Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/41

PREFACE. xxxiii older versions in the books of Ballimote and Lecain. In the notes, various other pieces are inserted, which certainly formed no part of the Irish translator's additions. The notes marked T are judicious and valuable, and worthy of aU attention. Those marked H are of no value in elucidating the version, and are only calculated to mislead the unwary reader. The character of these notes, and the school to which their author obviously belonged, ought, in the Editor's opinion, to have excluded them from any work published by the Irish Archaeological Society. The " Irish and Pictish additions to the " ' Historia Britonum' " in this translation are here printed from the "Book of Ballimote," collated with that of Lecain. The other pieces, which do not belong to the additions to the " Historia Brito- " num," are inserted in their proper places, where they will be duly noticed. The passage marked A, taken from the text, seems to contain the original form of a passage which is much corrupted in the Latin text, and presents probably the oldest form of the legend of the settlement of the Picts. The passage under letter b, which is the first of the additions made to the text, contains what may be called the Pictish legend of their settlement, and is, in point of fact, an amplification of the previous passage. It describes the settlement of the Picts under their eponymus Cruithne, and the division of Alban among his seven sons, and corresponds with the first part of the second division of the " Pictish