SCOTS AND PICTS.

41

importance in North Britain than those called Caledonians and Picts.

The Picts of the classic authors-the Cruithne of the Celtic-occupied a large portion of Ireland, but never appear to have been noticed by any writers except the native annalists. The early Scots of Caledonia may have held the like subordinate position in Northern Albion that the Cruithne (Picts) did in Ireland.

1

The earliest notice of the Scots in Britain is by Ammianus Marcellinus, when, in A.D. 360, the Scots, in conjunction with the Picts, devastated the Roman provinces in Britain. The most northerly of the Roman possessions in Britain had, previous to this date, been formed into the province of Valentia, on the extreme northern frontier of which the Romans had erected fortified lines extending between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. The Scots and Picts renewed their inroads in the years 364 and 368; and in these two irruptions were united with the Attacotti, another Caledonian tribe, which first makes its appearance in history at this time.

The Scots and Picts continued to harass the Roman provinces, and their inroads, apparently increasing, are noted in the years 382, 388, 396, 398, 409, 411, 416, 426, 436, and up to 445,2 when the Romans finally departed from Britain, and left their former subjects of its southern provinces an easy prey to the northern hordes, classed under the names of Scots and Picts.

1 Mon. Hist. Brit. lxxiii.

2 Mon. Hist. Brit.-pp. lxxiii.-lxxxii. 10, 62, 92, 93, 117, etc.

2

That the Scots in Britain were a prominent tribe and permanent inhabitants of Caledonia would appear from the position in which they are placed by Gildas, Nennius," and Bede3—viz., the Scots were from the north-west, or northwest and by west; the Picts from the north (of the Roman province of Valentia). Even if history had been silent on this point, the walls built by the Romans would sufficiently indicate the direction whence their enemies were expected. Ireland lies neither west nor north-west of the northern wall; and if it had been from Ireland that the Scottish invaders came, as it must have come by sea, there was no occasion for them to pass the defenceless coasts of richer provinces that they might face the fortified wall of the Romans, nor for the Romans to build a wall which could always be taken in reverse by their expected enemies.

X. "In the early period to which the present investigations are limited there is no authority for admitting an important Scandinavian element in the population of Caledonia."

66

XI. “ There is no authority for admitting as historical, and no necessity for supposing, any notable migration by sea into Caledonia from the period of Caesar's landing to the death of Severus. The great amount of population in that country which successfully resisted the Roman invaders, and perseveringly attacked the Roman

1 Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 10.

2 Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 60. 3 Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 117.

CALEDONIANS CELTIC.

43

provinces in Britain, appears, by reasonable deduction from authentic history, to have been Celtic."

There does not appear any sufficient authority for the assertion, or validity in the arguments, of those writers who, with great ingenuity and enthusiasm, have endeavoured to establish a Scandinavian or Teutonic origin' for any of the Caledonian tribes. Had any distinct race, alien to the Celtic inhabitants of Caledonia, existed before, or established themselves during, the three first centuries of the Christian era in the country on the northern sides of the Forth and Clyde, the Romans, with their usual insidious and unscrupulous policy, would not have failed to form a league with the intrusive element before undertaking their expeditions against the Caledonians; whereas we know that their various tribes were unanimous in cherishing an intense hatred and in offering a combined opposition to the Romans. Nor was this a

2

1 A charter granted between A.D. 1171 and 1199 by David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of the Scottish king, to Malcolm, son of Bartholf, the ancestor of the families of the name of Leslie, is addressed to all true subjects, lay or clerical, "Francis, Anglis, Flamingis, et Scotis." Here the Teutonic elements are strongly marked, the Scandinavian entirely omitted; yet, long before the date of this charter, there were not wanting, although in a less proportion, Scandinavian ingredients in the population of Aberdeenshire. (This charter is printed in Robertson's Antiquities of Aberdeenshire, vol. i. p. 546, Spalding Club.)

2 The Saxons, who afterwards formed so prominent a portion of the population of Scotland, are unknown to history until A.D. 287, when they are first mentioned by Eutropius as infesting the coasts of Belgica and Armorica. It is nearly a hundred years before the Saxons are again mentioned, and then by Ammianus Marcellinus, as, along with Picts, Scots, and Attacots, vexing the Britons by unceasing attacks. But it is to the eleventh century, and the reign of Malcolm Canmore, that Scotland owes that quiet influx of Saxon settlers that has sometimes been called "the Saxon Conquest."

transient enthusiasm, for the same resolute opposition to aggression on their own territories, and vindictive retaliation on the Roman districts, was continued by the Caledonians during the whole period of the Roman occupation of South Britain. So enduring and remarkable an accordance in feeling and action amongst many Celtic tribes can only be accounted for by supposing them to have been directed by some unceasing and general controlling power. The cruel superstition, subtle policy, and paramount authority of the Druids, stimulated by Roman persecution, suggests the influence of that priesthood as the most probable explanation of such unwonted unanimity and perseverance in the various Celtic tribes of Caledonia.

The repeated revolts of different tribes in South Britain, as the Iceni, Ordovices, Silures, etc., who rose against their oppressors, and the severities inflicted by the Romans consequent on the re-establishment of their authority, will sufficiently account for Caledonia being crowded by exiled Britons. For example, in the case of the Brigantes, who occupied the country on the north of the Mersey and Humber, it is only reasonable to presume that when vanquished they did not wait to be exterminated, although that is said to have been their fate, but retired from their rugged and forest-clad region across a nominal boundary, along with the Caledonians, with whom they had leagued in attacks upon their southern neighbours and foreign masters.1

1 1 Whilst A. Didius-Gallus was Propractor in Britain, between A.D. 50 and 58, the Romans, appearing as the

Thereafter, as restless and land

protectors of Cartismandua, the infamous queen of the Brigantes, defeated that people under the command of

less exiles, guided by a proscribed priesthood, it is not difficult to account for their hostility to former oppressors or to settlers on lands of which they had been dispossessed.1

name.

The Brigantes, it is probable from their position, were of the oldest Celtic race, and this is supported by one of the tribes in Ireland, mentioned by Ptolemy, being of the same Their resistance to the Romans in earlier periods, and their insurrections afterwards in support of the northern assailants of the Romans, may also be deemed corroborative of the identity of the Brigantes with the Caledonians, and of their being of the Gaelic branch. Probably, although such was the original tribe that occupied the territory in which our earliest histories place the Brigantes, there is proof that they were intermixed and in communion with the tribes of the Celtic

their chief Venusius, the husband of Cartismandua.-Annals of Tacitus, Mon. Hist. Brit. xxxvii. But the final defeat and dispossession of the Brigantes by the Romans is mentioned by Pausanias (Mon. Hist. Brit. 1.), and appears to have occurred when the Brigantes joined the Caledonians, who had made an irruption into the Roman province. These northern confederates were repelled by the Propraetor Lollius Urbicus soon after the accession of the Emperor Antoninus Pius in A.D. 138.

What was understood by the destruction of a people such as the Brigantes is explained by a passage in the Annals of Tacitus (Mon. Hist. Brit. xxxvii.), viz., that on the insurrection and pertinacions resistance of the Silures against the Romans, the Roman governor Ostorius declared

"that he would destroy the very name of the Silures out of Britain, in the same way as had been done formerly with the Sigambri, who had been transported to Gaul." This expression, having reached the devoted tribe, is said to have stimulated their fiercest passions.

1 Pinkerton, in his Enquiry into the Early History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 42 of the edition of 1814, says, in his usual style, "Pausanias seems, in total ignorance of Britain, to call the Maeatae Brigantes." In part at least the Maeatae probably were Brigantes.

2 The names of places on the slopes of the Alps and other parts of Western Europe render it probable that this tribe were early inhabitants of these localities.