W. F. Skene

“ We now learn some further particulars of the coronation of the Scottish kings, and we are told by Fordun that the bishop of St. Andrews, the head of the Scotch Church, and the seven earls of Scotland—the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteith, Buchan, and Lothian—took Alexander, brought him to Scone, and there raised him to the throne in honour and peace, with the approval of God and man, and with more grandeur and glory than any one till then, while all wished him joy and none gainsaid him. ”

“ The monastic character of the church gave, however, a peculiar stamp to her missionary work which caused her to set about it in a mode well calculated to impress a people still to a great extent under the influence of heathenism. It is difficult for us now to realise to ourselves what such pagan life really was—its hopeless corruption, its utter disregard of the sanctity of domestic ties, its injustice and selfishness, its violent and bloody character; and these characteristics would not be diminished in a people who had been partially Christianised and had fallen back from it into heathenism. ”

“ As the people sing their dedication, their voices resound from their shealings, here literally in the wilderness, and as the music floats on the air, and echoes among the rocks, hills, and glens, and is wafted over fresh-water lakes and sea-lochs, the effect is very striking. ”

“ The distance of Britain from the seat of government, its fertility, and the uncertainty of the Roman tenure of the island, caused it to be regarded less as a valuable portion of the Empire than as a distant mine from which every temporary advantage ought to be drawn at whatever cost to the natives. The Roman civil rule was harsh and oppressive; the British provinces a field for exaction, from which everything it could be made to yield was extracted and carried off without remorse. ”

“ No wonder if kings and nations became converted to Christianity and incorporated the church into their tribal institutions in a manner which now excites our wonder, if not our suspicion. The lives of the saints show us these missionaries, owing to their devoted and self-denying lives, first received with respect by some chief, then obtaining a grant of land to found their monastery, and the people soon after converted by the preaching of the Word of God. Their influence, however, was soon enhanced by a less legitimate feature. ”

“ The death of Malcolm Ceannmor, though his reign had been prolonged for the unusual period of thirty-five years, was a great misfortune for Scotland. He united in himself so many claims to the allegiance of the heterogeneous races under his rule, that a work of consolidation had been insensibly going on during his reign, while the influence of his pious and accomplished queen, the Saxon Princess Margaret, equally advanced their civilisation. ”

“ When it came then to the last hours for Colum Cille, and when the bell was rung for matins on the night of Whitsunday, he went before the others to the church, and made genuflexions and earnest prayers at the altar. At that time an angelic brightness filled the church about him on every side, and the venerable patron then resigned his spirit to heaven, to the joy and gladness of the people of heaven in general. His body, moreover, is in the earth here, with honour and veneration from God and men, attended with virtues and miracles every day of them. ”

“ He says—‘The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech, for two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the Teutonic, the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech inhabits the highlands and outlying islands. The people of the coast are of domestic and civilised habits, trusty, patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful, devout in divine worship, yet always prone to resist a wrong at the hands of their enemies. ”

“ But we, who having, many days before, made confession of our sins, are chastened with penance, worn with fasts, and washed from the stains of our sins with alms and tears, on the day of the Lord’s resurrection, approaching his table in Catholic faith, partake of the flesh and blood of the immaculate Lamb Jesus Christ, not to judgment but to the remission of our sins, and to the salutary preparation for the enjoyment of eternal blessedness.’ Having nothing to oppose to these propositions, they afterwards observed the rules of the church in the reception of this life-giving mystery. ”

“ This confidence in the Galwegians is somewhat new to thee 466who this day turnest thine arms against those through whom thou now rulest,—beloved by Scots and feared by Galwegians. Thinkest thou, O king, that the majesty of heaven will behold thee, with unmoved eyes, do thy best to ruin those by whom the throne was gotten and secured to thee and thine? With what forces and by what aid did thy brother Duncan overthrow the army of Donald and recover the kingdom which the tyrant had usurped? ”

“ Monachism reached the Irish Church through two different channels. From Martin of Tours the monastic influence reached the Irish Church through two different channels, and became the means of infusing a new life into that Church, imparting to it a character which harmonised better with the tribal organisation of the social system and exhibited itself in that marvellous burst of energy which not only filled Ireland with monasteries, but was carried by its monkish missionaries across the sea to Britain and the Continent. ”

“ It was during this period of upwards of a century and a half that the different provinces of Scotland were welded into one feudal monarchy, and the various races which inhabited them, and upon the allegiance of each of whom the kings of this race had hereditary claims, were fused into one mixed population combining the peculiar qualities of each.
The reign of Alexander the Third, the last king of this old Celtic dynasty of Scottish kings, saw the concentration of the various provinces of Scotland into one compact kingdom finally completed by the cession of the Isles in the year 1266. ”

“ Twelve years had now elapsed since Columba first set foot on the island of Iona, and he had already to a great extent accomplished the task he had set before him. He had founded his monastery in the island, as the central point of his mission; and the exhibition of the Christian life, as alone it was possible to present it in the state of society which prevailed among these pagan tribes, as a colony of tonsured monks following a monastic rule, had its usual effect in influencing the population of the adjacent districts. ”

“ The great invasion of the Vandals with the Alani and Suevi, which took place in 108the year 406, and was the first of those fatal inroads of the Barbarians into the very heart of the Empire which led to its final ruin, alarmed the troops which remained of the army in Britain, who, on the irruption of the Barbarians into Gaul, found that they would be cut off from the other forces of the Empire and exposed alone in their insular position to the attacks of the enemy, and led them to resort to the step which had now become the habitual tendency of a Roman army so placed—to proclaim an Emperor. ”

“ Space will, of course, not admit of anything like a complete analysis of them, but a comparison of the lives, in the order in which they appear to have been compiled, will show the growth of the legendary and fabulous additions to the real facts of his life, and the process by which it passed, from the few leading features of it which can be extracted from his own authentic writings, to the extraordinary mixture of fact, legend and fable which now makes up the popular conception of his life. ”

“ We thus see how completely the idea of a close connection, amounting to identity both of race and nation, between the Pictish inhabitants of North Britain and the Cruithnigh of Ireland, runs through these popular tales, and expresses a true state of matters which goes far to explain the supposed conquests and settlements under the Irish kings of the mythic and heroic period in Scotland. Although attributed to kings of the different races into which the descendants of Milesius were supposed to be divided, we can see that there is always a tendency to connect them with the Cruithnigh of Ulster. ”

“ Bede tells us that, when the great pestilence devastated Ireland in the year 664, ‘many of the nobility and of the middle ranks of the Anglic nation were there at that time, who, in the days of the bishops Finan and Colman, forsaking their native island, had retired thither, for the sake either of divine studies or of a more continent life; and some of them presently devoted themselves faithfully to a monastic life, others chose rather to apply themselves to study, going about from one master’s cell to another. ”