[450] New Statistical Account, vol. iv., Kirkcudbrightshire, p. 159.
[451] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. iii. p. 458.
[452] Logan's Scottish Gael, vol. ii. p. 195.
[453] Stuart's Costume of the Clans, Introd. p. li.
CHAPTER III.
STRONGHOLDS.
Next to the sepulchral monuments and the temples of remote ages, the fortifications frequently furnish the most durable and characteristic evidences of skill, and of the civilisation of the era to which they belong. In the Great Valley of the Mississippi, after Anglo-Saxon colonists have for upwards of two centuries been effecting settlements on the soil of the Red Indian, and obliterating every trace of him by their more enduring arts, the burial mounds and the forts of a race still older than the Red Indian remain to attest the pre-existence of civilisation in the American continent. Here, too, where for nine centuries at least, we can find authentic records of builders, sculptors, ecclesiastical architects, and military engineers, fashioning rude materials into goodly fabrics, of which traces are still discernible: we also can discover the wrecks of older structures reared in those dim and remote eras, into the secrets of which we long to penetrate. "How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears! How many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition of the old Babel-builders was well directed for this world. There are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality. It is well to have not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld all the days of their life. The age of Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess that we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture, than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians."[454] The Scottish "Caterthun" is no Athenian Acropolis, and our monolithic temples, though not ineloquent memorials of their builders, must rank with the primeval cyclopean structures of Greece, and not with her Parthenon or Colonna. But the aboriginal strongholds, though mostly of a sufficiently rude and primitive character, must not be overlooked in reviewing those "conquerors of the forgetfulness of men." The construction of offensive and defensive weapons is one of the earliest evidences afforded by man, in a savage state, of that intelligence and design by which he is distinguished from the brutes. Domestic and social relationships follow, from whence spring society, ranks, laws, and all the primary elements of civilisation. Among the first indications of such progress is the union for mutual defence, and the erection of strongholds for the safety of the community and the protection of property when threatened by invading foes. Herein lie the essential rudiments of a commonwealth, when the weal of the community and of its individual members have been recognised as the same.
A very slight review of the more simple class of British hill-forts will suffice, since we fortunately possess, in many of the contemporary records already described, more precise and definite history than they can now yield. It is for this reason that all notice of the aboriginal strongholds has been reserved till now, though it cannot admit of doubt that some of the simplest of them are contemporary with the pit-dwellings of the Stone Period, while others manifest such improvements as seem best to accord with the arts and weapons of the Archaic era which succeeded. Of these we have the circumscribed mote-hill or earthen-mound, steeply escarped, and with the remains of its little vallum of earth surmounted originally by the stronger palisades for which the neighbouring forest supplied abundant material. Nearly akin to these are the small circular forts of earth and loose stones which still crown the summits of so many Scottish hills; their lofty sites having secured them from the inroads of the agriculturist, while his aggressive ploughshare has obliterated all traces of the far more skilfully constructed Roman camp and military road which once occupied the neighbouring valleys. Within the area of some of these, or scattered about their neighbourhood, flint arrows and other primitive weapons have been frequently found, accompanied occasionally by more valuable relics. On removing, in 1830, the rich black mould nearly filling the trenches of three such forts, the remains of which still crown the ridge of a rising ground above the valley of Dalrymple, Ayrshire, human skulls and bones, deer's horns, and a horn-lance or spear-head of primitive type, were discovered. Similar records of the aboriginal fort-builders must no doubt frequently be turned up in the course of agricultural operations: but they can only tell us what is already obvious, that this class of strongholds, or duns, as they are locally termed, pertain to a people whose arts were still in their infancy. Some, however, of the small hill-forts must be regarded as the mere temporary lodge-ments of British outposts, in times of actual open war. Of this class probably are the earth-works on the summit of Birrenswork Hill, in Annandale, while the more extensive intrenchments of the Roman legions occupy the level areas at its base. Similar works are also to be met with in the Western Highlands. At Knoc Scalbert, near Campbelton, Argyleshire, is a fort of larger size and more complicated design, covering an area of about fifty paces in diameter; but the neighbouring heights retain the traces of the smaller outpost stations, indicative, when thus found in combination, of considerable skill and warlike strategy. Such also may be presumed to be the origin of these small hill-forts, where we trace a line of them on a series of successive heights, as may be seen on the Lammermoors and in other Scottish districts, and is especially noteworthy along the southern slopes of the Kilsyth and Campsie hills, immediately to the north of the great Roman wall. These are obviously the outposts of the hardy Caledonian, from whence he watched his opportunity for some sudden foray or midnight surprise of the garrisons occupying the stations along the wall, and which he maintained with such persevering success that the Roman conquerors had at length to give way, and to fix the northern limits of empire on the older line of Hadrian, between the Solway and the Tyne.
The circular British forts or camps surmounting the heights of Galloway and the Lothians, and more or less common in nearly every district of Scotland, generally occupy an area of from three hundred to four hundred feet in diameter, and are inclosed with ramparts of earth and stone, or occasionally entirely of loose heaps of stone, which have lost through time every trace of any definite form of masonry they no doubt once possessed. But the subject has already been treated of with ample details in Chalmers' Caledonia;[455] and little that is worth recording can be added to his careful researches. Roy also includes the most important of these native strongholds in his "Military Antiquities," superadding to his descriptions, plans and sections, by which a very perfect idea can be formed of their original design. These include Wood Castle, a very remarkable circular fort near Lochmaben, in Annandale,[456] which General Roy describes as a Roman post, though it differs in every possible feature from any known example of Roman castrametation. That it is a British stronghold is not now likely to be called in question. It bears, indeed, a singularly close affinity to the circular earth-works which so frequently accompany the Scottish monolithic circles. Others of the supposed Roman forts bear scarcely less conclusive marks of native workmanship, as the intrenched post on Inch Stuthill, near the Tay, (Plate XVIII.;) Liddell-Moat, near the junction of the Liddel with the Esk, (Plate XXIII.;) Castle Over, situated on a high point of land, formed by the junction of the Black and White Esks, (Plate XXVI.) supposed by Roy to be the Roman Uxellum; and Burgh-Head, on the Murray Frith, (Plate XXXIII.) which he unhesitatingly assigns as the Ultima Pteroton of Richard of Cirencester, and the Alata Castra of Ptolemy. All of these bear a curious general resemblance to some of the aboriginal forts of the Mississippi Valley; thus affording, under another aspect, evidence of the mind of man operating in the same way when placed in similar circumstances, and with a force not perhaps greatly differing from the unerring instincts of the lower animals. The last example, that of Burgh-Head, possibly includes some remains of Roman works. The straight wall and rounded angles, so characteristic of the legionary earth-works, are still discernible, and were probably much more obvious when General Roy explored the fort; but its character is that of a British fort, and its site, on a promontory nearly inclosed by the sea, is opposed to the practice of the Romans in the choice of an encampment. The remarkable general correspondence of the Scottish "Deil's Dike," described in the last chapter, to the Scoto and Anglo-Roman walls, proves that the native Britons were not slow to avail themselves of the superior engineering skill of the invaders, displayed in military works of more importance than the mere rectangular vallum.[457] The fortifications here specified are not, however, to be classed with the simple circular hill-forts first noted, wherein we trace the mere rudimentary efforts of a people in the infancy of the arts. They display equal skill in the choice of site, and in the elaborate adaptation of their earth-works to the natural features of the ground. Though undoubtedly of native workmanship many of these are not improbably contemporary erections thrown up by the native Caledonian to withstand the encroachments of the Roman invader.