Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/48

xl PEEFACE. a fashion, which seems to have commenced in Wales and spread to Ireland, came in, of writing history in the form of prophecy, supposed to have been uttered by some one who lived long before the time of the actual writer. The " Cy- " voesi Myi'ddin" is a good example of this, in which a history written, part of it in the reign of Hywel dda in the tenth century, and part as late as the reign of Henry the Second, is given in the shape of a prophecy supposed to be uttered by Myrddin in the sixth century. In some cases the proper names of the kings are plainly given ; in others they are cloaked under epithets. There are several specimens of this kind of prophetical history in the Irish Mss., but the most remarkable are the prophecies of St. Berchan. They contain a his- tory of the Irish kings down to the reign of Muir- cheartach O'Brien, who died in the year 1119; and likewise an account of the mission of St. Columba to Scotland, of the reign of Aedan, king of Dakiada, and of the kings of Scotland, from Ken- neth Macalpin to Donald Bain, in whose time this part of the poem appears to have been written. The whole is attributed as a prophecy to St. Berchan, who lived towards the end of the seventh century. The latter part of the poem, relating to Scotland, is here printed. The names of the kings are concealed under epithets, but there is little difficulty in iden- tifying them, and it is full of cmious allusions to the character and events of their reign, which are