Part 19

As a close union was thus effected between the long-separated Highlands and Lowlands, and a higher and more widely-diffused civilization introduced among the people in both, it may justly be asserted that the Norwegian conquests in the Highlands, and the Norwegian-Danish settlements in the Lowlands, were particularly fortunate for Scotland. It must always, indeed, be a subject of regret that so brave, and in many respects so noble, a people as the Caledonians and their descendants, should be exterminated. Who can observe without a feeling of sadness how the last feeble remnants of Scotland’s ancient masters, after having been expelled from the glorious Lowlands, cannot even now find rest among the barren rocks, and in the few arable valleys of the Highlands, but are obliged, year after year, in increasing numbers, to seek another home farther west, in the new world beyond the Atlantic? But, viewing the matter as it regards enlightenment and civilization, no charge can be reasonably brought against the Norwegians or Northmen, for having co-operated in Scotland to expel a people whose brethern and kinsmen had in every country which they occupied shown themselves incapable of adopting the new and milder manners of Christianity; and who, once before subdued by the Romans, had been compelled to yield to the fresher and more powerful Teutonic tribes of the Franks and Anglo-Saxon.

No small portion of the present population of Scotland, both in the Lowlands and on the remotest coasts and isles of the Highlands, is undoubtedly descended from the Northmen, and particularly from the Norwegians. Both the Norwegians and Danes, wherever they established themselves, introduced their Scandinavian customs, and preserved, in all circumstances, the fundamental traits of their national character. It becomes, therefore, probable that the Norwegian settlers in Scotland must, in certain districts at least, have exercised a vast influence on the development of the more modern life of the Scotch people, and on their national character. This is indeed actually and visibly the case. Yet, although the Norwegian kingdoms on the coasts of Scotland subsisted long after the downfall of the Danish power in England, still the effects of the Norwegian conquests in Scotland were far from being so great, or so universally felt there, as the results of the Danish conquests were in England. The Norwegian language was completely supplanted in the Hebrides by old Celtic or Gaelic; and on the Shetland Isles, the Orkneys, and the north coast of Scotland, by English. The Norwegian laws and institutions either entirely disappeared in these parts, or were formed anew after quite different models. Not even in the purely Norwegian Orkneys and Shetland Isles, though they remained united with Norway and Denmark until far in the fifteenth century, could the inhabitants maintain the ancient freedom which they had inherited from their forefathers. The free tenure of land, or right of “Udal,” was, for the most part, annihilated by the most shameful oppression. Established on many small, poor, and widely-separated islands, the Norwegians in Scotland could neither obtain such influence for their laws and institutions, nor concert so united and powerful a resistance against oppression, as their more fortunate Danish kinsmen in the open, rich, and densely-peopled plains of northern England.

In spite of the acknowledged fact that the Norwegians were the most numerous of all the Scandinavian colonists in Scotland, we constantly hear Norwegian achievements and Norwegian memorials referred to “the Danes.” Under this common appellation are also generally included, as in England, Norwegians and Swedes. The causes of this must probably be sought in the long dominion of Denmark over Norway, in the brisker and more uninterrupted communication which Scotland maintained with Denmark, in comparison with any other part of the North, and lastly, in the reciprocal marriages between the ancient Scotch and Danish royal families, which in former times contributed, in no small degree, to bind the Scotch and Danish people together. But the preponderance of the Danish name must also be attributed to the pre-eminent power of the Danes in ancient times, and in the early middle ages; and, of course, more particularly to that supreme dominion which they had so gloriously won for themselves in the neighbouring country—England.

SECTION III.

The Lowlands.—Population.—Language.—Norwegian-Danish Names of Places.

The boundaries between Scotland and England were anciently very unsettled. After the time of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings speedily extended their dominion over the Cheviot Hills, and frequently to the Firths of Clyde and Forth; whilst considerable tracts of the north of England, particularly in the north-western districts, were sometimes united with the Scotch Lowlands, or with kingdoms which existed there. Until England and Scotland were at length united under one crown, the north of England was almost uninterruptedly the theatre of the bitterest border warfare. The blood of many thousands of bold warriors has been spilt on that land which now teems with the blessings of wealth and peace.

Part of this old border land, or the most southern part of the present Scotland, from the Cheviot Hills to the narrow neck of land between the Firths of Clyde and Forth,—a tract of about sixty English miles—has not a much more mountainous character than the north of England. The hills undulate in the same gentle forms; and it is only here and there that a single rugged mountain shows its heath-covered or bare and peaked top. Large and well-cultivated plains alternate with charming valleys, which are frequently narrow, and so fertile that in some places creeping plants, bushes, and trees, almost entirely conceal the rivulets that wind through them.

The Highlands extend themselves from the Firth of Clyde to the north-west and north; whilst the Lowlands take a direction from the Firth of Forth along the eastern border of the Highlands, and by the coasts of the North Sea. To the Firth of Tay, and northwards to the Grampian Hills, the Lowlands are not very broad or extensive, whilst the Highland mountains nearly approach the seashore. It is not till we have crossed the Grampian Hills that those large level plains open upon us which comprehend the north-easternmost part of Scotland, particularly the present Aberdeenshire. From these less-wooded plains we turn towards the north-west into the fertile and well-wooded Moray; whence a transition again takes place to the Highlands, which begin in the adjoining shire of Inverness. At this extreme point the Lowlands have, as it were, exhausted all their splendour and abundance. Down towards the coast the land is filled with gently-sloping hills, and intersected by rivers, whose rapid currents remind one of the neighbourhood of the mountains. At a distance from the coast the land rises, the tops of the mountains become barer and sharper, the valleys have a greater depth, and the roaring of the streams over fragments of rock is heard more distinctly. The mountains, as they rise from the Lowlands to the Highlands, afford in a still higher degree than the more southern border mountains, the most enchanting prospects over the coasts and sea. It is with difficulty that the spectator tears himself from the view of the charms of the Lowlands, to bury himself in the dark mountains that rise so solemn and menacing before him.

Throughout the Lowlands, the people, both in personal appearance and character, very much resemble the inhabitants of the north of England. This is particularly the case with the inhabitants of the southern borders, between the Cheviot Hills and the Firths of Clyde and Forth. The same light-coloured hair and the same frame of body, which, in the north of England, remind us of the people’s descent from the Scandinavians, indicate here also considerable immigrations of that people into the southern part of Scotland, and thence farther up along the east coast. According to a very common saying here, even the language of the Lowlands is so much like that of Scandinavia, that Lowland seamen wrecked on the coasts of Jutland and Norway have been able to converse without difficulty in their mother tongue with the common people there. This is undoubtedly a great exaggeration; but this much is certain, that the popular language in the Lowlands contains a still greater number of Scandinavian words and phrases than even the dialect of the north of England. We must not unhesitatingly believe that the Saxon language did not extend itself from the north of England to the Scotch Lowlands till after it had been mixed with Danish; although the remote situation of the latter, so high towards the north, was certainly far more adapted to preserve the old Danish forms of words than that of north England, which was more exposed to the operation of newer fashions. But the Danish or Scandinavian elements in the popular language of the Lowlands are too considerable to admit of such a supposition, not to speak of the Scandinavian appearance of the inhabitants. These necessarily indicate Scandinavian immigrations; and, to judge from the present popular language, we might be easily tempted to believe that a far greater number of Northmen had settled in the Scottish Lowlands than in the middle and northern districts of England. We might, consequently, also expect to meet with a proportionately greater number of Scandinavian names of places in the Lowlands than in England.

But this is very far from being the case. Extremely few places with Scandinavian names are to be found in the Scotch Lowlands; and even those few are confined, almost without exception, to the old border land between the Cheviot Hills and the Firths of Clyde and Forth, and to the counties nearest the English border. Dumfriesshire, lying directly north of Cumberland and the Solway Firth, forms the central point of such places. Northumberland and Durham, the two north-easternmost counties of England, contain but a scanty number of them; and consequently must have possessed, in early times at least, no very numerous Scandinavian population. Cumberland, on the contrary, was early remarkable for such a population; whence it will appear natural enough that the first Scandinavian colonists in the Scotch border lands preferred to settle in the neighbourhood of that county. On the south-easternmost coast of Scotland, they would not only have been separated from their countrymen in the north of England by two intervening counties, but also divided by a broad sea from their kinsmen in Denmark and Norway. Such a situation would have been much more exposed and dangerous for them than the opposite coast, where they had in their neighbourhood the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, inhabited by the Northmen, as well as the Scandinavian colonies in Ireland and the Isle of Man.

The Scandinavian population in Dumfriesshire evidently appears to have emigrated from Cumberland over the Liddle and Esk into the plains which spread themselves westward of those rivers; at least the names of places there have the very same character as in Cumberland. Not only are the mountains called “fell” (Fjeld) and “rigg” (Ryg), as is also the case in the other border lands, but, what is more peculiar to Dumfriesshire, the terminations of “thwaite,” “beck,” and “garth,” not to mention “by,” or “bie,” are transplanted hither from Cumberland: as, Thornythwaite, Twathwaites, Robiethwaite, Murraythwaite, Helbeck, Greenbeck, Botchbeck, Torbeck, Stonybeck, Waterbeck, Hartsgarth, Tundergarth, Applegarth, Locherby, Alby, Middlebie, Dunnaby, Wysebie, Perceby, Denbie, Newby, Milby, Warmanbie, Sorbie, Canoby, and others.

These Scandinavian names of places are chiefly met with between the rivers Esk and Nith. Various authors have also endeavoured to show that the fishermen on the Nith have to the present day characteristic and original Scandinavian terms for their tackle and modes of fishing:—for instance, “pocknet,” Icelandic _pokanet_; “leister,” or “lister,” Icelandic _ljóstr_, Danish _Lyster_; “haaving,” Norwegian _haave_, _i.e._, to draw small nets in the water, &c., &c. Somewhat east of the river, and north of the town of Dumfries, lies the parish of “Tinwald,” a name undoubtedly identical with Thingvall, or Tingvold; which, as the appropriate Scandinavian term for places where the _Thing_ was held, is found in other districts of the British Isles colonized by the Northmen. And it was, indeed, natural that the Scandinavian colonists in the south-east of Scotland should fix their chief _Thing_ place in the district most peopled by them.

From Dumfriesshire the Scandinavian names of places branch off as it were in an arch towards the west and east. Some few appear at intervals towards the west, as in Kircudbright (Begbie, Cogarth), in Wigton (Sorby, Killiness), in Ayr (opposite little Cumbray, Crosby, Sterby, Bushby, and Magby), and also in Lanark (Bushby, close to the south-west of Glasgow). Towards the east, some few are met with in Roxburgh, as, for instance, on the borders of Cumberland, “Corby,” and “Stonegarthside,” and on the frontier of Northumberland several in _haugh_ (Höi, a hill) and _holm_. But on the whole only a few in _by_ are still to be found on the borders between Berwick and Haddington (such as Humbie, Blegbie, and Pockbie). Towards Glasgow and Edinburgh the mountains are no longer called “fell” and “rigg.” The Scandinavian names of places cease entirely in these districts; and only the Scandinavian word “fjörðr,” or Fjord, is heard here, as well as farther towards the north in the names of fiords (or firths) namely: Firth of Forth, Firth of Clyde, Firth of Tay, Moray Firth, and Dornoch Firth.

In the Lowlands, the number of Scandinavian names of places is quite insignificant when compared with the original Celtic, or even with the Anglo-Saxon names. Whence we may conclude that though a considerable immigration of Northmen into the Lowlands undoubtedly took place, it must have occurred under circumstances which prevented them from being sufficiently powerful to change the original names of places. We must, in particular, assume that the immigration took place much later than the Danish conquests in England; and on the whole we shall not be far from the truth in asserting, that as the Danish conquests in England must have driven many Anglo-Saxons into Scotland, so also the subsequent Norman conquest must have compelled many Danes and Norwegians, settled in the north of England, to cross the Scottish border.

According to this view, most of the Scandinavian settlements in the middle and northern parts of the Lowlands are to be referred at the earliest to the close of the eleventh century; and at so late a period an entire change of the ancient names of places then existing there, could not, of course, be effected.

SECTION IV.

Traditions concerning “the Danes.”—The Southern and Northern Lowlands.—Danish Memorials.—Burghead.

We cannot venture to conclude, from the few Scandinavian names of places found in the Lowlands, that the immigrant Scandinavian population was but inconsiderable; nor can we presume to infer either the extent or the period of the immigration from the numberless traditions respecting the Danes preserved throughout that district. For, although the Lowlands were far from being conquered by the Danes and Norwegians so early as England was, still the number of alleged Danish memorials, even of a remote age, is proportionately as great in the former as in the latter country. Tradition has gradually ascribed almost all the memorials existing in the Lowlands which are of any importance to “the Danes;” nay, even the learned have, down to the present day, been too much inclined to recognise traces of the _bloody Danes_ in the much more ancient Pictish, Roman, and Scottish monuments.

The traditions about the Danes have much the same character in the Lowlands as in England. They depict in vivid and touching traits the misery of the people and of the country under the repeated attacks of the wild sons of the sea, whose arrival, departure, and whole conduct, were as variable as the wind. When large bands of Vikings had landed, and the Scots had assembled an army to oppose them, it would sometimes happen that in the morning, when all was ready for the attack, the foreign ravagers were sought for in vain. In the darkness of the night they had taken the opportunity secretly to re-embark, and rumour soon announced to the army that the Vikings had again landed in quite a different part of the country, where they were spreading death and desolation. The Lowlander tells with horror of the many innocent women and children, not to speak of the numbers of brave men, who were slaughtered; of the churches, convents, and towns, that were destroyed by fire; and of the numerous herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, which, together with valuables of all sorts were carried off to the ships of the Vikings.

Although the Vikings are renowned in England for drunkenness and other kinds of dissipation, yet in Scotland tradition still more highly magnifies the inclination of the Danes for intoxicating liquors, and particularly for ale. It is also a general belief among the common people throughout Scotland and Ireland that the Danes brewed their strong ale from heather; a tradition which probably arose from the circumstance that in ancient times the Northmen spiced their ale with herbs; as, for instance, in Denmark with Dutch myrtle, or sweet willow (_Dan._, Porse), which grows in marshy heaths.

For the rest, there can be no doubt that the Scotch stories about the drunkenness of the Danes were a good deal multiplied in far later times, at the period, namely, when the Princess Anne, a sister of Christian the Fourth, was married to the Scotch king James the Sixth, or James the First of England. Queen Anne was accompanied to Scotland by several Danish noblemen, who introduced at court, and among its hangers-on, the same carousing and revelling which at that time prevailed in far too high a degree at the court of Denmark. Burns, in his poem of “_The Whistle_,” celebrates an ebony whistle still preserved in the family of Ferguson of Craigdarrock, which is said to have originally belonged to one of Queen Anne’s Danish courtiers.

This Dane, who, even among his own countrymen, had the reputation of a great drinker, challenged the Scotch to drink with him for a wager, and promised the whistle to him who could drink him under the table. At the same time he produced evidence to show that in all his many drinking bouts at various northern courts in Russia and Germany, he had never been vanquished. However, after drinking three consecutive days and nights with Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwelton, the Dane fell under the table, and Sir Robert gained the whistle. Sir Robert’s son afterwards lost it again at a similar drinking bout with Walter Riddel of Glenriddel, from whose descendants it passed in the same way into the family which now possesses it.

But as a contrast to the many naturally exaggerated tales about the excesses committed by the Danes both in earlier and later times, it is refreshing to meet with romantic traditions about Danish warriors, whose bravery and comeliness could win the hearts of Scottish maidens, even whilst the curses of the Scots were heaped on “the Danish Vikings.” A Danish warrior had been carried off by the Scots during an expedition into Morayshire, and imprisoned in a strong tower, where a speedy death awaited him. But the daughter of the lord of the castle, who had fallen in love with him, and found a requital of her affection, opened his prison door one night, and fled with him. When morning came the lord of the castle set off in pursuit of the fugitives, and overtook them on the banks of the river Findhorn, which runs through Morayshire. The lovers, who were both on one horse, attempted to swim the river; but the jaded animal could not make head against the stream, and the fugitive couple found a watery grave in the depths of the Findhorn. Near Dalsie, in Nairnshire, is a small sequestered valley on the banks of the Findhorn, inclosed by smooth sloping banks, overgrown with weeping birches. In the midst of this charming spot is seen a grave composed of stones heaped up, at one end of which stands a tall monumental slab, ornamented with carvings of a cross and other antique figures. This slab, the people say, is a monument to the unfortunate lady.

There is nothing intrinsically improbable in this tradition, since history testifies that the daughters of Scottish kings married Norwegian-Danish kings; whilst they, or at all events their countrymen, were making war in Scotland. In the beginning of the tenth century, the Scotch king, Constantine the Third, in conjunction with the more northern Anglo-Saxons, beat the Danes, who had passed over from Dublin under Reginald and Godfrey O’Ivar (Godfred Ivarsön), in a great battle near the Clyde. Although Constantine, during nearly the whole of his reign, had to fight against Danish and Norwegian Vikings, yet he gave his daughter in marriage to Anlaf, or Olaf, king of the Danes in Dublin and Northumberland; nay, he even fought with Olaf and his Danish-Norwegian army against the Anglo-Saxons at the battle of Brunanborg. Sigurd, Jarl of the Orkneys, was also married to a daughter of the Scotch king, Malcolm the Second (1003-1033), although he had made devastating incursions and conquests in Malcolm’s lands.

The attacks of the Norwegians and Danes on the Scottish Lowlands were so continuous that out of seven monarchs who reigned over the Scots from 863 to 961, or about a century, three are related to have fallen whilst fighting against the Danes. These monarchs are, however, said to have purchased decisive victories with their blood. If we compare the unsuccessful expeditions of the Northmen into the Scottish Lowlands with the great conquests made by the Danes in England, we shall not wonder that the inhabitants of the former country relate with a sort of pride the many victories of their forefathers over “the Danes;” nor shall we be surprised that the popular traditions, which point out the ancient battle fields, scarcely admit even the possibility of the Danes having been victorious.

In the southern and middle Lowlands (to the south of the Grampian Hills) the Firths of Forth and Tay afforded excellent landing places for the ancient Vikings. Many battles, therefore, were fought in their neighbourhood. In the vicinity of a rampart called “_the Danes’ dyke_,” in the parish of Crail, close to Fifeness, and between the firths just mentioned, the Scotch king Constantine, Kenneth’s son, is said to have fallen in a battle against the Danes in 881. Forteviot, or Abernethy, the ancient capital of the Picts, which the Vikings often tried to plunder, lay in the innermost part of the Firth of Tay. The defence of this place, by King Donald the Fourth, in 961, cost him his life. Near Redgorton, in Perthshire, is a farm called “Denmark;” close to which are to be seen remains of intrenchments, besides tumuli, and monumental stones, said to originate from a defeat suffered by the Danes at this spot.