The present Scotch Gaels are of Irish origin.
These two propositions go together; involving an objection to the so-called "Caledonian hypothesis" (p. [89]), with which they are incompatible. Nevertheless, anything confirmatory of[226] that hypothesis would, pro tanto, invalidate the present.
The chief facts upon which this doctrine rest are—
1st. The absence of the term sliabh, the current Gaelic form for mountain, throughout Scotland—even in the Gaelic parts of it.
2nd. The great extent to which the forms in aber are found northwards (see p. [81]). These occur so far beyond the Pict area, that, although so good a writer as Mr. Kemble has allowed himself to make it commensurate with the British, and although his list of compounds of aber has been placed in the present writer's chapter on the Picts, as an illustration of a certain line of criticism, the inference that they were Britons in North-Briton other than Pict is highly probable. Hence in the northern parts, at least, the word aber was used not because the country was Pict, but because it was British.
It is well known that the doctrine is, in respect to its results, the current one; from which it differs in resting on ethnological inference, rather than on a piece of history.
The historical account is to the effect, that the Scots of Scotland were originally Irish, so that Ireland was the true and proper Scotland. It was Ireland where the Scots dwelt when the Picts came from Scythia, Ireland whence the[227] Picts took their Scottish wives; and, finally, Ireland that gave its present Gaelic population to North Britain. Under a leader named Reuda the Scots of Ireland sailed across the Irish Sea, penetrated far into the Firth of Clyde, settled themselves to the north of the Picts, drove that nation southwards, multiplied their kind in the Highlands, and called themselves Dalriads (Dalreudini), since Reuda was the name of their chief, and daal meant part. The point where the Scots landed was just where the British and Pict areas joined, the parts about Alcluith or Dumbarton—"procedente autem tempore, Britannia post Brittones et Pictos, tertiam Scottorum nationem in Pictorum parte recepit, qui duce Reuda de Hibernia progressi vel amicitia vel ferro sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicarunt; a quo videlicet duce usque hodie dalreudini vocantur, nam eorum lingua 'daal' partem significat."—Hist. Eccl. i. 1.
To agree with Beda in making the Gaels of Scotland intrusive, but to demur to his evidence, is, apparently, to substitute a bad reason for a good one without affecting the conclusion, i.e., gratuitously. We shall soon see how far this is the case.
At present, I remark that all Scotland may have been British without having been wholly Pict; and that[228]—
The parts of Scotland which were not Gaelic at the beginning of the Historical period and have not been so since, never were.[26]