Chapter 16
If we thus allow, for the sake of argument, that Vetta, the son of Victus, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, is identical with Vetta the son of Victus commemorated in the Cat-stane inscription, and that he was the leader of those Saxons mentioned by Ammianus that were allied with the Picts in A.D. 364, we shall find nothing incompatible in that conjecture with the era of the descent upon Kent of Hengist and Horsa. Bede, confusing apparently the arrival of Hengist and Horsa with the date of the second instead of the first visit of St. Germanus to Britain, has placed at too late a date the era of their first appearance in Kent, when he fixes it in the year 449. The facts mentioned in the earlier editions or copies of Nennius have led our very learned and accurate colleague Mr. Skene, and others, to transfer forwards twenty or more years the date at which Hengist and Horsa landed on our shores.[200] But whether Hengist and Horsa arrived in A.D. 449, or, as seems more probable, about A.D. 428, if we suppose them in either case to have been born about A.D. 400, we shall find no incongruity, but the reverse, in the idea that their grandfather Vetta was the leader of a Saxon force thirty-six years previously. Hengist was in all probability past the middle period of life when he came to the Court of Vortigern, as he is generally represented as having then a daughter, Rowena, already of a marriageable age.
On the cause or date of Vetta's death we have of course no historical information; but the position of his monument renders it next to a certainty that he fell in battle; for, as we have already seen, the Cat-stane stands, in the words of Lhwyd, "situate on a river side, remote enough from any church." The barrows and pillar stones placed for miles along that river prove how frequently it had served as a strategic point and boundary in ancient warfare.[201] The field in which the Cat-stane itself stands was, as we have already found Dr. Wilson stating, the site formerly of a large tumulus. In a field, on the opposite bank of the Almond, my friend, Mr. Hutchison of Caerlowrie, came lately, when prosecuting some draining operations on his estate, upon numerous stone-kists, which had mutual gables of stone, and were therefore, in all probability, the graves of those who had perished in battle. Whether the death of Vetta occurred during the war with Theodosius in A.D. 364, or, as possibly the appellation Vecturiones tends to indicate, at a later date, we have no ground to determine.
The vulgar name of the monument, the Cat-stane, seems, as I have already hinted, to be a name synonymous with Battle-stane, and hence, also, so far implies the fall of Vetta in open fight. Maitland is the first author, as far as I am aware, who suggests this view of the origin of the word Cat-stane. According to him, "Catstean is a Gaelic and English compound, the former part thereof (Cat) signifying a battle, and stean or stan a stone; so it is the battlestane, in commemoration probably of a battle being fought at or near this place, wherein Veta or Victi, interred here, was slain."[202] I have already quoted Mr. Pennant, as taking the same view of the origin and character of the name; and Mr. George Chalmers, in his _Caledonia_, propounds the same explanation of the word:--"In the parish of Liberton, Edinburghshire, there were (he observes) several large cairns, wherein were found various stone chests, including urns, which contained ashes and weapons; some of these cairns which still remain are called the _Cat_-stanes or Battle-stanes.[203] Single stones in various parts of North Britain are still known under the appropriate name of _Cat_-stanes. The name (he adds) is plainly derived from the British _Cad_, or the Scoto-Irish _Cath_, which signify a battle."[204] But the word under the form _Cat_ is Welsh or British, as well as Gaelic. Thus, in the _Annales Cambriae_, under the year 722, the battle of Pencon is entered as "Cat-Pencon."[205] In his edition of the old Welsh poem of the Gododin, Williams (verse 38) prints the battle of Vannau (Manau) as "Cat-Vannau."
The combination of the Celtic word "Cat" with the Saxon word "stane" may appear at first as an objection against the preceding idea of the origin and signification of the term Cat-stane. But many of our local names show a similar compound origin in Celtic and Saxon. In the immediate neighbourhood, for example, of the Cat-stane,[206] we have instances of a similar Celtic and Saxon amalgamation in the words Gogar-burn, Lenny-bridge, Craigie-hill, etc. One of the oldest known specimens of this kind of verbal alloy, is alluded to above a thousand years ago by Bede,[207] in reference to a locality not above fourteen or fifteen miles west from the Cat-stane. For, in his famous sentence regarding the termination of the walls of Antoninus on the Forth, he states that the Picts called this eastern "head of the wall" Pean-fahel, but the Angles called it Pennel-_tun_. To a contracted variety of this Pictish word signifying head of the wall, or to its Welsh form Pengual, they added the Saxon word "town," probably to designate the "villa," which, according to an early addition to Nennius, was placed there. "Pengaaul, quae villa Scottice Cenail [Kinneil], Anglice vero Peneltun dicitur."[208]
The palaeographic peculiarities of the inscription sufficiently bear out the idea of the monument being of the date or era which I have ventured to assign to it--a point the weight and importance of which it is unnecessary to insist upon. "The inscription," says Lhwyd, "is in the barbarous characters of the fourth and fifth centuries." Professor Westwood, who is perhaps our highest authority on such a question, states to me that he is of the same opinion as Lhwyd as to the age of the lettering in the Cat-stane legend.
To some minds it may occur as a seeming difficulty that the legend or inscription is in the Latin language, though the leader commemorated is Saxon. But this forms no kind of valid objection. The fact is, that all the early Romano-British inscriptions as yet found in Great Britain, are, as far as they have been discovered and deciphered, in Latin. And it is not more strange that a Saxon in the Lothians should be recorded in Latin, and not in Saxon or Keltic, than that the numerous Welshmen and others recorded on the early Welsh inscribed stones should be recorded in Latin and not in the Cymric tongue.
Doubtless, the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists settled among them were, with their descendants, more or less acquainted with Latin in both its spoken and written forms. As early as the second year of his march northward for the conquest of this more distant part of Britain, or A.D. 79, Agricola, as Tacitus takes special care to inform us, took all possible means to introduce, for the purposes of conquest and civilisation, a knowledge of the Roman language and of the liberal arts among the barbarian tribes whom he went to subdue.[209] The same policy was no doubt continued to a greater or less extent during the whole era of the Roman dominion here as elsewhere; so that there is no wonder that such arts as lapidary writing, and the composition of brief Latin inscriptions, should have been known to and transmitted to the native Britons. There was, however, another class of inhabitants, besides these native Britons, who were, as we know from the altars and stone monuments which they have left, sufficiently learned in the formation and cutting of inscriptions in Latin,--a language which was then, and for some centuries subsequently, the only language used in this country, either in lapidary or other forms of writing. The military legions and cohorts which the Roman emperors employed to keep Britain under due subjection, obtained, under the usual conditions, grants of lands in the country, married, and became betimes fixed inhabitants. When speaking of the veteran soldiers of Rome settling down at last as permanent proprietors of land in Britain--as in other Roman colonies,--Sir Francis Palgrave remarks, "Upwards of forty of these barbarian legions, _some of Teutonic origin_, and others Moors, Dalmatians, and Thracians, whose forefathers had been transplanted from the remotest parts of the empire, obtained their domicile in various parts of our island, though principally upon the northern and eastern coasts, and _in the neighbourhood of the Roman walls_."[210] Such colonists undoubtedly possessed among their ranks, and were capable of transmitting to their descendants, a sufficient knowledge of the Latin tongue, and a sufficient amount of art, to form and cut such stone inscriptions as we have been considering; and perhaps I may add, that in such a mixed population, the Teutonic elements[211] in particular, would, towards the decline of the Roman dominion and power, not perhaps be averse to find and follow a leader, like Vetta, belonging to the royal stock of Woden; nor would they likely fail to pay all due respect, by the raising of a monument or otherwise, to the memory of a chief of such an illustrious race, if he fell amongst them in battle.
* * * * *
Besides, a brief incidental remark in Bede's History proves that the erection of a monument like the Cat-stane, to record the resting-place of the early Saxon chiefs, was not unknown. For, after telling us that Horsa was slain in battle by the Britons, Bede adds that "this Saxon leader was buried in the eastern parts of Kent, where a monument bearing his name is still in existence"[212] (hactenus in orientalibus Cantiae partibus monumentum habet suo nomine insigne).[213] The great durability of the stone forming Vetta's monument has preserved it to the present day; while the more perishable material of which Horsa's was constructed has made it a less faithful record of that chief, though it was still in Bede's time, or in the eighth century, "suo nomine insigne."[214]
* * * * *
The chief points of evidence which I have attempted to adduce in favour of the idea that the Cat-stane commemorates the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa may be summed up as follows:--
1. The surname of VETTA upon the Cat-stane is the name of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, as given by our oldest genealogists.
2. The same historical authorities all describe Vetta as the son of Victa; and the person recorded on the Cat-stane is spoken of in the same distinctive terms--"VETTA F(ILIUS) VICTI."
3. Vetta is not a common ancient Saxon name, and it is highly improbable that there existed in ancient times two historical Vettas, the sons of two Victas.
4. Two generations before Hengist and Horsa arrived in England, a Saxon host--as told by Ammianus--was leagued with the other races of modern Scotland (the Picts, Scots, and Attacots), in fighting with a Roman army under Theodosius.
5. These Saxon allies were very probably under a leader who claimed royal descent from Woden, and consequently under an ancestor or pre-relative of Hengist and Horsa.
6. The battle-ground between the two armies was, in part at least, the district placed between the two Roman walls, and consequently included the tract in which the Cat-stane is placed; this district being erected by Theodosius, after its subjection, into a fifth Roman province.
7. The palaeographic characters of the inscription accord with the idea that it was cut about the end of the fourth century.
8. The Latin is the only language[215] known to have been used in British inscriptions and other writings in these early times by the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists and conquerors of the island.
9. The occasional erection of monuments to Saxon leaders is proved by the fact mentioned by Bede, that in his time, or in the eighth century, there stood in Kent a monument commemorating the death of Horsa.[216]
* * * * *
If, then, as these reasons tend at least to render probable, the Cat-stane be the tombstone of Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, this venerable monolith is not only interesting as one of our most ancient national historic monuments, but it corroborates the floating accounts of the early presence of the Saxons upon our coast; it presents to us the two earliest individual Saxon names known in British history; it confirms, so far as it goes, the accuracy of the genealogy of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa, as recorded by Bede and our early chroniclers; while at the same time it forms in itself a connecting link, as it were, between the two great invasions of our island by the Roman and Saxon--marking as it does the era of the final declinature of the Roman dominion among us, and the first dawn and commencement of that Saxon interference and sway in the affairs of Britain, which was destined to give to England a race of new kings and new inhabitants, new laws, and a new language.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 128: The farm is called "Briggs, or Colstane" (Catstane), in a plan belonging to Mr. Hutchison, of his estate of Caerlowrie, drawn up in 1797. In this plan the bridge (brigg) over the Almond, at the boathouse, is laid down. But in another older plan which Mr. H. has of the property, dated 1748, there is no bridge, and in its stead there is a representation of the ferry-boat crossing the river.]
[Footnote 129: In this strategic angular fork or tongue of ground, formed by the confluence of these two rivers, Queen Mary and her suite were, according to Mr. Robert Chambers, caught when she was carried off by Bothwell on the 24th of April 1567. (See his interesting remarks "On the Locality of the Abduction of Queen Mary" in the _Proceedings of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol. ii. p. 331.)]
[Footnote 130: The comparative rapidity or slowness with which bones are decomposed and disappear in different soils, is sometimes a question of importance to the antiquary. We all know that they preserve for many long centuries in dry soils and dry positions. In moist ground, such as that on which the Cat-stane stands, they melt away far more speedily. On another part of Mrs. Ramsay's property, namely in the policy, and within two hundred yards of the mansion-house of Barnton, I opened, several years ago, with Mr. Morritt of Rokeby, the grave of a woman who had died--as the tombstone on the spot told us--during the last Scottish plague in the year 1648. The only remains of sepulture which we found were some fragments of the wooden coffin, and the enamel crowns of a few teeth. All other parts of the body and skeleton had entirely disappeared. The chemical qualities of the ground, and consequently of its water, will of course modify the rapidity of such results.]
[Footnote 131: _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, p. 96.]
[Footnote 132: _Statistical Account of Scotland_, collected by Sir John Sinclair, vol. x. pp. 68, 75.]
[Footnote 133: The _Scots Magazine_ for 1780, p. 697. See also Smellie's _Account of the Institution and Progress of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_ (1782), p. 8.]
[Footnote 134: Rowlands' _Mona Antiqua Restaurata_, second edition, p. 313. The inscription is printed in italics by Rowland. I have printed this and some of the following readings in small Roman capitals, in order to assimilate them all the more with each other.]
[Footnote 135: _Philosophical Transactions_, vol. xxii. p. 790.]
[Footnote 136: _Historical Inquiries concerning the Roman Monuments and Antiquities in Scotland_, p. 50.]
[Footnote 137: _The History of Edinburgh_, p. 508.]
[Footnote 138: _Tour in Scotland_ in 1772, Part ii. p. 237. When describing his ride from Kirkliston to Edinburgh, he observes: "On the right hand, at a small distance from our road are some rude stones. On one called the _Cat-stean_, a compound of Celtic and Saxon, signifying the Stone of Battle, is this inscription: IN HOC TUMULO JACET VETA F. VICTI; supposed in memory of a person slain there."]
[Footnote 139: Camden's _Britannia_, edited by Richard Gough, vol. iii. p. 317. Mr. Gough cites also as Mr. Wilkie's reading, "IN HOC TUM, JAC. CONSTANTIE VICT."]
[Footnote 140: In the VETTA of this line the cross bar in A is wanting, from the stone between the upright bars being chipped or weathered out.]
[Footnote 141: _Archaeologia Cambrensis_ (for 1848), vol. iii. p. 107.]
[Footnote 142: See his "Chronicon," in the _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, pp. 502 and 505. Nouns, and names ending thus in "r," preceded by a vowel, were often written without the penultimate vowel, particularly in the Scandinavian branches of the Teutonic language; as Baldr for Balder and Baldur; Folkvangr for Folkvangar; Surtr for Surtur and Surtar, etc. (See the Glossary to the prose Edda in Bohn's edition of Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, and Kemble's _Saxons in England_, pp. 346, 363, etc.) For genealogical lists full of proper names ending in "r" with the elision of the preceding vowel, see the long tables of Scandinavian and Orcadian pedigrees printed at the end of the work on the pre-Columbian discovery of America, _Antiquitates Americanae_, etc., which was published at Copenhagen in 1837 by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries. In the first table of genealogies giving the pedigree of Thorfinn, the son of Sigurd, of the Orkney dynasty, etc., we have, among other names--Olafr, Grismr, Ingjaldr, Oleifr (_Rex Dublini_); Thorsteinn Raudr (_partis Scotiae Rex_); Dungadr (_Earl of Katanesi_); Arfidr, Havadr, Thorfinnr, etc. (_Earls of Orkney_); etc. etc.]
[Footnote 143: _Inscriptions Chretiennes de la Gaule, anterieures au VIII. Siecle._ See Plates Nos. 10, 11, 15, 16, 24, 25, etc.]
[Footnote 144: The name LIBERALIS is probably the Latinised form of a British surname having the same meaning. Rydderch, King of Strathclyde, in the latter part of the sixth century, and the personal friend of Kentigern and Columba, was sometimes, from his munificence, termed Rydderch _Hael_, or, in its Latinised form, Rydderch _Liberalis_. The first lines of the Yarrow inscription appear to me to read as far as they are decipherable, as follows:--
HIC MEMOR IACIT F LOIN:::NI:::: HIC PE::M DVMNOGENL
The true character of the G in the fourth line was first pointed out by Dr. Smith. It is of the same form as the G in the famous SAGRAMANVS stone, etc.]
[Footnote 145: The exception is the letter D in DVO, which verges to the uncial form.]
[Footnote 146: In the inscription all the words are, as usual, run together, with the exception of the Jacit and Mulier, which are separated from each other by the oblique linear point. See a plate of the inscription in the _Archaeologia Cambrensis_ for 1855, p. 153.]
[Footnote 147: _Caledonia_, vol. ii. p. 844.]
[Footnote 148: _New Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol i. p. 138. For the same supposed corruption of the name Constantine into Cat-stane, see also Fullarton's _Gazetteer of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 182.]
[Footnote 149: The brief history of Kenneth, his parentage, reign, and mode of death, as given in one of the earliest Chronicles of the Kings of Scotland, quoted by Father Innes (p. 802), contains in its few lines a very condensed and yet powerful story of deep maternal affection and fierce female revenge. The whole entry is as follows:--"Kinath Mac-Malcolm 24, an. et 2. mens. Interfectus in Fotherkern a suis per perfidium Finellae filiae Cunechat comitis de Angus; cujus Finellae filium unicum praedictus Kinath interfecit apud Dunsinoen." The clumsy additions of some later historians only spoil and mar the original simplicity and force of this "three-volume" historical romance.]
[Footnote 150: Tom. i. p. 219, of Goodall's edition.]
[Footnote 151: _De Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, chap. lxxxi. p. 200.]
[Footnote 152: _Joannis Forduni Scotichronicon_, tom. i. p. 219.]
[Footnote 153: _Chronicon de Mailros_, p. 226 (Bannatyne Club edition).]
[Footnote 154: Wyntown's _Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 183.]
[Footnote 155: In the _Scotichronicon_ instead of "In Tegalere," the third of these lines commences "Inregale regens," etc.; and it is noted that in the "Liber Dumblain" the line begins "Indegale," etc.]
[Footnote 156: Buchanan, in his _Rerum Scoticorum Historia_, gives the locality as "ad Almonis amnis ostium." (Lib. vi. c. 81.)]
[Footnote 157: _Scotorum Historiae_, p. 235 of Paris edition of 1574. Bellenden and Stewart, in their translations of Boece's _History_ both place the fight at "Crawmond."]
[Footnote 158: This document, entitled _Nomina Regum Scottorum et Pictorum_ and published by Father Innes in his _Critical Essay_, p. 797, etc., is described by that esteemed and cautious author as a document the very fact of the registration of which among the records and charters of the ancient church of St. Andrews "is a full proof of its being held authentick at the time it was written, that is about A.D. 1251." (P. 607.)]
[Footnote 159: The orthography of the copy of this Chronicle, as given by Innes, is very inaccurate, and the omission of the two initial letters of "_in_ver," not very extraordinary in the word Rathveramoen. Apparently the same word Rathinveramon occurs previously in the same Chronicle, when Donald MacAlpin, the second king of the combined Picts and Scots, is entered as having died "in Raith in Veramont" (p. 801). In another of the old Chronicles published by Innes, this king is said to have died in his palace at "Belachoir" (p. 783). If, as some historians believe, the Lothians were not annexed to Scotland before his death in A.D. 859, by Kenneth the brother of Donald, and did not become a part of the Scottish kingdom till the time of Indulf (about A.D. 954), or even later, then it is probable that the site of King Donald's death in A.D. 863, at Rathinveramon, was on the Almond in Perthshire, within his own territories.]
[Footnote 160: I am only aware of one very marked exception to this general law Malcolm Canmore is known to have been killed near Alnwick, when attacking its castle. Alnwick is situated on the Alne, about five or six miles above the village of Alnmouth, the ancient Twyford, on the Alne, of Bede, on the mount near which St. Cuthbert was installed as a bishop. But in the ancient Chronicle from the Register of St. Andrews, King Malcolm is entered (see Innes, p. 803) as "interfectus in Inneraldan." The error has more likely originated in a want of proper local knowledge on the part of the chronicler than in so unusual a use of the Celtic word "inver;" for, according to all analogies, while the term is applicable to Alnmouth, it is not at all applicable to Alnwick.]
[Footnote 161: _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_. (Stevenson's Edit. p. 35.)]
[Footnote 162: _De Bello Gothico_, lib. iv. c. 20. See other authorities in Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 182.]
[Footnote 163: _Emmii Rerum Friescarum Historia_, p. 41.]
[Footnote 164: _History of England_, vol. i.--Anglo-Saxon Period, pp. 33, 34.]
[Footnote 165: _The Ethnology of the British Islands_, p. 259. At p. 240, Dr. Latham "A native tradition makes Hengist a Frisian." Dr. Bosworth cites (see his _Origin of the English, etc., Language and Nation_, p. 52) Maerlant in his Chronicle as doubtful whether to call Hengist a Frisian or a Saxon.]