Celtic Scotland

by W. F. Skene

[57]. The early Latin editions have, instead of Ienae aestuarium, Fines aestus. It is possible that this may be the correct reading, and that Wigtown Bay may have marked the utmost limit to which the Roman troops penetrated in Agricola’s second campaign.

[58]. The early Latin editions all read Leva. The edition of 1525 first altered it to Deva, and is followed by the late editions, and also by Wilberg; but the distance both from the Firth of Tay in the south and from Kinnaird’s Head corresponds more exactly with the mouth of the North Esk than with that of the river Dee.

[59]. The editions of Ptolemy all vary as to the situation of Loxa. The Ulm editions place it after the Varar aestus at Lossiemouth; the Strasburg editions at the mouth of the Nairn; while Wilberg’s edition places it before the Varar, at the Dornoch Firth. The Ulm reading is here preferred from the resemblance of Loxa to Lossie. The reading which places it north of the Varar seems inadmissible, as it is described by Ptolemy as the mouth of a river, and not an estuary or a bay, such as the Dornoch or Cromarty Firths would be described.

[60]. This has generally been supposed to be Loch Fine, in the usual random way of selecting the first large loch near about that part of the coast, but the position corresponds much more nearly with that of Loch Long. Its distance from the promontory of Kintyre is too great, and its vicinity to the Clyde too marked, for Loch Fine. The name, moreover, has clearly reference to the neighbouring Lake of Lomond, and the district of Lennox, the old name of which was Leamhan.

[61]. In the same loose way the Linnhe Loch is usually supposed to be meant by the Longus Fluvius, but it is impossible to suppose that a great arm of the sea—the greatest on the west coast—could be expressed by the word Fluvius. The editions give two different readings of the position, but that of all the editions, except Wilberg’s, corresponds with the mouth of the river Add.

[62]. Epidium has generally been identified with the island of Isla, from the natural enough inference that its name connects it with the Epidium promontorium, and consequently historians have been much at a loss where to look for the two Ebudas, and have resorted to mere conjecture. The Epidii seem, however, to have occupied Lorn as well as Kintyre, and the name would be appropriate to any island on that coast. Ptolemy places the two Ebudas close together, and makes them the most westerly of the group, while Maleus or Mull is the most northerly, placing it between Engaricenna and Epidium, which latter is the most easterly; and a comparison between Ptolemy’s positions and those of the islands south of the point of Ardnamurchan seems to leave little doubt as to their identity.

Ptolemy’s five Ebudas with Monarina form the group of islands frequently mentioned in ancient Irish documents as ‘Ara, Ile, Rachra acus innsi orcheana,’ that is Arran, Isla, Rachra, and the other islands.

[63]. This appears from many circumstances. Pausanias implies it when he says that Antoninus, who advanced the frontier of the province from Hadrian’s wall to the Firths of Forth and Clyde, took land from the Brigantes (Paus. viii. 43). Tacitus mentions Venusius, King of the Brigantes, hostile to Rome, and that his frontiers were to the north of the province appears from the geographer of Ravenna placing the town of Venusio north of the stations at the wall. The early Latin editions of Ptolemy omit the Gadeni, and call the tribe north of the wall Otalini; but the edition of 1525, and the later editions, have ‘Gadeni, the more northern (western); Otadeni, the more southern (eastern);’ and the name Gadeni occurs in inscriptions. If this is the correct reading, however, it is obvious that Ptolemy considered them as substantially the same people, as he places the towns of Bremenium and Curia among them generally, without distinguishing to which tribe each belonged, and the terminations are the same. Inscriptions mentioning the god of the Gadeni have been found at Reesingham and at Old Penrith, within the territory of the Brigantes. On the other hand, an inscription to the goddess Brigantia has been found at Middlebie, within the territory of the Selgovæ.

[64]. This seems to be the town mentioned by Bede, Ec. Hist. B. i. c. 12, ‘Orientalis (sinus) habet in medio sui urbem Giudi.’

[65]. Trimontium has been identified with the Eildon hills in Roxburghshire, owing simply to the resemblance of the form of the hill with a station supposed to be called the Three Mountains; but it is more probable that the syllable Tri represents the Welsh Tre or Tref, and that it is a rendering of Trefmynydd, or the Town on the Mountain. To place it at the Eildon hills is to do great violence to Ptolemy’s text.