Excerpt from Culture in Early Scotland

The subject treated in the following chapters embraces the Prehistoric, Roman, and Celtic Christian Culture of Scotland. Though North Britain was not known by the name of Scotland before the eleventh century, and the term Scotia must always be understood of Ireland previous to that time, I have retained it as most convenient, while not limiting myself exactly to the modem territorial boundary. As I explain further on, I use the word culture in a wide sense to denote anything of interest in the social, religious, and intellectual condition of a people. I have in a critical, yet, I trust, unbiassed spirit, gathered my material from every source fitted to throw light on what is in some portions of it an obscure subject. In treating such portions I have largely used the illustrative method, aiming to set before the reader a suggestive general picture of a state of things with which the want of sufficient information baffles a detailed acquaintance. Happily, however, the testimony of archæology, of folk-lore, and of the older historians such as Bæda, Gildas, Adamnan, and others, who have noticed ancient Scotland, has enabled me to deal in a more direct fashion with other periods in the culture of our forefathers. Happily, too, there are not wanting outstanding figures within the pale of the historic epoch, treated in the second and third books, whose lives may be taken as an epitome of the culture of their age.

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