Ailred distinguishes Laudonia and Calatria (in Stirlingshire) from Scotia when he says, ‘Cum Angliæ victor Willelmus Laodoniam Calatriam Scotiam usque ad Abernith penetraret.’—Ailred de bello apud Standardum.
Ordericus Vitalis equally distinguishes Moravia from Scotia when he says of Angus Comes de Moravia, who rebelled against David I., ‘Scotiam intravit.’—Ord. Vit. p. 702.
Thirdly, the same distinction is maintained in the early notices of the inhabitants of the different provinces. Thus Ailred describes the Scottish army at the battle of the Standard under David I. as consisting of the following bodies of troops:—1st, of Galwenses; 2d, of Cumbrenses et Tevidalenses; 3d, of Laodonenses cum Insulanis et Lavernanis; 4th, of Scoti et Muravenses. The accurate Hailes deduces from this,—‘The Scots, properly so called, were the inhabitants of the tract between the Firth of Forth and the country then called Moray.’—Hailes, An. vol. i. p. 78.
[5]. Nam Clota et Bodotria, diversi maris aestibus per immensum revectae, angusto terrarum spatio dirimuntur: quod tum praesidiis firmabatur: atque omnis propior sinus tenebatur, summotis velut in aliam insulam hostibus.—Tacit. in Vit. Ag., c. 23.
[6]. Hector Boece is the first of our historians who brings this Highland barrier prominently forward as a mountain range. He says, ‘Situs autem hic lacus (Loch Lomond) est ad pedem Grampii montis Pictorum olim Scotorumque regni limitis, qua ab ostiis Deae amnis latera Aberdoniae abluentis mare Germanicum prospectans incurvus asper atque intractabilis (quod et nomen ejus vernaculum Granzebain significat) per mediam Scotiam in alterum mare tendens obvio hoc lacu excipitur sistiturque.’—Ed. 1520, F. vii. 45.
His object was, by identifying this range with the boundary between the Picts and Scots, to extend the territories of the latter, and by applying to it the name of Tacitus’s Mons Grampius he has stamped upon it ever since the appellation of the Grampians. But the older authorities know nothing of the Grampians, and never mention this range of mountains. They only specify the mountain ranges of the Mounth and Drumalban. Thus the Tract de Situ Albaniae (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 135) mentions the ‘mons qui Mound vocatur, qui a mari occidentali usque ad mare orientale extenditur.’ And another description (ib. p. 214) has, ‘Et itaque est quoddam vastum quod vocatur le Mounth, ubi est pessimum passagium sine cibo, longitudinis lx. leucarum et latitudinis xvi. leucarum.’
The other range is frequently mentioned by Adamnan in the seventh century as ‘Dorsum Britanniae,’ and once as ‘Dorsi montes Britannici, quos Pictos et Scotos utrosque disterminant.’ The oldest of the Latin chronicles mention Fergus, the first king of Dalriada, as reigning ‘a monte Drumalban usque ad mare Hiberniae’ (ib. p. 130); and the Tract de Situ Albaniae mentions the ‘montes qui dividunt Scotiam ab Arregaithel.’
As this chain was the great boundary which originally separated the Picts from the Scots of Dalriada, it is essential to a clear understanding of the early history that its real position should not be mistaken, and it is only necessary to examine the passages in which it occurs to see that it was used with precision, and to identify the mountain chain which was meant by it. Much confusion, however, has been thrown into early Scottish history by the loose and arbitrary way in which this name has been applied by modern writers to any great mountain chain which they fancied might represent it, arising merely from a want of accurate acquaintance with the true character of the mountain system of Scotland, and a careless use of authorities. Of modern historians Pinkerton alone has rightly placed the name of Drumalban on the ridge which separates Argyllshire from Perthshire. Mr. Cosmo Innes, in the map in his Scotland in the Middle Ages, places it upon the great range of the Mounth, in which he is followed by Mr. E. W. Robertson, in his Scotland under her Early Kings; and Mr. Burton has made confusion worse confounded by identifying it with “the range now called the Grampians” (Hist. vol. i. p. 15); in this following Boece. Fordun gives an elaborate description of it in his Chronicle, B. ii. c. 7; and Buchanan rightly describes it as the highest part of Breadalban, and clearly indicates it as the ridge separating the east from the west waters, ‘ex eo enim dorso flumina in utrumque mare decurrunt, alia in septentrionem, alia in meridiem.’
The name Dorsum Britanniæ implies that it was part of the ridge which might be called the backbone of Britain, separating the rivers flowing in opposite directions, as the backbone of the body separates the ribs—a definition that never could be applicable to the so-called Grampians. The name of Drum is found, too, attached to the range along the whole course of it. We have Tyndrum and Cairndrum at the part whence the Tay flows; the Drummond hills at the source of the Spey where the range divides Badenoch from Lochaber; Achadrum where it crosses the great glen of Scotland between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy; and Loch Droma where it crosses the valley called the Deary-mor, in Ross-shire, at the head of the river Broom.
[7]. Provinciis septentrionalium Pictorum, hoc est, eis quae arduis atque horrentibus montium jugis ab australibus eorum sunt regionibus sequestratae.—B. iii. c. iv.