advenientes, sibi locum patriæ fecerunt." Bede, we see, thus fixes the Scots, not along the western Highlands and isles, but, merely upon the northern banks of the Clyde, * In the year of Christ 320, it is said, Fergus established himself from Ireland in Caledonia, with a body of troops, and the authority of a sovereign, and then fixed the appellation Scots, within the island of Britain. Thence the name was carried gradually with their possessions, over the whole extent of the present Scotland. And Hibernians, Caledonians, Roman Britons, and Saxons, have all concurred to form the present respectable nation of the Scots. This system, however, of Richard of Cirencester, who wrote in the fourteenth century, is not considered as of sterling validity. The historian of the Roman empire acquaints us, on the authority of Claudian, that the Irish, or Scots, about the year 407, invaded the whole western coast of Britain. This, again, is not considered as absolutely the first settlement of the Scots in Caledonia. The first tribe, under the name of Dalreudini, or Attacotti, afterwards Scoti, landed, says Pinkerton, from Ireland, under their leader Riada, about the year 250 of G 4 * Whitaker, our æra. The Picts, who had come from Scandinavia, permitted them to settle in Argyleshire, where they remained about two hundred years. They then were driven back into Ireland. Recovering themselves, however, they returned about fifty years afterwards, under Fergus, the son of Ere, who established his Scottish kingdom in the same district, about the year 503, The Scots, the Picts, and the Çaledonians, afterwards united under one sovereign, in 840, and then took the single name of Scots. About the accuracy of these dates, it is not necessary for us to enquire. It is very immaterial to the object of our pursuit, which of them be entitled to the highest degree of credit, I cannot, however, allow you to part from Irish antiquity altogether, until you derive, in a very few words, a much more comprehensive view of the subject, than I, perhaps, with all my pains, have been able to give you. The writer of what I am now to communicate to you, is the learned Dr. Barnard, an English divine of literary reputation, and at present a bishop in Ireland. It had been well, had his work fallen into my hands somewhat sooner, as it would have saved us both a considerable degree of heavy investigation. But, I was ignorant that the bishop had written on so uninviting a question; and my own little arrangement, when his dissertation fell into my hands, had been too far advanced, for me to give it up entirely, "The origin of that portion of the inhabitants of Britain, properly called Scots," says the bishop," has been in point of history so established by the concurrence of all writers on that subject, both native and foreign, from venerable Bede, down to Sir George Mackenzie, that, for a period of at least nine hundred years, it was never esteemed matter of question, until some late Scottish antiquarians, anxious to support an hypothesis inconsistent with their own annals and tradition, have thought proper wholly to reject the received opinion of their ancestors on this head, and to offer to the public in its place, an entire new system of their own, founded on arguments of probability, sufficiently plausible and ingenious, but, unsupported by written testimonies, or any authentic documents what ever, "Having read, with some degree of attention, what has been produced in this controversy on both sides of the question, and compared of the North, and finally establishing themselves in a victorious dominion over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa. The settlement of the Milesians, under the name of Scots, in Ireland, says Mr. Macpherson, is the capital point, established by the pretended literature of the Heathen Irish. Should this early settlement be once ascertained, it might naturally be expected to follow, that the British Scots, if they derived their blood from the Irish, should have carried with them to Caledonia that learning, science, and civility, which had made so great a progress in their mother country, before they transmigrated from it. But, nothing is more certain, than that the British Scots were an illiterate people, and involved in barbarism, even efter St. Patrick's mission to the Scots of Ireland. The abettors of the Irish antiquities are then reduced to this. dilemma; either the Scots of North Britain did not derive their origin from Ireland, or else the Irish had not any knowledge of letters, when the British Scots transmigrated from their country. If the first position be true, the whole Milesian tale is at an end; if the latter, on the other hand, be the fact, no memory remains in dominion of the country, without extirpating the ancient natives: for have not the Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans in Britain, and the English in Ireland, since done the same? But, no one, I believe, has been so absurd as to infer, that either of these kingdoms was peopled, as well as subdued by the invaders. It is equally an error, to suppose that the Irish chronicles derive the blood of their whole nation from these Milesians; for none, but their princes, and the spreading branches of their posterity, pretend to trace their families from this honourable source. "If genealogies had been preserved in England, with the same attention as they were in Ireland, we should probably be astonished to find as many of our fellow-subjects, now in poverty and obscurity, with royal blood flowing in their veins, in one country, as in the other. Whoever has read the short history of the line of Plantagenet, published towards the beginning of this century, will be sensible of the truth of this observation. But, the Irish genealogical tables, which are still extant, carry intrinsic proofs of their being genuine and authentic, by their chronological accuracy, and consistency with each other, through all the lines collateral, as well |