An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) | Page 7

we find that Scottish
historians do not use such terms in speaking of the Highland forces as
Mr. Hill Burton would lead us to expect. Of the two contemporary
authorities, one, the Book of Pluscarden, was probably written by a
Highlander, while the continuation of Fordun's _Scoti-chronicon_, in
which we have a more detailed account of the battle, was the work of
Bower, a Lowlander who shared Fordun's antipathy to Highland
customs. The Liber Pluscardensis mentions the battle in a very casual
manner. It was fought between Donald of the Isles and the Earl of Mar;
there was great slaughter: and it so happened that the town of Cupar
chanced to be burned in the same year.[20] Bower assigns a greater

importance to the affair;[21] he tells us that Donald wished to spoil
Aberdeen and then to add to his own possessions all Scotland up to the
Tay. It is as if he were writing of the ambition of the House of Douglas.
But there is no hint of racial antipathy; the abuse applied to Donald and
his followers would suit equally well for the Borderers who shouted the
Douglas battle-cry. John Major tells us that it was a civil war fought for
the spoil of the famous city of Aberdeen, and he cannot say who
won--only the Islanders lost more men than the civilized Scots. For him,
its chief interest lay in the ferocity of the contest; rarely, even in
struggles with a foreign foe, had the fighting been so keen.[22] The
fierceness with which Harlaw was fought impressed the country so
much that, some sixty years later, when Major was a boy, he and his
playmates at the Grammar School of Haddington used to amuse
themselves by mock fights in which they re-enacted the red Harlaw.
From Major we turn with interest to the Principal of the University and
King's College, Hector Boece, who wrote his History of Scotland, at
Aberdeen, about a century after the battle of Harlaw, and who shows no
trace of the strong feeling described by Mr. Hill Burton. He narrates the
origin of the quarrel with much sympathy for the Lord of the Isles, and
regrets that he was not satisfied with recovering his own heritage of
Ross, but was tempted by the pillage of Aberdeen, and he speaks of the
Lowland army as "the Scots on the other side".[23] His narrative in the
History is devoid of any racial feeling whatsoever, and in his Lives of
the Bishops of Aberdeen he omits any mention of Harlaw at all. We
have laid stress upon the evidence of Boece because in Aberdeen, if
anywhere, the memory of the "Celtic peril" at Harlaw should have
survived. Similarly, George Buchanan speaks of Harlaw as a raid for
purposes of plunder, made by the islanders upon the mainland.[24]
These illustrations may serve to show how Scottish historians really did
look upon the battle of Harlaw, and how little do they share Mr.
Burton's horror of the Celts.
When we turn to descriptions of Scotland we find no further proof of
the correctness of the orthodox theory. When Giraldus Cambrensis
wrote, in the twelfth century, he remarked that the Scots of his time
have an affinity of race with the Irish,[25] and the English historians of

the War of Independence speak of the Scots as they do of the Welsh or
the Irish, and they know only one type of Scotsman. We have already
seen the opinion of John Major, the sixteenth-century Scottish historian
and theologian, who had lived much in France, and could write of his
native country from an ab extra stand-point, that the Highlanders speak
Irish and are less respectable than the other Scots; and his opinion was
shared by two foreign observers, Pedro de Ayala and Polydore Vergil.
The former remarks on the difference of speech, and the latter says that
the more civilized Scots have adopted the English tongue. In like
manner English writers about the time of the Union of the Crowns
write of the Highlanders as Scotsmen who retain their ancient language.
Camden, indeed, speaks of the Lowlands as being Anglo-Saxon in
origin, but he restricts his remark to the district which had formed part
of the kingdom of Northumbria.[26]
We should, of course, expect to find that the gradually widening breach
in manners and language between Highlanders and Lowlanders
produced some dislike for the Highland robbers and their Irish tongue,
and we do occasionally, though rarely, meet some indication of this.
There are not many references to the Highlanders in Scottish literature
earlier than the sixteenth century. "Blind Harry" (Book VI, ll. 132-140)
represents an English soldier as using, in addressing Wallace, first a
mixture of French and Lowland Scots, and then a mixture of Lowland
Scots and Gaelic:
"Dewgar, gud day,