These Saxon allies were very probably under a leader who claimed
royal descent from Woden, and consequently under an ancestor or
pre-relative of Hengist and Horsa.

6. The battle-ground between the two armies was, in part at least, the
district placed between the two Roman walls, and consequently included
the tract in which the Cat-stane is placed; this district being erected
by Theodosius, after its subjection, into a fifth Roman province.

7. The palaeographic characters of the inscription accord with the idea
that it was cut about the end of the fourth century.

8. The Latin is the only language[215] known to have been used in
British inscriptions and other writings in these early times by the
Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists and conquerors of the
island.

9. The occasional erection of monuments to Saxon leaders is proved by
the fact mentioned by Bede, that in his time, or in the eighth century,
there stood in Kent a monument commemorating the death of Horsa.[216]

* * * * *

If, then, as these reasons tend at least to render probable, the
Cat-stane be the tombstone of Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and
Horsa, this venerable monolith is not only interesting as one of our
most ancient national historic monuments, but it corroborates the
floating accounts of the early presence of the Saxons upon our coast; it
presents to us the two earliest individual Saxon names known in British
history; it confirms, so far as it goes, the accuracy of the genealogy
of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa, as recorded by Bede and our early
chroniclers; while at the same time it forms in itself a connecting
link, as it were, between the two great invasions of our island by the
Roman and Saxon--marking as it does the era of the final declinature of
the Roman dominion among us, and the first dawn and commencement of that
Saxon interference and sway in the affairs of Britain, which was
destined to give to England a race of new kings and new inhabitants, new
laws, and a new language.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 128: The farm is called "Briggs, or Colstane" (Catstane), in a
plan belonging to Mr. Hutchison, of his estate of Caerlowrie, drawn up
in 1797. In this plan the bridge (brigg) over the Almond, at the
boathouse, is laid down. But in another older plan which Mr. H. has of
the property, dated 1748, there is no bridge, and in its stead there is
a representation of the ferry-boat crossing the