which chiefly agree in regarding it as a boundary or defensive barrier between two hostile provinces, – we have already said that it is difficult to conceive of it as such. It was obviously, on the other hand, not a merely temporary work: its extent, and the enormous labour which its construction must have involved, point to some purpose of a permanent kind. Again, its form – the broad fosse or ditch, with a high rampart on both sides – is rather against any theory which would represent it as having been made by the inhabitants of one district to ward off the inhabitants of an adjoining district: it would seem rather to have been formed with the object of meeting the possibility of those who held the earthwork being attacked from either side. The older theories, moreover, are wanting in precision: they are too vague; they fit into nothing; they fail to explain the topographical and structural peculiarities involved; they do not bring us face to face with a sufficiently appreciable historical situation. It is true that with respect to a period in our history so distant and obscure as the fifth century, and to a remnant of antiquity of which so little is to be learned except by inferential processes, it would be too much perhaps to expect that any theory should be wholly satisfactory and conclusive. Still, the subject will bear reconsideration, there being, as we think, one or two aspects of the question which hitherto have not received due prominence.
Previous to the final departure of the Romans from Britain in A.D. 410, the territory lying between the two Roman Walls – that is, the modern Lowlands of Scotland with Northumberland added – was the scene of a fierce racial conflict, embittered by long continuance. The two great opposing races in this conflict were the Picts and the Britons. The Scots and Angles also had their part in it; but at the time we speak of, they had not yet become predominant factors in the dispute. The Picts and the Britons, or Brythons, were both Celtic races, the former speaking Gaelic and the latter Welsh. The Picts represented the older body of Celtic immigrants – those who first landed in the isle of Britain and displaced the aboriginal inhabitants. The Britons, or Welsh-speaking Celts, were a second or later race, who in their turn dispossessed the older or Gaelic-speaking Celts, driving them into Galloway and the Scottish Highlands, and over into Ireland. The Picts, therefore, naturally regarding the Britons as supplanters, fought against them and invaded their territory at every opportunity, with the result that a bitter hereditary animosity was engendered between them. The chief territory of the Picts lay beyond the Wall of Antoninus – in other words, they occupied almost the whole country north of the Forth and the Clyde; but there was a large body of them, known as Niduari, or Men of the Nith, who occupied the south-western district of the Lowlands, corresponding to the modern counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigton. They are more usually known in history as the Picts of Galloway, and comprised within them a remnant of what was probably an older race – the Atecotti, a word which Professor Rhys regards as denoting "ancient inhabitants." Like the Picts, these Atecotti tattooed themselves, and were excessively hostile to the Britons. Besides this settlement in Galloway, there was also a Pictish settlement on the
