Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban And A Selection of Ancient Gaelic (Complete)
William Forbes Skene
9781465619488
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The name of Scotia, or Scotland, whether in its Latin or its Saxon form, was not applied to any part of the territory forming the modern kingdom of Scotland till towards the end of the tenth century. Prior to that period it was comprised in the general appellation of Britannia, or Britain, by which the whole island was designated in contradistinction to that of Hibernia, or Ireland. That part of the island of Britain which is situated to the north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde seems indeed to have been known to the Romans as early as the first century by the distinctive name of Caledonia, and it also appears to have borne from an early period another appellation, the Celtic form of which was Albu, Alba, or Alban, and its Latin form Albania. The name of Scotia, however, was exclusively appropriated to the island of Ireland, which was emphatically Scotia, the ‘patria,’ or mother country, of the Scots; and although a colony of that people had established themselves as early as the beginning of the sixth century in the western districts of Scotland, it was not till the tenth century that any part of the present country of Scotland came to be known under that name, nor did it extend over the whole of those districts which formed the later kingdom of the Scots till after the twelfth century. From the tenth to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries the name of Scotia, gradually superseding the older name of Alban, or Albania, was confined to a district nearly corresponding with that part of the Lowlands of Scotland which is situated on the north of the Firth of Forth. The Scotia of these centuries was bounded on the south by the Firth of Forth; on the north by the Moray Firth and river Spey; on the east by the German Ocean; and on the west by the range of mountains which divides the modern county of Perth from that of Argyll. It excluded Lothian, Strathclyde, and Galloway, on the south; the great province of Moravia, or Moray, and that of Cathanesia, or Caithness, on the north; and the region of Argathelia, or Argyll, on the west. Subsequently the name of Scotia extended over these districts also, and the kingdom by degrees assumed that compact and united form which it ever afterwards exhibited. The three propositions—1st, That Scotia, prior to the tenth century, was Ireland, and Ireland alone; 2d, That when applied to Scotland it was considered a new name superinduced upon the older designation of Alban or Albania; and 3d, That the Scotia of the three succeeding centuries was limited to the districts between the Forth, the Spey, and Drumalban,—lie at the very threshold of Scottish history. The history of the name of a country is generally found to afford a very important clue to the leading features in the history of its population. This is remarkably the case with regard to the history of Scotland, and the facts just indicated in connection with the application of its name at different periods throw light upon the corresponding changes in the race and position of its inhabitants. They point to the fact that, prior to the tenth century, none of the small and independent tribes which originally occupied the country, and are ever the characteristic of an early period in their social history, or of the petty kingdoms which succeeded them, were sufficiently powerful and extended, or predominated sufficiently over the others, to give a general name to the country; and they point to a great change in the population of the country and the relative position of these kingdoms to each other in the tenth century, and to the elevation, by some important revolution, of the race of the Scots over the others, whose territory formed a centre round which the formerly independent petty kingdoms now assumed the form of dependent provinces, and from which an influence and authority proceeded that gradually extended the name of Scotia over the whole of the country, and incorporated its provinces into one compact and co-extensive monarchy.
