Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/109

PEEFACE. ci cession undoubtedly existed and was in force among the Picts in his day. It implies that succession through males took place up to a certain point, and that, when that failed, succession through females was preferred. The same idea is espressed in the Irish legends in different forms. On examining the list of the Pictish kings down to the times of Bede, we find that there are numerous instances of brothers succeeding each other, but that in no one instance does a son succeed his father. Where, therefore, there were several sons of the same mother, they appear to have succeeded each other according to a law of male succession of very general application, which preferred brothers before sons ; but when the last brother had succeeded, the period seems to have arrived expressed by Bede in the words, " ubi res "perveniret in dubium," and then the succession went through daughters in preference to sons. Such a cus- tom must manifestly have arisen from an originally lax relation among the sexes, when no filiation could be predicated with certainty, except between a son and a mother, and thus alone the continuance of the royal blood could be secured. But the lists of the Pictish kings present, on examination, some further peculiarities. Fi^'st, The names of the fathers and of the sons are quite different. In no case does the name borne by any of the sons appear among the names of the fathers, nor, conversely, is there an instance of the father's name appearing among the sons. Second,