Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/43

PEEFACE. XXXV this form of the tradition the statement belongs, that seventy kings reigned over the Picts from Cathluan, the first king, to Constantin, the last of the Picts ; and the statement first appears in connexion with these additions to the " Historia Britonum." By the " Pictish Chronicle," this Constantin is iden- tified with Constantin, king of the Picts, the seven- tieth king in that list, who reigned from 790 to 820. As he was succeeded by his brother Angus, and Angus by Drust, the son of Constantino, he could in no sense have been the last king of the Picts, and this expression could only have been applied to him, if the passage was first written in his reign. It is remarkable that the first edition of the " His- " toria" which can be dated, that of 796, falls within his reign. By the poem, which follows the prose tradition, Constantin, the last of the Picts, ap- pears to be identified with Constantin, termed in the " Irish Annals" king of the Picts, who reigned from 862 to 876, as it is stated that sixty-six kings reigned over the Picts before Kenneth Macalpin, which would make him the sixty-ninth king. But he like- wise was succeeded by his brother ; the annals have antedated these reigns two years, which places his death in 878 ; and another edition of the "His- " toria Britonum" is dated in 879, one year after his death. The passage under letter E is a separate legend, found in the " Book of Lecain" only. Among the additions to the Irish Nennius found in the "Book " of Lecain " is a poem, prefixed to which, in a later