To the Scots, through St Columba, who, about 563, settled in Iona,
and converted the Picts as far north as Inverness, we owe the introduction
of Christianity, for though the Roman Church of St Ninian (397), at
Whithern in Galloway, left embers of the faith not extinct near Glasgow,
St Kentigern's country, till Columba's time, the rites of
Christian Scotland were partly of the Celtic Irish type, even after
St Wilfrid's victory at the Synod of Whitby (664).
St Columba himself was of the royal line in Ulster, was learned,
as learning was then reckoned, and, if he had previously been turbulent,
he now desired to spread the Gospel. With twelve companions he
settled in Iona, established his cloister of cells, and journeyed to
Inverness, the capital of Pictland. Here his miracles overcame
the magic of the King's druids; and his Majesty, Brude, came into
the fold, his people following him. Columba was no less of a diplomatist
than of an evangelist. In a crystal he saw revealed the name of
the rightful king of the Dalriad Scots in Argyll-namely, Aidan-and
in 575, at Drumceat in North Ireland, he procured the recognition of
Aidan, and brought the King of the Picts also to confess Aidan's
independent royalty.
In the ‘Life of Columba,' by Adamnan, we get a clear
and complete view of everyday existence in the Highlands during that
age. We are among the red deer, and the salmon, and the cattle
in the hills, among the second-sighted men, too, of whom Columba was
far the foremost. We see the saint's inkpot upset by a clumsy
but enthusiastic convert; we even make acquaintance with the old white
pony of the monastery, who mourned when St Columba was dying; while
among secular men we observe the differences in rank, measured by degrees
of wealth in cattle. Many centuries elapse before, in Froissart,
we find a picture of Scotland so distinct as that painted by Adamnan.
The discipline of St Columba was of the monastic model. There
were settlements of clerics in fortified villages; the clerics were
a kind of monks, with more regard for abbots than for their many bishops,
and with peculiar tonsures, and a peculiar way of reckoning the date
of Easter. Each missionary was popularly called a Saint, and the
Kil, or cell, of many a Celtic missionary survives in hundreds
of place-names.
The salt-water Loch Leven in Argyll was on the west the south frontier
of “Pictland,” which, on the east, included all the country
north of the Firth of Forth. From Loch Leven south to Kintyre,
a large cantle, including the isles, was the land of the Scots from
Ireland, the Dalriadic kingdom. The south-west, from Dumbarton,
including our modern Cumberland and Westmorland, was named Strathclyde,
and was peopled by British folk, speaking an ancient form of Welsh.
On the east, from Ettrick forest into Lothian, the land was part of
the early English kingdom of Bernicia; here the invading Angles were
already settled-though river-names here remain Gaelic, and hill-names
are often either Gaelic or Welsh. The great Northern Pictland
was divided into seven provinces, or sub-kingdoms, while there was an
over-King, or Ardrigh, with his capital at Inverness and, later, in
Angus or Forfarshire. The country about Edinburgh was partly English,
partly Cymric or Welsh. The south-west corner, Galloway, was called
Pictish, and was peopled by Gaelic-speaking tribes.
In the course of time and events the dynasty of the Argyll Scoti
from Ireland gave its name to Scotland, while the English element gave
its language to the Lowlands; it was adopted by the Celtic kings of
the whole country and became dominant, while the Celtic speech withdrew
into the hills of the north and northwest.
The nation was thus evolved out of alien and hostile elements, Irish,
Pictish, Gaelic, Cymric, English, and on the northern and western shores,
Scandinavian.
