Chapter 2: Celtic Scotland

There is evidence of human settlement in parts of present-day Scotland that dates back to 6,000 B.C. The inhabitants were hunters and fishermen. About two thousand years later, a second group arrived -- the Neolithic people. Some of their stone houses remain in Orkney; the well-preserved stone-built village, Skara Brae, attests to the wealth and stability of its builders. On the mainland, chambered tombs also show the sophisticated engineering of a settled, cooperative community. Then came the Beaker folk, named after the shape of their pottery. It is to these people that we owe the mysterious groups of huge stone circles and standing stones dotted hither and yon across the landscape.

The Bronze Age, or rather, the early and late Bronze Ages, from about 2,000 to 600 B.C., introduced swords, knives, chisels, buckles, cauldrons and buckets, all evidence of a high level of civilization and creature comfort that was enhanced by the metal craft learned in the so-called subsequent Iron Age. Such objects were used by the indigenous Picts, who lived in the region north of the Firth of Forth, and the Celts, who had come to live in regions of Britain and Ireland further south.

It is to the invading Romans that we owe our written history of Britain; before their arrival, it simply wasn't the Celtic custom to entrust their history to anyone but the holy men and it was not to be written. The Romans, however, were always anxious to set down their military triumphs in writing, and from their historians a picture of Britain and its inhabitants began to emerge. In the fourth century A.D., a Latin poem describes the people of Tartessos on the Atlantic coast of Iberia trading with the inhabitants of two large islands, Ierne and Albion (Ireland and Scotland), people who spoke a Celtic language.

Ptolemy's geography (written about 150 A.D.) includes a group of five islands lying between Scotland and Ireland. On them was built, a new structural form, the broch (a fortified dwelling), an immense round stone tower. The best preserved is found on Mousa in Shetland. Because they are perched on hills and headlands, the brochs seem to have been built by resident lords to protect their settlements from sea-borne raiders.

In 55 and 54 B.C. following his success in subduing most of Gaul, Caesar turned his attention to the islands of Britain. However, for a few years afterwards, the Roman armies were fully occupied in suppressing the revolt of the Gauls on the continent under Vercingetorix, and so Britain was more-or-less left on its own, apart from its trading links with the Continent.

Under the Emperor Claudius, Rome again began to look westwards to the misty lands over the sea, to a land full of legendary mineral wealth as well as good grain-growing pastures. Overcoming what amounted to only token resistance in the southeast, the Romans set up the frontier, the Fosse Way, running from Lincoln in the north to Essex in the southwest. Their prosperous villas attest to settled, peaceful conditions in the agricultural lands to the southeast. It was in the more mountainous areas west of the line, however, that the much sought-after minerals lay. And it was there that resistance was fiercest.

The accounts given by Tacitus (written approximately half a century after those of Ptolemy) are particularly important, for his father-in-law was Agricola, appointed Governor of the Roman province of Britain. Agricola invaded what is now southern Scotland in 81 A.D. Before that, Roman garrisons had been established at Caerwent (near present-day Chepstow) in the south and Deva (Chester) in the north to keep a close eye on the Celtic tribesmen to the west, where the Romans found it necessary to destroy the Druid center of Wales on the Menai Straits.

84 A.D. Mons Graupius

Farther north, under Agricola, the Roman armies vanquished one tribe after another until a final, decisive battle against Calgacus "the swordsman" at Mons Graupius in 84 A.D. This ended effective resistance (the Western Isles and the Highlands were left alone and up until the Clearances of the 18th century remained very much Celtic countries in language and culture). Though Agricola may have wished to add Ireland to his conquests, no Roman expedition was ever taken across the Celtic Sea to that large, relatively unknown western island.

The Romans gave the country north of present-day Stirlingshire the name Caledonia. Much of the terrain is rugged and mountainous. In fact, three fifths of Scotland are mountain, hill and wind-swept moorland, unsuitable for agriculture and therefore not interesting to the Romans. In the Welsh language, widely spoken throughout the area when the Romans arrived, it was known as Coed Celyddon (the Caledonian Forest), inhabited by spectres and madmen, including Myrddyn Wyllt (Mad Merlin). Tacitus refers to the inhabitants of the region as Britanni.

It was not only the nature of the terrain that caused the Romans to abandon their attempts at conquest but the unimagined terrors of this Celtic world. After the Roman armies had been recalled to Rome, following Mons Graupius, their strategy towards Scotland was mainly a defensive one. In 121 A.D., upon a visit to Britain, the Emperor Hadrian had this still-impressive wall built from Solway in the West Coast to Tyne in the east.

Twenty years later, the turf-built Antonine Wall, stretching from the Clyde to the Forth, followed its more famous stone predecessor. The Caledonians quickly learned to master the art of guerrilla warfare against a scattered, and no-doubt homesick Roman legion in the North, including those led by their aging and frustrated commander Severus. It wasn't long before the Antonine Wall was abandoned, and the troops of Rome withdrew south to the well known and much longer, stronger defensive barrier built by Hadrian. Trouble at home meant that by the end of the fourth century, the remaining Roman outposts in Scotland were abandoned. Any civilized benefits of Roman rule enjoyed by southern Britain were thus denied to their northern neighbors who were having troubles of their own.

At the time of the withdrawal, Scotland (Alba or Alban) was divided between four different races. The Picts of Celtic, perhaps of Scythian stock, predominated lived from Caithness in the north to the Forth in the south. The Britons of Strathclyde stretched from the Clyde to the Solway and further south into Cumbria. The late arriving Teutonic Anglo-Saxons, held the lands to the east south of the Forth into Northumbria and the kingdom of Dalriada, to the west, including present-day Argyll, (the land of the Gael). The Scots, from Northern Ireland occupied Kintyre and the neighboring islands in the third and fourth centuries. In perhaps typical Celtic fashion, the Picts and Scots spent more time fighting against each other than against their common enemies.

500 A.D.

A dramatic change occurred with the fall of Rome and the withdrawal of its legions from Britain. In what is now Scotland, the Picts from the north and the Irish Scotti (Scots) from the west took advantage of the departure to flood the undefended areas. The Scotti, who had first come as liberators, stayed as settlers. They may have been originally invited by the Britons in their wars with the Picts. Under Fergus MacErc and his two brothers, a fresh Scottish invasion from Ireland strengthened their hold on Dalriada. The situation thus paralleled that which was happening further south at roughly the same time where the Anglo-Saxon "helpers" turned into "invaders" further strengthening "the great divide." Southeastern Britain was deluged as Saxons, Jutes, Angles and Franks greedily poured into the poorly defended, rich agricultural lands.

In what is now Scotland, the Irish Scotti were the invaders. In their newly settled lands, to the north and west, a renewal of Celtic spirit came up against the Romanized Britons in the east, creating a divide that still exists today with the peoples of Scotland and Wales on one side and those of England on the other. And so, very early on the foundation for the modern call for separatism was laid.

The Coming of Christianity

In most of lowland Britain, Latin quickly became the language of administration and education, especially since Celtic writing was virtually unknown. Latin was also the language of the Church in Rome. It was not too long before the old Celtic gods were forced to give way to new ones such as Mithras, introduced by the Roman mercenaries. They were again replaced when missionaries from Gaul introduced Christianity to the islands. By 314, an organized Christian Church seems to have been established in most of Britain. For it was in that year that British bishops were summoned to the Council of Arles. By the end of the fourth century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many districts having come under the pastoral care of a bishop.

In the meantime, missionaries of the Gospel had been active in the south and east of the land that later became known as Scotland. (It was not until the late 10th century that the name Scotia ceased to be applied to Ireland and become transferred to southwestern Scotland.) The first of these missionaries was Ninian who probably built his first church (Candida Casa: White House) at Whithorn in Galloway. He ministered from there as a traveling bishop and was buried there after his death in 397 A.D. For many centuries, his tomb remained a place of pilgrimage, having been visited by kings and queens of Scotland. In 1427, King James l of Scotland offered his royal protection to those who wore the prescribed badge of the pilgrim while visiting St. Ninian's.

It was during the time of the Saxon invasions, in a relatively unscathed western peninsula that later took the name Wales, that the first monasteries were established (the words Wales and Welsh were used by the Germanic invaders to refer to Romanized Britons). They spread rapidly into Ireland and from there, missionaries returned to those parts of Britain that were not under the Roman Bishops' jurisdiction. Though preceded by St. Oran, who established churches in Iona, Mull and Tiree, Columba was the most important of these missionaries. He later became a popular saint in the history of the Christian Church, but even he built the nave of his first monastery facing west and not east. For his efforts at reforming the Church, Rome excommunicated him. His banishment from Ireland became Scotland's gain.

The island of Iona, just off the western coast of Argyll, is in present-day Scotland. It is been called the Isle of Dreams or Isle of Druids. It was here that Columba (Columcille "Dove of the Church") and a small band of Irish monks landed in 563 to spread the faith. And it was here that the missionary saint inaugurated Aidan as king of the new territory of Dalriata (previously settled by men from Columba's own Ulster). Iona quickly became the ecclesiastical head of the Celtic Church in the whole of Britain as well as a major political center. After the monastic settlement at Iona gave sanctuary to the exiled Oswald early in the seventh century, the king invited the monks to come to his restored kingdom of Northumbria. It was thus that Aidan, with his twelve disciples, came to Lindisfarne, destined with Iona to become one of the great cultural centers of the early Christian world.

Iona remained an important center of Christianity despite the retreat of many of its monks to Ireland during the deprivations of the Vikings. To be buried in the ancient burial ground in Iona was a special privilege for early Christians.

An ancient prophecy relates:

Seven years before the judgment,
The sea shall sweep over Erin at one tide,
And ever the blue-green Isla;
But I of Colum of the Church shall swim.

In Macbeth, too, there is a reference to the holy isle when Macduff informs Rosse that King Duncan's body has been taken to Columskill, "the sacred storehouse of his predecessors and guardian of their bones." In addition to good King Duncan, it is said that some sixty kings of Scotland, Ireland and Norway are buried in the cemetery of Reilig Odhrain, next to St. Oran's Chapel. King Kenneth MacAlpine selected Iona as his final resting-place in 860, and for two centuries, future kings of Scotland and many Highland chieftains were buried there.

Iona suffered greatly from the raids of the Vikings and Danes. Under their deprivations, the Abbey was destroyed and the rule of St. Columba and the remaining Celtic Church brought came to an end. It wasn't until 1072 that St. Margaret was able to rebuild the destroyed Abbey. By that time, of course, the Norman invasions had inaugurated centuries of armed conflict and political tension between the English and Scottish kingdoms.

The Reformation of the 16th century, with its brutal suppression of the old religion and all that was connected with it, seemed to completely transform Scotland. However, traditions die hard, and in Ireland and Scotland, many Celtic customs survived. Some of them even survived the bloody battle of Culloden in 1746 that for all intents and purposes marked the end of the Gaelic way of life in Scotland. The survival of these traditions (and the hostility caused by brutal attempts to eliminate them) underlies much of today's Celtic resurgence.

Iona's spell continues to draw visitors to the misty island. The Iona Community, founded in 1938, has restored much of the Abbey that had been rebuilt in 1506 and again in 1900. On his visit to Scotland in 1773, Dr. Samuel Johnston, very unimpressed with what he saw and experienced on his travels throughout Britain, was highly moved by his visit to Iona. Boswell records his learned friend's words thus: "We are now treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion."

We may question the learned Doctor's description of the highly cultured Celts as savages; he was unaware that their language developed from the same source as Sanskrit, the classical language of the Hindus. Their traditions and rituals were passed on through the spoken word so that their power would not be diminished by the blandness of the written word. In addition, full equality between men and women was fully accepted truth, even in battle. Even property was inherited through the female side of the family. The otherwise-learned doctor may have overlooked the fact that the Celts introduced the wheel to Europe and their skills in smelting and fashioning iron were legendary.

In 574, Columba is believed to have returned to Ireland to plead the cause of the bards, who were about to be expelled as troublemakers. According to legend, he sensibly argued that their expulsion would deprive the country of an irreplaceable wealth of folklore and antiquity. He also refused to chop down the ancient, sacred oak trees that symbolized the old druidic religion. Although the bards were allowed to remain, they were forced to give up their special privileges as priests of the old religion (Some modern writers, such as Robert Graves have seen the old traditions underlying much Celtic literature since the 6th century.)

In this period, the rapidly expanding Church adopted numerous Celtic saints. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, however, the Celtic Church, had its own ideas about the consecration of its Bishops, tonsure of its monks, dates for the celebration of Easter and other differences with Rome. The Church was more or less forced by majority opinion of the British bishops to accept the rule of St. Peter, introduced by Augustine, rather than of St. Columba. We can no longer speak of a Celtic Church as distinct from that of Rome.

Some differences remained, however. For one thing, the medieval church in Scotland differed from that of England. Specifically, it lacked a "metropolitan" or archbishop with authority over the various bishops. In 1192, the nine Scottish sees of the Scottish Church became "special daughters" of the papacy, enjoying equality under the authority of Rome (though Galloway stayed subordinate to the Archbishopric of York). In the 12th century, the Anglo-Norman practice of establishing field churches to serve the needs of particular nobles and estates spread into Scotland. During the rule of David l (1124-53), in the "proprietorial" churches, the exaction of tithes or 'tiends' became compulsory.

It was the increasing appropriation of tithes that helped finance the building of many splendid ecclesiastical monuments in Scotland. But as many historians have pointed out, it also led to the poverty of local parishes and their priests. The consequent discontent was one of the major causes of the later Reformation that completely transformed the Scottish Church with astonishing speed. Thus the greed of the ecclesiastical establishment, aided and abetted by the large landowners, (often in high Church positions) led to that sweeping reform that so affected the subsequent history of Scotland (and that of Ulster).

The Clans

Any modern visitor to the Highlands becomes rapidly aware, not only of the harshness of life that such mountainous and barren terrain imposed on its scattered inhabitants, but also of how difficult it must have been to communicate between the various glens. It was this difficulty, however, that helped perpetuate the clan system.

From time immemorial, the Highlanders had been organized in the ancient system of tribes or clans (the word clan meaning children). Family would perhaps be a better translation, for a clan was a close-knit, extended family, intensely loyal to its patriarch and fiercely proud of its own customs and traditions. The central feature of the clan (as opposed to the tribe, which had a territorial basis), was the deeply rooted Celtic principle of kinship, consanguinity -- all the members were bonded together by blood relationship. In particular, the clan chief and the heads of its various branches, the septs, were closely related; they bore a common name.

It is in Ireland that most of the highland clans originated. In the late fifth century, Loarn, son of Erc, was one of the three brothers who established the kingdom of Dalriada in Argyllshire and it is to him that most of the modern clan genealogies are traced. A direct line of ancestry went back from the MacDonalds, the Lords of the isles, to the Irish Colla Uais. It must be a source of much delight to this proud clan that their old archenemy the Campbells seem to have a purely fictitious origin. Viking invasions in the eighth and ninth centuries resulted in strong Norse origins for clans such as the MacLeods and Nicholsons.

In the time of the Druids, when the clan system was becoming firmly established, every heir or young chieftain had to give a public exhibition of his courage before being accepted. He was then placed on a pyramid of stone encircled by his clan, who then vowed to follow and obey him. The chief Druid then eulogized the ancestry and noble deeds of the family. Before a battle, in a speech known as Brosnachaidh Catha "Incentive to Battle," the chief Druid would also pour scorn on the enemy and praise the fighting men of his clan. This was a tradition found in other parts of the Celtic world as attested to by historian Tacitus, who described the fear of the Roman army on the shores of the Menaii faced by an awesome panoply of druids.

Throughout the centuries, conditions in the Highlands and Western Isles were ideal for the perpetuation of clan life and the traditions associated with it. With so little arable land available, cattle made up the main commodity and were therefore guarded and protected. In what today's Hollywood-conditioned residents of urban life must have seemed like the American West, the hills and valleys of the Scottish Highlands were warring grounds for the prized possessions of cattle.

The clan chief protected his people and their cattle from their enemies. The Gaelic title of the MacDonald chiefs was Buachaille nan Eileanan, the Shepherd of the Isles. The clan chief, whose name sometimes had been derived from a pagan deity, rather than an actual historical character, was held in high esteem, even as a kind of semi-divinity, commanding absolute loyalty. It was the duty of the clansmen to follow wherever he led, in peace and war. Ancient custom gave him the powers of lawgiver and judge. On hunting expeditions, he was given cuid-oidhche, "a night's share or portion" one night's hospitality for himself, his men and his animals in the place he had reached by nightfall. In return for land, his clansmen gave him goods and military service. The various offices of the society were hereditary. Every head of a distinct family was captain of his own tribe, every clan had its standard-bearer and its chief had his own poet or bard to praise his accomplishments in battle.

As in Wales and Ireland in the Middle Ages, the Celtic way of life in Scotland greatly interfered with the establishment of an effective, democratically organized state. The clans paid little heed to pronouncements coming from Edinburgh Kings and parliaments were far away, south of the Highland Line, totally removed from the realities of everyday life. Loyalty was not to any central government, but to one's own clan chief in his independent little principality.

The Western Highlands and the Islands were run as petty kingdoms, full of inter-tribal jealousies and family quarrels. In times of emergency, Highlanders were summoned to their clan's special meeting place by the Fiery Cross. The cross was carried from glen to glen by relays of strong runners who shouted their military slogans. Clansmen would take up their arms and go to their traditional meeting place to take orders from their chief. Each clan had a distinguishing badge, worn in their bonnets. Some of these plants like the leek, worn in the caps of Welsh soldiers, were thought to have magical or evil-averting significance.

In the later Middle Ages, the feudal system, introduced by the Normans, with its hierarchy of allegiance stretching from peasant to king, found its way into most of Scotland, especially the Lowlands. The older clan system was more or less confined to the more inaccessible Highland areas. Here it continued practically unchanged until the middle of the 18th century. If a clansman had to obey an order, his own chief was given preference over the feudal lord or king. Loyalty to clan came before anything else.

The Highlands remained completely beyond the control of king and parliament. However, James IV (1488-1513) tried to extend the Royal Prerogative into the Celtic strongholds by beginning a new policy towards the Chiefs, whose language he learned. He visited the Western Isles on many occasions, not as an invader, but as s friend, anxious to promote fishing and shipbuilding to contribute to the economy in an effort to turn the clans away from constant in fighting.

But the Celtic way of life was too deeply engrained and James soon reverted too more traditional, feudal ways of keeping order in the Highlands. A series of rebellions followed and it was not until the capture of Black Donald and the establishment of a number of strategically placed military strongholds throughout the Highlands, that any sense of order was accomplished.

When James VI became King of England in 1607, he ruled his Scottish kingdom from Whitehall. "This I must say for Scotland," he stated, " here I sit and govern it with my pen. I write and it is done, and by a Clark of the Council I govern Scotland now, which others could not do by the sword." All well and good, but problems with governing the Highlands could not be easily solved from a desk in London. The ways of the Celts continued to persist in a culture in which ancient feuds were still settled by the sword.

The Highlands had little contact with the administration at Edinburgh, let alone London. James had been brought up in the English Court; showing little sympathy for the Highland Clans; his policy became one of issuing Letters of Fire and Sward, authorizing one or more clans to deal with their neighbors in the manner they thought best. In this way, he could stay away and let the Scots settle their differences without any English expenditure of blood or money. Divide and conquer was the rule of the day; clan was set against clan.

The first to suffer was Clan Gregor when orders came from London for their complete extermination, including the destruction of the homes and the extinction of their name. Severe punishment was also meted out to the MacDonalds of Islay on the orders of the King. Patrick Stewart of the Orkneys was publicly hanged. Maclean of Duart and a number of other island chiefs were tricked into imprisonment before being released on the condition that they sign the Statutes of Iona in 1609. They were to dispense with the services of clan bards and send their sons to be educated in the Lowlands.

Thus, a situation that had been taking place with mutual consent of the leading social classes in Wales was forcibly repeated in Scotland. The aim was total destruction of an ancient way of life; the days of the independent sovereigns of the Isles came to an abrupt end. The notorious Campbell Clan of Argyll now seized the opportunity to become agents of the central government and protectors of the Lowlands. It was not until the Civil Wars of Charles I that the Highland chiefs were able to stir their followers into battle again.