Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/58

1 PEEFACE. the work of Giraldus Cambrensis. He founded this view on the fact that Eanulph Higden quotes the following sentence from this tract under the nanae of Giraldus : — " Nunc autem corrupte vo- " catur Scotia a Scotis cle Hihernia venientibus " et in ea regnantibus per spatium trecentorum " quindecim annorum usque scilicet ad regnum " Willelmi Eufi fratris Malcomi ;" and that in his " Topographia Hiberniae " Giraldus mentions his in- tention of writing upon the topography of Scot- land ; but the Editor cannot adopt this opinion. Passages are frequently given in Eanulph to which a name is prefixed, when perhaps only a word or two is taken from that author, and the rest of the passage from another source. As an instance of this, in the end of the same chapter he gives, under reference to Giraldus, " Distinctione prima capitulo " octavo decimo," a long passage containing an abstract of the " Legend of St. Andrew," while in point of fact the first ten words only are quoted from Giraldus' " De Instructione Princij^um ;" and in the quotation before referred to the words printed in italics are not in this tract. They seem taken from the passage in his " Topographia Hibemiee," printed in No. xxii. a. In a subsequent chapter he has another quotation fi-om this very tract, which he places under the name of Marianus ; further, Giral- dus did not write his topography of Ireland tdl the year 1186, and this tract is unquestionably an earlier work. In fact, Higden, who was acquainted