Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/51

PEEFACE. xliii ceeded each other ; Duncan Mac Malcolm having in point of fact no existence. 1 3. The Welsh " Bruts." — The publication of the The weish so-called History of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth produced a complete revolution in the traditionary history of the country ; and the legends which had hitherto prevailed as to the origin of the races in Britain assumed a totally new shape. Instead of the mythic genealogy contained in Nennius, in which the population of North and South Britain appeared under the form of two brothers, Brutus and Albanus, the sons of Isicon, Brutus now appears as the leader of a colony to Britain, and as having three sons, Locrinus, Camber, and Albanactus, among whom Britain was divided into three parts : Ijoegria, or England ; Cambria, or Wales ; and Albania, or Scot- land. This fable played so conspicuous a part in the controversy between England and Scotland, that it is desii'able to include it in this collection in the form in which it appears in the Welsh mss. Whether Geoffrey of Monmouth deduced his statement of these fables from older authority, or whether he himself invented them, is a question of much difficulty. His work is dedicated to Robert Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry the First who died in 1135, and appears to have been composed while his father still lived. In his epistle dedicatory, he states that he translated his work from an ancient book in the British lan- guage, given him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. That there was such a person at the period is