[287]. Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. 40, 45, 126.
[288]. Ibid. pp. 319, 328, 329.
[289]. Brude mac Bile and Talorcan mac Ainfrait. This will appear afterwards.
[290]. M‘Lennan, Primitive Marriage, p. 129.
[291]. Cæsar says of the Britons of the interior, ‘Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus, parentesque cum liberis; sed, si qui sunt ex his nati, eorum habentur liberi, quo primum virgo quæque deducta est.’—(B. v. c. 14.) Dio, as reported by Xiphiline, attributes a similar custom to the Caledonians and Mæatæ, when he says that they have wives in common, and rear the whole of their progeny. It is obvious that such a custom must have given rise to the feeling, that the only certainty of a child belonging to a particular family was to look to the mother, not the father, as the link which connected him with it; and that the Pictish system would naturally spring out of it; but it is probable Cæsar and Dio represented a custom as it appeared to them, without understanding it.
[292]. When the father of the children adopted was king in a nation where male succession prevailed, the eldest son appears to have remained in the father’s tribe, and succeeded to his throne, while the children adopted alone non-Pictish names. We shall find this to be the case where the kings were of foreign race.
[293]. 584 Mors Bruidhe mac Mailchon Righ Cruithneach.—Tigh.
[294]. 599 Bas Gartnaidh regis Pictorum.—Tigh.
[295]. In the Latin lists this king is confounded with the older Nectan, and called the son of Irb and the founder of Abernethy.
[296]. Bamborough is about sixteen miles south-east of Berwick. The Holy Island is about nine miles from Berwick, and is four miles long and two broad. The channel between it and the mainland is left dry at low water.