| Remains of the Pictish Language | [501] |
ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS.
| Map showing mountain chains | to face page | [8] |
| The five Ebudæ of Ptolemy compared with the islands south of Ardnamurchan Point | ” | [68] |
| The four Kingdoms | ” | [228] |
| The Kingdom of Alban | ” | [340] |
| The Kingdom of Scotia | ” | [396] |
| Feudal Scotland | ” | [496] |
INTRODUCTION.
Name of Scotia, or Scotland.
The name of Scotia, or Scotland, whether in its Latin or its Saxon form, was not applied to any part of the territory forming the modern kingdom of Scotland till towards the end of the tenth century.
Prior to that period it was comprised in the general appellation of Britannia, or Britain, by which the whole island was designated in contradistinction to that of Hibernia, or Ireland. That part of the island of Britain which is situated to the north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde seems indeed to have been known to the Romans as early as the first century by the distinctive name of Caledonia,[[1]] and it also appears to have borne from an early period another appellation, the Celtic form of which was Albu, Alba, or Alban,[[2]] and its Latin form Albania.
The name of Scotia, however, was exclusively appropriated to the island of Ireland, which was emphatically Scotia, the ‘patria,’ or mother country, of the Scots;[[3]] and although a colony of that people had established themselves as early as the beginning of the sixth century in the western districts of Scotland, it was not till the tenth century that any part of the present country of Scotland came to be known under that name, nor did it extend over the whole of those districts which formed the later kingdom of the Scots till after the twelfth century.
Ancient extent of the kingdom.
From the tenth to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries the name of Scotia, gradually superseding the older name of Alban, or Albania, was confined to a district nearly corresponding with that part of the Lowlands of Scotland which is situated on the north of the Firth of Forth. The Scotia of these centuries was bounded on the south by the Firth of Forth; on the north by the Moray Firth and river Spey; on the east by the German Ocean; and on the west by the range of mountains which divides the modern county of Perth from that of Argyll. It excluded Lothian, Strathclyde, and Galloway, on the south; the great province of Moravia, or Moray, and that of Cathanesia, or Caithness, on the north; and the region of Argathelia, or Argyll, on the west.