The good king Kenneth has
gone to his grave, and the light would seem to have departed with him. No sooner is he
laid in the tomb than the shadow of an eclipse falls upon the historic landscape, and for
some time we travel onwards in comparative darkness. Several successive reigns pass away
before we can see distinctly what is passing on the soil of Scotland. The chroniclers who
narrate the transactions of these dark centuries—and they are the darkest of Scottish
history—were not eye-witnesses of what they record; they gleaned their information
from a variety of traditional and monumental sources, and however painstaking and truth
loving they may have been, it was impossible for them to avoid being at times wrong in
their conclusions, and mistaken as to their facts.1 We are all the more sensible of the
darkness in which we find ourselves from its contrast to the clear light that irradiated
our country a few centuries previous, and which makes the times it brightened, though in
reality far more remote, seem to us much more near.
Great events bring their own light with them,
and write their own history. This is especially true of events which have the spiritual
for their basis, and which summon into action the souls rather than the bodies of men.
Such epoch has an electric brilliancy which keeps it above the horizon despite ages of
intervening darkness. How distinct and palpable is still the Scotland of the sixth and
seventh centuries! We follow as vividly the voyage of Columba across the Irish Sea to the
shores of Iona, as if we had sailed with him in the osier-ribbed vessel which carried him
across. We watch from day to day the rising walls of that humble edifice within which he
is to gather the youth of many lands, and there train them in a theology drawn from the
pure fountains of Holy Scripture. We become his companions when he goes forth on his
missionary tour among the Picts, and see him roll aside the darkness of Druidism from the
north of Scotland, and revive the dying lamp of the faith in the Lowlands. Our interest in
his labours grows as his work draws nigh its completion, and we see Scotland dotted with
Columban brotherhoods, schools of Christian knowledge, and centuries of Christian industry
and art. We are parted from the men who accomplished this great work by thirteen
centuries, yet we think of them as they had been our contemporaries, and had only recently
rested from their labours.
But with the death of Kenneth MacAlpin, or
rather with the decay of the Columban age, there comes a great change. Scotland hardly
looks the same country as when Columba stood at the head of its scholars and Kenneth
MacAlpin lead its armies. It has receded into the far distance, and we stand gazing into a
haze. Scotland, it is true, does not lack kings. Kenneth MacAlpin has successors who have
sat upon the Lia-Fail at Scone, but they pass before us like phantoms. Nor does
Scotland lack warriors; at least it does not lack battles. The land rings incessantly with
the clash of arms. But if the sword is busy, we fear the plough rests. The acres under
tillage diminish instead of multiplying, and fields which had been redeemed from the
wilderness by the skilful and diligent husbandry of men who had learned their agriculture
as well as their Christianity from the elders of Iona, fell back again into the desert and
become covered with bracken, while the wild boar, dislodged from his covert, comes back to
his old haunt and lies in wait for the traveller. The lamp has waxed dim, and its flame
sunk low in the schools of learning and in the sanctuaries of religion. We hear of armies
crossing the Tweed to fight for the doubtful possession of Northumbria, and extend the
Scottish dominions to the banks of the Tyne, or even the Humber, but hardly do we hear of
missionary bands in their home-spun woollen garments and sandals of cow hide, setting
forth, as aforetime, from the Scottish shore to carry the name of Scot and the faith of
Culdee to countries afar off.
The moment was critical. All that had been
won—and much had been won—was on the point of being lost. Scotland had begun to
work its way back to its former condition of divided and warring nationalities. So would
it have appeared to an onlooker. But no; Pict and Scot must not part company. If they
would fulfil their destiny they must contend side by side on the same battlefield, and
feel the purifying and elevating influence of a great common cause, prosecuted through
toil, through painful sacrifices, through disheartening reverses, till, borne to victory,
it has been crowned with complete achievement. It is not the success that comes with a
rush, but the success that comes as the fruit of slow, patient, and persistent labours and
conflicts that anneals, hardens, and at last perfects nations destined to rise to a first
place, and to render the highest services to mankind. It is on such a process that
Scotland is about to be taken. It is to be put upon the anvil and kept on it for seven
generations, till Pict and Scot shall not only have mingled their blood but fused their
souls, and for the narrow aims of Clan substituted the wider and nobler aspirations of
Nation.
Even before Kenneth was laid in the
sepulcharal vaults of Iona, the Scots had warning that the clouds were gathering, and were
sure to break in storm. They had seen what the sea could bring forth. Ships of ominous
build, swift as the eagle, and as greedy of prey, had once and again appeared off their
coast, and sent a thrill of terror along the sea-bo0ard. These unwelcome visitors would
retreat, and after disappearing in the blue main would suddenly return, as if they took
pleasure in tormenting their destined victims before pouncing up0on them. To come and see
and go back would not always suit the purpose of these plundering sea-kings. One day they
would strike. Already they had swooped upon the extreme north-western parts, and struck
their cruel talons into the quivering land. Iona gone, its monks slaughtered, and its
building blackened with fire, remained the monument of their visit. There were the
"hammers" which by long-continued and terrible blows were to weld into
homogeneity and consistency the rugged and unruly mass of humanity that occupied Scotland.
The first to take his seat on the Stone of
Scone and assume the government of the kingdom after Kenneth MacAlpin was his brother
Donald. Had the nation forgotten the services of the father, seeing they pass by the son
and place the brother on the vacant throne? No, Scotland is not unmindful of what it owes
to Kenneth MacAlpin; but in those days the succession to the crown was regulated by what
is known as the law of Tanbistry. This was a wise law in times so unsettled as those of
which we write, and must have largely helped to steady the nation. When it happened that a
monarch died leaving a son to succeed him who was of tender years, it was held unwise to
put the sceptre into his hands. The vigour of manhood was needed to cope with the saucy
and turbulent chieftains of the then Scotland, and in the hands of a child the sceptre
would have run great risk of being contemned. On the death of a monarch, therefore, his
nearest collateral relative, or that one of the royal family who was deemed fittest for
the office, was selected, and the son meanwhile had to wait till years had given him
experience, and the death of the reigning king had opened his way to the throne.2
As regards the prince now on the Scottish
throne, nearly all we can say of him is that he wore the crown for four years. He stands
too far off in point of time, and he is seen through too thick a haze to permit us to take
his measure. Historians have given us two different and opposite portraits of King Donald,
painted him, probably, as they wished him to have been, rather as he really was, for they
had hardly any better means of judging of his true character than we have. Boece and
Buchanan represent him as given up to all sorts of vicious indulgences, as governed
entirely by low flatterers, and as neglecting the business of the state, and wasting his
own time and the public revenue on "hunters, hawkers and parasites". The
scandals of the court came at last to such a head that the discontented chieftains among
the Picts thought that the time had come for asserting their independence and restoring
their ancient monarchy. With this view they formed an alliance with the Saxons of England,
assuring them that the northern kingdom was ready to drop into their arms would they only
unite their forces with theirs in the effort to wrest the ancient Pictland from the
Scottish sway. The Saxons marched northward as far as the Forth. Had the raid succeeded it
is probable that the Saxons would have kept the country themselves, and left the mutinous
and treacherous Picts to find a kingdom where they could. Happily the arms of Donald
prevailed, and Scotland remained the united nation which Kenneth had made it.
In Donald, as the old chroniclers have
striven to reproduce him from the mists of a remote time, we have, as we have said, a
picture with two totally unlike sides. On the side which we have been contemplating there
is shown us a profligate prince and a kingdom falling in pieces. Turn the obverse. We are
startled by the grand image that now meets us. The voluptuary and trifler is gone, and in
his room is a prince, temperate, brave, patriotic, sustaining the state by his energy and
virtues. So have Fordun and Winton, both of whom wrote before Boece, represented Donald.
They tell us, took, that not only was he careful to preserve the splendid heritage of a
united people which his brother had left him, but that he was studious to keep war at a
distance by cultivating friendship with neighbouring kings. We make no attempt to
reconcile these two widely divergent accounts. We see in them the proof that the real
Donald is not known, and now never can be known. In a question of this sort it is the
earliest authorities who are held to speak with the greater weight, seeing they stand
nearest the sources of information; and as it is the earlier chroniclers that give us the
more favourable portrait of Donald, he is entitled to the presumption thence arising in
his favour. Donald closed his short reign of four years---too short if he was the virtuous
prince which some believed him to have been, but tool long if he was the monster of vice
which others say he was---in the year 864. The rock in the western seas received his
ashes.
On the death of Donald the succession
returned to the direct line. We now see Constantin, the son of Kenneth MacAlpin, assuming
the crown. The memories of the great father lend prestige to the throne of the son, and
give authority to his sceptre. And, verily, there was need of all the vigour which could
possibly be infused into the government of the kingdom, for the hour was near when
Scotland would have to sustain a severer strain than any to which it had been subjected
since the days of the Romans. The tempest which had rolled up from England d in the
previous reign, and which had discharged itself on the southern shores of the Forth, was a
summer blast compared with the hailstorms which were gathering in the countries on the
other side of the North Sea. The battle with the Norseman was now to begin in deadly
earnest. A few premonitory blows, sharp and quick, had the Viking dealt on the borders of
the Country, but now he was to assemble all his hordes, and come against the land like a
cloud, and strike at the heart of the kingdom. For two centuries to come the kings of
Scotland would have other things to think of than the wine cup and the boar hunt, and the
Scots would do well to reserve their blood for worthier conflicts than a raid into
Northumbria.
Before the great battle opened Constantin
found that he had a little war on his hands at home. The district of Lochaber suddenly
burst into flames. This provincial conflagration had been kindled by a Highlander named
MacEwan, whom Constantin had appointed to be governor of the district. The ambition of
this man was not to be bounded by the narrow confine of his Highland principality. He had
higher aims than he could find scope for in Lochaber. A number of discontented men, who
too doubtless thought that their great merits had been overlooked, gathered round him and
offered him their help in his attempt on the throne. Constantin had timely notice of the
tempest that was brewing amid the mountains of Lochaber, and without giving it time to
burtst6, he crossed the hills and appeared on the scene of the disturbance e. MacEwan, who
did not dream that his treason had travelled as far as the valley of the Earn, and was
known in the Palace of Fort-Teviot, was surprised to find himself face to face with his
sovereign. His followers dispersing, left their leader to enjoy alone whatever promotion
Constantin might be pleased to confer upon him. That promotion was such as his services
deserved. He was hanged before the Castle of Dunstafnage, which he had made his
headquarters, and the rebellion expired.
After this appeared a portent of even worse
augury which struck alarm into the heart of both king and people. The tempest this time
came not from the land but from the sea. The Danes had landed on the coast of Fife, and
had already begun their bloody work. The tidings of what had happened sent a shock through
the whole kingdom. Contrary to their usual custom the invaders had made their descent on
the eastern coast, where they were not looked for, and as the Scotland of that age had no
army of observation, their landing was unopposed. They held no parley with the natives,
they offered no terms of submission, but unsheathing their swords, they began at once to
hew their way into the interior of the kingdom. Their course lay along the fertile vale of
the Leven, and its green beauty under their feet quickly changed into ghastly red. The
cruel Dane was merciful to none, but his heaviest vengeance fell upon the ministers of the
Christian Church. A considerable number of ecclesiastics is said to have made good their
escape to the Isle of May, but their persecutors followed them thither, and remorselessly
butchering them, converted the little isle into a horrible shambles. Possibly the Danes
deemed their slaughter a pleasing sacrifice to their god Odin, for paganism in all its
forms is a cruel and bloodthirsty thing.
King Constantin, assembling his army, marched
to stay the torrent of Scottish blood which the Danish sword had set flowing. He found the
Danish host divided into two bodies, and led by Hungan and Hubba, the two brothers of the
Danish king. One corps was robbing and slaughtering along the left bank of the Leven, and
the other was engaged with equal ardour in that to them most congenial work of the right
bank of the same stream. Constantine led his soldiers against the Danish force on the
left. Recent rains had swollen the Leven, and the Danes on the other side durst not tempt
the angry flood by crossing over to the assistance of their comrades. Left alone with the
Scottish army they were utterly routed, and Constantine inflicted a severe chastisement
upon them, cutting them off almost to a man.
When the Danes on the right side of the river
saw how complete was the victory of the Scots they fell back before them, and resolved to
make their final stand in the neighbourhood of their ships. Their fleet lay at anchor in
Balcombie Bay, in the eastern extremity of Fife, two miles beyond the town of Crail. A
sweet and peaceful scene is this spot, seen under its normal conditions. The blue sea, the
bright sandy beach, the vast crescent of rocks and shingle, steep and lofty, that sweeps
round it a full mile in circuit, lying moreover, in the bosom of a far mightier bay of
which the southern arm finds its termination in the promontory of St Abbs, and the
northern in the precipices of the Red Head, make a fine a piece of coast scenery as is
almost anywhere to be held. Yet dire was the carnage that day enacted on this usually
quiet and secluded spot.
The Danes strengthened their position by
drawing round the bay a-top, a bristling barricade of rocks and stones, with which the
spot plentifully supplied them. They dug entrenchments on the level plain outside their
bulwark, which further strengthened their camp. Immediately beneath, in the bay,—they
might almost drop a pebble upon their decks,--were moored their galleys, ready to carry
them across the sea, if the day should go against them, and they lived to go back to the
country whence they had come. The Danes fought for life, the Scots for country, and both
with fury and desperation. The battlefield was the open plain above the bay, in our day an
expanse of rich corn fields, all the richer, doubtless, from the blood that then so
abundantly watered it. The hottest of the strife would rage at the barrier of boulders
thrown up to break the onset of the Scots. It was the object of the latter to drive the
Danes over their own rampart, and roll them down the slope into the sea; but the invaders
made good their footing on the level ground, and forcing back the body of their
assailants, escaped the destruction that yawned in their rear. The slain lay all about,
and the blood of Scot and Dane trickling down in the same stream dyed the waters of the
bay, and gave terrible intimation to those in charge of the galleys of the desperate
character of the struggle that was going on shore.
The good fortune of Constantin did not attend
him in this second battle. This was owing to no lack of spirit or bravery on his part, but
grew out of the fret and discontent that continued to smoulder in the Pictish mind against
the sway of the Scottish sceptre.
A contingent of Picts is said to have left
the field while the battle was going on, and their desertion disheartening their comrades,
turned the scale in the fortunes of the day. When the battle had ended, Scotland was
without a king. As Constantin was fighting bravely in the midst of his fast falling ranks,
he was surrounded by the Danes, seized and dragged to a cave in the rocks, and there
beheaded. Ten thousand Scots are said to have perished in that battle. Of the Danes the
slain would be even more numerous, for the entire force on the left of the Leven was cut
in pieces in the first battle, and considering how desperately the second was contested,
the Danish dead in it would count at least man for man with the Scots. The Danes sought no
closer acquaintance with Scotland meanwhile. Making their way to their ships, they set
sail, leaving behind them a land over which rose the wail of widow and orphan, to be
answered back by an equally loud and bitter cry from the homes to which they were
hastening, as soon as they should have arrived there with the doleful tidings they were
carrying thither.3
The body of the king was found next day. A
sorrowing nation carried it to Iona, and laid it in the sepulchres of the Scottish kings.
It was only twenty years since the funeral procession of Kenneth MacAlpin had been seen
moving along the same tract, in greater pomp, it may be, but not in profounder grief. The
father had died on the bed of peace, the son had gone down in the storm of battle, and now
rest together in the sacred quiet of the little isle. Constantin had reigned fourteen
years, dying in A.D. 877.4
Such was the first burst of the great storm.
The clouds had rolled away for the moment, but they would return, not once, nor twice, but
many times in years to come. Henceforward the Scottish peasant must plough his fields and
reap his harvests with the terror of the Dane hanging over him. At any moment this flock
of Norse vultures might rise out of the sea, and swoop down upon his land and make it
their prey. He must be watchful, and sober, and provident. He must care for the interests
of his country, and know that his individual security and defence lay not in the strength
of his clan, but in the strength of his nation; in the unity and power of all its clans,
near and remote. He must cease to seek occasions of quarrelling, least, haply, the common
enemy should come suddenly and finding him fighting with his neighbour, should have an
easy victory over both.
The Danes of that day were the most powerful
of the German nations. Their narrow territory, overstocked with inhabitants, was
continually in labour to relieve itself by sending forth new swarms of piratical
adventurers. Its youth, hardy and martial, w3ere always ready to embark in any enterprise
that offered them the chance of waging battle and of gathering spoil.. They had been born
to slay or to be slain, and better not to have lived than to live and not to have mingled
in the carnage of the battlefield. Their welcome at the gates of Valhalla, and their place
among its heroes, would, they knew, be in strict accordance with their prowess in war and
the enemies they had slaughtered. Such was their ethical creed. They troubled themselves
with no questions of casuistry touching the rights of the inhabitants of a country marked
out for invasion. All lands were theirs if only their sword could give them possession. If
it was a case it belonged, without dispute, to the people of Odin, and nothing could be
more pleasing to this deity than that his worshippers should take possession of it, and
consecrate it by the erection of his altars. Such were the people that hung upon the flank
of the Scotland of the ninth and following century.
It is after a different fashion that the
overcrowded or hungry populations of our day go about the business of seeking out and
occupying new settlements. Crossing the sea with his wife and little ones, the emigrant
sets to work with his axe, felling not men but trees, and having cleared a space in the
primeval forest, he sets up his homestead, and begins those operations of spade or plough
which soon teach the earth around his humble log-house to wave with cornfields or blossom
with orchards. But so prosaic a mode of finding for himself a new home was little to the
taste of the emigrant of the ninth century. The country that could be won without battle
was scarce worth possessing. The claimant of new territories in that age crossed the main
in a galley blazoned with emblems of terror: the prow the head of horrid dragon, and the
stern the twisted tail of venomous snake. The earth grew red at his approach. The invaded
region was cleared out with the sword, and its new occupant set himself down on the gory
soil.
This fate had already been meted out to South
Britain. Descending on it with the swift and destructive force of one of their own
hailstorms, the Anglo-Saxons made the country their own. They cleared out the inhabitants
with the summary agencies of fire and sword, and driving a few miserable remnants of the
population into the corners of the land, they gave to the country a new race and a new
name. They called it Anglo-land. A similar fate had been allotted to Scotland by the Dane.
Its ancient people were to be hewn down. Some few might be spared to be hewers of wood and
drawers of water to the conqueror, but the Dane was to be its lord and master. Its ancient
name was to be blotted out: the sanctuaries of the Culdee were to be razed and the shrines
of Thor set up in their room. It was this tremendous possibility that made the two
nationalities coalesce. They were fused in the fire. Every battle with the Dane, every
heap of slain which his sword piled up, and every shipload of booty which he carried
across the sea, only helped to strengthen their cohesion and fan their patriotism. The
question was no longer whether shall Scot or Pict take precedence in the government of the
realm? The question now had come to be, shall either of the two be suffered to rule it, or
indeed to exist in it? Shall the name of Caledonia cease from the mouths of men, and shall
the country in all time coming be known ad Dane-land?
FOOTNOTES
1. When Malcolm Canmore died (l093), Scotland had no written history
of any sort. The school of Iona in the sixth and seventh centuries had produced a numerous
class of expert and elegant penmen and copyists, who furnished their country men with
transcripts of the Scriptures, commentaries, and books for Divine service. Scottish civil
history has its first beginnings in the charters granted to Abbeys. The oldest charter
extant is by King Duncan (1095) to the monks of Durham. Then follows a charter by David I.
The "Chronicle of Mailross," written in the Abbey of Melrose in the thirteenth
century, is, says Mr. Cosmo Innes, "the most ancient Scotch writing of the nature of
continuous history that is now extant." State papers begin in the reign of Alexander
III., or later half of the thirteenth century. Next comes the "Poem of the
Bruce," the Scotch Odyssey by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen
(1375-1395). Then follows Andrew Wyntoun (1420), Prior of Lochleven. His history has
little value as a poem, but is very valuable as a chronicle. In the end of the fourteenth
century, John Fordun laid the foundation of Scottish history in his Scoti-Chronicon.
Hector Boece wrote in 1533. His work is in classic Scotch prose.
2.
Johannis Major,Historia Britannioe, Lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 90 Edin., 1740.
3.
We have great faith in the traditions of a country, if they are natural, and are
corroborated by some monumental evidence, and are not tainted by the element of miracle.
The chronicler with his pen may put any number of legends he pleases on his page, but
nothing but the event itself can write its story on the face of a country, so as to take
hold of the belief of its inhabitants and be handed down by them. Of this battle we have
still living traditions in that party of the country. The inhabitants of the east of Fife
point out the cave amid the rocks of Balcombie Bay in which Constantin was murdered, and
the trenches and embankments of the Danes at the head of the bay are still traceable,
after the lapse of a thousand years. They are styled by the country people the Danes’
dykes. See also Johannis Major, Historia Majoris Britannioe, Lib. iii. cap. ii. p.
90. 1740.
4.
Dr. Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 327), guiding himself by the Ulster Annals
and the Chronicle of the Picts, relates this campaign differently. He finds that
the Danes had been driven from Dublin by the Norwegians; that they crossed to Alban, and
entered the country by the valleys watered by the Forth and the Teith; that they fought a
battle with the Scots at Dollar; that they drove the Scottish army before them to the
northeastern extremity of Fife, where the great battle was fought in which Constantin lost
his life. There are, however, very great difficulties in their ships. On arriving, and
beginning their march through the whole breadth of the country, what did they do with
their fleet? They could only send it round the north of Scotland by the Pentland, to wait
the arrival of the army on the east coast. Considering the hazard of a march through a
country whose whole population was hostile, were not the Danes more likely to accompany
their ships, and make their assault in unbroken force on the east coast, whence, if they
were beaten, they had an open road to their own country? It is extremely unlikely that the
expelled colony of Danes should have been able to drive the Scots before them across the
entire island, and that the Scots should make a stand only when they had no alternative
but fight or be driven into the sea. These improbabilities are so great that we may
venture to say they never took place. |
