Part 13

The combination of the Celtic word "Cat" with the Saxon word "stane" may appear at first as an objection against the preceding idea of the origin and signification of the term Cat-stane. But many of our local names show a similar compound origin in Celtic and Saxon. In the immediate neighbourhood, for example, of the Cat-stane, we have instances of a similar Celtic and Saxon amalgamation in the words Gogar-burn, Lenny-bridge, Craigie-hill, etc. One of the oldest known specimens of this kind of verbal alloy, is alluded to above a thousand years ago by Bede, in reference to a locality not above fourteen or fifteen miles west from the Cat-stane. For, in his famous sentence regarding the termination of the walls of Antoninus on the Forth, he states that the Picts called this eastern "head of the wall" Pean-fahel, but the Angles called it Pennel-tun. To a contracted variety of this Pictish word signifying head of the wall, or to its Welsh form Pengual, they added the Saxon word "town," probably to designate the "villa," which, according to an early addition to Nennius, was placed there. "Pengaaul, quæ villa Scottice Cenail [Kinneil], Anglice verò Peneltun dicitur."

The palæographic peculiarities of the inscription sufficiently bear out the idea of the monument being of the date or era which I have ventured to assign to it--a point the weight and importance of which it is unnecessary to insist upon. "The inscription," says Lhwyd, "is in the barbarous characters of the fourth and fifth centuries." Professor Westwood, who is perhaps our highest authority on such a question, states to me that he is of the same opinion as Lhwyd as to the age of the lettering in the Cat-stane legend.

To some minds it may occur as a seeming difficulty that the legend or inscription is in the Latin language, though the leader commemorated is Saxon. But this forms no kind of valid objection. The fact is, that all the early Romano-British inscriptions as yet found in Great Britain, are, as far as they have been discovered and deciphered, in Latin. And it is not more strange that a Saxon in the Lothians should be recorded in Latin, and not in Saxon or Keltic, than that the numerous Welshmen and others recorded on the early Welsh inscribed stones should be recorded in Latin and not in the Cymric tongue.

Doubtless, the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists settled among them were, with their descendants, more or less acquainted with Latin in both its spoken and written forms. As early as the second year of his march northward for the conquest of this more distant part of Britain, or A.D. 79, Agricola, as Tacitus takes special care to inform us, took all possible means to introduce, for the purposes of conquest and civilisation, a knowledge of the Roman language and of the liberal arts among the barbarian tribes whom he went to subdue. The same policy was no doubt continued to a greater or less extent during the whole era of the Roman dominion here as elsewhere; so that there is no wonder that such arts as lapidary writing, and the composition of brief Latin inscriptions, should have been known to and transmitted to the native Britons. There was, however, another class of inhabitants, besides these native Britons, who were, as we know from the altars and stone monuments which they have left, sufficiently learned in the formation and cutting of inscriptions in Latin,--a language which was then, and for some centuries subsequently, the only language used in this country, either in lapidary or other forms of writing. The military legions and cohorts which the Roman emperors employed to keep Britain under due subjection, obtained, under the usual conditions, grants of lands in the country, married, and became betimes fixed inhabitants. When speaking of the veteran soldiers of Rome settling down at last as permanent proprietors of land in Britain--as in other Roman colonies,--Sir Francis Palgrave remarks, "Upwards of forty of these barbarian legions, some of Teutonic origin, and others Moors, Dalmatians, and Thracians, whose forefathers had been transplanted from the remotest parts of the empire, obtained their domicile in various parts of our island, though principally upon the northern and eastern coasts, and in the neighbourhood of the Roman walls." Such colonists undoubtedly possessed among their ranks, and were capable of transmitting to their descendants, a sufficient knowledge of the Latin tongue, and a sufficient amount of art, to form and cut such stone inscriptions as we have been considering; and perhaps I may add, that in such a mixed population, the Teutonic elements in particular, would, towards the decline of the Roman dominion and power, not perhaps be averse to find and follow a leader, like Vetta, belonging to the royal stock of Woden; nor would they likely fail to pay all due respect, by the raising of a monument or otherwise, to the memory of a chief of such an illustrious race, if he fell amongst them in battle.

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Besides, a brief incidental remark in Bede's History proves that the erection of a monument like the Cat-stane, to record the resting-place of the early Saxon chiefs, was not unknown. For, after telling us that Horsa was slain in battle by the Britons, Bede adds that "this Saxon leader was buried in the eastern parts of Kent, where a monument bearing his name is still in existence" (hactenus in orientalibus Cantiæ partibus monumentum habet suo nomine insigne). The great durability of the stone forming Vetta's monument has preserved it to the present day; while the more perishable material of which Horsa's was constructed has made it a less faithful record of that chief, though it was still in Bede's time, or in the eighth century, "suo nomine insigne."

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The chief points of evidence which I have attempted to adduce in favour of the idea that the Cat-stane commemorates the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa may be summed up as follows:--

1. The surname of VETTA upon the Cat-stane is the name of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, as given by our oldest genealogists.

2. The same historical authorities all describe Vetta as the son of Victa; and the person recorded on the Cat-stane is spoken of in the same distinctive terms--"VETTA F(ILIUS) VICTI."

3. Vetta is not a common ancient Saxon name, and it is highly improbable that there existed in ancient times two historical Vettas, the sons of two Victas.

4. Two generations before Hengist and Horsa arrived in England, a Saxon host--as told by Ammianus--was leagued with the other races of modern Scotland (the Picts, Scots, and Attacots), in fighting with a Roman army under Theodosius.

5. These Saxon allies were very probably under a leader who claimed royal descent from Woden, and consequently under an ancestor or pre-relative of Hengist and Horsa.

6. The battle-ground between the two armies was, in part at least, the district placed between the two Roman walls, and consequently included the tract in which the Cat-stane is placed; this district being erected by Theodosius, after its subjection, into a fifth Roman province.

7. The palæographic characters of the inscription accord with the idea that it was cut about the end of the fourth century.

8. The Latin is the only language known to have been used in British inscriptions and other writings in these early times by the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists and conquerors of the island.

9. The occasional erection of monuments to Saxon leaders is proved by the fact mentioned by Bede, that in his time, or in the eighth century, there stood in Kent a monument commemorating the death of Horsa.

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If, then, as these reasons tend at least to render probable, the Cat-stane be the tombstone of Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, this venerable monolith is not only interesting as one of our most ancient national historic monuments, but it corroborates the floating accounts of the early presence of the Saxons upon our coast; it presents to us the two earliest individual Saxon names known in British history; it confirms, so far as it goes, the accuracy of the genealogy of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa, as recorded by Bede and our early chroniclers; while at the same time it forms in itself a connecting link, as it were, between the two great invasions of our island by the Roman and Saxon--marking as it does the era of the final declinature of the Roman dominion among us, and the first dawn and commencement of that Saxon interference and sway in the affairs of Britain, which was destined to give to England a race of new kings and new inhabitants, new laws, and a new language.

FOOTNOTES:

HIC MEMOR IACIT F LOIN:::NI:::: HIC PE::M DVMNOGENL

The true character of the G in the fourth line was first pointed out by Dr. Smith. It is of the same form as the G in the famous SAGRAMANVS stone, etc.]

'On the 14th day of the calends of July, Eleanor, Queen of England gave birth to her eldest son Edward; whose father was Henry; whose father was John; whose father was Henry; whose mother was Matilda the Empress; whose mother was Matilda, Queen of England; whose mother was Margaret, Queen of Scotland; whose father was Edward; whose father was Edmund Ironside; who was the son of Ethelred; who was the son of Edgar; who was the son of Edmund; who was the son of Edward the elder; who was the son of Alfred.'"--(The Greatest of the Plantagenets, pp. 8 and 9.)

Here we have eleven genealogical ascents appealed to from Edward to Alfred. The thirteen or fourteen ascents again from Alfred to Cerdic, the first Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, are as fixed and determined as the eleven from Alfred to Edward. (See them quoted by Florence, Asser, etc.) But the power of reckoning the lineage of Cerdic up through the intervening nine alleged ascents to Woden, was indispensable to form and to maintain Cerdic's claim to royalty, and was probably preserved with as great, if not greater care when written records were so defective and wanting.]

----maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades.]

The British kingdom of Rheged, over which Urien ruled, is by some authorities considered as the old British or Welsh kingdom of Cumbria, or Cumberland; but, according to others, it must have been situated further northwards. In the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad (see the Myvyrian Archæology, vol. i. p. 53), Urien defeats the enemy--apparently the Saxons or Angles--under Ida, King of Bernicia. In one line near the end of the poem, Taliesin describes Urien as attacking his foes "by the white stone of Galysten:"

"Pan amwyth ai alon yn Llech wen Galysten."

The word "Galysten," when separated into such probable original components as "Gal" and "lysten," is remarkable, from the latter part of the appellation, "lysten," corresponding with the name, "Liston," of the old barony or parish in which the Cat-stane stands; the prefix Kirk (Kirk-liston) being, as is well known, a comparatively modern addition. The word "Gal" is a common term, in compound Keltic words, for "stranger," or "foreigner." In the Gaelic branch of the Keltic, "lioston" signifies, according to Sir James Foulis, "an inclosure on the side of a river." (See Mr. Muckarsie on the origin of the name of Kirkliston, in the Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. x. p. 68.) The Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary gives "liostean" as a lodging, tent, or booth. In the Cymric, "lystyn" signifies, according to Dr. Owen Pughe, "a recess, or lodgment." (See his Welsh Dictionary, sub voce.) The compound word Gal-lysten would perhaps not be thus overstrained, if it were held as possibly originating in the meaning, "the lodgment, inclosure, or resting-place of the foreigner;" and the line quoted would, under such an idea, not inaptly apply to the grave-stone of such a foreign leader as Vetta. Urien's forces are described in the first line of the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, as "the men of Cattraeth, who set out with the dawn." Cattraeth is now believed by eminent archæologists to be a locality situated at the eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth--Callander, Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains various remains of ancient structures. Urien's foes at the battle of Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia--this last term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time the district of modern Northumberland, and probably also Berwickshire and part of the Lothians. An army marching from Cattraeth or the eastern end of Antonine's Wall, to meet such an army, would, if it took the shortest or coast line, pass, after two or three hours' march, very near the site of the Cat-stane. A ford and a fort are alluded to in the poem. The neighbouring Almond has plenty of fords; and on its banks the name of two forts or "caers" are still left--viz. Caerlowrie (Caer-l-Urien?) and Caer Almond, one directly opposite the Cat-stane, the other three miles below it. But no modern name remains near the Cat-stane to identify the name of "the fair or white strath." "Lenny"--the name of the immediately adjoining barony on the banks of the Almond, or in its "strath" or "dale"--presents insurmountable philological difficulties to its identification with Gwen; the L and G, or GW not being interchangeable. The valley of Strath-Broc (Broxburn)--the seat in the twelfth century of Freskyn of Strath-Broc, and consequently the cradle of the noble house of Sutherland--runs into the valley of the Almond about two miles above the Cat-stane. In this, as in other Welsh and Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining river. In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary, in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates. The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley--"Gwen-Ystrad;" but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was ever applied to this tract. In his learned edition of Les Bardes Bretons, Poemes du vi^e Siècle, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, suggests (page 412) that this term exists in a modern form under the name of Queen's-strad, or Queen's-ferry--a locality within three miles of the Cat-stane. But it is certain that the name of Queens-ferry, applied to the well-known passage across the Forth, is of the far later date of Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore. Numerous manors and localities in the Lothians and around Kirkliston, end in the Saxon affix "ton," or town--a circumstance rendering it probable that Lis-ton had possibly a similar origin. And further, against the idea of the appellation of "the white stone of Galysten" being applicable to the Cat-stane, is the fact that it is, as I have already stated, a block of greenstone basalt; and the light tint which it presents, when viewed at a distance in strong sunlight--owing to its surface being covered with whitish lichen--is scarcely sufficient to have warranted a poet--indulging in the utmost poetical license--to have sung of it as "the white stone." After all, however, the adjective "wen," or "gwenn," as Villemarque writes it, may signify "fair" or "beautiful" when applied to the stone, just as it probably does when applied to the strath which was the seat of the battle--"Gwenn Ystrad."