"Albanus acquired them with his race,
The illustrious son of Isiscon,
Brother to Britus, without treachery:
From him Albin of ships takes its name.
* * * * * * *
"The Cruithne acquired the western region,
After they had come from the plains of Erin:
Seventy noble kings of them
Acquired the Cruithen plains."[510]

Of the history of the neighbouring island during the first centuries of the Christian era our knowledge is necessarily extremely imperfect and uncertain; nor have the over-zealous exertions of Irish antiquaries to clear up this period of their national annals greatly added to our information. Without, however, entering upon the controverted ground of primitive Irish history, it is sufficient for our present purpose to know that at the period of the introduction of Christianity into Ireland it was occupied by the Hiberni, an ancient if not aboriginal Celtic race, by the Cruithne, as the inhabitants of Ulster are called by the native annalists, and also by the Scoti, a race who had then apparently established themselves in Ireland, and secured a complete supremacy over the elder native population, at no very distant date. Whencesoever this latter race was derived, we have evidence that they were considerably advanced in civilisation, though their superiority appears to have been less in arts than in arms, the traces of early artistic skill being generally ascribed on satisfactory grounds to the older races who acknowledged their supremacy. So effectual was their superiority in arms, however, in effacing every trace of the independence and nationality of the more ancient tribes, that towards the close of the third century at the latest, the name of Scotia appears to have been generally applied to Ireland, and for nearly seven centuries continued to indicate the Hibernia of Latin writers.

Christianity had already gained some partial footing in Ireland prior to the apostolic mission of St. Patrick, who was consecrated for that purpose by Pope Celestine, A.D. 433. Both the parentage and country of the Irish apostle have been made the subject of recent controversy, but, according to the most commonly accepted history, the little village of Kilpatrick, on the north bank of the Clyde, between Glasgow and Dumbarton, claims the honour of having given birth to the patron saint of Ireland; in return for which the Scottish apostle, St. Columba, is acknowledged as of Irish origin. Though Ireland was not unknown to the Romans no attempt appears to have been made to subject it to their grasping sway, and it was accordingly left to reap by indirect means the advantages of southern civilisation. This the introduction of the new religion most effectually promoted. Greek and Roman literature received the attention of the clergy in a way that produced far more direct and beneficial results than any which flowed from the intrusion of Roman civilisation and supremacy into the neighbouring island. A native literature was developed and fostered, native arts sprung up, and architecture assumed a peculiar national character. From the middle of the fifth till nearly the close of the eighth century, Ireland was among the most civilized and prosperous of the nations of Europe, and wanted only a native Alfred or a Canmore to give the same unity to its independent tribes which St. Patrick had conferred on its ecclesiastical state.

It was during this prosperous era, in the very beginning of the sixth century,[511] that a small colony of these Irish Scoti effected a settlement in the district of Scotland now known as the county of Argyle, and conferred on it the name of Dalriada, according to spurious monkish traditions, in honour of their leader, Cairbre Riada, a celebrated Scottic warrior whose epoch is assigned by older Irish annalists to the third century. This, however, was certainly not the first interchange of races between Scotland and Ireland, nor did it exercise any immediate influence on Scottish history. The earliest authentic records succeeding the era of Roman invasion exhibit Scotland divided into the kingdoms of the Cruithne, or Northern Picts, and the Piccardach, or Southern Picts. The Irish Cruithneans were doubtless a Celtic colony originally from Scotland. Early writers agree in recognising both by the same name of Picts, though few subjects have excited more fruitless controversy than the attempts to assign historic consistency to the half-fabulous race of Scottish Picti, or even to agree on the derivation or meaning of their name. The nec falso nomine Picti of Claudian was long assumed as decisive of their being mere naked savages, who decorated their bodies with paint. But this error is now generally abandoned. A more consistent derivation may be sought in the Welsh peith, to scream, to fight, whence pic-t-a, fighting man. In accordance with such a derivation it appears to have been common to more than one native tribe or kingdom, and to have been rarely or never used unaccompanied by some distinctive epithet, such as the Gwyddyl Ffichti, or Gaelic Picts of the Welsh Triads.

Into the long disputed question of the origin of the Pictish race, it is happily no longer needful to enter at large. Much learning and acrimony have been expended on it, not altogether without reason; for its proper understanding involves the consistent resolution of that period, of no slight importance in Scottish history, intervening between the year 296 of our present era, when the first mention of the Scottish Picti occurs,[512] and the intrusion of the Saxon race in the eleventh century into the kingdom of the Southern Picts. To the critical researches of one or two recent writers, and especially to the consistent narrative of Skene in his able work on the Highlanders of Scotland, we owe the rescue of this portion of Scottish history from the confusion and mystery to which monkish legends and modern controversy had consigned it. During this important era which intervenes between the final retreat of the Romans and the accession of Malcolm Canmore, we find North Britain divided into the three kingdoms of the Northern and Southern Picts and the Dalriads. The Irish derivation of the latter being undoubted, further research into their origin has been left to Hibernian antiquaries, while our native writers long sought in vain to discover any clue either to the intrusion or extrusion of the Pictish race, which if distinct from the old Celtic population, must have appeared and disappeared like the winter's snow. By some they have been supposed to have been utterly eradicated by successive invaders, or to have gradually disappeared as a distinct race by marriage and intermingling with their supplanters. Others have maintained that the Northern and Southern Picts were two distinct races, of which the latter alone were exterminated or driven from the soil by the successive invasions of the Lowlands, while the former maintained their ground, which is still possessed by their descendants the Scottish Highlanders. The weight of evidence, however, and the manifest coincidence between the ancient topographical nomenclature throughout the whole of Scotland, leave no room to doubt that both the Northern and Southern Picts, who have long formed a mythic and half-fabulous race in the popular traditions of Scotland, were none other than the original Celtæ, who so resolutely withstood the Roman invaders. Ptolemy gives the names of thirteen Caledonian tribes; in some editions of the Old Geographer the number is extended to seventeen; and to these the questionable authority of Richard of Cirencester adds at least four more. In all probability the greater number of these existed as independent and frequently rival tribes, up to the period of Roman invasion, and were for the first time united under one leader or chief when Galgacus led them against the legions of Agricola. The immense host, however, which he brought into the field, shews that Scotland was then no longer a savage and thinly-peopled country, while their war-chariots, their shields, huge iron swords, and other effective accoutrements, have already been referred to in evidence of the progress which they had then made in the useful arts. This union against a common enemy, maintained as we have good reason for believing it was, throughout the whole period of the Roman occupation of Scotland, was perhaps the most important of all the fruits which Scotland reaped from the intrusion of the civilized Romans; and to it we may with much probability ascribe the permanent coalition of the numerous independent tribes, and the consequent establishment of the two Pictish kingdoms, the limits of which were to a great extent determined by the natural features of the country. Both spoke dialects of the same Celtic language, to which the philologist still turns for explanation of the more ancient name of Lowland as well as Highland localities, and which still exists as a living tongue among the Scottish Gael. In the Welsh Triads, which are believed to be fully as old as the sixth century, the Picts are uniformly designated, without distinction, as the Gwyddyl Ffichti, that is the Gaelic or Celtic Picts; and Bede, in enumerating the different languages in which the gospel was taught in Britain, speaks of the lingua Pictorum as one tongue, though it is apparent elsewhere that he was familiar with the distinction between Northern and Southern Picts. Even Ritson, while fiercely opposing the idea of any community of origin between the Caledonian Britons and the Picts, admits that the language of the latter was a Celtic idiom.[513] They were in fact the descendants of the only primitive Scottish race of which we possess any authentic historical evidence: the Albiones of Festus Avienus; the race of Albanus of the "Albanic Duan;" the Albanich of Welsh and native writers; and the most numerous and powerful representatives of a people which we have reason to believe continued exclusively to occupy the British Islands from a period the commencement of which we must seek in those dim unchronicled centuries we have already attempted to explore, down to the fifth or perhaps the fourth century B.C. Then began what we should call the Teutonic Invasion, and the long quiescent Celtæ once more renewed their old nomadic life. Yet the lapse of so many centuries has not sufficed to efface the ancient characteristics by which we still recognise as one race the Cornish, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish Celtæ.

Of six modern Celtic dialects still recognised in Europe, four belong to the British Isles. A fifth, the Cornish, now extinct, also pertained to the same insular home of the Κέλται, while the only remaining one, the Armorican, or dialect of Brittany, belongs to a country intimately associated in the history of its early colonization with Britain. The table of the modern Celtic dialects of Europe, as modified by Dr. Charles Meyer, and adopted by Dr. Latham,[514] from that given by Dr. Prichard in his "Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations," is as follows—divided primarily into two great dialects, each composed of three separate idioms:—

But a new race of strangers acquired a footing in Scotland, who were destined to bear no unimportant part in its history. The colony of Irish Scoti, or Dalriadic Scots, having effected a settlement in the district of Argyle, continued to occupy this limited locality for upwards of three hundred years, without seeking to extend their possessions beyond the natural boundaries which inclose the Western Highlands. To this period we may with little hesitation assign many of the traces of ancient population, civilized arts, and extensive cultivation, which have been described in a former chapter.[515] A close intercourse appears to have been always maintained between the Scottish Dalriads and their Irish progenitors, and the history of the Dalriadic kingdom is still chiefly derivable from Irish annalists. From these we are led to conclude that the number and influence of the Dalriadic Scots had gradually increased, while the attention of the Northern and Southern Picts was chiefly engrossed by their own rival jealousies; but their position was frequently precarious, and for nearly three centuries they owed their safety fully as much to the natural isolation of their little kingdom, as to the dissensions of the Picts and the fidelity with which the Irish Scoti adhered to this colonial offshoot from the parent stock. The cooperation and alliance of the Dalriads at length became objects of consideration to these neighbouring rivals, and we learn of a union between the Scots and the Northern Picts, entered upon in the year 731, for the purpose of supplanting Angus MacFergus, a Southern Pict, who then occupied the throne.

At first the Cruithne and their allies were completely worsted, and for upwards of eighty years the larger portion of the kingdom of Dalriada appears to have been subjected to the rule of the Southern Picts. There is abundant evidence, however, that the Irish Scoti continued to maintain a close intercourse with their Dalriadic descendants, and made common cause with them against the Piccardach. The Irish annals occasionally afford the only evidence we now possess of the wars then waged between Scots and Picts, by recording the death of their native kings and chiefs, slain in Albany when fighting with their Dalriadic kindred. But for this powerful aid, it is difficult to conceive how the Dalriads could have held their ground within the small territory which they occupied, in opposition to a powerful kingdom united under one sovereign, even with all the skilful tact with which they availed themselves of the jealousies and rivalry existing between the northern and southern tribes. The struggle between the Dalriads and Picts assumed latterly in some degree the character of a war of succession. There is reason to believe, from several of the names of the Dalriadic kings, that they had not failed to strengthen their alliances with the Northern Picts by intermarriage, so that it is not improbable, owing to the peculiar Celtic ideas of succession by the female line, that the Dalriads may have acquired a claim to the Pictish throne. There appears, however, not only to have existed lines of hereditary sovereigns, succeeding according to the peculiar Pictish laws of succession to the supreme rule, but also a hereditary nobile genus, or patrician class, holding as tenaciously by the purity of their blood and lineage, as under the most stringent rule of the lyon kings-at-arms of a later age.[516] Much obscurity still rests on this period of our national history. Partially and at intervals we discover glimpses of the struggle then going on, amid which, however, increasing evidences suffice to shew that fortune favoured the Dalriadic Scots, until in the year 843 the whole of Scotland is found united under the sceptre of Kenneth MacAlpin, originally sovereign of the little kingdom of Dalriada.