Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/170

cLxii PEEFACE. history was really one of an invasion, and leads to the suspicion at once that it was in reality a part of the Scottish occupation of the Pictish kingdom. That they were Scots appears from this, that the year 875, when they are said to have been slain by the Danes, falls in the reign of Constantin, son of Kenneth Mac Alpin, in his fourteenth year ; and this year the " Pictish Chronicle" records a battle between the Danes and the Scots, and adds that not long after it occisi sunt Scoti co Aclicochlam, which seems to refer to this very slaughter. The "Pictish Chronicle" likewise records that Kenneth Mac Alpin, in his seventh year, transferred the relics of St. Columba to a church which he had built. We learn from the " Irish Annals " that these relics had been removed to Ireland in the year 849, by the Abbot of lona. They must now have been brought from thence ; and there is no doubt that the church which Kenneth had built was that of Dun- keld. During the first four reigns of the house of Kenneth, when the kings were termed Reges Pictorum, Dunkeld seems to have possessed the primacy, as in 865 the "Irish Annals" record the death of " Tuathal mac Artguso primus Episco- " pus Fortrenn 7 Abbas DuincaiUenn ;" but when, after the expulsion of Eocha and Grig, the sue-, cession was firmly established in the main line of the descendants of Kenneth, and their kings came to be called Rigli Alhan and Reges Scotorum, a new change took place in the ecclesiastical re-