Page:Annals of Duddingston and Portobello.pdf/39

8 the northern part of Britain appears to have been Caledonia, and the various tribes who inhabited it were indiscriminately called by them Caledonians. As "Caioll” signifies wood in Celtic, the Caledonii of the Roman writers has been supposed, with probability, to be a classical transformation of "Caoill daion,” "people of the woods.” Others are of opinion that Caledonia is a Roman corruption of the Gaelic words "Gael-doch,” the district of the Gael.

The condition of the Caledonians at the time of Agricola’s invasion very much resembled that of the tribes in South Britain in the time of Julius Casar. They were little removed in the scale of social life or of civil government from rude savages. Cesar informs us that in the interior of the island the Caledonians never sowed their lands, but followed the occupations of the hunter and the shepherd, clad in the skins, and living on the flesh and milk of their flocks and herds and the spoils of the chase. At this period extensive forests and marshes covered nearly the whole face of the country; the bear and the wolf lurked in its thickets and caves, and the bison, the moose deer, the Caledonian bull, and the wild boar roamed through its wastes.

And yet among the Caledonians who fought or fled from the advancing Roman as his Legions first cast their eyes on the blneblue [sic] waters of the Firth of Forth, from the rising ground of Inveresk or Soutra Hill, there were some skilled in the construction of weapons of iron. The Flint age was gone, to be succeeded by the age of Bronze, and at that time, in all probability, the greater part of the weapons of war and implements of culture were of this material. But evidence is not wanting that a superior metal had already become known to them, and had been largely adopted. With the advent of the Roman passed away the Bronze age of the Caledonian. In the making of bronze implements considerable skill had been attained, and specimens of remarkable beauty and finish have frequently been discovered throughout the country. Remains both Roman and native have been found in our parish at various times. We have in our possession an interesting relic of the Roman occupation in the shape of a copper coin picked up a few years ago in a field near Portobello, in the immediate neighbourhood of the old Roman road, vulgarly called the Fishwives’ Causeway. It bears the image and superscription of Faustina Anna Galeria, the wife of the Emperor Antoninus