§ 1. The Kingdom of Scotland.
♦Historical position of Scotland.♦
In Northern Britain, as in some other parts of Europe, we see a land which has taken its name from a people to which it does not owe its historic importance. Scotland has won for itself a position in Britain and in Europe altogether out of proportion to its size and population. But it has not done this by virtue of its strictly Scottish element. ♦Greatness of Scotland due to its English element.♦ The Irish settlers who first brought the Scottish name into Britain[88] could never have made Scotland what it really became. What founded the greatness of the Scottish kingdom was the fact that part of England gradually took the name of Scotland and its inhabitants took the name of Scots. The case is as when the Duke of Savoy and Genoa and Prince of Piedmont took his highest title from that Sardinian kingdom which was the least valuable part of his dominions. It is as when the ruler of a mighty German realm calls himself king of the small duchy of Prussia and its extinct people. ♦Two English kingdoms in Britain.♦ The truth is that, for more than five hundred years, there were two English kingdoms in Britain, each of which had a troublesome Celtic background which formed its chief difficulty. One English king reigned at Winchester or London, and had his difficulties in Wales and afterwards in Ireland. Another English king reigned at Dunfermline or Stirling, and had his difficulties in the true Scotland. ♦Extension of the Scottish name.♦ But the southern kingdom, ruled by kings of native English or of foreign descent, but never by kings of British or Irish descent,[89] always kept the English name, while the northern kingdom, ruled by kings of Scottish descent, adopted the Scottish name. The English subjects of the King of Scots gradually took the Scottish name to themselves. ♦Analogy of Switzerland.
Threefold elements in the later Scotland.♦ As the present Swiss nation is made up of parts of the German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which have detached themselves from their several main bodies, so the present Scottish nation is made up of parts of the English, Irish, and British nations which have detached themselves from their several main bodies. But in both cases it is the Teutonic element which forms the life and strength of the nation, the kernel to which the other elements have attached themselves. ♦True position of the Kings of Scots.♦ We cannot read the mediæval history of Britain aright, unless we remember that the King of Scots was in truth the English king of Teutonic Lothian and Teutonized Fife. ♦Enmity of the true Scots.♦ The people from whom he took his title were at most his unwilling subjects; they were often his open enemies, the allies of his southern rival.
♦Lothian, Strathclyde, and Scotland.♦
The modern kingdom of Scotland was made up of English Lothian, British Strathclyde, and Irish Scotland. The oldest Scotland is Ireland, whence the Scottish name, long since forgotten in Ireland itself, came into Britain and there spread itself. These three elements stand out plainly. ♦The Picts.♦ But the Scottish or Irish element swallowed up another, that of the Picts, of whom there can be no doubt that they were Celts, like the Scots and Britons, but about whom it may be doubted whether their kindred was nearer to the Scots or to the Britons. For our purpose the question is of little moment. The Picts, as far as geography is concerned, either vanished or became Scots.
♦Position of the Picts and Scots in the ninth century.♦
Early in the ninth century the land north of the firths of Clyde and Forth was still mainly Pictish. The second Scotland (the first Scotland in Britain) had not spread far beyond the original Irish settlement in the south-west. ♦Union of Picts and Scots, 843.
The Celtic Scotland.♦ The union of Picts and Scots under a Scottish dynasty created the larger Scotland, the true Celtic Scotland, taking in all the land north of the firths, except where Scandinavian settlers occupied the extreme north. ♦Bernicia.♦ South of the firths, English Bernicia, sometimes a separate kingdom, sometimes part of Northumberland, stretched to the firth of Forth, with Edinburgh as a border fortress. ♦Strathclyde or Cumberland.♦ To the west of Bernicia, south and east of the firth of Clyde, lay the British kingdom of Cumberland or Strathclyde, with Alcluyd or Dumbarton as its border fortress. ♦Galloway.♦ To the south-west again lay the outlying Pictish land of Galloway, which long kept up a separate being. Parts of Bernicia, parts of Strathclyde, were one day to join with the true Scotland to make up the later Scottish kingdom. As yet the true Scotland was a foreign and hostile land alike to Bernicia and to Strathclyde.
♦Settlements of the Northmen.♦