Caledonia

When the Romans took up occupation in the lower portion of what is now Scotland, they called the woad-painted tribes of the misty north the “Caledones” or “Caledonii”, and the land “Caledonia”.

Writing of the inhabitants of the north, the Roman historian Tacitus described them as a fierce people with “red hair and large limbs” and ready for a fight.  They were the dangerous and rebellious barbarians unwilling to yield to Rome.  In what was likely too great an effort to maintain against high mountain ranges, little potential economic gain and the guerilla tactics of the Caledonian tribes, Rome retreated from the boundary of the northern Antonine Wall further south to Hadrian’s wall.

But the name became a badge of honor and a term of endearment for Scotland; especially when there was a longing for home that could only be filled by their return to it.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood,

Land of my sires! what mortal hand

Can e'er untie the filial band,

That knits me to thy rugged strand!

Walter Scott The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto VI, Stanza 2.