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INTRODUCTION
The present
volume has been published with two main objects. The writer
has attempted to exhibit, in outline, the leading
features of the
international history of the two countries which, in 1707, became the
United Kingdom. Relations with England form a large
part, and the heroic part,
of Scottish history, relations with Scotland a very much smaller
part of English history. The result has been that in
histories of England
references to Anglo-Scottish relations are occasional and
spasmodic, while students of Scottish history have
occasionally forgotten
that, in regard to her southern neighbour, the attitude of
Scotland was not always on the heroic scale.
Scotland appears on the
horizon of English history only during well-defined epochs, leaving no
trace of its existence in the intervals between
these. It may be that the
space given to Scotland in the ordinary histories of England is
proportional to the importance of Scottish affairs,
on the whole; but the
importance assigned to Anglo-Scottish relations in the fourteenth
century is quite disproportionate to the treatment
of the same subject in the
fifteenth century. Readers even of Mr. Green's famous book, may
learn with surprise from Mr. Lang or Mr. Hume Brown
the part played by the
Scots in the loss of the English dominions in France, or may fail to
understand the references to Scotland in the
diplomatic correspondence
of the sixteenth century.[1] There seems to be, therefore, room for a
connected narrative of the attitude of the two
countries towards each
other, for only thus is it possible to provide the _data_ requisite for
a fair appreciation of the policy of Edward I and
Henry VIII, or of
Elizabeth and James I. Such a narrative is here presented, in outline,
and the writer has tried, as far as might be, to
eliminate from his work
the element of national prejudice.
The book has also another aim. The relations between
England and Scotland have
not been a purely political connexion. The peoples have,
from an early date, been, to some extent,
intermingled, and this mixture
of blood renders necessary some account of the
racial relationship. It
has been a favourite theme of the English historians of the nineteenth
century that the portions of Scotland where the
Gaelic tongue has ceased
to be spoken are not really Scottish, but English. "The Scots who
resisted Edward", wrote Mr. Freeman, "were the
English of Lothian. The
true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest to them, leagued with
the 'Saxons' farther off."[2] Mr. Green, writing of
the time of Edward I,
says: "The farmer of Fife or the Lowlands, and the artisan of the
towns, remained stout-hearted Northumbrian
Englishmen", and he adds that
"The coast districts north of the Tay were inhabited
by a population of the
same blood as that of the Lowlands".[3] The theory has been, at all
events verbally, accepted by Mr. Lang, who describes
the history of Scotland as
"the record of the long resistance of the English of
Scotland to England, of the long resistance of the
Celts of Scotland to the
English of Scotland".[4] Above all, the conception has been firmly
planted in the imagination by the poet of the Lady
of the Lake.
"These fertile plains, that soften'd vale,
Were once the birthright of the Gael;
The stranger came with iron hand,
And from our fathers reft the land."
While holding in profound respect these illustrious
names, the writer ventures
to ask for a modification of this verdict. That the Scottish
Lowlanders (among whom we include the inhabitants of
the coast districts from
the Tay to the Moray Firth) were, in the end of the
thirteenth century, "English in speech and manners"
(as Mr. Oman[5]guardedly
describes them) is beyond doubt. Were they also English in
blood? The evidence upon which the accepted theory
is founded is twofold. In
the course of the sixth century the Angles made a descent
between the Humber and the Forth, and that district
became part of the English
kingdom of Northumbria. Even here we have, in the evidence of
the place-names, some reasons for believing that a
proportion of the original
Brythonic population may have survived. This northern portion
of the kingdom of Northumbria was affected by the
Danish invasions, but it
remained an Anglian kingdom till its conquest, in the beginning of
the eleventh century, by the Celtic king, Malcolm
II. There is, thus,
sufficient justification for Mr. Freeman's phrase, "the English of
Lothian", if we interpret the term "Lothian" in the
strict sense; but it
remains to be explained how the inhabitants of the Scottish Lowlands,
outside Lothian, can be included among the English
of Lothian who resisted
Edward I. That explanation is afforded by the events which
followed the Norman Conquest of England. It is
argued that the Englishmen
who fled from the Normans united with the original English of
Lothian to produce the result indicated in the
passage quoted from Mr.
Green. The farmers of Fife and the Lowlands, the artisans of the towns,
the dwellers in the coast districts north of Tay,
became, by the end of the
thirteenth century, stout Northumbrian Englishmen. Mr. Green admits
that the south-west of Scotland was still inhabited,
in 1290, by the Picts of
Galloway, and neither he nor any other exponent of the theory
offers any explanation of their subsequent
disappearance. The history of
Scotland, from the fourteenth century to the Rising
of 1745, contains,
according to this view, a struggle between the Celts and "the English of
Scotland", the most important incident of which is
the battle of Harlaw, in
1411, which resulted in a great victory for "the English of
Scotland". Mr. Hill Burton writes thus of Harlaw:
"On the face of ordinary
history it looks like an affair of civil war. But this
expression is properly used towards those who have
common interests and
sympathies, who should naturally be friends and may be friends again,
but for a time are, from incidental causes of
dispute and quarrel, made
enemies. The contest ... was none of this; it was a contest between
foes, of whom their contemporaries would have said
that their ever being in
harmony with each other, or having a feeling of common
interests and common nationality, was not within the
range of rational
expectations.... It will be difficult to make those not familiar with
the tone of feeling in Lowland Scotland at that time
believe that the defeat of
Donald of the Isles was felt as a more memorable deliverance
even than that of Bannockburn."[6]
We venture to plead for a modification of this
theory, which may fairly
be called the orthodox account of the circumstances. It will at once
occur to the reader that some definite proof should
be forthcoming that the
Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, outside the Lothians, were actually
subjected to this process of racial displacement.
Such a displacement had
certainly not been effected before the Norman Conquest, for it was
only in 1018 that the English of Lothian were
subjected to the rule of a
Celtic king, and the large amount of Scottish
literature, in the Gaelic
tongue, is sufficient indication that Celtic Scotland was not confined
to the Highlands in the eleventh century. Nor have
we any hint of aracial
displacement after the Norman conquest, even though it is
unquestionable that a considerable number of exiles
followed Queen Margaret to
Scotland, and that William's harrying of the north of
England drove others over the border. It is easy to
lay too much stress upon
the effect of the latter event. The northern counties cannot have
been very thickly populated, and if Mr. Freeman is
right in his description
of "that fearful deed, half of policy, half of vengeance,
which has stamped the name of William with infamy",
not very many of the
victims of his cruelty can have made good their flight, for we are told
that the bodies of the inhabitants of Yorkshire
"were rotting in the
streets, in the highways, or on their own hearthstones". Stone dead left
no fellow to colonize Scotland. We find, therefore,
only the results and not
the process of this racial displacement. These results were the
adoption of English manners and the English tongue,
and the growth of English
names, and we wish to suggest that they may find an historical
explanation which does not involve the total
disappearance of the
Scottish farmer from Fife, or of the Scottish artisan from Aberdeen.
Before proceeding to a statement of the explanation
to which we desire to
direct the reader's attention, it may be useful to deal briefly with
the questions relating to the spoken language of
Lowland Scotland and to
its place-names. The fact that the language of the Angles and Saxons
completely superseded, in England, the tongue of the
conquered Britons, is
admitted to be a powerful argument for the view that the Anglo-Saxon
conquest of England resulted in a racial
displacement. But the argument
cannot be transferred to the case of the Scottish
Lowlands, where, also, the
English language has completely superseded a Celtic tongue. For, in
the first case, the victory is that of the language
of a savage people, known
to be in a state of actual warfare, and it is a victory which
follows as an immediate result of conquest. In
Scotland, the victory of
the English tongue (outside the Lothians) dates from a relatively
advanced period of civilization, and it is a victory
won, not by conquest or
bloodshed, but by peaceful means. Even in a case of
conquest, change of speech is not conclusive
evidence of change of race
(_e.g._ the adoption of a Romance tongue by the
Gauls); much less is it
decisive in such an instance as the adoption of English by the
Lowlanders of Scotland. In striking contrast to the
case of England, the
victory of the Anglo-Saxon speech in Scotland did not include the
adoption of English place-names. The reader will
find the subject fully
discussed in the valuable work by the Reverend J.B. Johnston, entitled
"Place-Names of Scotland". "It is impossible", says
Mr. Johnston, "to speak
with strict accuracy on the point, but Celtic names in Scotland
must outnumber all the rest by nearly ten to one."
Even in counties where the
Gaelic tongue is now quite obsolete (_e.g._ in Fife, in
Forfar, in the Mearns, and in parts of
Aberdeenshire), the place-names
are almost entirely Celtic. The region where English
place-names abound is, of
course, the Lothians; but scarcely an English place-name is
definitely known to have existed, even in the
Lothians, before the
Norman Conquest, and, even in the Lothians, the English tongue never
affected the names of rivers and mountains. In many
instances, the existence
of a place-name which has now assumed an English form is no
proof of English race. As the Gaelic tongue died
out, Gaelic place-names
were either translated or corrupted into English forms; Englishmen,
receiving grants of land from Malcolm Canmore and
his successors, called
these lands after their own names, with the addition of the suffix-ham
or-tun; the influence of English ecclesiastics
introduced many new names;
and as English commerce opened up new seaports, some of these
became known by the names which Englishmen had given
them.[7] On the whole, the
evidence of the place-names corroborates our view that the
changes were changes in civilization, and not in
racial distribution.
We now proceed to indicate the method by which these
changes were effected,
apart from any displacement of race. Our explanation finds a
parallel in the process which has changed the face
of the Scottish Highlands
within the last hundred and fifty years, and which produced
very important results within the "sixty years" to
which Sir Walter Scott
referred in the second title of _Waverley_.[8] There has been no
racial displacement; but the English language and
English civilization have
gradually been superseding the ancient tongue and the ancient
customs of the Scottish Highlands. The difference
between Skye and Fife is
that the influences which have been at work in the former for a
century and a half have been in operation in the
latter for more than eight
hundred years.
What then were the influences which, between 1066
and 1300, produced in the
Scottish Lowlands some of the results that, between 1746 and 1800,
were achieved in the Scottish Highlands? That they
included an infusion of
English blood we have no wish to deny. Anglo-Saxons, in considerable
numbers, penetrated northwards, and by the end of
the thirteenth century the
Lowlanders were a much less pure race than, except in the
Lothians, they had been in the days of Malcolm
Canmore. Our contention
is, that we have no evidence for the assertion that this Saxon admixture
amounted to a racial change, and that, ethnically,
the men of Fife and of
Forfar were still Scots, not English. Such an infusion of English
blood as our argument allows will not explain the
adoption of the English
tongue, or of English habits of life; we must look elsewhere for
the full explanation. The English victory was, as we
shall try to show, a
victory not of blood but of civilization, and three main causes helped
to bring it about. The marriage of Malcolm Canmore
introduced two new
influences into Scotland--an English Court and an English Church, and
contemporaneously with the changes consequent upon
these new institutions
came the spread of English commerce, carrying with it the
English tongue along the coast, and bringing an
infusion of English blood
into the towns.[9] In the reign of David I, the son of Malcolm
Canmore and St. Margaret, these purely Saxon
influences were succeeded
by the Anglo-Norman tendencies of the king's favourites. Grants of
land[10] to English and Norman courtiers account for
the occurrence of English
and Norman family and place-names. The men who lived in
immediate dependence upon a lord, giving him their
services and receiving his
protection, owing him their homage and living under his
sole jurisdiction, took the name of the lord whose
men they were.
A more important question arises with regard to the
system of land tenure, and
the change from clan ownership to feudal possession. How was
the tribal system suppressed? An outline of the
process by which Scotland
became a feudalized country will be found in the Appendix,
where we shall also have an opportunity of
referring, for purposes of
comparison, to the methods by which clan-feeling was
destroyed after the last
Jacobite insurrection. Here, it must suffice to give a brief
summary of the case there presented. It is important
to bear in mind that the
tribes of 1066 were not the clans of 1746. The clan system in
the Highlands underwent considerable development
between the days of
Malcolm Canmore and those of the Stuarts. Too much stress must not be
laid upon the unwillingness of the people to give up
tribal ownership, for it
is clear from our early records that the rights of
joint-occupancy were confined to the immediate kin
of the head of the clan.
"The limit of the immediate kindred", says Mr. E.W. Robertson,[11]
"extended to the third generation, all who were
fourth in descent from a
Senior passing from amongst the joint-proprietary, and receiving,
apparently, a final allotment; which seems to have
been separated permanently
from the remainder of the joint-property by certain
ceremonies usual on such occasions." To such holders
of individual property the
charter offered by David I gave additional security of
tenure. We know from the documents entitled "Quoniam
attachiamenta", printed in
the first volume of the "Acts of the Parliament of Scotland",
that the tribal system included large numbers of
bondmen, to whom the
change to feudalism meant little or nothing. But even when all due
allowance has been made for this, the difficulty is
not completely solved.
There must have been some owners of clan property whom the
changes affected in an adverse way, and we should
expect to hear of them. We
do hear of them, for the reigns of the successors of Malcolm
Canmore are largely occupied with revolts in
Galloway and in Morayshire.
The most notable of these was the rebellion of
MacHeth, Mormaor of Moray,
about 1134. On its suppression, David I confiscated the earldom
of Moray, and granted it, by charters, to his own
favourites, and especially
to the Anglo-Normans, from Yorkshire and Northumberland, whom
he had invited to aid him in dealing with the
reactionary forces of
Moray; but such grants of land in no way dispossessed the lesser
tenants, who simply held of new lords and by new
titles. Fordun, who wrote
two centuries later, ascribes to David's successor, Malcolm IV, an
invasion of Moray, and says that the king scattered
the inhabitants throughout
the rest of Scotland, and replaced them by "his own peaceful
people".[12] There is no further evidence in support
of this statement, and
almost the whole of Malcolm's short reign was occupied with the
settlement of Galloway. We know that he followed his
grandfather's policy of
making grants of land in Moray, and this is probably the germ
of truth in Fordun's statement. Moray, however,
occupied rather an
exceptional position. "As the power of the sovereign extended over the
west," says Mr. E.W. Robertson, "it was his policy,
not to eradicate the old
ruling families, but to retain them in their native provinces,
rendering them more or less responsible for all that
portion of their
respective districts which was not placed under the immediate authority
of the royal sheriffs or baillies." As this policy
was carried out even in
Galloway, Argyll, and Ross, where there were occasional rebellions,
and was successful in its results, we have no reason
for believing that it was
abandoned in dealing with the rest of the Lowlands. As, from time
to time, instances occurred in which this plan was
unsuccessful, and as other
causes for forfeiture arose, the lands were granted to strangers,
and by the end of the thirteenth century the
Scottish nobility was
largely Anglo-Norman. The vestiges of the clan system which remained may
be part of the explanation of the place of the great
Houses in Scottish
History. The unique importance of such families as the Douglasses or the
Gordons may thus be a portion of the Celtic heritage
of the Lowlands.
If, then, it was not by a displacement of race, but
through the subtle
influences of religion, feudalism, and commerce that the Scottish
Lowlands came to be English in speech and in
civilization, if the
farmers of Fife and some, at least, of the burghers of Dundee or of
Aberdeen were really Scots who had been subjected to
English influences, we
should expect to find no strong racial feeling in mediaeval Scotland.
Such racial antagonism as existed would, in this
case, be owing to the
large admixture of Scandinavian blood in Caithness and in the Isles,
rather than to any difference between the true Scots
and "the English of the
Lowlands". Do we, then, find any racial antagonism between the
Highlands and the Lowlands? If Mr. Freeman is right
in laying down the general
rule that "the true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest
to them, leagued with the 'Saxons' farther off", if
Mr. Hill Burton is correct
in describing the red Harlaw as a battle between foes who could
have no feeling of common nationality, there is
nothing to be said in
support of the theory we have ventured to suggest. We may fairly expect
some signs of ill-will between those who maintained
the Celtic civilization
and their brethren who had abandoned the ancient customs
and the ancient tongue; we may naturally look for
attempts to produce a
conservative or Celtic reaction, but anything more than this will be
fatal to our case. The facts do not seem to us to
bear out Mr. Freeman's
generalization. When the independence of Scotland is really at stake, we
shall find the "true Scots" on the patriotic side.
Highlanders and Islesmen
fought under the banner of David I at Northallerton; they took
their place along with the men of Carrick in the
Bruce's own division at
Bannockburn, and they bore their part in the stubborn ring that
encircled James IV at Flodden. At other times,
indeed, we do find the
Lords of the Isles involved in treacherous intrigues with the kings of
England, but just in the same way as we see the
Earls of Douglas engaged
in traitorous schemes against the Scottish kings. In both cases
alike we are dealing with the revolt of a powerful
vassal against a weak
king. Such an incident is sufficiently frequent in the annals of
Scotland to render it unnecessary to call in racial
considerations to afford
an explanation. One of the most notable of these intrigues
occurred in the year 1408, when Donald of the Isles,
who chanced to be engaged
in a personal quarrel about the heritage which he claimed in
right of his Lowland relatives, made a treacherous
agreement with Henry IV;
and the quarrel ended in the battle of Harlaw in 1411. The real
importance of Harlaw is that it ended in the defeat
of a Scotsman who, like
some other Scotsmen in the South, was acting in the English
interest; any further significance that it may
possess arises from the
consideration that it is the last of a series of efforts directed
against the predominance, not of the English race,
but of Saxon speech and
civilization. It was just because Highlanders and Lowlanders did
represent a common nationality that the battle was
fought, and the blood
spilt on the field of Harlaw was not shed in any racial struggle, but in
the cause of the real English conquest of Scotland,
the conquest of
civilization and of speech.
Our argument derives considerable support from the
references to the
Highlands of Scotland which we find in mediaeval literature. Racial
distinctions were not always understood in the
Middle Ages; but readers
of Giraldus Cambrensis are familiar with the strong racial feeling that
existed between the English and the Welsh, and
between the English and
the Irish. If the Lowlanders of Scotland felt towards the Highlanders as
Mr. Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we
should expect to find
references to the difference between Celts and Saxons. But, on the
contrary, we meet with statement after statement to
the effect that the
Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the ancient Scottish
language and literature, while the Lowlanders have
adopted English customs
and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and "Scotland" are never
used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from
other inhabitants of
Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means, up to the end of the
fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue.[13] In the
beginning of the sixteenth
century John Major speaks of "the wild Scots and Islanders" as
using Irish, while the civilized Scots speak
English; and Gavin Douglas
professed to write in Scots (_i.e._ the Lowland
tongue). In the course of
the century this became the regular usage. Acts of the Scottish
Parliament, directed against Highland marauders,
class them with the border
thieves. There is no hint in the Register of the Privy Council or
in the Exchequer Rolls, of any racial feeling, and
the independence of the
Celtic chiefs has been considerably exaggerated. James IV and James
V both visited the Isles, and the chief town of Skye
takes its name from the
visit of the latter. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, it
was safe for Hector Boece, the Principal of the
newly founded university
of Aberdeen, to go in company of the Rector to make a voyage to the
Hebrides, and, in the account they have left us of
their experiences, we can
discover no hint that there existed between Highlanders and
Lowlanders much the same difference as separated the
English from the Welsh.
Neither in Barbour's _Bruce_ nor in Blind Harry's _Wallace_ is
there any such consciousness of difference, although
Barbour lived in Aberdeen
in the days before Harlaw. John of Fordun, a fellow-townsman
and a contemporary of Barbour, was an ardent admirer
of St. Margaret andof
David I, and of the Anglo-Norman institutions they introduced, while
he possessed an invincible objection to the kilt. We
should therefore expect to
find in him some consciousness of the racial difference. He
writes of the Highlanders with some ill-will,
describing them as a
"savage and untamed people, rude and independent, given to rapine, ...
hostile to the English language and people, and,
owing to diversity of
speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write
thus of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and
ecclesiastical
institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation
when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw
on that rough and boorish
people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The reference
to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did
not understand that the
Highlanders were a different people; and when he called them hostile
to the English, he was evidently unaware that their
custom was "out of hatred
to the Saxons nearest them" to league with the English. John
Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513),
mentions the differences
between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild Scots speak
Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he
adds, "most of us spoke
Irish a short time ago."[16] His contemporary, Hector Boece, who
made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us
who live on the borders of
England have forsaken our own tongue and learned English,
being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the
Highlanders remain just as
they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore, in whose days we began
to adopt English manners."[17] When Bishop
Elphinstone applied, in 1493,
for Papal permission to found a university in Old
Aberdeen, in proximity to
the barbarian Highlanders, he made no suggestion of any racial
difference between the English-speaking population
of Aberdeen and their
Gaelic-speaking neighbours.[18] Late in the sixteenth century, John
Lesley, the defender of Queen Mary, who had been
bishop of Ross, and came
of a northern family, wrote in a strain similar to that of Major
and Boece. "Foreign nations look on the
Gaelic-speaking Scots as wild
barbarians because they maintain the customs and the
language of their
ancestors; but we call them Highlanders."[19]
Even in connexion with the battle of Harlaw, we find
that Scottish historians
do not use such terms in speaking of the Highland forces as
Mr. Hill Burton would lead us to expect. Of the two
contemporary authorities,
one, the Book of Pluscarden, was probably written by a
Highlander, while the continuation of Fordun's "Scoti-chronicon", inwhich we have a more
detailed account of the battle, was the work of
Bower, a Lowlander who shared Fordun's antipathy to
Highland customs. The "Liber
Pluscardensis" mentions the battle in a very casual manner.
It was fought between Donald of the Isles and the
Earl of Mar; there was
great slaughter: and it so happened that the town of Cupar chanced to be
burned in the same year.[20] Bower assigns a greater
importance to the
affair;[21] he tells us that Donald wished to spoil Aberdeen and then to
add to his own possessions all Scotland up to the
Tay. It is as if he were
writing of the ambition of the House of Douglas. But there is no
hint of racial antipathy; the abuse applied to
Donald and his followers
would suit equally well for the Borderers who shouted the Douglas
battle-cry. John Major tells us that it was a civil
war fought for thespoil
of the famous city of Aberdeen, and he cannot say who won--only
the Islanders lost more men than the civilized
Scots. For him, its chief
interest lay in the ferocity of the contest; rarely, even in struggles
with a foreign foe, had the fighting been so
keen.[22] The fierceness
with which Harlaw was fought impressed the country so much that, some
sixty years later, when Major was a boy, he and his
playmates at the Grammar
School of Haddington used to amuse themselves by mock fights in
which they re-enacted the red Harlaw.
From Major we turn with interest to the Principal of
the University and King's
College, Hector Boece, who wrote his _History of Scotland_, at
Aberdeen, about a century after the battle of Harlaw,
and who shows no trace of
the strong feeling described by Mr. Hill Burton. He narrates
the origin of the quarrel with much sympathy for the
Lord of the Isles, and
regrets that he was not satisfied with recovering his own heritage
of Ross, but was tempted by the pillage of Aberdeen,
and he speaks of the
Lowland army as "the Scots on the other side".[23] His narrative in
the "History" is devoid of any racial feeling
whatsoever, and in his
_Lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen_ he omits any mention of Harlaw at
all. We have laid stress upon the evidence of Boece
because in Aberdeen, if
anywhere, the memory of the "Celtic peril" at Harlaw should have
survived. Similarly, George Buchanan speaks of
Harlaw as a raid for
purposes of plunder, made by the islanders upon the mainland.[24] These
illustrations may serve to show how Scottish
historians really did look
upon the battle of Harlaw, and how little do they
share Mr. Burton's horror
of the Celts.
When we turn to descriptions of Scotland we find no
further proof of the
correctness of the orthodox theory. When Giraldus Cambrensis wrote, in
the twelfth century, he remarked that the Scots of
his time have an affinity
of race with the Irish,[25] and the English historians of the
War of Independence speak of the Scots as they do of
the Welsh or the Irish,
and they know only one type of Scotsman. We have already seen the
opinion of John Major, the sixteenth-century
Scottish historian and
theologian, who had lived much in France, and could write of his native
country from an "ab extra" stand-point, that the
Highlanders speak Irish
and are less respectable than the other Scots; and his opinion was
shared by two foreign observers, Pedro de Ayala and
Polydore Vergil. The
former remarks on the difference of speech, and the latter says that the
more civilized Scots have adopted the English
tongue. In like manner
English writers about the time of the Union of the Crowns write of the
Highlanders as Scotsmen who retain their ancient
language. Camden, indeed,
speaks of the Lowlands as being Anglo-Saxon in origin, but he
restricts his remark to the district which had
formed part of the kingdom
of Northumbria.[26]
We should, of course, expect to find that the
gradually widening breach
in manners and language between Highlanders and Lowlanders produced some
dislike for the Highland robbers and their Irish
tongue, and we do
occasionally, though rarely, meet some indication of this. There are not
many references to the Highlanders in Scottish
literature earlier than
the sixteenth century. "Blind Harry" (Book VI, ll. 132-140) represents
an English soldier as using, in addressing Wallace,
first a mixture of French
and Lowland Scots, and then a mixture of Lowland Scots and
Gaelic:
"Dewgar, gud day, bone Senzhour, and
gud morn!
*
* *
* *
Sen ye ar Scottis, zeit salust sall ye
be;
Gud deyn, dawch Lard, bach lowch,
banzoch a de".
In "The Book of the Howlat", written in the latter
half of the fifteenth
century, by a certain Richard Holland, who was an adherent of the House
of Douglas, there is a similar imitation of Scottish
Gaelic, with the same
phrase "Banachadee" (the blessing of God). This seemingly innocent
phrase seems to have some ironical signification,
for we find in the "Auchinleck
Chronicle" (anno 1452) that it was used by some Highlanders
as a term of abuse towards the Bishop of Argyll.
Another example occurs in
a coarse "Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective", by Alexander
Montgomerie, the court poet of James VI. The Lowland
literature of the
sixteenth century contains a considerable amount of abuse of the
Highland tongue. William Dunbar (1460-1520), in his
"Flyting" (an exercise in
Invective), reproaches his antagonist, Walter Kennedy, with
his Highland origin. Kennedy was a native of
Galloway, while Dunbar
belonged to the Lothians, where we should expect the strongest
appreciation of the differences between Lowlander
and Highlander.Dunbar,
moreover, had studied (or, at least, resided) at Oxford, and was
one of the first Scotsmen to succumb to the
attractions of "town". The
most suggestive point in the "Flyting" is that a
native of the Lothians
could still regard a Galwegian as a "beggar Irish bard". For Walter
Kennedy spoke and wrote in Lowland Scots; he was,
possibly, a graduateof
the University of Glasgow, and he could boast of Stuart blood.
Ayrshire was as really English as was Aberdeenshire;
and, if Dunbar is in
earnest, it is a strong confirmation of our theory that he, being
"of the Lothians himself", spoke of Kennedy in this
way. It would, however, be
unwise to lay too much stress on what was really a
conventional exercise of a particular style of
poetry, now obsolete.
Kennedy, in his reply, retorts that he alone is true Scots, and that
Dunbar, as a native of Lothian, is but an English
thief:
"In Ingland, owle, suld be thyne habitacione,
Homage to Edward Langschankis maid thy
kyn".
In an Epitaph on Donald Owre, a son of the Lord of
the Isles, who raised a
rebellion against James IV in 1503, Dunbar had a great opportunity for
an outburst against the Highlanders, of which,
however, he did not take
advantage, but confined himself to a denunciation of treachery in
general. In the "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins",
there is a well-known
allusion to the bag-pipes:
"Than cryd Mahoun[27] for a Healand padyane;
Syne ran a feynd to feche Makfadyane[28]
Far northwart
in a nuke.[29]
Be he the correnoch had done schout
Erschemen so gadderit him about
In Hell grit rowme they
tuke.
Thae tarmegantis with tag and tatter
Full lowde in Ersche begowth to
clatter,
And rowp lyk revin and ruke.
The Devill sa devit was with thair yell
That in the depest pot of Hell
He smorit thame with
smoke."
Similar allusions will be found in the writings of
Montgomerie; but such
caricatures of Gaelic and the bagpipes afford but a slender basis for a
theory of racial antagonism.
After the Union of the Crowns, the Lowlands of
Scotland came to be more
and more closely bound to England, while the Highlands remained
unaffected by these changes. The Scottish nobility
began to find its true
place at the English Court; the Scottish adventurer was
irresistibly drawn to London; the Scottish
Presbyterian found the
English Puritan his brother in the Lord; and the Scottish Episcopalian
joined forces with the English Cavalier. The history
of the seventeenth century
prepared the way for the acceptance of the Celtic theory in the
beginning of the eighteenth, and when philologists
asserted that the Scottish
Highlanders were a different race from the Scottish Lowlanders,
the suggestion was eagerly adopted. The views of the
philologists were
confirmed by the experiences of the 'Forty-five, and they received a
literary form in the "Lady of the Lake" and in
"Waverley". In the
nineteenth century the theory received further development owing to the
fact that it was generally in line with the
arguments of the defenders
of the Edwardian policy in Scotland; and it cannot
be denied that it holds
the field to-day, in spite of Mr. Robertson's attack on it in
Appendix R of his "Scotland under her Early Kings".
The writer of the present volume ventures to hope
that he has, at all
events, done something to make out a case for re-consideration of the
subject. The political facts on which rests the
argument just stated will
be found in the text, and an Appendix contains the more important
references to the Highlanders in mediaeval Scottish
literature, and offers a
brief account of the feudalization of Scotland. Our argument
amounts only to a modification, and not to a
complete reversal of the
current theory. No historical problems are more difficult than those
which refer to racial distribution, and it is
impossible to speak
dogmatically on such a subject. That the English blood of the Lothians,
and the English exiles after the Norman Conquest,
did modify the race over
whom Malcolm Canmore ruled, we do not seek to deny. But that it was
a modification and not a displacement, a victory of
civilization and not of
race, we beg to suggest. The English influences were none the
less strong for this, and, in the end, they have
everywhere prevailed. But
the Scotsman may like to think that mediaeval Scotland was not
divided by an abrupt racial line, and that the
political unity and
independence which it obtained at so great a cost did correspond to a
natural and a national unity which no people can, of
itself, create.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Spanish and Venetian Calendars of State
Papers. Cf. especially the
reference to the succour afforded by Scotland to France
in Spanish Calendar, i. 210.]
[Footnote 2: _Historical Essays_, First Series, p.
71.]
[Footnote 3: _History of the English People_, Book
III, c. iv.]
[Footnote 4: _History of Scotland_, vol. i, p. 2.
But, as Mr. Langexpressly
repudiates any theory of displacement north of the Forth, and
does not regard Harlaw in the light of a great
racial contest, his
position is not really incompatible with that of the present work.]
[Footnote 5: _History of England_, p. 158. Mr. Oman
is almost alone innot
calling them English in blood.]
[Footnote 6: _History of Scotland_, vol. ii, pp.
393-394.]
[Footnote 7: Instances of the first tendency are
Edderton, near Tain,
_i.e._ _eadar duin_ ("between the hillocks"), and Falkirk, _i.e._
_Eaglais_ ("speckled church"), while examples of the
second tendency aretoo
numerous to require mention. Examples of ecclesiastical names are
Laurencekirk and Kirkcudbright, and the growth of
commerce receives the
witness of such names as Turnberry, on the coast of Ayr, dating from the
thirteenth century, and Burghead on the Moray
Firth.]
[Footnote 8: Cf. _Waverley_, c. xliii, and the
concluding chapter of
_Tales of a Grandfather_.]
[Footnote 9: William of Newburgh states this in a
probably exaggeratedform
when he says:--"Regni Scottici oppida et burgi ab Anglis habitari
noscuntur" (Lib. II, c. 34). The population of the
towns in the Lothianswas,
of course, English.]
[Footnote 10: For the real significance of such
grants of land, cf.
Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, Essay II.]
[Footnote 11: _Scotland under her Early Kings_, vol.
i, p. 239.]
[Footnote 12: Annalia, iv.]
[Footnote 13: There is a possible exception in
Barbour's _Bruce_ (Bk.
XVIII, 1. 443)--"Then gat he all the Erischry that war intill his
company, of Argyle and the Ilis alswa". It has been
generally understoodthat
the "Erischry" here are the Scottish Highlanders; but it is certain
that Barbour frequently uses the word to mean
Irishmen, and it is
perhaps more probable that he does so here also than that he should use
the word in this sense only once, and with no
parallel instance for more
than a century.]
[Footnote 14: Chronicle, Book II, c. ix. Cf. App.
A.]
[Footnote 15: Ibid, Book V, c. x. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 16: _History of Greater Britain_, Bk. I,
cc. vii, viii, ix.Cf.
App. A.]
[Footnote 17: _Scotorum Regni Descriptio_, prefixed
to his "History".Cf. App.
A.]
[Footnote 18: _Fasti Aberdonenses_, p. 3.]
[Footnote 19: _De Gestis Scotorum_, Lib. I. Cf. App.
A. It isinteresting to
note, as showing how the breach between Highlander and
Lowlander widened towards the close of the sixteenth
century, thatFather James
Dalrymple, who translated Lesley's History, at Ratisbon,
about the beginning of the seventeenth century,
wrote: "Bot the rest of
the Scottis, quhome _we_ halde as outlawis and wylde peple". Dalrymple
was probably a native of Ayrshire.]
[Footnote 20: _Liber Pluscardensis_, X, c. xxii. Cf.
App. A.]
[Footnote 21: _Scoti-chronicon_, XV, c. xxi. Cf.
App. A.]
[Footnote 22: _Greater Britain_, VI, c. x. Cf. App.
A. The keenness ofthe
fighting is no proof of racial bitterness. Cf. the clan fight on the
Inches at Perth, a few years before Harlaw.]
[Footnote 23: _Scotorum Historiae_, Lib. XVI. Cf.
App. A.]
[Footnote 24: _Rerum Scotorum Historia_, Lib. X. Cf.
App. A.]
[Footnote 25: _Top. Hib._, Dis. III, cap. xi.]
[Footnote 26: _Britannia_, section _Scoti_.]
[Footnote 27: Mahoun = Mahomet, _i.e._ the Devil.]
[Footnote 28: The Editor of the Scottish Text
Society's edition of
Dunbar points out that "Macfadyane" is a reference to the traitor of the
War of Independence:
"This Makfadzane till Inglismen was suorn;
Eduard gaiff him bath Argill and Lorn".
Blind Harry, VII, ll. 627-8.]
[Footnote 29: "Far northward in a nuke" is a
reference to the cave in
which Macfadyane was killed by Duncan of Lorne (Bk. VIII, ll. 866-8).]
Contents
-
Chapter I - Racial Distribution and Feudal
Relations 500 - 1066
-
Chapter II - Scotland and the Normans 1066 - 1286
-
Chapter III - The Scottish Policy of Edward I 1286
- 1296
-
Chapter IV - The War of Independence 1297 - 1328
-
Chapter V - Edward III and Scotland 1328 - 1399
-
Chapter VI - Scotland, Lancaster, and York 1400 -
1500
-
Chapter VII - The Beginnings of the English
Alliance 1500 - 1542
-
Chapter VIII - The Parting of the Ways 1542 - 1568
-
Chapter IX - The Union of the Crowns 1568 - 1625
-
Chapter X - "The Troubles in Scotland" 1625 - 1688
-
Chapter XI - The Union of the Parliaments 1689 -
1707
-
Appendix A - References to the Highlanders in
Mediaeval Literature
-
Appendix B - The Feudalization of Scotland
-
Appendix C - Table of the
Competitors of 1290
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