Landscape in History, and Other Essays

by Archibald Geikie

Here, then, in our Celtic place-names lies a wide and as yet, for large districts, but little worked field for exploration. Civilisation has advanced less rapidly and ruthlessly in the Celtic-speaking parts of the country, where, too, there are fewer historical records of progress and change. But the topographical names when carefully worked out supply a good deal of information regarding former conditions of surface whereof every other memorial has perished.

Our Saxon progenitors, also, gave appropriate local names; but with a sturdy self-assertion, and prosaic regard for plain fact, they chose to couple their own cognomina with them. If a settler fenced in his own inclosure he called it his 'ton' or his 'ham.' If he felled the trees of the primeval woodlands and made his own clearance, it became his 'fold.' If he built himself a mud cottage, it was his 'cote,' or if he attained to the dignity of a farm, he called it his 'stead.' As he and his brethren increased their holdings and drew their houses together for companionship and protection, the village kept their family name. But besides these patronymic epithets, which are of such value in tracing out the early settlement of the country, the English gave more or less descriptive local names. In their 'holts' and 'hursts,' 'wealds' and 'shaws,' we can still tell where their woods lay. In their 'leighs,' 'fields,' and 'royds,' we can yet trace the open clearings in these woods. But for the broad landmarks, rivers, and larger natural features of the country, the Saxons were generally content to adopt, in some more or less corrupted form, the names already given by the Celtic tribes who had preceded them.

(3) As another but less reliable source of information regarding alterations in the surface of the country, I would make brief allusion to the subject of local tradition. In these days of education and locomotion, we can hardly perhaps realise how tenacious, and on the whole faithful, the human memory may be in spite of the absence of written or printed documents. Even yet we see the unbroken and exact record of the true boundaries of a parish or township handed down in the annual beating of the bounds or riding of the marches. And even where no such ceremony has tended to perpetuate the remembrance of topographical details, tradition, though it may vary as to historical facts, is often singularly true to locality. I am tempted to give what seems to me a good example of this fidelity of tradition. Many years ago among the uplands of Lammermuir I made the acquaintance of an old maiden lady, Miss Darling of Priestlaw, who with her bachelor brothers tenanted a farm which their family had held for many generations. In the course of her observant and reflective life she had gathered up and treasured in her recollection the traditions and legends of these pastoral solitudes. I well remember, among the tales she delighted to pour into the ear of a sympathetic listener, one that went back to the time of the Battle of Dunbar. We know from his own letters in what straits Cromwell felt himself to be when he found his only practicable line of retreat through the hills barred by the Covenanting army, and how he wrote urgently to the English commander at Newcastle for help in the enemy's rear. It has usually been supposed that his communications with England were kept up only by sea. But the weather was boisterous at the time, and a vessel bound for Berwick or Newcastle might have been driven away from land. There is therefore every probability that Cromwell would try to send a communication by land also. Now the tradition of Lammermuir maintains that he did so. The story is told that he sent two soldiers disguised as natives of the district to push their way through the hills and over the border. The men had got as far as the valley of the Whiteadder, and were riding past the mouth of one of the narrow glens, when a gust of wind, sweeping out of the hollow, lifted up their hodden-grey cloaks and showed their military garb beneath. They had been watched, and were now overtaken and shot. Miss Darling told me that tradition had always pointed to some old whin-bushes at the opening of the cleugh as the spot where they were buried. At her instigation the ground was dug up there, and among some mouldering bones were found a few decayed buttons with a coin of the time of Charles the First.

Tradition is no doubt often entirely erroneous; but it ought not, I think, to be summarily dismissed without at least critical examination. There are doubtless instances where it might come in to corroborate conclusions deducible from other and usually more reliable kinds of evidence.

(4) But of all the sources of information regarding bygone mutations of the surface of the land, undoubtedly the most important is that supplied by the testimony of geology. Early human chronicles are not only imperfect, but may be erroneous. The chronicle, however, which Nature has compiled of her past vicissitudes, though it may be fragmentary, is, at least, accurate. In interpreting it the geologist is liable, indeed, to make mistakes; but these can be corrected by subsequent investigation, while the natural chronicle itself remains unaffected by them. Moreover, it embraces a vast period of time. Historical evidence in this country is comprised within the limits of nineteen centuries. The testimony from Celtic topographical names may possibly go back some hundreds of years further. But the geological record of the human period carries us enormously beyond these dates. Hence, in so vast a lapse of time, scope has been afforded for a whole series of important geological revolutions. On every side of us we may see manifest proofs of these changes. The general aspect of the country has been altered, not once only, but many times. The agencies that brought about these changes have, in not a few instances, preserved tolerably complete memorials of them. We are thus enabled to trace the history of lakes and rivers, of forests and mosses: we can follow the succession of animals that have wandered over the land, and many of which had died out ere the days of history began: we can dimly perceive the conditions of life amidst the earliest human population of the country: we can recover abundant evidence of the extraordinary vicissitudes of climate which, since these ancient times, have affected not this land only, but the whole northern hemisphere.

The evidence from which these reconstructions of the former aspect of the country and its inhabitants can be deduced lies easily accessible around us. From the numerous caves in the limestone districts, abundant remains have been disinterred of the land-animals that were contemporary with aboriginal man, and among them relics of human workmanship have likewise been obtained. Our bogs have yielded skeletons of the Irish elk and other denizens of the primeval glades and woodlands, together with the canoes and stone-implements of the hunters of these animals. Our river-terraces reveal a long history of climatal changes onward from the later phases of the Ice-Age, during which the country witnessed successive migrations of northern and southern mammals accompanied by Palaeolithic and Neolithic men. The raised beaches and sunk forests contain relics of contemporary human workmanship which prove that man had already become an inhabitant of Britain before the land had settled into its present level above the sea.

It may be of advantage to consider here, from the various sources of information above enumerated, what appears to have been the condition of the surface of Britain at the dawn of authentic history and what have been the nature and origin of the changes which this surface has undergone within historic time. When the light of human testimony first begins to fall upon Britain at the advent of the Romans, the general aspect of the country must have presented in many respects a contrast to that which is now to be seen; and notably in the wide spread of its forests, in the abundance of its bogs and fens, and (through the northern districts) in the vast number of its lakes.

At the first coming of the Romans by far the larger part of the country was probably covered with wood. During the centuries of Roman occupation some of the less dense parts of the woodland were cleared. In driving their magnificent straight highways through the country, the Roman legionaries felled the trees for seventy yards on each side of a road, in order to secure themselves from the arrows of a lurking foe. So stupendous was the labour thus involved, that they gladly avoided forests where that was possible, and sometimes even swung their roads to right or left to keep clear of these formidable obstacles. For many hundreds of years after the departure of the legions, vast tracts of primeval forest continued to be impassable barriers between different tribes. In these natural fastnesses the wolf, brown bear, and wild boar still found a secure retreat. Even as late as the twelfth century the woods to the north of London swarmed with wild boars and wild oxen. Everywhere, too, the broken men of the community betook themselves to these impenetrable retreats, where they lived by the chase, and whence they issued for plunder and bloodshed. The forests were thus from time immemorial a singularly important element in the topography. They have now almost entirely disappeared, and their former sites have as yet only been partially determined, though much may doubtless still be done in making our knowledge of them more complete.

In connection with this subject it should be remembered that, in many instances, the areas of wood and open land have in the course of generations completely changed places. The wide belts of clay-soil that sweep across the island, being specially adapted for the growth of trees, were originally densely timbered. But the process of clearance led to the recognition of the fact that these clay-soils were also eminently fitted for the purposes of agriculture. Hence, by degrees, the sites of the ancient forests were turned into corn-fields and meadows. On the other hand, the open tracts of lighter soil, where the earlier settlers established themselves, were gradually abandoned, and lapsed into wastes of scrub and copsewood.