596, Jugulatio filiorum Aidan i Bran Domangart et Eochad Find et Artuir i Cath Chirchind in quo victus est Aedan.—Ib.
[182]. Reeves’s Adamnan, ed. 1874, p. 12. The author cannot identify the battle of Leithrig, but Adamnan tells us that Artur and Eochoid Find, two of Aidan’s sons, were killed in the battle of the Miathi, which identifies it with the battle of Chirchind, fought in 596. This was the last year of St. Columba’s life. It is difficult to fix the locality of this battle. Circinn was a name applied to the district of which Maghgirginn or Mearns, now Kincardineshire, was a part, but Aidan could hardly have penetrated so far east. Dr. Reeves thinks it may have been at the place now called Kirkintulloch. The term ‘Barbari’ is applied by Adamnan both to Picts and Saxons, but the name Miathi seems to belong to the Picts. The same war may have embraced Saxons also, as Domangart, slain the same year, perished, according to Adamnan, in battle ‘in Saxonia.’
[183]. Bede, Hist. Ecc. B. i. c. xxxiv. Tighernac has, in 600, ‘Cath Saxonum la h-Aedain ubi cecidit Eanfraith frater Etalfraich la Maeluma me Baedain in quo victor erat.’ The Irish annalist ignores Aidan’s defeat, and fixes upon Maeluma’s success in cutting off Theobald with his troops. By some it has been supposed that Dalstone in Cumberland was the scene of this battle; but while the word Degsastane passes naturally into Dawstone, it never could have formed Dalstone.
CHAPTER IV.
ETHNOLOGY OF BRITAIN.
Inquiry into Ethnology of Britain proper at this stage.
Having thus given the traditionary history of that dark interval which intervened between the departure of the Romans from the island of Britain in the beginning of the fifth century, and the period when we become once more acquainted with its history in the latter part of the sixth century, and find the barbarian tribes who had assailed the Roman province now settled in the form of kingdoms with definite limits; and having endeavoured to extricate from it a chronological narrative of events based on historic truth, we may pause here to make some inquiry into the ethnology of the races composing these kingdoms.
The traditionary writers describe the whole of these four nations—the Britons, Picts, Scots, and Saxons—as having been colonies of foreign races who came into Britain at different periods; and, in a sense, this is true of all of them, though the immigration of the first two took place at a very remote period, and long before we have any historical record connected with the inhabitants of the island. Archæology, however, enables us to trace the previous existence of a people of a different race, indications of which are to be found to a limited extent in the earlier notices of Britain and in its topography.
An Iberian or Basque people preceded the Celtic race in Britain and Ireland.
A distinguished writer on ethnology lays down certain propositions which he terms fixed points in British ethnology. His first proposition is this: ‘Eighteen hundred years ago the population of Britain comprised peoples of two types of complexion, the one fair, and the other dark. The dark people resembled the Aquitani and the Iberians; the fair people were like the Belgic Gauls.’ His second proposition is, ‘The people termed Gauls, and those called Germans, by the Romans, did not differ in any important physical character.’ These two propositions we may accept as well founded.[[184]] Certain it is that when the Romans entered Britain and became acquainted with its inhabitants in that part of the island nearest Gaul, they do not record any difference in their physical appearance. On the contrary, Tacitus remarks that they resembled each other in every respect. When the war with the Silures, who occupied territories in the south-west, brought them in contact with that people, Tacitus thus records the result of their observation. Their complexion was different and of a darker hue. Their hair was curly, and they resembled the Iberians: and when Agricola’s campaigns made them acquainted with the inhabitants of Caledonia, the only observation they made was that they were larger-limbed and had redder hair, and in this respect resembled the Germans more than the Gauls.
At an early period, the Greek writers, in whom we find the earliest notices of Britain, seem to have had a persuasion that the portion of the inhabitants of Britain who were more particularly connected with the working of tin, possessed peculiarities which distinguished them from the rest. At first they knew only of islands called the Cassiterides, so called from a word signifying tin, as the quarter from whence tin was brought. They then became aware that tin was wrought in Britain as well, and they came to view the Cassiterides as islands lying between Spain and Britain. Diodorus tells us that ‘they who dwell near the promontory of Britain which is called Belerion (Land’s End) are singularly fond of strangers, and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, civilised in their habits. These people obtain the tin by skilfully working the soil which produces it; this being rocky, has earthy interstices, in which, working the ore, and then fusing, they reduce it to metal; and when they have formed it into cubical shapes, they convey it to a certain island lying off Britain, named Ictis; for at the low tides the intervening space being laid dry, they carry thither in wagons the tin in great abundance.’ He also says, ‘Above the country of the Lusitanians, there are many mines of tin in the little islands called Cassiterides from this circumstance, lying off Iberia, in the ocean, and much of it also is carried across from the Bretannic Isle to the opposite coast of Gaul, and thence conveyed on horses by the merchants, through the intervening Celtic land, to the people of Massilia, and to the city called Narbonne.’ Though the name Ictis leads one to refer this description to the Isle of Wight, it is more probable that the present St. Michael’s Mount is meant. At ebb tide it is accessible from the mainland, and tin is found there in two ways, in streamlets and in mines. By the Cassiterides, the Scilly Islands seem to be intended.[[185]]