In 603 Rhydderch appears to have died, and Bede tells us that Aidan came against Aedilfrid with a large and powerful army. It consisted no doubt of a combined force of Scots and Britons, at whose head Aidan was placed as Guledic, and he appears also to have had the aid of Irish Picts. He advanced against the Bernician kingdom, and entered Aedilfrid’s territories by the vale of the Liddel, from the upper end of which a pass opens to the vale of the Teviot, and another to that of the North Tyne. The great rampart called the Catrail, which separated the Anglic kingdom from that of the Strathclyde Britons, crosses the upper part of the vale of the Liddel. Its remains appear at Dawstaneburn, whence it goes on to Dawstanerig, and here, before he could cross the mountain range which separates Liddesdale from these valleys, Aidan was encountered by Aedilfrid and completely defeated, his army being cut to pieces at a place called by Bede ‘Degsastan,’ in which we can recognise the name of Dawstane, still known there. On the part of Aedilfrid, his brother Theobald, called by Tighernac, Eanfraith, was slain by Maeluma, the son of Baedan, king of Ulster, and the body of men he led into battle cut off.[183] On Nine Stone Rig, opposite Dawstane, there still exists a circle of nine stones; and on the farm of Whisgills, some miles lower down the valley, there is an enormous cairn in the middle of an extensive moor, and near it a large stone set on end about five feet high, called the standing stone; and at Milnholm, on the Liddel, an ancient cross of one stone. These are probably memorials of the battle and flight which followed it. It was fought within sight of the ancient hill-fort which we have identified as Coria, one of the cities of the Ottadeni in the second century. Bede adds that this battle was fought in the year 603, and the eleventh year of the reign of Aedilfrid, which lasted for twenty-four years, and that from this time forth till his own day (that is, till 731), none of the kings of the Scots ventured to come in battle against the nation of the Angles, and thus terminated the contest between these tribes for the possession of the northern province substantially in favour of the latter people, who under Aedilfrid now retained possession of the eastern districts from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, as far west as the river Esk. ----- Footnote 102: Hibernia is first mentioned as being also called Scotia by Isidore of Seville in 580. Footnote 103: Procop. _Bell. Goth._ iv. 20. (A.D. 540-550.) Footnote 104: Steph. Byzant. _De Urbibus_ (A.D. 490). Footnote 105: Exceptis diversorum prolixioribus promontoriorum tractibus, quæ arcuatis oceani sinibus ambuitur.—_Hist. Gild._ § 3. Footnote 106: