The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

This is that remarkable epoch in our national history known by the name of the Scottish Conquest. It has naturally formed the subject of much investigation and of still more debate. Our earlier historians, assuming the results to have corresponded with the term Conquest, attribute to Kenneth the total extermination of the Piccardach or Southern Picts; the consequence of which has been, that later and more accurate writers, seeking in vain for any evidence of so complete a revolution, have been inclined to pronounce the whole a fable. But it still remains for us to inquire if no other elements of friendly alliance and permanent union existed between the Picts and Scots than those which sprung from cooperation against a common foe. A tradition of a Spanish origin appears to have been ascribed to the Irish Scoti from the earliest period. It is interwoven into all the fables and monkish legends of our earlier chroniclers, and has already been alluded to in reference to the Lia Fail. It is now perhaps vain to attempt to analyze this obscure and doubtful tradition, though we are not without evidence of its probability.[517] The period of their arrival in Ireland is necessarily very partially ascertained, though our information is perhaps sufficiently authentic and minute if we assume, from the notice of Avienus, already referred to, that they were unknown in Ireland in the fourth century before Christ, while we have good evidence of their presence there at the period of Julius Cæsar's British invasion. During this interval history furnishes very satisfactory means of accounting for such a migration. In the year B.C. 218, the second and fiercest struggle between the rival republics of Carthage and Rome was commenced by Hannibal taking Saguntum, a town on the eastern coast of Spain. The Peninsula thereafter became the theatre of a war afterwards carried by Hannibal into Italy, which was not concluded till B.C. 202, when Spain was added to the growing empire of the Italian Republic. But the natives of Spain did not willingly bow to the yoke. One of the bloodiest of all the Roman wars commenced in Spain B.C. 153, and did not finally terminate for twenty years, during which cities were razed to the ground, multitudes massacred and made slaves, and the triumphant arms of Rome borne to the Atlantic shores. Here therefore is an epoch in the history of the Spanish peninsula which seems completely to coincide with the ancient traditions of the Scoti, and the knowledge we possess of the period of their arrival in Ireland.

Such coincidences are not of course to be accepted as absolute proof; but in the absence of more direct evidence they are well worthy of attention, as guiding us to some knowledge of that race which had acquired a footing in Ireland, and partially displaced the aboriginal Hiberni shortly before the Roman invasion of England. But we have still the evidence of philology, the prevailing topographical nomenclature of Ireland, and the dialects of its earliest native literature, all adding confirmation to the conclusion that the Scoti were only another branch of the great Celtic family, which, after enjoying the advantages of commercial intercourse with Phœnicia and Carthage, and sharing in the civilisation of the distinguished nations then bordering on the Mediterranean, had at length been driven forth from their settlements on the western shores of Spain by the encroachments of the Roman Republic. The brief and very partial presence of a Scandinavian race in Scotland is still traceable in its dialects and topographical nomenclature; but no such indications within the limits of the ancient Dalriada, or in the Erse as contrasted with the British dialects of the Celtic language, betray indications of the Irish Scoti having interfused any elements of a foreign tongue into the ancient language of the Scottish Gael. Assuming, therefore, their Celtic origin we can readily understand how a race speaking a cognate dialect, and seeking the shores of Ireland, not as invaders, but as refugees, might rapidly acquire the supremacy over the older Celtic races inferior to them in the arts of war. Such a superior Celtic race were no less fitted to become the colonists and chiefs of Caledonia; and to this consanguinity between the Irish Scoti and the Scottish Picts, which rests more on philological evidence than on any theory of the direct origin of the former, we must look for one of the most important elements in that remarkable revolution of the ninth century known as the Scottish Conquest. The subdivisions of the great Celtic family are of much more importance in relation to the early history of the British islands, and especially of Scotland, than the later Teutonic migrations. There are, first, two great subdivisions, arising apparently from the different routes by which the Celtæ migrated from Asia to the north-west of Europe; and secondly, there are the minor subdivisions,—of greater importance in their bearing on the present inquiry,—resulting from successive arrivals in this country of offshoots from both the great streams of migration, modified by previous sojourn in different countries of Europe, and probably also by some intermingling with foreign races. Thus, the Cruithne and Piccardach, or Northern and Southern Picts of Scotland, are frequently distinguished by the Welsh chroniclers as the Gwyddyl duon and the Gwyddyl gwyn, or black and fair Gaels. Perhaps the term Du-Caledones (Di-Caledones), by which the Romans distinguished the Northern from the Vecturiones or Southern Picts, is only a combination of the Celtic du or dubh, black, with the generic name adopted by them. The Scoti appear also to have been of the fair race, which may, perhaps, be assumed as the indication of a purer Caucasian origin than the Cruithne or Gwyddyl duon of the north. They are termed in the Welsh Triads the Gwyddyl coch or Red Gaels; while the name of Scot, which has adhered to them and to the later country of their adoption, is none other than that of Nomade, Scuta, wanderer, first applied to the refugees—as we conceive from Spain—who in the second century B.C. sought a new home amid the Irish Celtæ.[518] It is to be noted, however, in reference to the former appellations, that both the Scots and Irish were wont to distinguish the Scandinavian invaders by the name of Dubh-Ghaill, the black strangers,—a term derived not from their complexion but their costume.

The presence of a Pictish race—the Cruithne—in Ireland, contemporary with the Scottish Piccardach and Cruithne, and the very great correspondence between many of the gold and bronze relics, as well as the older architectural and monumental antiquities of Scotland and Ireland, all point to a very close intercourse maintained between the two countries at an early period, while the remarkable historical poem, the Albanic Duan, already quoted, assigns to the Cruithne of Scotland an Irish origin. Under such circumstances the occupation of Dalriada by a Scotic colony speaking a dialect of the same language as the Caledonian Picts would be too unimportant a change to excite any notice beyond the limits of the Western Highlands. The native tribes whose borders were encroached upon would settle their disputes according to the summary diplomacy of primitive courts; and that done, intercourse, alliances, and intermarriages would follow as naturally between Scots and Picts as between Piccardach and Cruithne. So, in like manner, when the Scots in alliance with the Cruithne or Northern Picts conquered the Piccardach or Southern Picts, it was merely transferring the supremacy to a more powerful branch of the same great Celtic family. There existed few of the causes for lasting or deadly feud which occur in the struggle for power between rival races, such as the Moors and Goths of Spain, or the English and Irish. The struggle in England between the Normans and Saxons owed its chief elements of bitterness to other causes, as is proved by the readiness with which the two races intermingled when they met on common ground and on an equal footing in the Scottish Lowlands, under Malcolm Canmore. Aided by the very summary processes adopted in rude periods for getting quit of the elements of a disputed regal succession, the lapse of a single generation would suffice to obliterate the animosities between Scot and Pict, and to establish the former in undisputed possession of such supremacy as the Normans had to compel and to maintain for several generations in England, at the point of the sword. Perhaps it formed another element of interfusion among the various Celtic races that the supremacy of the Scoti was solely as warriors. The old native race are always referred to by the Irish bards as superior to them in the knowledge of the arts; a fact perhaps sufficiently accounted for on the presumption of their arrival in Ireland as refugees, after a protracted strife extending over more than one generation, during which the refined arts and luxuries of civilisation would disappear in the struggle for existence. This also may in some degree account for the fact that the Scoti allied themselves with the inferior and most dissimilar race in Scotland, compelled thereto obviously by the superiority of the Piccardach or Fair Picts. But the superior race finally triumphed. The Scoti, indeed, with the aid of the Cruithne, gained the ascendency; but on the extinction of the Scotic line of princes descended from Kenneth MacAlpin, or on the transference of the crown to a collateral branch, according to ancient Pictish law, it seems to have returned to the fair race of the Piccardach. The ultimate ground of dispute between the two, which proved the chief stumblingblock, and prevented a complete union of the southern and northern kingdoms during the reign of the Scottish dynasty, was this Celtic idea of succession through brothers, in opposition to the hereditary succession aimed at by the Dalriadic race, and which was not so effectually forced on the Northern Picts even by the Saxon Conquest as to prevent its revival by Donald Bain, on the death of Malcolm Canmore in 1093. The concluding stanzas of the Albanic Duan, written in the early part of Malcolm's reign, are peculiarly characteristic of the revived claims of the Gwyddyl duon,—

"Malcolm is now the king,
Son of Duncan of the yellow countenance,
His duration no one knoweth
But the knowing one who alone is knowing.

Two kings and fifty,—listen,—
To the son of Duncan of the ruddy countenance,
Of the race of Erc high, clear in gold,
Possessed Alban,—ye learned."

But though a variety of evidence seems to refer to the Scoti as inferior in arts to the native Irish, it is still probable that Ireland owes to them the introduction from the southern seats of European civilisation of some of the useful and ornamental arts, the traces of which are so abundant throughout the island. It is, however, chiefly to their undoubted superiority in arms over the kindred races that previously were in possession of the ancient kingdoms both of Hibernia and of Albany, that we must ascribe the singular and almost unparalleled occurrence of the conquerors transferring their own name to the whole race and country subject to their rule.

Such is a hasty glance at the most important events pertaining to the civil history of Scotland during the first centuries of the Christian era, with an attempt to account for some of the changes that have heretofore seemed most difficult to reconcile with ascertained facts. But other and no less remarkable changes were, meanwhile, being wrought on the native tribes of Caledonia. The legionaries of Rome had in vain attempted to penetrate into their fastnesses; but other Roman missionaries of civilisation followed with more abundant success. Towards the latter end of the fourth century, ere yet the little kingdom of Dalriada had a being, a youth, the son of a British Prince of Cumberland, visited Rome during the Pontificate of Damasus, elected Bishop of Rome, A.D. 366. Young Nynias, or Ninian, remained there till the succession of Siricius to the Popedom, A.D. 384, who, according to Bede, finding the young Briton trained in the faith and mysteries of the truth, ordained him, and sent him as a Christian missionary to preach the faith to the heathen tribes of North Britain. This is the celebrated British Bishop St. Ninian, or St. Ringan, as he is more frequently styled in Scotland, where numerous churches, chapels, holy wells, as also caves and other noted localities, still bear his name. Arriving in Britain towards the close of the fourth century, he tarried not among his native mountains of Cumberland, but crossing the Solway, established the chief seat of his mission at Whithern, in Wigtonshire, a prominent headland of the old province of Galloway, where he erected the celebrated Candida Casa, according to Bede, "a church of stone, built in a manner unusual among the Britons."[519] The fact is of great value, as disproving the assumption of both Scottish and Irish antiquaries, prior to Dr. Petrie, that the earliest British churches were constructed of wattles. The remains of Roman buildings in Scotland suffice to shew that the Britons of the fourth century had not then to learn, for the first time, the art of masonry, though the facilities offered by a thickly wooded country frequently led the first Christian missionaries to employ its oak and plaited reeds in the construction of their chapels and cells. We are told by Bede that the first church of Lindisfarne was built by St. Finan, more Scotorum, non de lapide, sed de robore secto et arundine.

The brethren of Iona, too, as Adomnan incidentally mentions, were challenged by the proprietor, from whose lands they had gathered stakes and wands for the repair of their dwellings. Yet notable as the cathedral church of Whithern doubtless was, we can have little hesitation in picturing it to our own minds as a sufficiently humble and primitive structure, though distinguished among contemporary edifices, and dear to us in no ordinary degree, as the first British temple consecrated to the rites of the true faith. The Candida Casa, or white-walled cathedral of Whithern, though dedicated originally to St. Martin,[520] became the shrine of the Scottish apostle St. Ninian, and the resort of many a royal and noble pilgrimage, down even to the Reformation; but it would be vain now to look for any relics of this most interesting primitive structure on the bold headland of Galloway, though the fragments of a later ruined chancel still mark the site of St. Ringan's famous shrine.