Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/31

PREFACE. xxiii or Fife, and place Circin at the end, the Pictish chronicle transposes these two, and commences the list with Circin, maintaining in other respects the same order. It is in Maghcircin, or the plain of Circin, that Brechin is situated ; and as the chronicle terminates with the foundation of an ecclesiastical settlement there, this chronicle was probably com- piled by the monks of Brechin. The termination of the chronicle in the middle of the reign of Kenneth, son of Malcolm, and the fact that while the years of the reign of the other kings are given, the years of Kenneth's reign are left blank, point to his reign as the period of its compilation. Kenneth reigned from 977 to 995, and the chronicle has accordingly been placed in this series between these dates. 2. Saxon AND Welsh additions to the " His- saxon and " toeia Beitonum." — Some time in the course of the ^0^3 ^ the' seventh or eighth centuries, a work was composed " S'^'°" ^'- termed the " Historia Britonum," containing an ac- count of the early traditions of the different races inhabiting Britain, with the events of their history, partly legendary and partly real, from the departure of the Romans till the final subjugation of the island by the Saxons. The original work appears to have terminated with the foundation of the kingdom of Northumbria in 547. It seems to have been at once adopted by the Britons as the most popular exposition of their early history, and to have be- come the basis upon which subsequent writers interwove or attached additional matter ; and edi-