[8]
As the Romans never occupied Sutherland or Caithness or even came near
their borders, their inhabitants were never disarmed or prevented
from the practice of war, and thus enfeebled like the more southerly
Britons.
After the departure, in 410, of the Romans, St. Ninian sent his
missionaries over Pictland, but darkness broods over its history
thenceforward for a hundred and fifty years. Picts, Scots of Ireland,
Angles and Saxons swarmed southwards, eastwards, and westwards
respectively into England, and ruined Romano-British civilisation,
which the Britons, unskilled in arms, were powerless to defend, as the
lamentations of Gildas abundantly attest.
In 563 Columba, the Irish soldier prince and missionary, whose Life
by Adamnan still survives,[9] landed in Argyll from Ulster, introduced
another form of Christian worship, also, like the Pictish, "without
reference to the Church of Rome," and from his base in Iona not only
preached and sent preachers to the north-western and northern Picts,
but in some measure brought among them the higher civilisation then
prevailing in Ireland. About the same time Kentigern, or St. Mungo,
a Briton of Wales, carried on missionary work in Strathclyde and in
Pictland, and even, it is said, sent preachers to Orkney.
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