their bodies being naked they regard not the dirt! They wear iron about their bellies and necks, esteeming this as fine and rich an ornament as others do gold. They make on their bodies the figures of divers animals, and use no clothing, that these may be exposed to view. They are a very bloody and warlike people, using a little shield or target, and a spear. Their sword hangs on their naked bodies. They know not the use of a breastplate and helmet, and imagine these would be an impediment to them in passing the fens. The air is always thick with the vapours that ascend from these marshes."

Another writer, Xiphilinus, in his epitome of the now lost books of an author contemporary with the Emperors Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus-embracing the period when the slab to the former was inscribed at Cilurnum by the Spanish cavalry, already alluded to-states, "The two most considerable bodies of the people in the northern part of the island, and to which almost all the rest relate, are the Caledonians and the Mæatæ. The latter dwell near the Great Wall that separates the island into two parts; the others live beyond them. Both inhabit upon barren uncultivated mountains, or in desert marshy plains, where they have neither walls nor towns, nor manured lands, but feed on the milk of their flocks, what they get by hunting, and some wild fruits. They never eat fish though they have great plenty of them. They have no houses but tents, where they live naked. Their government is popular, and the exercise to which they are most addicted is robbing. They fight upon chariots; their horses are low but swift. They have great agility of body and tread very surely. The arms they make use of are a buckler, a poniard, a short lance, at the lower end of which is a piece of brass in the form of an apple; with this their custom is to make a noise to frighten their enemies. They are accustomed to fatigue, to bear hunger, cold, and all manner of hardships. They run into the morasses up to the neck, and live there several days without eating. When they are in the woods they live upon roots and leaves. They make a certain food that so admirably supports the spirits, that when they have taken the quantity of a bean they feel no more hunger or thirst. We are masters of little more than half the island."

Nay, what is not a little curious, the Romans have left behind them a representation of the natives of the district around what is now Glasgow, but then a wilderness through which roamed the wolf,

the black bear, and other wild beasts. In the "Roman-Room" of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow College, is preserved a slab discovered in the Roman fort of Castlehill, near East Kilpatrick, on the Antonine Wall, whereon are sculptured three naked captives sitting on the ground, their arms tied behind their backs, and guarded by a cavalry soldier. The Roman eagle and a capricorn occupy one side of the slab, and a priest in full dress, with a sacrificing vessel in his hand, appears on the other. The expression of the captives is grim and determined, corresponding with the description of the wild people by the historians before cited. The slab is dedicated to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, to commemorate the construction, by the Second Legion, Augusta, of four miles and six hundred and sixtysix paces of the Roman barrier between Clyde and the Forth. The date of this curious piece of sculpture is about the year 140 of the Christian era.

Such are the Roman descriptions and delineation of our rude ancestors, more than 1600 years ago. Animated by an unquenchable love of liberty, they courageously met the Imperial troops in many a bloody conflict, and Rome failed in the effort to wrest from Caledonia her cherished independence.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE GLASGOW ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

NO. VIII.

ON THE EARLY POPULATON OF SCOTLAND:

BY

JOHN SCOULER, Esq., M.D.

[Read at a Meeting of the Glasgow Archæological Society, on 9th January, 1860.]

THE question of the race to which the early population of the North of Scotland belonged is the most difficult to answer of any which relates to the ethnology of the British Islands. In answering it, every possible solution has been given, and if opinion is still unsettled it depends perhaps as much on the temper of the writers as on the obscurity of the subject. The classical authors afford us but small assistance, and until very recently the state of Celtic philology was so unsatisfactory that the resources it was capable of affording could not be employed with safety. If the hypotheses advanced have been numerous, they do not claim an equal amount of probability, and two of them may be at once set aside, and the rival followers of Pinkerton and the M'Phersons may be safely neglected. That the early population of the North of Scotland was Gothic has as little probability as the antagonistic doctrine that Ireland was peopled by Celts from Scotland. The dream of Pinkerton that the Belgic colonies in England, the Scots or Gaedhil of Ireland, and the Picts of Scotland, were of Gothic descent is merely a specimen of ethnological monomania. That a Gothic language was spoken in Scotland before the time of the Saxon invasion, as put forth by Pinkerton and supported by the truly respectable authority of Dr. Jamieson, is a doctrine which it is difficult to accept. All the topographical names of the country north of the Firths, except such as are of modern Norse or Saxon origin, were either Gaedhelic or British, and we find no Gothic name earlier than the sixth century. Malcolm Canmore, who married a Saxon princess, spoke the Gaedhelic in his intercourse with his subjects, and acted as interpreter to his Saxon queen, a circumstance which would be inexplicable if the eastern Lowlands, from the Forth

Such fancies are not yet extinct, Dr. Latham tells us that the Picts came from Pomerania, and that the Celts of Asia, the Galatæ, were Poles from Gallicia.

to the Moray Firth had been occupied by a Gothic race. According to this hypothesis the language spoken in the Pictish kingdom was not Saxon but Norse, and introduced long before the first century. Adopting this view, Dr. Jamieson has endeavoured to prove that the language of the Lowland Scots is not of Saxon, but of Scandinavian origin. This opinion has however been satisfactorily refuted by Mr. Garnet, who shews that the Scottish language is merely a Saxon dialect, closely allied to that spoken in the North of England. In opposition to the ultra Gothicism of Pinkerton we have the ultra Celticism of Goodall and the M'Phersons, which they defended with far less learning and even greater want of candour. According to these writers history is completely distorted; instead of receiving colonies from Ireland, settlers from Scotland are asserted to have peopled that island. How Ireland and Scotland were originally colonised is unknown, but no traces of a migration from Scotland to Ireland is to be found before the reign of Queen Elizabeth. As the British and the Gaedhelic dialects are very distinct, and certainly were equally so in the fifth century, we have the following difficulty. If the language of the North of Scotland was allied to the British, it is obvious that Ireland was not settled from Scotland, or at least the colonists were so few as to be unable to preserve their dialect. On the other hand, the well established fact of an Irish immigration into Argyle, A.D. 503, affords a satisfactory explanation of the diffusion of the Gaedhelic dialect over the West of Scotland.

Quitting these extreme views, a third opinion remains, which is more worthy of a lengthened discussion. According to Cambden, Innes, and Chalmers, the entire population of the countries to the north of the firths was homogeneous, spoke the British language, and differed from the Southern Britons as the latter did from Celts of Gaul, only by a greater degree of barbarism. That this was the correct view of the northern population until the appearance of the Picts, may be fully conceded. Our information respecting this early period is very meagre, as the Roman authors afford us but little aid. The inference of Tacitus, that the Caledonians were of Teutonic origin on account of their great limbs and light complexion, is physiological and not historical, and founded on the assumption that such secondary characters of races are unchanged by time. This question, which perplexed Niebuhr, has been solved by Pritchard. The modern Germans do not retain the physical characters which Tacitus observed in their ancestors. Ammianus Marcellinus describes the

Gauls of his time as large limbed, red haired, and of light complexion; or, in other words, differing in no respect from the Caledonians of Tacitus. It thus appears that Pinkerton's inference from a statement of Tacitus is of no value as a criterion of national affinity. The only means of inquiry, in the absence of written testimony, is an examination of the ancient topographical names, the method which guided Humboldt in his researches respecting the ancient races of Spain, and which Dr. Pritchard has turned to so good an account in illustrating the history of the Celts. The force of this kind of evidence is so strong, as to find even in Pinkerton an unwilling witness, when he admits that the oldest inhabitants of the north of Scotland were a Celtic people. The evidence afforded from this source has been fully illustrated by Chalmers, who not only proves the antiquity of the British names, but gives evidence of the gradual substitution of Gaedhelic ones, under the influence of the Dalriadic conquest and of the Irish ecclesiastics. In accordance with this we find that the names given by Ptolemy are often clearly of British origin, and even repetitions of names which occur in the southern part of the island. Thus, Cantae Cornabii and Vacomagi are unquestionably British. Zeuss shews that the Varar or Moray Firth is equivalent to the Arar of Cæsar; Loxus, to Luxonium; the Volsas of Scotland corresponds to Belsa (La Bausse) in Gaul. Another Caledonian tribe were the Mertae or Smertae, and we find on the Continent a Romano-Celtic inscription-" Dio Mercurio and Rosmertae."

It does not follow, that if the Caledonian tribes were British and not Gaedhelic during the times of the Antonines, that they remained so during the period between Severus and Constantine; and this conducts us to what is really important in the Pictish question. Putting aside the dreams of Pinkerton and the M'Phersons, and admitting on the authority of the topographic and Ptolemaic names that the Caledonians were Celtic Britons, the only inquiry which remains, is, did this population remain unchanged between the times. of Tacitus and Ptolemy and the arrival of the Dalriads in Argyle, A.D. 503? Were the Picts merely an old people with a new name, or were they foreign intruders among the Caledonians? The Roman authors yield a few but very important statements. Although there are fourteen clans mentioned by Ptolemy as inhabiting the north of Scotland, the whole nation is denominated Caledonia from the most numerous tribe among them, which occupied the country from Loch Fyne to the Moray Firth. Ptolemy, however, makes no mention