Chronicles of Strathearn. Various
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a douce Provost of its own, and Bailies, and such like novel things and persons. But this we cannot tell from our present standpoint, and we might easily persuade ourselves this afternoon that Auchterarder has suffered no sea change, were it not that every now and again the columns of our local newspaper foam under the rage of its municipal contendings.
In the far east, the Strath seems to be shut off by the Moncrieffe Hill—wooded still, as in the days when it was first named. But the Earn slips between this seeming obstacle and the spurs of the Ochils, making such haste as it can through carse-like land to join the lordly Tay hard by Abernethy—the ancient capital of the Southern Picts—the centre of missionary enterprise, when darkness was thick upon the land after Ninian had died at Whithorn, on the Solway, and before Columba had set foot upon Iona. The valley at our feet, the limits of which I have attempted to mark off, is Strathearn—a right noble expanse of fertile soil, richly wooded, abundantly watered, dotted over with villages and guardian Parish Churches, like that of Muthill; bright with Castles that have left their names in history, and with mansion-houses of hardly less fame, that gleam from among their ancestral trees—a Strath that may be fitly characterised as the Scottish Esdraelon, in which many things have happened, and many men have been well worthy of being held in remembrance.
I had intended in this paper to give an account of some early inroads into Strathearn, but the exigencies of space have determined for me that I can deal with only one—the earliest of all—the Roman invasion. I should have liked to have told the story of the invasion by Egfrid of Northumbria, which ended so disastrously for him at Nechtansmere—most likely Dunnichen, in Forfarshire, in the year 685 A.D., and of which it may well be that we have a solitary trace in the name Abercairny—plainly identical with Abercornig—Abercorn in the Lothians—where the Angles founded a monastery under Abbot Trumuini, who, being engaged in Strathearn advocating the adoption of the Roman in opposition to the prevalent Columban cult, had to beat a hasty retreat beyond the Forth when disaster came to Egfrid. The larger subject would have included also the invasion by Siward, Earl of Northumberland, in support of the claims of Prince Malcolm, afterwards Malcolm Canmore, in opposition to Macbeth, the usurper, as he is commonly, perhaps unfairly, called. The first stage of the inroad ended with an encounter at Tula Amon—at the junction of the Tay and the Almond, near Perth. The result was not decisive, for it would seem that for a little while Macbeth kept possession of the country north of the Forth, being especially strong in Fife, where he had powerful family connections and friends in the Culdee brotherhood at Lochleven, while Malcolm reigned in the Lothians. And a little later, in connection with the complications into which Malcolm was forced through his fortunate marriage with Margaret, sister of the Atheling, we have traces—somewhat indistinct, truly, but still historical—of an inroad by the grim conqueror of England—William, and of a meeting between him and Malcolm at Forteviot. All this might have proved instructive in detailed exposition, but I must content myself with this condensed reference. My subject is, therefore, the earliest historical inroad into Strathearn—the Roman inroad, which I have called, in the heading of this paper, the Opening Up of Strathearn.
Everybody knows that Julius Caesar set foot in Britain and conducted a campaign against the native tribes in 55–54 B.C. He made no permanent impression. But successive expeditions were sent out, and the tide of conquest flowed further and further east and west and north till it reached the Solway. The details of the conflict do not concern us here. But it would be unpardonable to omit mentioning Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, in the East, and of Caractacus, leader of the Silures, in the West, both of whom offered strenuous opposition to the Roman advance. The powerful tribe of the Brigantes, who possessed the country between the Humber and the Solway, made a stout defence in the North, but by the year 70 A.D. the Roman province was coterminous with the present southern boundary of Scotland. It was now that the Romans heard the name of a new tribe—the Caledonian Britons, who, according to report, lived upon fish and milk, clearly indicating a less advanced stage of civilisation than that of the tribes they had encountered hitherto. The unexplored territory in which they dwelt was vaguely called Thule. Tacitus, the historian, and son-in-law of Julius Agricola—the discoverer of Strathearn—imagined it to be an island formed by the meeting of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. But the time was now come when more accurate information was to be obtained concerning Caledonia and its inhabitants. Some external characteristics had been noted. The Caledonians were described as Caerulei, from the green colour with which they stained their bodies. It was also said that they fought with chariots like the Britons of the interior, whom Caesar heard of 125 years before.
Julius Agricola was the man who first brought the Caledonians within the ken of distinct history. He came to Britain in 78 A.D. His first campaign was on the Welsh border, his second in the territory of some outlying Brigantian tribes along the northern shores of the Solway. These were the Selgovae, who occupied what is now the county of Dumfries, and the Novantes further to the west in the modern counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigton. To the north of these lay the great nation of the Damnonii—of the same stock as those who occupied Devonshire in the south of England. They held extensive territories in the centre of Scotland, including the counties of Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew, south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and, north of these estuaries, the counties of Dumbarton and Stirling and the districts of Menteith, Stratherne, and Forthreve, or the western half of the peninsula of Fife. They were the "novae gentes," or new nations, whose territories Agricola ravaged as far as the "Tavaus," or Tay, in his third campaign. They were somewhat civilised, having towns, of which we know the names of six—three lying south of and three north of the Firths. The chief of the southern towns was Coria—Carstairs, near Lanark, on the Clyde. North of the Forth there were Alauna, where the Allan joins the Forth; Lindum—that is Ardoch, at our own doors; and Victoria, in Fife, situated on a small lake. The lake has disappeared, but the name Lochore remains, and is otherwise famous than as a town of the Damnonii. The natural division line between the Selgovae, Novantes, and Damnonii was the hilly country which separates the waters that flow north from those that find their way into the Solway—the Ituna Aestuarium, as its name then was. Crossing this mountain barrier, Agricola struck into the valley of the Clyde, passed with his legions through Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire, then by the fords of the Forth and the Vale of the Allan into Strathearn, thence onward to the Tay. There was an alternative route. A fleet accompanied his movements. He might have crossed the Firth of Forth—the Bodotria Aestuarium—and penetrated through Fife to the Tay. But Tacitus usually mentions the crossing of estuaries, and he omits it in this case. Besides, he states that the natives on the north shore of the Forth were new to him in the fifth campaign.
It was, therefore, in the year 80 A.D., during his third campaign, that Agricola entered Strathearn by way of Alauna. He did not effect a permanent conquest. His operations rather resembled a reconnaisance in force. But he meant serious business. He planted forts in commanding situations, choosing so wisely, from a strategic point of view, that not one of them was ever taken or surrendered. They were placed so as to command the principal passes into the Highlands. They form a ring-fence round the territory hastily overrun by Agricola in this third campaign. Beginning in the west with Bochastle, at the Pass of Leny, near Callander, we come successively to Dalginross, at Comrie; Fendoch, at the mouth of the Sma' Glen; the camp at the junction of the Almond and the Tay; and, Ardargie, in the parish of Forgandenny, on the River May, commanding an extensive prospect of the Ochils, and along the course of the road from the Tay to the great camp at Ardoch. Here was evidently the base of operations, with accommodation, if need arose, for the entire Roman army in Scotland.
Having thus viewed the land and pegged out his claim by means of forts, Agricola returned to winter quarters. In the following summer—the summer of 81 A.D., he made no forward movement. But he was meditating a great enterprise—no less an enterprise than to penetrate beyond the Tay and break the power of the Caledonians in their remote fastnesses. It behoved him to be cautious, so he constructed the chain of forts which afterwards became the Wall of Antonine—from Borrowstonness, on the Forth, to Old Kilpatrick, on the Clyde. Meantime he was laying his plans with admirable foresight. He entrusted the forts in Strathearn to the courage of their slender garrisons, and the issue proved that he could do so safely. But there was unexplored territory westward and eastward. Nobody knew what dangers might be lurking there, ready to assail him in rear the moment he left the security of his fortified place. So we find him in the summer of 82 A.D., in Argyll and Kintyre, with