held it as a fixed principle, that their happiness and security could not be obtained but by human sacrifices. The islands of Rugen, Zealand, and Upsal, were famous for the numerous victims there offered. The Gauls, the Cimbri, the Norwegians, and the Icelanders, slaughtered their victims, like the Britons, in various ways; and the Germans were so devoted to this shocking custom, that no business of any moment was transacted among them without being prefaced by the blood of men.* Pliny intimates that the Druids ate part of the human victim, which is not improbable, for this also seems to have been a very ancient and general practice. In the island of Chios it was a religious custom to tear a man limb from limb; and, according to Porphyry, the same prevailed at Tendos. The Lamiæ, who inhabited different parts of Italy, Greece, Pontus, and Lybia, are represented in the same unfavourable light. Philetratus speaks of their bestial appetite, and Aristotle alludes to practices still more shocking, as if they tore open the bodies big with child, that they might get at the infant to devour it. Strabo also mentions that the ancient Lamiæ were equally cruel. The Sirens, on the coast of Campania, are celebrated for their alluring arts and cruel practices; and Silenus, in a passage quoted by Euripides, says, that the Cyclopians feasted greedily on the flesh of their unhappy victims. So very awful, it seems, was the impression of the mysterious cruelty of the Druids on the minds of strangers, that the Roman veterans dreaded to approach the sacred groves where they performed their bloody worship.† The Britons had several annual festivals, which were observed with great devotion; of this kind was the august solemnity of cutting the misletoe of the oak, which was * We might quote innumerable passages from the ancients to prove the universality of this horrid custom. The ancient Egyptians, so justly celebrated for their wisdom and humanity, burnt human victims alive upon the altars of Typhon and Juno. Similar practices prevailed among the ancient nations of India and the tribes of Arabia. The Persians buried their victims alive. Plutarch informs us that Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, entombed twelve persons quick under ground for the good of her soul. Aristomenes, the Messinian, sacrificed three hundred Lacedemonians, among whom was the king of Sparta, at the altar of Jupiter. The Lacedemonians offered the like number of captives at the altar of Mars. The ancient Romans were accustomed to the like sacrifices; they both devoted themselves to the infernal gods, and constrained others to submit to the same horrid doom. The nations of Canaan and the Carthagenians chose the most excellent victims. Those who were sacrificed to Moloch, or Saturn, the god of light and fire, were thrown into the arms of a molten idol, which stood in the midst of a large fire, and was red with heat. The arms of it were stretched out, with the hands turned upwards, as it were to receive them, yet sloping downwards, so that they dropt from them into a glowing furnace below. At one public sacrifice, the Carthagenians offered two hundred sons of the nobility, besides three hundred other victims who presented themselves voluntarily. Sometimes they were otherwise slaughtered, and by the very hands of their parents, who after the warmest expressions of kindness and endearments, stabbed them to the heart, and with the warm blood besmeared the grim visage of the idol Ashteroth, or Baal. These cruel rites were practised also by the Israelites. Even in modern times the custom of human sacrifices prevailed in a great degree at Mexico, under the mild government of the Peruvians, and in most parts of America. In Africa it is still kept up, where, in the inland parts, they sacrifice the captives taken in war to their Fetiches; and the same custom continues to be observed throughout the islands of the South Sea. + The custom was condemned by Augustus, and punished and abolished by Tiberius and Claudius. performed by the Arch-Druid, and it is thus described by Pliny: "The Druids held nothing so sacred as the misletoe of the oak; as this is very scarce, and rarely to be found, when any of it is discovered they go with great pomp and ceremony on a certain day to gather it. When they have got every thing in readiness under the oak, both for the sacrifice and the banquet which they make on this great festival, they begin by tying two white bulls to it by the horns; then one of the Druids, clothed in white, mounts the tree, and with a knife of gold cuts the misletoe, which is received in a white sagum; this done, they proceed to their sacrificing and feasting." This festival was kept on the sixth day of the moon, and as near as this permitted to the tenth of March, which was their new-year's day. The first day of May was a great annual festival in honour of the sun. Midsummer day and the first of November were likewise annual festivals; the one to implore the friendly influence of heaven upon their fields, and the other to return thanks for the favourable seasons and the fruits of the earth. It is also probable that all their gods and goddesses, their sacred groves, their hallowed hills, lakes, and fountains, had their several annual festivals marked in the Druidish calendar. On these festivals, after the appointed acts of devotion were finished, the rest of the time was spent in feasting, singing, dancing, and all kinds of diversion. That it was unlawful to build temples to the immortal gods, or to worship them under walls or roofs, was an article in the Druidical creed*. All their places of worship, therefore, were in the open air, and generally on eminences; but, to prevent being incommoded by the wind and rain, or distracted by the view of external objects, or disturbed by the intrusion of unhallowed feet, when they were either instructing their disciples or performing their religious rites, they selected the deepest recesses of groves and woods for their sacred places. These sacred oak grovest were watered by * During the expedition of Xerxes into Greece, all the Grecian temples were burnt at the instigation of the Magi, because the Grecians were so impious as to circumscribe the habitation of the gods,—their temple being the universal world.-Cicero. + The Jews were strongly infected with the same idolatrous veneration for the oak. Hence the prophet exclaims, "They shall be ashamed of the oaks which they have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.”—Isaiah, c. i. v. 29. Lucan has poetically described one of the Druidical groves above-mentioned in the following manner : "Lucus erat longo nunquam violatus ab ævo," &c. "Not far away, for ages past had stood An old, unviolated, sacred wood; Whose gloomy boughs thick interwoven made some consecrated fountain or river, and enclosed by a ditch or mound. In the centre of the grove was a circular area, inclosed with one or two rows of large stones, set perpendicularly in the earth, which constituted the temple, within which the altar stood on which the sacrifices were offered. There are still many vestiges of these temples in the British isles. The Druidic vestiges in Northumberland will be hereafter described. Although the ancient Britons admitted no image of their gods, at least none in the shape of men or other animals, in their sacred groves, yet they had certain visible symbols or emblems of them. A cube was the symbol of Mercury, and Jupiter was represented by a lofty oak. The oaks used for this purpose were truncated, that they might be the more emblematic of unshaken firmness and stability. Such were those in the Druidical grove described by Lucan: The British Druids exercised their authority in opposing the usurpations of the Roman invaders. Fired with correspondent resentment, that victorious people determined to seek security in the destruction of the Druidic order. In every quarter the British priests were sacrificed to this cruel policy. Those who retired to the isle of Anglesey perished in the flames by the orders of Suetonius; and immediately after, vast numbers were destroyed in the unfortunate revolt of the Britons under Boadicea. From this period the power and glory of the Druids rapidly disappeared. But so deeply rooted were the principles of Druidism in the minds of the Britons, that they equally baffled the power of the Romans and the light of the gospel. Even so late as the eleventh century, Canute found it necessary to promulgate a law against heathenish superstitions. The rude but venerable remains of the ancient Britons in Northumberland will be noticed in subsequent parts of the work. Having given this descriptive sketch of the physical and moral state of the ancient Britons, which includes that of the aboriginal inhabitants of this county, we shall now proceed to take a rapid view of those important occurrences that followed the Roman invasion, and which more particularly relate to the district of Northumberland. ROMAN HISTORY OF NORTHUMBERLAND. HE historical notices concerning the conquest of Northumberland, in the Roman authors, are extremely unsatisfactory, and the events recorded by them to have happened in this part of Britain so imperfectly related, that it becomes difficult to form them into an uninterrupted narration. According to Ptolemy,* the people who inhabited that tract of sea-coast extending from the river Tyne to the Frith of Forth, including the half of Northumberland, the east part of Roxburghshire, the whole of Berwick, and of East Lothian, were called the Otodini. This name is derived, by Baxter, from the British words Ot o dineu, which signify a high and rocky shore: but Chalmers traces the word from the British Odd, or Oth, signifying what tends out from; so Odd-y-tin implies the region tending out from the Tyne. The chief town of the Otodini was at Bremenium, which is admitted to be Rochester, on the Reed water. The neighbouring tribe of the Gadeni inhabited the interior of the country to the west of the Otodini, from the Tyne on the south to the Forth on the north, comprehending the west part of Northumberland, the small district of Cumberland north of the Irthing river, the west part of Roxburgh, the whole of Selkirk, Tweedale, great part of Mid Lothian, and nearly all West Lothian, having Curia, on the Gore water, for their capital. The word Gadeni, Dr. Macpherson ima * The primary guide towards ascertaining the geography of ancient Britain is Ptolemy of Alexandria, the great geographer, mathematician, and astronomer, who flourished towards the middle of the second century. Richard of Cirencester, a monk of Westminster, who lived in the 14th century, composed a "Description of Britain," accompanied with an illustrative map. This industrious monk appears to have wrote from better documents and more copious information than Ptolemy: his authority is therefore followed by the intelligent antiquaries of the present day, who have directed a particular attention to the topographical position of the British tribes. Horsley's Brit. Rom. p. 356. Reynolds' Itin. of Antoninus, p. 35. Chalmers' Caledon. vol. i. p. 59. ROMAN HISTORY OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 21 gines, signified, in the ancient British language, Thieves or Robbers; while others, well acquainted with the British language, imagine that their name is derived from the many groves which, in those days, added both strength and ornament to their picturesque country. But it is generally allowed that both these tribes were either dependants of the Brigantes, or at least confederates with them; for they were occa sionally distinguished by the same name, and in their history and fate they were equally united. The Brigantes were the most numerous and powerful of the British nations. Their territories included that vast tract of country which is now divided into Yorkshire and the county of Durham on the east coast, and Lancashire, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and some portion of Northumberland, on the west. Their name is supposed to imply, in the British language, the People of the Summits. The invasion of the southern shores of Great Britain by the Romans under Cæsar, was opposed by such a combination of bravery and policy, as discouraged the repetition of such expeditions for upwards of a century. The conquest of our island was at length undertaken by some of the ablest generals of Rome. The discipline and perseverance of the Roman armies gradually prevailed over the disunited but vigourous efforts of the natives, and their authority was successively acknowledged by the southern tribes. The inhabitants of these northern parts appear to have been in alliance with the Romans, till the conjugal infidelity of Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, involved the nation in a civil war. The Romans attached themselves to the perfidious queen; but the injured husband, after a long and destructive war, which he conducted with consummate skill and bravery, surmounted all opposition, and was reinstated on his throne. About twenty years afterwards, in the reign of Vespasian, the Romans, under Petilius Cerealis, defeated the Brigantes in several severe battles, and spread desolation and terror through those parts of their country which they could not entirely subdue. The Romans had not yet ventured to penetrate into Northumberland; but, in A. D. 80, Agricola led his legions from Mancunium, (the Manchester of the present time), and marched into the north along the western coast.* Having, partly by the terror of his arms, and partly by the fame of his clemency, subdued many unknown tribes, he endeavoured to secure his conquests by building a chain of forts across the isthmus between the Firths of Clyde and Forth. This consummate commander next penetrated into the recesses of Caledonia,† and after an obstinate battle defeated the Britons under Galgacus, at the foot of the Grampian mountains. After this victory Agricola slowly conducted his troops back through the conquered tribes, and in the year 84, traversed the territories of the Otodini and Gadeni, and took winter quarters, it is supposed, on the south of the Tyne and the Solway. This appears to ness. Horsley's Rom. p. 43. Whitaker's Hist. of Manch. 8vo. vol. i. p. 43. + The Caledonians were a powerful tribe that inhabited the mountainous regions between Perth and InverAs these interior districts were, in early ages, covered with an extensive forest, the British people gave t the descriptive appellation of Celyddon, signifying in their language the coverts. This British word was latinized by the Romans Caledonia and Caledonii, which term was usually extended to the whole country which lay northward of the Forth. Pliny mentions the Caledonian forests -Owen's Dict. in vo. Welch Archaiology, vol. i. page 150. Pliny, l. i. e. xvi. |