It would be proper to conclude this tour of the Black Death in Britain with some account of its spread to Scotland. Unfortunately, little detail is recorded. According to Knighton{396} the Scots were delighted when they heard of the fate which had overtaken their hated neighbours in England. They regarded it as a proper retribution for past offences and, as the plague swirled over Cumberland and Durham, massed their forces in the forest of Selkirk, ‘laughing at their enemies’ and awaiting the best moment to invade. It was their last laugh for, as they were on the point of moving into action, ‘the fearful mortality fell upon them and the Scots were scattered by sudden and savage death so that, within a short period, some five thousand died’. The panicstricken soldiers dispersed throughout Scotland, dying by the side of the road or carrying the infection with them to their homes.
‘God and Sen Mungo, Sen Ninian and Seynt Andrew scheld us this day and ilka day fro Goddis grace and the foule deth that Ynglessh men dyene upon.’{397} Such was the prayer that the Scottish soldier was trained to say as he watched the sufferings of the English on the other side of the frontier. It is certain that his prayers went for little but so little attention is paid to the Black Death by historians of Scotland that one is tempted to believe that St Mungo, St Ninian and St Andrew must have spared their admirers some part at least of the tribulations of other less well protected Europeans. One of the few people living at the time of the plague whose account survives is John of Fordun.{398}
‘In the year 1350,’ he wrote,
there was, in the kingdom of Scotland, so great a pestilence and plague among men… as, from the beginning of the world even unto modern times, had never been heard of by man, nor is found in books, for the enlightenment of those who come after. For, to such a pitch did that plague wreak its cruel spite, that nearly a third of mankind were thereby made to pay the debt of nature. Moreover, by God’s will, this evil led to a strange and unwonted kind of death, insomuch that the flesh of the sick was somehow puffed out and swollen, and they dragged out their earthly life for barely two days. Now this everywhere attacked especially the meaner sort and common people; – seldom the magnates. Men shrank from it so much that, through fear of contagion, sons, fleeing as from the face of leprosy or from an adder, durst not go and see their parents in the throes of death.
This all-too familiar description could have applied as well to any other country. Androw of Wyntoun,{399} who was contemporaneous with John of Fordun but certainly never read the latter’s chronicles, confirms that Scotland suffered severelv.{400}
Finally, the Book of Pluscarden,{401} a slightly later chronicle but still written dose enough to the date of the plague to have some ring of authenticity, also refers to a third of the population being slain and to the poor suffering far worse than the rich.
‘They were attacked with inflammation and lingered barely four and twenty hours,’ noted the anonymous author, concluding more hopefully: ‘The sovereign remedy is to pay vows to St Sebastian, as appears more clearly in the legend of his life.’
