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The Irish Kingdom of Scotland
and the alteration of outlook and purpose is fundamental.
While the old literary tradition marches forward, draw-
ing perpetually from the original fountain, the new literature
talks the accent and thought of the empire. It has
become practical : the purpose is not any longer primarily
to thrill, to terrify, or to amuse, but is a call to action,
to reformation and to sacrifice. Its heroes are not gods
and righting men. They are monastic founders and
scholars, poets and philosophers, legislators and saints.
The biographies of the distinguished Irishmen of the
epoch constitute in themselves a volume of literature that
reconstructs for us the old Irish world and peoples
it with living men and women in whom legend and won-
der commingle with ripe scholarship and complete in-
tellectual integrity.
4. THE MILITARY CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND
It was from the midst of an Ireland thus intimately
known to us and thus carrying on the tradition of Irish
as well as Greek and Roman culture that the men who
conquered, colonized and Christianized the northern half
of Britain went forth to their work. Little more than
an outline is necessary to delineate the steps by which the
military conquest of Scotland was completed.
Irish Scots had crossed the Strath-na-Maolle of the
Gaels, the northern arm of the Mare Hibernicum of the
Romans, and the North Channel of modern days, and
settled in that part of Caledonia which the Romans called
Vespasiania, some hundreds of years before Angle, or
Saxon, or Jute, had appeared on the rim of civilization.
The Venerable Bede refers to the migration: "In course
of time Britain, besides the Britons and Picts, received a
third nation, Scotia, who, issuing from Hibernia, under