Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her

by William Elliot Griffis

For example, what became of the “Picts,” who figure so largely in ancient writings, before Pictland became Scotland? Old legends represent King Kenneth II, who died in 995, as having “exterminated” the Picts, who had slain his father. Thus these aborigines sank, in popular tradition, to mere mythology. A Pict now seems but as a nixie, a brownie, or some sort of mythical, even fairy folk, hardly human, to whom great feats, including even the building of Glasgow Cathedral, are attributed. In 1814, Sir Walter Scott met a dwarfish traveller in the Orkneys, whom the natives regarded as a “Pecht” or Pict. So says Andrew Lang. The Picts have been so swallowed up in oblivion that they are like “the ten lost tribes of Israel”—who never were “lost” in any sense but that of absence of records, and from a genealogical point of view. I have met intelligent persons who thought “the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee”—so denominated by Henri Havard—were as Pompeii and only waiting to be excavated and come to resurrection in museums!

The Picts of Scotland are exactly where the ancient Ebisu or Ainu of Japan are—in the veins of the people now called the Japanese. The descendants of the Picts to-day talk Scotch, or English, either of the American or British variety. It is no more fashionable in Scotland to trace one’s lineage to Pictish forebears, than in Japan to the Ainu or Ebisu, from whom millions of Japanese are descended. Who wants to be descended from common savages, when gods, kings, nobles, and chiefs are as plentiful as herring or blackberries?

CHAPTER X
STIRLING: CASTLE, TOWN, AND TOWERS

To ride in fast express trains from town to town, across the Strathmore, or Great Valley, containing the central plain of Scotland, on which lies almost every one of its large cities and industrial centres, makes one thrill when contrasting the present with the past. Our comrade, Quandril, so fresh on Scottish soil that she had hardly got the ship’s motion out of her head, was completely daft, when speeding from Edinburgh to Stirling. So much history, visualized and made real, acted like a fierce stimulant. The cannonade of fresh impressions, at every moment, added still further to her delightful brain disturbance.

Here are two entries from her journal:—

“I am delighted with Scotland. As I realize that I am on Scottish ground, I can scarcely understand the indifference of the people, who walk about as if it were nothing remarkable.... Such a sight as met our astonished vision! Never had our New World eyes seen anything like this ancient city.”

In riding about in the suburbs, Quandril gathered some wild poppies. She noticed that every place had its title—Lanark Villa, Rose Villa, Breezy Brae, etc. In several places, a sign was up announcing that “this land may be ‘fued.’” The person who rented the land, using it, without receiving a title in fee simple, was a “feuar.”

How different the Scottish landscape, with its myriad chimneys, from the feudal days, when this French invention was unknown! When Scotland had a Robin Hood, in the person of Rob Roy, this feature was rare. In picturing the long-armed and famous cowboy, cattle-dealer, friend of the poor, and enemy of the rich, Sir Walter Scott has told of the desolate character of the tract of country stretching from the Clyde to the Grampians. One may recall how the young English horsewoman, whose feelings are described during the tedious ride toward the adventurous mountain-land, found a willow wand before the door, as an emblem that the place was tabooed. At one town we were told of a relic—the coulter of a plough—kept in commemoration of the event, which may remind us of the story of the cicerone, who showed the sword with which Balaam smote his ass. Being told by the tourist that Balaam did not actually smite, but only desired a sword that he might smite with it, he received the answer, “Well, that’s the sword he wanted.” This outdid even our own P. T. Barnum’s story of the club that (might have) killed Captain Cook. Since at twenty smaller places had the authentic club been exhibited, Barnum’s show could not be without it, and keep up its reputation.

To the focus of Scottish history, Stirling, we hied during several of our journeyings in Scotland. As with Niagara, at the first vision one may not have grasped the full glory, but a second or third view deepened one’s impression. There are others, however, who in imagination, after having read Scott’s “Lady of the Lake” have pictured to their minds “Stirling’s towers” and were not in the least disappointed, when beholding for the first time the reality in stone. A great rock, like that in Edinburgh, rises sheer from the plain. The tourist sees one of those natural fortresses, around which, first a church, then a fair, then a village, then a town, and finally, a famous city have had their evolution. One needs but little power of the historic imagination to go back to the days before the streets, avenues, and imposing buildings of to-day existed, and think of steel-clad knights and long trains of men with claymore and target. The castle, built on a precipitous rock, overlooks one of those low, flat, alluvial plains, which the Scots call a carse.

Stirling, which had several names, in different forms, beside the Gaelic “Struithla,” was also known as “Snowdon,” as those may remember who have read Scott.