Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/84

Ixxvi PEEFACE. was exclusively applied to Ireland prior to the tenth century, it is not correct to say, as many Irish Avriters do, that the term Scotus or Scoti was ex- clusively used to designate its inhabitants. Scotia was a territorial or geographical term, and was limited to the country which bore it for the time, but Scotus was a name of race or generic term, im- plying people as weU as country. The geographical and the generic terms, though connected witb the same people, are rarely co-extensive, and as the race extends beyond the limits of their original country, so does the generic term. The name of Scotus was no doubt applied to those of the race of the Scoti wherever they were found. While Bede talks of Ire- land as being the " Patria Scotorum," and applies the name of Scotia exclusively to that island, he also mentions the Dalriads as the " Scoti qui Britanniam " inhabitant ;" and there can be little doubt that" while the geographical term of Scotia was confined to the island of Ireland, the generic term of Scoti embraced the people of that race whether inhabiting Ireland or Britain. As this term of Scotia was a geographical term derived from the generic name of a people, it was to some extent a fluctuating name, and though applied at first to Ireland, which pos- sessed the more distinctive name of Hibernia, as the principal seat of the race from whom the name was derived, it is obvious that, if the people from whom the name was taken inhabited other countries, the name itself would have a tendency to pass from the