majestic tome, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, at once collective, descriptive, analytic, and pictorial, of one outstanding type of national relics. What that work sought to do for a class of remains is now being attempted for the whole early historical monuments of the country. The lines on which the Commission began with Berwickshire, under supposed restrictions from the Treasury, were happily found capable of considerable freedom of expansion when Sutherland was dealt with, and in the Third Report and Inventory,' treating of Caithness, the equipment of maps, plans, and illustrations is on a scale liberal enough to give the volume a pictorial attraction well suited to supplement the archaeology to the distinctness of which indeed the sketches and plates are indispensable aids.1 Sutherland, with its vast area of 1880 square miles, sparsely populated, mountainous, and barren, yielded less, or at any rate less interesting, results of archaeological survey than Caithness, with its 712 square miles of area, which, although boggy and waste enough in the interior, carry even there a far larger proportion of remains of human life and habitation than are found in Sutherland. Still more signally is that superiority shown on the coast line. In Sutherland, west of Strathnaver, remains of any kind were excessively few, while the wild and deeply indented coast line from the Kyle of Tongue round to Loch Inver contributed scarce more than a dozen items to the inventory. In Caithness, on the other hand, the shore is prolific of ancient sites, and is, although not the exclusive by any means, yet the distinctive locality of the broch. In the interior, while the brochs are far fewer than they are on the coast, they are not relatively to other structures in any materially smaller proportion. Inland structures, whether in Caithness or Sutherland, almost universally follow the rivers. In both-Sutherland with 67 examples and Caithness with more than twice as many-the broch, with its seaward outlook, is a determinant problem both of archaeology and history. Caithness, thus marked as the head-seat of a structural type, unfortunately offers in its records, whether inscriptions, charters, or chronicles, whether misty tradition or still mistier legend, no effectual help towards the history of the time of and before the brochs. The province certainly found its place pretty early in 1 Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments. of Monuments and Constructions in the County of Caithness. Illustrations in text. Pp. liii, 204. London: H.M. 7s. 6d. net. Third Report and Inventory authentic writings, such as the Landnamabok, but it looms, as usual, larger and vaguer in legendary and romantic sources of information, which, although utterly beyond trust, yet cannot be ignored; such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Britons, and the cycle of literature which had its imagination nourished by that most wonderful of early quasi-historical inspirations. Geoffrey1 declares that the Pictish King Roderick, having landed in the north part of Britain, was defeated and slain by Marius, King of Britain (son of Arviragus), who gave to the defeated followers of Roderick that part of Albany to inhabit which is called Caithness, a province, it is added, which had long been deserted, uncultivated, and without inhabitants. Even before Geoffrey's time, Nennius had described Britain as extending from Totness to Caithness.2 This contrast with Totness (in Devonshire) was carried into literature by Geoffrey, who assigns Totness as the landing place first of Brutus and afterwards of Vespasian. Totness stood for the southmost point of Britain, Caithness for the northmost. 'Ele commence en Cotenois, said Geoffrey's translator, Wace, according to his French editor, the well-known scholar, Le Roux de Lincy, who did not notice that Cotenois (Totenois) was an error for Totness. Henry of Huntingdon lent historical countenance to a connexion of the two places by a great road which began in Caithness and ended at Totness. The latter point was certainly near the terminus of the south-western line of the Roman road, which, traversing Southern Scotland from the Forth, passed through Catterick, in Yorkshire, to Lincoln, and there-as the Fosse-way-branched off to Exeter almost in a straight line, to reach the sea-way a few miles further on at Totness, if indeed it did not actually terminate there. But it requires some imaginative engineering to complete the line by a protraction from the Forth, at any rate beyond Ardoch, to Caithness, which an old Norse author fitly enough styled 'the promontory of Scotland.' In much the same way it became a sort of Ultima Thule in romance. Law, too, so recognised it. The limits of English and Scottish jurisdiction for the March laws were between Toteneys' and Catenes.' Great as is the contrast of northern Scotland and southern 4 8 Monumenta Britannica, see map of Britannia Romana there. |