The story told in these quaint words was, without any doubt, read by Shakespeare, and in the alembic of his imagination grew into the immortal play. Touched by his genius, the names Dunsinnane and Birnam, lying close to Scone, are luminous points on the map, upon which the eye loves to linger. The incidents may not be authentic. We are told they are not. But Macbeth certainly slew Duncan and was King of Scotland, and finally met his Nemesis at Dunsinnane, near Birnam Wood, where Malcolm III., called Canmore, avenged his father's death, slew the usurper, and was crowned king at Scone, 1054. The historic point selected by Shakespeare {255} has an important significance of a different sort. It was the dividing line between the old and the new. Macbeth's reign marks the close of the Celtic period. With the advent of Malcolm III., there commenced that infusion of Teutonic political ideals which was destined at last to merge the Anglo-Saxon and the Scottish Celt into one political organism. Malcolm's mother was the sister of the Earl of Northumberland. So the son of Duncan was half-English; and he became more than half-English when, somewhat later, he married Margaret, sister of his friend and guest, "Edgar the Atheling," last claimant of the Saxon throne, who had taken refuge with him while vainly plotting against William the Conqueror. This was in 1067, the year after the conquest. So at this critical period in English history, the door leading to the South, which had until now been kept bolted and barred, except for hostile bands, was left ajar. A host of Saxon nobles, following their leader, Edgar, streamed into Scotland, and soon formed the most powerful element about the throne, bringing new speech, new ways, new customs; in fact, doing at Scone precisely what the Norman {256} nobles were at the same time doing at London, substituting a more advanced civilization for an existing one. The manners of the Norman nobles were not more odious to the Saxon nobility in England, than were those of the Saxons to the proud thanes and people in Scotland. Then Malcolm began to bestow large grants of land upon his foreign favorites, accompanied by an almost unlimited authority over their vassals, and feudalism was introduced into the free land. With these changes there gradually formed a dialect, a mingling of the two forms of speech, which became the language of the Court, and of the powerful dwellers in the Lowlands. And so, in succeeding reigns, the process of blending went on, the wave of a changed civilization driving before it the Celtic speech, manners, and habits, into their impregnable fastnesses in the Highlands, there to preserve the national type in proud persistence. Such was the condition for one hundred and fifty years, the Crown in open alliance with aliens, subverting established usages and fastening an exotic feudalism upon the South; while an angry and defiant Celtic people remained unsubdued in the North. {257}