Subsequently the name of Scotia extended over these districts also, and the kingdom by degrees assumed that compact and united form which it ever afterwards exhibited.
The three propositions—1st, That Scotia, prior to the tenth century, was Ireland, and Ireland alone; 2d, That when applied to Scotland it was considered a new name superinduced upon the older designation of Alban or Albania; and 3d, That the Scotia of the three succeeding centuries was limited to the districts between the Forth, the Spey, and Drumalban,—lie at the very threshold of Scottish history.[[4]]
The history of the name of a country is generally found to afford a very important clue to the leading features in the history of its population. This is remarkably the case with regard to the history of Scotland, and the facts just indicated in connection with the application of its name at different periods throw light upon the corresponding changes in the race and position of its inhabitants. They point to the fact that, prior to the tenth century, none of the small and independent tribes which originally occupied the country, and are ever the characteristic of an early period in their social history, or of the petty kingdoms which succeeded them, were sufficiently powerful and extended, or predominated sufficiently over the others, to give a general name to the country; and they point to a great change in the population of the country and the relative position of these kingdoms to each other in the tenth century, and to the elevation, by some important revolution, of the race of the Scots over the others, whose territory formed a centre round which the formerly independent petty kingdoms now assumed the form of dependent provinces, and from which an influence and authority proceeded that gradually extended the name of Scotia over the whole of the country, and incorporated its provinces into one compact and co-extensive monarchy.
Physical features of the country.
The great natural features of a country so mountainous and intersected by so many arms of the sea as that of Scotland, seem at all times to have influenced its political divisions and the distribution of the various races in its occupation. The original territories of the savage tribes of Caledonia appear to have differed little from those of the petty kingdoms which succeeded them, and the latter as little from the subsequent provinces of the monarchy. The same great leading boundaries, the same natural defences, are throughout found occupying a similar position and exercising a similar influence upon the internal history of the country, while, amidst the numerous fluctuations and changes which affected the position of the northern tribes towards the southern and more civilised kingdoms of Britain, the two ever showed a tendency to settle down upon the great natural bulwarks of the south of Scotland as their mutual boundary, to which, indeed, the independent position of the northern monarchy in no slight degree owed its existence.
Where the great arm of the western sea forming the Solway Firth contracts the island to a comparatively narrow breadth, not exceeding seventy miles, a natural boundary was thus partially formed, which had its influence at the very dawn of Scottish history; but, if during the occupation of the island by the Romans, who placed their trust more in the artificial protection of a rampart guarded by troops, the comparatively level ground in this contracted part of the country presented facilities for such a construction, the great physical bulwark of the Cheviot Hills had an irresistible attraction to fix the boundary eventually between the Solway and the Tweed, where that chain of hills extending between them proved so effectual a defence to the country along the whole of its range, that every hostile entrance into it was made either at the eastern or the western termination of that mountain chain.
Farther north is the still more remarkable natural boundary where the Eastern and the Western Seas penetrate into the country in the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and approach within a comparatively short distance of each other, separating the northern from the southern regions of Scotland by an isthmus not exceeding thirty-five miles in breadth. This was remarked as early as the first Roman invasion of Scotland, when the historian Tacitus observes that these estuaries almost intersect the country, leaving only a narrow neck of land, and that the northern part formed, as it were, another island.[[5]]
Proceeding farther north, the great series of the mountain ranges, stretching from the south-west to the north-east, present one continuous barrier, intersected indeed by rivers forming narrow and easily defended passes, but exhibiting the appearance of a mighty wall, which separates a wild and mountainous region from the well-watered and fertile plains and straths on the south and east; and, while the latter have been at all times exposed to the vicissitudes of external revolution, and the greatly more important and radical change from the silent progress of natural colonisation, the recesses of the Highlands have ever proved the shelter and protection of the descendants of the older tribes of the country, and the limit to the advance of a stranger population.
MAP
SHEWING
MOUNTAIN CHAINS
W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh & London.