The Catstane is a small, rough rock about 4 feet high on the South bank of the River Almond to the South of Carlowrie, Midlothian, near to the river's confluence with the Gogar Burn. It bears four lines of Latin inscription, and is apparently a burial memorial, near to a number of long cist burials, now lost. Indeed, the site is no longer accessible, being within Northern perimeter fence of Edinburgh Airport. Click here for a location map provided by StreetMap. Click here for an arial photograph provided by Multimap.
The Cat Stane, Edinburgh Airport
Unfortunately, it is now impossible to gain a close view of the Cat Stane without special permission from Edinburgh Airport (although we hope to gain permission in the near future!). However, there are a number of old engravings and descriptions available, not least in James Young Simpson's "The Cat-Stane, Edinburghshire: is it not The Tombstone of the Grandfather of Hengist and Horsa?" (1861). This is the same Simpson, a local from Bathgate who, aside from being an enthusiastic amateur antiquarian, discovered chloroform!
The Catstane, from Simpson (1861)
The above engraving was also used by Romilly-Allen and Anderson in The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1903). Here, the Latin inscription is given as:
IN OC TV
MVLO IACIT
VETTA F(ILIVS)
VICTI
Romilly-Allen and Anderson give this as: "Beneath this mound lies Vetta, son of Victus". However, more recently, W.A. Cummins has given it as: "In [h]oc tumulo iac[it] Vetta f[ilia] Victi", meaning "In this tomb (mound) lies Vetta, daughter of Victus" - Cummins, The Picts and Their Symbols (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), p.161. However, more controversially, he also claims that this stone is of locally Pictish origin, presumably on account of the existence of long cist burials found there, and the dubious assumption that long cists inherently signify Pictish presence or influence. But Bede certainly says that modern Kinneil on the Eastern end of the Antonine Wall was called, in Pictish, Peanfahel, suggesting that there were at least Picts in West Lothian - presumably, Cummins conjectures, the real origin of Bede's phrase "the Southern Picts". The Catstane, of course, is only around ten miles East of Kinneil/Peanfahel. However, the names on the Catstane barely seem like Latinised Pictish! On the other hand, the fact that this stone is named "Cat" could (tenuously) suggest a Pictish connection with the Pictish name Cait, still preserved in modern Caithness in the far North-east. Furthermore, there is, of course, the single genuinely Pictish stone from Edinburgh a few miles even further East. As with any Pictish debate, however, there are too many imponderables to allow for a conclusive argument! Moreover, if there is a Celtic root behind the modern name of the stone, it is far more likely to be cath, meaning "battle" - a common Brythonic placename element in Lowland Scotland. Equally, the immediately adjacent settlements bearing the name Carlowrie ("Cærlowrie", as late as the C19th) could suggest strong Brythonic connections. A further intriguing connection is with the Caiy Stane a few miles to the South, which has also been known as the Cat Stane.
The Cat Stane, Edinburgh Airport
However, Simpson ostentatiously claimed that the Catstane represents the tombstone of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, the C5th leaders of the Jutish mercenaries employed by the British King Vortigern and who rebelled against the Britons in Kent, thus precipitating the entire history of the wars between the Britons and the immigrant "English" tribes. See the Ogmios Press online version of Simpson's paper here. What, exactly, their grandfather would be doing in Kirkliston is less than obvious... Equally, Simpson gives the inscription as:
IN OC TV
MVLO JACIT
VETTA F
VICTA
The Cat Stane was also mentioned by the famous Welsh antiquary, Edward Llwyd, and Simpson gives a reproduction of what Llwyd saw around 1700:
The Catstane, from Simpson (1861) after Llwyd (1700)
It is possible that Simpson had the following passage in mind, from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People:
The two first commanders are said to have been Hengist and Horsa. Of whom Horsa, being afterwards slain in battle by the Britons, was buried in the eastern parts of Kent, where a monument, bearing his name, is still in existence. They were the sons of Victgilsus, whose father was Vecta, son of Woden; from whose stock the royal race of many provinces deduce their original. In a short time, swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they began to increase so much, that they became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them. Then, having on a sudden entered into league with the Picts, whom they had by this time repelled by the force of their arms, they began to turn their weapons against their confederates.
Again, a possibly tantalising Pictish connection, but in Bede we have Victgilsus son of Vecta son of Woden, which still seems a little too far away from "Vetta, son of Victus". Maybe Victus son of Vetta would almost work, but even then...
The Cat Stane, from Simpson (1861)
What does seem fairly certain, from analysis of the Catstane inscription and radio carbon dating is that the burial ground immediately associated with the stone is from either the C5th or C6th, and is definitely Christian, given the orientation of the graves - cf. Lloyd & Jennifer Laing, The Picts and the Scots (Sutton Publishing, 1996), p.24. Notably, the Laings don't rule out the possibility of a Pictish provenance for the Catstane cemetery, although unlike Cummins, they don't go so far as to specifically claim that it was! In 1864, nine rows of burial cists were discovered some 21 yards to the South-east of the Catstane, yielding no less than 51 individual burials, and an older, presumably pre-Christian burial cairn containing several skeletons was discovered in 1830 around 60 yards to the West. Unfortunately, modern needs have destroyed these sites, but it seems that the Catstane was part of a much larger and quite significant site in its day.