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 haye sayed 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 com pared pared it, as well with the ancient histories of the Scots and Irish, as with the evidence of such foreign writers as make mention of them, I am of opinion, that a system may be formed from these materials, equally consistent with probability and written authority, which rather tends to reconcile, than to subvert the opinions of both parties; and is, at the same time, supported by as convincing evidence, as truth, at this distance of time, is capable of receiving. "It appears to be highly probable, that the north of Ireland might have been originally peopled from the adjacent parts of Caledonia, as the Scottish antiquarians assert, and that the southern inhabitants of the island might have derived their origin from their neighbours in South Britain (perhaps from the Belgae and Damnonii, whose posterity in Ireland were called Firbolghs, and Tuatha de Danan): I am therefore ready to admit that the Irish might have been the children, rather than the parents of the Caledonians, "But, this concession, as to the first popu lation of Ireland, has no tendency to invalidate the history of a certain Milesian dynasty having, in process of time, invaded, and obtained the 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 |