Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/498

Rh 476 SCOTLAND [HISTORY. 685-756. is preserved in St Cuthbert's church at Edinburgh and in Kirkcudbright. To the same period belong two inscrip- tions, the earliest records of Anglian speech, one on the cross of Bewcastle in Cumberland, commemorating Alfred, a son of Oswy, the other, taken perhaps from a poem of Csedmon, at Ruthwell in Dumfries. Neither the Tweed nor the Solway was at this period a line of division. Oswy was succeeded by his son Egfrid (685), against whom the Picts successfully rebelled ; and the Scots and a considerable part of the Britons also recovered their freedom. Anglian bishops, however, continued to hold the see of Whithorn during the whole of the 8th century. The Northumbrian kings, more successful in the west than in the east, gradually advanced from Carlisle along the coast of Ayr, and even took Alclyde. In what is now England their power declined from the middle of the 8th century before the rise of Mercia. Shortly before the commencement of the 9th century the descents of the Danes began, which . led to the conflict for England between them and the Saxons of Wessex. The success of the latter under Alfred and his descendants transferred the supremacy to the princes of the southern kingdom, who, gradually advanc- ing northwards, before the close of that century united all England under their sceptre. Before its fall Northumberland produced three great men, the founders of English literature and learning, though two of them wrote chiefly in Latin, Caedmon, the monk of Whitby, the first English poet ; Bede, the monk of Jarrow, the first English historian ; and Alcuin, the monk of York, whose school might have become the first English university, had he not lived in the decline of Northumbrian greatness and been attracted to the court of Charlemagne. It is to this early dawn of talent among the Angles of Northumberland that England owes its name of the land of the Angles and its language that of English. The northern dialect spoken by the Angles was the speech of Lothian, north as well as south (in North- umberland) of the Tweed, and was preserved in the broad Scotch of the Lowlands, while modern English was formed from the southern dialect of Alfred, Chaucer, and Wycliffe. This early Teutonic civilization of the lowland district of Scotland, in spite of the Danish wars, the Celtic conquest, and border feuds, never died out, and it became at a later time the centre from which the Anglo-Saxon character permeated the whole of Scotland, without suppressing, as in England, the Celtic. Their union, more or less complete in different districts, is, after the difference in the extent of the Roman conquest, the second main fact of Scottish history, distinguishing it from that of England. Both, to a great degree, were the result of physical geography. The mountains and arms of the sea repelled invaders and preserved longer the ancient race and its customs. Early It is necessary, before tracing the causes which led to Pictish the union of races in Scotland, to form some notion of northern Scotland during the century preceding Kenneth Macalpine, during which the light of Adamnan and Bede being withdrawn we are left to the guidance of the Pictish Chronicle and the Irish Annals. The Picts whom Columba converted appear to have been consolidated under a single monarch. Brude, the son of Mailochon, ruled from Inverness to lona on the west and on the north to the Orkneys. A sub-king or chief from these islands appears at his court. The absence of any other Pictish king, the reception of the Columbite mission in Buchan under Drostan, a disciple of Columba, and perhaps Columba himself, the foundation of the church of Mortlach near Aberdeen by Machar, another of his disciples, favour the conclusion that the dominion of Brude included Aberdeen as well as Moray and Ross. Its southern limits are unknown. annals. The Picts 1 of Stirling, Perth, and Forfar, corresponding to Strathearn and Menteith, Athole and Gowrie, Angus and Mearns, had been already converted by Ninian in the 5th century may have already come under a single king ruling perhaps at Abernethy, with monnaers under him. It seems certain that Abernethy was earlier than Dun- keld a centre of the Celtic Church distinct from lona, and the seat of the first three bishops of Scotland. Its round tower cannot be safely ascribed to an earlier date than the 9th century, but may have been preceded by a church dedicated to St Bridget either in the 5th by Nechtan Morbet, or in the 6th century by Garnard, son of Donald, a later Pictish king. Although there exists a complete list of the Pictish kings from Brude, son of Mailochon, to Brude, son of Ferat, conquered by Kenneth Macalpine, and of the Scots of Dalriada from Aidan (converted by Columba) to Kenneth Macalpine, with their regnal years, it is only here and there that a figure emerges suffi- ciently distinct to enter history. Parts of these lists are fictitious and others doubtful, nor do we know over what extent of country the various monarchs ruled. Of the figures more or less prominent amongst the Pictish kings are Brude, the son of Derili, the contemporary of Adam- nan, who was present at the synod of Tara when the law called Kain Adamnan, freeing women from military service, was adopted, and who died in 706, being then styled king of Fortren. Nechtan, another son of Derili, was the contemporary of Bede, who gives (710) the letter of Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth, to him when he adopted the Roman Easter and the tonsure. Six years later Nechtan expelled the Columbite monks from his dominions. They retired to Dalriada, as their brethren in Nc rthumberland had done when a similar change was made by Oswy. Nechtan also asked for masons to build a church in the Roman style, to be dedicated to St Peter, and several churches in honour of that apostle were founded within his territory. Shortly after, Egbert, an Anglian monk, persuaded the community of Hy (lona) itself to conform, but too late to lead to the union of the churches of the Scots and the Picts, which were separated also by political causes. Fifteen years later the greatest Pictish monarch, Angus An$ MacFergus, after a contest with more than one rival, Mai gained the supremacy, which he held for thirty years Fer (731-761). In revenge for the capture of his son Brude by Dungal, son of Selvach, king of the Dalriad Scots, he attacked Argyll, and laid waste the whole country, destroy- ing Dunnad (1 on Loch Crinan), then the capital, burnt Creich (in Mull), and put in chains Dungal and Feradach, the sons of Selvach. He next conquered (739), and it is said drowned, Talorgan, son of Drostan, king of Athole, one of his rivals, and, resuming the Dalriad war, reduced the whole of the western Highlands. The Britons of Strathclyde were assailed by a brother of Angus, who 1 But there had been a time when not one but several Pictish kings ruled the northern and central districts of Scotland, and of this we have perhaps a trace in the Pictish legend according to which Cruithne, the eponymus of the race, had seven sons, Cait, Cee, Ciric, Fib, Fidach, Fotla, Fortren. Conjecture identifies five of these names with districts known in later history, Cait with Caithness, Ciric with Mearns (Magh Circen, the plain of Ciric), Fib with Fife, Fotla with Athole (Athfotla), Fortren with southern Perthshire, con- necting it with a division of the same county in a tract of the 12th century. (Comp. plate VI.) Six of the divisions Angus and Mearns, Athole and Gowrie, Strathearn and Menteith, Fife and Fortreive, Mar and Buchan, Moray and Ross fairly correspond to districts after- wards ruled by the Celtic mormaers of Angus, Athole, Strathearn, Fife, Mar, and Moray ; Caithness in the 9th century became Norse, and a new earl (of March) was introduced from the south of the Forth. They correspond also to seven great earldoms of Scotland, which appear with more or less distinctness on several occasions in the reigns of the Alexanders. This, at least, is a highly ingenious theory, but not certain history.