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A period of rather longer duration succeeded to the Roman rule, in which the native and foreign races in the country first struggled for the succession to their dominant authority in the island, and then contended among themselves for the possession of its fairest portions.

The third period commences with the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century, and lasted for two centuries and a half, till the Scottish dynasty became extinct in the person of Malcolm the Second.

There then succeeded, during the fourth period, which lasted for a century, a renewed struggle between the different races in the country, which, although the Scoto-Saxon dynasty, uniting through the female line the blood of the Scots and the Saxons, succeeded in seating themselves firmly on the throne, cannot be said to have terminated in the general recognition of their royal authority till the reign of David the First.

During the first three periods of her early history, Scotland may be viewed as a purely Celtic kingdom, with a population composed of different branches of the race popularly called Celtic. But during the subsequent periods, though the connection between Scotland with her Celtic population and Lothian with her Anglic inhabitants was at first but slender, her monarchs identified themselves more and more with their Teutonic subjects, with whom the Celtic tribes maintained an ineffectual struggle, and gradually retreated before their increasing power and colonisation, till they became confined to the mountains and western islands. The name of Scot passed over to the English-speaking people, and their language became known as the Scotch; while the Celtic language, formerly known as Scotch, became stamped with the title of Irish.

What may be called the Celtic period of Scottish history has been peculiarly the field of a fabulous narrative of no ordinary perplexity; but while the origin of these fables can be very distinctly traced to the rivalry and ambition of ecclesiastical establishments and church parties, and to the great national controversy excited by the claim of England to a feudal supremacy over Scotland, still each period of its early history will be found not to be without sources of information, slender and meagre as no doubt they are, but possessing indications of substantial truth, from which some perception of its real character can be obtained.

Before the early history of any country can be correctly ascertained, there is a preliminary process which must be gone through, and which is quite essential to a sound treatment of the subject; and that is a critical examination of the authorities upon which that history is based. This is especially necessary with regard to the early history of Scotland. The whole of the existing materials for her early history must be collected together and subjected to a critical examination. Those which seem to contain fragments of genuine history must be disentangled from the less trustworthy chronicles which have been tampered with for ecclesiastical or national purposes, and great discrimination exercised in the use of the latter. The purely spurious matter must be entirely rejected. It is by such a process only that we can hope to dispel the fabulous atmosphere which surrounds this period of Scottish history, and attempt to base it upon anything like a genuine foundation.

These works, however, are all more or less tainted by the same defect, that they have not been founded upon that complete and comprehensive examination of all the existing materials for the history of this early period, and that critical discrimination of their relative value and analysis of their contents, without which any view of this period of the annals of the country must be partial and inexact. They labour, in short, under the twofold defect, first, of an uncritical use of the materials which are authentic; and second, of the combination with these materials of others which are undoubtedly spurious. The early chronicles are referred to as of equal authority, and without reference to the period or circumstances of their production. The text of Fordun's Chronicle, upon which the history, at least prior to the fourteenth century, must always to a considerable extent be based, is quoted as an original authority, without adverting to the materials he made use of and the mode in which he has adapted them to a fictitious scheme of history; and the additions and alterations of his interpolator Bower are not only founded upon as the statements of Fordun himself, but quoted under his name in preference to his original version of the events.

The author has elsewhere endeavoured to complete the work commenced by Thomas Innes. He has collected together in one volume the whole of the existing chronicles and other memorials of the history of Scotland prior to the appearance of Fordun's Chronicle, and has subjected them, as well as the work of Fordun, to a critical examination and analysis.

It may be said that this task has been rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Burton's History of Scotland, which commences the narrative with the invasion of Agricola, and claims 'the two fundamental qualities of a serviceable history--completeness and accuracy;' but, with much appreciation of the merits of Mr. Burton's work as a whole, the author is afraid that he cannot recognise it as possessing either character, so far as the early part of the history is concerned, and he considers that the ground which the present work is intended to occupy remains still unappropriated.

It remains for him to indicate here at the outset the materials founded upon by the previous writers which he considers of questionable authority, or must reject as entirely spurious.

Among the Welsh documents which are usually founded upon as affording materials for the early history of the country, there is one class of documents contained in the Myvyrian Archaeology which cannot be accepted as genuine. The principal of these are the so-called Historical Triads, which have been usually quoted as possessing undoubted claims to antiquity under the name of the Welsh Triads; the tale called Hanes Taliessin, or the history of Taliessin; and a collection of papers printed by the Welsh MS. Society, under the title of the Iolo MSS. These all proceeded from Edward Williams, one of the editors of the Myvyrian Archaeology published in 1801, and who is better known under the bardic title of Iolo Morganwg. The circumstances under which he produced these documents, or the motives which led him to introduce so much questionable matter into the literature of Wales, it is difficult now to determine; but certain it is that no trace of them is to be found in any authentic source, and that they have given a character to Welsh literature which is much to be deplored. In a former work, the author in reviewing these documents merely said, 'It is not unreasonable therefore to say that they must be viewed with some suspicion, and that very careful discrimination is required in the use of them.' He does not hesitate now to reject them as entirely spurious.

It will of course be impossible to write upon the Celtic period of Scottish history without making a large use of Irish materials; and it is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the Irish Annals for this purpose; but these too must be used with some discrimination. The ancient history of Ireland presents the unusual aspect of the minute and detailed annals of reigns and events from a period reaching back to many centuries before the Christian era, the whole of which has been adopted by her historians as genuine. The work of Keating, written in Irish in 1640, a translation of which by Dermod O'Connor was published in 1726, may be taken as a fair representation of it. The earlier part of this history is obviously artificial, and is viewed by recent Irish historians more in the light of legend; but there is nothing whatever in the mode in which the annals of the different reigns are narrated to show where legend terminates and history begins, and there is a tendency among even the soundest writers on Irish history to push the claims of these annals to a historical character beyond the period to which it can reasonably be attached. For the events in Irish history the Annals of the Four Masters are usually quoted. There is a certain convenience in this, as it is the most complete chronicle which Ireland possesses; but it was compiled as late as the seventeenth century, having been commenced in 1632 and finished in 1636. The compilers were four eminent Irish antiquaries, the principal of whom was Michael O'Clery, whence it was termed by Colgan the Annals of the Four Masters. These annals begin with the year of the Deluge, said to be the year of the world 2242, or 2952 years before Christ, and continue in an unbroken series to the year of our Lord 1616. The latter part of the annals are founded upon other documents which are referred to in the preface, and from which they are said to be taken, but the authority for each event is not stated, and some of those recorded are not to be found elsewhere, and are open to suspicion. The earlier part of the annals consists simply of a reduction of the fabulous history of Ireland into the shape of a chronicle, and, except that it is thrown into that form instead of that of a narrative, it does not appear to the author to possess greater claims to be ranked as an authority than the work of Keating. He cannot therefore accept it as an independent authority, nor can he regard the record of events to the fifth century as bearing the character of chronological history in the true sense of the term, though no doubt many of these events may have some foundation in fact.

The older annals stand in a different position. Those of Tighernac, Inisfallen, and the Annals of Ulster, are extremely valuable for the history of Scotland; and, while the latter commence with what may be termed the historic period in the fifth century, the earlier events recorded by Tighernac, who died in the year 1088, may contain some fragments of genuine history.

The subject of this work will be most conveniently treated under three separate heads or books.

The first book will deal with the Ethnology and Civil History of the different races which occupied Scotland. In this inquiry, it will be of advantage that we should start with a clear conception of the knowledge which the Romans had of the northern part of the island, and of the exact amount of information as to its state and population which their possession of the southern part of it as a province affords. This will involve a repetition of the oft-told tale of the Roman occupation of Scotland. But this part of the history has been so overloaded with the uncritical use of authorities, the too ready reception of questionable or forged documents, and the injurious but baseless speculations of antiquaries, that we have nearly lost sight of what the contemporary authorities really tell us. Their statements are, no doubt, meagre, and may appear to afford an insufficient foundation for the deductions drawn from them, but they are precise; and it will be found that though they may compress the account of a campaign or a transaction into a few words, yet they had an accurate knowledge of the transactions, the result of which they wished to indicate, and knew well what they were writing about. It will be necessary, therefore, carefully to weigh these short but precise statements, and to place before the reader the state of the early inhabitants of Scotland as the Romans at the time knew them and viewed them, not as what by argument from other premises they can be made to appear.

This will lay the groundwork for an inquiry into their race and language; and an attempt will then be made to trace the history of these different races, their mutual struggle for supremacy, the causes and true character of that revolution which laid the foundation of the Scottish monarchy, and the gradual combination of its various heterogeneous elements into one united kingdom; and thus by a more complete and critical use of its materials, to place the early history of the country, during the Celtic period, upon a sounder basis.

The subject of the third and last book will be the Land and People of Scotland. It will treat of the early land tenures and social condition of its Celtic inhabitants. The publication of the Brehon laws of Ireland now enables us to trace somewhat of the history and character of their early tribal institutions and laws, and of their development in Scotland into those communities represented in the eastern districts by the Thanages, and in the western by the Clan system of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Footnote 1:

Footnote 2:

The name of Alban occurs in this form in the nominative also in the Prophecy of St. Berchan throughout, as 'Dia mo lan Alban is Eire' ; Ba ard Albain chathair bhinn ; Mescfaidh Albain ima chenn ; Ba lomlan Albain o a la .

So also the form of Alban appears as the name of Scotland in all the Welsh documents, and the Pictish Chronicle, which is evidently translated from a Gaelic original, has Albania, which must have been formed from Alban.

The affectation of using the form Alba in the English rendering of the name was first introduced by the late Dr. O'Donovan, and has been adopted without much consideration by some Scottish writers; but the late Professor O'Curry, an equally accurate Irish scholar, invariably used the form Alban, and the author prefers retaining this conventional form.

Footnote 3:

Footnote 4:

The first proposition is clearly established by the following catena of authorities:--

Scotia eadem et Ibernia, proxima Britanniae insula.... Unde et Ibernia dicta. Scotia autem quod ab Scotorum gentibus colitur appellata.--Lib. xiv. c. vi.

Movit hoc ab ortu AEgyptus et India ad occasum alter pene orbis Britannia cum adjacente Scotia. Tota insula Scotiae mirabatur.

SEVENTH CENTURY.

Finitur autem ipsa Britannia a facie septentrionalis insulam Scotiam.

Iterum in eodem oceano occidentali post ipsam magnam Britanniam ... est insula maxima quae dicitur Ibernia, quae, ut dictum est, et Scotia appellatur.

De Scotia ad Britanniam ... enavigavit.--Pref. sec.

In Scotia et in Britannia.--Lib. i. cap. i.

De Scotia ad Britanniam ... adduxit.--Lib. i. cap. xxix.

Per totam nostram Scotiam et omnium totius orbis insularum maximam Britanniam.--Lib. iii. cap. xxiv.

EIGHTH CENTURY.

Haec autem proprie patria Scottorum est.--Lib. i. cap. i.

Columba presbyter de Scottia venit Brittaniam.--Lib. v. cap. xxiv.

NINTH CENTURY.

VITA S. WIRONIS.

TENTH CENTURY.

Quid attexam Britannias interfuso mari toto orbe divisas, a Romanis in orbem terrarum redactas? Tremuit hos Scotia, quae terris nihil debet.

v. Id. Junias. In Scotia insula Hibernia depositio S. Columbae, cognomento apud suos Columbkilli.

To which it may be added that King Alfred, in his translation of Orosius, translates the passage, 'Hibernia, quae a gentibus Scotorum colitur,' by 'Ighernia, which we call Scotland.'

For the second proposition we have the following:--

In the following century we have

The transference of the name of Scotia from Ireland to Scotland seems to have been completed in the eleventh century, for Marianus Scotus, who lived from 1028 to 1081, calls Malcolm the Second, who died 1034, 'rex Scotiae' , and Brian, King of Ireland, 'rex Hiberniae.' The author of the Life of St. Cadro?, in the same century, applies the name of Scotia to North Britain ; while Adam of Bremen, who wrote in 1080, has 'Hibernia Scottorum patria, quae nunc Irland dicitur' .

The third proposition is equally important, and it will be necessary to establish it once for all at the outset. This will appear--First, from the ancient descriptions of Scotland; Secondly, from topographical allusions in the Old Laws and in the Chronicles; and Thirdly, from the names given to the inhabitants of the different provinces.

In the 'Brevis Descriptio Scotiae' , the provinces of Tyndale then belonging to Scotland, Lothian and Galloway, are mentioned, and Argyll is omitted.

Footnote 5:

Footnote 6:

Hector Boece is the first of our historians who brings this Highland barrier prominently forward as a mountain range. He says, 'Situs autem hic lacus est ad pedem Grampii montis Pictorum olim Scotorumque regni limitis, qua ab ostiis Deae amnis latera Aberdoniae abluentis mare Germanicum prospectans incurvus asper atque intractabilis per mediam Scotiam in alterum mare tendens obvio hoc lacu excipitur sistiturque.'--Ed. 1520, F. vii. 45.

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