Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/21

Rh having in several conflicts overcome the natives who withstood them, they admitted the rest to terms of peace, but that they continued 100 years, all but one, in dependence on the kings of Kent, at the end of which their dependent state (Ducatus) was changed into a kingdom, Ida being advanced to the royal dignity. From all of which we may at least infer a Teutonic settlement, or series of settlements, slowly establishing themselves in defiance of native opposition, and, during a century of struggle and conflict, shaping themselves into something of a coherent state. The natives whom the invaders found in possession of the soil were not Picts or Scots, but Britons, of the same race as the inhabitants of the more southern parts of the island, who were known to the Angles as Welsh, and are shown by the contemporary poems of the bards, Taliesin, Aneurin, and Lliwarch Hen, to have acquired from the Romans no small degree of refinement and civilization. But centuries of peace, and dependence upon the protection of the Roman legions, had rendered them, like the inhabitants of all parts of the empire, ill-fitted to defend themselves against the ferocious assaults of their untamed enemies; and although under the leadership of Arthur, Urien, Owain, and other valiant princes, whose very personality seems afterwards to melt away in a cloud of poetry and romance, they maintained a gallant struggle against the "heathen barbarians,"—it was a losing struggle with a hapless issue. It was evidently during the early part of this hundred years' contest for the establishment of the North Angle State, that the twelve great battles recorded by Nennius were fought between the Saxons and the Britons under Arthur, the first of which was on the Eiver Glen, and several at Dubglass, identified with "the strong frontier afforded by the waters of the Dunglass and Peass Burn," at the east end of the Lammermoors. Had any genuine works of Merddyn or Merlin Caledonius come down to us, we might have possessed contemporary glimpses of this period, like those of the heroes, battles, and