The subject of this work will be most conveniently treated under three separate heads or books.
The first book will deal with the Ethnology and Civil History of the different races which occupied Scotland. In this inquiry, it will be of advantage that we should start with a clear conception of the knowledge which the Romans had of the northern part of the island, and of the exact amount of information as to its state and population which their possession of the southern part of it as a province affords. This will involve a repetition of the oft-told tale of the Roman occupation of Scotland. But this part of the history has been so overloaded with the uncritical use of authorities, the too ready reception of questionable or forged documents, and the injurious but baseless speculations of antiquaries, that we have nearly lost sight of what the contemporary authorities really tell us. Their statements are, no doubt, meagre, and may appear to afford an insufficient foundation for the deductions drawn from them, but they are precise; and it will be found that though they may compress the account of a campaign or a transaction into a few words, yet they had an accurate knowledge of the transactions, the result of which they wished to indicate, and knew well what they were writing about. It will be necessary, therefore, carefully to weigh these short but precise statements, and to place before the reader the state of the early inhabitants of Scotland as the Romans at the time knew them and viewed them, not as what by argument from other premises they can be made to appear.[[18]]
This will lay the groundwork for an inquiry into their race and language; and an attempt will then be made to trace the history of these different races, their mutual struggle for supremacy, the causes and true character of that revolution which laid the foundation of the Scottish monarchy, and the gradual combination of its various heterogeneous elements into one united kingdom; and thus by a more complete and critical use of its materials, to place the early history of the country, during the Celtic period, upon a sounder basis.
The second book will deal with the Early Celtic Church of Scotland and its influence on the language and culture of the people. The ecclesiastical history of Scotland has shared the same fate with its civil history, and is deeply tainted with the fictitious and artificial system which has perverted both; but the stamp of these fables upon it is less easily removed. It has also had the additional misfortune of having been made the battle-field of polemical controversy. Each historian of the Church has viewed it through the medium of his ecclesiastical prepossessions, and from the standpoint of the Church party to which he belonged. The Episcopal historian feels the necessity of discovering in it his Diocesan Episcopacy, and the partisan of Presbyterian parity considers the principles of his Church involved in maintaining the existence of his early Presbyterian Culdees. One great exception must be made, however, in Dr. Reeves’s admirable edition of Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, which has laid the foundation for a more rational treatment of the history of the early Church in Scotland.
The subject of the third and last book will be the Land and People of Scotland. It will treat of the early land tenures and social condition of its Celtic inhabitants. The publication of the Brehon laws of Ireland now enables us to trace somewhat of the history and character of their early tribal institutions and laws, and of their development in Scotland into those communities represented in the eastern districts by the Thanages, and in the western by the Clan system of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
[1]. See Book i. chap. i. infra.
[2]. It will be seen from the title of this work that the author does not adopt what he ventures to call the pedantic affectation of using the form of Alba instead of Alban. The oldest form of the word is Albu, as that of the name for Ireland was Eriu. Thus, in the oldest Irish Glossary—that of Cormac—we have, sub voce Trifod, ‘Eriu agus Manann agus Albu.’ The inflections are Eriu, G. Erenn, D. Eirinn, A. Erinn. Albu, G. Alban, D. Albain, A. Albain or Albu. In the later Irish documents the forms of Eire and Alba usually occur in the nominative. A nominative form derived from the genitive is, however, also found; and the names of places ending in a vowel seem to have a tendency to fall into this form in current speech. Thus we have Erin for Eiriu or Eire, Alban for Albu or Alba, Arann for Ara, Rathlin for Rechra, etc. In his Irish Glosses, Mr. Whitley Stokes has ‘Eirinnach (gl. Hibernigena), from the old name of this island, which is declined in the Book of Leinster and Lib. Hymn. Nom. herinn (Maelmura Othna’s poem), Dat. dond erinn, Gen. and Acc. herenn (see Fiacc’s hymn. vv. 7, 8, 10, and the Orthain at the end, and the quatrain from Marianus Scotus, Z. 944).’—(Irish Glosses, p. 66.)
The name of Alban occurs in this form in the nominative also in the Prophecy of St. Berchan throughout, as ‘Dia mo lan Alban is Eire’ (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 79); Ba ard Albain chathair bhinn (ib. p. 87); Mescfaidh Albain ima chenn (ib. p. 89); Ba lomlan Albain o a la (ib. p. 91, etc.).
So also the form of Alban appears as the name of Scotland in all the Welsh documents, and the Pictish Chronicle, which is evidently translated from a Gaelic original, has Albania, which must have been formed from Alban.