The History Of Scotland - Volume 1: From The Roman Occupation To Feudal Scotland E-Book

Andrew Lang

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 301

Beschreibung

This is volume 1, covering the time from the Roman Occupation to Feudal Scotland. In many volumes of several thousand combined pages the series "The History of Scotland" deals with something less than two millenniums of Scottish history. Every single volume covers a certain period in an attempt to examine the elements and forces which were imperative to the making of the Scottish people, and to record the more important events of that time.

Leseprobe

The History Of Scotland – Volume 1

From The Roman Occupation To Feudal Scotland

Andrew Lang

Contents:

The Roman Occupation

After The Romans.

The Dynasty Of Kenneth Macalpine.

Early Culture In Scotland.

The Dynasty Of Malcolm Canmore.

Feudal Scotland.

THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND – VOLUME 1, Andrew Lang

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849604615

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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THE ROMAN OCCUPATION

To the wisdom which comes after the event the map of Scotland seems, in part, a prophecy of her history. If one race occupied the country, if another race, more powerful in arms and perhaps in force of character, invaded the land, the ancient owners would naturally find refuge among the glens of the central hills, and beside the deeply penetrating sea-lochs of the western coast, while the new-comers would settle in the Lowlands and on the fertile plains of the eastern shores.

So far the prophecy of the map was fulfilled. The Celts, and perhaps a race more ancient than the Celts, were pushed beyond the Grampians, and into the difficult recesses of Moydart, Morar, Knoydart, Argyll, Lochaber, Badenoch, and the Islands. Teutonic invaders and Norman adventurers occupied the East Coast, the comparatively accessible Border district, and the great straths of Tay, Forth, Clyde, and Tweed, lording it over the remnant of the Gael.

But the nature of the land revealed by the map could lead no observer to anticipate that the successful invaders, though of the same Germanic race and speech as those who dispossessed the Celts in England, would in Scotland form a kingdom separate from theirs, hostile to theirs, and only to be united with theirs after a contest of six hundred years. Nothing in the topography of the country contains a prophecy of this separation of the Teutonic or English conquerors of southern Scotland into a separate Scottish nation. That severance of the English north and south of Tweed was the result of historical events, which made Scotland a nation partly Celtic, leaning on many occasions to alliance with the English south of Tweed; partly English, leaning ever, as against England, to alliance with the distant realm of France.

The record of the long resistance of the English of Scotland to England, of the long resistance of the Celts of Scotland to the English of Scotland, of the attempts at union, often defeated, much disputed, and finally successful, is the history of the country. On this history the Roman occupation, so potent in other lands, made scarcely a mark. A few camps and other material relics remain, but, by one of the many paradoxes of Scottish history, the Roman law came later to affect the law of a state on which the arms and civilisation of Rome had left hardly a trace, while Southern Britain, so long a regular Roman province, is singularly uninfluenced by Roman law. The absence of the material influence of Rome in Scotland is accounted for by the appearance of a people who came here after the Roman Eagles had fled, and who, though as English as the population of Lincolnshire or Yorkshire, were destined to be called by the name of certain Irish Celts, " Scots ", and practically to make the history of the country. They entered on domains which Celtic hordes had ravaged before their arrival, and thus Rome, except for her law and her form of Christianity, is hardly to be reckoned among the influences which created Scotland.

The Roman occupation of Scotland south of Forth and Clyde, and her excursions through the regions north of this line, are thus only important so far as Roman authors have left us accounts of the races whom they encountered. The country now called Scotland cannot be said to have any records in written history before the Roman occupation of Britain. Even during the centuries of Roman power our sources of intelligence are meagre. Ancient historians, biographers, and geographers, writing in Latin or Greek, were more concerned with the fortunes of the Roman arms, or with the exploits of individual generals, than with ethnological distinctions of local races, with topographical details, and with the manners of barbarous peoples. When the Romans depart, literature nearly ceases; and when literature begins again, its remains are scanty, fantastic, and obscure.

As to the races who inhabited Scotland before the Roman Eagles crossed Tweed or Tay, we have no evidence but that of tradition; of archaeology working among the tombs; and of etymology dealing with old names of places or tribes. To discuss the race and language of the tribes who incised on the rocks the universal hieroglyphs of early man; who used the polished neolithic weapons; to found theories on the shapes of skulls unearthed from barrows, is the province of another science, not of history. That Celtic tribes, at remote and unknown periods, settled in the north of our island, is certain. What earlier inhabitants they found already in possession, if they found any, is matter of dispute. As we shall see, it is believed by some scholars that these earlier races were, long after the Celtic invasions of Britain, still well represented in many parts of Scotland under the names of Picts and Caledonians; were encountered by the Romans; and were, later, absorbed by, and lost in the mass of, Celts; adopting a Celtic language, and blending with the Gaelic-speaking tribes.

This people of Celts, the advanced-guard of the " Indo-European Aryans," was divided into two chief stems. First there came the speakers of Gaelic, still found in Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Scottish Highlands. They call themselves Gaidhel (English Gael}, which of old they wrote Goidel. The other Celtic stem consists of the people now extant in Brittany and Wales, and (in the earlier part of this history) still persistent in Cumbria. These are Britons, but science prefers their Welsh name, Brythons. They were akin to the Continental Gauls, as Caesar saw, and are believed to have come to this island later than their fellow Celts, the Goidels, whom they drove west and north.

On this theory the Romans, when they arrived in our island, would find the southern part, especially the south and east coasts, tenanted by Brythons, Welsh-speaking kinsmen of the peoples of Gaul. Remoter parts of the country, especially in the west, would be the home of Goidels, Gaelic-speaking tribes. Intermingled with these, or even existing in separate communities in the North, would be, perhaps, men of an earlier unascertained race. The descendants of these men were, possibly, the tribes later unfavourably known to Romans and Britons as the Caledonians; still later, as the Picts. It will be seen, however, that philologists are by no means of one mind as to the hypothesis that the Caledonians or Picts were, in blood and speech, distinct from, and prior to, the Gaelic-speaking peoples. 

In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar landed in southern Britain, and penetrated north of the Thames. He found a people dwelling (when security was needed) in huts circled with a ditch and rampart, and surrounded by bush. Near the coast they were agricultural; farther inland they were pastoral. They painted themselves blue (perhaps only to strike terror in war); we do not hear that they tattooed themselves. Their most important custom (if correctly reported) was Polyandry; ten or twelve men, generally brothers, or a father with his sons, had wives, it is said, in common. It has been suggested by Professor Rhys that Csesar may have borrowed his report of this trait from " some Greek book of imaginary travels "; or that he misunderstood " the Joint-Family," now to be studied in India; or that he was thinking of a legend about Polyandry among the people (conceivably not Celtic) of the yet unexplored interior. The important fact for us is that we find Polyandry again attributed by classical writers, centuries later, to the tribes of Northern Scotland, and that the Pictish law of succession in the Royal Family is alleged to have been through females. Sons of a Royal Pictish mother succeeded each other on the throne, and, failing these, the succession went to sisters' sons. This points, of course, to an age when fathership was uncertain, as it would necessarily be under Polyandry. Now this custom of Polyandry is declared not to be " Aryan." This means that scholars, examining the words for relationships in " Aryan " languages, decide that the peoples who speak these languages had developed the present family system before their separation. If this view be correct, then neither the Picts, nor the Southern Britons described by Caesar, if really polyandrous, were members of the "Aryan race," but were relics of some prior " non-Aryan " population.

It is probable that this philological opinion will have to be modified, and the common names for relations, in the Aryan languages, seem to need a new critical examination. Even in Greek, we find words which denote kinship reckoned on the mother's side, as it is by polyandrous races: such a word is homo-galaktes, "Kindred in the same mother's milk." At present it seems unsafe to regard a race as necessarily " non-Aryan " because its institutions offer traces of kinship through females. The evidence, on the other hand, from customs, such as that of reckoning kin on the female side, is also not to be pressed too hard. Customs are apt to endure, especially in royal families, after the circumstances in which they arose have long ceased to exist. It is certain that the natives both of northern and southern Britain, when the Romans made their acquaintance, were in stages of culture which are not usually found associated with promiscuity or polyandry. This means that they had already reached a condition beyond the state of savagery - for example, their possession of horses and metals placed them above even barbarians, such as the Maoris of New Zealand.

The peoples of Southern Britain, whom Caesar knew, used a gold coinage, had weapons of iron, and fought from chariots. In these respects, at least, they were on a level with, or above, the civilisation of Homer's heroes, who had no coinage. The Britons had kings, and, as in Homer, a just and rightful king was rewarded by luck in harvests, therefore in weather. Of their religion we speak later, when describing the conversion of Scotland.

For nearly a century after Caesar, Rome left Britain alone. In A.D. 43, Claudius sent an army to the island. But, by A.D. 50, the Roman province, thus subdued, included no part of modern Scotland. The province was bounded by the Severn on the west, by the Humber on the north. Farther north the nearest frontier tribe, the Brigantes, occupied a territory which probably extended to the Firth of Forth. The Brigantes, inevitably, came to blows with Rome, and the Romans learned that, beyond their domains, lay a people called by them Caledonii. The natives were said to live on fish and milk. Later we are told that they ate no fish. Their king, men said, was not allowed to possess private property, or to marry. In this state of things the king would never be succeeded by a son, and the Pictish crown, in fact, did go through brothers, not sons. We need not conclude, as we have said, that these far northern peoples were still polyandrous, or promiscuous in the relations of the sexes; but survivals of such a condition, like female kinship, may have clung (as often occurs) to the royal house.

In 78 A.D. Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, who wrote his life, arrived as Governor of the Province of Britain. Its northern boundary was now probably the southern march of modern Scotland. Porches, baths, and an elegant conviviality, says Tacitus, with temples and schools, were introduced with marvellous expedition. In 80 A.D. Agricola crossed the Border, ravaging " new nations," as far as the estuary of the " Taus " or " Tanaus." The modern name is uncertain. In 81 A.D. Agricola pushed his conquests across the watershed between the Solway Firth and the Clyde. In this and the following years (81-82) Agricola garrisoned the new frontier between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. The north of the country, beyond the rampart of what we now style the Grampian range, was then unknown to Agricola. Fifeshire too was practically unknown. Agricola himself explored the west during his fifth summer of command, and beheld the blue distant shore of Ireland. He had with him an exiled Irish chief, from whose sanguine talk probably he gathered that a legion and a few auxiliary bands could conquer his country. Agricola subdued " unknown tribes " (ignotas gentes) and fortified " that part of Britain which looks towards Ireland" (copiis instruxif).

In the following year, his sixth, Agricola subjected to Rome the communities (civitates) beyond Forth, because a general rising of the north was anticipated; he also explored the havens with his fleet. His expeditions by sea and land often brought his mariners and soldiers together, " gleefully recounting their exploits and adventures by wood and wave." Prisoners averred that the natives were terrified by the fleet which laid open the secrets of the sea, and cut off their last refuge. But it scarcely seems probable that the natives were great seafaring experts, and they had places of safety enough inland, from " the skirts of Cairntable " to the gorges of Lochaber and Glencoe. The tribes mustered, attacked certain forts of the Romans, and made timid counsellors advise retreat. Mr.. Skene, whose theories are now sceptically regarded, conceives that Agricola's advanced forts west of Tay were the objects of this assault, and that his headquarters were at Grassy Walls in Strath Tay. He did not fall back on the line of Forth and Clyde; but leaving the forts to hold their own, he advanced with his army in three divisions. He marched parallel with Tay into the flat country north of the river, now left open by the native attack on his western camps. He established a camp at Cupar Angus, another, rather to the south-east, at Lintrose, and a third in the south-west, to command the passage of the Tay. The enemy, abandoning their western expedition, attacked the Ninth Legion in the second camp by night, but Agricola hurried from a place near Cupar Angus and took the natives between two fires. They were dispersed into the woods and marshes, and Agricola went into winter quarters. Tacitus's account of these movements proves that the natives were not mere brave unskilled savages. They had excellent information; their scheme of a diversion was well conceived. Finding that they could neither amuse nor terrify Agricola, who pressed forwards (incessit) they returned with speed, and assailed his weakest division so eagerly (and that by a night surprise, on which savages do not usually venture), that they forced their way into the camp. Agricola was not far off, and, by sending his swiftest foot and horse, he made an attack on the rear of the natives already engaged in the Roman camp itself. They fought till daylight, and then drew off to inaccessible fastnesses. This is no mere savage warfare. In 84, Agricola made a naval diversion on the east coast and marched inland.

We must, of course, put the cultivated lands and trim fenced woods of Scotland out of our minds when we think of Agricola's marches. Only the mountain forms remain as he beheld them. The rivers must, in those days, have been of greater volume than now, flowing through swampy undrained country, overgrown with " bush," thickets of birch, alder, and hazel, scarce penetrable hiding-places of the foe. Cultivation, where not wholly neglected, would be found chiefly in the straths. Deer, wolves, and the wild cat abounded. A land of forest, hill, and quagmire was the scene of Agricola's operations. The tribes, after their check in Forfarshire, sent their women and children into places of security, the chiefs armed their forces, and united in sacrifices at great gatherings. In spring, when Agricola sent his fleet to carry terror northward, he himself marched to the " Mons Graupius " of Tacitus. The place is disputed: Mr. Skene believes that Agricola occupied, beneath the Hill of Blair, the isthmus at the meeting of Isla and Tay. Here he protected himself by a vallum, now called Cleaven Dyke; the tribes (as usual), " took the hill of him," and held Buzzard Dykes on a slope of Blair Hill. But the tribes had not the opportunity to charge down hill. A plain severed them from the Roman vallum; and on the level, disciplined troops were their masters. Tacitus reckons the Highland force at 30,000; even the old men had come in, he says, as long afterwards they and the boys gathered round the royal standard at Glenfinnan. Their leader, Calgacus, addressed them, and Agricola harangued his forces. The Highlander's speech, in Tacitus, contains words prophetic of a later day, and a more brutal conqueror, solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. The speech is, of course, the composition of the Roman historian; but its patriotic appeal and invocation of liberty have often animated the descendants of his country's enemies. Agricola (like Mackay long after) had " Dutch " forces (Batavorum cohortes), which he placed in the centre, with cavalry on the wings; his Roman legions were in the second line, in front of the vallum. The Highlanders arrayed their first line on the level ground; their supports occupied the heights. The chariots and horsemen scoured the plain. To avoid being outflanked, Agricola now extended his front; he himself dismounted and stood by his colours. The battle began with a discharge of arrows and other missiles, in which the Highlanders seem to have had some superiority. Agricola therefore ordered his Batavian and other foreign forces to charge. In the mellay the claymore and target (ingentes gladii, breves cetriz), and the swashing blows of the Highlanders, were less successful than the point delivered by the Batavians. Against spears, as against bayonets, the broadsword might have held its own, but the short Roman sword came within the guard of the two-handed claymore. The Roman lines then charged up the slopes; the Highland chariots swooped down, and apparently were broken by the Roman cavalry, who, in turn, were impeded by difficult ground. Meanwhile the Highland supports, descending from the hill, attacked the legions in the rear, or were about doing so, when they were assailed by fresh Roman cavalry from the wings. They fled, and were pursued: some ran, some rushed unarmed on certain death. At the fringe of wood they rallied, formed, and repelled the pursuers; but Agricola sent cavalry into the more open bush, dismounted men into the thickets, and broke up the enemy. Tacitus reckons the Highland loss at 10,000; the Roman at 360. Had Calgacus fallen or been taken we should have heard of it, and it is improbable that the Highlanders, drawing off in fair order, and under cover of woods, suffered so severely as Tacitus declares. They burned their huts, their retreat was unknown and not explored: Agricola retired into winter quarters, probably behind Forth and Clyde. His fleet was bidden to circumnavigate the island. Agricola was presently recalled by Domitian, and his attack on the north remained fruitless. The north was unsubdued.

Tacitus has a few ethnological remarks on the natives of Britain.

Not much can be known, he says, in the case of Barbarians as to whether the people are aborigines or invaders. To the Caledonians, on whom Agricola had been warring, he assigns flaming hair, and mighty limbs, which he regards as possible proofs of German origin. He implies that the small communities (civitates) were rarely and with difficulty induced to unite in a common cause. Of promiscuity or polyandry he says not a word. He talks of " wives and children " in a manner inconsistent with a theory of promiscuous hordes. Ptolemy assigns " towns " to the natives of the south and east, but no traces exist except of the Roman stations on the sites where towns appear to be indicated for example, at Birrenswark, recently excavated. The Dumnonii, a considerable people, stretched from Clyde to Tay, and appear to have had a centre near Carstairs, another near Ardoch camp, and a third at Loch Orr in West Fife. There are still remains of native ramparts at Burghead; but nothing is known of native towns in the region of the Highlands, which, about 1740, Forbes of Culloden could still describe as townless. Concerning the nature and extent of these ancient "towns" we are ignorant.

Rome had still to make her most imposing mark on British soil the wall and vallum, with the towers, gates, and altars of the legions. It was in 120 that Hadrian erected the famous Roman wall from Tyne to Solway. Obviously the wall was needed. About 139 the Brigantes broke its bounds, were subdued by Lollius Urbicus, and were bridled by an earthen rampart, "the wall of Antoninus Pius," erected between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. In 181 (?) the tribes burst through the new dyke between Forth and Clyde, slew the Roman commander, and overran part of the province. They were punished by a general whom Commodus despatched to the scene, but they had tasted blood, and had learned where plunder could be obtained.

In 208, under Severus, the tribes again broke out. Dio Cassius, a contemporary, tells us that there were now two chief " nations " among the Northern people the Caledonii and the Mseatae; the Maeatae near the Wall, south of Forth, the Caledonii behind them, north of Forth, according to Mr. Haverfield's map, but doubt prevails. Mr. E. W. Robertson recognises, in this duality, the Celtic principle of " division." We have Caledones and Maeatae; Dicaledones and Vecturiones; later, Northern and Southern Picts. To return to Dio Cassius, both of these confederacies, Maeatae and Caledonii, are said by him to have dwelt in " waterless mountains," a singular statement. They had neither forts nor cities; they did not till the soil; they were pastoral and hunters. Though the fishing was splendid, they never ate fish. Naked and unshod, they had wives in common. They were great thieves, " looted most liberally," and fought from chariots, their horses being small but swift; they themselves were very fleet, and they were steady in combat. Their dwellings Dio calls scenae, probably wattled huts. Their arms were targe, dirk, and short spear, with a rattling bronze ball at the handle. A man would hide for days in a bog, with only his head above; they had a mysterious food, of which a portion no bigger than a bean would support life for long. Herodian says they were naked, with collars and belly-pieces of iron. They tattooed themselves with designs representing beasts (tribal marks?).

These are not very consistent descriptions. A people in the stage of using iron, and driving chariots, has commonly passed beyond promiscuity of women, and absence of agriculture. The nakedness was probably but that of Montrose's Irish, or of Highlanders throwing off their plaids, and charging in their smocks. The remark that the people are now in two "nations" appears, if correct, to imply a system more united and centralised than that of tribes, something more akin to the Iroquois League. To subdue these foes, Severus is said to have made military roads (210) through the forests of the Forth to the meeting of Almond and Tay, and so into Forfarshire, where is the great camp called Battledykes. Thence the Roman ways, and fortified camps, extended to the Moray Firth. Dio reckons the Roman casualties in this expedition at 50,000, caused less by the sword than by disease and climate. After reaching " the extreme North " (Burghead, probably), and observing the parallax and length of the days and nights, Severus, quite outworn, was carried south in a litter. His reward, perhaps, was the security of the province as far as the Tay. He seems to have strengthened the wall between Forth and Clyde, but the North revolted after his return to York, where he died in 211. Then comes a period of silence.

Britain was soon in much the same condition as the empire itself, hardly to be saved from the northern barbarians. The Teutonic tribes, Saxons and others, began to make incursions by sea; and Britain accepted the sway of Carausius, who, in 287, took the title of Augustus, and ruled the whole province. He was succeeded by Allectus, and now, under Constantius Chlorus (306), we begin to hear of the Picts, " the Caledonians and other Picts." A hundred and fifty years after Severus marched to the Moray Firth, the province was invaded by "Picts and Scots" (360). The Picts ravaged as far as the wall of Hadrian (between Tyne and Solway), while the Scots harried the west coast. The Picts are also mentioned as being in two nations, the Dicaledonce and Vecturiones or Verturiones. The latter word, in Goidelic (Gaelic), " yields the well-known name of the Brythons of the kingdom of Fortrenn " between Forth and Tay.

The question now arises, who were the Picts, and who were the Scots? The old theories of the Teutonic origin of the Picts may be dismissed, and we may as well leave out of view the discussions concerning "Pechts' houses," with the notion that a dwarfish race " the Pechts " have become the fairies of legend. The " Pechts " of folk-lore, who are credited with great works, down to the building of Glasgow Cathedral, answer merely to the Cyclopes, the mythical builders of Tiryns and Mycenae. The name Pecht or Pict hung in the popular memory, and any mysterious erection, or unintelligible relic of prehistoric times, was explained as a work of Pechts or of fairies. Myths unattached crystallised round the name, and the same story is told in Scotland of the last Pecht, and in modern Greece of the fabulous Drakos. Casting all folk-lore aside, we briefly state the hypothesis of Mr. Skene.

The Picts, allowing for casual mixtures of other races, were simply Goidel, Gaelic-speaking or Gaelic-Welsh-speaking Celts, ancestors in some degree of the present Highlanders. Under the new name, Picts, they were but the old unsubdued enemies of Rome beyond the wall, the foes of Agricola and Severus. Just as Allemanni, Franci, and Saxones were new Roman names for aggregates of Teutonic tribes previously known by other appellations, so " Picti " was a new collective name for the barbaric tribes of Northern Britain. To " Picti " the Romans would assign the sense of " painted " or " tattooed," but Pict is probably in origin an ancient word, not derived from the Latin Pictus. The Southern Picts were a trifle more civilised than those of the North, and, in Galloway, were more or less converted by St. Ninian, about 397. The names of the earliest Pictish kings in the list are " purely Irish or Gaelic " (which is not admitted by Professor Rhys), and Gaelic are the place names of the regions which the Picts inhabited. In short, the Picts, south or north, were mainly Gaelic Highlanders, in Mr. Skene's opinion.

As to the Scots, their language, too, he thinks, was Erse or Gaelic. The name, " Scoti," designated natives of Ireland; but the Northern Irish (Scoti), of Ulster, had among them Picts too, under another title that is, men of the same branch of the Celtic race as the Highlanders, who spoke a dialect of the same Celtic language, and, in Ireland, were called by the same name, Cruithnig. The Scots were Picts who came from ancient Scotia (Ireland), into the region of modern Scotland. In 1753, James Mor Macgregor found, or pretended to have found, exiled Macgregors in Ireland, who were ready, at a word from Prince Charles, to invade Argyll under his banner. That expedition, had it been successfully made, would have much resembled, on this theory, the colonising of Kintyre and Islay by " Scots " from Ulster. In this settlement (about 500 A.D.) the Scots from Ireland were called Dalriada (from the Irish district whence they came?). They and their Dalriadic kingdom in Scotland will have to be noticed later: meanwhile, about 360, the Picts (Celts), with the Scots (men of the same race settled in Ireland), were ravaging the Roman province of Britain. This, briefly stated, is the opinion of Mr. Skene.

A more recent Celtic scholar, Professor Rhys, Principal of Jesus College, has hitherto upheld the theory that the Picts were members, not of the Celtic, but of some non-Aryan race. What people, if any, now represents that race Iberian, Ivernian, Basque, Finnish, Ligurian, or what not Mr. Rhys would not profess to decide. His ideas rest partly on the evidence of institutions, such as the much discussed Pictish form of the family; partly on the characteristic forms of personal names of individual Picts; partly on the existence of a few inscriptions in the Ogam character, which, so far, have not been construed as Celtic, or as any other Aryan language, in Mr. Rhys's opinion. The arguments have a tendency to combine, as when Mr. Rhys remarks that, in early Gaelic, we find proper names of individuals constructed on a principle which we do not meet among other Aryan peoples. These proper names designate their bearer as "servant of" this or that animal or saint, dogs being often the chosen animal, both in Ireland and Scotland. The usage is familiar among Semitic races, but nobody thinks that Picts or Scots are Semites. Here, then, is a non-Aryan personal name-system, which again, in Mr. Rhys's theory, may be derived from an institution not found with certainty among Aryans that is, Totemism. This institution is widely diffused among savages; each stock of kindred claims descent from, or legendary connection with, and more or less reveres, its peculiar sacred plant or animal. Thus the singular names, " servant of the dog," and so on, occurring in Gaelic, point, in Mr. Rhys's theory, to a non-Aryan race, " Pictish," Celticised, indeed, in speech, but retaining in these personal names survivals of institutions not certainly discovered among Aryans. Again, Totemism is, as a general rule, associated with the system of tracing kinship through the mother, not the father, and is not reckoned an " Aryan " institution.

To this it must be replied that such names as Mr. Rhys relies on, the names of individual men, Flying Cloud, or Running Wolf, among Totemistic savages, like the Red Indians, have no bearing on Totemism. A brave called " Sitting Bull " may, or may not, belong to a Totemistic kindred; but, even if he does, his Totem, or kin-crest and revered object, is not indicated by his own proper name. He is Sitting Bull of the Wolf, Crab, or Frog, or other Totem name. To raise a presumption in favour of Totemism among Scots or Picts, we must first discover these peoples to have been divided into stocks of kindred which bear, as stocks, names of animals, plants, and the like. Indications of such stocks, Mr. Rhys thinks, may be found among the Dalriad Scots, divided into Cinel Gabran, Cinel Loarn, and Cinel Angus, of which the two former meant " Little Goat " (?) and " Fox." However, among Greeks and other Aryan races, no less than in Scotland and Ireland, there occur features which may be explained, conjecturally, as survivals of Totemism. Thus Totemism, if proved to have existed in Scotland, would not necessarily indicate non-Aryanism in the Picts or Scots, unless there are no Aryans anywhere.

The account given by Tacitus, also, in the ' Germania,' of the important relationship of uncles, and of sisters' sons, closely resembles what we are told about the Pictish family system. Yet the Germans, if anybody is, are Aryans. Once more, numbers of names of Anglic (English) kindreds and settlements in England have been derived from plants and animals, and have, so far, a slight Totemistic air. But the English were Aryans, if any one ever was. Thus, granting animal names of individual men among Picts and Scots, these do not indicate a Totemistic origin, and, if they did, prove nothing as to whether Picts and Scots were or were not " Aryans." On the other hand, the formula on which Pictish and Scottish names were constructed "a slave of" so-and-so may be very unlike what Aryans used elsewhere. They resemble, as has been said, Semitic usage, "Obededom" "servant of Edom," and so forth. But Jews were not Picts or Ivernians! The usage is probably an early one, and, if found among the most remote and backward dwellers in this island, decides nothing on either side as to their race, Aryan or non-Aryan.

Leaving proper names (which, so far, prove nothing), Mr. Rhys examines the vague pseudo-historical legends of Irish, Scottish, and Pictish origins. His argument is too complex and too full of hypothetical etymologies for analysis here. He supposes the distinction between Picts (Cruithni) and Scots (Goidel?) to be one of language and religion. In Mr. Rhys's view, ancient Ireland was inhabited by Goidels, and also, in the north, by Cruithni, members of an earlier race. The Dalriad Scots who, from Ireland, invaded Scotland about 500 A.D., were Cruithni by ancient descent, but had been Goidelised or Celticised, and were also Christians before they left northern Ireland for Kintyre, while the Picts among whom they settled in Kintyre "may have been still using their native Pictish or Ivernian (non-Aryan) speech," and were Pagans. Both Picts and Scots " were closely kindred communities of Cruithni " . . . the Scots were Cruithni who had adopted the Celtic language of the Aryan conqueror (Goidel) in Ireland; they were a people, in fact, that gloried in being Goidels, and endeavoured to forget their Cruithnic origin.

Here Mr. Rhys and Mr. Skene partly coincide. Scots and Picts are, from of old, akin; the Scots spoke Gaelic. But Mr. Rhys thinks that they had learned it, being non-Aryan, from Celtic conquerors in Ireland, and that the Picts, when the Scots arrived in Kintyre, still spoke a non-Aryan language. Mr. Skene thinks that the Scots spoke Gaelic, and were akin to the Picts, but that Gaelic was the natural language of both peoples, both being Aryans and Celts.

As to the name " Pict," Mr. Rhys does not derive it from the Latin Picti, " painted fellows," nor does he think that the Scottish Pecht, or Norse Pet, or Welsh Peith is derived from the Roman word Pictus. Indeed he doubts the evidence that the Picts were ever painted or tattooed. On the whole, Mr. Rhys decides that the Picts were not Celts, and, from remains of what is supposed to be their language as found inscribed in Ogam characters on stones, he once tended to regard the Picts as akin to the Basques. But in this theory he does not persist. His strongest evidence for the nonAryan character of the Picts is the existence of a few inscriptions of which the Ogam characters can be deciphered, but which yield no sense in any known Aryan tongue. Mr. Rhys finds in the Aberdonian and Moray "f" for "wh" ("Fa fuppit the fite felpie? ") a relic of non-Aryan Pictish pronunciation. On the other hand, Mr. Skene wrote that every circumstance " tends to show that the Picts, who inhabited the northern and western regions of Scotland, as well as Galloway and the districts in Ireland, belonged to the Gaelic race, and spoke a Gaelic dialect." The Southern Picts, too, south of the Grampians, " were probably originally of the same Gaelic race," with a British (Brython) element. Certainly when Gildas (560) calls the Picts "a set of bloody freebooters with more hair on their thieves' faces than clothes to cover their nakedness," we do seem to recognise a view of the Highlanders long popular in the Lowlands.