line was not extended either upwards
or downwards into any form of letter. Straight or hyphen lines, at the
end both of words--especially of the proper names--and of the whole
inscriptions, have been found on various Romano-British stones, as on
those of Margan (the Naen Llythyrog), Stackpole, and Clydau, and have
been supposed to be the letter I, placed horizontally, while all the
other letters in these inscriptions are placed perpendicularly. Is it
not more probable that they are merely points? Or do they not sometimes,
like tied letters, represent both an I and a stop?

WHO IS COMMEMORATED IN THE CAT-STANE INSCRIPTION?

In the account which Mr. George Chalmers gives of the Antiquities of
Linlithgowshire in his _Caledonia_, there is no notice of the
inscription on the Cat-stane taken; but, with a degree of vagueness of
which this author is seldom guilty, he remarks, that this monolith "is
certainly a memorial of some conflict and of _some_ person."[147]

Is it not possible, however, to obtain a more definite idea of the
person who is named on the stone, and in commemoration of whom it was
raised?

In the extracts that have been already given, it has been suggested, by
different writers whom I have cited, that the Cat-stane commemorates a
Scottish king, Constantine IV., or a Pictish king, Geth. Let us first
examine into the probability of these two suggestions.

1. CONSTANTINE?--In the olden lists of our Scottish kings, four King
Constantines occur. The Cat-stane has been imagined by Lord Buchan and
Mr. Muckarsie to have been raised in memory of the last of these--viz.,
of Constantine IV., who fell in a battle believed by these writers to
have been fought on this ground in the last years of the tenth century,
or about A.D. 995. In the _New Statistical Account of Scotland_, the
Reverend Mr. Tait, the present minister of Kirkliston, farther speaks of
the "Catstean (as) supposed to be a corruption of Constantine, and to
have been erected to the honour of Constantine, one of the commanders in
the same engagement, who was there slain and interred."[148]

In the year 970 the Scottish king Culen died, having been "killed
(according to the Ulster Annals), by the Britons in open battle;" and in
A.D. 994, his successor, Kenneth MacMalcolm, the founder of Brechin, was
slain.[149] Constantine, the son of Culen, reigned for the next year
and a half, and fell in a battle for the crown fought between him and
Kenneth, the son