southern side of the Firth of Forth, which settlement included the part of Lothian in which Edinburgh is situated, as also a portion of the Pentland Hills, – "a name in which we are supposed to have a corruption of Pehtland, the land of the Peht or Pict."[1] All the remainder of the territory between the Walls was held by the Britons, from among whom the Romans organised a native army to assist in the defence of the province.
In describing this conflict of races, we need not for present purposes go farther back than A.D. 360. In that year the Picts, aided by the Scots, took advantage of the withdrawal of the Roman troops to burst through the Northern Wall and invade the territory of the Romanised Britons. In this, the northern Picts were joined by the Picts of Galloway, including the ferocious tribe of the Atecotti ("bellicosa hominum natio"). For four years these Picts combined to harass the province, ravaging and destroying everywhere; at the end of which time the great Roman general Theodosius was sent against them with an army. By 369 he had restored peace to the province and refortified the Northern Wall. The Picts he drove back to the north and west; but the fiercest of the Galloway hordes, the Atecotti, he enrolled as Roman soldiers, sending four regiments of them into active service on the Continent. He doubtless hoped, by this policy, to break the power of the Niduari Picts. But this did not end the difficulty. The Roman empire itself was now assailed by the barbarians at its very heart, hence the Imperial troops had from time to time to be recalled from the extremities. On each occasion when the Roman troops marched out of Northern Britain, the Picts renewed their attacks, and the same scenes of bloodshed and savage reprisal followed. This continued intermittently throughout a period of thirty-eight years, till, in 407, Constantine finally withdrew the Roman armies from Britain. These were followed in 410 by the whole body of Roman officials who had been left behind to carry on the civil government; and with this event the Roman rule in Britain came to an end.
Unfortunately for us, with the departure of the Romans, written history took its departure also; and it is not till about A.D. 560, when the earliest British historian, Gildas, penned his lugubrious jeremiad, that we obtain a few dim and uncertain glimpses of what took place in the interval. This ancient Welsh monk, who had melancholy views of life and of human nature, tells a somewhat clouded and confused story, from which the chief impression to be gathered is, that he had a very poor opinion of his own countrymen, the Britons. His history is thin and rhapsodical; still, as Dr Skene has observed, while there is much in Gildas that is vague and indefinite, and although in no instance does he condescend upon a date, yet his narrative up to A.D. 409 is found to agree in the main with the Greek and Roman authorities for the same period.[2] Referring, then, to Gildas for what happened after the departure of the Romans, we find that no sooner had they gone than the Picts and Scots renewed their wonted tactics,
