An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) | Page 2

of the towns, remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen", and he adds that "The coast districts north of the Tay were inhabited by a population of the same blood as that of the Lowlands".[3] The theory has been, at all events verbally, accepted by Mr. Lang, who describes the history of Scotland as "the record of the long resistance of the English of Scotland to England, of the long resistance of the Celts of Scotland to the English of Scotland".[4] Above all, the conception has been firmly planted in the imagination by the poet of the Lady of the Lake.
"These fertile plains, that soften'd vale, Were once the birthright of the Gael; The stranger came with iron hand, And from our fathers reft the land."
While holding in profound respect these illustrious names, the writer ventures to ask for a modification of this verdict. That the Scottish Lowlanders (among whom we include the inhabitants of the coast districts from the Tay to the Moray Firth) were, in the end of the thirteenth century, "English in speech and manners" (as Mr. Oman[5] guardedly describes them) is beyond doubt. Were they also English in blood? The evidence upon which the accepted theory is founded is twofold. In the course of the sixth century the Angles made a descent between the Humber and the Forth, and that district became part of the English kingdom of Northumbria. Even here we have, in the evidence of the place-names, some reasons for believing that a proportion of the original Brythonic population may have survived. This northern portion of the kingdom of Northumbria was affected by the Danish invasions, but it remained an Anglian kingdom till its conquest, in the beginning of the eleventh century, by the Celtic king, Malcolm II. There is, thus, sufficient justification for Mr. Freeman's phrase, "the English of Lothian", if we interpret the term "Lothian" in the strict sense; but it remains to be explained how the inhabitants of the Scottish Lowlands, outside Lothian, can be included among the English of Lothian who resisted Edward I. That explanation is afforded by the events which followed the Norman Conquest of England. It is argued that the Englishmen who fled from the Normans united with the original English of Lothian to produce the result indicated in the passage quoted from Mr. Green. The farmers of Fife and the Lowlands, the artisans of the towns, the dwellers in the coast districts north of Tay, became, by the end of the thirteenth century, stout Northumbrian Englishmen. Mr. Green admits that the south-west of Scotland was still inhabited, in 1290, by the Picts of Galloway, and neither he nor any other exponent of the theory offers any explanation of their subsequent disappearance. The history of Scotland, from the fourteenth century to the Rising of 1745, contains, according to this view, a struggle between the Celts and "the English of Scotland", the most important incident of which is the battle of Harlaw, in 1411, which resulted in a great victory for "the English of Scotland". Mr. Hill Burton writes thus of Harlaw: "On the face of ordinary history it looks like an affair of civil war. But this expression is properly used towards those who have common interests and sympathies, who should naturally be friends and may be friends again, but for a time are, from incidental causes of dispute and quarrel, made enemies. The contest ... was none of this; it was a contest between foes, of whom their contemporaries would have said that their ever being in harmony with each other, or having a feeling of common interests and common nationality, was not within the range of rational expectations.... It will be difficult to make those not familiar with the tone of feeling in Lowland Scotland at that time believe that the defeat of Donald of the Isles was felt as a more memorable deliverance even than that of Bannockburn."[6]
We venture to plead for a modification of this theory, which may fairly be called the orthodox account of the circumstances. It will at once occur to the reader that some definite proof should be forthcoming that the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, outside the Lothians, were actually subjected to this process of racial displacement. Such a displacement had certainly not been effected before the Norman Conquest, for it was only in 1018 that the English of Lothian were subjected to the rule of a Celtic king, and the large amount of Scottish literature, in the Gaelic tongue, is sufficient indication that Celtic Scotland was not confined to the Highlands in the eleventh century. Nor have we any hint of a racial displacement after the Norman conquest, even though it is unquestionable that a considerable number of exiles followed Queen Margaret to Scotland, and that William's harrying of the north of