PART IV.
THE CHRISTIAN PERIOD.
"Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui,
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui,
Præstet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui."
S. Thomæ Aquinatis
Hymnus de Corpore Christi.
CHAPTER I.—HISTORICAL DATA.
By whatever course the earlier colonists of the British Isles reached our shores and diffused the first influences of the presence of man, as well as those succeeding evidences of his progress, the traces of which have been reviewed in the preceding sections, it is unquestionable that that latest and most important of all sources of change, the introduction of Christianity, took place by a very different route from that of the Straits of Dover. All the affinities indicated by the later and well-defined relics of native art point to a more intimate intercourse and community of customs and arts between the natives of Scotland and Ireland than between those of the northern and southern parts of the island of Great Britain, taking as its natural intermediate boundary the Highlands of Northumberland and Cumberland. South of this the tribes partook of the characteristics of those of the neighbouring continent. They shared in the civilisation of the north of Europe, held by its mythology, and were involved in its enslavement by the aggressive expansion of the overgrown Roman empire; while the nations both of northern Albany and of the Irish isle were left to the unmitigated influences, for good or evil, of their wild independence. The geographical position of the British and Irish coasts sufficiently accounts for frequent intercourse between the natives of Scotland and Ireland from the earliest periods. While the narrowest part of St. George's Channel has a breadth of about sixty-five miles, the opposite coasts of the Mull of Cantyre and of Fair Head in the county of Antrim, are only fourteen miles apart. The remarkable ancient historical Gaelic poem, generally termed the ALBANIC DUAN, written in its present form in the reign of Malcolm Canmore about the middle of the eleventh century, thus refers to the first peopling of Scotland and the Irish origin of the northern Picts:—
"Ye learned of all Albin,
Ye wise, yellow-haired race,
Learn who was the first
To acquire the districts of Albin.