Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/191

PREFACE. clxxxiii year 498 to the middle of the eighth century. Between Alpin, the last king of Scottish Dalriada, and Kenneth Mac Alpin, the first king of the later Scottish kingdom, they place an interval of a cen- tury, during which Dalriada was under Pictish rule ; and Alpin, the last king of Scottish Dalriada, was thus a difierent person from Alpin the father of Kenneth, who lived a century later. The great events of this interval, which were affected by the subsequent controversy regarding the independence of Scotland, were first the foun- dation of St. Andrew by Angus, son of Fergus, king of the Picts ; and secondly, the existence of a Pictish kingdom in Dalriada, between the older and the later Scottish kingdoms ; and the change caused in the later chronicles by the pressure of the controversy regarding the independence of the Church was, regarding the first event, its trans- ference from its true date to the fourth century, by attaching the legend connected Avith the arrival of the relics of St. Andrew into Scotland in the eighth century to the earlier legend connected with their removal from Constantinople in the fourth century, so as to give a remote antiquity to the church of St. Andrews. With regard to the other event of the Pictish rule in Dalriada, — -the change produced on the chronicles by the controversy produced regarding the independence of Scotland was twofold, and led both to its suppression and amplification. In order to preserve the continuity