[11] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 4, c. 26. Nen. Geneal. Tigh. 686. An. Ult. 685. According to Nennius, no Saxon tax-gatherer ever again took tribute from the Picts. Tribute and a foreign bishop—or abbot—were the true tests of dependence at this period. Tulachaman seems to have been the place often known as Rath-inver-aman—“the fort at the mouth of the river Almond,” where vestiges of it are I believe still traceable. Dun Ollaig was probably a place at which Talorcan of Atholl was killed some years later.
[12] Tigh. 726, 728, 729. An. Ult. 728. Bed. Hist. Ecc. Contin. 740, 750.
[13] Adam. Vit. Col. (Reeves), p. 370, note A, p. 435.
[14] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 1, c. 34. Uladh may be said to have had three meanings—1. Legendary Uladh, the northern kingdom of Ireland answering very nearly to modern Ulster; 2. Historical Uladh, the province lying to the eastward of Lough Neagh, and the rivers Bann and Newry; 3. Uladh proper, the southern and principal portion of the historical province, answering to the diocese of Down. The other historical divisions were, Iveagh on the south-west, answering to the diocese of Dromore, and Dal-Araidhe on the north, the “district of the Airds,” or hill-country, equivalent to the diocese of Connor. Dalaraide must not be confounded with Dalriada. It was gradually restricted to the northern portion, known as Tuisceart or the north.
[15] Tigh. 723, 726, 734. An. Ult. 730, 732, 733, 735, 742. I have touched very slightly upon the annals of Dalriada, a very vexed question, which bears about as much upon the general history of Scotland, as the early annals of Sussex might do upon the general history of England.
[16] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 1, c. 34; l. 2, c. 4. Nen. Geneal.
[17] Caledonia, b. 2, c. 2. One of the localities in which a battle was fought during the Northumbrian civil wars in this century is called by Sim. Dun., Eildon; by the Saxon chronicler, Edwin’s Cliff. Edwin’s burgh in Lothian has long supplanted any earlier name which the locality may have borne, but upon the borders of Selkirk forest, and in the neighbourhood of the Catrail, the British Eildon has long outlived the Anglian monarch’s Cliff.
[18] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 2, c. 20; l. 3, c. 1, 24. Tigh. 631, 632. Nen. Geneal. Egfrid gave to St. Cuthbert Carlisle, with a circuit of fifteen miles, Creke with three miles—in short, all the open country in the north of Cumberland which was thus interposed between that district and Strath Clyde; whilst his donations of South Gedlet and Cartmel “with its Britons,” in the north of Lancashire, together with his grants on the Ribble and elsewhere to Wilfrid, shew that the greater part of Lancashire must have intervened between the Britons of English Cumbria and North Wales. Manchester and Whalley, or Billingaheth, were also in the Northumbrian territories. Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 1, c. 9. Hist. St. Cuth., p. 69. Edd. Vit. Wilf., c. 17. Chron. Sax. 798, 923. Nennius states that Cadwallader died of the great plague in Oswy’s reign, which can only refer to the pestilence of 664, though he has been purposely confounded with the West Saxon Ceadwalla, who died at Rome in 688. In spite of the assertion of Gildas, that all the records of his countrymen had perished, it was maintained that he had written a history and then destroyed it (Gild. Capit. 20); and Walter Mapes, bringing a book (as he said) from Brittany, where no other copy has ever been found, gave it to Geoffrey of Monmouth to translate. The work is called in Welsh the Brut Tyssilio, and is attributed to a certain Tyssilio living in the seventh century, who writes familiarly of Scotland, Moray, and Normandy, and brings the “Twelve Peers of France” to Arthur’s Coronation! Granting the existence of these Twelve Peers, how could Tyssilio, living in the seventh century, have been familiar with the institution of Charlemagne, who died in the ninth? In the nineteenth century the Brut has been “done into English” with some very marvellous notes, in which the curious inquirer will find Cæsar refuted by Tyssilio, and Homer corrected by Dares Phrygius!
[19] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 4, c. 26; l. 5, c. 12, 23; Do. contin., 750. Sim. Dun., 756.
[20] I allude to the Lex Aodh Fin, meaning, apparently, the right of Aodh and his family to Can and Cuairt, which were amongst the leading privileges of royalty. The following may explain the succession at this period—