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CHAPTER XIV

THE CALEDONIANS, OR PICTS

F the inhabitants of Britain in prehistoric times we can learn but little, and little, and that only in the most general way. While the literature on the subject is quite extensive, and, so far as it records the results of archæological investigation, not without considerable value, yet the data thus far made available are so fragmentary as to form a basis for hardly anything more than a probable supposition as to who they were and whence they came.' The following summary by one of the recent English authorities' gives us a hint of the progress thus far made in this line of inquiry:

From the bones which have been taken from the tombs, and from the ancient flint-mines uncovered in Sussex and Norfolk, the anatomists have concluded that the Neolithic Britons were not unlike the modern Eskimo. They were short and slight, with muscles too much developed for their slender and ill-nurtured bones; and there is that marked disproportion between the size of the men and women, which indicates a hard and miserable life, where the weakest are overworked and constantly stinted of their food. The face must have been of an oval shape, with mild and regular features the skulls, though bulky in some instances, were generally of a long and narrow shape, depressed sometimes at the crown and marked with a prominent ridge, "like the keel of a boat reversed."'

The oldest races were in a pre-metallic stage, when bronze was introduced by a new nation, sometimes identified with the oldest Celts, but now more generally attributed to the Finnish or Ugrian stock. When the Celts arrived in their turn, they may have brought in the knowledge of iron and silver; the Continental Celts are known to have used iron broad-swords at the battle of the Anio in the fourth century before Christ, and iron was certainly worked in Sussex by the Britons of Julius Cæsar's time; but as no objects of iron have been recovered from our Celtic tumuli, except in some instances of a doubtful date, it will be safer to assume that the British Celts belonged to the later Bronze Age as well as to the Age of Iron.*

With reference to the earliest population of Scotland, the following hypothesis given by Samuel Laing in his work on Prehistoric Remains of Caithness may be taken as a fairly comprehensive statement:

Our population contains three distinct ethnological elements: I. Xanthochroi brachycephali (the fair, broad-headed type); II. Xanthochroi dolichocephali (the fair, long-headed type); III. Melanchroi (the dark type). In Cæsar's time, and for an indefinitely long period, Gaul contained the first and third of these elements, and the shores of the Baltic presented the second. In other words, the ethnological elements of the Hiberno-British islands are identical with those of the nearest adjacent parts of the continent of Europe, at the earliest period when a good observer noted the characters of their population.

Dr. Thurnam has adduced many good reasons for believing that the "Belgic" element intruded upon a pre-existing dolichocephalic "Iberian population; but I think it probable that this element hardly reached Ireland at all, and extended but little into Scotland. However, if this were the case, and no other elements entered into the population, the tall, fair, red-haired and blue-eyed dolichocephalia, who are, and appear always to have been, so numerous among the Irish and Scotch, could not be accounted for.

But their existence becomes intelligible at once, if we suppose that long before the well-known Norse and Danish invasions a stream of Scandinavians had set into Scotland and Ireland, and formed a large part of our primitive population. And there can be no difficulty in admitting this hypothesis when we recollect that the Orkneys and the Hebrides have been, in comparatively late historical times, Norwegian possessions. In another

fashion, the fair and broad-headed "Belga" intruded into the British area; but meeting with a large dolichocephalic population, which at subsequent times was vastly reinforced by Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Danish invasions, this type has been almost wiped out of the British population, which is, in the main, composed of fair dolichocephalia and dark dolichocephalia. But language has in no respect followed these physical changes. The fair dolichocephali and fair brachycephali of Germany, Scandinavia, and England speak Teutonic dialects; while those of France have a substantially Latin speech; and the majority of those of Scotland, and, within historic times, all those of Ireland, spoke Celtic tongues. As to the Melanchroi, some speak Celtic, some Latin, some Teutonic dialects; while others, like the Basques (so far as they come under this category) have a language of their

own.

So far as any definite conclusions can be deduced from the work of the ethnologists and archæologists, it appears that the first Celtic invaders to enter Scotland (whether at a period simultaneous with or prior or subsequent to the advent of the Stone-Age Britons in that part of the island cannot perhaps be definitely told) were the Gaels, or Goidels, who had crossed over into Britain from Gaul, first settling on those portions of the coast most easy of access from the points of embarkation, thence pushing into the interior, and gradually spreading to the west and north. In their progress they must have encountered and, to a greater or less extent, superseded the aborigines -the Britons of the Stone Age. This may have been done by exterminating them, by driving them off towards the west, or by assimilating them with themselves. Probably all of these methods of race extinction were brought into operation. In such a primitive age, these tribes, native and foreign, cannot be conceived to have been other than loosely organized hordes of wandering savages, preying upon one another, without fixed habitations, and to whom all weaker strangers were foredoomed enemies. The Celts, bringing with them from the Continent the knowledge of bronze and iron, would have considerable advantage in battle over the aborigines, who had no more effective weapons than sharpened stones. In those days, also, it is reasonable to suppose that the country was so sparsely populated that for centuries after the first coming of the Gaels, there would be room enough

on the island for both races; and many bodies of the aborigines no doubt remained unmolested long after the extinction of their race had been in part accomplished. As fresh waves of invasion swept over the eastern shores, the Celts first coming would be apt to be driven farther and farther inland from the coast, and would in turn displace the natives—who, to escape death or slavery, would be obliged to push farther westward and northward. Some of these (supposed) aborigines, however, seem to have made a successful stand against the encroachments of the newcomers, and among them we find two tribes who were identified with portions of Scotland down to a date long after the beginning of the historic era. These were the Novantæ and Selgovæ mentioned by Ptolemy, whose territory in his time (the early part of the second century) embraced the country west of the river Nith and south of the Ayr - Kirkcudbrightshire and Galloway - and possibly, also, the peninsula of Kintyre, in Argyle. Toward the end of the Roman occupation they seem to have coalesced, and became known as the Attecotti, a "fierce and warlike tribe," who gave the Romans a great deal of trouble. They afterwards appear in history as the Galloway Picts, and seem to have remained a distinct people under that name down to a comparatively recent date.'

The Gaelic Celts of the first migrations were in time followed by other bodies of their own tribesmen, and later by large incursions of invaders of a kindred race-the Cymric Celts.' The first comers, accordingly, seem to have been pushed on to the west and north, overrunning the west of England and Wales, entering Scotland, and some of them, more venturesome than others, crossing over into Northern Ireland, and making that country their own. In the course of time, various tribes of the Cymric Celts acquired the most of Southern Britain and not a small portion of Scotland, spreading over the island in considerable numbers, and leaving few parts unoccupied save the hills and highlands of Scotland, which became the final retreat and stronghold of their Gaelic cousins.'

Cæsar was the first observer who has left any record of these early Cymro-Celtic Britons. Of their origin and manner of living he speaks as follows (De Bello Gallico, book v., ch. xii., xiv.):

The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself; the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgæ for the purpose of plunder and making war; almost all of whom are called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the lands. The number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous, for the most part very like those of the Gauls; the number of cattle is great. They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a certain weight, as their money. Tin is produced in the midland regions; in the maritime, iron; but the quantity of it is small; they employ brass, which is imported. There, as in Gaul, is timber of every description except beech and fir. They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare, and the cock, and the

goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure. The climate is more temperate than in Gaul, the colds being less severe.

The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic customs. Most of the island inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with woad, which occasions a bluish color, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their body shaved except their head and upper lip. Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and parents among their children; but if there be any issue by their wives, they are reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first espoused when a virgin.

A description of the several peoples inhabiting Britain at this time, or shortly after, is found in Ptolemy's Geography, written about A.D. 121. According to Professor Rhys's interpretation of Ptolemy, most of the country between the Humber and Mersey and the Caledonian Forest belonged to a tribe or confederation known as the Brigantes. The Novantæ and Selgovæ, occupying the district on the Solway west of the Nith, appear, however, to have been independent of them; as were also the Parisi, between the Humber and the Tees. The Otadini (occupying a portion of Lothian and the coast down to the southern Wall) and the northern Damnonii (inhabiting the district north of the Novantæ, the Selgovæ, and the Otadini, and to a considerable distance beyond the Forth and Clyde-the present counties of Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark, Dumbarton, Stirling, and the western half of Fife) were either distinct peoples subject to the Brigantes, or included in the tribes that went under that name.'

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Aside from the Novantæ and Selgovæ, these various tribes are now generally supposed to have belonged to the Cymric Celts, being part of the same people who, since the time of Julius Cæsar, have been popularly known as "Britons," at the present day sometimes called "Brythons," to distinguish them from the "Goidels," or Gaelic Celts of Britain. Freeman includes with the Brythons nearly all the tribes of North Britain, a classification which seems entirely too comprehensive; he says of the latter :

On the whole, it is most likely that they belonged to the same branch of the Celtic race as the southern Britons, and that they differed from them chiefly as the unsubdued part of any race differs from the part which is brought into subjection. In the later days of the Roman power in Britain, these northern tribes, under the name of Picts, appear as dangerous invaders of the Roman province, invaders whose inroads were sometimes pushed even into its southern regions."

The connection of these different divisions of the early races with our subject is quite important, for, as we shall see later on, that portion of Britain inhabited for so long a time by the Novantæ, the Selgovæ, the Otadini, the Damnonii, the Brigantes, and the Galloway Picts of later writers is the

part from which Ireland received the largest proportion of her Scottish immigrants."

Up to the close of the tenth century, the name Scotland" was applied solely to the Hibernian island. The present Scotland was then known as Caledonia, or by its ancient Gaelic name of Alban, or Albania. Before that period, and, indeed, for some time afterwards, its boundaries did not extend south of the Forth and Clyde. That part of the country south of these estuaries was included in the Roman province, and its inhabitants for the most part were Romanized Britons. During their wars with the Brigantes in the first century, the Romans learned of a people to the north of that nation, whom they termed Caledonian Britons. Lucan first mentions them A.D. 65: "Unda Caledonios fallit turbata Britannos." They are alluded to by Tacitus some fifteen years later (Life of Agricola, c. xi.), who says:

Who were the first inhabitants of Britain, whether indigenous or immigrants, is a question involved in the obscurity usual among barbarians. Their temperament of body is various, whence deductions are formed of their different origin. Thus, the ruddy hair and large limbs of the Caledonians point out a German derivation." The swarthy complexion and curled hair of the Silures, together with their situation opposite to Spain, render it probable that a colony of the ancient Iberi possessed themselves of that territory. They who are nearest Gaul resemble the inhabitants of that country; whether from the duration of hereditary influence, or whether it be that when lands jut forward in opposite directions, climate gives the same condition of body to the inhabitants of both. On a general survey, however, it appears probable that the Gauls originally took possession on the neighboring coast. The sacred rites and superstitions of these people are discernible among the Britons. The languages of the two nations do not greatly differ. The same audacity in provoking danger, and irresolution in facing it when present, is observable in both. The Britons, however, display more ferocity, not being yet softened by a long peace; for it appears from history that the Gauls were once renowned in war, till, losing their valor with their liberty, languor and indolence entered among them. The same change has also taken place among those of the Britons who have been long subdued; but the rest continue such as the Gauls formerly were.

Tacitus's account of the campaigns carried on against the Caledonians by Agricola sufficiently illustrates the spirit and valor of these early Scotchmen. Though often defeated in battle, they were never subdued; and when unable to withstand the charges of the Roman legions in the open, they fell back to their retreats in forest and mountains, where they were able to hold the Romans at bay.

Dion Cassius, the historian (about A.D. 155-230), brings them to our attention again, when in the year 201 we find the Caledonians joined with the Mæatæ in preparation for an attack on the Roman province. This was postponed, however, by the action of the Roman Governor, Virius Lupus, who purchased peace at a great price from the Mæatæ. Dion, writing before the year 230, gives the following description of these Mæatæ, which, while in some respects evidently founded upon fable, yet as a whole corresponds