History Of The Scottish Nation Volume 2 of 3 volumes.
By Rev. J. A. Wylie LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM, ETC.

LONDON:
HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO.
ANDREW ELLIOT, EDINBURGH
1886

Etext of History of the Scottish Nation.
Vol. III.

FROM UNION OF SCOTS AND PICTS, A.D. 843, TO DEATH OF ALEXANDER III., A.D.
1286.

Contents
Chapter 1 UNION OF THE PICTS AND SCOTS  REIGN OF KENNETH MACALPIN.
Importance, of the Union, Its Way prepared by great Battles, The historic Career of the Picts
closed, Legends of their Massacre false, Causes of permanence of Union,  Two Peoples, but one
Faith, After War comes Legislation, The "Code Macalpin," Early Laws relating to Land,
Specimens of the Code Macalpin, The Code the Compilation of several Ages, Chair of Columba
and Stone of Destiny placed at the Centre of the Kingdom, Death of Kenneth Macalpin, His
Burial.
Chapter 2 DONALD  CONSTAINTIN  FIRST BATTLE WITH THE DANES.
With Kenneth Macalpin the Light departs, Clearness of the Columban Age compared with
following Centuries, Scotland retrograding, The Scots must be placed on the Anvil, King
Donald, Two Portraits of him, King Constantin, Quells a Disturbance in Lochaber, The Danes
land on the Coast of Fife, Battle and Defeat of the Danes on the Leven, Danish Fleet in
Balcombie Bay, Bloody Battle at Crail,  Defeat of Scots and Death of King Constantin, Burial of
Constantin, Contrasted Modes of Emigration in Ancient and Modern Times, Shall Scotland be
blotted out and Daneland substituted? 
Chapter 3 ETH  GRIG  PICTISH PERSECUTION OF COLUMBAN CHURCH TOLERATION.
Outlook after the Battle of Crail, Accession of "Swiftfoot," A Shoal of "Sea Monks," Accession
of Grig, or Gregory, Gives Freedom to the Scottish Church,  First Use of the Term "Scottish
Church," The "Pictish Bondage" of Scottish Church, King Nectan and a new Easter Calendar,
Nectan's Clergy shorn in the Roman Fashion, The Recalcitrants expelled, Nectan's Edict revoked
by Gregory,  Evils of Nectan's Policy, Columbites recalled by Kenneth Macalpin Nectan dies in a
Monk's Cowl.
Chapter 4 GREGORY OF SCOTLAND AND ALFRED OF ENGLAND  NORSEMEN  THE
FADING COLUMBAN LAMP.
A strong Hand at the Helm, Treason among the Picts, Gregory chastises them,  Gregory's
Exploits on the Border, His Conflicts with the Danes and the Britons,  Crosses to Ireland,
Ravages of Hardnute in North of England, Expelled by Gregory, Friendship betwixt Gregory and
Alfred of England, Beauty of Alfred's Character, Adversities of his Youth, Illustrious Labours of
his riper Years,  Heads Army of Bible Translators, A dying Lamp.
Chapter 5 DONALD  CONSTANTIN  LOST BATTLES AND THEIR LESSONS.
Accession of Donald, Return of the Danes, The Scottish Alliance with Alfred renewed, The
Danes repulsed, A Danish Colony settled in Northumbria, Donald fights two Battles in Moray,
His Death,  Accession of Constantin, Under Constantin Scotland retrogrades, A National
Assembly at Scone for the Reformation of the Church, Its Significance, Civil Divisions of
Scotland, The Country known as Alban, Boundaries of the Kingdom of Alban, Out-lying
Regions north and south of Alban, Saxonia on the south and Norwegia on the north, Divisions of
the Kingdom of Alban, Names and Boundaries of its five Provinces, Subdivisions of the
Province, Constantin joins the Danes against England, Is defeated in Battle,  Invades England a
second time, Stratagem of Anlaf, Battle of Brouny, Lesson of Defeat, Retreat of Constantin
pursued by Athelstan, Scottish Boundary recedes to, the Forth, Corivention at Abernethy,
Constantin abdicates and enters the Monastery of St. Andrews. 
Chapter 6 SPECIAL MISSION OF SCOTLAND  SYNOD OF SCONE  A TENTH CENTURY
REFORMATION
The Silent Forces the Mightier, Power of Christianity is in the ratio of its simplicity, Shown in
the Power of Columba's Mission, Sources of Scottish History, Adamnan's Life of Columba;
Book of Deer, &c., Dr. Johnson's eulogy,  General Assembly of the Scottish Church at Scone,
Independence of Scottish Church, Reformation on the lines of the Bible, Proceedings closed
with an Oath to go forward in Reformation,  Delays the Triumph of Rome, Revival, Columban
Church in Existence and Action in the Twelfth Century.
Chapter 7 DESTRUCTION OF EARLY SCOTTISH LITERATURE  THE COLUMBITES
METAMORPHOSED  WAS IONA A ROMAN OR A PROTESTANT CHURCH.
Causes of the Destruction of Early Scottish Literature, The Columbites claimed in our day by
Romanists, This a Hallucination, Iona and Rome contrasted in their Foundation-stone, Bede's
testimony to the Columbites, Testimony of Columbanus,  Iona and Rome contrasted in their
Top-stone, The Columban Eucharist and the Romish Mass, Extraordinary Statement of Father
Innes, Testimony of Claudius Scotus, The use of the terms body and blood of Christ, Altar,
Sacrifice, etc., no proof that the Church of Columba believed in Transubstantiation and the
Mass, Cave on the Communion Tables of the Early Church, Or Lindsay Alexander on the
Columbite Supper,  Footnote Wooden Communion Tables in Early Irish Church,  The Mass of
the Primitive Church,  What the phrase means and how it came into use, Still used in Eastern
Church, No witness from the dead needed.
Chapter 8 REIGNS OF MALCOLM I. INDULF  DUFF  CULLEEN SCOTLAND'S ONE
TALENT.
 Disorders repressed, Malcolm assassinated, Tndulf ascends the Throne, The Danes in Firth of
Forth, Battle at Cullen in which Indulf falls, Edinburgh, Duff the Black,  Change in Office of
Abbot, Vigour of Duff, He is assassinated, Cullen King,  His Profligacy and Death, Scotland's
one Talent, Bible Christianity,  Scotland trading with its one Talent, The rich harvest it Yields it,
The Scots burying their Talent in the Earth.
Chapter 9 REIGN OF KENNETH  BATTLE OF LUNCARTY  HOUSE OF
HAY-ALTERATION OF LAW OF SUCCESSION.
Mission of the Norsemen, Kenneth III., State of the Hebrides, A Norse Flotilla on the East Coast,
Battle of Luncarty, The Scots flee, Arrested by Hay and his two Sons, Defeat turned into Victory,
Historic Proofs of the Incident, Revival of Arts and Agriculture, Succession to the Crown: the
Fittest chosen, Law of Succession changed, Death of Prince Malcolm, Story of Kings Death.
Chapter 10 MALCOLM II. CESSION OF LOTHIAN TO SCOTS  BATTLES OF MURTLACH
AND BARRY  KINGDOM OF SCOTIA.
Evil Years, Claimants to the Throne, Malcolm II. mounts it, His Character, by Fordun, Battle of
Carham, Lothian ceded to Scotland, Danish Fleet off the Spey,  Devastations, Spread of the
Danish Power in Scotland, Battle of Murtlach,  Growth of the Danish Power, The Danes aim at
Subjugation of all Scotland, A Danish Fleet at the Red Head, Danish Ravages, The Scots Muster
at Barry, Battle of Barry, Death of Camus, "Kingdom of Alban" dropped, and "Kingdom of
Scotia" substituted, Last of Male Line of Fergus, Malcolm II. dies by the Dagger, The Laurel
entwined with Cypress. 
Chapter 11 DUNCAN AND MACBETH.
This Era in itself trivial, Lighted up by a great Genius, Who was Macbeth? His Genealogy and
History, according to Scottish Chroniclers, According to the Orkneyinga Saga, Grandeur of
Shakespeare's Drama, We accept the Fiction of the Poet in place of the real History of the Time,
Macbeth a good Ruler, His Gifts to the Culdees, Nevertheless Nemesis follows, Return of
Malcolm, Son of Duncan,  War for the Throne Macbeth is slain,  Malcolm ascends the Throne.
Chapter 12 MALCOLM CANMORE AND WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
With Malcolm Canmore a new Age, Invaders in Frock and Cowl, Battle of Hastings, William of
Normandy, England receives a New Master, War betwixt Malcolm Canmore and William the
Conqueror, William invades Scotland,  William at Abernethy, Terrible Devastations, Williain
fails to conquer Scotland,  His Failure a Blessing to both Countries.
Chapter 13 QUEEN MARGARET  CONFERENCE WITH CULDEE PASTORS.
A Royal Closet, Malcolm Tower at Dunfermline, Arrival of Edgar Aetheling and his Sister
Margaret at Queensferry, Character of Margaret's piety, Her Fastings, Charities, and Religious
Acts, Her Church Reforms, Conference with Culdee Pastors, Bishop Turgot Scottish Church of
Eleventh Century, Anti-Papal,  Points debated in the Conference: Ist, Uniformity of Rite, 2nd,
The Lenten Fast, 3rd, The Lord's Day, 4th, The Question of Marriage, 5th, The Question of the
Eucharist,  Culdee "Lord's Supper," Irish Culdees and the Supper," The "Hour of Temptation to
Scotland." 
Chapter 14 GLIMPSES OF THE COLUMBAN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES  EASTER
CONTROVERSY  FALL OF IONA.
Continuity of Columban Church, Glimpses of it in Middle Ages, Its Golden Age,  Its first Ebb,
Marked Decadence in Eighth Century, Expulsion of Columbite Clergy from Pictish Territory, 
An Eighth Century Exodus, Persecutions and Sufferings of the Exiles,  War follows betwixt Pict
and Scot, The Easter Controversy,  Difference betwixt the Eastern and Western Observance of
Easter,  Council of Nicea, The Moons do not revolve in accordance with the Council's Decree,
The Nineteen Years' Cycle, The "Elders" rebel against the Easter Decree,  In 717 Iona submits,
The Material Iona falls, the Spiritual Iona flourishes,  Monastery burned and Monks slain. 
Chapter15 TRANSLATIONS OF THE CHAIR OF COLUMBA  THE ONE BISHOP OF ALBAN
A GREAT TEMPEST IN WHICH SCOTLAND DOES NOT SINK.
Service rendered by Sword of Dane, Continued Organisation and Vigour of Columban Church,
Proofs furnished by Rome herself, Roman Synods at Chalons-sur-Soane and Celcyth,
Translations of Columba's Chair to Dunkeld, Abernethy, St Andrews, Boundaries of Alban in
Tenth Century, Wreck of Kingdoms and Peoples, Scotland escapes.
Chapter 16 EPOCHS OF REVIVAL IN COLUMBAN CHURCH.
Alban's one Bishop, Who consecrated Cellach? Rome includes Bishop and Presbyter in the same
Order of Clergy  Re-establishment of Columban Clergy in East of Scotland, Enlargement of
Liberties of Scottish Church, Synod of Mote Hill,  The Columban Church comes again into view
in Queen Margaret's Days, Her success with the Scots small, They are still outside the Pope's
Church.
Chapter 17 THE CULDEES  THEIR ORIGIN  THEIR FUNCTIONS  THEIR DIFFUSION.
Dissolution of Columban Brotherhoods, Rise of the Ascetic or Anchorite System,  The Culdees
or Keledei, Name signifies "the Servants of God, Two Theories of their Origin,  First, that they
are sprung from the Roman Church, Proofs: Legend of St. Serf, First Pope, next Abbot of
Lochleven, Another form of this Legend,  Legend of St Andrew, Patron Saint of Scotland,
Legend of founding of St Andrews, The first Ceile De, This Theory inconsistent with the Fact
that the Culdees were persecuted by Romanists, Inconsistent with the Fact that they were the
Evangelisers of the Continent, The Culdees a Continuation of the Columban Church,  Great
historic Proofs of this, Culdees Pioneers of the Reformation.
Chapter 18 NORWEGIAN KINGDOM OF ORKNEY  MARGARET REVOLUTIONISES
SCOTLAND  DEATH OF MALCOLM AND MARGARET  ESTIMATE OF MARGARET'S
CHARACTER AND SERVICES.
Bye Drama in Orkney and Shetland, Their early Religion Druidism, Christianised by
Missionaries from Iona, Norwegian Kingdom in Orkney, Heathenism returns,  Christianised a
second time under Olave Tryggvosson, From A.D. 1014 the Norwegian Power in Scotland
begins to decline, Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld,  Margaret changes her Tactics, Builds a
magnificent Church at Dunfermline,  Pomps and Ceremonials, Margaret's Ideal of Worship,
Tendency of dying Churches to effloresce into Rites and Ceremonies, Last Days of Malcolm and
Margaret, Death of Malcolm Canmore, Margaret's Illness, Her Death, Estimate of her Character
and Services to Scotland. 
Chapter 19 DONALD BANE  KING EADGAR  ALEXANDER'S BATTLE WITH THE
BISHOPS   ALEXANDER'S VOW AND MONASTERY OF INCHCOLM.
A double vacancy, Unpopularity of the Reigning House, Donald Bane, Eadgar Ascends the
Throne, Introduction of Lowland Scotch, Alexander the "Fierce, his zeal for the "Church," His
religious benefactions, Turgot becomes Bishop of St Andrews, Quarrel over his Consecration,
Another vacancy in See of St. Andrews,  Eadmer elected, Battle of Jurisdiction betwixt the
Bishop and the King, Eadmer leaves the Kingdom, The "Fatal" Chair of St. Andrews, Alexander
makes more Bishops, Scotland changing its appearance, The Storm, Alexander's Vow,  Founding
of Inchcolm, Career of the Monastery, Walter Bower and Thomas Forret. 
Chapter 20 DAVID 1. AND NEW AGE OF EUROPE  DAVID'S PERSONAL QUALITIES
AND HABITS  WAR TO RESTORE THE ANGLO-SAXON LINE IN ENGLAND  BATTLE OF
THE STANDARD.
Battle betwixt the Spiritual and the Temporal Powers, The Spiritual conquers,  Scotland brought
within the sphere of this Conflict, Personal qualities of David,  Painstaking in Administration of
Justice, A lover of the Chase, His peregrinations,: Stirling, Perth, Jedburgh, Edinburgh, His
efforts to raise his Niece to the English Throne, Treaty at Durham, Second Invasion of England,
The two Armies at Cutton Moor, Battle of the Standard, Subsequent negotiations, The Norman
keeps the English Throne.
Chapter 21 KING DAVID'S ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY  ERECTION OF FIVE
NEWBISHOPRICS  SUPPRESSION OF THE CULDEES.
David's two projects: Restoration of Saxon Line in England and substitution of the Roman for
the Columban Church in Scotland, Alexander I. leaves four Bishoprics,  David's new Bishoprics, 
Rossemarkie, Aberdeen, Caithness, Suppression of the Culdees, At Dornoch, At Lochleven,
Continuity of Culdees in Lochleven Monastery, Legend of Servanus, Culdees of Monimusk,
Culdees of St. Andrews,  Their Firmness and Fidelity, Their Battle of Two Hundred Years, Their
Existence traced till the Reformation.
Chapter 22 FOUNDING AND ENDOWING OF HOLYROOD.
Abbey of Holyrood, Edinburgh in King David's Days, David and the Wild Boar,  The King's
Vow, Building of Abbey, Its Monks Augustinian, Its Endowments,  Numerous Benefactors, Its
Chapels, and Altars, The Monks at Breakfast, Dinner, Supper, Evening Recreations.
Chapter 23 INTERIOR OF ABBEY-ROUTINE OF DAILY SERVICES  DUTIES OF THE
SEVERAL FUNCTIONARIES  BENEFIT TO SOCIETY?
Divisions of the Monastic Day, Monastic Discipline, Tierce, Sext, Nones, Prime, Compline,
Officers of Abbey: Abbot, Prior, etc., Cellarer, Treasurer, Refectioner, etc., Question of Benefits
flowing from the Abbey.
Chapter 24 FOUNDING OF ABBEYS CONTINUED  ABBEYS NORTH OF THE
GRAMPIANS IN VALLEY OF THE TWEED, MELROSE KELSO) ETC.,  VARIOUS
ORDERS OF FRIARS  OUTLOOK OF SCOTLAND.
Scotland's Aspect changing, Incheolm, Buildings, Rich Endowments, Drowning and Miracle,
Turned into a Lazaretto, etc., Fertile and picturesque spots selected by Monks, Build on
Columban Foundations, Monimusk, etc., Abbey of Melrose,  Jedburgh, Kelso, Its Regalities,
Right of Sanctuary, More Friars, Houses for Women, Rural Deaneries, Worship of New Church,
Sermons of the Friars,  Examples, Outlook of the Scots, Coming purification.
Chapter 25 DEATH OF DAVID  HIS CHARACTER.
His latter Days darkened, Death of his only Son, Prince Henry, Arrangements for the Succession,
His Death, His Character, Difficult to estimate accurately, His Character as a Ruler tested by
Time, His great Error his Ecclesiastical Policy, Its Influence most Disastrous, Scottish Patriotism
benumbed. 
Chapter 26 REIGNS OF MALCOLM IV. WILLIAM THE LION  ALEXANDER III. BATTLE
OF LARGS.
Malcolm IV., Gathering Clouds, Why called the "Maiden," Malcolm's Softness with Henry of
England, Moro Religious Houses, Accession of William the Lion,  Why styled "The Lion,"
Taken Captive by the English Barons, Buys his Liberty with the Surrender of the Independence
of his Kingdom, A great Price for one Man,  Abbey of Arbroath, Scotland under Interdict,
Richard Coeur de Lion gives Scotland back its Independence, More Priests, Independence of
Scottish Papal Church, Alexander II., His Troubled Reign, More Friars, Alexander III., His
Coronation, The Comyns, Alexander's Marriage, Founding of Abbey of Sweetheart, Translation
of Queen Margaret's Relics, Last Appearance of the Vikings, Haco's Armada, Destructive Storm,
Battle of Largs, an Epoch in Scottish History, Death of Alexander III.

CHAPTER I.  A.D. 843 860. UNION OF THE SCOTS AND PICTS REIGN OF KENNETH
MACALPIN. 

The middle of the ninth century saw the Scots and Picts united under the scepter of Kenneth, the
son of Alpin. The advent of this union was long deferred: it was at least consummated in A.D.
843; but even then it received no enthusiastic welcome from those to whom, as might have been
foreseen, it brought great increase of power and prestige. The idea of mixing their blood to form
one nation, and uniting their arms to establish one central throne, and so taking pledges for the
maintenance of peace at home, and the acquisition of influence abroad, however meritorious it
seems to us, does not appear to have approved itself to the two races that inhabited the one
country of Caledonia. They entertained this idea only when it came to be forced upon them by
the stern lessons of the battlefield a school in which it would seem the education of infant
nations must begin.

This union was preceded and prepared by a series of great battles. The question at issue in these
fierce conflicts was, To which of the two nationalities, the Scots or the Picts, shall the
supremacy belong, and by consequence the right to govern the kingdom? The wars waged to
determine this point ended in a supreme trial of strength on the banks of the Tay near Scone.1
The engagement was a desperate one. Seven times the Picts assailed, and seven times were they
driven back. Their king, Bred, fell in battle, and his armour, afterwards presented to Kenneth
MacAlpin, was sent by him to hung up at Icolmkil.2 From that bloody field the Scots and Picts
emerged one nation. Supremacy, which had been the object aimed at by the combatants till now,
was abandoned for the more practical and wiser policy of union. Battle had swept away one of
the two thrones which had hitherto borne sway in Caledonia, and the one throne left standing
was that of the prince whose progenitor, Aidan, Columba had made to sit on the Lia-Fail, or
Stone of Destiny, and anointed as the first really independent sovereign of the Scots.

The Picts closed their distinctive historic career when they lost this battle. They were by much
the earlier inhabitants of the country, and doubtless regarded the Scots as a new people. The
Picts or Caledonians, if not the first, were among the first races that found their way to
Caledonia after its plains and mountains had looked up from the waters of the flood. Yet this
ancient people were content to lose name and record in the annals of a race whose arrival in the
mountains of Argyllshire dated only five centuries back. The award of battle had decreed that
they elder should serve the younger, and to that award they bowed. Not Pictish blood lone, nor
Scottish blood alone, but the two streams commingled, were to form the one blood which was to
inspire the valour and fight the battles of the future. Scotland had made a great stride forward,
and it was a happy omen for the future career of the united people that in making this new start
they put the help into the hands of that race in whose hearts glowed the faith of Columba.

We refuse to credit the legends which say that battle was succeeded by massacre, and that the
glory of victory was dimmed and the fame of the victors tarnished by the utter and cruel
extermination of the vanquished people. It is true, no doubt, that from about this time the Picts
disappear, or nearly so, from the page of history. Some historians have been able to find no
solution of this mystery, save in the supposition that they were swept from off the face of their
country by the unsparing and unpitying sword of the victorious Scot. "The extermination of the
Picts." Says Fordun, "was total and final; not only were their kings and leaders destroyed, but
their race and generation, and even their language failed."3 This is too ready and obvious a
solution of the problem to be the true one. It is inherently most improbable. If the Scots of that
day were guilty of a crime so enormous, they had sat for three centuries to little purpose, verily,
at the feet of the Columba and his successors. The deed would have been as impolitic as it would
have been cruel. The hour was near when a foe, which their fathers had not known, fierce as the
vultures of the land from which he came, was to invade their country. Already the piratical fleets
of the Norseman were beginning to be seen on their coasts. The Scots, in these circumstances,
could have committed no more deplorable error than stamp out a valour which might on a future
day do them good service on the battlefield. When the invader should be crowding, horde on
horde, into their land, and the clash of swords rose loud, how sorely would the Scots miss those
stalwart Caledonian warriors, who, if not locked in the sleep of death, would have contended by
their side for a common country, and chased the Norse marauder to his galley.

Besides, it must be taken into account that massacre in the circumstances would have swept off a
full half of the population of Scotland, and left the surface of the country to a large extent
unoccupied. Yet we are not conscious of any diminution of the population in the times
subsequent to the victory of Kenneth MacAlpin. Scotland is as full of men as before. It has no
lack of warriors to fight its battles. Whence come these armies? Not merely from the narrow
territories of the Scots in the western boarder, but from the less mountainous and more thickly
peopled districts on the east and north, the very regions which, on the supposition of massacre,
had been converted into a desert. How came these parts to be again so quickly populated? Did
the Scots, by some marvellously rapid process of increase, fill in the short time the empty land?
Or did new races spring from the ashes of the slain to repair the ravages of the sword? These
considerations make the theory we are discussing wholly untenable, and force us to the
conclusion, which is certainly by much the more agreeable alternative, even, that the Picts,
although the more numerous people, loyally accepted the award of the battle, and putting the
good of country before the considerations of race, permitted the sword, which had already shed
quite enough of flood, to be sheathed, and the wounds of their country to be closed.

It is deserving of our notice, moreover, that the monarch under whom we see the united races
beginning their career as the one Scottish nation, was the son of that King Alpin, whose bloody
head had been affixed as a trophy of the Pictish arms to the gates of Abernethy. The dishonour
put upon the father was wiped out when the son entered these same gates in triumph to fill the
throne of an united people, and stretch his sceptre from west to east across the entire country,
and from the banks of the Forth to the great ocean stream that rolls betwixt the promontory of
Cape Wrath and the precipices of the Orkneys.

It is not always that unions accomplished on the battlefield are lasting. It sometimes happens
that when the pressure of the sword is removed the old rivalries and enmities break out afresh,
and the nationalities united for a moment again fall asunder, to be parted, it may be more widely
than before. It was not so, however, in the union affected betwixt the Scots and the Picts on the
battlefield on the Tay. Nor is it far to seek for the causes that gave the union permanency. In the
veins of Kenneth MacAlpin there flowed the blood of both races. A Scot by the father's side, and
a Pict by the mother's, both people had a share in him. Moreover, he enjoyed the prestige of
having been crowned on the Lia-Fail. With that stone were linked the traditions of dominion and
rule. These traditions stretched back to the remote times of the Irish monarchs, who were said to
have received consecration upon it. What is more, this stone was supposed to possess the
mysterious power of imparting a peculiar sacredness and a kingly virtue to the man who was
crowned upon it. It had been the privilege of no Pictish monarch to take his seat on that
venerable stone. That honour was reserved for the kings of the Scottish nation alone. In our days
the ceremony, though still practised, does not count for much;' but in that age it wax the better
half of the coronation. Where that stone was there was the legitimate sovereign, and there was
the rock of the kingdom, in the popular belief at least.

There was another and mightier element of cohesion in the union of which we speak, than either
the blood that flowed in the veins of Kenneth MacAlpin, or the virtue of the august chair in
which his coronation had taken place. The two peoples were by this time of one faith. When the
northern Picts were converted from Druidism to Christianity by Columba, the way was opened
for their becoming one with the nation of which the great missionary as a Dalriadan Scot was a
member. Columba was the true apostle of union. Pict and Scot had sat together in the school of
Iona. Pict and Scot had gone forth together in the same missionary band to evangelise in the
fields of France and Germany; and if they could be members of the same church organisation,
and sit at the same eucharistic table, surely they could meet in the same national Council, and
pay their homage at the foot of the same throne. After all it was the Rock of Iona rather than the
Stone at Scone that was the bond of union between the Scots and Picts.

The work of the sword at an end, the labours of the legislator must now begin. This second task,
we may well imagine, was even harder than the first. During the fierce struggle for supremacy
which had been going on during the previous reigns, many disorders had grown up, doubtless,
which called loudly for correction. There had been a loosening of the bonds of society all over
the land. In the Highlands especially the clans had enjoyed a larger than usual measure of
license, and were not to be easily broken into orderly and settled courses. Yet the attempt must
needs be made. The time was favourable, for the throne was stronger than it had ever before
been, and around it was now a united nation. And Kenneth, the chroniclers say, did not let slip
the opportunity that offered, but devoted the later half of his reign to reforming the laws,
repressing and punishing crime, and improving the administration of justice, than which no
greater boon could he have conferred upon a people whose latent forces, which waited the great
occasions of the future, would amply repay all the pains it might cost to discipline and regulate
them.

In all ages the glory of the legislator has been held by the wise to surpass that of the conqueror.
A code of enlightened jurisprudence is worth more than a hundred victories on the battlefield;
though it may sometimes happen that the rough work of the sword must prepare the way for the
quiet and patient labours of legislation. The old chroniclers credit Kenneth with being the author
of a body of laws which they dignify by the name of the "Code MacAlpin." The exploits of
Kenneth on the battlefield are well authenticated, we can speak only hesitatingly of his labours
in the Cabinet. Without attributing to him the work and fame of a great or original legislator, we
may concede, nevertheless, that before descending into the tomb he made it his study to leave
behind him some monument of his juridical industry and wisdom. Kenneth could hardly avoid,
one should think, making some rude essay towards framing laws for the altered circumstances of
the now united nation, embodying what was best and wisest in the forms and administration of
both peoples.

Of the laws of Scotland before the days of Kenneth we are altogether ignorant. They are said to
have been composed by Ethfin, "son to Eugene with the crooked nose," and that is all we know
about them. But pour ignorance is no proof that there was no code in Scotland till Kenneth came
to the throne. "Wherever society exists," says Mr. Cosmo Innes, "life and the person must be
protected. Wherever there is property there must be rules for its preservation and transmission.
Accordingly in the most ancient vestiges of the written law of Scotland we find constant
references to a still earlier common law." The laws relating to land must have been simple
indeed, for in those days no one had any personal right in the soil; it was the property of the
tribe. But as the people lived by the land, and the staple industry was agriculture, there must
have been laws regulating and defining the extent to which the individual members of the tribe
might use that soil which was the common property of all. The first approximation to the
creation of the individual right in the soil, so far as we can perceive, was the grants made to the
Columban monasteries. When a Columban Brotherhood was established in a district, a certain
amount of land was gifted to it by the King or the Mormaer. The brethren were to cultivate the
portion assigned them with their own hands or those of their converts. The monastic glebe was
both a means of subsistence to the monastery, and a model farm which served to stimulate and
guide the rural industry of the neighbouring population. They dotted the land with Christian
nations, in miniature, exhibiting to the surrounding pagan population the whole economy of
Christian civilised life. These grants created no individual rights in the soil. The lands were the
property of the Columbites, not as individuals but as a community. Still, as set apart from the
tribal territory, and held by a distinct tenure, they were an approximation to the system of
personal holdings, which afterwards came into use.

The jurisprudence of Ireland was more advanced than that of Scotland. Its political and social
arrangements were settled at an earlier period. And what so likely as that the Scots, when they
came across to Argyll, brought with them some of the Irish codes. Ireland was their mother
country. They turned to it for their models in framing both Church and State. Columba worked
on the same lines in evangelising Scotland which Patrick adopted when, a century before, he
crossed the sea to spread the light of the Christianity in Ireland. We are safe, therefore, in
assuming that the "Code MacAlpin" had its first beginning on the other side of the Irish channel.
These beginnings were the foundation on which Kenneth build when, resting from his wars, he
set to work to legislate for the united nation. Whatever in these ancient codes was adapted to the
new circumstances of his subjects he would preserve; what was lacking in them his own wisdom
would supply; and in this way doubtless the code that bears his name came into existence. Only
part of it is his; much of it was in being before he began his legislative labours, and much has
been added since. The code is the composition of no one man, nor the production of any one age.
It reflects the image of various ages.

The spirit of the "MacAlpin Code" and the justice of its enactments may be best shown by a few
examples.

"I. That in every shire of the kingdom there should be a judge, for deciding of controversies, well
seen in the laws; and that their sons should be brought up in the study of the laws. . . . .III. He
that is convicted of theft shall be hanged; and he that is guilty of slaughter, beheaded. IV. Any
woman convict of a capital crime, shall be either drowned or buried alive. V. He that
blasphemes God, or speaks disrespectfully of his saints, of his king, or of his chieftains, shall
have his tongue cut out. IV. He that makes a lie to his neighbour's prejudice, shall forfeit his
sword, and be excluded the company of all honest men. VII. All persons suspected of any crime,
shall suffer the inquest of seven wise and judicious men, or of any number of persons above that,
provided the number be odd. . . . IX. All vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and other idle persons, that
may, and do not, gain their livelihood by some honest calling, shall be burnt upon the cheek, and
whip with rods. . . . .XIV. He that is injurious to his father, by any member of his body, shall
have that member cut off, then hanged, and remain unburied above ground. . . . XVI. All
witches, jugglers, and others that have any paction with the devil, shall be burnt alive. XVII. No
seed shall be sown till it be first well cleansed from all noxious grains. XVIII. He who suffers his
land to be over-run with poisonous and hurtful weeds, shall pay, for the first fault, an ox to the
common good; for the second, ten; and for the third, he shall be forfaulted of his lands. XIX. If
you find your comrade and friend killed in the field, bury him; but if he be an enemy, you are not
bound to do it. XX. If any beast be found straying in the fields, restore him, either to the owner,
the Tocioderach, or, searcher after thieves, or to the priest of the parish; and whoever keeps him
up for three days, shall be punished as a thief. . . . .XXIII. If your neighbour's kine fall a fighting
with yours, and if any of them happen to be killed, if it be not known whose cow it was that did
it, the homyl-cow (or the cow that wants horns) shall be blamed for it; and the owner of that cow
shall be answerable for his neighbour's damage."

There was surely some occult reason for this law. Why the blame should be laid on the cow
which nature had made incapable of committing the offence we cannot even conjecture, unless it
were that by way of compensating for her want of horns the cow had received a double dose of
quarrelsomeness and pugnacity. The laws that follow are without doubt the product of the times
subsequent to the reign of Malcolm Canmore. No Columban missionary needed the protection
which they provide for the person and life of ecclesiastics. The Columbite Father could journey
from north to south without the slightest risk of injury or insult. The reverence entertained for
his character and office was a more effectual defence than any enactment could be. But when
these laws had birth it is obvious that the state of matters had changed. They are a confession
that the clergy were unpopular, that the Roman rites were liable to be contemned and scoffed at,
and that the Columban feeling, whatever may be thought of this way of expressing it, still
strongly pervaded the Scottish people.

"XXVII. Altars, churches, oratories, images of saints, chapels, priests, and all ecclesiastical
persons, shall be held in veneration. XXXVIII. Festival and solemn days fasts, vigils, and all
other ceremonies instituted by the church, shall be punctually observed. XXIX. He who injures a
churchman, either by word or deed, shall be punished with death. XXX. All sepulchres shall be
held in great veneration, and a cross put upon them, that they may not be trampled. Upon. XXXI.
The place where any man is killed or buried, shall be untilled seven years. XXXII. Every man
shall be buried according to his quality. If he be a nobleman and has done great actions for the
commonwealth, he shall be buried after this manner: Two horsemen shall pass before him to the
church; the first mounted upon a white horse, clothed in the defunct's best apparel, and bearing
his armour; the other shall be upon a black horse, in a mourning apparel; and when the corpse is
to be interred, he who is in mourning apparel shall turn his back to the altar, and lamentably
bewail the death of his master; and then return the same way that he came: the other shall offer
his horse and armour to the priest; and then inter the corpse with all the rites and ceremonies of
the church."4

The bulk of these enactments embody an admirable wisdom. Some of them are obviously
borrowed from the great Hebrew lawgivers, with whose code the Columban teachers were, of
course, familiar. The enactment which doomed the spot where innocent blood had been shed to
lie for seven years untouched by the plough, was well fitted to deepen in the popular mind the
abhorrence of murder. Waving with rank and noxious weeds, it warned the wayfarer not to
pollute himself by treading on so accursed a spot. Touching the statute against witchcraft, we
shudder when we think that for this imaginary crime the terrible doom of burning was awarded
and inflicted. But before charging our ancestors with cruelty, it may be well to reflect that up to
the beginning or middle of last century, the highest judicial tribunal in Scotland held witchcraft
to be a crime, and burned the poor unhappy creatures convicted of it at the stake.

So far this relic of the legislation of early days. Success in arms may be a glory, or it may be an
infamy. Whether it is the one or the other, depends altogether on the use which the victory is put.
But the work of the legislator can hardly be other than beneficial, and therefore glorious. The
man who establishes a great and righteous principle, and embodies it in law, is greater than the
man who wins a hundred battles. He has done a work for all time. What the sword of one
conqueror has set up, the sword of another casts down; but a Truth once established can never be
lost. Even should the Gates of Error war against it they cannot overthrow it. It has become the
possession of the race, and it goes down the ages ruling and blessing mankind.

The measures of Kenneth at this crisis were admirably adapted to make the two nations
coalesce, and give stability to the throne by which henceforward they were to be ruled. The old
seat of the Scottish kings was amid the Argyllshire mountains. This was by much too remote for
the now enlarged kingdom of Alban. Its continuance there would have weakened the central
authority, created impediments to justice, and delayed intelligence when, it might be, the safety
of the kingdom depended on its quick transmission. Accordingly Kenneth established his capital
at Forteviot, an the valley of the Earn. The spot was about equally distant from both seas. It lay
betwixt the Highlands and the Lowlands. The Tay afforded ready access to the ocean. The
watchers on the Red Head could espy the Norseman, and quickly notify his approach in the royal
palace of Forteviot; and what perhaps was not the least of the considerations that weighed with
Kenneth in fixing here the seat of his government, was that the site was within the Pictish
dominions, and the residence of the king among them would naturally help to conciliate this
brave and ancient race, still smarting from defeat, to the rule of the new dynasty.

The ecclesiastical capital, took, Kenneth removed to an inland and central position. The Rock
amid the western seas, so long the headquarters of Scottish Christianity, was exchanged for a
little valley in the southern Grampians, enclosed by woody crags, and watered by the Tay.
Kenneth ordained that at Dunkeld should be the seat of the Scottish primacy (851). To impart to
the second Iona something of the sanctity and prestige of the first, which the Vikings had made
utterly desolate, Kenneth brought hither the relics of Columba.5 What was of better augury for
the renown of his new cathedral and the prosperity of his enlarged dominions, he transported
across Drumalban the Columban clergy whose ancestors Nectan had driven out of his kingdom a
century and a half before because they refused to conform to the Roman customs. These
religious teachers he defused through the Pictish territory, planting many of them in the places
from which their fathers had been expelled. By this tolerant measure he did an act of reparation
for a great wrong, and strengthened his own influence among his Pictish subject.

One other symbol of authority and rule remained to be brought out and put conspicuously before
the nation. This was the Lia-Fail, or Fatale Chayre as the Scots styled it. With the reverence due
to so venerable a symbol of dominion, this stone was brought to Scone, that the kings of
Scotland might receive consecration upon it, and possess that mysterious and awful sanctity
which, in popular belief, belonged to monarchs who had sat in this august seat. These three, the
Throne, the Primacy, and the Stone of Consecration, were grouped at the centre of the kingdom,
and within the Pictish territory, that the new subjects of Kenneth might feel that the union was
complete, and that the Scottish monarchy had crossed Drumalban, not to make a transitory stay,
but to find a seat of permanent abode.

After these labours the Scottish nation and its monarch enjoyed a few years of peace. We see the
good king living tranquil days in his palace of Forteviot, in the quiet valley which the Earn
waters, and the heights of Dupplin on the one hand, and the swellings of the Ochils on the other
so sweetly embosom. On the west, the long vista guides the eye to where Drumalban rears its
summits and looks down on the two nations which it no longer divides. We read, indeed, of
some raids of the King Kenneth in his latter years into the country of the Saxons beyond the
Forth, for that river was still the southern boundary of Alban.6 But the record of these incursions
is so doubtful, and their bearing, even granting they took place, on the Scottish affairs is so
insignificant, that they hardly deserve historic mention. Kenneth reigned sixteen years after the
union of the two nations. He had served his country equally by his valour in the field and his
wisdom in the closet. He died in 860 in his palace at Forteviot. His mortal malady was fistula.

The tidings that King Kenneth was dead would fly far and fast over Scotland, and wherever they
came they would awaken sincere and profound sorrow. There was mourning in Dalriada, which,
sixteen years before, had seen the son of the slaughtered Alpin descend its mountains to begin
that campaign which had ended in a union that decreed that there should no more be battle
betwixt Scot and Pict. There was mourning in Pictavia, which, though compelled to bow to the
sword of Kenneth, had found that his sceptre was just and equitable. There was mourning amid
the wild hills of the north onward to the strand of Caithness, for the clans had learned that the
monarch who reigned in the halls of Forteviot was not a conqueror but a father. And now come
his obsequies. What a multitude gathers at the royal gates of Forteviot! Mormaer and Toiseach,
with their respective clans, from the Pentland to the Forth, are there, including warriors who
aforetime, it may be, had mustered to fight against the man who dust they are now carrying in
profound grief to the grave. The vast procession is marshalled, and proceeds with slow and
stately march, along the valley westward. The pilbroch flings out its wail of woe, summoning
dwellers in hamlet and glen to join the funeral cortege and swell the numbers of this great
mourning. The procession wends its way betwixt lakes and mountains which have since become
classic, though then they were unsung by bard or poet. Many days the march continues, for the
way is long to the royal sepulchres amid the western seas. At last the desolate and lonely isle is
reached. Iona is still the proudest fane in Europe, despite that the Vikings have ravaged it with
fire and sword, and left it nothing but its indestructible name. The greatest of the Scottish kings,
and even monarchs of other lands, leave it as their dying request to be taken to Iona, and buried
in the Isle which the memory of Columba like a mighty presence sill overshadows. We see the
funeral part arrive at Port na Churraich; they pass along the "Street of the Dead.6 and they
deposit the remains of Kenneth in the burial place of the kings who have sat on the stone of
destiny. They leave him there, the thunder of the Atlantic singing his requiem, for psalm and
chant have ceased amid the fallen shrines of Iona.

FOOTNOTES

1. See ante, vol. i. 360.

2. The Chronicle of Huntingdon says that "in his twelfth year Kenneth encountered the Picts
seven times in one day, and having destroyed many, confirmed the kingdom to himself."  Chron.
Picts and Scots, p. 209.

3. "Sic quidem non solum reges et duces gentis illius deletis sunt, sed etiam stirps et genus adeo
cum idiomatis siu lingua defecisse legitur." Scoti Chron., Lib. iv. Buchanan limits the extirpation
of the Picts to those who remained in arms against Kenneth after the great battle which gave him
the crown. This would gain all the ends of the conqueror, and we may safely conclude that this
was the whole extent of the slaughter.

4. The Macalpin Laws. The authenticity of these laws has occasioned come controversy. They
are given in Boece (Lib. x.). From Boece they have passed into Wilkins' Concilia (i. 179, 180).
Innes was at first a supporter of their authenticity, but afterwards changed his opinion so far as
regards the form in which they are given by Boece. They are rejected as the work of Kenneth
MacAlpin by Pinkerton (Enquiry), Hailes (Historical Memorials), and Chalmers (Caledonia).
The more probable opinion is that stated in the text, even, that this code is the production of
several ages, Kenneth adding what was required by his own times and the circumstances of his
nation.

5. Septimo anno regni sui relequias Sancti Columbae transportavit ad ecclesiam quam
construxit. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 8.

6. Portions of this road, by which the royal dead were conveyed from Port na Churraich to the
place of sepulture, exist at this day.   

CHAPTER II.  A.D.  860 877. DONALD CONSTANTIN FIRST BATTLE WITH THE DANES. 

The good king Kenneth has gone to his grave, and the light would seem to have departed with
him. No sooner is he laid in the tomb than the shadow of an eclipse falls upon the historic
landscape, and for some time we travel onwards in comparative darkness. Several successive
reigns pass away before we can see distinctly what is passing on the soil of Scotland. The
chroniclers who narrate the transactions of these dark centuries and they are the darkest of
Scottish history were not eye-witnesses of what they record; they gleaned their information from
a variety of traditional and monumental sources, and however painstaking and truth loving they
may have been, it was impossible for them to avoid being at times wrong in their conclusions,
and mistaken as to their facts.1 We are all the more sensible of the darkness in which we find
ourselves from its contrast to the clear light that irradiated our country a few centuries previous,
and which makes the times it brightened, though in reality far more remote, seem to us much
more near. 

Great events bring their own light with them, and write their own history. This is especially true
of events which have the spiritual for their basis, and which summon into action the souls rather
than the bodies of men. Such epoch has an electric brilliancy which keeps it above the horizon
despite ages of intervening darkness. How distinct and palpable is still the Scotland of the sixth
and seventh centuries! We follow as vividly the voyage of Columba across the Irish Sea to the
shores of Iona, as if we had sailed with him in the osier-ribbed vessel which carried him across.
We watch from day to day the rising walls of that humble edifice within which he is to gather
the youth of many lands, and there train them in a theology drawn from the pure fountains of
Holy Scripture. We become his companions when he goes forth on his missionary tour among
the Picts, and see him roll aside the darkness of Druidism from the north of Scotland, and revive
the dying lamp of the faith in the Lowlands. Our interest in his labours grows as his work draws
nigh its completion, and we see Scotland dotted with Columban brotherhoods, schools of
Christian knowledge, and centuries of Christian industry and art. We are parted from the men
who accomplished this great work by thirteen centuries, yet we think of them as they had been
our contemporaries, and had only recently rested from their labours.

But with the death of Kenneth MacAlpin, or rather with the decay of the Columban age, there
comes a great change. Scotland hardly looks the same country as when Columba stood at the
head of its scholars and Kenneth MacAlpin lead its armies. It has receded into the far distance,
and we stand gazing into a haze. Scotland, it is true, does not lack kings. Kenneth MacAlpin has
successors who have sat upon the Lia-Fail at Scone, but they pass before us like phantoms. Nor
does Scotland lack warriors; at least it does not lack battles. The land rings incessantly with the
clash of arms. But if the sword is busy, we fear the plough rests. The acres under tillage diminish
instead of multiplying, and fields which had been redeemed from the wilderness by the skilful
and diligent husbandry of men who had learned their agriculture as well as their Christianity
from the elders of Iona, fell back again into the desert and become covered with bracken, while
the wild boar, dislodged from his covert, comes back to his old haunt and lies in wait for the
traveller. The lamp has waxed dim, and its flame sunk low in the schools of learning and in the
sanctuaries of religion. We hear of armies crossing the Tweed to fight for the doubtful
possession of Northumbria, and extend the Scottish dominions to the banks of the Tyne, or even
the Humber, but hardly do we hear of missionary bands in their home-spun woollen garments
and sandals of cow hide, setting forth, as aforetime, from the Scottish shore to carry the name of
Scot and the faith of Culdee to countries afar off.

The moment was critical. All that had been won and much had been won was on the point of
being lost. Scotland had begun to work its way back to its former condition of divided and
warring nationalities. So would it have appeared to an onlooker. But no; Pict and Scot must not
part company. If they would fulfil their destiny they must contend side by side on the same
battlefield, and feel the purifying and elevating influence of a great common cause, prosecuted
through toil, through painful sacrifices, through disheartening reverses, till, borne to victory, it
has been crowned with complete achievement. It is not the success that comes with a rush, but
the success that comes as the fruit of slow, patient, and persistent labours and conflicts that
anneals, hardens, and at last perfects nations destined to rise to a first place, and to render the
highest services to mankind. It is on such a process that Scotland is about to be taken. It is to be
put upon the anvil and kept on it for seven generations, till Pict and Scot shall not only have
mingled their blood but fused their souls, and for the narrow aims of Clan substituted the wider
and nobler aspirations of Nation.

Even before Kenneth was laid in the sepulcharal vaults of Iona, the Scots had warning that the
clouds were gathering, and were sure to break in storm. They had seen what the sea could bring
forth. Ships of ominous build, swift as the eagle, and as greedy of prey, had once and again
appeared off their coast, and sent a thrill of terror along the sea-bo0ard. These unwelcome
visitors would retreat, and after disappearing in the blue main would suddenly return, as if they
took pleasure in tormenting their destined victims before pouncing up0on them. To come and
see and go back would not always suit the purpose of these plundering sea-kings. One day they
would strike. Already they had swooped upon the extreme north-western parts, and struck their
cruel talons into the quivering land. Iona gone, its monks slaughtered, and its building blackened
with fire, remained the monument of their visit. There were the "hammers" which by
long-continued and terrible blows were to weld into homogeneity and consistency the rugged
and unruly mass of humanity that occupied Scotland.

The first to take his seat on the Stone of Scone and assume the government of the kingdom after
Kenneth MacAlpin was his brother Donald. Had the nation forgotten the services of the father,
seeing they pass by the son and place the brother on the vacant throne? No, Scotland is not
unmindful of what it owes to Kenneth MacAlpin; but in those days the succession to the crown
was regulated by what is known as the law of Tanbistry. This was a wise law in times so
unsettled as those of which we write, and must have largely helped to steady the nation. When it
happened that a monarch died leaving a son to succeed him who was of tender years, it was held
unwise to put the sceptre into his hands. The vigour of manhood was needed to cope with the
saucy and turbulent chieftains of the then Scotland, and in the hands of a child the sceptre would
have run great risk of being contemned. On the death of a monarch, therefore, his nearest
collateral relative, or that one of the royal family who was deemed fittest for the office, was
selected, and the son meanwhile had to wait till years had given him experience, and the death of
the reigning king had opened his way to the throne.2

As regards the prince now on the Scottish throne, nearly all we can say of him is that he wore the
crown for four years. He stands too far off in point of time, and he is seen through too thick a
haze to permit us to take his measure. Historians have given us two different and opposite
portraits of King Donald, painted him, probably, as they wished him to have been, rather as he
really was, for they had hardly any better means of judging of his true character than we have.
Boece and Buchanan represent him as given up to all sorts of vicious indulgences, as governed
entirely by low flatterers, and as neglecting the business of the state, and wasting his own time
and the public revenue on "hunters, hawkers and parasites". The scandals of the court came at
last to such a head that the discontented chieftains among the Picts thought that the time had
come for asserting their independence and restoring their ancient monarchy. With this view they
formed an alliance with the Saxons of England, assuring them that the northern kingdom was
ready to drop into their arms would they only unite their forces with theirs in the effort to wrest
the ancient Pictland from the Scottish sway. The Saxons marched northward as far as the Forth.
Had the raid succeeded it is probable that the Saxons would have kept the country themselves,
and left the mutinous and treacherous Picts to find a kingdom where they could. Happily the
arms of Donald prevailed, and Scotland remained the united nation which Kenneth had made it.

In Donald, as the old chroniclers have striven to reproduce him from the mists of a remote time,
we have, as we have said, a picture with two totally unlike sides. On the side which we have
been contemplating there is shown us a profligate prince and a kingdom falling in pieces. Turn
the obverse. We are startled by the grand image that now meets us. The voluptuary and trifler is
gone, and in his room is a prince, temperate, brave, patriotic, sustaining the state by his energy
and virtues. So have Fordun and Winton, both of whom wrote before Boece, represented Donald.
They tell us, took, that not only was he careful to preserve the splendid heritage of a united
people which his brother had left him, but that he was studious to keep war at a distance by
cultivating friendship with neighbouring kings. We make no attempt to reconcile these two
widely divergent accounts. We see in them the proof that the real Donald is not known, and now
never can be known. In a question of this sort it is the earliest authorities who are held to speak
with the greater weight, seeing they stand nearest the sources of information; and as it is the
earlier chroniclers that give us the more favourable portrait of Donald, he is entitled to the
presumption thence arising in his favour. Donald closed his short reign of four years---too short
if he was the virtuous prince which some believed him to have been, but tool long if he was the
monster of vice which others say he was---in the year 864. The rock in the western seas received
his ashes.

On the death of Donald the succession returned to the direct line. We now see Constantin, the
son of Kenneth MacAlpin, assuming the crown. The memories of the great father lend prestige
to the throne of the son, and give authority to his sceptre. And, verily, there was need of all the
vigour which could possibly be infused into the government of the kingdom, for the hour was
near when Scotland would have to sustain a severer strain than any to which it had been
subjected since the days of the Romans. The tempest which had rolled up from England d in the
previous reign, and which had discharged itself on the southern shores of the Forth, was a
summer blast compared with the hailstorms which were gathering in the countries on the other
side of the North Sea. The battle with the Norseman was now to begin in deadly earnest. A few
premonitory blows, sharp and quick, had the Viking dealt on the borders of the Country, but now
he was to assemble all his hordes, and come against the land like a cloud, and strike at the heart
of the kingdom. For two centuries to come the kings of Scotland would have other things to
think of than the wine cup and the boar hunt, and the Scots would do well to reserve their blood
for worthier conflicts than a raid into Northumbria.

Before the great battle opened Constantin found that he had a little war on his hands at home.
The district of Lochaber suddenly burst into flames. This provincial conflagration had been
kindled by a Highlander named MacEwan, whom Constantin had appointed to be governor of
the district. The ambition of this man was not to be bounded by the narrow confine of his
Highland principality. He had higher aims than he could find scope for in Lochaber. A number
of discontented men, who too doubtless thought that their great merits had been overlooked,
gathered round him and offered him their help in his attempt on the throne. Constantin had
timely notice of the tempest that was brewing amid the mountains of Lochaber, and without
giving it time to burtst6, he crossed the hills and appeared on the scene of the disturbance e.
MacEwan, who did not dream that his treason had travelled as far as the valley of the Earn, and
was known in the Palace of Fort-Teviot, was surprised to find himself face to face with his
sovereign. His followers dispersing, left their leader to enjoy alone whatever promotion
Constantin might be pleased to confer upon him. That promotion was such as his services
deserved. He was hanged before the Castle of Dunstafnage, which he had made his headquarters,
and the rebellion expired.

After this appeared a portent of even worse augury which struck alarm into the heart of both
king and people. The tempest this time came not from the land but from the sea. The Danes had
landed on the coast of Fife, and had already begun their bloody work. The tidings of what had
happened sent a shock through the whole kingdom. Contrary to their usual custom the invaders
had made their descent on the eastern coast, where they were not looked for, and as the Scotland
of that age had no army of observation, their landing was unopposed. They held no parley with
the natives, they offered no terms of submission, but unsheathing their swords, they began at
once to hew their way into the interior of the kingdom. Their course lay along the fertile vale of
the Leven, and its green beauty under their feet quickly changed into ghastly red. The cruel Dane
was merciful to none, but his heaviest vengeance fell upon the ministers of the Christian Church.
A considerable number of ecclesiastics is said to have made good their escape to the Isle of May,
but their persecutors followed them thither, and remorselessly butchering them, converted the
little isle into a horrible shambles. Possibly the Danes deemed their slaughter a pleasing sacrifice
to their god Odin, for paganism in all its forms is a cruel and bloodthirsty thing.

King Constantin, assembling his army, marched to stay the torrent of Scottish blood which the
Danish sword had set flowing. He found the Danish host divided into two bodies, and led by
Hungan and Hubba, the two brothers of the Danish king. One corps was robbing and
slaughtering along the left bank of the Leven, and the other was engaged with equal ardour in
that to them most congenial work of the right bank of the same stream. Constantine led his
soldiers against the Danish force on the left. Recent rains had swollen the Leven, and the Danes
on the other side durst not tempt the angry flood by crossing over to the assistance of their
comrades. Left alone with the Scottish army they were utterly routed, and Constantine inflicted a
severe chastisement upon them, cutting them off almost to a man.

When the Danes on the right side of the river saw how complete was the victory of the Scots
they fell back before them, and resolved to make their final stand in the neighbourhood of their
ships. Their fleet lay at anchor in Balcombie Bay, in the eastern extremity of Fife, two miles
beyond the town of Crail. A sweet and peaceful scene is this spot, seen under its normal
conditions. The blue sea, the bright sandy beach, the vast crescent of rocks and shingle, steep
and lofty, that sweeps round it a full mile in circuit, lying moreover, in the bosom of a far
mightier bay of which the southern arm finds its termination in the promontory of St Abbs, and
the northern in the precipices of the Red Head, make a fine a piece of coast scenery as is almost
anywhere to be held. Yet dire was the carnage that day enacted on this usually quiet and
secluded spot.

The Danes strengthened their position by drawing round the bay a-top, a bristling barricade of
rocks and stones, with which the spot plentifully supplied them. They dug entrenchments on the
level plain outside their bulwark, which further strengthened their camp. Immediately beneath,
in the bay, they might almost drop a pebble upon their decks,--were moored their galleys, ready
to carry them across the sea, if the day should go against them, and they lived to go back to the
country whence they had come. The Danes fought for life, the Scots for country, and both with
fury and desperation. The battlefield was the open plain above the bay, in our day an expanse of
rich corn fields, all the richer, doubtless, from the blood that then so abundantly watered it. The
hottest of the strife would rage at the barrier of boulders thrown up to break the onset of the
Scots. It was the object of the latter to drive the Danes over their own rampart, and roll them
down the slope into the sea; but the invaders made good their footing on the level ground, and
forcing back the body of their assailants, escaped the destruction that yawned in their rear. The
slain lay all about, and the blood of Scot and Dane trickling down in the same stream dyed the
waters of the bay, and gave terrible intimation to those in charge of the galleys of the desperate
character of the struggle that was going on shore.

The good fortune of Constantin did not attend him in this second battle. This was owing to no
lack of spirit or bravery on his part, but grew out of the fret and discontent that continued to
smoulder in the Pictish mind against the sway of the Scottish sceptre.

A contingent of Picts is said to have left the field while the battle was going on, and their
desertion disheartening their comrades, turned the scale in the fortunes of the day. When the
battle had ended, Scotland was without a king. As Constantin was fighting bravely in the midst
of his fast falling ranks, he was surrounded by the Danes, seized and dragged to a cave in the
rocks, and there beheaded. Ten thousand Scots are said to have perished in that battle. Of the
Danes the slain would be even more numerous, for the entire force on the left of the Leven was
cut in pieces in the first battle, and considering how desperately the second was contested, the
Danish dead in it would count at least man for man with the Scots. The Danes sought no closer
acquaintance with Scotland meanwhile. Making their way to their ships, they set sail, leaving
behind them a land over which rose the wail of widow and orphan, to be answered back by an
equally loud and bitter cry from the homes to which they were hastening, as soon as they should
have arrived there with the doleful tidings they were carrying thither.3

The body of the king was found next day. A sorrowing nation carried it to Iona, and laid it in the
sepulchres of the Scottish kings. It was only twenty years since the funeral procession of
Kenneth MacAlpin had been seen moving along the same tract, in greater pomp, it may be, but
not in profounder grief. The father had died on the bed of peace, the son had gone down in the
storm of battle, and now rest together in the sacred quiet of the little isle. Constantin had reigned
fourteen years, dying in A.D. 877.4

Such was the first burst of the great storm. The clouds had rolled away for the moment, but they
would return, not once, nor twice, but many times in years to come. Henceforward the Scottish
peasant must plough his fields and reap his harvests with the terror of the Dane hanging over
him. At any moment this flock of Norse vultures might rise out of the sea, and swoop down upon
his land and make it their prey. He must be watchful, and sober, and provident. He must care for
the interests of his country, and know that his individual security and defence lay not in the
strength of his clan, but in the strength of his nation; in the unity and power of all its clans, near
and remote. He must cease to seek occasions of quarrelling, least, haply, the common enemy
should come suddenly and finding him fighting with his neighbour, should have an easy victory
over both.

 The Danes of that day were the most powerful of the German nations. Their narrow territory,
overstocked with inhabitants, was continually in labour to relieve itself by sending forth new
swarms of piratical adventurers. Its youth, hardy and martial, w3ere always ready to embark in
any enterprise that offered them the chance of waging battle and of gathering spoil.. They had
been born to slay or to be slain, and better not to have lived than to live and not to have mingled
in the carnage of the battlefield. Their welcome at the gates of Valhalla, and their place among
its heroes, would, they knew, be in strict accordance with their prowess in war and the enemies
they had slaughtered. Such was their ethical creed. They troubled themselves with no questions
of casuistry touching the rights of the inhabitants of a country marked out for invasion. All lands
were theirs if only their sword could give them possession. If it was a case it belonged, without
dispute, to the people of Odin, and nothing could be more pleasing to this deity than that his
worshippers should take possession of it, and consecrate it by the erection of his altars. Such
were the people that hung upon the flank of the Scotland of the ninth and following century.

It is after a different fashion that the overcrowded or hungry populations of our day go about the
business of seeking out and occupying new settlements. Crossing the sea with his wife and little
ones, the emigrant sets to work with his axe, felling not men but trees, and having cleared a
space in the primeval forest, he sets up his homestead, and begins those operations of spade or
plough which soon teach the earth around his humble log-house to wave with cornfields or
blossom with orchards. But so prosaic a mode of finding for himself a new home was little to the
taste of the emigrant of the ninth century. The country that could be won without battle was
scarce worth possessing. The claimant of new territories in that age crossed the main in a galley
blazoned with emblems of terror: the prow the head of horrid dragon, and the stern the twisted
tail of venomous snake. The earth grew red at his approach. The invaded region was cleared out
with the sword, and its new occupant set himself down on the gory soil.

This fate had already been meted out to South Britain. Descending on it with the swift and
destructive force of one of their own hailstorms, the Anglo-Saxons made the country their own.
They cleared out the inhabitants with the summary agencies of fire and sword, and driving a few
miserable remnants of the population into the corners of the land, they gave to the country a new
race and a new name. They called it Anglo-land. A similar fate had been allotted to Scotland by
the Dane. Its ancient people were to be hewn down. Some few might be spared to be hewers of
wood and drawers of water to the conqueror, but the Dane was to be its lord and master. Its
ancient name was to be blotted out: the sanctuaries of the Culdee were to be razed and the
shrines of Thor set up in their room. It was this tremendous possibility that made the two
nationalities coalesce. They were fused in the fire. Every battle with the Dane, every heap of
slain which his sword piled up, and every shipload of booty which he carried across the sea, only
helped to strengthen their cohesion and fan their patriotism. The question was no longer whether
shall Scot or Pict take precedence in the government of the realm? The question now had come
to be, shall either of the two be suffered to rule it, or indeed to exist in it? Shall the name of
Caledonia cease from the mouths of men, and shall the country in all time coming be known ad
Dane-land?

FOOTNOTES

1. When Malcolm Canmore died (l093), Scotland had no written history of any sort. The school
of Iona in the sixth and seventh centuries had produced a numerous class of expert and elegant
penmen and copyists, who furnished their country men with transcripts of the Scriptures,
commentaries, and books for Divine service. Scottish civil history has its first beginnings in the
charters granted to Abbeys. The oldest charter extant is by King Duncan (1095) to the monks of
Durham. Then follows a charter by David I. The "Chronicle of Mailross," written in the Abbey
of Melrose in the thirteenth century, is, says Mr. Cosmo Innes, "the most ancient Scotch writing
of the nature of continuous history that is now extant." State papers begin in the reign of
Alexander III., or later half of the thirteenth century. Next comes the "Poem of the Bruce," the
Scotch Odyssey by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen (1375-1395). Then follows Andrew
Wyntoun (1420), Prior of Lochleven. His history has little value as a poem, but is very valuable
as a chronicle. In the end of the fourteenth century, John Fordun laid the foundation of Scottish
history in his Scoti-Chronicon. Hector Boece wrote in 1533. His work is in classic Scotch prose.

2. Johannis Major,Historia Britannioe, Lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 90 Edin., 1740.

3. We have great faith in the traditions of a country, if they are natural, and are corroborated by
some monumental evidence, and are not tainted by the element of miracle. The chronicler with
his pen may put any number of legends he pleases on his page, but nothing but the event itself
can write its story on the face of a country, so as to take hold of the belief of its inhabitants and
be handed down by them. Of this battle we have still living traditions in that party of the country.
The inhabitants of the east of Fife point out the cave amid the rocks of Balcombie Bay in which
Constantin was murdered, and the trenches and embankments of the Danes at the head of the
bay are still traceable, after the lapse of a thousand years. They are styled by the country people
the Danes' dykes. See also Johannis Major, Historia Majoris Britannioe, Lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 90.
1740.

4. Dr. Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 327), guiding himself by the Ulster Annals and the Chronicle of
the Picts, relates this campaign differently. He finds that the Danes had been driven from Dublin
by the Norwegians; that they crossed to Alban, and entered the country by the valleys watered by
the Forth and the Teith; that they fought a battle with the Scots at Dollar; that they drove the
Scottish army before them to the northeastern extremity of Fife, where the great battle was
fought in which Constantin lost his life. There are, however, very great difficulties in their ships.
On arriving, and beginning their march through the whole breadth of the country, what did they
do with their fleet? They could only send it round the north of Scotland by the Pentland, to wait
the arrival of the army on the east coast. Considering the hazard of a march through a country
whose whole population was hostile, were not the Danes more likely to accompany their ships,
and make their assault in unbroken force on the east coast, whence, if they were beaten, they had
an open road to their own country? It is extremely unlikely that the expelled colony of Danes
should have been able to drive the Scots before them across the entire island, and that the Scots
should make a stand only when they had no alternative but fight or be driven into the sea. These
improbabilities are so great that we may venture to say they never took place.



C HA P T E R I I I.

A.D. 877 889.

ETH GRIG PICTISH PERSECUTION OF COLUMBAN

CHURCH TOLERATION. 

When Scotland looked up from the battlefield of Crail there appeared on every side nothing but
disaster and apparent ruin. The throne empty, the flower of the army fallen on the field, and the
adhesion of the Picts become doubtful, the Union appeared to be in greater peril than at any time
since the great battle on the banks of the Tay, which brought the Scots and Picts together in one
nation. But the dynasty of Fergus is not to end here; the little country must gather up its strength
and repair its losses before the Danes have time to return and strike a second blow. 

The first care of the Scots was to select one to fill the vacant throne. The choice of the nation fell
on Eth or Aodh,, the brother of Constantin. This prince had been present in the recent battle, and
when the king fell he rallied the broken ranks and led them off the field. Of all his exploits this
only has come down to us. He is known as Eth of the Swift Foot, from an abnormal nimbleness
of limb which enabled him to outstrip all his fellows. John Major calls him an Asahel, and tells
us that no one could keep pace with him in running.1 Of Eth, as of all the Scottish monarchs of
the time, very different portraits have been drawn. It were vain to plunge into the darkness of the
ninth century in search of the real Eth. He is gone from us for ever, but we have no proof that he
conspicuously possessed the talents fitting him for governing in the unsettled and unhappy times
in which it fell to his lot to occupy the throne. A brief year summed up the period of his reign,
and "Swift Foot" was carried to Iona.

While events of great importance are passed over as unworthy of record, the early chroniclers
often detain us with occurrences of no significance whatever, especially if they have about them
as much of the marvellous as to make them pass for prodigies. If we may credit these writers, the
earth, the sea, and the air were, in those ages, continually sending forth supernatural omens to
warn or to terrify men. During the reign of Eth a shoal of the fish called "sea monks" appeared
on the coast. These denizens of the deep had their name from the resemblance they bore to the
cowled fraternity whose habitat is the land. They looked like an army of monks immersed in the
waves and struggling to reach the shore. The peasantry who regarded them as the certain
prognosticators of disaster, beheld their approach with alarm if not with horror. There was no
need surely to send a shoal of sea-monks to foretell calamities which were already palpably
embodied in the war galleys of the Danes, in the graves at Balcombie Bay, and the sounds of
grief that still echoed in castle and cottage throughout Scotland.

With the next reign came better complexioned times. The deep wound Scotland had received in
the battle-field of Crail began to be healed. We now find Grig, or, as he is sometimes termed
Gregory, on the throne. The lineage of this man cannot be certainly traced. The presumption is
that he was outside the royal line, or at best but distantly related to it, and that he opened his way
to the crown by his ambition and talents, favoured by the distractions of the time. He stood up
amongst the kings of Scotland as Cromwell at a later day stood up among the monarchs of
England, to show that men not "born in the purple" may nevertheless possess the gift of
governing, and that nations are not shut up to accept a foolish or a wicked prince as their master
simply because he happens to be sprung of a family which has given kings to them aforetime.
The vigour and firmness of Gregory steadied a reeling state, and brought back to the throne the
prestige it had lost during the previous reign. He had won his high position over not a few rivals,
but he knew how to conquer enemies by pardoning them. The first act of his administration was
to issue an indemnity to all who had been in arms against him. An act of grace which augured
well for his future reign.

The reign of Gregory has been made famous by a law passed by him in favour of the ministers of
religion . It is recorded of him in the "Pictish Chronicle," and in the "Register of the Monastery
of St Andrews," both ancient documents of the highest authority, that "he was the first who gave
freedom to the Scottish Church which had been in bondage till that time, according to the rule
and custom of the Picts."2 The church of those days is kept very much out of sight. The old
chroniclers, so full of talk on other things, are very reticent on this subject. Columba and Iona
would seem to have fallen out of their memory. But there come in the course of their narrations
incidental statements which are a lifting of the veil, and which give us a momentary glimpse of
the position of churchmen and the state of religion. This is one of those incidental statements. It
is brief but pregnant, and warrants one or two not unimportant conclusions.

First of all, it is noteworthy that this is the first time that we meet in history the term the
"Scottish Church." This alone is of great significance. We have not yet met the name "Scotland"
as applied to the whole country. It is still Alban. The church takes precedence of the country, and
we read of the "Scottish Church" before we read of the "Scottish Kingdom." There can be no
question that the " church" which we here see Gregory liberating from Pictish thraldom was the
church of which the Columban clergy were the ministers. There was as yet no foreign priesthood
in the c country. There were, it is true, a few propagandist missionaries and itinerant monks in
the land doing business for Rome, butter their proselytising labours were confined mostly to the
court of princes or the monastery of the abbot, where they strove to insinuate themselves into
confidence by an affectation of a sanctity which they did not possess, and all the while scheming
to supplant the clergy of the nation by accusing them of practising a worship of barbarous rites,
and throwing ridicule upon them as wearing the tonsure of Simon Magus. They were shut out,
however, from carrying on any great scheme of propagandism among the people by their
ignorance of the tongue of the country. No ecclesiastical body at this hour in Scotland had any
pretensions to the status of a church, save that spiritual organization which had its cradle in the
Scotch colony of Dalriada, its centre in the Scotch school of Iona, and which from that centre
had spread itself over the Scottish land. This church had all along been served mostly by
Scotsmen in both its home and foreign field, and when this little sentence lifts the veil in the end
of the ninth century it is seen still existing in its corporate condition, and receiving royal
recognition as the National Church of Scotland.

It may be that neither trunk nor bough are so robust and vigorous as they were in the sixth and
seventh centuries, but there stands the old tree still, and there around it are the Scottish people,
and in this royal edict we see room made for its spreading itself more widely abroad. We may
venture to infer further that the "Church of Scotland" of that age enjoyed a measure of liberty
among the Scots which was denied it among the Picts. The bondage in which the "Scottish
Church" is here seen to be held is spoken of as a bondage distinctively Pictish. Whatever may
have been the nature of that bondage, which it is not easy to conjecture from so brief a
statement, it would seem to have been restricted to Pictland, and unknown in the territory of the
Scots, where a more liberal treatment was adopted toward the clergy.

It may throw a little light on this matter if we recall an occurrence that had taken place among
the Picts a century and a half before the days of Gregory, the first liberator of the Scottish
Church. Nectan was at that time on the Pictish throne (A.D. 717). There came to Nectan's court
certain missionaries, "ecclesiastical touters," from the South, who cried up the Roman rites in
general, and mightily extolled in particular the tonsure of Roman and her Easter celebration, and
as loudly decried all the usages of the Scottish Church. "The rites of your clergy," said these
strangers to the Pictish monarch, "have no efficacy in them, and are displeased to the Deity.
Your priests have no true tonsure and no true Easter. The courses they follow are contrary to the
universal Church; we come to lead you and your people into the right path, that you may no
longer offend God and hazard your salvation by the observance of a barbarous ritual." These
words had all the more influence with Nectan that they were fortified by a letter from Abbot
Ceolfrid of Jarrow, Northumbria, who was of great repute as a canonist and churchman, and to
whom King Nectan had previously written on the subject, for he had begun to weary of the
simple Columban rites, and to long for the more ornate ceremonies and the more pompous
worship of Rome, with which he desired to ally himself. It required, therefore, no elaborate
argument to make a convert of a man who was already more than half convinced. Having tasted
the new wine of Rome, the juice of the vine of Iona had lost its relish for him. The new, said
Nectan, is better than the old.

The historian Bede has given a minute and graphic description of the scene, and in doing so he is
narrating what took place in his own day. The letter of Abbot Ceolfrid is addressed in as
magniloquent terms as if the monk had been writing to a great Eastern potentate instead of a
Pictish king. The inscription runs: "To the most excellent Lord and most glorious King Naiton."
"This letter," says Bede, "having been read in the presence of King Naiton, and many others of
the most learned men, and carefully interpreted into his own language by those who could
understand it, he is said to have much rejoiced at the exhortation, in so much that, rising from
the midst of his great men who sat about him, he knelt on the ground, giving thanks to God that
he had been found worthy to receive such a present from the land of the Angles, and, said he, 'I
knew indeed before that this was the true celebration of Easter; but now I so fully know the
reason for the observance of this time that I seem convinced that I knew very little of it before.
Therefore I publicly declare and protest to you who are here present, that I will for ever
continually preserve this time of Easter, together with all my nation; and I do decree that this
tonsure, which we have heard is most reasonable, shall be received by all the clergy of my
kingdom.' Accordingly he immediately performed by his regal authority what he had said. For
the cycles of nineteen years were by public command sent through all the provinces of the Picts
to be transcribed, learnt, and observed, the erroneous revolutions of eighty-four years being
everywhere obliterated. All the ministers of the altar and the monks adopted the coronal tonsure;
and the nation being thus reformed, rejoiced as being newly placed under the direction of Peter,
the most blessed prince of the Apostles, and made secure under his protection."3 

Bede drops the curtain while the scene is at its best, the king praising and giving thanks, and the
nobles and people joining their acclamations with their sovereign over this great religious
reformation! A whole clergy had been transformed into orthodox by a few "clips" of the scissors
fetched from Rome. The festivals of the Church had been placed on the sound and solid basis of
a reformed calendar; and a kingdom, aforetime blighted and mocked with heretical and
barbarous rites, and ministered to by priests with the horrid tonsure of Simon Magus, had
become enriched and fructified by ordinances full of efficacy and mystic grace, and served by
priests without doubt holy, seeing they have "holiness" written upon their heads by the scissors
which have imprinted upon them the orthodox tonsure. Well might Pictavia rejoice! It has
opened a new epoch! And well might "the most excellent Lord and most glorious King Naiton"
rejoice, seeing he has found what has he found?--that Word which maketh wise unto salvation?
That Word which a king of old made a lamp to his feet? That Word which has showed to nations
the road to greatness?--no! "the most excellent Lord and glorious King Naiton" has found a
rectified Easter Calendar!

There is another side to this bright picture. Voices not altogether in unison are heard to mingle
with this chorus of national rejoicing. Whence come these discordant sounds? These are the
protests of certain recalcitrant members of the Columban clergy who refuse to submit their
heads to be shorn after this new and strange fashion. It matters not, we can hear them urge,
whether the head to be tonsured after this mode of after that, or whether it be tonsured at all.
Ours is not a gospel of tonsure one way or other. Columba did not cross the sea and institute his
brotherhood at Iona merely to initiate Scotland into the mystery of the tonsure. The truth of our
doctrine and the efficacy of our sacraments do not lie in the peculiar tonsure of the man who
dispenses them. That were to make Christianity a system of childish mimicry or of wicked
jugglery. Nor does the power of the eucharist to edify depend on its being solemnised on a
particular day. It is the grand fact of the Resurrection that gives the Christian festival its sublime
significance. Tonsure or no tonsure is therefore noting to us. But it is everything it is to submit
our heads to have imprinted upon them the badge of subjection to Rome. That were to renounce
the faith of our fathers. It were to arraign and condemn Columba and the elders of Iona as having
been in error all along, and guilty of schism in living separate from Rome, and following
rebelliously the precepts of Scripture when they ought to have submitted to the councils of the
Church. Know therefore, O King, that we will not obey our command nor receive your tonsure.



This was conduct truly faithful and magnanimous. It shows that the spirit of Columba still lived
in the Scottish Church, and that the people of Scotland, instructed by pastors who could
intelligently and firmly sacrifice status and emolument at the shrine of truth, had not so far
degenerated as the silence of the monkish historians of after days would make us think. There
must yet have been no inconsiderable amount of piety and Christian knowledge in Scotland.

But to Nectan these pleadings were addressed in vain. He was so filled with the adulation of
Abbot Ceolfrid and the flatteries of the missionaries of Rome that he had no ear to listen to the
remonstrances of his own clergy. He could ill brook the slight on his authority which their
courageous resolution implied, and was but the more sent on carrying out his "reformation."
Accordingly, as Bede informs us, "he prayed to have architects sent him to build a church in his
nation after the Roman manner, promising to dedicate the same in honour of the blessed Peter,
the prince of the Apostles, and that he and all his people would always follow the custom of the
Holy Roman Apostolic Church, as far as they could ascertain the same in consequence of their
remoteness from the Roman language and nation."4 He followed this up by immediate steps for
completing the revolution in his church and kingdom by sending messengers throughout his
dominions to have the Easter tables altered from the cycle of eighty-four to the cycle of nineteen
years, and the festival kept in accordance with the new reckoning; and further, the messengers
were commanded to see that all the ministers of religion had their heads shorn after the Roman
fashion, and if any one refused to conform he was to be told that there was no longer place for
him in the dominions of King Nectan. We do not know how many, but there is reason to
conclude that a very great number of the Columban clergy refused compliance, and had to go
into exile. They were hospitably received by their brethren on the Scottish side of Drumalban.

In this occurrence we see the "Scottish Church" in the Pictish dominions passing into bondage.
She must submit henceforth to the royal will, and do the royal bidding in the matter of the
tonsure and Easter. It is probable that these two things were only the beginnings of the servitude
in which the clergy were kept by the Pictish kings. It is of the nature of such bondage to grow.
The men who had so far yielded, rather than go into exile with their brethren, would have to
yield still farther, and have other burdens imposed upon them. Possibly secular exactions were in
time added to their ecclesiastical and spiritual sacrifices and disqualifications. Burdens would be
laid on their estates as well as on their consciences. It had been customary to exempt their lands
from the imposts and taxes of the State: these immunities they would no longer enjoy. Possibly
they were spoiled of their lands altogether. And now for a century and more the Columban
clergy had been subject to this servitude in the Pictish dominions.

When we know what the bondage, was, we can the better conjecture the kind and extent of the
extent of the liberty which King Gregory gave the "Scottish Church." In the decree of Nectan we
have the "law and custom" of the Pictish monarchy in ecclesiastical affairs. It enjoined, under
heavy penalities, the Roman observance. It was this that drove the Columban clergy across the
Drumalban, and not the secular burdens and imposts which possibly were added afterwards. The
latter they could have submitted to with a good conscience, although they might have accounted
them unjust and oppressive; but the first, the Roman observance to wit, touched the conscience,
and left them no alternative but to leave their country. Here then, in the revocation of Nectan's
edict even, must the liberation of the "Scottish Church" begin. This was the part of the
"servitude" that pressed on the soul. Release from the burdens and exactions of a secular kind
which may have been laid on their lands, and which would be exigible by the King or the
Mormaer, would follow in due course; but first, release must come to the conscience, and that
could be given only by revoking Nectan's decree, and leaving the Columbites at liberty to resume
the customs of their ancient Church. That this decree was revoked, and the ancient liberty of
worship restored to the Columban clergy, we have undoubted proof. Two hundred years
afterwards, when the Columban pastors met in conference with Queen Margaret and her
bishops, the charge against them was that they practised barbarous rites, and neither in the
matter of the tonsure nor the matter of the eucharist did they conform to the lawless of Rome.
No more satisfactory evidence could we have of the liberty which Gregory gave the Scottish
Church, and the use she made of it. It gave her two hundred years more of her ancient discipline
and worship.

This tyrannical measure recoiled on Nectan and his kingdom. It created a rupture between the
Picts and Scots, which issued in long and bloody wars betwixt the two races. The conversion of
the Pictish nations by Columba was followed by an instant sheathing of the sword; and now for a
century and a half, hardly had there been battle betwixt Pict and Scot. No mightier proof can we
have of the power of Christianity to bind nations in amity and banish war, than in a country like
the Scotland of that day, and between two such nations as the Picts and Scots, there should have
been a peace of more than a century's duration. Yet such is the fact. The two nations were
drawing together, and the union betwixt them would have come without fighting and bloodshed,
had not the bigotry of Nectan rekindled the old fires, and made it impossible that the two races
should unite till first it had been shown in a series of terrific and bloody contests which of the
two was the stronger on the battlefield. Nor is this all. It is probable that Nectan's policy cost the
Picts the sovereignty of Scotland. They were the more numerous, and in some respects the more
powerful of the two nations: and had the union come by peaceable means, the Picts undoubtedly
would have given kings to the throne and their name to the country, but when they forced the
matter to the decision of arms, they found that the injustice and cruelty of Nectan to the
Columban Church weighed upon their sword and turned its edge in the day of battle. They
fought with the valour of their race, they shed their blood in torrents, but they failed to win the
kingdom, and their name perished.

King Nectan and his line disappear, but the church of Columba which he has chased out of his
dominions comes back to dwell again in the old land. One of the first measures of Kenneth
MacAlpin after ascending the throne of the united kingdom was, as we have seen, to recall the
Columban clergy and place them in the old ecclesiastical foundations left vacant by the
expulsion of their fathers. Another half century passes, and the Columban church obtains another
enlargement under King Gregory, and now, after having been plucked up and cast out of the
Pictish territory, we see her again taking root and flourishing in the enjoyment of her ancient
privileges and liberties. Historians have been little observant of this fact, and certainly little
observant of its lesson, but it is full of instruction, It adds another to the many examples in
history of the truth of Beza's saying, not yet uttered, that "the church is an anvil which has worn
out many a hammer." Nectan struck with all his force, but when dying in the cowl of a monk he
saw doubtless that the blow had effected little, and had he lived longer he would have seen that
it had missed the anvil and struck his own throne. These well-authenticated facts make the
silence of the monkish chroniclers of the tenth century regarding the condition of the Columban
church a matter of less moment. We are independent of their testimony; for here have we great
historic monuments which assure us that the church of Columba had not passed out of existence,
as their silence would among lead one to conclude, but, on the contrary, that it remained rooted
in the land as an independent organisation, maintaining divine service according to the simple
formula of Columba; that it lived on into the darkness of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
keeping alive the Christian knowledge of the Scottish people, of whose successive generations it
was the instructor, in short, that it was the sheet anchor of the country staying it in the midst of
the furious tempests that burst upon it, now from the mountains of the north, now from the
Danes beyond the sea, and now from the Saxons of England. 

FOOTNOTES

1. Historia Britannioe, Lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 90.

2. "Hic primus dedit libertatem Ecclesiae Scoticanae, qui sub servitude erat usque ad illud
tempus, ex constitutione et more Pictorum." Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 151.

3. Bede, Hist. Eccl., Lib. v. c. xxi.

4. Bede, Hist. Eccl., Lib. v. c. xxi. 

CHAPTER IV. A.D. 878 889. GREGORY OF SCOTLAND AND ALFRED OF ENGLAND
NORSEMEN THE FADING COLUMBAN LAMP. 

We fail to discover in succeeding Pictish sovereigns that excess of proselytising zeal which
turned King Nectan into a persecutor. We read of no second act of bigotry similar to that which
disgraced his reign. His successors on the throne could hardly fail to see that Nectan had
committed a great error. The proofs of this were but too visible. He had created a great void at
the heart of his kingdom. He had weakened the moral power and endangered the civil order of
the nation; he had kindled the flames of war after they had been extinct for a century and a half;
in fine, he had brought revolution on himself, and been fain in the end of his days to seek the
shelter of a convent, and after having worn a crown, die in a monk's cowl.

These evil consequences had followed the tyrannical act which the Pictish king, influenced by
the flattery of Abbot Ceolfrid, and the persuasions of the Roman missionaries, and impelled
moreover by his own fanatical zeal, had been driven to commit. His successors, warned by his
example, would learn not to be enamoured of Roman novelties, or open their ear to readily to
monkish counsellors. Still, though they saw Nectan's error, they might not be in a position to
rectify it. To revoke the edict and recall those whom it had driven into banishment might not
now be in their power. They had a war on their hands with the Scots, which demanded all their
attention. While that war lasted it would not be a wise policy to recall the Columban clergy.
They were mostly Scotch, and might have difficulty in maintaining the attitude of neutrals
during hostilities. They would at least be liable to be suspected of secretly favouring the triumph
of the Scotch arms. The correction of Nectan's error must lie over for the present. And hence it
was that, although there is no evidence that the Roman innovations meanwhile made much
progress beyond the court of Nectan, or found favour with the Pictish people, farther than the
royal edict might compel them to an outward uniformity in the Easter celebration, the return of
the Columban clergy to the Pictish dominions did not take place till the war between the two
races had ended in their union into one nation. The return of the Columbites, as we have seen,
was under Kenneth Macalpin: their full restoration to their ancient liberties was half a century
later in the reign of King Grig, or Gregory, to whom we now return.

The strong hand of Gregory on the helm, Scotland began again to make headway (883). It had
stood still, or gone back, during the troubled but, happily, short reign of the "Swift Food," whose
policy had nothing of the progressive quality with which nature had so largely endowed his
limbs. While he sat on the throne the gloom kept thickening above the country, but with the new
ruler there came a new dawn. Gregory had opened his reign with a measure of good augury, and
not less of wise policy" for it is not necessary to support that in relaxing the bonds of the
Columban clergy he was actuated solely by religious considerations. He had respect, no doubt, to
the benefit which himself and his nation would reap from this act of justice. If, as is strongly
suspected, his title to the throne was doubtful, he did well to make sure that so influential a body
as the Columbites should be on his side and in favour of his government.

Having by one and the same act enlarged the liberties of the "Scottish Church," and strengthened
his own throne, Gregory addressed himself to the task of correcting the disorders in which the
defeat at Crail and the reign of "Swift Foot" had involved the kingdom. A portion of the Pictish
nation had brought their loyalty into suspicion. Their behaviour in the late disastrous battle had
been equivocal. Their treachery or cowardice was believed to have led to the loss of the day, and
the many calamities that followed thereon. Gregory did not choose that so grave a dereliction of
duty on so critical an occasion should go without chastisement. Since the battle other
circumstances had come to light which tended still farther to strengthen the doubt entertained
respecting the thorough devotion of a section of the Picts to the cause of the union. The Danes,
on quitting the country after the battle of Crail, left this part of the coast in the possession of the
Picts. This looked like keeping open the door for the return of the enemy. Gregory could not
permit the keys of his kingdom to be in the hands of men who were disaffected to his
government, and who seemed not unwilling to sacrifice the union between the two races
provided they recovered thereby their standing as a separate and independent nation. He drove
this body of disaffected Picts out of Fife across the Forth. He pursued them through the Lothians
to Berwick, in which they shut themselves up, and were Gregory made them captive, the citizens
having opened their gates to him.

These successes at home would seem to have tempted the Scottish monarch to venture on
exploits outside his own kingdom. Instead of returning within the limits of Alban, which were
already considerably overpassed, he led his army farther into Northumbria. These parts were
then much infested by the Danes. When repulsed from the coast of Scotland they not
unfrequently turned their galleys in the direction of England, and overspreading the northern
counties, then almost defenceless, they gathered no end of spoil, and shed very much blood.
Gregory doubtless reckoned that if he could clear out these invaders from the northern counties
of England the chance was so much the less of having to fight them on the soil of Scotland. As
an acknowledgment of the services Gregory had rendered them by ridding them, for the time at
least, of these troublesome visitors, the petty sovereigns which then ruled in England, seem to
have given him some sort of authority or dominion over the border counties of Northumberland,
Cumberland, and Westmoreland, happy to commit their defence against foreign invasion to the
sword of Gregory.

The Scottish monarch is described as pursuing his triumphant career further west. We next find
him with his army in Strathclyde. The Britons of the Kingdom of Cumbria had offended by
appropriating a narrow strip of Scottish territory which lay on the northern banks of the Clyde,
and which included that famous rock (Dumbarton) at the foot of which the great apostle of
Ireland had passed his youth. The stolen territory was all the more likely to have interest to the
man who had "Given liberty to the Scottish Church," inasmuch as it was the birthplace of that
great Scotsman who had been the founder of the "Scottish Church," first by christianising
Ireland, and in the next place by putting the evangelical torch into the hands of Columba that he
might carry it across and light with its sacred flame the dark land of Caledonia. Having rescued
this hallowed spot, for such doubtless it was to Gregory, and have chastised the Britons for
appropriating it, it was given back to Scotland.

Not yet had Gregory finished his victorious course, if we are to believe his Scotch chroniclers.
He next crossed to Ireland, where he is said to have waged a campaign with great glory, quelling
an insurrection which had broken out against the King of Dublin, an ally of Gregory's, and
restoring him to his throne. It must be added, however, that the record of these wars is somewhat
dubious, and we despatch them with brevity. The English and Irish chroniclers are silent
respecting them. We hear of them only from Fordun and other Scotch historians. That, however,
is no sufficient reason for regarding them as altogether apocryphal. The "Registry of the Priory
of St Andrews" says expressly "that Gregory conquered Ireland and the greater part of
England,"1 by which we understand it to be meant that his conquests in these two countries were
extensive, and had a decisive effect on the governments of both kingdoms. Those who maintain
that these campaigns were never waged, and that their record is illusory, defend their allegation
by saying that Gregory was a munificent patron of the church, and that the monks of St Andrews,
to show their gratitude, carved out this brilliant career for the Scottish king, and exalted him to
the rank of a hero. But it does not appear that Gregory surpassed other Scotch kings of his age in
the gifts he bestowed on churchmen, his one well known act of grace excepted. Besides, the
benefactions of Gregory were bestowed in the end of the ninth century, whereas his apotheosis
as a great warrior, which it is insinuated was done in recompence of his liberality to the church,
did not take place till the middle of the thirteenth century, the Registry of St Andrews having
been written in 1251. It is truly refreshing to find the gratitude of the monks remaining fresh and
green after four centuries. Seldom is it found that the sense of obligation to be benefactors is so
deep and lasting on the part of corporate bodies whether lay or cleric, as to call forth warm
expressions of thanks centuries after the authors of these good gifts have exchanged their thrones
for their stone coffins. Long before this wreath was placed on his tomb by the monks of St
Andrews, Gregory was nothing more than a handful of ashes.

In that age it was difficult to keep England and Scotland apart, so as that their affairs should not
intermingle. The same terrible people from beyond the sea were the enemies of both, and made
their hostile descent now on the coast of the one country and now on the coast of the other. This
drew England and Scotland together, and helped to maintain the peace betwixt them. If so be the
Danish hordes were driven back, and their galleys chased off the coast, it mattered little whether
the feat had been achieved by Scotch or by English valour, since both countries shared in nearly
equal measure in the benefits of the victory. So did it happen in this instance. Gregory on
arriving in Northumbria, whither his pursuit of the fleeing Picts had led him found the Danes,
under their leader Hardnute, laying waste the country and slaughtering the inhabitants. The
England of that day was miserably distracted and torn. The Danes were inflicting upon the
Saxons all the horrors which the Saxons had inflicted on the Britons at a former epoch. The
throne of Wessex was filled by one of the bravest and wisest princes of his age, nevertheless a
great part of the reign of Alfred was passed on the battlefield to prevent his dominions being
overrun and devastated by these northern marauders. Occupied with these greater cares, the
remote Northumbria was left largely to take care of itself. It was here that the barbarian leader
and his merciless followers were now ravaging. Although he found them on English soil,
Gregory not the less recognised in Hardnute and his warriors the enemies of his own country,
and gladly seized the opportunity now offered him of avenging upon them in Northumbria the
injuries they had inflicted upon his nation in Fife. If a brother sovereign should be the first to
reap advantage from the success of his arms, this consideration, so far from making the Scottish
king hold back, made him only the more eager to effect the expulsion of the Danes. Gregory
inflicted such a slaughter upon them that it broke their power in the north of England, and
delivered the petty sovereigns that then ruled in that land, as well as the great prince of Wessex,
from their terror. The bonds of amity betwixt the two nations and their rulers were strengthened
by this interchange of friendly acts. The bloody fields of the borderland were effaced from the
memories of men by the bloodier fields of the Dane. Northumberland was placed under the
suzerainty, if not the formal sovereignty, of the man whose sword had redeemed it from the
spoiler. Alfred appears to have felt no alarm at the nearer approach of the Scottish border to his
own dominions. What stronger defence could he have on his northern frontier than the arms of
Gregory? He rightly judged, doubtless, that ruled by him Northumbria would a protecting wall to
himself against the tempests from the German Sea. And as regards the Anglo-Saxons now
professedly Christian, how much more preferable, as allies and neighbors, were the Scots to the
Danes, in whom the wolfish instincts of paganism were yet unbroken and rampant. The Saxons
of the north of England, says Fordun, "thought it better willingly to submit to the Catholic Scots,
though enemies, than unwillingly to the Pagan infidels."

In the dark sky of the ninth century there is seen a star of pure and brilliant radiance, on which
we love to fix our eyes. We cannot come within the proximity of its orbit without pausing to
admire and speak of it. In no age would a creation so lovely have failed to attract and fascinate
our gaze, but shining out amid the clouds and tempests of this age, we hail it with wonder and
delight. Alfred, Prince of Wessex, exhibited the rare union of the scholar, the legislator, the
warrior, and the patriot. To these he would have added, had his days been longer, the Christian
reformer. Such, indeed, he was, but only in limited measure, for hardly had he begun to develop
his enlightened plans for the reformation of his realm when the grave closed over him, and with
Alfred went down into the tomb the hopes of England for four centuries. Till the days of
Wyckliffe there came no second dawn to Christendom.

Few princes not one in an hundred have had the inestimable privilege of the same training and
discipline through which Alfred passed. The range of his education extended far beyond the
science and philosophy of his day. His instruction in the liberal arts was not overlooked: not only
was he a patron of men of letters, he himself cultivated letters, and the success with which he did
so is seen in his translation of the Pastoral of Gregory I. and Bede's Ecclesiastical History. But to
these accomplishments Alfred added a higher wisdom than that of the schools. His great
qualities were rooted in a piety which was drawn from the Sacred Writings, rather than from the
precepts and traditions of churchmen. Moreover, Adversity had taken him to school, and for
some terrible years that stern instructress made him give good heed to her lessons. At one time
the Danes had well nigh wrested his kingdom from him. He was obliged to flee in disguise and
hire himself out as a cowherd. In the quiet of the woods and fields thoughts would arise which
had not come into his mind amid courts and armies. When he recovered his throne and had rest
from war, these thoughts bore fruit. He gave himself to the work of establishing order,
promoting industry, cultivating commerce, and extending the maritime powers of England. His
son and Grandson, Edward and Athelstan, followed in their father's steps, and these three princes
were among the first to show the world that the road to fame is open to the man of peace not less
than to the man of the sword. In the successful voyages of Other and Ulfstan into the then
unknown northern seas, the English nation under Alfred early displayed their natural bent, and
gave prognostication of what they were destined to accomplish in the field of discovery in after
ages.2

But these were not the highest of the labors of Alfred. He panted above all things to effect a
religious reform of his realm. What instrumentality did Alfred employ for effecting his grand
purpose? Did he send to Rome for instructors? Did he multiply his "celebrations"? A dogma, till
then unheard of, was just beginning to be broached by Paschasius Radbertus in France, that in
the eucharist the communicant receives the literal flesh and blood of Christ for his eternal life.
Shall Alfred illuminate his realm with this new gospel? What England needed was not more
mystery, but more light. The dark ness was thick enough already, and there was no need to turn
twilight into midnight by promulgating the Cimmerian dogma of transubstantiation.

Alfred took up his position on ground which no churchman of his century had courage to
occupy. Turning away from priest and sacrament he went to the Word of God. He conceived the
great idea of translating the Scriptures into the vernacular of the Saxon people. He assembled a
select body of learned men at his court, and set them to the work of translating the Bible: he put
his own hand to the work, so much was his heart set upon it, and like Columba, he was engaged
in translating the Psalms at the time of his death.3

Alfred stands at the head of the noble army of Bible translators. It is a higher glory than his fifty
battles by land and sea. The work in which he led the way can know no termination till the Word
of Life has been translated into the tongue of every people on earth, and its light has shone round
and round the globe.

It would be interesting to know the personal relations that subsisted betwixt Gregory and Alfred.
If the character of the first approximated the portrait which the Scottish chroniclers have left of
him, these two princes must have been drawn to one another by a warmer sentiment than mere
conventional friendship. Both, we are permitted to believe, were magnanimous, princely, and
patriotic; and it is interesting to see two such men occupying contemporaneously the thrones of
Scotland and England. Alfred was surrounded by men who loved and admired him, and who
have painted him in colours that remain fresh to this day. We are sure we see the true likeness of
the great English prince of the ninth century. His Scottish contemporary enjoyed no such
advantage, and we are not certain that we have the real features of Gregory. But it corroborates
what has been transmitted to us concerning him to know that, like Alfred, he aimed at effecting a
religious reform, more or less extensive. For no other interpretation can we put upon the
statement that Gregory gave freedom to the Scottish Church which till his time had been kept
bondage among the Picts.

During the century and a half going before, great deadness, doubtless, overspread the east and
north of Scotland, the ancient territory of the Picts. The Columban Church in those parts had
been all but rooted out. The Sabbath services in many places had ceased; and where they were
still continued it was with great inefficiency and coldness by the poor substitutes which had been
found for the expelled Columbites; men from the north of England, were the influence of Rome
was now dominant, or monks from the houses of Adamnan foundation, ion which, as in the case
of Adamnan himself, the spirit of the Roman Egbert was struggling with the spirit of Columba
for the mastery. The schools had been closed, and the instruction of the youth was neglected.
There is no evidence to show that the Roman ideas and customs had infected the people to any
great extent. It was religious apathy and Pictish coercion, rather than Papal propagandism that
weighed upon the land. In the old days when Columba directed the evangelisation of Scotland
from Iona, no royal will circumscribed his plans or fettered the steps of the missionaries he sent
forth. The land was before them, and they might to whither they would and kindle their light at
all the great centres. They did so, and in a generation or two the country was dotted with
evangelical beacon-fires, and the Aryan darkness of the Druid was dispelled. This was a freedom
of action which had been unknown to the Columban Church in Pictland for a century and a half.
The consequence was that, denied the liberty of evangelistic enterprise, the inclination to enter
upon it departed. The Columban Church in Pictland lay down and sunk into slumber, leaving her
lamp untrimmed, and the region around immersed in spiritual gloom. With her release from
thraldom there came, doubtless, to the church in Pictland, and, perhaps, also in the ancient
territory of the Scots, a reawakening of zeal and a revival of the light. That light, it is true,
burned less brightly now than when it was first kindled on Iona, four centuries before. But the
old lamp was not to be permitted to go out. The appearance of the Roman tonsure on the heads
of certain of the Columbite clergy gave emphatic warning that years, and it might be centuries,
of darkness were yet in store for Scotland. In presence of these gathering shades, what could the
friends of the gospel do, except watch around their lamp and feed its flame, and if they could not
bring back its pristine brightness, they could keep it alive, till the night had numbered its
watches, and the hour had struck for that great dawn to appear for which the world was waiting. 

FOOTNOTES 

1. Hic subjugavit sibi Hyberniam totam et fere Angliam." Innes' Critical Essay, pp. 801, 802.

2. John Von Muller, Universal History, vol. ii. p. 134. Lond., 1818.

3. Wilkins (Concilia, i. p. 186, et seq.) has given us a specimen of Alfred's labours in a portion of
the law of God translated by him.

CHAPTER V. A.D. 889 942 DONALD CONSTANTIN LOST BATTLES AND THEIR
LESSONS. 

The royal vaults at Iona had received another tenant,1 and Donald, the third of that name, the
son of Constantin II., now filled the throne (A.D. 889). The keen eye of Gregory had not failed to
mark the virtues of the youth, and on his death-bed, it is said, he recommended him to his nobles
as his fittest successor. "Nor did he deceive," says Buchanan "the judgment of that wise king."2
No long time elapsed till occasion presented itself for testing the capabilities of the new
sovereign. Across the German Sea had sped the tidings that Gregory was dead, and in a brief
space the black galleys of the Norsemen were again seen ploughing the waves, their
dragon-headed prows turned in the direction of England.

They arrived off the coast of Northumbria, and for some days they remained inactive, as if
uncertain whether to swoop down upon th3e northern or upon the southern half of the island.
Alfred, who was still alive, fearing that the tempest now hanging on the Northumbrian coast
might finally burst upon his own dominions, made advances to Donald of Scotland. He reminded
the Scottish king of the alliance which had subsisted betwixt the two kingdoms in his
predecessor's time, and which had been fruitful in benefits to both countries, and proposed that
the old friendship should be continued, and that each should assist the other, as occasion
required, against the enemies which the sea was continually sending forth against both. These
overtures were cordially met by King Donald. An armed force was sent to the help of Alfred of
England, and there followed a bloody battle with the common enemy, in which the bulk of the
Danish invaders were slaughtered. The remnant that survived the carnage have, it would seem,
but little heart to go back to their own country, were permitted to settle in Northumbria, on
condition of their embracing the Christian faith. These worshippers of Odin accepted without
scruple the easy stipulation; but their conversion brought neither honour to their new religion,
nor in the end safety to the country in which it opened to them a settlement

Scarcely had this cloud passed away till another rose in the opposite quarter which tested still
more severely the spirit of the Scottish king. The clans of Moray and Ross had fallen out and
were fighting with one another. It were vain to seek for the cause of quarrel, for it needed but
little to kindle at any moment the flames of internecine war on this region of normal disturbance.
What added to the gravity of the affair was the circumstance that a body of Danes, lured by the
scent of plunder, had joined the fray, and were increasing the effusion of blood which already
exceeded what would have been spilt in a pitched battle. On receiving the tidings that his
chieftains were quarrelling, Donald turned his face towards the north and marched right into the
heart of the tempest. He met the insurgent host, a ravaging horde of stranger Danes, mutinous
Picts, and rebellious chieftains, and he defeated them in two successive battles, the one fought at
Cullen, and the other in the neighbourhood of Forres. The well-known stone in the latter locality,
which has engaged the attention of the curious for centuries, but which no one haws yet
indubitably deciphered, is not unnaturally conjectured to be in some sort the memorial of these
events, and to mark, it may be, the grave of King Donald. His death is variously recorded, but the
preponderance of opinion is that he died at Forres,3 having fallen in the battle, or sunk under the
fatigues consequent on the campaign. So says Fordun. Boece, on the other hand, prolongs his
life, and makes him visit Northumbria to see how it fared with the Danish colony planted there,
and whether those worshippers of Odin, who had been so summarily transformed on the
battlefield into the professors of the Christian faith, were conducting themselves as became loyal
subjects and good Christians. The old historian John Major hints his concurrence with Boece.4
All agree, however, that King Donald Breathed his last in the eleventh year of his reign. His
career was brief but full of stirring events, and now that it was over he was borne amid the grief
of his nation to rest in the solemn quiet of Iona.

Donald was succeeded by Constantin (A.D. 900), the son of Swift Foot. During the reign of the
man who we now see mounting the throne the shadow on the dial of Scotland was destined to go
back several degrees. His wavering faith and unsteady friendships wrought greater vexations to
himself, and brought greater calamities upon his country, than if he had been a bad and not
simply a week prince.

The Scottish reigns of that day were short. The throne was beset by too many enemies to permit
any long interval of time to part the "Fatayle Chayre" at Scone from the royal sepulchres of Iona.
War, or foreign invasion, or domestic treason were never far from the royal seat, and its
occupant was given but few years to possess it, and these fully of anxiety, and darkened by the
shadow of the all but certainty of a tragic end. But King Constantin was an exception. His reign
was prolonged for forty years, and when at last he came to die, he expired on the bed of peace.
His reign, as we have hinted, wore a sombre complexion, yet its mistakes and reverses are
redeemed by an event that sheds a halo round the man, and gives a singular interest to his epoch.
That event was the convocation, in the sixth year of his reign, of a nationally Assembly at Scone
for the reformation of the Scottish Church. Our curiosity and interest are intensely awakened by
the unexpected occurrence of a reforming Assembly in the tenth century of Scotland. What, we
naturally ask, were the subjects discussed, and what the practical resolutions adopted? But
instead of full information on these points, we are baulked and mortified by receiving only a few
meagre details.

Neither the ancient chroniclers nor the modern historians have appreciated the significance of
this convention. They dismiss it in six lines: and yet it clearly indicate a rallying of the
Columban forces, all the more remarkable that it takes place in what we have been accustomed
to regard as one of the deadest periods of Scottish history. What further adds to its significance
is the fact that this convention at Scone is one in a chain of events, all of which point in the same
direct, even the continued corporate existence of the Scottish Church, and its systematic
progressive action. First comes the restoration of the Columban clergy to the east and north of
Scotland by Kenneth MacAlpin. Next they have their ecclesiastical status and freedom restored
to them by King Gregory, and now the Scottish Church, east and west, united in one, and her
liberty of action given back, assembles under Constantine to reform herself according to her
ancient laws and the Word of God. Looking at it in this light, the convocation records its own
history, and refuses to be wiped out from the nation's annuals, despite that chronicler and
historian have virtually ignored it, and all but consigned it to oblivion. Waiving this matter for
the present, we shall devote the following chapter to the special consideration of this convention.

Before entering on the political and military events of the reign of Constantin, we must pause
here to sketch the civil divisions and arrangements of Scotland which were made about this
time. First of all it behoves our readers to bear in mind that the Kingdom of Scotia has not yet
made its appearance. The Scots and Picts are there, fusing their blood into one nation, and
uniting their realty before one throne, but the territory they occupy is still known as the Kingdom
of Alban. What is the extent of the Kingdom of Alban, and where are its boundaries placed?
Alban is bounded on the south by the Firth of Forth, and on the north by the Spey. So small was
the area, and so restricted the limits of Alban at the opening of the tenth century. Both north and
south of the Kingdom of Alban was a broad margin of territory over which the tides of war were
incessantly flowing and ebbing. The fealty of the inhabitants of these districts was regulated by
the turning and shifting of battle. On the south of the Forth was Saxonia; and when victory
inclined to three Scots the men of the Lothians and the Merse recognised their ruler in the
occupant of the royal palace at Scone, and did his bidding; but when the Anglo-Saxons proved
the stronger, they carried the tribute of their homage across the Tweed to lay it at the feet of the
Northumbrian monarch.

It was much the same in the counties on the north of the Spey. The Kings of Norway, having
subjected the Orkneys, pushed their conquests southward into Caithness and Sutherland, and
onward to the fertile region which is watered by the Findhorn and the Spey. But their dominion
over these parts was precarious and transitory, and was always challenged by the Kings of Alban.
The Albanic monarch claimed to be the lords superior of these counties, and the Norwegian
Jarls, who the Kings of Norway appointed to govern them in their name, had frequently to pay
verbal homage, and at times more substantial tribute to the Scottish kings. While these outlying
regions north and south of the Alban were in this transition state, neither included in Scotland,
nor yet wholly excluded from it, the condition of the inhabitants was far from enviable. Their
territory was the battlefield on contenting Kings, and they were continually familiar with war in
its most barbarous forms. They escaped from the yoke of one master only to fall under that of
another and after a brief space to return into bondage to their former tyrant. So passed their
lives; much reason had they to wish that the time would come when their absorption into the
Kingdom of Alban would bring them rest. That time was now near.

It remains that we indicate the civil divisions of the Kingdom of Alban. As stated above, this
little kingdom, soon to grow into the greater Scotland, was meanwhile included within the
modest limits of the Forth and the Spey. It was divided into five regions. On the west was the
province of Fortrenn. It consisted of the modern districts of Menteith and Strathearn, and its
population, mainly Pictish, was spoken of as the men of Fortrenn. The second region, lying next
on the east, consisted of the territory embraced by the Forth and the Tay, Fife and Fotherif. To
this was attached the Carse of Gowrie. The inhabitants of this province were eminently the Scoti
of Alban. This was the nucleus or heart of the kingdom, and here, at Scone, was placed the royal
palace of the Scottish kings. The third province, beginning at Hilef, extended to the Dee and the
German Ocean. It included Angus and Mearns; the districts known in our day as the shires of
Forfar and Kincardine. There is some doubt as regards the position of Hilef, the starting point on
the west of the third province. It is probably Lyff, on the north bank of the Tay, and the present
boundary between the counties of Perth and Forfar. The inhabitants were called the Men of
Moerne, and had as their stronghold the Castle of Dun Fother or Dunotter. The fourth reign
stretched northward from the Dee to the River Spey, and included the modern counties of
Aberdeen and Banff. The fifth province extended from the Spey to the mountains of Drumalban,
including the present Breadalbane and Athol.

These were the five regions that constituted the body of the kingdom; but we have said the
boundaries of Alban were not fixed and immoveable. A successful raid or victorious battle
would at times enlarge them beyond their normal lines. When this happened on the north, the
county of Moray formed a sixth province, and the ancient Dalriada, lying along the western
sea-board, formed a seventh.

These five regions were subdivided into smaller sections, each under its respective r