V.MAY 26, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.
419
be sorry to give up the old division, pointed
out by CANON TAYLOR, into the land of the
invers and the land of theabers. I still think
it correct, even though some Irish eccle-
siastics may have carried their language into
Fifeshire and left invers there in the very
home of the Picts. Perhaps some one can
say whether golf is a Pictish game. Caman,
the Irish game, is very different. C. S.
"The Scots, who were an Irish sept, crossed in the fourth century to Argyle." These would be brave words from any pen other than that of CANON TAYLOR. Your amateur historian is oftentimes deterred from declar- ing " whatsoever things are true " by the bold destructiveness of modern history- making. But CANON TAYLOR'S is a sure and practised hand, which trembleth not when stating facts. And in this instance, even when raised against the weight and glamour of Gibbon's clarum et venerabile nomen, it manifests its accustomed steadiness. Gibbon is evidently the father of those who gainsay the fact so undoubtingly advanced by CANON TAYLOR. He says (' Decline and Fall,' vol. i. p. 743) :-
"It improbable that in some remote period of antiquity the fertile plains of Ulster received a
colony of hungry Scots it is certain that, in the
declining age of the Roman Empire, Caledonia, Ire- land, and the Isle of Man were inhabited by the
Scots They long cherished the lively tradition
of their common name and origin; and the mis- sionaries of the Isle of Saints, who diffused the light of Christianity over North Britain, established the vain opinion that their Irish countrymen were the natural as well as spiritual fathers of the Scottish race. The loose and obscure tradition has
been preserved by the Venerable Bede On this
slight foundation an huge superstructure of fable
was gradually reared The Scottish nation, with
mistaken pride, adopted their Irish genealogy
The Irish descent of the Scots has been revived,
Britons Asserted,' p. 154). Yet he acknowledges,
1. That the Scots of Ammian (A.D. 340) were already
settled in Caledonia, and that the Roman authors
do not afford any hints of their emigration from
another country. 2. That all the accounts of such
emigrations which have been asserted or received
by Irish bards, Scotch historians, or English anti-
Juaries are totally fabulous. 3. That three of the rish tribes which are mentioned by Ptolemy (A.D. 150) were of the Caledonian extraction. 4. That a younger branch of Caledonian princes of the house of Fingal acquired and possessed the monarchy of Ireland. After these concessions, the remaining difference between Whitaker and his adversaries is minute and obscure."
Gibbon's distinction between probability and certainty in the two facts he adduces in his opening sentence is as undialectic as it is arbitrary. But logic was never his forte.
Those two facts are on a similar plane of
certainty, with the addition that the former
is not confined to one province. The Scots
overran a wider area than Ulster. Then,
again, curiously enough, the historian fails
to see that a "lively [or living] tradition"
could hardly be also "loose and obscure."
Such confusion of epithets entirely in-
validates the subsequent " loose and obscure "
charges of " slight foundation," " huge super-
structure of fable," "mistaken pride," and
"last moments of its decay." This is all
the more surprising as he has a keen eye
for Whitaker's suicidal "concessions." For
the rest these latter go for nothing in face
of the simple fact so succinctly stated by
CANON TAYLOR. The marvel is that it should
need restating. Yet few facts need it more.
The " mistaken pride " has faded into either
a burning shame or a flat denial. Scotsmen,
seemingly, resent the "Irish descent" with as
much heat as they would an imputed one
from the Hottentots. More than once, both
in Scotland and out of it, I have emphasized
the relationship by transmuting the adage
" Scratch a Russian and find a Tartar " into
44 Scratch a Scotsman and find an Irishman,"
but the effort was invariably received with a
cynical smirk of unbelief. urru " -**
The Scottish
nation " no longer " adopt the Irish
genealogy " with " mistaken pride." Is there
not something of the undutifulness of
children disowning their parents in this?
But, disown it as they will, the plain
historic fact is there. Nomenclature and
language alike proclaim it ; prejudice and
obstinacy alone ignore it. The Goidelic
races (kinsmen to the Irish Scots) may
have wandered north of the Tweed, but
they were not the parents of the Caledonian
Scots ; those bracketed were, and the Ulster
plantation under James was nothing short
of a return of the descendants of the original
Irish colonists to the mother country. Scot-
tish and Irish character may, and does now,
differ toto coelo, but it is the difference between
parent and child prolonged through many
generations, which in a family is confined to
few. In neither case is it a severance of
blood. J. B. McGovERN.
St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.
It is fairly certain, as CANON TAYLOR ob- serves, that the north of Scotland (Caithness and Sutherland) remained largely Pictish, although under Gaelic rule, until the arrival of the Scandinavian races. It probably still contains a considerable infusion of Pictish blood. The language, however, must have become Gaelic, and has remained so, in part, to the present day. In the Orkney and