Author Description

If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland as it was when the Romans underAgricola (81 A.D.) crossed the Border, we should recognise little but the familiar hills andmountains. The rivers, in the plains, overflowed their present banks; dense forests of oak and pine, haunted by great red deer, elks, and boars, covered land that has long been arable. There were lakesand lagoons where for centuries there have been fields of corn. On the oldest sites of our townswere groups of huts made of clay and wattle, and dominated, perhaps, by the large stockaded houseof the tribal prince. In the lochs, natural islands, or artificial islets made of piles (crannogs), affordedstanding-ground and protection to villages, if indeed these lake-dwellings are earlier in Scotland thanthe age of war that followed the withdrawal of the Romans.The natives were far beyond the savage stage of culture. They lived in an age of iron tools andweapons and of wheeled vehicles; and were in what is called the Late Celtic condition of art andculture, familiar to us from beautiful objects in bronze work, more commonly found in Ireland thanin Scotland, and from the oldest Irish romances and poems