[487] This, however, did not happen at first; for the name of Ireland was not yet generally used among strangers, as Adam de Breme, who lived in the eleventh century, and Nubigensis, in the twelfth, were the first who mentioned it: the name of Scotland was by degrees appropriated to Albania, which was for some time called Little Scotland, “Scotia Minor,” to distinguish it from Ireland, which was called “Scotia Major,” whose inhabitants did not lose all of a sudden the name of Scots: they are so called in the eleventh century by Herman, in the first book of his chronicle; by Marianus Scotus, Florentius Wigorniensis, in his annals, in which, having inserted the chronicle of Marianus, in mentioning the year 1028, he says, “In this year was born Marianus, probably a Scot from Ireland, by whose care this excellent chronicle has been compiled from several histories.” We discover the same thing in a chronicle in the Cottonian library (Abbé Mac Geoghegan).
[488] The Picts, confiding in the happy omen of future friendship from the Scots, obtained wives from them, and thereby contracted so close an alliance, that they seemed to form but one people; so that the passage between the two countries being free, a number of Scots came and settled amongst the Picts, who received them with joy (Buchanan).
Britannia post Britones et Pictos tertiam Scotorum nationem in Pictorum parte, recepit, qui, duce Reuda, de Hibernia progressi, vel amicitiâ vel ferro, sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicârunt, à quo scilicet duce usque hodiè Dalreundini vocantur (Beda, Hist. Eccles. lib. i. cap. 1).
Cambrensis says, that in the reign of Niall the Great in Ireland, the six sons of Muredus, King of Ulster, with a considerable fleet, seized on the northern part of Britain, and founded a nation, called Scotia (Topog. Hib. dist. 3, cap. 16).
“It is certain,” says Camden, “that the Scots went from Ireland into Britain. Orosius, Bede, and Eginard, bear indisputable testimony that Ireland was inhabited by the Scots.” Elsewhere he calls the Irish the ancestors of the Scotch. “Hiberni Scotorum atavi.”
[489] Author of the New Analysis of Chronology, and late Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.
[490] See p. 376.
[491] This should have been Scythians.
[492] “Origin and Purity of the Primitive Churches of the British Isles.”
[493] Various colonies of the Tuath-de-danaans had settled here: but I talk now of the last one, immediately preceding the Scythians.