448 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



period is marked by an inscription which, though not bearing any 

 tokens of Christianity, is of the Eoman rather than of the Celtic type, 

 and therefore I refer it to the period after Constantine, hic iactt 

 istvmvlo vetta Filius victe. This is inscribed on a stone pillar, which 

 is called the Catstone, i. e., " battle-stone," at Kirkliston in Lothian. 

 Immediately to the east of it many stone cists have been found, formed 

 of undressed flags set edgeways, containing skeletons. About sixty 

 yards to the west stood a large tumulus, which was opened in 1824, 

 and found to contain several skeletons. Four miles to the east there 

 were formerly two very large conical cairns called also Catstones, in 

 which were cists containing skeletons and weapons of iron and bronze. 

 To the north-west of these, a few yards distant, is another stone pillar 

 bearing the same name, and about it many skeletons have been found 

 irregularly interred without cists. The rude earthworks of an ancient 

 camp still exist, and more extensive entrenchments once existed in the 

 same neighbourhood. Thus abundant traces of a bloody conflict have 

 been preserved even to our own times, and how many may have been 

 effaced by cultivation during fifteen centuries past ! 



It is clear that the Teutonic race were actively engaged throughout 

 this struggle with the forces of the empire. It was by their aid that 

 Octavius was enabled to assert his independence, early in the reign of 

 Constantine. Where Pordun mentions "other" allies, without speci- 

 fying their nationality, Ammianus supplies " Saxons," s. a. 364 ; and 

 later he seems to call them Yecturiones, s. a. 368 ; since to Picts and 

 Saxons of the earlier notice Dicaledones and Yecturiones of the latter 

 correspond, and Dicaledones are surely Picts. It was to Scandinavia 

 (according to the Welsh Brut) thatConan's second flight was directed. 

 The panegyrists say that the Saxons were vanquished by Theodosius, 

 and Pordun and Boece that [Norway was the refuge of some of the 

 fugitives from the contest. When then we find this monument 

 commemorating a person whose name clearly indicates his Teutonic 

 nationality, and naming as his father one whose people may well have 

 been known as Yecturiones, we have surely good reason for regarding 

 it as the monument of a chieftain of this people who fell in the con- 

 flict ; and that his epitaph should have been written more Romano not 

 more Brittannico, is perfectly consistent with the statement that Max- 

 imus, a Roman by birth and education, devoted himself after the battle 

 to the honourable interment of the slain. [Now these two names occur 

 in the genealogy of the Kings of Kent, Woden, his son Wecta (or 

 Wither, as iEthelward calls him), his son Witta, his son Wictgils, 

 his sons Hors and Hencgest. In my " Essay on the Conquest of 

 Britain by the Saxons," and in my " Genealogy of the Kings of Kent," 

 I have shown that Woden commenced his migration to Scandinavia 

 about a. d. 325, at which time he was the father of several sons of 

 mature age, and that Hors and Hencgest came to Britain a. d. 428, 

 Hencgest being then the father of a marriageable daughter. Nearly 

 intermediate between these dates is that of the battle of which we are 

 speaking, a. d. 369. Witta, the grandson of Woden, and grandfather 



