[206] In Maitland's time (1753), there was a farm-house termed "Catstean," standing near the monument we are describing. And up to the beginning of the present century the property or farm on the opposite side of the Almond, above Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition—viz., Cat-elbock. This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning term Almond-hill.
[207] Historia Ecclesiast., lib. i. c. xii. "Sermone Pictorum Peanfahel, lingua autem Anglorum Penneltun appellatur."
[208] Historia Britonum, c. xix. At one time I fancied it possible that the mutilated and enigmatical remains of ancient Welsh poetry furnished us with a name for the Cat-stane older still than that appellation itself. Among the fragments of old Welsh historical poems ascribed to Taliesin, one of the best known is that on the battle of Gwen-Ystrad. In this composition the poet describes, from professedly personal observation, the feats at the above battle of the army of his friend and great patron, Urien, King of Rheged, who was subsequently killed at the siege of Medcaut, or Lindisfarne, about A.D. 572. Villemarque places the battle of Gwen-Ystrad between A.D. 547 and A.D. 560.
The British kingdom of Rheged, over which Urien ruled, is by some authorities considered as the old British or Welsh kingdom of Cumbria, or Cumberland; but, according to others, it must have been situated further northwards. In the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad (see the Myvyrian Archæology, vol. i. p. 53), Urien defeats the enemy—apparently the Saxons or Angles—under Ida, King of Bernicia. In one line near the end of the poem, Taliesin describes Urien as attacking his foes "by the white stone of Galysten:"
"Pan amwyth ai alon yn Llech wen Galysten."
The word "Galysten," when separated into such probable original components as "Gal" and "lysten," is remarkable, from the latter part of the appellation, "lysten," corresponding with the name, "Liston," of the old barony or parish in which the Cat-stane stands; the prefix Kirk (Kirk-liston) being, as is well known, a comparatively modern addition. The word "Gal" is a common term, in compound Keltic words, for "stranger," or "foreigner." In the Gaelic branch of the Keltic, "lioston" signifies, according to Sir James Foulis, "an inclosure on the side of a river." (See Mr. Muckarsie on the origin of the name of Kirkliston, in the Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. x. p. 68.) The Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary gives "liostean" as a lodging, tent, or booth. In the Cymric, "lystyn" signifies, according to Dr. Owen Pughe, "a recess, or lodgment." (See his Welsh Dictionary, sub voce.) The compound word Gal-lysten would perhaps not be thus overstrained, if it were held as possibly originating in the meaning, "the lodgment, inclosure, or resting-place of the foreigner;" and the line quoted would, under such an idea, not inaptly apply to the grave-stone of such a foreign leader as Vetta. Urien's forces are described in the first line of the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, as "the men of Cattraeth, who set out with the dawn." Cattraeth is now believed by eminent archæologists to be a locality situated at the eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth—Callander, Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains various remains of ancient structures. Urien's foes at the battle of Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia—this last term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time the district of modern Northumberland, and probably also Berwickshire and part of the Lothians. An army marching from Cattraeth or the eastern end of Antonine's Wall, to meet such an army, would, if it took the shortest or coast line, pass, after two or three hours' march, very near the site of the Cat-stane. A ford and a fort are alluded to in the poem. The neighbouring Almond has plenty of fords; and on its banks the name of two forts or "caers" are still left—viz. Caerlowrie (Caer-l-Urien?) and Caer Almond, one directly opposite the Cat-stane, the other three miles below it. But no modern name remains near the Cat-stane to identify the name of "the fair or white strath." "Lenny"—the name of the immediately adjoining barony on the banks of the Almond, or in its "strath" or "dale"—presents insurmountable philological difficulties to its identification with Gwen; the L and G, or GW not being interchangeable. The valley of Strath-Broc (Broxburn)—the seat in the twelfth century of Freskyn of Strath-Broc, and consequently the cradle of the noble house of Sutherland—runs into the valley of the Almond about two miles above the Cat-stane. In this, as in other Welsh and Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining river. In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary, in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates. The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley—"Gwen-Ystrad;" but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was ever applied to this tract. In his learned edition of Les Bardes Bretons, Poemes du vie Siècle, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, suggests (page 412) that this term exists in a modern form under the name of Queen's-strad, or Queen's-ferry—a locality within three miles of the Cat-stane. But it is certain that the name of Queens-ferry, applied to the well-known passage across the Forth, is of the far later date of Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore. Numerous manors and localities in the Lothians and around Kirkliston, end in the Saxon affix "ton," or town—a circumstance rendering it probable that Lis-ton had possibly a similar origin. And further, against the idea of the appellation of "the white stone of Galysten" being applicable to the Cat-stane, is the fact that it is, as I have already stated, a block of greenstone basalt; and the light tint which it presents, when viewed at a distance in strong sunlight—owing to its surface being covered with whitish lichen—is scarcely sufficient to have warranted a poet—indulging in the utmost poetical license—to have sung of it as "the white stone." After all, however, the adjective "wen," or "gwenn," as Villemarque writes it, may signify "fair" or "beautiful" when applied to the stone, just as it probably does when applied to the strath which was the seat of the battle—"Gwenn Ystrad."
Winchburgh, the name of the second largest village in the parish of Kirkliston, and a station on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, is perhaps worthy of note, from its being placed in the same district as the stone of Vetta, the son of Victa, and from the appellation possibly signifying originally, according to Mr. Kemble (our highest authority in such a question), the burgh of Woden, or Wodensburgh. (See his History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 346.)
[209] Vita Agricolæ, xliv. 2.
[210] History of England—Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 20.
[211] On the probable great extent of the Teutonic or German element of population in Great Britain as early as about A.D. 400; see Mr. Wright, in his excellent and interesting work The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 385.