1. Constantine?—In the olden lists of our Scottish kings, four King Constantines occur. The Cat-stane has been imagined by Lord Buchan and Mr. Muckarsie to have been raised in memory of the last of these—viz., of Constantine IV., who fell in a battle believed by these writers to have been fought on this ground in the last years of the tenth century, or about A.D. 995. In the New Statistical Account of Scotland, the Reverend Mr. Tait, the present minister of Kirkliston, farther speaks of the "Catstean (as) supposed to be a corruption of Constantine, and to have been erected to the honour of Constantine, one of the commanders in the same engagement, who was there slain and interred."[148]
In the year 970 the Scottish king Culen died, having been "killed (according to the Ulster Annals), by the Britons in open battle;" and in A.D. 994, his successor, Kenneth MacMalcolm, the founder of Brechin, was slain.[149] Constantine, the son of Culen, reigned for the next year and a half, and fell in a battle for the crown fought between him and Kenneth, the son of Malcolm I. The site of this battle was, according to most of our ancient authorities, on the Almond. There are two rivers of this name in Scotland, one in Perthshire and the other in the Lothians. George Chalmers places the site of the battle in which Constantine fell on the Almond in Perthshire; Fordun, Boece, and Buchanan place it on the Almond in the Lothians, upon the banks of which the Cat-stane stands. The battle was fought, to borrow the words of the Scotichronicon, "in Laudonia juxta ripam amnis Almond."[150] The Chronicle of Melrose gives (p. 226) the "Avon"—the name of another large stream in the Lothians—as the river that was the site of the battle in question. Wynton (vol. i. p. 182) speaks of it as the "Awyne." Bishop Leslie transfers this same fight to the banks of the Annan in Dumfriesshire, describing it as having occurred during an invasion of Cumbria, "ad Annandiæ amnis ostia."[151]
Among the authorities who speak of this battle or of the fall of Constantine, some describe these events as having occurred at the source, others at the mouth of the Almond or Avon. Thus the ancient rhyming chronicle, cited in the Scotichronicon, gives the locality of Constantine's fall as "ad caput amnis Amond."[152] The Chronicle of Melrose, when entering the fall of "Constantinus Calwus," quotes the same lines, with such modifications as follows:[153]—
"Rex Constantinus, Culeno filius ortus,
Ad caput amnis Avon ense peremtus erat,
In Tegalere; regens uno rex et semis annis,
Ipsum Kinedus Malcolomida ferit."
Wyntown cites the two first of these Latin lines, changing, as I have said, the name of the river to Awyne, almost, apparently, for the purpose of getting a vernacular rhyme, and then himself tells us, that
"At the Wattyr hed of Awyne,
The King Gryme slwe this Constantyne."[154]
If the word "Tegalere" in the Melrose Chronicle be a true reading,[155] and the locality could be identified under the same or a similar derivative name, the site of the battle might be fixed, and the point ascertained whether it took place, as the preceding authorities aver, at the source, "water-head" or "caput" of the river; or, as Hector, Boece and George Buchanan[156] describe it, at its mouth or entrance into the Forth at Cramond; "ad Amundæ amnis ostia tribus passuum millibus ab Edinburgo."[157] A far older and far more valuable authority than either Boece or Buchanan, namely, the collector of the list of the Scottish and Pictish kings, extracted by Sir Robert Sibbald from the now lost register of the Priory of St. Andrews,[158] seems also to place the death of King Constantine at the mouth of the Almond, if we interpret aright the entry in it of "interfectus in Rathveramœn" as meaning "Rath Inver Amœn,"—the rath or earth-fortress at the mouth of the Amœn.[159]
Even, however, were it allowed that the battle in which Constantine perished was fought upon the Almond, and not upon the Avon, on the stream of the former name in the Lothians and not in Perthshire, at the mouth and not at the source of the river, there still, after all, remains no evidence whatever that the Cat-stane was raised in commemoration of the fall of the Scottish king; whilst there is abundant evidence to the contrary. The very word "Inver," in the last of the designations which I have adduced, is strongly against this idea. For the term "Inver," when applied to a locality on a stream, almost invariably means the mouth of it,[160] and not a site on its course—such as the Cat-stane occupies—three miles above its confluence. Nor is there any probability that an inscribed monument would be raised in honour of a king who, like Constantine, fell in a civil war,—who was the last of his own branch of the royal house that reigned,—and was distinguished, as the ancient chroniclers tell us, by the contemptuous appellation of Calvus. There is great reason, indeed, to believe that the idea of the Cat-stane being connected with the fall of Constantine is comparatively modern in its origin. Oral tradition sometimes creates written history; but, on the other hand, written history sometimes creates oral tradition. And in the present instance a knowledge of the statements of our ancient historians in all probability gave rise to such attempts as that of Mr. Wilkie—to find, namely, a direct record of Constantine in the Cat-stane inscription. But when we compare the inscription itself, as read a century and a half ago by Lhwyd and Sibbald, and as capable of being still read at the present day, with the edition of it as given by Lord Buchan, it is impossible not to conclude that the idea of connecting the legend with the name of Constantine is totally without foundation. For, besides minor errors in punctuation and letterings, such as the total omission in Lord Buchan's copy of the inscription of the three last letters VLO of "TVMVLO," the changing of VETTA to VIC, etc., we have the two terminal letters of JACIT—viz. the IT, changed into the seven-lettered word CONSTAN, apparently with no object but the support of a theory as to the person commemorated in the legend and the monolith. Most assuredly there is not the very slightest trace of any letters on the surface of the stone where the chief part of the word CONSTAN is represented as existing—viz., after JACIT. It would be difficult, perhaps, to adduce a case of more flagrant incorrectness in copying an inscription than Mr. Wilkie's and Lord Buchan's reading of the Cat-stane legend affords. Mr. Gough, in his edition of Camden's Britannia (1784), only aggravates this misrepresentation. For whilst he incorrectly states that the inscription is "not now legible," he carelessly changes Mr. Wilkie's alleged copy of the leading word from CONSTAN to CONSTANTIE, and suppresses altogether the word VIC.
Getus, Gweth, or Geth?—I have already cited Mr. Lhwyd's conjecture that the Cat-stane is "the tomb of some Pictish King," and the opinion expressed by him and Mr. Hicks, that taking the V in the Latin VETTA of the inscription as equal to the Pictish letters G or Gw, the name of the Pictish king commemorated by the stone was Getus, "of which name," observes Mr. Lhwyd, "I find three Pictish kings." In the analogous account sent by Mr. Hicks to the Philosophical Transactions along with Mr. Lhwyd's sketch of the Cat-stane, it is stated that the person's name on "this Pictish monument" was Gweth or Geth, "of which name," it is added, "were divers kings of the Picts, whence the vulgar name of Ketstone."
It is unnecessary to stop and comment on the unsoundness of this reasoning, and the improbability—both as to the initial and terminal letters—of the surname VETTA in this Latin inscription being similar to the Pictish surname Geth or GETUS, as Lhwyd himself gives and writes it in its Latin form. Among the lists of the Pictish kings, whilst we have several names beginning with G, we have some also commencing in the Latinised forms of the Chronicles with V, as Vist, Vere, Vipoignamet, etc.