THE Romans may have marched far into the North-east of Scotland trying to impose imperial rule on the teuchters, but on the West side when they got to the vicinity of Duntocher they called a halt. Why so?

You'll perhaps recall that a few years back I made mention in this column of the vast relief map on a wall near the Coliseum in Rome showing the extent of the great Empire at its height. And there it is, a line across Scotland's slender waist representing the Antonine Wall, built around 150AD, and marking the end of the civilised world.

What was it, apart from the weather, that made the Romans declare, ''Bugger this for a gemme o' dominoes'', or the Latin equivalent, and proceed to put up their earth and stone rampart from the Forth to the Clyde. What was it they saw from the bus garage in Old Kilpatrick, peering through the drizzle into the misty middle distance? What stopped these great warrior adventurers in their tracks? Why, it was the Attacoti, of course, the painted tribe who dwelt beside Loch Lomond and who were top cannibals. As one Roman scholar so

neatly put it: ''When hunting in the woods the Attacoti preferred the shepherd to his flock!''

Everyone interested in the more macabre aspects of Scotland's story must know the legend of Sawney Bean, a cave-dweller of the South-west in the reign of James VI, who lived by robbery and murder, tidying up the crime scene by devouring his victims. What might be less well-known is that, from the Attacoti onwards, there were always Scots with a taste for human flesh. Mind you, we were, apparently, a bit picky. According to St Jerome, Scots selected only the most fleshy and delicate parts for eating. No primitive bone-chompers us yins.

One scholar speculates: ''There is reason to fear that cannibalism was not quite extinct in Scotland even in ages which may be deemed comparatively civilised.'' And the evidence: Andrew Wintoun writes about a man, Chrysten Cleek, who lived near Perth around 1339, and ''set settis (traps) commonly, children and women for to slay''. He ate as much human flesh as he could get his hands on. This reference comes in stanzas in which Wintoun is discussing the devastation around Perth caused by the ravages of the armies of Edward III.

We were wrong if we thought the Bean family of Ballantrae were our only cannibal clan. Around 1460, as the reign of James II drew to a close, Lindsay of Pitscottie described the capture of a brigand who haunted the byways of Angus. According to Pitscottie, ''this miserable man had ane execrable fashion, to tak all young men and children he could steal away quietly and eat them, and the younger they were, esteemed them the mair tender and delicious''.

The sequel to this tale is so unsettling and distressing that I have to class it as one of the most gruesome I've encountered in many years trawling the backwaters of Scottish history. For their ''damnable abuse'' the Angus man-eater, his wife, and bairns, were all burnt, except a one-year-old girl who was saved and taken to be brought up in Dundee.

Ah, I hear you sigh, a happy ending. Oh no, most definitely no! After she reached a ''woman's years'', the girl was condemned and burnt for her probably imagined and certainly innocent part in those cannibal feasts all those years before. A huge crowd, mostly women, cursed her for her damnable deeds. The girl, according to Pitscottie, was unrepentant and told the throng: ''If ye had experience of eating men and women's flesh, ye wold think it so delicious, that ye wold forbear it again.''

Unjust, unbelievable, terrifying, just three adjectives which this tale provokes. The Scots anthropophagi should be recognised, however, as part of our occult history. I've always wanted to conclude a column with the line, ''Hannibal Lecter, eat your heart out!'' I don't suppose there will be a better opportunity.