in which the battlefield of Harlaw is situated abounds to this day in Celtic place-names, and, not many miles away, the Gaelic tongue may still be heard at Braemar or at Tomintoul.  It was not to a racial battle between Celt and Saxon that the Earl of Mar and the Provost of Aberdeen, aided by the Frasers, marched out to Harlaw, in July, 1411, to meet Donald of the Isles.  Had the clansmen been victorious there would certainly have been a Celtic revival; but this was not the danger most dreaded by the victorious Lowlanders.  The battle of Harlaw was part of the struggle with England.  Donald of the Isles was the enemy of Scottish independence, and his success would mean English supremacy.  He had taken up the role of “the Disinherited” of the preceding century, just as the Earl of March had done some years before.  As time passed, and civilization progressed in the Lowlands while the Highlands maintained their integrity, the feeling of separation grew more strongly marked; and as the inhabitants of the Lowlands intermarried with French and English, the differences of blood became more evident and hostility became unavoidable.  But any such abrupt racial division as Mr. Freeman drew between the true Scots and the Scottish Lowlanders stands much in need of proof.

Harlaw was an incident in the never-ending struggle with England.  It was succeeded, in 1416 or 1417, by an unfortunate expedition into England, known as the “Foul Raid”, and after the Foul Raid came the battle of Bauge.  They are all part of one and the same story; although Harlaw might seem an internal complication and Bauge an act of unprovoked aggression, both are really as much part of the English war as is the Foul Raid or the battle of Bannockburn itself.  The invasion of France by Henry V reminded the Scots that the English could be attacked on French soil as well as in Northumberland.  So the Earl of Buchan, a son of Albany, was sent to France at the head of an army, in answer to the dauphin’s request for help.  In March, 1421, the Scots defeated the English at Bauge and captured the Earl of Somerset.  The death of Henry V, in the following year, and the difficulties of the English government led to the return of the young King of Scots.  The Regent Albany had been succeeded in 1420 by his son, who was weak and incompetent, and Scotland longed for its rightful king.  James had been carefully educated in England, and the dreary years of his captivity have enriched Scottish literature by the King’s Quair: 

  “More sweet than ever a poet’s heart
   Gave yet to the English tongue”.

Albany seems to have made all due efforts to obtain his nephew’s release, and James was in constant communication with Scotland.  He had been forced to accompany Henry V to France, and was present at the siege of Melun, where Henry refused quarter to the Scottish allies of France, although England and Scotland were at war.  Although constantly complaining of his imprisonment, and of the treatment accorded to him in England, James brought home with him, when his release was negotiated in 1423-24, an English bride, Joan Beaufort, the heroine of the Quair.  She was the daughter of Somerset, who had been captured at Bauge, and grand-daughter of John of Gaunt.