History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 1

( Originally Published 1909 )

The Early History of Scotland—Caledonians, Picts, and Scots—Kenneth Macalpine

THE history of Scotland, though that of a country too poor and too thinly peopled to rank among the higher powers of Europe, has, nevertheless, attracted the attention of the world, even in preference to the chronicles of more powerful and opulent states. This may be justly ascribed to the extreme valor and firmness with which in ancient times the inhabitants defended their independence against the most formidable odds, as well as to the relation which its events bear to the history of England, of which kingdom, having been long the hereditary and inveterate foe, North Britain is now become an integral and inseparable part by the treaty of union.

Our limits oblige us to treat this interesting subject more concisely than we could wish; and we are of course under the necessity of rejecting many details which engage the attention and fascinate the imagination. We will endeavor, notwithstanding, to leave nothing untold which may be necessary to trace a clear idea of the general course of events.

The history of every modern European nation must commence with the decay of the Roman empire. From the dissolution of that immense leviathan almost innumerable states took their rise, as the decay of animal matter only changes the form, without diminishing the sum, of animal life. The ambition of that extraordinary people was to stretch the authority of Rome, whether under the republic or empire, over the whole world; and even while their own constitution struggled under the influence of a rapid decline, the rage with which they labored to reduce to their yoke those who yet remained unconquered of their unhappy neighbors was manifested on the most distant points of their enormous territory.

Julius Caesar had commenced the conquest of Britain, whose insular situation, girdled by a tempestuous ocean, was no protection against Roman ambition. It was in the year B.C. 55 that the renowned conqueror made his descent; and the southern Britons were completely subjected to the yoke of Rome, and reduced to the condition of colonists, in the year of grace 80, by the victorious arms of Agricola.

This intelligent chief discovered, what had been before suspected, that the fine country, the southern part of which he had thus conquered, was an island, whose northern extremity, rough with mountains, woods, and inaccessible morasses, and peopled by tribes of barbarians who chiefly subsisted by the chase, was washed by the northern ocean. To hear of a free people in his neighborhood, and to take steps for their instant subjugation, was the principle on which every Roman general acted; and it was powerfully felt by Julius Agricola, father-in-law of the historian Tacitus, who at this time commanded in South Britain. But many a fair and fertile region, of much more considerable extent, had the victors of the world subdued with far more speed and less loss than this rugged portion of the north was to cost them.

It was in the year 80 when Agricola set out from Manchester, then called Mancunium; and that and the next sea-son of 81 were spent in subduing the tribes of the southern parts of what is now termed Scotland, and in forcing such natives as resisted across the estuaries of the Forth and the Clyde, driving them, as it were, into another island. It was not till 83 that the invaders could venture across the Firth of Forth, and engage themselves among the marshes, lakes, and forests near Lochleven. Here Agricola, having divided his troops into three bodies, one of them, consisting of the ninth legion, was so suddenly attacked by the natives at a place called Loch Ore, that the Romans suffered much loss, and were only rescued by a forced march of Agricola to their support. In the summer of 84, Agricola passed northward, having now reached the country of the Caledonians, or Men of the Woods, a fierce nation, or rather a confederacy of clans, toward whose country all such southern tribes and individuals as preferred death to servitude had retired be-fore the progress of the invaders. The Caledonians and their allies, commanded by a chief whom the Romans called Galgacus, faced the invaders bravely, and fought them manfully at a spot on the southern side of the Grampian hills, but antiquaries are not agreed upon the precise field of action. The Romans gained the battle, but with so much loss that Agricola was compelled to postpone further operations by land, and he retreated to make sure of the territories he had overrun. The fleet sailed round the north of Scotland, and Agricola's campaigns terminated with this voyage of discovery. There was no prosecution of the war against the Caledonians after the departure of Agricola in 85. Much was, however, done for securing at least the southern part of that general's conquests; and it was then, doubtless, that were planned and executed those numerous forts, those extensive roads, those commanding stations, which astonish the antiquary to this day, when, reflecting how poor the country is even now, he considers how intense must have been the love of power, how excessive the national pride, which could induce the Romans to secure at an expense of so much labor these wild districts of mountain, moor, thicket, and marsh.

Nor, after all, were these conquests secured. The Emperor Adrian, in 120, was contented virtually to admit this fact, by constructing an external line of defence against the fierce Caledonians, in form of a strong wall, reaching across the island from the Tine to the Solway, far within the boundary of Agricola's conquest. It is at the same time to be supposed that the Romans of the second century retained in a great measure the military possession of the country beyond this first wall, as far, perhaps, as the Firths of Clyde and Forth; while, on the further side of these estuaries, it seems probable they did not exercise a regular or permanent authority.

But in the reign of Antonine, another and more northern boundary wall was extended across the island, reaching from Carriden, close to Linlithgow on the Firth of Forth, to the Firth of Clyde. This ultimate bulwark served to protect the country betwixt the estuaries, while the regions beyond them were virtually resigned to their native and independent proprietors. Thus the Romans had two walls; the more northern, an exterior defence, assisted by military communications and defences, to receive a first attack; and the more southern, an internal boundary, to retreat upon, if necessary.

The existence of a double line of defence seems to argue that this powerful people did not hold any permanent possessions beyond the more northern boundary about the year 140, when the second and more advanced rampart was completed. No doubt, however, can be entertained, even if the fact were not proved by roads and military stations, that the Romans restrained and overawed, if they could not absolutely subject, the considerable provinces overrun by Agricola in Fife and the western districts beyond the wall of Antonine. Camelodunum, or Camelon, a large and strong town, was placed near Falkirk for the sup-port of the wall at its eastern extremity, and many Roman forts are found so disposed as to block up the passes from the Highlands. The existence and position of military roads and forts or camps also shows the care taken by the Romans to maintain the necessary communications at various points betwixt the two walls, so that the troops stationed to guard them might act with combined movements.

Notwithstanding these martial precautions, the strength of the Roman empire failed to support her ambitious pretensions to sovereignty; and, A.D. 170, the Romans, abandoning the more northern wall of Antonine, retired behind that erected under the auspices of the Emperor Adrian in 120. They doubtless retained possession of such forts and stations, of which there were many, as served the purpose of outworks to protect the southern rampart.

Under this enlargement of their territories, and awed by the Roman eagles, the Caledonians remained quiet till the beginning of the third century, when, in the year 207, open war again broke out betwixt them and the Romans. In 208 the Emperor Severus undertook in person the final conquest of the Caledonians. It would be difficult to assign a reason why, in the uncertain state of the empire, a prince equally politic and cautious, raised by his talents from the command of the Pannonian army to the lofty rank of emperor, should, at the advanced age of threescore, commit his person and a powerful host, the flower of his forces, to the risks of a distant contest with savage tribes, where victory, it might be thought, could achieve little honor, and defeat or failure must have been ruin to that reputation which constituted his recognized title to empire. Severus was, however, tortured in mind by the dissensions between his sons Geta and Caracalla, and hastened, with the precipitation of a soldier born and bred, to drown domestic vexation amid the din of war. A Scotsman may also argue that the subjugation of Caledonia was an object of no small difficulty and importance, since in such circumstances so wise a prince would intrust to no delegate the honor which might be won in the struggle, or the command of the powerful force necessary to obtain it.

The Roman emperor made his invasion of Caledonia at the head of a very numerous army. He cut down forests, made roads through marshes and over mountains, and endeavored to secure the districts which he overran. But the Caledonians, while they shunned a general action, carried on, with the best policy of a country assailed by a superior force, a destructive warfare on the flanks and rear of the invading army; and the labors of the Romans, with the fatigues and privations to which they were exposed, wasted them so much that they are said by the historian Dion to have lost fifty thousand men, equal probably to more than half of their force. Severus, however, advanced as far as the Firth of Moray, and noticed a length of days and shortness of nights unknown in the southern latitudes. In this Boreal region the emperor made a peace, illusory on the part of the barbarians, who surrendered some arms, and promised submission. Severus returned from his distant and destructive excursion, borne as usual in his litter at the head of his army, and sharing their hardships and privations. He had no sooner reached York on his return, than he received information that the whole Caledonian tribes were again in arms. He issued orders for collecting his forces and invading the country anew, with the resolution to spare neither sex nor age, but totally to extirpate the natives of these wild regions, whose minds seemed as tame-less as their climate or country. But death spared the emperor the guilt of so atrocious a campaign. Severus expired, February, 211. His son restored to the Caledonians the territories which his father had overrun rather than subdued; and the wall of Antonine, the more northern of the two ramparts, was once again tacitly recognized as the boundary of the Roman province, and limit of the empire.

From this time the war in Britain was on the part of the Romans merely defensive, while on that of the free Britons it became an incursive predatory course of hostilities, that was seldom intermitted. In this species of contest the colonized Britons, who had lost the art of fighting for themselves, were for some time defended by the swords of their conquer-ors. In 368, and again in 398, Roman succors were sent to Britain, and repressed successfully the fury of the barbarians. In 422 a legion was again sent to support the colonists; but, tired of the task of protecting them, the Romans, in 446, ostentatiously restored the Southern Britons to freedom, and exhorting them henceforth to look to their own defence, evacuated Britain forever. The boast that Scotland's more remote regions were never conquered by the Romans is not a vain one; for the army of Severus invaded Caledonia, with-out subduing it, and even his extreme career stopped on the southern side of the Moray Firth, and left the northern and western Highlands unassailed.

In the fifth century there appear in North Britain two powerful and distinct tribes, who are not before named in history. These were the Picts and Scots.

I. The name of the former people has caused much, but seemingly unnecessary, speculation. The Picts seem to have been that race of free Britons beyond the Roman wall who retained the habit of staining the body when going into battle, and were called by the Romans and Roman colonists the Painted Men, a name which, at first applied to particular tribes, superseded at last the former national name of Caledonians. These people inhabited the eastern shores of Scot-land, as far south as the Firth of Forth, and as far north as the island extended. Claudin. proves that these natives actually followed the custom of painting their bodies, as implied by the expression nee falso nomine Pictos "nor falsely termed the Picts." There can be little doubt that, though descendants of the ancient British Caledonians, and there-fore Celts by origin, the Picts were mingled with settlers from the north, of Gothic name, descent, and language. The erratic habits of the Scandinavians render this highly probable.

II. The Scots, on the other hand, were of Irish origin; for, to the great confusion of ancient history, the inhabitants of Ireland, those at least of the conquering and predominating caste, were called Scots. A colony of these Irish Scots, distinguished by the name of Dalriads or Dalreudini, natives of Ulster, had early attempted a settlement on the coast of Argyleshire: they finally established themselves there under Fergus, the son of Eric, about the year 503, and, recruited by colonies from Ulster, continued to multiply and increase until they formed a nation which occupied the western side of Scotland, and came to border on a people with a name, and perhaps a descent, similar to their own. These were the Attacotti, a nation inhabiting the northern part of Lanark-shire and the district called Lennox, which seems ultimately to have melted away into the Scots.

These two free nations of Picts and Scots, inhabiting, the former the eastern, the latter the western, shores of North Britain, appear to have resembled each other in manners and ferocity, and to have exercised the last quality without scruple on the Roman colonists. Both nations, like the Irish, converted their shaggy and matted hair into a species of natural head-dress, which served either for helmet or mask, as was deemed necessary. Their weapons were light javelins, swords of unwieldy length, and shields made of wickerwork or hides. Their houses were constructed of wattles, or in more dangerous times they burrowed under ground in long, narrow, tortuous excavations, which still exist, and the idea of which seems to have been suggested by a rabbit-warren. The Picts had some skill . in constructing rude strongholds, surrounded by a rampart of loose stones. They had also some knowledge of agriculture. The Scots, who lived in a mountainous country, subsisted almost entirely on the produce of the chase, and that of their flocks and herds. Their worship might be termed that of demons, since the imaginary beings whom they adored were the personification of their own evil pursuits and passions. War was their sole pursuit, slaughter their chief delight; and it was no wonder they worshipped the imaginary god of battle with barbarous and inhuman rites.

Even over these wild people, inhabiting a country as savage as themselves, the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing under his wings. Good men, on whom the name of saint (while not used in a superstitious sense) was justly bestowed, to whom life and the pleasures of this world were as nothing, so they could call souls to Christianity, undertook and succeeded in the perilous task of enlightening these savages. Religion, though it did not at first change the manners of nations waxed old in barbarism, failed not to introduce those institutions on which rest the dignity and happiness of social life. The law of marriage was established among them, and all the brutalizing evils of polygamy gave place to the consequences of a union which tends most directly to separate the human from the brute species. The abolition of idolatrous ceremonies took away many bloody and brutalizing practices; and the Gospel, like the grain of mustard-seed, grew and flourished in noiseless increase, insinuating into men's hearts the blessings inseparable from its influence.

Such were the nations to which the Britons whom Rome had colonized were exposed by the retreat of those who were at once their masters and protectors, and these two fierce races inhabited the greater part of the country now called Scotland.

The retreat of the Romans left the British provincialists totally defenceless. Their parting exhortation to them to stand to their own defence, and their affectation of having, by abandoning the island, restored them to freedom, were as cruel as it would be to dismiss a domesticated bird or animal to shift for itself, after having been from its birth fed and supplied by the hand of man. The Scots and Picts rushed against the Roman bulwark, when no longer defended by Romans; it was stormed from the land by the barbarians, or the barrier was surrounded by turning the extremities of it with naval expeditions. Persecuted in every quarter, and reduced to absolute despair, the provincial Britons called in the Saxons to their aid about two years after the Romans had left the island.

The Saxons were of Gothic descent, and to courage equal to that of the North Briton tribes they added better arms and a formidable discipline. They drove back both Scots and Picts within their own limits, and even made considerable additions of territory at their expense. Ida, one of those northern worshippers of Odin who erected the kingdoms of the heptarchy, landed in 547, and founded that of Northumberland. Subduing or bringing under voluntary obedience a part of the Picts who had formed settlements on the southern side of the Firth of Forth, this prince added for the time to an English sceptre the districts of lower Teviotdale and Berwickshire, as well as all the three Lothians, excepting some part of the western county so named.

Thus the country now called Scotland was divided between five nations, which we shall recapitulate. 1. The Irish Scots held all the mountainous district, now called Argyleshire, as far as the mouth of the Clyde. 2. The country called Clydesdale, with Peebleshire, Selkirkshire, and the upper parts of Roxburghshire, bordered on the south by Cumberland, forming what was anciently entitled the kingdom of Strath-Clyde, was inhabited by the descendants of the British colonists, who were hence called Britons. 3. Galloway, comprehending most part of Ayrshire, was inhabited by a mixed race, partly Scots settlers from Ireland of a different stock from that of the Dalriads or Irish Scots of Argyleshire, partly Picts who had acquired possessions among them. Hence the Galwegians are sometimes called the wild Scots of Galloway. 4. The most numerous people in Scotland, as thus subdivided, seem to have been the Picts. The successes of the Saxons had, indeed, driven them as a nation from Lothian, and their possession of Galwegia was, as just noticed, only partial. But they possessed Fife and Angus, Stirling, and Perthshire : more north of this they held all the northeastern counties, though in Moray, Caithness, and Sutherland, there were settlements of Scandinavians in a state of independence. 5. Lastly, the Saxons of Northumberland had extended their kingdom to the Firth of Forth: so that Ida, a Saxon, occupied the March, Teviotdale as high as Melrose, and the three Lothians, which afterward became and are now accounted integral parts of Scotland. The Saxons retained possession of these five provinces under several kings, and especially under Edwin, who founded near the shores of the Forth the castle called from his name Edwinsburgh, now Edinburgh, the capital of the Scottish kingdom; this was posterior to 617. In 685 a check was given to the encroachment of the Saxons by the slaughter and defeat of their king Egfrid at the battle of Drumnechtan, probably Dunnichen ; and the district south of the Forth was repeatedly the scene of severe battles between the Picts and Northumbrians, the latter striving to hold, the former to regain, these fertile provinces.

A much more important struggle than that between the Saxons and Picts was maintained between the latter nation and the Scoto-Irish inhabiting, as we have seen, the western, as the Picts held the eastern side of the island. It was, indeed, evident that until these two large portions of North Britain should be united under one government, the security of the country against foreign invaders was not to be relied on. After many desperate battles, much effusion of blood, and a merciless devastation of both countries, some measures seem to have been taken for settling a lasting peace between these contending nations. Urgaria, sister of Ungus, king of Picts, was married to Aycha IV., king of Scots, and their son Alpine, succeeding his father as king of Scots, flourished from 833 to 836, in which last year he was slain, urging some contests in Galloway. The Pictish throne, thus thrown open for want of an heir male, was claimed by Kenneth, son and successor of Alpine, who, as descended of Urgaria, the sister of Ungus, urged his right of inheritance with an army. Wrad, the last of the Pictish monarchs, died at Forteviot, in 842, fighting in defence of his capital and kingdom, and the Pictish people were subdued. Tradition and ancient history combine in representing Kenneth, when victorious, as extirpating the whole race of Picts, which we must consider as an exaggeration. More modern authors, shocked at the improbability of such an incident, have softened it down by supposing that, on the death of Wrad, Kenneth occupied the Pictish throne by inheritance, as lawful heir in right of his grandmother Urgaria. But it is a great bar to this modified opinion, that from the time of Kenneth Macalpine's victory over Wrad, no more is spoken in Scottish history of the Pictish people or the Pictish crown; while the king of Scots and his nation engross the whole space, which before the subjugation was occupied by both nations. In a word, so complete must have been the revolution, that the very language of the Picts is lost, and what dialect they spoke is a subject of doubt to antiquarians. It was probably Celtic, with a strong tinge of Gothic.