, 
 though with decaying brightness. The livings left vacant 
 by their expulsion were filled by priests from the kingdom of 
 Northumbria and the south of Ireland. In both countries 
 the novel doctrines and rites of which Boniface was the 
 propagator, had already taken root and were flourishing. 
 
 The second consequence of these ecclesiastical changes 
 was the interruption of the peace which had so long 
 existed between the two nations. For a full century, as 
 we have already seen, after the arrival of Columba, hardly 
 was there a battle betwixt Scot and Pict ; but now the 
 period of amity comes to an end, and it is Rome that is seen 
 stirring the embers of strife. Those whom the evangelist of 
 lona had united in one Christian confederacy the emissaries 
 of the Vatican again part into two rival and hostile king- 
 doms. The flag of battle is again unfurled, and an element 
 of intenser bitterness is infused into the strife than had ever 
 been known even in the days of Druidism. 
 
 What success these new teachers who filled the vacant 
 charges and walked so straightly by canon and rubric 
 had in con\4ncing the ancient Caledonians that they 
 could not be saved unless they observed the great 
 Christian festival on the right day, and were soundly in- 
 stiTicted by a tonsured clergy, we know not. One thing 
 is certain, however, that Nectan did not much prolong 
 his reign after these events. On the seventh year after 
 he had driven out the Columban pastors, he vacated his 
 throne and entered a monastery. Whether, in assuming the 
 cowl, he sought escape from the cares of government, or 
 whether he was drawn to the cell in the hope of doing expia- 
 tion as a monk for the sins he had committed as a king, or 
 
344 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 whether he simply yielded to the importunities of his monk- 
 ish advisers and masters, who may have wished to place a 
 more pliant ruler in his seat, we know not, but the fact is 
 that Nectan adopted the fashion, even then becoming pre- 
 valent, and since his time followed by mightier monarchs, of 
 forsaking, in their last days, croAvn and courtiers, for the 
 sombre, if not sanctified, companions of the cloister, and 
 engaging in the mortifying but not purifying observances of 
 asceticism.^ 
 
 From this date there opens an era of trouble and convul- 
 sion in the Pictish kingdoms. The conversion of Nectan to 
 the Roman rite had disrupted the bond which joined the two 
 peoples in one. The flight of the pastors of the old faith 
 across Drumalban into Dalriada, carrying thither the tidings 
 of the spoliation to which they had been subjected in the 
 Pictish realm, had also inflamed the wrath of the Scots. 
 That mountain barrier, %drtually annihilated so long as the 
 faiths of the two peoples were one, was upreared again ; and 
 instead of the feet of those " who bring good tidings, and 
 publish peace," there were now seen upon these mountains 
 heralds bearing the flag of defiance, and blowing the trumpet 
 of war. Armies crossed and recrossed Drumalban, carrying 
 into the territories of Pict and Scot battle and bloodshed. 
 It were unspeakably wearisome to recount the story of these 
 savage and sanguinary conflicts, even were it possible. Who 
 could dwell with interest over such a recital, or who could 
 be the wiser or the better for it ? We look down into a 
 mist, as it were : we see combatants rushing to and fro, we 
 see host encountering host, we hear the din of battle per- 
 petually rising ; anon there comes a cloud that hides all, and 
 when it again lifts and the light is let in, new champions are 
 seen struggling on the stage, and new battles are going for- 
 
 ^ Tighernac, Skene, vol. i. p. 2S4. 
 
lONA AND ROME ; OR, THE SECOND ROMAX INVASION. 345 
 
 ward, but the cause in which they originate, and the 
 interests they advance, we find it hard, often impossible, to 
 ascertain. The ages seem running to waste. Now it is the 
 Picts and Scots that are seen contending with one another. 
 Now it is the Scottish clans that have fallen out among them- 
 selves, and are laying waste their countiy by intestine broils. 
 Now the Dalriadans are seen rushing across the Clyde to 
 assail the Britons of Strathclyde. And now the Picts and 
 Scots make peace between themselves, that they may join their 
 arms against the Angles of the kingdom of Northumbria. 
 But what fruit comes of all these bloody encounters does 
 not appear ; nor of many of them does there remain record 
 or memorial, save the cairn which has come down to our 
 day through the tempests of a thousand winters, and the 
 sepulchral urn which the plough or the mattock lays open, to 
 tell that here warrior fought a ad died, though his name and 
 deeds have long since passed into oblivion. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 UXION OF THE SCOTS AND PICTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 
 
 In a.d. 787 new troubles came from without to complicate 
 the affau's of the four kingdoms into which Scotland and 
 England were then divided, and to add to the miseries with 
 which they were already full. Ships of ominous look, from 
 beyond the sea, appeared suddenly like a flock of \iilturcs 
 off the coasts of Britain. They made their appearance 
 simultaneously on both the eastern and western shores of 
 the island. Their prows moulded Hke beak of eagle, and 
 their sterns tapered and curliug like tail of dragon, gave 
 dismal presage of the errand on which they were bent. 
 Their long narrow build, and the rows of oars by which 
 they were impelled, made their passage tlu-ough the waves 
 like that of bird hasting to the prey. They were the terror 
 alike of the Scot and the Pict, of the Angle of the eastern 
 kingdom, and the Briton of the western, all of whom sus- 
 pended their mutual feuds to wage united battle against 
 this common and fomiidable foe. From Norway and Den- 
 mark had come this horde of ravagers. The old chronicler, 
 Simeon of Dm-ham, who alone relates the occiuTences of 
 these unhappy times, tells us that feaiful prodigies heralded 
 the anival of these sea pirates. Dragons of fire and warriors 
 in flame filled the night skies, and shook with terror the men 
 of Northumbria and Mercia. And when at last these fright- 
 ful prognostications received but too terrible fulfilment in 
 
UNION OF SCOTS AND PICTS THE SCOTTISH NATION. 347 
 
 the arrival of the Vikings, Simeon goes on to give us a har- 
 rowing description of the slaughter which they inflicted. 
 It is singular that the first burst of this northern tempest 
 should have fallen upon the two great religious institutions 
 of the age. The riches known to be hoarded in these estab- 
 lishments was what, doubtless, drew 'thither these spoilers. 
 " In the same year," (793) " the pagans from the northern 
 region came with a naval armament to Britain like stinging 
 hornets, and overran the country in all directions like fierce 
 wolves, plundering, tearing, and killing not only sheep and 
 oxen, but priests and levites, and choirs of monks and nuns. 
 They came, as we before said, to the church of Liudisfarne, 
 and laid all waste with dreadful havoc, trod with unhallowed 
 feet the holy places, dug up the altars, and carried off all the 
 treasures of the holy church. Some of the brethren they 
 killed, some they carried off in chains, many they cast out 
 naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the 
 sea."' 
 
 A few years thereafter a like calamity befell the older 
 institution of loua. The northern storm-cloud was seen to 
 diWde in two when it approached the shores of Britain. 
 One tempest made its descent southward along the English 
 coast, its track marked by the mins the old chronicler so 
 graphically describes. The other tempest crossed the Orkneys, 
 swept round Cape Wrath, and descended on the western shore 
 of Scotland, expending its destructive rage on the Hebrides. 
 The marauders bore off" to their ships the spoil of the 
 wretched inhabitants, destroying what they were unable to 
 cany away, and after slaughtering the owners, and setting 
 fire to their dwellings, they departed, leaving the western 
 isles and the adjoining coast a scene of desolation. The 
 sanctuary of lona had no exemption from these awful 
 
 ' Sim. Dim., Hist. Begum., ad an 793 ; Skene, i. 303. 
 
348 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 calamities. Neither its fame, iior the inoffensive lives of 
 its inmates, could procure it reverence or consideration in 
 the eyes of these barbarians. It was spared on occasion of 
 their first visit (794), but in four years the Vikings returned 
 to harry and slay ; and in a.d. 802, as the Annals of 
 Ulster record, Ikomkill was burned by these sea robbers, 
 and in a.d. 806 its destruction was completed by the 
 slaughter of its Avhole community, amounting to sixty-eight 
 persons.^ This beacon of evangehcal light, which had 
 burned for two centuries, redeeming the land from pagan 
 darkness, drawing to the feet of its elders scholars from 
 other and distant countries, and so wonderfully shielded 
 amid the temj)ests of battle between Pict and Scot which 
 had raged around it for a hundred years past, but the 
 light of which had begun to wax faint and low, was now 
 finally jiut out by the hand of violence. 
 
 But the fallen Institute rose up again, though not on its 
 old rock, nor in its former glory. lona, up to the period of its 
 suppression, had continued to be the recognised head of the 
 Columban church in both Ireland and Scotland. But the 
 authority in the Columban church, which till now had been 
 single, was henceforth dual. The question had come to be, 
 Shall the seat of supremacy in the communities of lona be 
 placed in Scotland or in Ireland ? That question was deter- 
 mined in a way not to give umbrage to either nation. It 
 was resolved that henceforth there should be two parent or 
 presiding institutions, one at Kells in Ireland, and another 
 in Dunkeld in Scotland. In the little cup-like valley where 
 the Tay struggles through the southern range of the Gram- 
 I)ians, Constantine, king of the Picts, laid the foundations 
 of a second lona, a very few years after the destruction of 
 the first. The relics of Columba were afterwards dug up 
 
 1 Ul. Ann., Skene, i. 304. 
 
UNION OF SCOTS AND PICTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 349 
 
 and brought from the island of Hii, to sanctify the soil on 
 which the new temple stood ; for men had begun to believe 
 in a holiness that springs out of the earth, rather than in 
 that which comes down from heaven. It was easier 
 consecrating the soil with the bones of Columba, than 
 animating the new institution with his spirit ; easier rearing 
 a new temple than rekindling, in its first brightness, the 
 old lamp. 
 
 The conversion of the Pictish monarch in 717 to the rite — 
 we say the idte rather than the faith of Rome ; and the enforced 
 exodus of the Columban pastors from his dominions, were, 
 there is reason to think, the originating causes of those poli- 
 tical changes and social convulsions that were immediately 
 consequent on the change of religion, although few of our 
 historians appear to suspect the connection between these 
 two events. In order to see how these two things stood 
 related, let us glance a moment at what Scotland had now 
 become. 
 
 We do not hesitate to avow it as our belief that Scotland 
 at the end of the seventh and the opening of the eighth century 
 was the most Christian country in Europe. Perhaps we 
 might venture to add the most civilized, for Christianity and 
 civilisation are never far apart. The Christianity of Scotland, 
 unlike that of Italy and of most Continental countries at that 
 same period, was drawn from the Bible, and was of that 
 kind which goes to the roots of individual and national 
 life, and instead of expending itself in rites and ceremonies 
 of hierarchical magnificence, develops in the quiet and 
 enriching virtues of purity, truth, industry, and sobriety — 
 the true civilisation. lona had now for a century and a half 
 been shedding its evangelical light over the country. Five 
 generations of Scotsmen had been reared under it. The 
 land was fairly planted with churches, its thin population 
 
350 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 cousidered. The pastors who ministered in them were 
 thoroughly trained in Divine learning, and were a race of 
 pious, humble, laborious, and, in many instances, studious 
 and scholarly men. The education of youth was cared for. 
 The population, happily reheved from the distractions of 
 war, cultivated the arts of the time, both ornamental and 
 useful. The same men who intei-preted Scripture to them 
 taught them how to use the pen and the chisel, how to 
 construct their dwellings and cultivate their fields. The 
 sons of princes and nobles were proud to enrol themselves 
 as pupils in the school of lona. Scholars from abroad came 
 to visit a land that had become so famous, that thereby they 
 might increase their stores of knowledge ; and kings when 
 dying commanded that their bones should be transported 
 across the North Sea, ferried over to the island of Icolmkill, 
 and laid beneath the shadow of its saintly towers. Where, 
 in the Europe of that age, is there seen another countiy with 
 a halo like this round it, unless it is Ireland in the fifth 
 centuiT ? 
 
 But soon after the opening of the eighth century we find 
 this fau' picture deformed by sudden tempests. Whence 
 and of what nature were these storms ? The Dane had not 
 yet set foot on our soil, and even when his piratical hordes 
 appeared off" our coasts, the nation rose and drove him aMay, 
 or limited his ravages to the islands and parts of the sea- 
 board. The couviilsions of this era had their origin vvathin 
 the countiy. Who or what was it that set Pict against 
 Pict, and Scot at times against both? Historians have 
 been unable to discover any cause for this sudden outbreak, 
 and have spoken vaguely of it as referable to the wildness 
 and barbarism of the age. But the age in Scotland was not 
 barbarous : on the contrary, it was pious and peaceful ; this 
 being the fifth generation which had given the plough the 
 
UNION OF SCOTS AND PICTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 351 
 
 preference over the sword, and cultivated peace rather than 
 war with tlieir neighbours. It begins now to be seen that 
 these disturbances had a religious origin, and that they gi*ew 
 out of the \'isit of the papal envoy to the court of King 
 Nectan of the Southern Picts, and his attempt to impose, at 
 the sword's point, on the pastors of the Columban church, 
 the badge of submission to the new faith and the foreign 
 authority which he sought to instal in the country. It is 
 here, too, that the solution lies, as is strongly suspected, of 
 what is so startling and inexplicable, even that when the 
 troubles we now see beginning come to an end, the 
 numerous and powerful nation of the Picts have entirely 
 disappeared, if not from the soil of the country, yet from the 
 page of history, and the comparatively small handful of 
 Scots in Dalriada have come to the front and grasped the 
 supremacy, and henceforward give their name to the nation 
 and to the country. The point is a curious one in our 
 histoiy, and deserves a little examination. 
 
 It is to be noted, first, that the commencement of these 
 troubles is coincident with the arrival of Boniface at Xectan's 
 court, and the expulsion of the pastors from the Pictish 
 territory on their refusal to have their heads shorn in the 
 Roman fashion. This raises a presumption against the 
 strangei-s as mischief-makers. But, farther, at this same 
 time, we find a great political revolution or convulsion 
 within the Pictish kingdom apart from the troubles to which 
 the expulsion of the clergy across Drumalban into Dalriada 
 may have given rise with the Scots. "We see the two great 
 divisions of the Picts, north and south of the Grampians, 
 bursting into sudden flame, arraying themselves in arms 
 against each other, and this is followed by a century of strifes 
 and bloody battles. We know of no political occurrence 
 which could have so suddenly and violently disrupted the 
 
352 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 bonds betwixt the two. But in the change of religion in 
 southern Pictland we have a sufficient solution. It ralUed 
 the Pictish people under two creeds, and parted them into 
 two churches. The Picts of the northern kingdom continued 
 loyal to lona. Their pastors, unaffected by the decree of 
 the southern king, continued to feed their flocks as afore- 
 time, preaching the evangehcal faith of Columba, whereas 
 those on the south of the Grampians had forsaken the faith 
 of their fathers for novel rites and doctrines, and wore the 
 coronal tonsure in token of their submission to a foreign 
 master. War is just what we should expect in the circum- 
 stances. The animosities and hatreds wliich this great seces- 
 sion from the Columban church engendered could not fail 
 to provoke it. The crisis would be rendered more acute 
 by the consideration that it imperilled the political independ- 
 ence of the country, as well as undermined its ancient faith. 
 It opened the door to invasion from Northumbria, with 
 whom the southern Picts had become one in religious rite ; 
 and ambitious chiefs on both sides, under pretext of religious 
 or patriotic aims, would find the occasion favourable for 
 enlarging their territories or acquiring greater personal 
 authority.^ 
 
 The fact that the Scots appear as the aUies of the 
 northern Picts throughout this tumultuous and bloody cen- 
 tury, corroborates the idea that rehgion mainly had to do 
 with its troubles. The Scots, it is to be remembered, never 
 fell away from lona, and they would naturally sympathise 
 with their co-reHgionists, the northern Picts, and be ready 
 to help them in their conflicts with their Romanised comi- 
 trymen on the south of the Grampians. The sudden and 
 unexpected reappearance of Nectan from the monastery to 
 which he had i-etired, the moment he saw a chance of 
 1 Tighernac, Skene, i. 287, 288. 
 
UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 353 
 
 recovering his throne, is also suggestive of the religious 
 element in these complications, and shows that the foreign 
 monks were pulling the wires that plunged the Pictish 
 tribes into mm'derous internecine war. 
 
 It helps to throw light on the condition of our country, 
 and the opinions that agitated it at that era, to reflect that 
 when the establishment of lona was plundered and burned 
 by the Norsemen, the foundations of a new church were 
 immediately thereafter laid in the realm of the Picts by the 
 hands of a Pictish monarch. Plainly the old faith had still 
 many adherents among the southern Picts, for Constantine, 
 who founded the new Columban sanctuaiy at Dunkeld, 
 would not have adventured on showing so decided a mark 
 of favour for the apostle of lona unless he had known that 
 among his subjects were many to whom the memory and 
 doctrine of the abbot of Icolmkill were still dear. The act 
 was a virtual revocation of the ban pronounced against the 
 Columban clerg}' by his predecessor Nectan, and a virtual 
 permission to the extruded shepherds to return and feed 
 their former flocks. Some — perhaps many — did, doubtless, 
 return, and found admission into the heritages and livings 
 which their predecessors, a century before, had been forced 
 to vacate. In what way their influence would be employed 
 it is no Avays difficult to guess. It would be put forth for 
 the re-establisment of the Columban faith, and by conse- 
 quence the ascendancy of the race by whom mainly that 
 faith was held — the Scots, to wit. " The Pictish chronicle," 
 says Mr Skene, " clearly indicates this as one of the great 
 causes of the fall of the Pictish monarchy." ^ So long as 
 both branches of the Columban church, the Irish and the 
 Scottish, w^as governed from one centre, and that centre 
 lona, the Scots must have felt that they were one with the 
 1 Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 315. 
 I. Z 
 
354 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Irish, being linked to them by the most sacred of all bonds, 
 but when that bond was broken by the erection of two 
 parent institutions, the Scots doubtless felt that they were 
 parted as a church, and parted as a nation, and that hence- 
 forth their thoughts must be turned more exclusively to the 
 acquisition of influence and territory in the country where 
 they had fixed their abode. 
 
 The Roman rite, we have said, does not appear to have 
 made its way beyond the Grampians. The spirit of Columba 
 still predominated in the North, and the pastors, sent forth 
 from Zona, continued to feed their flocks, though, we fear, 
 not in the same simplicity of faith, nor with the same ful- 
 ness of knowlege and zeal, which had characterised them in 
 an earlier and better age. But even among the southern 
 Picts there woidd appear to have been two powerful religious 
 parties all along during the dark century that intervened 
 between the conversion of Nectan and the founding of the 
 church at Dunkeld. We cannot otherwise account for the 
 transference to the Pictish territory of the northern Institute. 
 Rome Avould not have suffered such a monument of the old 
 faith and the old liberty to exist, had she been quite mistress 
 among the southern Picts. The policy of King Constantine, 
 in founding Dunkeld, was plainly one of conciliation. He 
 aimed at securing the good will of those of his subjects who 
 had not yet been brought to believe that Easter was more 
 honoured by being kept on this day rather than on that, and 
 that the chief glory of a pastor lay not in the depth of his 
 piety, but in the form of his tonsure. 
 
 The conciliatory policy of Constantine, king of the Picts, 
 was followed up by Kenneth Mac Alpin, the first Scot who 
 reigned over the two peoples, when he brought the relics of 
 Columba to consecrate the new church at Dmikeld — a j^ro- 
 ceeding which, he must have judged, would gratify his new 
 
UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 355 
 
 subjects, and tend to consolidate his government over them. 
 Nor was this all. Kenneth Mac Alpin took a still more 
 decided step in the same direction. He set the Abbot of 
 Dunkeld over the church of the Picts.^ This was to undo 
 the work of Boniface, and to restore the supremacy of the 
 Columban Clmrch over the whole of Scotland. The peace 
 and quiet in which this revolution was accomplished may 
 be accepted as a proof that the faith of Rome had not gone 
 very deep among the southern Picts after all, and that a 
 goodly portion of them had continued to cling to the old 
 doctrines of the north, and refused to yield their faith to the 
 novelties which the Roman missionary had brought with him 
 from the sensuous and ritualistic south. 
 
 It is now the opening of the ninth century, and Scotland 
 is in sight of its first great landing place. Constantine, able 
 and patriotic beyond the measure of the sovereigns of his 
 age and country, is on the throne of the southern Picts. He 
 reigned^ thirty years, dying in a.d. 820.- He was succeeded 
 in the government by several kings whose reigns were so 
 short, and whose actions were so obscure, that their names 
 hardly deserve, and seldom receive mention.'^ The Pictish 
 kingdom had now for some time been on the decline. When 
 the southern and northern Picts were united, and one kinff 
 ruled the land from the Firth of Forth to the Pentland, the 
 Picts were a powerful people. Their numbers, and the sur- 
 passing bulk of their territory, quite over-shadowed the Scots 
 in their little domain of Dalriada. But from the day that 
 Oolumba arrived on the western shore and kindled his 
 lamp on lona, the disproportion between the little Dalriada 
 and the greater Pictland gradually grew less. The moral 
 
 1 Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 361; Skene, i. 316. 
 
 - Ann. Ulster, Skene, i. 305. 
 
 •* Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 20. 
 
356 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 influence which radiated from Icolmkill, and the scholars it 
 sent forth, gave power at home and influence abroad to the 
 Scots, despite their foot-breadth of a kingdom. The names 
 of greatest literary glory in France in that age were those of 
 Scotsmen. When the emperor Charlemagne founded the 
 University of Paris, it was to Scotland he turned for men to 
 fill its chairs of philosophy, of mathematics, and languages. 
 Among Scotsmen in France eminent for their attainments 
 in literature and piety, was Joannes Scotus, or Albinus its 
 equivalent. He left behind him not a few monuments of 
 his genius, one of which Buchanan says he had seen, a work 
 on Rhetoric with his name inscribed.^ Clement, another dis- 
 tinguished Scotsman, proved a thorn in the side of the pope- 
 dom. He stood up in the centre of Europe in opposition to 
 Boniface, whom Gregory H. had sent to the Germans, and 
 maintained in public disputation the sole authority of the 
 Scriptures against the traditionalism of Boniface.^ The tide 
 was turning against the Papal missionary, when the eloquent 
 and undaunted Clement was seized, sent off under a safe 
 guard to Rome, and never heard of more. We may venture 
 to affirm that Scotland had the honour of furnishing the first 
 martyr who suffered under the papacy. This^ by no means 
 exhausts the list of Scotsmen who, by their learning and 
 piety, placed their little country on a pedestal whence it was 
 seen over all Europe. 
 
 But ever since the day the foreign monks appeared among 
 the southern Picts, a process had been going on amongst 
 them exactly the reverse of that which Columba originated 
 among the Scots. The new comers introduced religious 
 dissensions, and these eventually broke up the union betwixt 
 
 ^ Buchanan, Hist., lib. v. cap. 53. 
 
 " Alter qui dicitur Clemens, genere Scotus est, Bonifacii epistola ad 
 Papam, Labbei concilia ad ann., 745. 
 
UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 35/ 
 
 the nortlicrn and soutliern kingdoms. The dissolution of 
 the union was followed by war. The strength of the Piets 
 departed, and though a gleam of prosperity visited them in 
 the days of Constantine, their power never fully returned, 
 and what they had gained under Constantine they more than 
 lost during the reigns of his feeble successors. INIoreover, 
 there was a party among the Picts themselves who from 
 community of faith favoured the Scotch succession. As the 
 result of these concurring causes there had come to be a 
 crisis in the Pictish supremacy. Is it Pict or Scot who is to 
 be the future ruler of the land ? And by what name shall 
 North Britain be known henceforward ? By that of Pict- 
 land, or by that of Scotland ? Such was the question now 
 waiting solution in the ancient Caledonia. 
 
 At this juncture the male line of Angus, king of the 
 Picts, became extinct, and the throne was claimed by Alpin. 
 Alpin was a son of that Achaius, king of Dalriada, with 
 whom Charlemagne of France is said to have formed an 
 alliance. Achaius had for wife a sister of Angus, the Pictish 
 sovereign. Thus Alpin, the claimant of the Pictish throne, 
 was a Scot by the father's side and a Pict by the mother's. 
 He advanced his claim in a.d. 832. Modern historians 
 incline to the belief that the transference of the sovereignty 
 of the Picts to the line of Dalriada was effected by peace- 
 able means. Not so, say the older historians : the Pictish 
 sceptre, they tell us, was not grasped by the Scottish line till 
 after several bloody battles. We prefer to follow the his- 
 torians who stood nearest the event, and who moreover have 
 tradition and probability on their side. The greater people 
 were not likely to yield up the rule to the smaller without 
 bringing the matter to a trial of strength on the battlefield. 
 The first encounter between the two armies took place at 
 Restennet, near Forfar. When night closed the battle, the 
 
358 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 uncertain victory was claimed by Alpin ; but even this doubt- 
 ful success had cost him dear, for a thu'd of his army lay 
 on the field. The Pictish king was among the slain, but the 
 Picts notified that they did not hold the death of their 
 monarch as deciding the issue of the war, for they straight- 
 way proceeded to elect another in his room. 
 
 The second battle was fought in the neighbourhood of 
 Dundee. It was the Picts who triumphed in this fight, and 
 they won the battle by a stratagem similar to that which 
 Bruce employed four hundred and eighty years after at Ban- 
 nockburn. The camp attendants were instructed to mount 
 the baggage horses and make their appearance on the heights 
 around the field when the combatants should be in the thick 
 of the fight. This make-believe of a second army advancing 
 to the aid of the Picts threw the Scots into panic. They 
 broke and fled : the king and his principal nobles were taken 
 captive on the field. The nobles were slain on the spot ; 
 but A]i)iu was reserved for more ignominious execution. 
 All ransom being refused for him, he was bound, led away, 
 and beheaded, and his head, fixed on a pole, was carried in 
 triumph round the army. This barbarous exhibition over 
 the gory trophy was stuck up on the walls of the Pictish 
 capital, supposed to have been Aberuethy. 
 
 There followed a few years' cessation in the war.^ Elated 
 by their victory, the Picts broke out in fiercer dissensions 
 among themselves than ever. It happened, too, about this 
 time, that they were assailed by the Danes, and one of their 
 most powerful tribes all but exterminated.^ Thus the Scots 
 had respite, and were able to recruit their strength, much 
 impaired by their disastrous defeat. Kenneth, the son of 
 
 1 Chion., Pkts and Scots, p. 209 ; Skene i. 206 ; Biichan., Hist., lib. v. 
 c. 58. 
 
 - Skene, i. 387, 308. 
 
UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 359 
 
 tlie fallen Alpiii, a brave and worthy prince, was placed on 
 the throne. The young monarch was naturally desirous to 
 prosecute the quarrel against the Picts, and his ambition to 
 enlarge his realm by adding the Pictish territories to it was 
 quickened by the cruel indignities to which his father had 
 been subjected, and of which he was touchingly reminded 
 by some adventurous youth, who took down the head of the 
 murdered Alpin from the walls of Abernethy and carried it 
 to the young Kenneth. He convoked an assembly of his 
 nobles and strongly urged upon them a renewal of hostilities 
 against the Picts ; but the older and more experienced of the 
 nobles, were averse, belie\ing that the time for another trial 
 of strength was not yet come. Kenneth allowed the matter 
 to sleep three years longer. 
 
 But in the fourth year Kenneth revived the project, and 
 succeeded in overcoming the reluctance of his nobles by the 
 following extraordinary stratagem, as Fordun relates, and 
 in which Boethius, Buchanan, and others follow him. He 
 invited the nobles to a banquet in the palace, and prolonged 
 the festivities to so late an hour that the guests, instead of 
 departing to their homes, sunk down on the floor of the 
 banqueting room overcome by wine and sleep. The king 
 had previously selected a youth, a relation of his own, whom 
 he instructed in the part he was to play, providing him at 
 the same time with a luminous robe, made out of the 
 phosphorescent skins of fish, and a long tube which 
 was to serve the purpose of a speaking trumpet. It was 
 now past midnight : all Avas dark in the chamber where 
 the feast had been held, and the silence was unbroken, save 
 an occasional interruption from the heavy slumber of the 
 prostrate mass that covered the floor. Suddenly a terrible 
 voice rang through the banqueting room and awoke the 
 sleepers. On opening their eyes, they beheld with amaze- 
 
360 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 nicnt a figure in the middle of the hall, in a blaze of 
 silvery glory, speaking in a voice of more than mortal 
 power, commanding them to gird on the sword and avenge 
 the murder of King Alpin, and thundering in their ears 
 dreadful maledictions should they not obey. No sooner 
 had the spectre delivered its message than it disappeared 
 as noiselessly as it had entered, leaving those whom 
 it had dazzled, or tei-rified by its unearthly brightness, 
 bewildered by its mysterious exit. When morning broke 
 the nocturnal apparition was the one toj^ic of conversa- 
 tion, and all were agreed that a celestial messenger had 
 visited them in the night, and that it was the will of 
 the Deity that they should renew the war with the Picts. 
 They were confimied in this conclusion by the king, who 
 assured them that the same celestial visitor had appeared 
 to himself, bringing with him a message which left him 
 no alternative but a resumption of the war. The character 
 of the times made the success of such a stratagem possible, 
 and so makes the stoi*}- credible.^ 
 
 But whatever we may think of the story, we now find the 
 Scottish nobles, who had liitherto held back, rushing into 
 the field, and plunging, noble and soldier alike, into furious 
 battle with the Picts. Crossing Drumalban, and advancing 
 into the low grounds of Stirlingshire, the Scots, shouting 
 their war-cry, "Remember Alpin," flung themselves upon 
 the ranks of the Picts. The Pictish army was broken and 
 routed. But one battle was not enough to decide the issue 
 of the war. The Picts rallied ; battle followed battle, and 
 when we think how much was at stake, and how enflamed 
 were the combatants on both sides, we can well believe that 
 these encounters were as sanguinary as the chroniclers say. 
 At last the matter came to a final trial of strength near 
 
 ^ Fordun, lib. iv. cap. 4 ; Buchanan, lib. v. cap. 60. 
 
UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS — THE SCOTTISH NATION. 3G1 
 
 Scone. When this last battle had been fought the Pictish 
 king lay dead on the field ; and around him, in gory 
 heaps, lay the bulk of his nobility and army. The Tay, 
 Avliich rolled past the scene in crimsoned flood, making 
 flight impracticable, increased the carnage of the battle.^ 
 
 That severities and atrocities were consequent on \ictory, 
 to awe the conquered country, and prevent insurrection and 
 revolt among the Picts, is highly probable. Submission 
 was a new experience to this impatient and war-like 
 people. But the legend that assigns to the Pictish race, 
 as the result of its conquest by the Scots, the fate of 
 utter extemiination, is wholly incredible. Such an effiision 
 of blood, even had it been possible, would have been 
 as profitless as it would have been revolting. It was 
 blood far too precious to be spilled like water. If that 
 ancient and valorous race had been swept off", the Norsemen 
 from across the sea, and the Anglo-Saxons from the other 
 side of the border, would have rushed in and taken posses- 
 sion of the empty land. How sorely should the Scots have 
 missed the Picts in the day of battle ! They were of the 
 old Caledonian stock, descendants of the men who fought 
 the Romans at the roots of the Grampians, and their blood 
 instead of being poured on the earth was to be mixed ^vith 
 that of the Scots, to the invigoration of both. Mixed blood 
 is ever the richest, and gives to the race in whose veins 
 it courses a notable robustness and variety of faculty. It was 
 not extermination but absorption or incorporation that befell 
 the Picts at this epoch. It is true that their name hcnce- 
 foi*ward disappears from history ; but so, too, had the earlier 
 name of Caledonian at a former epoch. It as suddenly and 
 completely disappeared as that of Pict does now : but no 
 one supposes that the people who bore it suffered exter- 
 
 ^ Buclian., lib. v. cap. G2. 
 I. 2 A 
 
362 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 miuation. In both cases it was the name only, not the 
 race, that became extinct. 
 
 In A.D. 843 Kenneth Mac Alpin ascended the throne as 
 ruler of the whole land. Under him the two crowns and the 
 two peoples were united. The conquerors and the con- 
 quered gradually merged into one nation, and from the 
 opening of the tenth century the only terms employed to 
 designate the countiy and its inhabitants were Scotland 
 and the Scots. 
 
 END OF VOL. 1. 
 
 TunihitU or Spears, Printers, Edmburgli. 
 
THE SECOND VOLUIVIE OF THIS HISTORY 
 
 Will he issued in OCTOBER, and will embrace 
 
 The Times and Labours of Ninian, Palladius, the Abernethy 
 
 Brotherhood, Patrick in Ireland, Columba in lona, 
 
 and the Celtic Evangelisation, &c. 
 
 Fourth Thoitfuiul, Demy 8vo, Cloth, Price 8v. Gd. 
 
 THE PAPACY; 
 
 ITS HISTORY, DOGMAS, GENIUS, AND PROSPECTS. 
 
 BEING THE EVANGELICAL ALLLVNCE FIRST PRIZE ESSAY 
 OX POPERY. 
 
 By Rev. J. A. WYLIE, LL.D. 
 
 "Dr Wylie's volume is learned, philosophical, and eloquent." — British 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 "This able and finished production combines at once the rare qualities of 
 clear statement, vigorous logic, and eloquent style. Its tone and spirit are 
 worthy of an Evangelical Alliance ; and it is to the praise of the author that he 
 could write upon a subject on which the public mind has been so excited, and, we 
 may say, so exasperated, with such an absence of all passion and prejudice. " — 
 Baptist Magazine. 
 
 "It would be difficult to determine which to admire most,— the breadth 
 and comprehensiveness of the plan, the method of the argument, the clearness 
 and copiousness of the details, the vividness and tact of the gi-ouping, the fine, 
 healthy air of its high Chi-istian philosophy, or the vigorous eloquence, rich 
 imagery, and moral earnestness of its style." — Glasgow Constitutional. 
 
 "The volume is the substance of a whole Protestant library, in a form which 
 rewards, in.stead of taxing, the patience of the reader." — Witness. 
 
 " One of the most massive and masterly productions in our Uterature on the 
 subject." — Report on Popery, General Assemhhj of the Free Church of Scotland. 
 
 "The book of the age on the question." — iiei;. Mr BrocUehurst, in Corn 
 Exchange, Manchester. 
 
 " The most important work on Popery since the beginning of the century." — 
 United Presbyterian Magazine. 
 
 "With all we have read on Popery, we have yet met with nothing in the 
 English language which we regard to be so complete in itself, and so overwhelm- 
 ingly destructive to Romanism, as the work before us. "— Evangelical Magazine. 
 
 London : HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. 
 Edinburgh : A. ELLIOT, 17 Princes Street. 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 Skcond Edition, Price 6s. Qd. 
 
 THE GREAT EXODUS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 " THE TIME OF THE END." 
 
 " Dr Wylie does not follow the ordinary beaten path so commonly trodden by 
 the feet of ' students of prophecy. ' He is neither literalist, spiritualist, nor futur- 
 ist. He thinks out his own method, and follows his own course, and is rather, if 
 we might coin a word, a typologist. His scheme of interpretation is worked out 
 with great skill, precision, and clearness." — London Record. 
 
 "This work is not only one of great ability, but it is in many respects a 
 remarkable production : it is so with regard to the amount of research which is 
 everjTvhere visible in its pages : it is, too, a remarkable work viewed in relation 
 to the hypothesis, if we may use the word, which the volume developes, and which 
 is so ably supported. In many respects Dr Wylie differs on important points con- 
 nected with prophecy, and with the past history of the Church, from most, if not 
 all, of our i^opular writers on prophetic questions. . . . The style of the work is, 
 indeed, from the beginning to the end, characterised by great affluence. It is one 
 of the most interesting and valuable which has appeared for a long time past on 
 the subject of prophecy, and is destined to occupy a permanent place in the cate- 
 gory of our Protestant theology." — London Morning Advertiser. 
 
 Crown Svo, Cloth, Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 EGYPT AND ITS FUTURE; 
 
 A VISIT TO THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 " There is just enough of what is personal about it to form a sketch, which is 
 then filled in by bright, warm colouring ; history, ancient and modern, jihysical 
 geography, poetry, and even such dry things as statistics are interwoven with the 
 facts that come under the writer's own observation in such an easy, and yet 
 l^erhaps, therefore, artistic manner, that few readers will fail to be interested, and 
 fewer still to be instnicted. The journey out, the run through Italy, the passage 
 from Brindisi to Alexandria, and the arrival in that ancient town just a little 
 before the war broke out, all furnish materials which the writer turns to excellent 
 account. Then Egypt itself, the land of the Pharaohs, is presented in such clear 
 and graphic terms as if it stood out in a picture to the actual vision of the reader. 
 Its soil, its people, its laws, even its dogs, and above all, its monuments of hoary 
 antiquity, which connect the present with a far-distant past — all are made to pas.s 
 successively under review. God hath set ' His signs and wonders in the land of 
 Egypt, even unto this day.' An interesting account is given of the mummies 
 lately discovered at Thebes. ' That the Pharaohs of early Bible times,' says Dr 
 Wylie, ' the contemporaries of Joseph and Moses, should come out of their tombs, 
 and that we of the nineteenth century should see the very faces of the kings who 
 figure in the sad story of the Bondage and the terrible drama of the Exodus, is 
 what no one looked for, and what, perhaps, no one deemed possible. Yet this 
 most improbable and most unexpected event is what has taken place. . . . We 
 saw these Pharaohs lying in their coffins, with their mortuary appendages and 
 inscriptions around them. Sight amazing and well-nigh incredible ! We gazed 
 with an indescribable feeling, not being perfectly sure how this strange meeting 
 had come about — whether thej' had come up to us, or we had gone down to them. ' 
 Thi.s part of the volume is full of sacred and solemnising interest, and all through 
 it vrtll be read with great profit and satisfaction." — London Record. 
 
 London : HAMILTON, AI)AMS, & CO. 
 Edinburgh : A. ELLIOT, 17 Princes Street. 
 
o 
 
 '^^ 
 

 DUE DATE 
 
 
 MAY 
 
 ^ 6 1998 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f.^1^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bpf- 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 201-6503 
 
 
 Printed 
 in USA 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 
 ||l||l||!!j||||'||l1||ill II' Jllilllll!' 
 
 0038809540