Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/157

PREFACE. cxlix VIII. OF THE SCOT- TISH FABLE. This sketch of the history of the four nations development which occupied the territory of the subsequent king dom of Scotland, shows the Scots as occupying a very different position in true history from that as- signed to them in the scheme of the early Scottish history propounded by John of Fordun. Appearing for the first time in the year 360 as a people of Ireland, inhabiting Ireland, and joining with other barbaric tribes in incursions upon the Eoman province in Britain, it was only about the year 498 that the Scots formed their first permanent settlement on the western shores of North Britain ; and, confined within limits differing but little from those of the modern county of Argyle, they remained a small Scottish colony in Britain for about 250 years, i.e., to nearly the middle of the eighth century, under their Scottish kings, without extending their terri- tory beyond these limits. During this time they were subjected for a period of between thirty and forty years to the rule of the Angles, and at the end of it they were entirely crushed and subdued by the Pictish monarch. There was then an interval of as nearly as possible one century between the termina- tion of the small Scottish kingdom of Dahiada and the subsequent Scottish kingdom founded by Ken- neth Mac Alpin, during which we find a series of Pictish princes in Dalriada. In the middle of the ninth century a Scottish dynasty was placed on the