THE MODERN SCOTTISH NATION.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 158, 15 March 1872, Page 3

THE MODERN SCOTTISH NATION.

When thadisputedcrela'tioiis between t%?l^S^iJ§b Qrowna begap, the names of' England an<f Scotland seem not to have.... been in use at all. And if we choose to use them as conveof express] Tig the English and Scottish,territories as tiey then stood, we'must's! ilf remember ! t hat the Wits' ot those-territories hvno waVanswered to modern limits of England and Scotland. Part of modern England was not yet r and a very part of modern Scotland was hot yet Scottish. The growth of the Scottish nation and kingdom is one of trie most remarkable facts in history, Lt was formed by ihe fusing together of certain porndnsof all the three races wtnVViu the tetft 5 ) century, as now, inhabited tne. Lpe'of Britain. Those throe race*, maybe most conveniently spoken of as English, \Velsh; and Irisn. A portion of «}ach of th'dse three races was, through a variety 'of po--1 MC4I circumstances, 'deticSed'fro.u trie' main stock of its own u tttou,_ and a 1 Wrfre brought into close connection with one another. At the beginning of' the tenth ceatury the three were "still j distinct. The orig-nal ->cots, a colon'y ' from Ireland, "th'a ori cinal had, centuries before, csrauiisied themselves on the north-western coast of Britain, and not very long before tne period with whL'h 1 am concerned, they had conquered or fraternized with or exterminated or assimilated the Picts, the" peo.deof the nortli- western part of.modern Scotland The relations between the Picts and Scots I leave in intentional vagueness they ,fortn a very difficult question and oue whose soTutioV or exposition is in no way essential to my object. 'lt is enough that at the beginning of the tenth century an independent Celtic potentate, the King of Scots, reigned over all modern Scotland north of the, two great firths of Forth andCyde except so tar as Scandinavian adventurers had already beguu to occupy the islands and the extreme north of the mainland At that time, however, the southern parfof what is now Scotland had nothing to do with the Scots, and it had to do with the King of Scots only , inasmuch as an independent branch of the Scottish royal family reigned in one part of it. All south-western Scotland, with much of what is now north-wesr-ern England, formed the Kingdom of the Straihclyde Welsh. Over thi~ kingdom, fj om an early date in the tenth century, Kings of the Scottish family reigned, but it formed a purely distinct state, independent equally of the Kiug of -cots and of the King - of the Wes£ Saxons. The souh-eastern part of modern Scotland, Lothian in the wide sense of the word, "was simply part of Northumberland,, that great region which, under one k<ng, sometimes under two or more, stretched from tHe fiumber to the Forth. Lothian was therefore, then as now, a strictly Teutonic country, inhabited by a population mainly, Anglian and.speaking, then"as now, the Northumbrian dialect of English. In the language of the' Scots, the land was Saxony and its people Saxons. An inroad into Saxony was a favourite exploit of the Scottish Kings, and they had already' begun to look with .wistful eyes ,on the northern bulwark of Saxony, the border-fortress raised by the great IS orthumbrian Bretthe castle ,of Eadwinesburg or Edinburgh. Here then are -the- three elements of the'modern Scottish nation: the true Scots, the Irish population north of the Forth; the Welsh of rttrath 1 - clyde op Cumberland;, the, English of Lothian. Of these, the first and' third still survive and .retain their several languages, though ever since they have been brought into connection with each other, the English element has advanced and the Irish element has fallen' back The Welsh element has long since been absorbed by the English. The old 'Welsh l kingdom no longer exists as a distinct division; it is divided between modern Scotland, and its languige survives ouly in some parts of local nomenclature, to be traced out by inquiring ..antiquaries and pKilologers.— Edward A. Freeman