having in several conflicts overcome the natives who withstood them, they admitted the rest to terms of peace, but that they continued 100 years, all but one, in dependence on the kings of Kent, at the end of which their dependent state (Ducatus) was changed into a kingdom, Ida being advanced to the royal dignity. From all of which we may at least infer a Teutonic settlement, or series of settlements, slowly establishing themselves in defiance of native opposition, and, during a century of struggle and conflict, shaping themselves into something of a coherent state. The natives whom the invaders found in possession of the soil were not Picts or Scots, but Britons, of the same race as the inhabitants of the more southern parts of the island, who were known to the Angles as Welsh, and are shown by the contemporary poems of the bards, Taliesin, Aneurin, and Lliwarch Hen, to have acquired from the Romans no small degree of refinement and civilization. But centuries of peace, and dependence upon the protection of the Roman legions, had rendered them, like the inhabitants of all parts of the empire, ill-fitted to defend themselves against the ferocious assaults of their untamed enemies; and although under the leadership of Arthur, Urien, Owain, and other valiant princes, whose very personality seems afterwards to melt away in a cloud of poetry and romance, they maintained a gallant struggle against the "heathen barbarians,"—it was a losing struggle with a hapless issue. It was evidently during the early part of this hundred years' contest for the establishment of the North Angle State, that the twelve great battles recorded by Nennius were fought between the Saxons and the Britons under Arthur, the first of which was on the Eiver Glen, and several at Dubglass, identified with "the strong frontier afforded by the waters of the Dunglass and Peass Burn," at the east end of the Lammermoors.[1] Had any genuine works of Merddyn or Merlin Caledonius come down to us, we might have possessed contemporary glimpses of this period, like those of the heroes, battles, and
- ↑ The above was written before the appearance of Mr. J. S. Glennie's valuable paper upon Arthurian localities, prefixed to the third part of the Early English Text Society's Merlin, 1869. While considering that there is room for wide difference of opinion as to the identification of special localities, as will be seen, I agree with him in thinking that all early authority points to the country south of the Forth as the historical scene of the Arthur Conflicts. Indeed, the whole passage in Nennius, relating to Arthur and the twelve battles—beginning with the departure of Ochtha to Kent, from the region near the northern wall where he had first landed, upon which Arthur fought against the enemy along with the British chiefs, he being himself commander-in-chief, and ending with the statement that while the Saxons were repeatedly defeated they continually sought fresh aid from Germany, whence also they received kings who led them, until Ida, the son of Eobba, reigned as first king of Bernicia—so manifestly refers to the struggle in the north, that it is difficult to see how any other meaning could suggest itself, except of those who came to the subject prepossessed with the legendary Arthur history of the Middle Ages.
