Had one perfect daughter
Dustric, she was for every good deed[[125]] (renowned).
This Drust is therefore clearly connected with Galloway; and we thus learn that when two kings appear in the Pictish Chronicle as reigning together, one of them is probably king of the Picts of Galloway.[[126]]
The Drusts are followed by two brothers of Drest son of Gyrom, a Talerg, and another Drest son of Munait, and then we find ourselves on firm historic ground when we come to Bridei son of Mailcu.[[127]] He is said to have reigned thirty years, and to have been baptized in the eighth year of his reign by St. Columba. As that saint is recorded to have come from Ireland to Britain in the year 563, this places the first year of his reign in the year 556, and the termination of his reign in the year 586. His death is, however, recorded by Tighernac in the year 583. Bede terms him Bridius, son of Meilochon, a most powerful king reigning over the Picts, and says that St. Columba converted his nation to Christianity in the ninth year of his reign, having preached the word of God to the provinces of the northern Picts;[[128]] and Adamnan places his fort and palace on the banks of the river Ness.[[129]] The Pictish Chronicle states that Galam Cennaleph reigned one year with Bridei, and Tighernac records the death in 580 of Cendaeladh, king of the Picts.[[130]] He too was probably a king of the Picts of Galloway, and traces of his name also can be found in the topography of that district.[[131]]
We have now traced the history of the Picts down to the last half of the sixth century, when we find ourselves on firm ground, and leave them a Christian people, united in one kingdom under the rule of a powerful monarch.
The Scots.
But if the word ‘Picti’ was a term applied to the native tribes beyond the northern frontier of the Roman province, and the future kingdom of the Picts was formed from a combination of them, it is equally clear that the term ‘Scoti’ first appears as an appellation of the inhabitants of Ireland. Gildas tells us that the Scots assailed the province from the north-west,[[132]] which, from his standpoint, indicates Ulster as the region whence this band of Scots had emerged, and when he describes the Picts as settling down in the extreme part of the island, where they still remained to his day, he adds, that the shameless Irish robbers, as he terms the Scots, returned home, at no distant date to reappear.[[133]] By this expression he appears to indicate that there was a subsequent settlement of them in the island, but he makes no further allusion to it.
Nennius, after giving an account of the traditionary settlement of the Scots from Spain in Ireland, adds a notice of their later settlements in Britain; but the text of this part of his work is unfortunately corrupt, and seems to have been so from an early period, as the Irish translation of it in the eleventh century contains obvious marks of its being an attempt to explain what was obscure to the translator. He appears to indicate settlements in North and South Wales, and in Dalrieta.[[134]]
Bede’s account is more consistent. He says that in course of time, Britain, after the Britons and Picts, received a third nation, that of the Scots, into that part of the country occupied by the Picts who came from Ireland under their leader Reuda, and either by friendly arrangement or by the sword acquired those seats among the Picts which they still possess, and that from their leader Reuda they were termed ‘Dalreudini.’ He adds, that ‘Hibernia’ or Ireland was the native country of these Scots, and that their new settlement was on the north side of that arm of the sea which formerly divided the Britons from the Picts, and where the Britons still have their chief fastness, the city called ‘Alcluith.’[[135]] There is no doubt that Alcluith is the rock in the Clyde on which Dumbarton Castle is situated; the Firth of Clyde, the arm of the sea in question; and that Bede correctly describes the position of the Scottish settlement in his own day, as well as its name of Dalriada, from which he deduces his Reuda as their ‘Eponymus.’
The notices of the Scots by the Roman writers are quite in harmony with these traditionary accounts. They make their first appearance in 360, when they joined the Picts and the Saxons in assailing the Roman province. It is true that an expression of the Roman historian may be held to imply that they had first appeared on the scene seventeen years earlier, in the year 343; but that part of Ammianus’s work is lost, and we have no distinct account of what took place when Constans visited Britain in that year. When Theodosius drove back the invading tribes after their eight years’ occupation of the province, we are clearly told by Claudian that the Scots were driven back to ‘Ierne’ or Ireland; and throughout all the subsequent incursions in which the Scots took part, he implies that it was from thence they were made.