dexterous rival of the original forger. An Irish writer, in 1766 had had the honor of first flinging down the gauntlet to the impostor-it remained for an Irish writer in 1829, to administer the coup de grace to the executors of the forgery. The essay of Doctor Drummond, in the seventeenth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, has stripped the last rag of probability from the back of the Highland felon, and Macpherson now stands forth "latro famosus," a knave of the first magnitude, naked to the gaze of historic reprobation.

The second, or, as it may be called, the Pictish sophism, which, indeed, is to a great extent contained, although not insisted on, in the North British theory, is better grounded. It owes its origin to our own Usher, who in 1639, as we have said, first demonstrated the existence of a remnant of the Picts, so far down as the twelfth century. Sibbald, in 1680, ventured next to hint at the existence of Pictish blood in the lowlands, in his own day; and Innes, a clear and rea ́sonable writer, in 1729, carried out Sibbald's conjecture so far as to conclude "that the bulk of the Scottish commons are as well the offspring and race of the Picts, as of the Scots;" and to this extent, (notwithstanding Henry of Huntingdon's statement, that in his time, the middle of the twelfth century," the Picts seemed then to be so far extinct, and their language so utterly destroyed, that all that was recorded of them in ancient history, appeared a mere fable,") most reasonable men at the present day will be willing to go; for as the world grows older, and historic examples accumulate, this fact becomes every day more apparent, that to effect the extermination of a people, especially if they inhabit a mountainous country, would be almost as impracticable as it would be impious. Still, when Innes goes the length of hinting at a preponderance of Pictish blood in Scotland, we cannot help thinking that even he has been carried away by an over-anxiety for that honor of the Scottish crown, which he so frequently

protests it is an object of his essay to maintain. The more comprehensive sophism, however, which maintained that Picts and Scots were equally Caledonians, was so much better calculated to gratify national vanity, and was so long propped up by Macpherson and his advocates, that no Scottish antiquary cared to build upon the theory of Innes for many years after. Left in apparently undisputed possession of the field, the Highland party daily increased in insolence and absurdity, until in an evil hour for the cause of imposture, their folly provoked the great John Pinkerton to enter the arena. Then might be seen such a prostration of the Gael, as had not been equalled since the battle of Harlaw. Seers and Sennachies, kicked out of their misty preten sions, lay grovelling on every sidethe ghosts of Lodi shrieked in their airy halls-nor could all her kilts protect Macpherson from such visitations of the Gothic foot, as sent him howling beyond the Grampians. kerton believed the Highlanders to be Irish, and, therefore, he hated them with the more perfect hatred. That they were braggadocios and impostors would, indeed, have been sufcient to ensure them a reasonable amount of rough treatment at his hands, under any circumstances; but to be convicted of an Irish origin, as in Pinkerton's opinion they clearly were, filled up the measure of their condemnation, and left no room in the breast of the indignant Goth for the least effort of pity. The lash of ridicule, and the stroke of denunciationthe whip and the club alternately, lacerated and crushed them. But there is a dash of humour through Pinkerton's most bitter passages, that disarms even the sufferers

Pin

"The Sennachies' mode of study," says Martin, in his description of the Western Isles, "is very singular. They shut their doors and windows for a day's time; and lie on their backs, with a stone upon their belly, and plaids about their heads; and their eyes being covered, they pump their brains for rhetorical encomium, or panegyric."

}

"Surely," says Pinkerton "Martin had the second sight; and the prophecy relates to the Macphersons. The stone must be ignorance, the plaid prejudice." As for the Highlanders,

"They are mentioned," says he, "in minuter annals and memoirs, as concerned in thefts and riots; but in solemn narra tion, not one name of a Highlander is to be found in the whole history of Scotland after the year 1056.'

Yet he won't allow the Macphersons the sorry consolation of being even Highlanders

Macpherson, it is perfectly known, means the son of the parson, and it is probable that only the Lowland priests, who were sent to the Highlands, were called parsons-a Lowland term."

How enraging it must have been to the author of Ossian, to have his origin traced to a Saxon priest! But, it will be asked, how did Pinkerton reconcile his Irish antipathies to the admission that the Scotch Highlanders are all of Irish descent? Thus: he estimated the Highland population at 400,000; that of the Lowlands at upwards of a million; and while he made little of the Highlanders in number, he looked upon them as perfectly contemptible in intellect. But the Lowland character he reverenced highly, and thought that if he could rescue that part of the Scottish population from the imputation of an Irish descent, he could well afford us our pretensions to the remainder, and wish us joy of the acquisition. He, therefore, maintained that the ancient Picts, so far from being exterminated, had remained in possession of the Lowlands of Scotland, from the time of Kenneth MacAlpin, to his own day; that the Pictish language was the old Gothic dialect of the Lowlands; that the Picts themselves were Goths, distinct alike from the Irish Highlanders, and the Strathclyde Britons; and that whatever was respectable in Scottish history, was Gothic in origin and characteristics.

Pinkerton's work drew forth the "Caledonia" of Chalmers, a voluminous advocate of the school of Innes. Chalmers is not so unreasonable in matter as in manner. He carelessly speaks of his work as "the amusement of his winter evenings," and presumptuously proclaims that this toy of his leisure (3 vols. quarto) has left no difficulty unexplained, no obscurity unelucidated, no knot untied in Scottish history.

This indiscreet complacency threw Pinkerton into an indescribable fury.

"That a man," he exclaims, "without a shadow of learning, and whose pursuits had, even to his old age, been political and mercantile, should suddenly attempt themes only fit for the most profound erudition, is, indeed, a phenomenon. But, as ignorance is insensible of its own ignorance, it is the less wonder that a writer whose quotations show that, far from writing, he cannot even read Latin, should not only engage in a task so foreign to his little means, but should have the presumption to judge his judges. The plagitincture of learning, or of that candour arisms are so gross that no man of any which always accompanies it no man, sensible that he was writing in a learned age, and under the eyes of learned judges, would have ventured on the smallest of them. But the naked and unconscious

impudence of real, stark, stubborn ignorance, is proverbial. The ostrich hides his head, and thinks no one sees him."

Notwithstanding this tirade, Chalmers has not sunk; and although there are difficulties in the way of identifying the Picts with the Welsh, in which he follows Camden, Lloyd, Innes, Guthrie, and Hume, and in which he has been followed in our own day by Betham, yet we cannot but think this theory much more feasible than either the Gothic one of Pinkerton, or the Gaelic one of the Macphersons.

Pinker

We have shown that to shake off the Irish connection, or at least to reduce it to the slenderest thread, has been the uniform object of Scottish writers, ever since the explosion of Boece and Buchanan. This antipathy to the Irish, so far from having been worn out by its own abortive efforts, or modified by time, continues still to actuate the Scotch. Its last and most extravagant effort is the essay before us. ton had carried it to a considerable length, in rescuing the entire Lowland population from our claims of kindred blood, and even he was satisfied to leave us our colony beyond the Grampians; but the Highland Society and Mr. Skene, not content with wiping out all remnants of an Irish descent from the plains, would now rob us of the entire Highland population also, and so extinguish every trace of Scottish blood out of the very colony and kingdom of the Scots! They are all Picts south of the Grampians, cried Pinkerton; they are all Picts north of the Grampians, cries Mr. Skene; they are all Picts, Highland and Lowland,

echoes the Highland Society; and so, in spite of Claudian, Orosius, Isidore, Gildas, Beda, and the chronicles, the stigma of on Irish descent is wiped off from Scotland, hill and plain! We proceed to examine the arguments by which Mr. Skene endeavours to fix a Pictish origin on the Highlanders. The following summing up of the evidence in his own words, embraces all the relevant parts of his argument, and gives ample opportunity for judging of its correctness, or the contrary.

"In the first place."-He says, "it has been shown that, from the earliest period down to the end of the fifth century, that part of Scotland which extends to the north of the Friths of Forth and Clyde,

was at all times inhabited by a single nation, termed by the Romans at first Caledonians, and afterward Picts.

"In the second place. It has been proved that, in the beginning of the sixth century, an Irish colony arrived in Scotland, and obtained possession of the southern part of Argyle, and that during a period of 340 years, the territories and the relative situation of the two nations of Picts and Dalriads remained unaltered.

"In the third place. It has been proved that, during this period, the Picts were divided into two great nations, the Dicaledonians, Cruithne or northern Picts, and the Vecturiones, Piccardach or southern Picts; that the northern Picts inhabited the whole of the mountainous part of the country, with the exception of the Dalriadic territories, consisting of southern Argyle alone, while the southern Picts occupied the plains; that, in the year 843, the Dalriadic Scots conquered the Piccardach or southern Picts, but that their conquest was confined to that branch of the Pictish nation alone; and that, while the northern Picts probably assisted the Dalriadic Scots in that conquest, their situation was, at all events, not in any respects altered by it, but, on the contrary, that they remained in full possession of the north of Scotland.

"In the fourth place.. We have proved that the northern Picts occupied the whole of the Highlands as late as the end of the ninth century. We have shown that they spoke the same language, and bore the same national name as the Highlanders did; and, lastly, we have traced the Highlanders, as in possession of the highland districts, up to the very period in which we had previously found these districts inhabited by the northern Picts.

"These facts, then, supported as they are by evidence of no ordinary description, leads us to this simple result, that the highlands of Scotland have been in habited by the same nation from the earliest period to the present day. And that while the tribes composing that nation have uniformly styled themselves Gael or Albanich, they have been known to the numerous invaders of the country under the various appellations of AlCruithne, northern Picts, Reddschankes, biones, Caledonii, Picti, Dicaledones, wild Scottis, and Highlanders,” v. 1, p. 86, 87.

against the testimony of Beda and the The first proposition is directly Annalists, from whom it is certain that an Irish colony (whether Attacoti or not makes little difference) had settled on the western coast of north Britain

before the arrival of Fergus Mac Erc. The question is of small importance in the present enquiry, and we there fore pass the proposition over, subject only to a reservation in favor of the truth, if it should be necessary to full back on it hereafter.

The second proposition which limits the original possessions of the Dalriadic colony to the southern part of Argyle, and denies any extension of those limits for a period of 340 years, is denied, both major and minor. us proceed to examine by what arguments each assertion is sought to be supported.

Let

To determine the extent of the Dalriadic settlement, it is necessary first to ascertain the position of a certain range of mountains, called in the authorities Drumalban, and Dorsum Britannic, of which the one is no more signifying alike the ridge or back of than the Latin form of the other, both Britain; perhaps the back-bone of Britain would come nearer the peculiar meaning than any other expression. This ridge of mountains is admitted, on all hands, to have been the eastern boundary of the kingdom of Fergus. It is also admitted to be the "Mous Mound" of Girald Cambrensis, to whom the tract" De Situ Albani qua se in figuram hominis habet" is ascribed. He compares Scotland to the shape of a man; Argyle being the head and neck; the "Mons Mound" the body; the rivers Tay and Spey, diverging from the Mons Mound," the legs; and the arms being those ranges of hills which separate Argyle

from the rest of Scotland, and which, to use the words of Mr. Skene, "must therefore have consisted of two ridges, the one branching from the south, and the other on the north." But the term Mound is applied to at least one of these, as well as to the ridge running between the sources of the Tay and Spey; for it is distinctly stated that the "Mons Mound” divides Caithness through the middle (dividit Cathanesiam per medium.) We have, therefore, to enquire whether the Dorsum Britanniæ is to be identified with the range extending from Caithness on the north, to the highlands between Argyleshire and Perth on the south, or with the range of the Grampians running east and west, or with both. In the Regiam Majestatem it is clearly applied to the Grampians; "gif anie dwell beyond their places or bounds (i. e. betwixt Forth and Drumalbane) in Murray, Ross, Caithness, Argyle, or in Kentyre," &c.; but, in Buchanan, Monypenny and others referred to by Mr. Skene, it as clearly belongs to that "long range of hills commencing at Loch Long, and running up the centre of the island, until it is lost among the mountains of Caithness," (p. 30,) because these alone fulfil the condition of separating the rivers which run into the eastern, from those which run into the western sea, the great characteristic of Drumalban according to the above writers. It is clear that the author of the tract, "De Situ" considered Scotland to be broader than long, or he would not have represented the body as running east and west; and, as his geographical knowledge is not likely to have been worse than that of preceding ages, it would seem fair to suppose that the same had been the opinion of the original namers of Drumalban, and that the Grampian range is the Dorsum Britanniæ ox, while the actual back of Britain, according to the true geography of the country, had received the same name, as a supposed subordinate branch. Thus the northern Pictish provinces, spoken of by Beda as those " quæ arduis atque horrentibus Montium jugis ab Australibus eorum sunt regionibus sequestrate" had clearly for their boundary Drumalban proper, according to this distorted idea of the shape of the country; while it is equally clear that we cannot understand this Drumalban as the boundary of the Dalriadic territory, as it would include the whole of the north of

Scotland, between the German Ocean and Irish Sea, whereas Fergus's kingdom was bounded by the Irish Sea only. We must, therefore, understand the Drumalban which bounded Dalriada to be that supposed subordinate ridge already mentioned, which, however, is the real back bone of North Britain, running north and south from Caithness to Loch Lomond. The kingdom of Fergus would consequently comprehend all Argyle, Western Inverness, Ross, Sutherland and the islands. An ardent Dalriad might still insist on taking the Grampians as the line, and thus extend the conquest over all Caithness, Inverness and Moray, subject only to the objection above; so that, in contenting ourselves with the subordinate " Mound" as our boundary, we may fairly lay claim to a degree of moderation not very common among antiquaries. But what ridge does Mr. Skene adopt? Not the Grampians, as may readily be supposed. Neither does he take the line of the Mound from Caithness; for his object is to preserve Inverness and Ross to the Picts, at all hazards; and to choose the boundary we have taken would be fatal to him at the first step. Does he then adopt some other mountain range more answerable to the conditions of the question? No; but he takes the southern half of the line we have adopted the lower arm of the figure of Cambrensis-the only portion of the whole system which is not mentioned by name in the evidence; and which is received as a subordinate part of the system, only because it is in connection with the mound of Caithness; not adopting the whole from the evidence of a part; but adopting one part on the very strength of the claims of another part which he rejects. It will naturally be asked on what evidence does he ground this separation? The reader will perhaps smile when we say, by endeavouring to destroy these very claims on the evidence of Beda and Walafred Strabo from whom he quotes, to show that the district north of the Linnhe Loch-his point of separation—had never been out of the possession of the Picts.

The passage from Beda has been so often subjected to criticism, and has in particular been so ably handled by Innes, that we are rather surprised at Mr. Skene bringing it forward as admitted evidence. It is where, speaking of Iona, about the year 731, he says, "Quæ videlicet insula ad jus