Chapter 17

[Footnote 166: See his _Origin of the English, German, and Scandinavian Languages_, p. 54. Some modern authorities have thought it philosophical to object to the whole story of Hengist and Horsa, on the alleged ground that these names are "equine" in their original meaning--"henges" and "hors" signifying stallion and horse in the old Saxon tongue. If the principles of historic criticism had no stronger reasons for clearing the story of the first Saxon settlement in Kent of its romantic and apocryphal superfluities, this argument would serve us badly. For some future American historian might, on a similar hypercritical ground, argue against the probability of Columbus, a Genoese, having discovered America, and carried thither (to use the language of his son Ferdinand) "the olive branch and oil of baptism across the ocean,"--of Drake and Hawkins having, in Queen Elizabeth's time, explored the West Indies, and sailed round the southernmost point of America,--of General Wolfe having taken Quebec,--or Lord Lyons being English ambassador to the United States in the eventful year 1860, on the ground that Colombo is actually the name of a dove in Italian, Drake and Hawkins only the appellations of birds, and Wolfe and Lyons the English names for two wild beasts.]

[Footnote 167: See Thorpe's edition of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon Poems, p. 219, line 45.]

[Footnote 168: _Monumenta Historica_, p. 623.]

[Footnote 169: _Ib._, p. 659.]

[Footnote 170: _Ib._, p. 544.]

[Footnote 171: _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, lib. i. cap. 15, p. 34 of Mr. Stevenson's edition. In some editions of Bede's _History_ (as in Dr. Giles' Translation, for example) the name of Vitta is carelessly omitted, as a word apparently of no moment. Such a discussion as the present shows how wrong it is to tamper with the texts of such old authors.]

[Footnote 172: See these names in page 414 of Stevenson's edition of the _Historia Ecclesiastica_.]

[Footnote 173: _Monumenta Historica Britt._, preface, p. 82.]

[Footnote 174: "Ethelwerdi Chronicorum," lib. ii. c. 2, in _Monumenta Historica_, p. 505.]

[Footnote 175: _Ibid._ lib. i. p. 502 of _Monumenta Historica_.]

[Footnote 176: The historical personage and leader Woden is represented in all these genealogies as having lived four generations, or from 100 to 150 years earlier than the age of Hengist and Horsa.]

[Footnote 177: See p. 24 of Mr. Stevenson's edition of _Nennii Historia Britonum_, printed for the English Historical Society. In the Gaelic translation of the _Historia Britonum_, known as the Irish Nennius, the name Wetta or Guitta is spelled in various copies as "Guigte" and "Guite." The last form irresistibly suggests the Urbs Guidi of Bede, situated in the Firth of Forth. Might not he have thus written the Keltic or Pictish form of the name of a city or stronghold founded by Vitta or Vecta; and does this afford any clue to the fact, that the waters of the Forth are spoken of as the Sea of Guidi by Angus the Culdee, and as the Mare Fresicum by Nennius, while its shores are the Frisicum Litus of Joceline? In the text I have noted the transformation of the analogous Latin name of the Isle of Wight, "Vecta," into "Guith," by Nennius. The "urbs Guidi" of Bede is described by him as placed in the middle of the Firth of Forth, "in medio sui." Its most probable site is, as I have elsewhere (see _Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 254, 255) endeavoured to show, Inch Keith; and, phonetically, the term "Keith" is certainly not a great variation from "Guith" or "Guidi." At page 7 of Stevenson's edition of Nennius, the Isle of Wight, the old "Insula Vecta" of the Roman authors, is written "Inis Gueith"--a term too evidently analogous to "Inch Keith" to require any comment.]

[Footnote 178: See Irish Nennius, p. 77; _Saxon Chronicle_, under year 855, etc.]

[Footnote 179: _Northern Antiquities_, Bohn's edition, p. 71. Sigge is generally held as the name of one of the sons of Woden.]

[Footnote 180: _Gest._ I. sec. 5, I. 11.]

[Footnote 181: _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, p. 707.]

[Footnote 182: See his "Chronicon ex Chronicis," in the _Monumenta Historica_, pp. 523 and 627.]

[Footnote 183: See preceding note (1), p. 168. In answer to the vague objection that the alleged leaders were two brothers, Mr. Thorpe observes that the circumstance of two brothers being joint-kings or leaders, bearing, like Hengist and Horsa, alliterative names, is far from unheard of in the annals of the north; and as instances (he adds) may be cited, Ragnar, Inver, Ulba, and two kings in Rumedal--viz. Haerlang and Hrollang.--See his Translation of Lappenberg's _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol. i. pp. 78 and 275.]

[Footnote 184: See Mr. Stevenson's Introduction, p. xxv., to the Historical Society's edition of Bede's _Historia Ecclesiastica_; and also Mr. Hardy in the Preface, p. 71, to the _Monumenta Historica Britannica_.]

[Footnote 185: The great importance attached to genealogical descent lasted much longer than the Saxon era itself. Thus the author of the latest Life (1860) of Edward I., when speaking of the birth of that monarch at London in 1239, observes (p. 8), "The kind of feeling which was excited by the birth of an English prince in the English metropolis, and by the king's evident desire to connect the young heir to the throne with his Saxon ancestors, is shown in the _Worcester Chronicle_ of that date. The fact is thus significantly described:--

'On the 14th day of the calends of July, Eleanor, Queen of England gave birth to her eldest son Edward; whose father was Henry; whose father was John; whose father was Henry; whose mother was Matilda the Empress; whose mother was Matilda, Queen of England; whose mother was Margaret, Queen of Scotland; whose father was Edward; whose father was Edmund Ironside; who was the son of Ethelred; who was the son of Edgar; who was the son of Edmund; who was the son of Edward the elder; who was the son of Alfred.'"--(_The Greatest of the Plantagenets_, pp. 8 and 9.)

Here we have eleven genealogical ascents appealed to from Edward to Alfred. The thirteen or fourteen ascents again from Alfred to Cerdic, the first Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, are as fixed and determined as the eleven from Alfred to Edward. (See them quoted by Florence, Asser, etc.) But the power of reckoning the lineage of Cerdic up through the intervening nine alleged ascents to Woden, was indispensable to form and to maintain Cerdic's claim to royalty, and was probably preserved with as great, if not greater care when written records were so defective and wanting.]

[Footnote 186: _The Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 11.]

[Footnote 187: See the inscription, etc., in Whittaker's _Manchester_, vol. i. p. 160.]

[Footnote 188: On these Frisian cohorts, and consequently also Frisian colonists, in England, see the learned _Memoir on the Roman Garrison at Manchester_, by my friend Dr. Black. (Manchester, 1849.)]

[Footnote 189: Buckman and Newmarch's work on _Ancient Corinium_, p. 114.]

[Footnote 190: Palgrave's _Anglo-Saxons_, p. 24.]

[Footnote 191: For fuller evidence on this point, see the remarks by Mr. Kemble in his _Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 13, etc.]

[Footnote 192: _Ammiani Marcellini Historiae_, lib. xxviii. c. 1. The poet Claudian, perhaps with the full liberty of a poet, sings of Theodosius' forces in this war having pursued the Saxons to the very Orkneys:--

----maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades.]

[Footnote 193: _Inquiry into the History of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 116. See also Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, chap. xxv.]

[Footnote 194: _Histor. Eccles._, lib. i. c. 1, Sec. 8.]

[Footnote 195: Bede's _Hist. Eccles._, lib. ii. cap. v. (Oisc, a quo reges Cantuariorum solent Oiscingas cognominare.)]

[Footnote 196: _Ibid._, lib. ii. cap. xv.]

[Footnote 197: _The Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 341.]

[Footnote 198: In his account of the kings of the Picts, Mr. Pinkerton (_Inquiry into History of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 293) calculates that the sovereign "Wradech Vechla" of the _Chronicon Pictorum_ reigned about A.D. 380. In support of his own philological views, Mr. Pinkerton alters the name of this Pictish king from "Wradech Vechla" to "Wradech _Vechta_." There is not, however, I believe, any real foundation whatever for this last reading, interesting as it might be, in our present inquiry, if true.]

[Footnote 199: _The Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 149.]

[Footnote 200: Mr. Hardy, in the preface (p. 114, etc.) to the _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, maintains also, at much length, that the advent and reception of the Saxons by Vortigern was in A.D. 428, and not 449. He contests for an earlier Saxon invasion of Britain in A.D. 374. See also Lappenberg in his _History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings_, vol. i. pp. 62, 63.]

[Footnote 201: Two miles higher up the river than the Cat-stane, four large monoliths still stand near Newbridge. They are much taller than the Cat-stane, but contain no marks or letters on their surfaces. Three of them are placed around a large barrow.]

[Footnote 202: _History of Edinburgh_, p. 509.]

[Footnote 203: _Transactions of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol. i. p. 308. Maitland, in his _History of Edinburgh_, p. 307, calls these cairns the "Cat-heaps."]

[Footnote 204: _Caledonia_, vol. i. p. 86. The only references, however, which Mr. Chalmers gives to a "single stone" in Scotland, bearing the name of Cat-stane, all relate to this monument in Kirkliston parish:--"The tallest and most striking ancient monolith in the vicinity of Edinburgh is a massive unhewn flat obelisk, standing about ten feet high, in the parish of Colinton." Maitland (_History of Edinburgh_, p. 507), and Mr. Whyte (_Trans. of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol. i. p. 308) designate this monument the Caiy-stone. "Whether this (says Maitland) be a corruption of the Catstean I know not." The tall monolith is in the neighbourhood of the cairns called the Cat-stanes or Cat-heaps (see preceding note). Professor Walker, in an elaborate Statistical Account of the Parish of Colinton, published in 1808, in his _Essays on Natural History_ describes the Cat-heaps or cairns as having been each found, when removed, to cover a coffin made of _hewn_ stones. In the coffins were found mouldering human bones and fragments of old arms, including two bronze spear-heads. "When the turnpike road which passes near the above cairns was formed, for more than a mile the remains of dead bodies were everywhere thrown up." Most of them had been interred in stone coffins made of coarse slabs. To use the words of Professor Walker, "Not far from the three cairns is the so called 'Caiy-stone' of Maitland and Whyte. It has always, however (he maintains), been known among the people of the country by the name of the Ket-stane." It is of whinstone, and "appears not to have had the chisel, or any inscription upon it." "The craig (he adds) or steep rocky mountain which forms the northern extremity of the Pentland Hills, and makes a conspicuous figure at Edinburgh, hangs over this field of battle. It is called Caer-_Ket_an Craig. This name appears to be derived from the Ket-stane above described, and the fortified camp adjacent, which, in the old British, was termed a Caer." (P. 611.)]

[Footnote 205: See "Annales Cambriae," in the _Monumenta Hist. Britannica_, p. 833.]

[Footnote 206: In Maitland's time (1753), there was a farm-house termed "Catstean," standing near the monument we are describing. And up to the beginning of the present century the property or farm on the opposite side of the Almond, above Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition--viz., Cat-elbock. This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning term Almond-hill.]

[Footnote 207: _Historia Ecclesiast._, lib. i. c. xii. "Sermone Pictorum Peanfahel, lingua autem Anglorum Penneltun appellatur."]

[Footnote 208: _Historia Britonum_, c. xix. At one time I fancied it possible that the mutilated and enigmatical remains of ancient Welsh poetry furnished us with a name for the Cat-stane older still than that appellation itself. Among the fragments of old Welsh historical poems ascribed to Taliesin, one of the best known is that on the battle of Gwen-Ystrad. In this composition the poet describes, from professedly personal observation, the feats at the above battle of the army of his friend and great patron, Urien, King of Rheged, who was subsequently killed at the siege of Medcaut, or Lindisfarne, about A.D. 572. Villemarque places the battle of Gwen-Ystrad between A.D. 547 and A.D. 560.

The British kingdom of Rheged, over which Urien ruled, is by some authorities considered as the old British or Welsh kingdom of Cumbria, or Cumberland; but, according to others, it must have been situated further northwards. In the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad (see the _Myvyrian Archaeology_, vol. i. p. 53), Urien defeats the enemy--apparently the Saxons or Angles--under Ida, King of Bernicia. In one line near the end of the poem, Taliesin describes Urien as attacking his foes "by the white stone of Galysten:"

"Pan amwyth ai alon yn Llech wen Galysten."

The word "Galysten," when separated into such probable original components as "Gal" and "lysten," is remarkable, from the latter part of the appellation, "lysten," corresponding with the name, "Liston," of the old barony or parish in which the Cat-stane stands; the prefix Kirk (Kirk-liston) being, as is well known, a comparatively modern addition. The word "Gal" is a common term, in compound Keltic words, for "stranger," or "foreigner." In the Gaelic branch of the Keltic, "lioston" signifies, according to Sir James Foulis, "an inclosure on the side of a river." (See Mr. Muckarsie on the origin of the name of Kirkliston, in the _Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol. x. p. 68.) The Highland Society's _Gaelic Dictionary_ gives "liostean" as a lodging, tent, or booth. In the Cymric, "lystyn" signifies, according to Dr. Owen Pughe, "a recess, or lodgment." (See his _Welsh Dictionary_, _sub voce_.) The compound word Gal-lysten would perhaps not be thus overstrained, if it were held as possibly originating in the meaning, "the lodgment, inclosure, or resting-place of the foreigner;" and the line quoted would, under such an idea, not inaptly apply to the grave-stone of such a foreign leader as Vetta. Urien's forces are described in the first line of the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, as "the men of Cattraeth, who set out with the dawn." Cattraeth is now believed by eminent archaeologists to be a locality situated at the eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth--Callander, Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains various remains of ancient structures. Urien's foes at the battle of Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia--this last term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time the district of modern Northumberland, and probably also Berwickshire and part of the Lothians. An army marching from Cattraeth or the eastern end of Antonine's Wall, to meet such an army, would, if it took the shortest or coast line, pass, after two or three hours' march, very near the site of the Cat-stane. A ford and a fort are alluded to in the poem. The neighbouring Almond has plenty of fords; and on its banks the name of two forts or "caers" are still left--viz. Caerlowrie (Caer-l-Urien?) and Caer Almond, one directly opposite the Cat-stane, the other three miles below it. But no modern name remains near the Cat-stane to identify the name of "the fair or white strath." "Lenny"--the name of the immediately adjoining barony on the banks of the Almond, or in its "strath" or "dale"--presents insurmountable philological difficulties to its identification with Gwen; the L and G, or GW not being interchangeable. The valley of Strath-Broc (Broxburn)--the seat in the twelfth century of Freskyn of Strath-Broc, and consequently the cradle of the noble house of Sutherland--runs into the valley of the Almond about two miles above the Cat-stane. In this, as in other Welsh and Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining river. In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary, in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates. The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley--"Gwen-Ystrad;" but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was ever applied to this tract. In his learned edition of _Les Bardes Bretons, Poemes du vi^e Siecle_, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, suggests (page 412) that this term exists in a modern form under the name of Queen's-strad, or Queen's-ferry--a locality within three miles of the Cat-stane. But it is certain that the name of Queens-ferry, applied to the well-known passage across the Forth, is of the far later date of Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore. Numerous manors and localities in the Lothians and around Kirkliston, end in the Saxon affix "ton," or town--a circumstance rendering it probable that Lis-ton had possibly a similar origin. And further, against the idea of the appellation of "the white stone of Galysten" being applicable to the Cat-stane, is the fact that it is, as I have already stated, a block of greenstone basalt; and the light tint which it presents, when viewed at a distance in strong sunlight--owing to its surface being covered with whitish lichen--is scarcely sufficient to have warranted a poet--indulging in the utmost poetical license--to have sung of it as "the white stone." After all, however, the adjective "wen," or "gwenn," as Villemarque writes it, may signify "fair" or "beautiful" when applied to the stone, just as it probably does when applied to the strath which was the seat of the battle--"Gwenn Ystrad."

Winchburgh, the name of the second largest village in the parish of Kirkliston, and a station on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, is perhaps worthy of note, from its being placed in the same district as the stone of Vetta, the son of Victa, and from the appellation possibly signifying originally, according to Mr. Kemble (our highest authority in such a question), the burgh of Woden, or Wodensburgh. (See his _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol. i. p. 346.)]

[Footnote 209: _Vita Agricolae_, xliv. 2.]

[Footnote 210: _History of England_--Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 20.]

[Footnote 211: On the probable great extent of the Teutonic or German element of population in Great Britain as early as about A.D. 400; see Mr. Wright, in his excellent and interesting work _The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon_, p. 385.]

[Footnote 212: _Historia Ecclesiastica_, lib. i. c. 1; or Dr. Giles' _Translation_, in Bohn's edition, p. 5.]

[Footnote 213: Dr. Giles' _Translation_, in Bohn's edition, p. 24.]

[Footnote 214: _Historia Ecclesiastical_, lib. i. c. 15.]

[Footnote 215: Perhaps it is right to point out, as exceptions to this general observation, a very few Greek inscriptions to Astarte, Hercules, Esculapius, etc., left in Britain by the Roman soldiers and colonists.]

[Footnote 216: On the supposed site, etc. of this monument to Horsa, in Kent, see Mr. Colebrook's paper in _Archaeologia_, vol. ii. p. 167; and Halsted's _Kent_, vol. ii. p. 177. In 1631, Weever, in his _Ancient Funeral Monuments_, p. 317, acknowledges that "stormes and time have devoured Horsa's monument." In 1659 Phillpot, when describing the cromlech called Kits Coty House--the alleged tomb of Catigern--speaks of Horsa's tomb as utterly extinguished "by storms and tempests under the conduct of time."]

ON SOME SCOTTISH MAGICAL CHARM-STONES, OR CURING-STONES.

Throughout all past time, credulity and superstition have constantly and strongly competed with the art of medicine. There is no doubt, according to Pliny, that the magical art began in Persia, that it originated in medicine, and that it insinuated itself first amongst mankind under the plausible guise of promoting health.[217] In proof of the antiquity of the belief, this great Roman encyclopaedist cites Eudoxus, Aristotle, and Hermippus, as averring that magical arts were used thousands of years before the time of the Trojan war.

Assuredly, in ancient times, faith in the effects of magical charms, amulets, talismans, etc., seems to have prevailed among all those ancient races of whom history has left any adequate account. In modern times a belief in their efficiency and power is still extensively entertained amongst most of the nations of Asia and Africa. In some European kingdoms, also, as in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, belief in them still exists to a marked extent. In our own country, the magical practices and superstitions of the older and darker ages persist only as forms and varieties, so to speak, of archaeological relics,--for they remain at the present day in comparatively a very sparse and limited degree. They are now chiefly to be found among the uneducated, and in outlying districts of the kingdom. But still, some practices, which primarily sprung up in a belief in magic, are carried on, even by the middle and higher classes of society, as diligently as they were thousands of years ago, and without their magical origin being dreamed of by those who follow them. The coral is often yet suspended as an ornament around the neck of the Scottish child, without the potent and protective magical and medicinal qualities long ago attached to it by Dioscorides and Pliny being thought of by those who place it there. Is not the egg, after being emptied of its edible contents, still, in many hands, as assiduously pierced by the spoon of the eater as if he had weighing upon his mind the strong superstition of the ancient Roman, that--if he omitted to perforate the empty shell--he incurred the risk of becoming spell-bound, etc.? Marriages seem at the present day as much dreaded in the month of May as they were in the days of Ovid, when it was a proverbial saying at Rome that

"Mense malas _Maio_ nubere vulgus ait."

And, in the marriage ceremony itself, the finger-ring still holds among us as prominent a place as it did among the superstitious marriage-rites of the ancient pagan world. Among the endless magical and medical properties that were formerly supposed to be possessed by human saliva, one is almost universally credited by the Scottish schoolboy up to the present hour; for few of them ever assume the temporary character of pugilists without duly spitting into their hands ere they close their fists; as if they retained a full reliance on the magical power of the saliva to increase the strength of the impending blow--if not to avert any feeling of malice produced by it--as was enunciated, eighteen centuries ago, by one of the most laborious and esteemed writers of that age,[218] in a division of his work which he gravely prefaces with the assertion that in this special division he has made it his "object (as he declares) to state no facts but such as are established by nearly uniform testimony."