Our argument derives considerable support from the references to the Highlands of Scotland which we find in mediæval literature. Racial distinctions were not always understood in the Middle Ages; but readers of Giraldus Cambrensis are familiar with the strong racial feeling that existed between the English and the Welsh, and between the English and the Irish. If the Lowlanders of Scotland felt towards the Highlanders as Mr. Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we should expect to find references to the difference between Celts and Saxons. But, on the contrary, we meet with statement after statement to the effect that the Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the ancient Scottish language and literature, while the Lowlanders have adopted English customs and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and "Scotland" are never used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from other inhabitants of Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means, up to the end of the fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue.[13] In the beginning of the sixteenth century John Major speaks of "the wild Scots and Islanders" as using Irish, while the civilized Scots speak English; and Gavin Douglas professed to write in Scots (i.e. the Lowland tongue). In the course of the century this became the regular usage. Acts of the Scottish Parliament, directed against Highland marauders, class them with the border thieves. There is no hint in the Register of the Privy Council or in the Exchequer Rolls, of any racial feeling, and the independence of the Celtic chiefs has been considerably exaggerated. James IV and James V both visited the Isles, and the chief town of Skye takes its name from the visit of the latter. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was safe for Hector Boece, the Principal of the newly founded university of Aberdeen, to go in company of the Rector to make a voyage to the Hebrides, and, in the account they have left us of their experiences, we can discover no hint that there existed between Highlanders and Lowlanders much the same difference as separated the English from the Welsh. Neither in Barbour's Bruce nor in Blind Harry's Wallace is there any such consciousness of difference, although Barbour lived in Aberdeen in the days before Harlaw. John of Fordun, a fellow-townsman and a contemporary of Barbour, was an ardent admirer of St. Margaret and of David I, and of the Anglo-Norman institutions they introduced, while he possessed an invincible objection to the kilt. We should therefore expect to find in him some consciousness of the racial difference. He writes of the Highlanders with some ill-will, describing them as a "savage and untamed people, rude and independent, given to rapine, ... hostile to the English language and people, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write thus of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw on that rough and boorish people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The reference to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did not understand that the Highlanders were a different people; and when he called them hostile to the English, he was evidently unaware that their custom was "out of hatred to the Saxons nearest them" to league with the English. John Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513), mentions the differences between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild Scots speak Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he adds, "most of us spoke Irish a short time ago."[16] His contemporary, Hector Boece, who made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us who live on the borders of England have forsaken our own tongue and learned English, being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the Highlanders remain just as they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore, in whose days we began to adopt English manners."[17] When Bishop Elphinstone applied, in 1493, for Papal permission to found a university in Old Aberdeen, in proximity to the barbarian Highlanders, he made no suggestion of any racial difference between the English-speaking population of Aberdeen and their Gaelic-speaking neighbours.[18] Late in the sixteenth century, John Lesley, the defender of Queen Mary, who had been bishop of Ross, and came of a northern family, wrote in a strain similar to that of Major and Boece. "Foreign nations look on the Gaelic-speaking Scots as wild barbarians because they maintain the customs and the language of their ancestors; but we call them Highlanders."[19]
Even in connexion with the battle of Harlaw, we find that Scottish historians do not use such terms in speaking of the Highland forces as Mr. Hill Burton would lead us to expect. Of the two contemporary authorities, one, the Book of Pluscarden, was probably written by a Highlander, while the continuation of Fordun's Scoti-chronicon, in which we have a more detailed account of the battle, was the work of Bower, a Lowlander who shared Fordun's antipathy to Highland customs. The Liber Pluscardensis mentions the battle in a very casual manner. It was fought between Donald of the Isles and the Earl of Mar; there was great slaughter: and it so happened that the town of Cupar chanced to be burned in the same year.[20] Bower assigns a greater importance to the affair;[21] he tells us that Donald wished to spoil Aberdeen and then to add to his own possessions all Scotland up to the Tay. It is as if he were writing of the ambition of the House of Douglas. But there is no hint of racial antipathy; the abuse applied to Donald and his followers would suit equally well for the Borderers who shouted the Douglas battle-cry. John Major tells us that it was a civil war fought for the spoil of the famous city of Aberdeen, and he cannot say who won—only the Islanders lost more men than the civilized Scots. For him, its chief interest lay in the ferocity of the contest; rarely, even in struggles with a foreign foe, had the fighting been so keen.[22] The fierceness with which Harlaw was fought impressed the country so much that, some sixty years later, when Major was a boy, he and his playmates at the Grammar School of Haddington used to amuse themselves by mock fights in which they re-enacted the red Harlaw.
From Major we turn with interest to the Principal of the University and King's College, Hector Boece, who wrote his History of Scotland, at Aberdeen, about a century after the battle of Harlaw, and who shows no trace of the strong feeling described by Mr. Hill Burton. He narrates the origin of the quarrel with much sympathy for the Lord of the Isles, and regrets that he was not satisfied with recovering his own heritage of Ross, but was tempted by the pillage of Aberdeen, and he speaks of the Lowland army as "the Scots on the other side".[23] His narrative in the History is devoid of any racial feeling whatsoever, and in his Lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen he omits any mention of Harlaw at all. We have laid stress upon the evidence of Boece because in Aberdeen, if anywhere, the memory of the "Celtic peril" at Harlaw should have survived. Similarly, George Buchanan speaks of Harlaw as a raid for purposes of plunder, made by the islanders upon the mainland.[24] These illustrations may serve to show how Scottish historians really did look upon the battle of Harlaw, and how little do they share Mr. Burton's horror of the Celts.
When we turn to descriptions of Scotland we find no further proof of the correctness of the orthodox theory. When Giraldus Cambrensis wrote, in the twelfth century, he remarked that the Scots of his time have an affinity of race with the Irish,[25] and the English historians of the War of Independence speak of the Scots as they do of the Welsh or the Irish, and they know only one type of Scotsman. We have already seen the opinion of John Major, the sixteenth-century Scottish historian and theologian, who had lived much in France, and could write of his native country from an ab extra stand-point, that the Highlanders speak Irish and are less respectable than the other Scots; and his opinion was shared by two foreign observers, Pedro de Ayala and Polydore Vergil. The former remarks on the difference of speech, and the latter says that the more civilized Scots have adopted the English tongue. In like manner English writers about the time of the Union of the Crowns write of the Highlanders as Scotsmen who retain their ancient language. Camden, indeed, speaks of the Lowlands as being Anglo-Saxon in origin, but he restricts his remark to the district which had formed part of the kingdom of Northumbria.[26]
We should, of course, expect to find that the gradually widening breach in manners and language between Highlanders and Lowlanders produced some dislike for the Highland robbers and their Irish tongue, and we do occasionally, though rarely, meet some indication of this. There are not many references to the Highlanders in Scottish literature earlier than the sixteenth century. "Blind Harry" (Book VI, ll. 132-140) represents an English soldier as using, in addressing Wallace, first a mixture of French and Lowland Scots, and then a mixture of Lowland Scots and Gaelic:
"Dewgar, gud day, bone Senzhour, and gud morn!
*****
Sen ye ar Scottis, zeit salust sall ye be;
Gud deyn, dawch Lard, bach lowch, banzoch a de".
In "The Book of the Howlat", written in the latter half of the fifteenth century, by a certain Richard Holland, who was an adherent of the House of Douglas, there is a similar imitation of Scottish Gaelic, with the same phrase "Banachadee" (the blessing of God). This seemingly innocent phrase seems to have some ironical signification, for we find in the Auchinleck Chronicle (anno 1452) that it was used by some Highlanders as a term of abuse towards the Bishop of Argyll. Another example occurs in a coarse "Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective", by Alexander Montgomerie, the court poet of James VI. The Lowland literature of the sixteenth century contains a considerable amount of abuse of the Highland tongue. William Dunbar (1460-1520), in his "Flyting" (an exercise in Invective), reproaches his antagonist, Walter Kennedy, with his Highland origin. Kennedy was a native of Galloway, while Dunbar belonged to the Lothians, where we should expect the strongest appreciation of the differences between Lowlander and Highlander. Dunbar, moreover, had studied (or, at least, resided) at Oxford, and was one of the first Scotsmen to succumb to the attractions of "town". The most suggestive point in the "Flyting" is that a native of the Lothians could still regard a Galwegian as a "beggar Irish bard". For Walter Kennedy spoke and wrote in Lowland Scots; he was, possibly, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, and he could boast of Stuart blood. Ayrshire was as really English as was Aberdeenshire; and, if Dunbar is in earnest, it is a strong confirmation of our theory that he, being "of the Lothians himself", spoke of Kennedy in this way. It would, however, be unwise to lay too much stress on what was really a conventional exercise of a particular style of poetry, now obsolete. Kennedy, in his reply, retorts that he alone is true Scots, and that Dunbar, as a native of Lothian, is but an English thief:
"In Ingland, owle, suld be thyne habitacione,
Homage to Edward Langschankis maid thy kyn".