Note 10 — PART I. AN EPITOME OF THE HISTORY OF ROMAN OCCUPATION IN BRITAIN.

The supposition is not destitute of support. The migratory tendencies of the Gothic tribes have always been conspicuous. From the earliest periods of our history, the inhabitants of Jutland and its neighbouring provinces were in the habit of making descents upon the coasts of Britain. After the departure of the Romans, their attempts were probably more bold and frequent, but they did not then, for the first time, commence. The Norfolk and Suffolk coast was, from its position, peculiarly exposed to these incursions, and as early as the close of the third century, was placed under the command of a military Count called Comes litoris Saxonici. This district was called ‘the Saxon shore,’ as Sir Francis Palgrave observes, not merely because it was open to the incursion of the Saxons, but, most probably, because they had succeeded in fixing themselves in some portion of it. The weak hold which the Romans, at all times, had of Scotland, would render it an easier prey than England to the Franks and Saxons. Tacitus informs us, that the ruddy hair and lusty limbs of the Caledonians indicate a Germanic extraction. Richard of Cirencester tells us, that a little before the coming of Severus, the Picts landed in Scotland; from which we are at least entitled to infer, that the Picts were not the original inhabitants of North Britain; and probably the statement is substantially correct, inasmuch as large reinforcements landed in Scotland at this period, as previously observed. The Scots—the other branch of the people classed under the general term Caledonians—are confessedly of Irish origin. When St. Columba, whose mother tongue was Irish Gaelic, preached to the Picts, he used an interpreter. Fordun, the Father of Scottish History, tells us, ‘The manners of the Scots are various as to their languages; for they use two tongues, the Scottish and the Teutonic. The last is spoken by those on the sea-coasts and in the low countries, while the Scottish is the speech of the mountaineers and the remote islanders.’ The proper Scots, Camden describes as those commonly called Highlandmen; ‘for the rest,’ he adds, ‘more civilized, and inhabiting the eastern part, though comprehended under the name of Scots, are the farthest in the world from being Scots, but are of the same German origin with us English.’ Dr. Jamieson, whose researches in philology are well known, is decidedly of opinion that the Picts and Saxons had a common origin. Upon what other theory, he argues, can the prevalence of the Saxon tongue in the Lowlands of Scotland be accounted for? William the Conqueror could not change the language of South Britain—was it likely that a few Saxon fugitives at the Scottish court could supplant that of their benefactors?

The theory of the Germanic origin of the Picts removes another difficulty. How is the disappearance of the Celtic tongue from England to be accounted for? The Saxons, on seizing the soil, would not exterminate the inhabitants, but retain them as bondsmen. Had the majority of the occupants of England been the original Britons or Romanized Celts, we should have found in our daily speech, and in the names of our towns and villages, a large intermixture of Gaelic and Latin; but such is not the case. Grant that the Picts were a branch of the great Gothic family—and that successive waves of them had, long before the time of Cerdic, poured from the lowlands of Scotland over the plains of England, and the almost entire extermination of the ancient British is easily accounted for.

If the theory here advocated, cannot be sustained, it must at least be allowed, that the population of North Britain was largely leavened with individuals of the Saxon race. These strangers would doubtless obtain that supremacy over the natives which the Franks did in Gaul; so that, even upon this limited view of the question, the influence of the Germanic race in fixing the destinies of Britain, at this critical period, is apparent.