Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban Vol. III

BOOK III. LAND AND PEOPLE . — CHAPTER I. SCOTLAND IN THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER THE THIRD. — CHAPTER II. THE SEVEN PROVINCES OF SCOTLAND. — CHAPTER III. LEGENDARY ORIGINS. — CHAPTER IV. THE TUATH OR TRIBE IN IRELAND. — CHAPTER V. THE FINÉ OR SEPT IN IRELAND, AND THE TRIBE IN WALES. — CHAPTER VI. THE TRIBE IN SCOTLAND. — CHAPTER VII. THE THANAGES AND THEIR EXTINCTION. — CHAPTER VIII. THE FINÉ OR CLAN IN SCOTLAND. — CHAPTER IX. THE CLANS AND THEIR GENEALOGIES. — CHAPTER X. LAND TENURE IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS SUBSEQUENT TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The brightest and most prosperous period in the annals of Scotland was undoubtedly that during which she was under the rule of the dynasty of kings which sprang from the union of the Celtic king Malcolm Ceannmor with the Saxon princess Margaret. It was during this period of upwards of a century and a half that the different provinces of Scotland were welded into one feudal monarchy, and the various races which inhabited them, and upon the allegiance of each of whom the kings of this race had hereditary claims, were fused into one mixed population combining the peculiar qualities of each.

The reign of Alexander the Third, the last king of this old Celtic dynasty of Scottish kings, saw the concentration of the various provinces of Scotland into one compact kingdom finally completed by the cession of the Isles in the year 1266. Scotland now presented the same geographical platform which it ever after possessed. The various races which composed its population occupied in the main the same relative position. The kingdom of Scotland could now be no longer viewed as a limited Gaelic kingdom, possessing dependencies peopled by British, Anglic, or Scandinavian communities, but had become a feudal monarchy, the dominant element of 2which was Teutonic, while the Celtic population was either restricted to the wilder and more mountain regions, or formed the under class of serfs and tillers of the soil.

It would seem as if the task of amalgamating the discordant elements of the population, and of concentrating the semi-independent provinces which they peopled, had no sooner been completed than the dynasty which effected it was to pass away, and a war of succession was to follow, which was still further to root up her ancient institutions, and to throw the kingdom still more into the hands of kings and nobility of an alien race.

By the death of his only daughter, who had been married to the king of Norway, and of his only son in the same year, Alexander the Third found that unless he had a male heir by a second marriage the succession to the throne would devolve upon a little grand-daughter, the Princess of Norway, then only two years old, and on her the succession was settled in a Parliament held at Scone on the 5th February 1283-4, failing such male issue. In the instrument by which the succession was so settled the magnates of Scotland bound themselves to receive Margaret, daughter of Eric, king of Norway, and of Margaret, daughter of King Alexander, as their lady and heir of the kingdom of Scotia; and to acknowledge her and her heirs as their liege lady, and the true heir of their sovereign in the whole kingdom, and in the island of Man, and all the other islands pertaining to the kingdom of Scotia, as well as in Tynedale and Penrith, and other dependencies of the kingdom.^[1]

Such were the enlarged limits to which the name of Scotia, once confined to the districts between the Firth of Forth and the river Spey, had now extended; and the dependencies of the kingdom, which had then embraced large 3semi-independent provinces on the south and west of these boundaries, were now reduced to the recently-acquired Western Isles, and to the small districts of Tynedale and Penrith lying beyond her southern frontier.

If this process of consolidation, however, may be said to have been completed in the reign of Alexander the Third, it can only be held to have properly commenced with that of David the First. Prior to his accession, although the rule of the Scottish monarchs had extended itself by degrees over the districts south of the Forth and Clyde, and then west of the Drumalban range and the river Spey, yet the name of Scotia was still confined to the eastern districts between these limits. These districts formed the real nucleus and heart of the kingdom, and were more directly associated with her monarchs as kings of the Scots.

The extension of their power over the southern districts commenced about a century after the establishment of the Scottish dynasty on the Pictish throne, when, in the year 946, the districts forming the kingdom of Cumbria were ceded by Edward the elder to Malcolm king of the Scots. This kingdom extended, at that time, from the river Clyde to the river Derwent in Cumberland, and to the cross at Stanmore on the borders of Westmoreland and Yorkshire, which separated it from the Northumbrian territories. It embraced the western districts of Scotland from the Clyde to the Solway, the present county of Cumberland, with the exception of that part of it which lies on the south of the river Derwent and formed the barony of Copeland, and the whole of Westmoreland exclusive of the barony of Kendal, which, with Copeland and the western districts as far as the borders of Wales, belonged to the Northumbrian kingdom.

Within eighty years afterwards, the districts on the east coast extending from the Forth to the Tweed, and consisting of Lothian and Teviotdale, were ceded to his grandson, 4another Malcolm. These southern territories were, however, in the position of dependencies on the kingdom of Scotland, lying beyond her proper southern frontier and within that of England, and were on three different occasions entirely separated from the Scottish kingdom:—First during the usurpation of Macbeth and the possession of the greater part of Scotland by the Norwegian Earl of Orkney, whose joint rule certainly did not extend beyond the Forth, while the southern districts remained faithful to the family of Duncan; again during the short reign of Donald Ban; and for a third time after the death of Eadgar, when the territories over which he had ruled as king were divided between his brothers Alexander and David, the former reigning as king over the kingdom north of the Forth and Clyde, while the latter ruled with the title of Earl over these southern dependencies. The southern frontier of the Cumbrian kingdom did not, at this time, extend beyond the Solway, for the Norman king, William Rufus, had, in the year 1092, wrested that part of it which lay between the Solway and the Derwent from Malcolm Ceannmor, and given it to the Norman baron Ranulph de Meschines, while Henry I. erected it, with Westmoreland, in 1132, into the bishopric of Carlisle. The southern boundary of Earl David’s possessions had thus become coincident with the southern frontier of the later kingdom of Scotland. It was only on the accession of David to the throne of Scotland that they became permanently united to the kingdom, and the name of Cumbria, or Cumberland, was restricted to that part of the ancient kingdom of Cumbria which now belonged to England. The connection of the royal family with the ancient line of the Saxon kings, the training and Norman tendencies of David himself, and his marriage with the daughter of an Earl of Northumbria, and widow of an Earl of Northampton, whose mother was a niece of the Conqueror, created a tie between them and the Anglic population of the 5southern districts which was closer than that which now connected him with the Celtic population of the other portions of the kingdom; and Lothian assumed that prominent position as the most valuable and cherished centre of the interests of the monarchy, which had hitherto belonged to the region between the Forth and the Spey.

But while David the First may be held to have established the Solway, the range of the Cheviots, and the Tweed, as the proper southern boundary of the kingdom of Scotland, his marriage gave him claims to territories beyond it, which he was disposed to assert when opportunity offered. During the life of Matilda, his queen, he had enjoyed in her right the earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon; but on her death, seven years after he had succeeded to the throne of Scotland, the earldom of Northampton passed to her son by her first marriage, Simon de Senlis, while Henry, her son by King David, succeeded to the earldom of Huntingdon. The death of Henry, king of England, in 1135, and the disputed succession between his daughter the empress of Germany and his sister’s son Stephen, Earl of Mortaigne, presented the opportunity King David longed for. He embraced the cause of the empress, who was his niece, and in her name took possession of Northumberland, with the exception of the castle of Bamborough, which he soon after surrendered to Stephen, who confirmed the Honor of Huntingdon to Prince Henry, with Doncaster and the castle of Carlisle in addition to it. In the following year King David again claimed the northern provinces in name of his son Prince Henry, and both Northumberland and Cumberland were yielded to him; but on peace being made between him and Stephen he surrendered Northumberland, retaining, however, Cumberland in England. An attempt, two years afterwards, to regain Northumberland led to the battle of the Standard, in which David was defeated; but a peace was concluded in 1139, 6when Northumberland was made over to Prince Henry, except the fortresses of Newcastle and Bamborough, which he retained to his death in 1152, when King David had Malcolm, the eldest son of Prince Henry, proclaimed heir to the crown, and presented his second son, William, to the Northumbrian barons as their ruler. Malcolm had not been four years on the throne when he surrendered Northumberland and Cumberland to the king of England, which were annexed to the English crown, while the king restored to him the Honor of Huntingdon. An attempt on the part of his brother and successor, William the Lion, to regain these provinces, led to the war in which he was defeated and taken prisoner in 1173, and Huntingdon was taken from him and given to Simon de Senlis; but on the death of the latter in 1184 it was restored to King William, who bestowed it upon his youngest brother David, afterwards known as David, Earl of Huntingdon, in whose family it remained.^[2] The claims of the Scottish kings upon the northern provinces of England were renewed by Alexander the Second, but through the mediation of Cardinal Otho, the Pope’s legate, all questions in dispute between England and Scotland were finally settled by an agreement concluded at York in September 1237. In lieu of the claims made by Alexander upon the earldoms of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, as his hereditary right, and for the dowry he ought to have received with Johanna, the sister of the king of England, whom he had married, King Henry undertook to convey to the King of Scotland in property, lands in the earldoms of Northumberland and Cumberland to the yearly value of two hundred pounds.^[3] The lands so settled upon him were Tynedale, also called the barony of Werk, in 7Northumberland, and the crown demesne in Cumberland, consisting of Penrith and other lands, with the exception of the castle of Carlisle.

Such is a short sketch of the attempts made by the kings of Scotland to extend their frontiers to the south; and the result was that in the reign of Alexander the Third the southern boundary of Scotland was the same as it is at present, but Alexander was left in possession of the lands of Tynedale and Penrith beyond it, as a dependency of the kingdom, and they remained with his successor John Baliol, when they were finally lost to Scotland in the war of independence which followed his short and disastrous reign.

But if the kings of this dynasty struggled vainly to enlarge their boundaries on the south, they were more successful in gradually extending the power of the crown over the northern and western provinces. David I. by successfully defeating and crushing the rebellion of Angus, Earl of Moray, in 1130, terminated the semi-independent state of that province, and no earl of this province was permitted to exist till King Robert Bruce bestowed it upon his nephew Randolph, but its guardianship was committed to different Scottish nobles, under the title of Custos Moraviæ.^[4] The son of Malcolm MacHeth, who called himself the son of Earl Angus, attempted on the accession of Malcolm IV. to regain the province with the aid of the powerful Regulus of Argyll, but unsuccessfully, and their failure was followed by the northern seaboard, between Inverness and the Spey, where David I. had already planted the royal castle, being to a great extent taken from the native chiefs and given to strangers—a policy still further followed out by his successor William the Lion, who added the district of Ross, in which he built two castles; 8and the crown continued to maintain its control over these provinces, notwithstanding occasional attempts on the part of the Celtic inhabitants to regain their independence by supporting the pretensions of the families of MacWilliam and MacHeth. The province of Caithness too, which at this time included Sutherland, and had for generations belonged to the Norwegian earls of Orkney, who held it nominally under the king of Scotland with the title of Earl, was at length brought by the same monarch more directly under the power of the crown, and placed in the same position as the other Scottish provinces. By his son Alexander the Second the still more extensive province of Argathelia or Argyll, forming the western seaboard of Scotland, and extending from Loch Long, opening off the Firth of Clyde, to the borders of Caithness, was brought under subjection, so that in the reign of this king the power of the crown was firmly established over the whole mainland of Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. The islands, however, which surrounded it still belonged to the kingdom of Norway. The Orkney and Shetland Islands had been colonised by the Norwegians as early as the ninth century. They had been ruled by a line of Norwegian Jarls, who owed submission to the king of Norway alone, and though the succession to these Jarls opened in the reign of William the Lion to two families of Scottish descent, they were still considered as Jarls under the Norwegian crown, and the islands did not become connected with the Scottish kingdom till long after the period we are dealing with. The Western Isles, however, stood in a different position. Although the Norwegian Vikings had to a great extent taken possession of them at the same time that they colonised Orkney, and they had been the subject of frequent contest between the Norwegian Jarl and the Danish kings of Dublin, who had acquired possession of the island of Man, they were still claimed by the Scottish kings as belonging 9to their kingdom, till the reign of Edgar, when they were formally ceded to the king of Norway. They were at this time along with the Isle of Man under the rule of petty kings of Norwegian descent, and this line of Norwegian kings of the Isles retained the whole till the year 1154, when the kingdom of the Isles was divided, and the islands south of the Point of Ardnamurchan passed under the rule of the Celtic ruler of Argyll, whose claim was derived through a descent in the female line from one of the Norwegian kings of the Isles, but who still held them nominally under the king of Norway. The tie to Norway, however, was becoming weaker and the connection with Scotland stronger, when the unsuccessful attempt of Hakon, king of Norway, to firmly re-establish his power over the whole of the islands in the reign of Alexander the Third, and his defeat and death, led to the cession of Man and the Isles in the year 1266 to the Scottish monarch. And in 1284 we find them settled upon the Maid of Norway as a dependency of the Scottish kingdom. The Western Islands became from this time firmly united to the rest of Scotland, while the island of Man, after being in the following century alternately in the possession of the Scots and the English, finally passed over to the English crown.

Such then was, in extent, the Scotland of Alexander the Third, and of its physical aspect at this time we can also form a very fair conception. As early as the third century we are told that the Barbarian tribes beyond the bounds of the Roman province in Britain ‘inhabit mountains wild and waterless, and plains desert and marshy, having neither walls nor cities, nor tillage, but living by pasturage, the chase, and certain berries;’ and that ‘many parts being constantly flooded by the tides of the ocean become marshy.’^[5] Had the writer of this description ever seen the Scotch mountains, probably ‘waterless’ is the very last epithet he would have 10thought of applying to them; and though the inhabitants are said to have had neither walls nor cities, yet no doubt every rock and height showed the rude fortification or hill fort, the remains of so many of which are still seen, and every rising ground, with its rude collection of huts, would be surrounded with its rampart of earth and stones. Adamnan, writing in the seventh century, tells us of the fortified residence of the king of the Picts on the banks of the river Ness, with its royal house and gates, of a village on the banks of a lake, and of the houses of the country people. Of the leading physical features of the country he tells us too, of the large inland lakes, Loch Ness and Loch Awe, and of the range of mountains forming the backbone of Britain, or great watershed dividing the eastern and western waters, and separating the Scots from the Picts;^[6] and Bede, in the succeeding century, talks of the mountains which separated the southern from the northern Picts, and within which the former had seats.^[7]

To some extent these features must have still characterised the Scotland of Alexander the Third. The aspect of the country became gradually altered by the hand of man as he advanced in civilisation. The introduction of Christianity, and its rapid spread over the country, would fill it with those rude Celtic monasteries which were everywhere established, and with small Christian colonies, who practised a rude agriculture; forests would be cut down and mosses drained; and in place of ‘those marshy parts of the country, constantly flooded by the tides of ocean,’ would appear those rich carses which border the estuaries of her great rivers. The climate would become ameliorated, towns and villages would spring up, and a more settled mode of life become established among the Celtic tribes 11which formed her population. An old description of Scotland north of the Firths, written in the first year of the reign of William the Lion, exhibits of course the same great physical landmarks, which do not alter, as still forming the leading territorial boundaries. ‘This region is said to exhibit the form and figure of a man. The chief part of the figure, that is, the head, is in Arregaithel, or Argyll, in the west part of Scotland, on the Irish Sea. His feet are upon the German Ocean. The mountains and deserts of Arregaithel form his head and neck, and his body is the range of mountains called Mound, or the Mounth, which extends from the western to the eastern sea. His arms are the mountains which separate Scotia from Arregaithel. His right side is formed from Moray, Ross, Marr, and Buchan. His legs are these two great and principal rivers the Tay and the Spey. Between the legs are Angus and Mearns, on this side of the Mounth, and other districts on the other side,’ that is, Marr and Buchan, ‘between the Spey and the Mounth.’^[8] This description, which is fanciful enough, would place the head of the supposed figure at Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland. The body is formed by the great range of hills which separated Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire from the counties of Perth, Forfar, and Kincardine, and which forms, as it were, the backbone of the Grampians, and these are the mountains obviously alluded to by Bede as separating the northern from the southern Picts. The arms are formed by the range of hills which run at right angles, and are the great watershed dividing the eastern and western waters. The southern part forming the left arm now separates Argyllshire from Perthshire, and the northern part, or right arm, divides the western seaboard of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, which then formed part of Argyllshire, from the eastern districts of these counties, 12and these are equally plainly the Drumalban range, which in Adamnan’s time divided the Scots from the Picts.

Upon this scene, during the period when Scotland was under the rule of this dynasty, two great additional features were introduced. The first consisted of those Norman castles or strongholds, either built by the Norman barons to whom grants of land had been made, and which contributed so greatly to their power in the country, or by the kings of this race upon the crown lands; and around the latter would cluster those groups of dwellings, inhabited by traders and artisans, which, on the banks or at the mouths of navigable rivers, formed the burghs and seaport towns in which the trade and commerce of the country was carried on. The second great feature consisted of those monasteries founded by these kings for communities of regular canons or other monastic orders of the Roman Catholic Church, which, with their stone-and-lime buildings, the extensive tracts of land attached to them, and the industrial habits they fostered, would tend greatly to extend the cultivation of the soil, and to promote the social condition of the people under their influence.

We have a somewhat imperfect description of Scotland as it was in the time of Alexander the Third, compiled not long after his death. It commences at the eastern border between England and Scotland, and first names Tyvidale, that is, Teviotdale, with its two royal castles of Rokesborow or Roxburgh, and Geddeworth or Jedburgh, the latter a favourite residence of Alexander the Third. Then follows Lothian, with its castles of Berwick, Edinburgh, Dunbar, and Strivelyn or Stirling. These two provinces extend, it tells us, from the border to Erlesferie and Queneferie, that is, to the Firth of Forth. In the districts which extend in the west from the Clyde to the Solway it names only the new castle built upon the Ayr water, and in Galewey, Anandale the land of the Lord Robert de Brus, the royal castle of 13Dounfres or Dumfries, that of Kirkcudbright, belonging to William de Ferrers, and the castle of Baleswynton, belonging to John de Cumyn. The central districts are not named, but here was the extensive forest of Ettrick and Traquair separating the eastern from the western districts. Beyond Lothian, it tells us, lay the land of Fif or Fife, in which were the burgh of St. Andrews and the castle of Locres or Leuchars. Beyond the Firth of Tay was the land of Anegos or Angus, in which were the castles of Dundee and Forfar; and then follows ‘a certain waste called the Mounth, upwards of sixty miles long and sixteen broad, across which a most wretched passage can be taken to the north, without food’ (ubi est pessimum passagium sine cibo). Then follows Mar, and Bouwan or Buchan, in which is the burgh of Aberdene with its royal castle. Followed by the land of Morref or Moray, with the castles of Elgyn and Spiny, and then Ross and Cateneys or Caithness.^[9]

This description seems to follow the coast, as the central districts of Gowry, Atholl, Stratherne, and Menteath are omitted, as well as the district of Arregaithel or Argyll, and the enumeration of the castles is very imperfect. Fordun, however, gives a view of Scotland in his day which is probably equally applicable to the time of Alexander the Third, and in which he seems to break out into enthusiastic admiration of his native country. ‘It is a country,’ he says, ‘strong by nature, and difficult and toilsome of access. In some parts it towers into mountains; in others it sinks down into plains. For lofty mountains stretch through the midst of it from end to end, as do the tall Alps through Europe, and these mountains formerly separated the Scots from the Picts, and their kingdoms from each other,’—a very accurate description of the Drumalban chain, extending through Scotland from south to north. ‘Impassable as they are on horseback, save in very few places,’ he proceeds, alluding 14here to the passes into Argyll, ‘they can hardly be crossed even on foot, both on account of the snow always lying on them, except in summer-time only, and by reason of the boulders torn off the beetling crags, and the deep hollows in their midst. Along the foot of these mountains are vast woods, full of stags, roe-deer, and other wild animals and beasts of various kinds.... Numberless springs also well up, and burst forth from the hills and the sloping ridges of the mountains, and trickling down with sweetest sound in crystal rivulets between flowery banks, flow together through the level vales, and give birth to many streams; and these again to large rivers, in which Scotia marvellously abounds beyond any other country; and at their mouths, where they rejoin the sea, she has noble and secure harbours. Scotia also has tracts of land bordering on the sea, pretty level and rich, with green meadows, and fertile and productive fields of corn and barley, and well adapted for growing beans, peas, and all other produce; destitute, however, of wine and oil though by no means so, of honey and wax. But in the upland districts, and along the highlands, the fields are less productive, except only in oats and barley. The country is there very hideous, interspersed with moors and marshy fields, muddy and dirty. It is, however, full of pasturage grass for cattle, and comely with verdure in the glens along the watercourses. This region abounds in wool-bearing sheep, and in horses; and its soil is grassy, feeds cattle and wild beasts, is rich in milk and wool, and manifold in its wealth of fish in sea, river, and lake.’lake.’^[10]

We can thus, in some degree, picture to ourselves the Scotland of this period. Instead of the large tracts of cultivated land and the modern mansions of its possessors surrounded by plantations, we should see forests of trees of native growth, from amid which, or on their margin, would 15rise the towers of the royal castles, or those of the Norman barons. We should see small patches of cultivated land, interspersed with long stretches of barren heath. In sheltered valleys we should find the seats of the early bishoprics of the Celtic Church, and the more imposing monasteries of the regular clergy and monastic orders subsequently introduced, surrounded by a greater extent of cultivated land, and with the huts of the occupiers of the soil clustering round. On the banks of the navigable rivers, or at their mouth, we should find settlements of the trading and industrial population protected by rude walls; and we should find the northern and western districts exhibiting very much the same characteristics as they did during the succeeding centuries:—the two great leading mountain chains of the Mounth and Drumalban forming a succession of hunting-grounds or forests, left to the red-deer and other game; the minor chains leading from them to the south-east and north-east terminating abruptly on the lowland plains, and forming a great mountain barrier, extending on the south in an oblique line from Ben Lomond to the great range of the Mounth near Stonehaven, and on the north from the same range at Ballater to the river Nairn, through which the great rivers rising among the western hills pour their waters, through narrow gorges which form the passes into the mountain region. Within this line the country would be mainly used for pasturage, and its natural defences would render but few artificial fortifications necessary.

During the period when the boundaries of Scotland had been thus extended by the kings of this dynasty, its population was composed of several distinct races, partly of Teutonic and partly of Celtic origin, forming a people of very mixed descent, in which the Teutonic element was gradually predominating more and more over the Celtic, and either absorbing the latter or confining it to the more barren and mountain regions of the country. The constituent elements of this 16population bore six different names. These were the Picts and the Cumbrians or Britons, the Scots and Angles, the Norwegians, and the Franks or Normans, and we find them distinguished by these names under the rule of the Scoto-Saxon monarchs, till they gradually become merged in the general name of Scots. Thus the charters of Eadgar and Alexander the First are addressed to their subjects, both Scots and Angles. Those by David the First and Malcolm the Fourth sometimes to Scots and Angles, at other times to Franks or Normans and Angles, and frequently to Franks and Angles, Scots and Galwegians or Picts, while in the charters of the subsequent kings these distinctions disappear. When the whole force of the kingdom was called out by David the First at the invasion of England which terminated in the disastrous battle of the Standard, we find that his army, according to Richard of Hexham, was composed of Normans, Germans, Angles, Northumbrians and Cumbrians of Teviotdale, of Lothian, of Picts commonly called Galwegians, and of Scots,^[11] while, according to Ailred, the army was arranged in the following battalions. The first was composed of the Galuenses or Galwegian Picts; the second of the Cumberenses and Teviotdalenses or Britons of Strathclyde and Teviotdale; the third of the Laodonenses, Insulani, and Lauernani, that is, a mixed battalion of Angles of Lothian, Norwegians of the Isles, and the Gaelic people of the Lennox; and the king had in his own battalion the Scotti and Muravenses, that is, the people of Scotland between the Forth and the Spey and of the great province of Moray, which he had recently subjected, beyond it, and along with them ‘Milites Angli et Franci,’^[12] or Saxon and Norman barons.

Of these races two only were indigenous, and the rest 17were intruders. To the indigenous races belonged the Cumbrians or Britons south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the Picts, who originally inhabited the whole country north of these estuaries, as well as Galloway and a considerable part of Ireland. Both belonged to the Celtic race, the former to that branch of it, the dialect of which is represented by the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, and perhaps in the main most nearly approached the Cornish in the form of their speech. But whether the Picts were altogether a homogeneous people may perhaps be a question. From the time when they first became known to the Romans, they appear throughout as divided into two branches; but whether the expression of the Roman historian, when he terms these two divisions of the Pictish people two nations, indicates any diversity of race, or whether, as the language of Bede rather implies, the distinction was simply geographical, certainly in one important respect they for a time showed a material difference, for the southern Picts adopted Christianity at a much earlier period than the northern Picts, and they were so far disunited that the conversion of the former did not imply that of the whole nation, and for a century and a half, while the southern portion were nominally Christian, the northern half remained Pagan. Every circumstance, however, connected with them, tends to show that the Picts who inhabited the northern and western regions of Scotland, as well as Galloway and the districts in Ireland, belonged to the Gaelic race and spoke a Gaelic dialect, while the southern Picts, placed between them and a British people, present features which appear to assimilate them to both; and the conclusion we came to was that they were probably originally of the same Gaelic race, while a British element had entered into their language, either from mixture with that people, or from some other influence arising from their contact.

The sixth century brought in both an additional Gaelic and a Teutonic element into the population of this part of 18Britain, for in the beginning of that century a colony of Scots from Ireland, who were undoubtedly a Gaelic people, settled on the barren coasts on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, and the same century saw the eastern seaboard, extending from the Tweed to the Firth of Forth, in possession of the Angles of Northumberland; while there is reason to believe that some parts of the country between these limits had been previously partially settled by Frisian tribes belonging to the great Saxon confederation.

In the ninth century the great outburst of piratical adventurers from the Scandinavian shores brought first the Danes and afterwards the Norwegians to Scotland, and the latter not only colonised the Orkney and Shetland Islands but became masters of the Western Isles, and from time to time of considerable districts on the mainland of Scotland. During the reigns of the earlier kings of this dynasty the Saxon influence was largely increased by those who either took refuge in Scotland from the power of the Norman Conqueror or were attracted by the connection of these kings through their mother with the Saxon royal family; while David the First introduced the Norman barons, who obtained large tracts of land on both sides of the Firths of Forth and Clyde under his auspices and that of his immediate successors.

In estimating the extent to which these foreign elements influenced the original inhabitants, and how far they formed a permanent ingredient in the mixed population, it is necessary to keep in view the circumstances under which they obtained a footing in the country, and the peculiar features which characterised the intruders. Did they enter the country as colonists or as conquerors? If the former, did they come as military colonists? or did they bring their wives and families with them? Or, if the latter, did they amalgamate with the conquered population so as to form one people, the language and institutions of one or other obtaining 19the mastery over the whole? or did they exterminate or drive them out? or were the remains of the conquered people retained as a servile class under the conquerors? The first recorded settlements which have a historical basis were those of the Scots on the west coast and of the Angles on the east. Of these the Scots appear to have come more as colonists than as invaders. They were a tribe of Scots who came from the district of Dalriada in Ireland in the beginning of the sixth century, and brought that name with them which was applied to the southern part of the great western district of Argyll. They belonged to the same Gaelic race as the Pictish tribes among whom they were settled, and the oldest tradition as reported by Bede cannot tell whether ‘they secured to themselves these settlements by fair means or by force of arms.’^[13] The conversion of the northern Picts to Christianity by the Irish missionary St. Columba, and the establishment of a Christian church among them under Scottish clergy, now formed a bond of union between them; and it is recorded by Bede that up to the time when he wrote his History their mutual boundaries had remained unaltered. In the same century the Angles of Bernicia, under the sons of Ida, who had founded that kingdom, obtained possession of the districts extending along the east coast as far as the Firth of Forth. They were a Pagan people, conquering a Christian population of a different race and language from themselves; and there seems little reason to question that this settlement was only effected after a fierce and prolonged struggle between the Angles and the native population, by which, after varied fortunes on either side, the latter were eventually either exterminated or driven into the more hilly and barren regions on the west. There were thus formed four distinct kingdoms, which remained independent of each other during the sixth, 20seventh, and eighth centuries, viz. those of the Picts and of the Cumbrian Britons consisting of the two indigenous races, and those of the Scots of Dalriada and Angles of Bernicia established by two of the intruding peoples; and their mutual boundaries had remained unaltered down to the period when Bede wrote in the eighth century.

It was not till the ninth century that those changes in their relative position commenced which ultimately led to their fusion into one mixed population. A revolution in that century led to a dynasty of kings of Scottish descent being permanently placed on the Pictish throne, and to a Scottish element being largely and to an increasing extent introduced into the Pictish population. The capital of the Pictish kingdom had at this time been Scone, and around this central point the new Scottish monarchy had its chief influence, and in the neighbouring districts the new Scottish population would be most numerous. The province of Fife seems to have been considered as their main seat, and they appear to have spread over the central districts of the region extending from the Forth to the great barrier of the Mounth, while the more independent portion of its Pictish population appear at its two extremities in the firu Fortren or men of Fortren, who had their chief stronghold in Dundurn at the eastern end of Lochearn, and in the viri de Moerne or men of Mearns, whose principal fortress was Dunfother or Dunnottar at Stonehaven. These Scots and Picts, belonging to the same Gaelic race and speaking kindred dialects, would amalgamate readily enough, and they would probably be found at this time established alongside of each other in homesteads some of which would be Scottish and others Pictish,—a state of matters of which we find examples in northern Russia, where the earlier Finnish population and the intruding Slavs occupy respective villages, and in parts of Greece, where the distribution of the Albanian and the Greek population presents 21the same features. This view of the distribution of the Scottish and Pictish communities in the new kingdom of Alban, to which the name of Scotia was soon applied, will to some extent account for the strange interlacing in this part of the country of the three earliest dioceses of Dunkeld, of Abernethy, afterwards represented by the dioceses of Dunblane and Brechin, and of St. Andrews,—the two former being traditionally connected with the Pictish name, and the latter closely identified with the Scottish people. Diocesan boundaries are usually found to reflect more ancient ethnic divisions.

The Scottish dynasty of kings had not occupied the Pictish throne for more than sixty or seventy years when the failure of the line of British kings of the Strathclyde Britons, and the election of a brother of the Scottish king to be their successor, placed a similar dynasty of Scottish kings on the throne of the Cumbrian kingdom, and made its eventual cession to the Scottish monarch a more natural and easy arrangement; and the cession of Lothian in the following century completed the territorial formation of the later Scottish kingdom.

Such being the state of matters when the dynasty of kings sprung from the union of Malcolm Ceannmor with the Saxon Princess Margaret ruled over this kingdom, we find when we reach the reign of Alexander the Third that a great change has taken place. The British speech has entirely disappeared from the district forming the ancient Strathclyde kingdom, and their population now speak the same Northumbrian or northern dialect of English with the people of Lothian; while this Teutonic language has likewise spread over the eastern districts extending from the Forth to the Moray Firth, where in the reign of Malcolm Ceannmor that Celtic king had had to interpret the Saxon speech of his queen to its inhabitants, and the indigenous Gaelic vernacular was now confined to 22the mountain regions of the North and West north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, while the people of Lennox and Galloway, within the limits of the ancient Cumbrian kingdom, likewise retained their Gaelic speech. There had, therefore, taken place in these districts a silent revolution, of which history has taken little note.

Besides the violent or organic changes produced in a population by the invasion or colonisation of a foreign people which history marks, and the effects of which we can trace in the events recorded in the annals of the country, there is another silent and inorganic spread of one race over the territory of another, the eventual results of which are apparent enough, and the causes which led to it may be divined, but the steps of its progress are less easily marked. In the one, whole nations or tribes take possession of part or the whole of new districts; in the other, they spread not collectively but in families or groups. In the one, the inroad is effected by force or by direct convention. In the other, it is the result of natural causes arising from the contact of two races possessing different qualities and states of civilisation, and from the influence which the force of character of one people may exercise over another. Their influence, too, upon the spoken language and the place-names of the people presents itself in different aspects. In the one, the language of the invading people is established as the language of the country when the subject population has been exterminated or driven out, and the older place-names are either adopted into the language or changed at once. In the other, the silent and gradual inorganic colonisation changes by degrees the spoken language, but not the bulk of the place-names. The great natural features of the country usually retain the names imposed upon them by its original inhabitants, but those of the homesteads occupied by the colonising race assume the forms of their language, and those applicable to the dwellings of man only remain unchanged when the original people have 23lingered longer, or when the name is expressive of some common natural feature, which has been readily adopted as such by the intruders. Topography thus affords us some help in indicating the presence of the stranger, and marking the extent to which the race to which he belongs has spread over the country.

When Earl David, as Prince of Cumbria, proposed to restore the ancient church of Glasgow, and asked the elders and wise men of Cumbria to inquire into the ancient possessions of that church, they told him that after Kentigern, the founder of the church, and several of his successors, had passed to God, ‘various seditions and insurrections rising all around not only destroyed the church and its possessions, but, laying waste the whole country, delivered its inhabitants into exile. Thus, also, all good being exterminated, after a considerable interval of time different tribes of different nationalities pouring in from different parts inhabited this deserted country, but being of separate race, speaking a dissimilar language, and living after different fashion, not easily agreeing among themselves, they maintained paganism rather than the cultivation of the faith. The Lord, however, who wills that none should perish, was pleased to visit, in his clemency, these unhappy inhabitants of a condemned habitation, irrationally dwelling after the manner of beasts. In the days of Henry, king of England, Alexander reigning as king in Scotia, God sent them David, brother-german of the foresaid king, as prince and leader, who corrected their obscene and wicked contagion, and bridled their contumelious contumacy with nobleness of soul and inflexible severity.’^[14] This picture, coloured no doubt to deepen the shade of the past, 24and to brighten the prospects of the country under David’s rule, still sufficiently indicates the belief that the British inhabitants had to a great extent deserted the country, and that it had been repeatedly laid waste by foreign nations, who had eventually settled in the country. The allusion to the paganism of some refers probably to the Norwegians and Danes, the former of whom in 870 besieged their capital Alclyde, now Dumbarton, and destroyed it after a few months’ siege, and carried a great host of prisoners with them to Ireland into captivity, and five years afterwards the Britons of Strathclyde and Picts of Galloway were ravaged by the Danes of Northumberland. A Welsh chronicle, attributed to Caradoc of Llancarvan, tells us that in ‘891 the men of Strathclyde, who would not unite with the Saxons, were obliged to leave their country, and go to Gwynedd or North Wales.’^[15] In 945 it was ravaged by Edmund, king of Wessex, and ceded to the Scots. In 1000, Ethelred, king of Wessex, entered Cumbria, ravaged it nearly all, and it was again laid waste; and in 1070, Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria, having collected a considerable force, made a furious incursion into the Cumbrian kingdom, then under the dominion of the Scottish king Malcolm, spreading slaughter and conflagration on all sides. These notices sufficiently 25bear out that feature in the dark picture of the past history of the British kingdom, and we may well believe that under these repeated devastations, and under the Scottish dominion, its Welsh population, isolated in the north between Picts, Scots, and Angles, and harassed by incessant invasions, would gradually retreat to their mother country of Wales, and that their neighbours would gradually settle in the partially deserted country.

There are some indications of earlier settlements among them of Frisians, who left their name in Dunfres, the town of the Frisians, as Dunbreatan or Dumbarton is the town of the Britons,^[16] and the subjection of the Cumbrian kingdom to the Angles of Northumbria for thirty years prior to 685 must have had an effect on its population; but, be this as it may, the neighbouring Anglic population, attracted by her fertile plains and valleys, appear at a later period to have made their way into the upper valley of the Tweed and Teviot, and along the banks of the great watercourse of the Clyde, and to the plains of Renfrew and Ayr, where they have left evidence of their settlements in the numerous Saxon place-names ending with the generic terms of ton and hame, while the northern district, where the limits of the Cumbrian kingdom penetrated into the mountains—the district surrounding the romantic lake of Loch Lomond—seems soon to have acquired a Gaelic population, and became known as the Levenach or Lennox. The Gaelic population of Galloway at the same time appear to have encroached upon the southern limit of Ayrshire and peopled the district of Garrick with a Gaelic race. Extensive territories too were granted by Earl David to his Norman followers. The great district of Annandale was given to De Bruce. The adjacent districts of Eskdale 26and Ewisdale were filled with Normans. The De Morevilles obtained Cuninghame or the northern district of Ayrshire, and the Norman Fitzallan, who became the Steward of Scotland, acquired Strathgryff, or Renfrew and part of Kyle. These Norman barons settled their Northumbrian followers on their lands, and thus almost the whole of the ancient kingdom of the Cumbrian Britons became soon entirely Saxonised.

A similar process seems to have commenced in the eastern districts north of the Forth after the union of the Celtic monarch with the Saxon princess had given the Saxon influence predominance in the country, and stamped his children with the character and feeling of Saxon monarchs, which soon produced a similar result. We find Saxon barons, who fled to Scotland from the power of the Norman Conqueror, acquiring lands in the province of Fife. The burghs founded by the kings of this race on the crown lands were filled with Saxon and Flemish traders, and the latter people obtained grants of land. Thus we find Malcolm the Fourth granting the lands of Innes ‘Beroaldo Flandrensi,’ and David, Earl of Huntingdon, grants lands in Garrioch to Malcolm, son of Bertolf, a Flemish name, and his charter is addressed to ‘all good men of his kingdom, French or Normans, English or Angles, Flemish and Scotch.’^[17] The great religious houses established by them brought southern ecclesiastics into the northern parts of the kingdom, who were accompanied by a southern following; and on the extensive church lands we find the sole remains of the Celtic population appearing as serfs, under the Celtic appellations of ‘Cumlawes’ and ‘Cumherbes,’^[18] and large territories speedily passed into the possession of Norman barons, who settled them with their own followers.

In the scanty records which throw light upon the history of the land in these districts, we can see the Gaelic name of the land-owners gradually becoming more and more restricted, 27and retreating before the Teutonic settlers. We can see more and more of the land becoming feudalised, and being held by the followers of the barons in military tenure. The church lands, forming a large proportion of the whole, became in fact agricultural colonies of strangers. In the crown lands alone the older land tenures maintained their position for a time, though there too the increasing importance of the royal burghs, and the gradual advance of their Saxon inmates into the surrounding land, soon carried the Saxon tongue into them; and thus the old Celtic kingdom of Alban or Scotia, extending from the Firth of Forth to the river Spey, had in the reign of Alexander the Third assumed an entirely Teutonic aspect, while what Fordun tells us of Malcolm the Fourth, that ‘having gathered together a large army, the king removed the rebel nation of the Moravienses from the land of their birth, as of old Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had dealt with the Jews, and scattered them throughout the other districts of Scotland, both beyond the mountains,’ that is, the Mounth,‘and on this side thereof, so that not even one native of that land abode there, and installed therein his own peaceful people,’^[19] is probably to some extent true in so far as regards the inhabitants of the plain country extending from the Spey along the southern shore of the Moray Firth to the river Nairn, in which the royal castles of Elgin, Forres, and Nairn were situated, and which formed the three small sheriffdoms of these names. It is not at all unlikely that that king, or his successor William the Lion, should have adopted the policy of interposing between the native population, ‘who,’ Fordun tells us, ‘would, for neither prayers nor bribes, neither treaties nor oaths, leave off their disloyal ways, or their ravages among their fellow-countrymen,’ and the frontier of the province a tract of country, garrisoned, as it were, with the more settled people of the lowlands.

28But if this silent and gradual immigration of the Teutonic people thus took place into the southern and eastern districts of the country north of the Forth and Clyde, and either absorbed its Celtic inhabitants or gradually drove them back into the more mountainous regions, the latter were exposed to a more direct assault from another people of Teutonic race on the north and west, which, however, did not produce the same permanent effect upon the population. This was that strange and sudden appearance in the northern and western seas of a piratical horde of sea-robbers, which issued from the Scandinavian countries lying to the north of Germany. The first to make their appearance were the Danes, and though they repeatedly ravaged the Western Isles and destroyed the Christian monasteries, they effected permanent settlements only in Ireland, and in the northern provinces of England forming the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. They were followed by the Norwegians, who appear to have been more attracted by the islands surrounding Scotland, and thus came more immediately in contact with the Gaelic population of Scotland. They entirely occupied the islands of Orkney and Shetland, which they colonised; and took possession of the Western Isles, without, however, driving out or absorbing the previous inhabitants of Gaelic race.

By the Gaelic people these northern ravagers were termed either Geinnte or Gentiles as being pagans, or Gall or Strangers as being foreigners, and the two races of the Danes and Norwegians were distinguished by the terms Dubhgeinnte or Dubhgall, that is, black pagans or black strangers, and Finngeinnte or Finngall,^[20] white pagans or white strangers, and the Western Islands were termed Innsigall, or the Islands of the Strangers, while the Norwegians themselves called them 29the Sudreys or Southern Islands, to distinguish them from the Nordereys or Northern Islands, that is, the Orkney and Shetland Islands.^[21]

That the Norwegians did not so thoroughly colonise the Western Isles and absorb its Gaelic population, as was the case with the Orkney and Shetland Islands, may have arisen from their finding in the former a more dense population, and also that they appear to have used the Sudreys more as a kind of stepping-stone to other settlements, or as temporary strongholds, rather than as places for lasting settlements, and thus their Norwegian population was generally of a more transient and fluctuating character;^[22] but this was mainly true of the earlier period of their occupation only, and a more important ground of difference arose from the Gaelic population of the Western Isles more nearly assimilating themselves to the character of the Norwegian sea-robbers. They seem to have submitted easily to their rule, and to have adopted their habits, so that when one of the great Norwegian Vikings, Ketill Flatnose, succeeded in establishing a petty kingdom in the Isles in opposition to the rapidly increasing power of Harald Harfager, the first monarch who acquired the dominion of all Norway, we find the Isles said by the Sagas to be in the possession of Scotch and Irish Vikings, and Ketill appears in the Irish Annals under the name of Caittil Finn as the leader of a people called the Gallgaidheal, a name applied to those Gaidheal who became subject to the Norwegians, and conformed to their mode of life. Harald, however, eventually conquered both the Orkney Islands and the Sudreys or Western Isles. The former came under the rule of a line of Norwegian Jarls, who, by the marriage of one of them with the daughter of ‘Dungadr, Jarl of Katenes,’ that is, of Duncan, 30the Celtic Mormaer of Caithness, added that province to their dominions; and the Norwegian population seem to have as completely colonised the eastern and level part of Caithness as they did the Orkney Islands.

Harald appears to have governed the Western Isles by Norwegian Jarls, but his hold upon them was slight, and apparently ceased with his death, and they became merely the haunt of stray Vikings until the middle of the following century, when their possession was contested between the Danes of Dublin and Limerick, who had got a firm hold of the Island of Man, and the Norwegian Jarls of Orkney. One of the principal leaders of the Danes of Dublin, Anlaf Cuaran, had become connected with the Scottish King Constantine, and appears to have exercised some authority over the islands; but at the great battle of Brunanburgh, in which he and his father-in-law Constantine were engaged, we find the death of Geleachan, King of the Isles, recorded, as well as that of Cellach, a prince or Mormaer of Scotland,^[23] names which undoubtedly show a Gaelic form. Soon after we find Maccus or Magnus, son of Aralt, a leader of the Danes of Limerick, called King of Many Islands, and a struggle took place between his brother and successor Godfred, son of Aralt, called King of Innsigall, and Sigurd, Norwegian Jarl of Orkney, for the possession of the western Isles, when the former was slain by the Gaelic people of Dalriada or Argyll, and the Isles were acquired by the Orkney Jarl, who soon after added to his territories the western and northern districts of Scotland. His territories are said in the Sagas to have consisted, besides Orkney and the Sudreys, of Katanes, Sudrland, Myrhaevi or Moray, and Dali or the glens of Argyll, on the west, and we find a Jarl Gilli apparently ruling the Isles, whose principal seat was the island of Coll, and whose name has a Gaelic form.^[24] He pays scatt or tribute to 31Sigurd, and obtained his sister in marriage. Under Sigurd’s son Thorfinn, the most powerful of the Orkney Jarls, after the defeat and death of King Duncan in 1040, the whole of the northern districts of Scotland, as far as the river Tay, fell under the power of the Norwegians, who likewise possessed the Sudreys or Western Isles and the Gaelic district of Galloway, while Macbeth, the Mormaer of Moray, ruled as king over the dominions left to him, and the other districts south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde adhered to the family of Duncan; but on the death of Thorfinn, we are told that the additional territories acquired by him fell back to their native lords. Malcolm, the son and heir of Duncan, succeeded in defeating and killing the usurper Macbeth, and his successor Lulach, also of the family of the Mormaers of Moray, and establishing himself as king over the same territories which had been possessed by his father. The Western Isles pass for a time under the power of an Irish king of Leinster, which shows how powerful the Gaelic element in their populations still was, and on his death fell under the authority of the Crown. At this time the Isle of Man was in the possession of the Danish kings of Dublin, but a powerful Norwegian Viking who had joined the expedition of Harald, king of Norway, in 1066, with his followers, and fought at the battle of Stamford Bridge, succeeded after that defeat in driving the Danes out of Man and extending his power over the Western Isles, where he founded a new dynasty of Norwegian kings of the Isles. He is termed in the Chronicle of Man Godred Crovan, and, in the Irish Annals, Goffraig Meranach, king of the Galls of Dublin and the Isles, where his death,^[25] which, according to the Chronicle of Man, took place in the island of Isla, is recorded in 1095. The Isles had, however, two years 32before been invaded by Magnus, king of Norway, and brought under his dominion, and were eventually formally ceded to him by King Eadgar in the beginning of his reign, who thus, for a time, terminated their nominal connection with the Scottish kingdom. After the death of King Magnus, we find the leading men of the Isles applying to the king of Ireland to send them some person of worth of the royal family to act as their king till Olave, the son of Godred, should grow up, and Donald, son of Tadg, was sent, who is said in the Annals of Innisfallen to have acquired the kingdom of Innsigall by force,^[26] but was driven out when the king of Norway sent a Norwegian named Ingemund. But on his attempting to have himself appointed king, he was attacked and slain by the chief men of the Isles, and Olave, the son of Godred Crovan, was established as king over all the Isles, and ruled them for forty years. The Norwegians at this time still possessed the western seaboard of Scotland north of the Firth of Clyde, and the district of Galloway. According to the Red Book of Clanranald, ‘All the islands from Manann, or the Isle of Man, to Arca, or the Orkneys, and all the bordering country from Dun Bretan, or Dumbarton, to Cata, or Caithness, in the north, were in the possession of the Lochlannach or Norwegians, and such of the Gaedhal of those lands as remained were protecting themselves in the woods and mountains.’^[27]

This is probably a true picture of the relative position of the Norwegian and the Gaelic population at this time, and is no doubt equally applicable to the district of Galloway; but, during the rule of Olave over the Isles, a simultaneous effort seems to have been made by the Gaelic inhabitants of both districts to free this mainland border country from the presence of the Norwegians. The leader of the native Gaelic population of Argyll was Somerled, and of that of Galloway was Fergus. The former 33bears certainly a Norwegian name, but the names of father and grandfather have been preserved. He was son of Gillebride, son of Gille-adomnan, and these names are of too purely a Gaelic form to indicate anything but a Gaelic descent, and they are said in the Book of Clanranald to have taken refuge from the Norwegians in Ireland, and to have had a hereditary right to the mainland territories possessed by the latter. The name of the father of Fergus of Galloway has not been preserved, but his own name is a purely Gaelic form, and his personal qualities probably raised him to the leadership of the Gaelic population. Macvurich describes Gillebride, the father of Somerled, as being present at a conference held by the Macmahons and Maguires in Fermanagh, and obtaining help from them to regain his inheritance in Scotland. He went over to Scotland with his son Somerled and a band of followers, and when in the mountains and woods of Ardgour and Morvern, they were surprised by a large force of Norwegians, who were, however, eventually defeated by Somerled and his party; and, adds Macvurich, ‘he did not halt in the pursuit until he drove them northward across the river Sheil, and he did not cease from that work until he cleared the western side of Alban from such of the Norwegians as had acquired the dominion of the islands, with the exception of the island called Innsigall, and he gained victory over his enemies in every field of battle.’^[28] We have no record of what took place in Galloway, except that the result appears to have been the same, for we find the people of Galloway joining the army of King David at the Battle of the Standard under their Celtic leaders, and Fergus fully established in his reign as Lord of Galloway. The Norwegians, however, were not allowed even to retain quiet possession of the Isles, and Somerled, who now appears as Regulus of Argyll, succeeded in eventually wresting the 34Southern Isles from them. Macvurich tells us that after he had cleared the mainland of the Norwegians ‘he spent some time in war, and another time in peace,’ and during one of these intervals peace appears to have been concluded between the leaders of the Gaelic population and the Norwegian king Olave, for the latter married Afreca, daughter of Fergus, the Celtic lord of Galloway, by whom he had a son, Godred, and gave one of his own daughters to Somerled, the Celtic Regulus of Argyll, in marriage, who had by her four sons, Dubhgal, Reginald, Angus, and Olave.^[29] During the reign of Olave he is said by the Chronicle of Man to have ‘lived upon such terms of union with all the kings of Ireland and Scotland that no one dared to disturb the kingdom of the Isles as long as he was alive;’ but after his death the two populations came again into conflict, which resulted in the Gaelic population of Galloway maintaining their independence, and those of Argyll adding a large portion of the Islands to the dominions of their leader. Olave was slain in the island of Man by the sons of his brother Harold, who had formed a conspiracy against him in the year 1152, upon which, we are told in the Chronicle of Man, the conspirators divided the land among themselves, and a few days afterwards, having collected a fleet, they sailed over to Galloway, intending to conquer it for themselves. The Galloway men, however, formed themselves in a body and assailed them with great impetuosity; whereupon they speedily fled in great confusion, and either slew or expelled from it all the men of Galloway who were resident within the island.’^[30] In the following year Godred, the son of Olave, arrived with some ships from Norway, and was elected by the chiefs of the Isles as their king; but he was no sooner secure in his kingdom than he became tyrannical to his chief men, some of whom he dispossessed, and others he degraded from their dignities. One of the most 35powerful of these, Thorfinn, son of Otter, went to Somerled and asked to have his son Dubhgal, whose mother was King Olave’s daughter, that he might set him on the throne of the Isles, and taking him through the Isles he forced the chiefs to acknowledge him for their sovereign, and to give hostages for their allegiance. Another of these chiefs called Paul fled privately to Godred, who seems to have been in Man, and told him what had taken place, when he immediately collected his followers, got his ships ready, and sailed to meet the enemy. Somerled, too, collected a fleet of eighty vessels, and a sea-battle was fought between Godred and Somerled, during the night of the Epiphany, with great slaughter on both sides, and next morning they came to a compromise, and divided the sovereignty of the Isles, ‘so that from that period they have formed two distinct monarchies till the present time.’^[31]

Somerled was slain, as we know, at Renfrew in the year 1164, and on his death his eldest son Dubhgal appears to have succeeded him in his mainland territories, while his possessions in the Isles fell to his second son Reginald with the Norwegian title of king. Godred died in the Isle of Man in the year 1187, and was succeeded by his eldest son Reginald. There thus came to be two Reginalds reigning over the Isles at the same time, the Norwegian Reginald the son of Godred, and the Celtic Reginald the son of Somerled. Both bore the title of King of the Isles, and thus they are often confounded. There is preserved in the Book of Fermoy a curious poem which throws some light on the state of the Isles at this time.^[32] It consists mainly of a panegyric on the Norwegian Reginald, but appears to allude likewise to the other Reginald. When the Isles were divided, those which lie south of 36the Point of Ardnamurchan appear to have fallen to the share of Somerled, and his son Reginald seems to have had his chief seat in the island of Isla. The Isles retained by the Norwegians consisted of Skye, the Long Island, and the islands of Tyree and Coll. The latter island of Coll, which we find was the chief seat of the Jarls who had ruled the Isles under the king of Norway prior to the establishment of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, appears to have remained as the chief seat of the Norwegian Reginald, for he is addressed in the poem as king of Coll. The islands of Arran and Bute in the Firth of Clyde appear to have been shared between the two Reginalds, the Norwegian retaining Arran, which forms a prominent feature in the poem under the poetic name of Eamain Abhlach or Eamania of the apple-trees,^[33] and Bute passing over to the Celtic Reginald.

It is unnecessary for our present purpose to follow the history of the Western Isles further. Suffice it to say that Argyll came under the power of the Crown in 1222, when Alexander the Second firmly established his authority over this extensive western region. In 1196 William the Lion had brought the great northern district of Caithness under subjection, and severed the southern half of it, which he placed under a Scotch lord, and in the same reign of Alexander the Second, the restricted earldom of Caithness passed into the possession of a branch of the Celtic family of the Earl of Angus, and he died in the island of Kerreray while endeavouring to wrest the Isles from Norway. In the following reign the whole kingdom of the Isles passed into the possession of the Scottish monarch, the last Norwegian king of Man having died in 1265, and the Isles being formally ceded to Alexander the Third in 1266; and thus the power of 37the Norwegians entirely disappeared from the mainland of Scotland and from the Western Isles, the islands of Orkney and Shetland alone remaining as a dependency of the kingdom of Norway.

During the entire duration of this Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, we see the frequent appearance of a subordinate body termed the Princes or Chiefs of the Isles,^[34] whose recognition of the authority of the king was necessary to his assumption of that position. We see them electing a king and occasionally deposing a king; and that this body consisted of persons partly of Norwegian and partly of Gaelic descent is evident, from their sometimes deferring to the authority of the king of Norway, and at other times appealing to Ireland for aid. When the Norwegian influence was paramount, they would accept the control of the Norwegian monarch. When the Gaelic influence predominated, they seem invariably to have fallen back upon the kindred Gael of Ireland, and come under their influence. The inferior population of the Isles throughout was probably Gaelic, who formed the actual occupiers of the soil under superior lords, some of Norwegian and some of native descent.

When the partition of the kingdom of the Isles took place between Olave and Somerled, the Southern Isles, which thus passed under the rule of a native lord, would naturally attract to them the Gaelic population, both chiefs and people, while the chiefs of Norwegian descent would as naturally withdraw to the Northern Isles, which remained under Norwegian rule; and thus the Norwegian population would become more restricted to these islands, while that of the Southern Isles would become more purely Gaelic; accordingly we find the Norwegian place-names in Skye and the Long Island are more numerous and more thoroughly spread over the Isles than in the islands south of the Point of Ardnamurchan, a result we 38might also naturally expect from the Norwegian occupation of the former having lasted a century longer than that of the latter. We should also expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the island which is called Leodhus or Lewis, which though larger than any of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely inaccessible. It is of course thinly peopled, and the inhabitants live mostly by hunting and fishing. To this island Olave retired, and lived in the way of poverty. Seeing the island could not support him and his followers, he went confidentially to his brother Reginald, who was at that time resident in the Islands, and thus accosted him: Brother, my lord and sovereign, thou art conscious that the kingdom of the Isles is my birthright, but as the Almighty hath appointed thee to rule over them, I neither envy nor begrudge thee this royal dignity. Let me now only entreat thee to appoint me some portion of land in the Islands, where I may live creditably with my people; for the island of Leodhus, which thou hast given me, is insufficient for my maintenance.’^[35] Apparently Reginald saw no way of satisfying his demand, and found an easier solution in making him prisoner and sending him to King William the Lion, who imprisoned him during the rest of his reign.

We likewise see from the Chronicle of Man that there was frequent intermarriage between the two races who occupied the islands, and this would not only lead to the introduction of personal names of Norwegian form into families of pure Gaelic descent in the male line, but must to a great extent have altered the physical type of the Gaelic 39race in the islands; but there is no reason to suppose that, after the entire defeat of the Norwegians in the reign of Alexander the Third, and the cession of the kingdom of the Isles to him, there remained in them many families of pure Norwegian descent, and from the population of Scotland, as we find it in his reign, the Norwegian element, never probably a very permanent and essential ingredient, must now have entirely disappeared.

When the ‘Communitas’ or Estates of Scotland met at Scone on the 5th of February 1283, to regulate the succession to the crown, we find that the great holders of the land in Scotland consisted at this time, first, of thirteen of the great hereditary earldoms, one of which was held by a family of Anglic descent, and four by Norman barons who had succeeded by inheritance in the female line to the ancient Celtic earls; and, secondly, of twenty-four barons, of whom eighteen at least represented the Norman baronage of the kingdom, while the Celtic element is represented only by three families descended from Somerled, the great Celtic Lord of Argyll;^[36] and when Edward the First placed the whole of Scotland under four justiciaries in 13051305, we find the country south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde still divided into the two great districts of Lothian and Galloway, but the lands beyond the Scottish Sea, that is, north of these firths, are now for the first time differently grouped, one division consisting of the country between the river of Forth and the mountains, and the other of the lands beyond the mountains, or that part of the country to which the Gaelic population was now restricted.^[37]

The account given by Fordun of the distribution of the 40population in his day entirely corresponds with this. He says—‘The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech, for two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the Teutonic, the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech inhabits the highlands and outlying islands. The people of the coast are of domestic and civilised habits, trusty, patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful, devout in divine worship, yet always prone to resist a wrong at the hands of their enemies. The highlanders and people of the islands, on the other hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, of a docile and warm disposition, comely in person but unsightly in dress, hostile to the English people and language, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. They are, however, faithful and obedient to their king and country, and easily made to submit to law if properly governed.’^[38]

This description is no doubt to some extent coloured by the predilections of one who himself belonged to the low-country population, but it is not greatly unlike the prejudiced view taken of the characteristics of the Celtic population by late historians, and the struggle between the prejudices of the old historian against the Highland population and his reluctant admission of their better qualities is apparent enough.

We thus find a Gaelic-speaking people in the Highlands 41and a Teutonic-speaking people in the Lowlands. The language of the former is at an earlier period termed Albanic, and afterwards Scotch, the language of the latter is by the native writers prior to the sixteenth century usually termed Inglis; but in the sixteenth the progress of a literature in the latter tongue led to those who used it calling it Scotch, while they applied to the Celtic dialect, formerly called Scotch, the epithet of Irish corrupted into Erse. The Celtic part of the population has never given any other name to their language than Gaelic, and term the language of the Lowlanders Beurla Sassannach, or the Saxon tongue.

It is the social history and position of this portion of the population with which we have now to do.

During the Celtic period of her history we find Scotland exhibiting a distribution of her population in separate districts, which is very analogous to what existed in Ireland at the same period. The latter country appears from a very early period to have been divided into five provinces, and these provinces of Udlah or Ulster, Laighean or Leinster, Mumhan or Munster, and Connacht or Connaught, with Midhe or Meath, were ruled by provincial kings under the Ardri, or supreme king of Ireland, who had his royal seat at Teamhar or Tara in Meath.

In the same way the earliest account we possess of the provincial distribution of the population of Scotland tells us that Transmarine Scotland,^[39] or the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, was anciently divided by seven brothers into seven provinces, and that the principal of these was Enegus with Moerne, so called from Enegus, the firstborn of the brothers. This name of Enegus or Angus, now represented by the county of Forfar, is no doubt the same with the ancient Celtic personal name of Angus; and Moerne, now called Mearns, or the county of Kincardine, is a corruption of the old Gaelic name Maghgherghin, that is, the plain of Gergin, and is alluded to under that name 43in one of the old Lives of St. Patrick.^[40] The second province was Adtheodle and Gouerin, or Atholl and Gowry. The old form of this name of Adtheodle was Athfodla, in which form it appears in the Annals of Tighernac, and Gouerin was probably Gabhrin, a name analogous to the old name of the district of Ossory in Leinster, which is called Gabhran, pronounced Gowran.^[41] The third was Sradeern and Meneted, or Stratherne and Menteath, and there seems no doubt that the former is the district which appears so frequently in the Irish Annals under the name of Fortren.^[42] The fourth was Fif with Fothreve. The old form of the former name was Fibh. The latter name has entirely disappeared, but was preserved in the deanery of Fothri, in the diocese of St. Andrews. The two together embraced the entire peninsula between the Firths of Forth and Tay, and the line of division between Fibh on the east and Fothreve on the west extended from the eastern boundary of the county of Fife on the Tay to the mouth of the river Leven on the Forth. The fifth province consisted of Mar and Buchan, which still bear these names and form the modern county of Aberdeen. The sixth was Muref and Ros. The old form of the former name was Moreb, and was applied to a large territory extending along the southern shore of the Moray Firth from the river Spey, and across the entire country to the Western Sea. It was anciently separated from Ros by the river of Beauly, the passage across which was by a ford termed the Stockford,^[43] and the name, which signifies in old Gaelic a promontory, was very applicable to the peninsula stretching into the Moray Firth between the Firths of Cromarty and Dornoch. The 44seventh province was Cathanesia, within and beyond the mountains, for the mountain called Mound divides Cathanesia into two parts. This is the range now called the Ord of Caithness. The old form of the name is Caith, from which the Norwegians formed the name Katanes, compounded of that syllable with the Norwegian word nes, signifying a promontory, and applied it to that part of the province which lay to the north of the mountains, while they termed the southern half Sudrland, from which comes the modern name of Sutherland. Each province thus consisted of two districts, forming in all fourteen, and the old description proceeds to tell us that these seven brothers who thus divided the country might be considered as seven kings who had under them seven inferior kings, making fourteen in all, and that the seven kings divided the kingdom of Alban into seven kingdoms, in which each reigned in his own time.^[44]

As the western region, which formed the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, is here omitted, while it includes the district of Caithness, which soon after the ninth century passed into the possession of the Norwegian Earls of Orkney, it is obvious that this description applies in the main to the territory of the Pictish kingdom prior to the accession of the Scottish dynasty which united it with Dalriada; and we find mention during this time of the petty kings of Athfodla or Atholl, and of Fortren or Stratherne,^[45] while during the last century of the independent existence of the Pictish monarchy, the Ardri, or supreme king, had his principal seat at Scone in the district of Gowry.

The old descriptions then give us another legendary version of these seven provinces, which the author says were described to him by Andrew, bishop of Caithness, a Scotsman 45by birth, and a monk of Dunfermlyn, who flourished at the time it was compiled, viz., in the first year of the reign of William the Lion; and if the first account applies to the Pictish kingdom prior to the ninth century, it is equally clear that this latter account must be referred to the kingdom of Alban or Scotia which succeeded it, for it omits altogether the province of Cathanesia, which had now passed into the possession of the Norwegians, and substitutes for it a province termed Argathelia, which must have included within its bounds the territory which had formed the ancient Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.

The bishop describes the provinces more by their natural boundaries than by the two large districts included in each. According to his account, the first kingdom or province extended from that great water, termed in Scotch Froch, that is, Forth, in British or Welsh Werid, in Roman (by which he evidently means Anglic) Scottewatre, or the Scottish Water, which divides the kingdoms of Scotland and England, and flows past the town of Strivelin or Stirling, as far as that other great river which is called Tae, or the Tay. This province corresponds in extent with the third province of the first list, which includes Stratherne and Menteath. His second province extends to Hilef, as the sea encircles it till it reaches a mountain on the north plain of Strivelin or Stirling, which is called Athrin, by which Athrie in the gorge of the Ochils can alone be meant. The district of Gowry is situated between the river Tay and the Isla, if that river be meant by the Hilef, but its eastern boundary is the small stream called the Liff, which is believed to have been formerly the channel through which the Isla reached the sea instead of flowing into the Tay, and that part of this province which is encircled by the sea points plainly to the great peninsula between the Firths of Tay and Forth. This province, therefore, does not entirely correspond with any of the provinces in the first list, 46but is formed of its fourth province of Fife and Fothreve, with the addition of Gowry. The bishop’s third province extends from Hilef to the Dee, and corresponds with the first province in the first list, containing the district of Angus and Mearns. His fourth province extends from the Dee to that great and wonderful river termed the Spe or Spey, the greatest and best of all Scotia. This province, therefore, corresponds with the fifth province in the first list containing Mar and Buchan. The fifth province extended from the Spey to the mountain Bruinalban or Breadalbane, and corresponds with that part of the second province of the first list termed Adtheodle or Atholl. The sixth province is Muref and Ros, which is the same with the sixth province in the first list; and the seventh is Arregaithel. The changes thus produced upon the provincial distribution of the population by the formation of the kingdom of Alban or Scotia in the ninth century were, first, that in place of the province of Fife and Fothreve, we now find a larger province, including Gowry, with Scone, the royal seat of the Ardri, or supreme king; and here, probably, the chief settlements of the Scots had been made, and the chief power and influence of the kings of Scottish race were formed. It lay between the provinces of Stratherne and Menteath or Fortren on the south-west, and of Angus and Mearns or Maghgherghinn on the north-east, where, during the period of this dynasty, the men of Fortren on the one hand and the men of Mearns on the other appear as a separate people, and probably represented those remains of the older population which still preserved a separate existence.

The separation of Atholl from Gowry, and the fact that the first five provinces are described by their natural boundaries, while the sixth retains its older designation of Muref and Ros, rather points to the great mountain barrier which separates the Highlands from the Lowlands now assuming greater significance in the tribal distribution, the 47population within it being less affected by the change of dynasty and retaining more of their older constitution. Thus we find at this period the older title of Ri or king still appearing in the province of Moray only.^[46]

The great change, however, in this list is the disappearance of Cathanesia or Caithness and Sutherland from the provinces, and the substitution of Arregaithel for it. The former had become in the tenth century a possession of the Norwegian Jarls of Orkney, and the separate petty kingdom of Dalriada had ceased to exist. The name of Arregaithel, however, must not be held as synonymous with that of Dalriada, but appears to have been applied to a much larger district than that which formed that small kingdom. In a former part of the description, the author terms it the principal or largest part of the country on its west side, over against the Irish Sea, and talks of the mountains which separate it from Scotia; and we can see from the references to it in one of the statutes of William the Lion, in the first year of whose reign this description was written, that it comprised, in fact, the entire western seaboard of Scotland, and included not only the territory which had formed the kingdom of Dalriada, but also the western districts of the province of Moray and Ross. In this statute a distinction is drawn between the country situated between the Forth, the river Spey, and Drumalban, and the districts beyond these limits, which consist of Moravia or Moray, Ros, Katanes or Caithness, Ergadia, and Kintyre. Ergadia here is merely the Latin form of Arregaithel, and Kintyre had been separated from it when the Western Isles were ceded in the end of the eleventh century to Magnus, king of Norway, who, by a stratagem, included it in the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles. We find, however, in the same statute ‘Ergadia which belongs to Scotia’ 48or the southern part of it, distinguished from ‘Ergadia which belongs to Moravia,’ or that part which formed the western districts of Moray; and in a charter by King Robert the Bruce reviving the old earldom of Moravia, it is said to extend to the boundary of ‘northern Ergadia, which belongs to the Earl of Ross.’^[47]

The author of the description, who is usually supposed to have been Giraldus Cambrensis, but whose etymologies show him to have been evidently a Welshman and acquainted with the Welsh language, gives us four interpretations of the name Arregaithel. He says it is so called as ‘the margin of the Scots or Irish,’ for all the Irish and Scots are generally called Gattheli, from their original leader Gaithelglas; or because the Scotti Picti first peopled it after their return from Ireland;^[48] or because the Irish occupied these parts after the Picts; or, what is more certain, because that part of the country of Scotia is more closely connected with the country of Ireland.

In the Irish Annals the form of the name is Airergaidhel, 49Airer signifying a district.^[49] The Scotch form is Earrgaoidheal from Earr, a limit or boundary, and this approaches most nearly to the form of the name in the old description, with its etymology of margin or limit of the Gael. The oldest name is that probably in the Albanic Duan, where it is termed Oirir Alban, or the coast lands of Alban, from Oirthir, a coast or border; and we find the name Oirir applied to it in the Book of Clanranald, which distinguishes the Oirir a tuath, or northern Oirir, and the Oirir a deas, or the southern Oirir, from each other. The name given to this district by the Norwegians was Dali or Dalir, the Dales, and Somerled, the Regulus of Arregaithel, and his family, are termed in the Orkneyinga Saga the Dalveria Aett, or family of the Dales.^[50]

Such being the territorial divisions of Scotland at this period, we find, in place of each province being under the rule of a Ri or king, with a subordinate division under a sub-king that, with the exception of Arregaithel or Argyll, the rulers of the whole of these districts now bear the name of Mormaer or great Maer or Steward, while the Mormaer of Moreb or Moray appears occasionally under the title of Ri or king. These Mormaers held a position in the scale of power and dignity inferior only to the Ardri or supreme king. Thus, in narrating the great battle fought in 918 between the Danes and the people of Alban, in the reign of Constantin, son of Aedh, king of Alban, the Irish Annals tell us that neither their king nor any of their Mormaers fell by him;^[51] and the Pictish Chronicle mentions in the same reign the death of Dubucan, son of Indrechtaig, Mormaer Ængusa, or of Angus.^[52] In 965 Dubdon Satrapas Athochlach, that is, Governor of Athole, by which title the Mormaer is probably meant, fell in battle, according to the Pictish Chronicle. The same chronicle 50records in the reign of Cullen, who died in 970, the death of Maelbrigdi, son of Dubucan the Mormaer of Angus; and in 976 Tighernac tells us that three Mormaers of Alban, whose names he gives us as Cellach son of Findgaine, Cellach son of Baredha, and Duncan son of Morgaind, took part in a foray by one of the petty kings of Ireland against another.^[53]

The reign of Malcolm the Second, who ascended the throne in 1004, and whose thirty years’ rule over Alban was distinguished by the acquisition of the cismarine territories south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, throws still further light upon the position of these provincial rulers. In the early part of his reign the great conflict took place between the Danes of Dublin and the native Irish under their great king Brian Boroimhe, which was to determine whether the Galls or foreign hordes of Scandinavia or the native Gaedheal were to retain possession of Ireland; a conflict terminated in favour of the Gaedheal when the battle of Clontarf was won in the year 1014 by Brian, the Ardri, or supreme king of Ireland, though, like some other victorious generals, he lost his own life in the struggle. In this great conflict we find the people of the provinces taking part on both sides; those in the possession of the Norwegians siding with the Danes, and those under native rule taking part with King Brian. To the assistance of the Danes came Sigurd, Norwegian Earl of Orkney, with the host of the Orkneys and of the Norwegian Islands, the Galls or Norwegians of Caithness and Mann. Skye, Lewis, Kintyre, and Oirergaidhel or Argyll, are especially mentioned as being on the Danish side. On the other hand, ten Mormaers followed Brian with foreign auxiliaries, who probably represented the districts in Alban under native rule, and the leading man among them appears to have been Donald, son of Eimin, son 51of Cainnech, Mormaer of Mar, who fell in the battle of Clontarf.^[54]

In this reign the Mormaers of Moreb or Moray come very prominently forward, and show us the title hereditarily borne by a very powerful family, which eventually placed two of its members on the throne. The first who appears is Findlaec the son of Ruadri, Mormaer Moreb, whose death is recorded at 1020, when he was slain by the sons of his brother Maelbrigdi. This Findlaec is obviously the Finnleikr Jarl who is mentioned in one of the Norse Sagas as defending his district in Scotland against Sigurd the Norwegian Jarl of Orkney, who eventually conquered Myrhaevi of Moray and Ross.^[55] In 1029 the death of Malcolm, son of Maelbrigdi, son of Ruadri, is recorded, when he bears the title of Ri or king. He is obviously the son of that Maelbrigdi, the brother of Findlaec; and in 1032 Gillacomgan, son of Maelbrigdi, Mormaer of Moreb, was burnt with fifty of his men. The son of Findlaec was Macbeth, who afterwards usurped the throne of Scotland, and the son of Gillacomgan was Lulach, who succeeded him for the short space of three months.^[56]

In the same reign we find also the petty kings of Arregaithel or Argyll and Gallgaithel or Galloway making their first appearance. In the year 1031, when Cnut, the Danish king of England, invaded Scotland, he is said to have received the submission of Malcolm, king of the Scots, and of two other kings, Maelbaethe and Iehmarc. These kings appear to have represented the districts beyond the rivers Spey and Drumalban, which at this time formed the boundary of Scotland proper on the north-west and west; for Maelbaethe can be no other than the celebrated Macbeth, who was then Mormaer of Moreb or Moray, and Iehmarc may be identified 52with Imergi, who appears in the old Irish Genealogies as ancestor of Somerled the petty king of Argyll.^[57] The Irish Annals record in the same year in which king Malcolm died, the death also of Suibne, son of Kenneth, Ri or king of Gallgaidel. This name, which appears to have been applied in the Irish Annals as a general name of the Gaedhel or Gael of the Western Isles and of the districts lying along the coast, who became subject to and adopted the manners of the Norwegian pirates or Galls, was, as a territorial name, used in a more restricted sense, and appropriated to the district of Galloway, a name which in its Latin form of Galwethia is derived from the Welsh equivalent of Galwyddel. The Norwegians knew it by the name of Gaddgeddla, a district said in the Orkneyinga Saga to be ‘at the place where Scotland and England meet.’^[58]

On the death of Malcolm the Second in the year 1034 the dynasty of Scottish kings, which had been established on the Pictish throne nearly three centuries previously, came to an end. There appears to have been no male descendant left who could claim the crown, and the succession opened to his grandson by his eldest daughter. So far as the districts south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde were concerned, his claim was not opposed to the law of succession which previously prevailed there, and though inconsistent with the law of tanistry which regulated the succession to the crown among the Scots, it had been so far modified that the right of the heir-female to succeed in default of heirs-male appears to have been recognised in such an emergency, but the change 53was too recent to have acquired a firm and permanent place in the law of the country; and here the right of Duncan, the son of the eldest daughter, was contested by Thorfinn, the most powerful of the Norwegian Jarls of Orkney, whose mother was likewise a daughter of Malcolm II.; and a war of succession followed, which was terminated by the death of King Duncan in 1040. According to a contemporary writer, he was slain by the commander of his own army, Macbethad, son of Findlaech, who succeeded him.^[59] This was Macbeth, the Ri or Mormaer of Moray, who appears to have treacherously joined the Norwegian Jarl and slain his king, in hopes of obtaining, with the assistance of the former, the Scottish crown.

We are told by the Orkneyinga Saga that Thorfinn then followed the routed army, and subjected the land to himself as far south as Fifi or Fife; that he drove those who resisted him to the deserts and the woods, and subdued the country wherever he went; and that till the day of his death he possessed nine jarldoms in Scotland and the whole of the Sudreys or Western Isles.^[60] These jarldoms were no doubt the districts ruled by the native Mormaers, and, if his conquest embraced merely the low country as far south as Fife, the districts which he had not subjected consisted merely of the province composed of Gowry, Fife, and Fothreve, the province of Athol, and that consisting of Stratherne and Menteath. Over these, within which Scone, the capital of the kingdom, was situated, Macbeth appears to have ruled as king, while the districts of Lothian and Cumbria recognised the son of Duncan as their legitimate monarch, with the exception of the Gaelic territory of Galloway, which was under Norwegian rule.

54In 1054, Malcolm, the eldest son of Duncan, who is termed by the historians son of the king of the Cumbrians, with the assistance of Siward, earl of Northumbria, drove Macbeth from his kingdom and regained possession of its capital, Scone; and on the death of Thornfinn in 1057 Macbeth was driven north and slain within no great distance from the frontier of his native province of Moray, and Malcolm’s rule was extended over the whole kingdom as its legitimate monarch. We are told in the Orkneyinga Saga that Thorfinn ‘was much lamented in his own land, but in those lands which he had subjected to himself by conquest the natives were no longer content under his government; consequently many rikis which the earl had subjected fell off, and their inhabitants sought the protection of those native chiefs who were territorially born to rule over them.’^[61] These rikis were no doubt the districts subdued by Thorfinn, which now passed again under the rule of their native Mormaers, and it is rather remarkable that, with the exception of the districts of Stratherne and Menteath, when we can trace the position of the remaining districts, consisting of Athol, Gowry, Fife, and Fothreve, we find them in the possession of the Crown, and ruled over by members of the royal family.^[62]

By the Norwegians these Mormaers seem to have been viewed as holding the same position as the Norwegian Jarls, and this name is invariably given to them in the Sagas. 55Like them, they were viewed as the hereditary rulers of the territory with which they were connected, and as protecting the rights of the Crown within its bounds. That the office, whatever it was, was held hereditarily by the same family we see in the notices of two of these families preserved in the Pictish Chronicle and in the Irish Annals. In the one we find Dubucan, son of Indrechtaig, Mormaer of Angus, succeeded by his son Maelbrigdi; and in the other we see the family of Ruadri filling the office of Mormaer of Moray, and the succession apparently following the Irish law of tanistry, and alternating between the descendants of his two sons Maelbrigdi and Findlaec; and when this family was finally driven from the throne in the person of Lulach, the grandson of the former, we find his son Maelsnectai appearing as Ri Muireb or king of Moray, from whom it passed through his sister to Ængus, termed in the Annals ‘son of the daughter of Lulaig.’^[63]

A more complete revelation, however, is made to us with regard to the Mormaers of another district, that of Buchan, in the Book of Deer, which contains the usual memoranda of the old grants made to that monastery while still retaining its character as an old Celtic foundation. Here the names of seven of the old Mormaers during the five centuries and a half which elapsed between the foundation of the Celtic monastery in the time of Columcille and the reign of David the First are given. We are told that Bede Cruthnech, or the Pict, Mormaer of Buchan, gave the cathair or city Abbordoboir, now Aberdour, on the south shore of the Moray Firth, to Columcille and Drostan, and afterwards certain lands called also a cathair or city, to which Columcille gave the name of Dear. He seems to have been followed by Comgall, son of Aeda, who made a grant to Columcille and Drostan. After him we have Matan 56son of Cearill, Domhnall son of Giric, and Domnall son of Ruadri, but there is nothing to show what the connection of these Mormaers with each other was or when they lived, but the dignity then passes to a family called Mac Dobharcon.^[64] Two brothers, Domhnall son of Mac Dobharcon, and Cainneach son of Mac Dobharcon, follow each other as Mormaers, and the latter is succeeded by his son Gartnait, who, with his wife Ete, daughter of Gillemichel, makes a grant in the eighth year of King David, that is, in 1132.

The succession among these latter Mormaers seems to follow the same rule of tanistic succession which we have seen among the Mormaers of Moray.

The same valuable record, however, makes a further revelation regarding the organisation of those districts ruled over by the Mormaers. It shows us that the next rank under the Mormaers of Buchan was held by persons termed Toisechs, who possessed a similar relation in a subordinate capacity to the land and the people. Thus we find that Bede the Pict grants Abbordoboir free from the claim of Mormaer and of Toisech, and in the grants of land by the subsequent Mormaers there is usually associated with them the Toisech as having an interest in the subject of the grant. Among these Toisechs a family descended from Morcunn or Morgan appears very prominent. Thus Comgall, son of Aeda, grants the land from Orti to Furerie, and Mondac, son of Morcunn, gave Pette mic Garnait and Achad Toche Temni, and it is added that ‘one was Mormaer and the other was Toisec.’^[65] Then Cathal, son of Morcunt, gives Achadnagleree; and Domhnall 57mac Giric, the fourth Mormaer named, and Maelbrigdi, son of Cathal the Toisech, gives Pett in Mulenn; and finally Colban, Mormaer of Buchan, and Eva, daughter of Garnait (the previous Mormaer), his wife, and Donnachac, Toisech of the clan Morgainn, mortmained all the foregoing offerings to God, Drostan, Colcumcille, and Peter, free of all burdens except four davachs of such burdens as come upon chief residences of Alban and chief churches. Among the witnesses to this grant are Morgunn and Gillepetair, sons of Donnachach, and others who are called Maithi, that is, good men or nobles of Buchan. Another family of Toisechs which appears is that descended from Batni. Thus Matan, son of Cairill, who is the third-named Mormaer, gives the Mormaer’s share in Altere, now Altrie; and Culi, son of Batni, gives the Toisech’s share. Then Domhnall, son of Ruadri, the fifth-named Mormaer, and Malcolm, son of Culi, give Bidhen, now Biffie; and here the king comes in as also possessing rights in these lands, for Malcolm, son of Cinaetha, or Malcolm II., gives the king’s share in Bidhen, Pett mic Gobroig, and the two davachs of Upper Rosabard. Then Domhnall, son of Mac Dubhacinn, mortmains all these offerings to Drostan upon giving the whole of them to him, and Cathal mortmains in the same way his Toisech’s share. They also give Eddarun, and Cainnech, son of Mac Dobharcon, and the same Cathal give Alterin of Ailvethenamone; and then it is added Cainnech, Domhnall, and Cathal mortmained all these offerings free from Mormaer and Toisech. It is unnecessary to notice the other grants further than that Comgall, son of Cainnaig, Toisech of Clan Canan, gives certain lands free from Toisech. Thus in the organisation of these districts we find a gradation of persons possessing territorial rights within them, consisting of the Ardri or supreme king, the Mormaer, and the Toisech, and the latter of these appears as not only possessing rights in connection thawith the land, but also standing in a relation 58to the tribe or clan which occupied them as their leader.^[66] The same record discloses a similar connection between the Mormaer and the land in the person of two of the Mormaers of Moray. Thus Malcolm, the son of Ruadri, who died in 1029, gives the Delerc, and Malsnectai, the son of Lulach, the successor of Macbeth as usurper of the throne, gives Pettmalduib to Drostan. These lands were probably within the province of Moray ruled by them, and we are told by the Saxon Chronicle that ‘in 1078 King Malcolm won the mother of Maelslaht or Maelsnectai and all his best men,’ an expression similar to that of the Maithi or good men of Buchan, which, as we have seen, included the Toisech ‘and all his treasure and his cattle,’ and he himself escaped with difficulty. His death as Ri Moreb, or king of Moray, is recorded, as we have seen, in 1080.

On the death of Eadgar, the successor of Malcolm III., his brother Alexander the First ruled as king over Scotland proper, while Lothian and Cumbria or Strathclyde fell to his brother David. From the time when the Celtic king Malcolm had married the Saxon princess Margaret there had been an increasing Saxon influence in the government of the Celtic provinces; and when his sons by that princess had been firmly established on the throne by foreign aid, in opposition to the attempt of their father’s brother to maintain his right under the older law of succession, with the assistance of the Gaelic population, and found their chief support in the Anglic population of Lothian and the Merse, the reigns of Eadgar and Alexander the First must be viewed as essentially those of Saxon monarchs modelling their kingdom in accordance with Saxon institutions; while the object of David from the first, 59both while he governed the southern districts as earl and the whole of Scotland as king, was to introduce the feudal system of Norman England into Scotland, and adapt her institutions to feudal forms.

The charters of Eadgar relate mainly to land south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and we find that the immediate dependants of the Court, who formed the witnesses to these charters, were certainly Saxons; and when Alexander the First founded the monastery of Scone after the attempt made upon his life by the Gaelic population of the northern provinces, we find that the foundation charter is framed upon the model of the Saxon charters. Like the latter, which were granted with the assent of the members of the Witenagemot, who subscribe the charter as consenting parties with the designation of Episcopus and Abbas if churchmen, and of Comes or Dux if earls, without the addition of the diocese, monastery, or earldom with which they were connected; so we find this charter granted with the consent of nine persons, two of whom have the simple designation of Episcopus, who are followed by seven others, six of whom have the word Comes or Earl after their names; and the only one who is not so designated is Gospatrick, whom we know to have been at the time Earl of Dunbar, and who probably represented that part of Lothian attached to Alexander’s kingdom. The other six must of course have represented the districts of transmarine Scotland, which properly formed Alexander’s dominions. We thus find in his reign a body constituted somewhat similarly to that portion of the Witenagemot of the Saxon monarchs, and exercising similar functions.^[67] The six persons, however, who bear the title of Comes are Beth, Mallus, Madach, Rothri, Gartnach, and Dufagan, and of these we can identify four. Mallus is undoubtedly the Mallus Comes Stradarniæ or Earl of Stratherne, 60who took such a prominent part in the Battle of the Standard.^[68] Madach is that Maddach, Jarl of Atjoklum, or Earl of Atholl, said in the Orkneyinga Saga to be the son of Melkolfr or Melmare, brother of Malcolm the Third.^[69] Rothri appears in a charter in the Book of Deer, granted in the eighth year of King David, as Ruadri, Mormaer of Mar; and Gartnach is the Gartnait, son of Cainnech, Mormaer of Buchan, who grants the charter. The remaining two, Beth and Dufagan, cannot be identified with certainty, but the resemblance of the name of the latter to Dubican, who appears at an earlier date as Mormaer of Angus, leads to the supposition that he may have filled that position. At all events there is enough to show that the six persons who appear with the title of Comes as representing the districts north of the Firths, were the same persons whom we have hitherto found in connection with these districts bearing the title of Mormaer; and thus the great Celtic chiefs of the country, to whom the Norwegians applied the Norwegian title of Jarl, which was a personal dignity though given in connection with a territory, now appear bearing the Saxon title of Comes or Earl, and the Celtic title of Mormaer, probably official in its origin, was now merged in a personal dignity.^[70]

61In one of the earliest charters in King David’s reign, we find a slight change in the position of these comites. It is the first of David’s charters to the monastery of Dunfermline, and in this charter five bishops appear who alone prefix to their names the word ‘Ego,’ and add the title of Episcopus simply with the word confirmed; and then follows a list of names of persons who are said to be ‘hujus privilegii testes et assertores,’ and these are headed by five earls—viz., Ed Comes, Constantinus Comes, Malise Comes, Rotheri Comes, and Madeth Comes.^[71] The last three are obviously the same with three of the earls who subscribe the Scone charter, and who, we have seen, had been Mormaers of Stratherne, Mar, and Atholl. Constantin appears in a subsequent charter, where King David grants to Dunfermlin ‘the whole shyre of Kirkcaldy, which Earl Constantine held from them by force, in perpetual charity,’ and this charter is simply witnessed by three bishops and three earls—viz., Madeth Comes, Malis Comes, Head Comes.^[72] Constantin, however, appears in two documents in the Chartulary of St. Andrews, in which he is described as Earl of Fife. In the first, which is the memorandum of the grant by Edelrad, son of Malcolm, king of Scotland, abbot of Dunkeld, and also Earl of Fife, of the lands of Admore, it is said to have been confirmed by his brothers David and Alexander ‘in presentia multorum virorum fide dignorum scilicet Constantini Comitis de Fyf viri discretissimi.’ The second is a perambulation of the boundaries of Kirkness and Lochore, when the king sends his messengers through the province of Fyf and Fothrithi, and 62summons many of their people in one place—viz., Constantinem Comitem de Fyf virum discretum et facundum cum satrapys et satellitibus et exercitu de Fyf et Macbeath Thaynetum de Falleland (Falkland), etc. The dispute is then referred to ‘tres viros legales et idoneos,’ the first of whom is ‘Constantinus Comes de Fyf magnus judex in Scotia.’^[73] We thus see that one of the principal functions of these old Mormaers, who now appear as comites or earls, was judicial, and it is probable that the title of Magnus judex, or great judge, given to Constantin, is simply the Latin equivalent of the Celtic title of Mormaer, or great maer, and by the ‘satrapes,’ probably the same persons are meant who appear in the Book of Deer with the Celtic title of Toiseach. The ‘Ed comes’ who precedes Constantin in the first of King David’s charters may possibly be the same person as the ‘Head comes’ who witnesses the second, but neither can be identified.^[74]

63During the entire reign of David the First these earls appear simply with the designation of Comes without any territorial addition, with two exceptions, which occur towards the end of his reign. In the earliest charter the earls who witness it, among whom is Constantin, are followed by other witnesses, partly officers of state, as the chancellors, partly Norman barons, and a few Celtic names which have no designation, and the first witness who follows the earls and precedes the chancellor is Gillemichel Makduf. In the foundation charter of Holyrood, granted not long after, he follows the chancellor and the chamberlain as Gillemichel Comes, and in a subsequent charter to Dunfermline he again precedes them as Gillemichel Comes de Fif. In a charter in the Book of Deer, which must have been granted in the last year of David’s reign, the earl who succeeded Gillemichel appears as Dunchad, Comes de Fif, and along with him, for the first time, appears Gillebride, Comes de Angus. Gillemichel has usually been supposed to be the son of Constantin, but this has arisen solely from the preconceived notion that all the ancient Earls of Fife bore the name of Macduff. There is, however, no evidence of any connection between them, and it is obviously quite inconsistent with the character of their appearance as witnesses in the same charter.

There is no doubt that David’s object, on his accession to the throne, was to feudalise the whole kingdom, by importing feudal forms and feudal holdings into it, and to place the leading dignitaries of the kingdom in the position of Crown vassals, as well as to introduce a Norman baronage. The relation of those old Celtic earls or Mormaers towards the Crown on the one hand, had hitherto been purely official, and that towards the districts with which their names were connected 64was not a purely territorial one. It was more a relation towards the tribes who peopled it than towards the land. David’s desire, certainly, would be to place them, whenever opportunity offered in the position of holding the land they were officially connected with as an earldom of the Crown in chief, in the same manner as the barons held their baronies, and in these cases he may have inaugurated the policy undoubtedly followed, as we shall see, by his successors.

Gillemichel Macduff, from his position in the earliest charter, must have held a high position as a follower of the king, and may have rendered him great services, which legend drew back to the usurpation of the throne of his ancestor Duncan by Macbeth, and led to the creation of the fictitious Macduff, who makes his first appearance in Fordun’s Chronicle, and after Constantin’s death Gillemichel may first have had the personal title of Comes or Earl bestowed upon him, and then been feudally invested with the Earldom of Fife, which thus may have become a territorial title in his person. It certainly did so in that of his successor Duncan, who received from David a charter of the earldom, which was confirmed to his successors by the subsequent kings;^[75] and a similar feudal investiture of the earldom of Angus in the person of Gillibride may have added that old Celtic earldom likewise to the number, as from this time, when we find the older earldoms still conferring no territorial designation on their earls, Gillibride invariably appears along with them as Earl of Angus. During the earlier part of the reign of Malcolm IV. no change appears to have been made in the position of the existing earldoms. His first charter after his accession appears to have been his confirmationconfirmation of the grants to the 65monastery of DunfermlineDunfermline, and this charter is witnessed first by six bishops, then by twelve barons, most of whom were Normans, and other foreigners, and then by six of the earls (De Comitibus), who are thus named: Gospatricius Comes, Ferteth Comes, Duncanus Comes, Morgund Comes, Melcolmus Comes, et Comes de Engus. The five preceding earls were those of Dunbar, Stratherne, Fife, Mar, and Athol, the earl of Buchan, who would make up the number of the seven earls, not appearing among them. To this number a temporary addition was made by Malcolm, when, on making peace with Malcolm macHeth, the pretended son of Earl Angus of Moray, in 1157, he gave him the district of Ros with the title of earl; but the inhabitants soon rose against him and drove him out.

An event, however, took place soon after, which led to the policy inaugurated by David the First, of feudalising these earldoms, being resumed by Malcolm and still further carried out by his successor. This was the attack made upon the king by six of the old Celtic earls, when, under the leadership of Ferteth, earl of Stratherne, they besieged him in Perth in the year 1160. Fordun, quoting from the Chronicle of Melrose, says, ‘Six earls—Ferchard, Earl of Stratherne, to wit, and five other earls—being stirred up against the king, not to compass any selfish end, or through treason, but rather to guard the common weal, sought to take him, and laid siege to the keep of that town (Perth). God so ordering it, however, their undertaking was brought to nought for the nonce, and after not many days had rolled by, he was, by the advice of the clergy, brought back to a good understanding with his nobles.’^[76] An expression in the Orkneyinga Saga would lead us to infer that the object of the six Celtic earls was to put up the young son of William Fitz Duncan, who was usually called 66the Boy of Egremont, and as grandson of King Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm III. by Ingibiorg, widow of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney, had a direct claim to the throne, which would commend itself both to the Gaelic and to the Norwegian population in preference to the descendants of the Saxon princess Margaret.^[77] Wyntoun gives us the following account of this occurrence:—

Wyntoun here associates with the five earls who followed Ferteth, the Earl of Stratherne, Gillandrys Ergemawche. If two persons are meant, Ergemawche may be a corruption of Egremont, and Gillandres may have represented the old Celtic earls of Ross, as the clan bearing the name of Ross are called in Gaelic Clan Ghilleanrias, or descendants of Gillandres, and may have led the revolt which drove Malcolm macHeth out of the earldom.

Each of the seven provinces of Scotland consisted, as we have seen, of two districts, and we find a Mormaer ruling over each: but when they appear in the reign of Alexander the First, under the name of Comes or Earl, we find the number reduced to six; and with the exception of the province consisting of 67the two districts of Mar and Buchan, each of which is represented by an earl, the other provinces appear with one of its two districts possessing an earl, and the other remaining unrepresented. It was these six earls, no doubt, who formed the party who attacked the king in Perth, and one feature of the new policy appears to have been to increase their number by appointing new earls to the vacant districts, who were feudally invested with their earldoms, and thus introducing a large feudal element into the old Celtic earldoms, while those which retained their original character would be gradually feudalised as opportunity offered. Malcolm had thus restored one of these vacant districts when he made Malcolm macHeth Earl of Ross; and when that earl was driven out by the inhabitants, he endeavoured to connect it still more closely with the Crown, by giving the earldom to Florence, Count of Holland, in marriage with his sister Ada in 1162, but this grant, too, did not practically take effect.^[79] Two years after he added another in the district of Menteath, which, along with Stratherne, formed one of the old provinces of Scotland. ‘Gillechrist, Comes de Menteth,’ makes his first appearance as witness in a charter granted by King Malcolm to the canons of Scone in 1164; and in the same charter we have Gillebride Comes de Angus and Malcolm Comes appearing for the first time with the territorial designation of ‘De Ethoel.’

The policy thus inaugurated by David the First as entering into his plan for transforming the old Celtic kingdom of the Scots into a feudal monarchy, and to some extent carried out by Malcolm the Fourth, was still more vigorously prosecuted by his successor William the Lion; and we find that during 68his reign he converted two of the old earldoms into feudal holdings, that a third had passed by gift and a fourth by succession into the hands of Norman barons, and that he added four new earldoms to the number.

We have seen that during the reign of Alexander the First and the early part of the reign of David, Ruadri or Rotheri, who had been Mormaer of Mar, appears witnessing the royal charters, with the personal title of Comes or Earl. He was followed, during the latter part of the reign of David and during that of his successor Malcolm IV., by Morgundus or Morgund, who also bears the personal title of Comes or Earl; but in the early part of the reign of William the Lion, when the territorial designations became more common, he is superseded by a certain Gilchrist, Earl of Mar, and Gilchrist, in his turn, makes way in 1171 for Morgund again. The explanation of this apparent contest for the position of earl is furnished us by the controversy which afterwards took place between the family of De Lundin, who were the kings hereditary Hostiarii or doorkeepers, and from that office took the name of Doorward or Durward. It appears from this controversy that Morgund was alleged to be illegitimate, and King William had probably taken advantage of this flaw in his title to break the succession of the old Celtic earls by recognising Gilchrist, the next lawful heir, as earl. This Gilchrist had married Orabilis, the daughter of Ness, son of William, one of the foreign settlers in Fife, and his daughter was the mother of Thomas de Lundin, the king’s Hostiary or Doorward, and carried the claims of the lawful heirs into this family.^[80] It is probable, however, that this illegitimacy, 69though possibly well founded according to the canon law, was not recognised as such by the Celtic customs, and an arrangement seems to have been come to by which Morgund agreed to receive from the king the investiture of the earldom as a feudal holding, while the claims of the rival party were satisfied by a large tract of land between the rivers Dee and Don, which was withdrawn from the earldom and became the property of the Durwards. There is preserved a deed by King William, in which he narrates that Morgund, son of Gillocher, formerly Earl of Mar, appeared before him in June 1171 and was invested with the earldom of Mar, in which his father had died vest and seized, and which was now granted to him and his heirs whatsoever.^[81] It may perhaps be doubted whether this is an original deed; but there can be little doubt that it contains the record of a real transaction by which the earldom was converted into a purely feudal holding, which, like all such holdings created at this time, was descendible to heirs-female.

The policy followed by King William, with regard to these earldoms, was checked for a time by the unfortunate result of his attempt in 1174 to recover possession of the northern provinces of England, when he was taken prisoner, and only recovered his liberty by surrendering the independence of his kingdom; but soon after his liberation, when he returned to Scotland, he appears to have created two new earldoms, which he bestowed upon his brother David. The first was the earldom of Garvyach or Garrioch in Aberdeenshire, formed from the districts surrounding the ancient fortification of Dunideer, and extending between the river Don and its tributary the Ury. The second was the earldom of Levenach or Lennox, and consisted of the northern part of 70the old Cumbrian kingdom, which appears to have received a Gaelic population, and is nearly represented by the county of Dumbarton.^[82] These districts were probably at the time in the hands of the Crown. The earldom of Garvyach passed on David’s death to his son John the Scot, after whose death it again reverted to the Crown, and was eventually granted as a lordship to the earls of Mar. The earldom of Levenach does not appear to have remained long in Earl David’s possession, as we find it emerging in the possession of a line of Celtic earls, the first of whom, Aluin, must have received it as early as the year 1193. Earl David was invested with the English earldom of Huntingdon on the death of its then possessor, Simon de Senlis, in 1184; and it is probable that on that occasion he resigned the earldom of Lennox in favour of the head of its Gaelic population.^[83]

In 1179 William the Lion brought the people of Ross under more complete subjection to the Crown, and built two royal castles within its bounds, but he appears to have retained the earldom in his own hands, as the Count of Holland complains that he had been deprived of it, although he had never been forfeited. His grievance was probably not a very substantial one, as it is very unlikely that he either had obtained or could obtain practical possession of it. Seven years after the king formed a second earldom out of the territory of the old Cumbrian kingdom, at its southwestern extremity, where it bordered upon the Gaelic district of Galloway, and appears to have received a Gaelic population from thence. This was the district of Carrick, which he 71bestowed as an earldom upon Duncan, son of Gilbert, and grandson of Fergus, the Celtic Lord of Galloway.

Ten years after this he took advantage of the slaughter of the bishop of Caithness by the Norwegian earl of Orkney and Caithness, to extend his power over that district likewise, and to reduce its earl to submission. Harald, the earl at this time, was not a very distant relation of the king by paternal descent, being the son of Madach, earl of Atholl, whose father was a brother of Malcolm the Third, but he inherited the earldom of Orkney to which Caithness at this time was attached, through his mother, Margaret, the daughter of a previous earl, of Norwegian descent, and he had married a daughter of Malcolm MacHeth, the so-called earl of Moray, and was thus associated with that family in their opposition to the Crown. The result of two separate invasions of Caithness by the royal army was, that Caithness, north of the great range called the Ord of Caithness, was eventually restored to Earl Harald, to be held by him on payment to the Crown of a large sum of money; while the district south of that range, which has the Norwegian name of Sudrland or Sutherland, was retained by the king, and bestowed upon Hugo, a scion of the house of De Moravia, as a lordship, and eventually made an earldom in the person of his son William. Before the death of William one of the old Celtic earldoms had passed by succession into the hands of a foreign baron, for William Cumyn, the head of the Norman house of that name, became possessed of the earldom of Buchan by his marriage with Marjory, daughter of Fergus, the last of the Celtic earls.

Alexander the Second, the successor of William, followed out the same policy, but during his reign, notwithstanding the increase in the number of the earldoms, and the feudalisation of some of the older ones, we find the seven earls of Scotland frequently making their appearance, apparently as a constitutional body whose privileges were recognised. They 72first appear as taking an important part in the coronation of Alexander as king of Scotland, and then consisted of the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteath, Buchan, and Lothian.^[84] With the exception of Menteath, which was a more recent earldom, these are the same earldoms whose earls gave their consent to the foundation charter of Scone; but Menteath comes now in place of Mar, perhaps owing to the controversy as to the rightful possessor of the latter earldom, and Buchan was, as we have seen, now held by a Norman baron.

Another of these ancient earldoms, however, soon after terminated in the male line, and this raised a question which throws some light upon their character and relation to the law of feudal tenures. When Fergus, the last of the old Celtic earls of Buchan, died in the end of King William’s reign, there seems to have been no doubt that the earldom devolved upon his daughter Marjory, which she carried to her husband, William Cumyn; but when Henry, the last of the old Earls of Atholl, died, soon after the accession of Alexander the Second, his heirs were two sisters, Isabella and Forflissa, and the question at once arose whether the earldom was partible between them, as was the case with any feudal barony, or whether it devolved in its entirety upon the elder sister, Isabella, who had married Thomas of Galloway, brother of Alan, Lord of Galloway. This question, and the decision of the Curia regis or royal court, consisting of the tenants in chief of the Crown, are incidentally mentioned when the same discussion took place before Edward the First between three of the competitors for the crown on the death of the Maid of Norway. These were John Baliol, who claimed as grandson of Margaret, the eldest daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon; Robert de Bruce, who claimed as son of his second daughter Isabella; and John de Hastings, as grandson of Ada, the youngest daughter. The competition 73for the crown came eventually to be between Baliol, who claimed as representing Earl David through his eldest daughter, and Bruce, who asserted that being his grandson he was one step nearer, and should be preferred to his great-grandson, notwithstanding that he was thus connected through the second daughter. John de Hastings, who, like Baliol, stood only in the relation of great-grandson, admitted the right of the latter to the throne, if the kingdom was maintained in its entirety, but asserted that being held under the English Crown, it was partible like any other feudal holding, and that he ought to be preferred to one-third of the territory of the kingdom; and Robert Bruce put in a further claim, that in the event of his right to the whole being rejected, he was likewise entitled to one-third. His argument was this—‘The land of Scotland, albeit it is called a kingdom, ought to be partible, by reason that the event which has now happened to Scotland, seeing that it is held in fee of our lord the king of England by homage, is no other than similar to what it would have been as to an earldom or a barony of the realm of England which had descended in such case. And if an earldom or barony had descended to three daughters, with the issue of them, each would have her purpart, seeing that the three daughters represent but one heir of all the heritage of their father; so that no advantage ought to accrue unto the eldest, or unto the issue of her, except solely the name of the dignity, and especially of the chief messuage.’^[85] The king of England referred this question to the eighty Scotch arbiters, who had been elected by the parties, who were asked to decide—‘first, whether the kingdom of Scotland is partible; second, although it be that the kingdom is not partible, whether the lands acquired and the escheats are 74partible or not. The third, whether the earldoms and the baronies of the kingdom are partible of right; and the fourth, seeing that the kingdom is not partible, in case the right to the kingdom falls to daughters, whether any consideration ought to be paid to the younger ones, by reason of the equality of right which descended to all, as though in acknowledgment of their right,’ This discussion only bears upon our subject in so far as it affects the position in this respect of the old earldoms, and it is unnecessary to refer to the answers of the arbiters, except to the third and fourth questions. ‘To the third they say that an earldom in the kingdom of Scotland is not partible; and this was found by judgment in the Court of the king of Scotland as to the earldom of Astheles, or Atholl; but as to baronies, they say that they are partible. To the fourth they say that as to a kingdom they never saw the like; but if an earldom falls to daughters in Scotland, the eldest takes it wholly. But if either of the other sisters has not been provided for, in the life of the father, it is proper that the eldest, who takes the inheritance, makes her a payment and assignment. And this is of grace, not of right.’^[86]

They thus adopt the argument of Robert the Bruce as to baronies but not as to earldoms. It is, however, unlikely that the eighty arbiters, forty of whom were named by Baliol and forty by Bruce, should have been unanimous in rejecting the claim of the latter; and the qualification contained in the fourth answer has much the appearance of a compromise between two conflicting views, and like most compromises is inconsistent with the grounds upon which either must be based. In point of fact both views had a substance of truth in them. So far as the old Celtic earldoms of the kingdom were concerned, the arbiters pronounced a correct judgment, for such earldoms were rather official and personal than territorial dignities, and the territory of the earldom, which afterwards 75formed its demesne, was more of the nature of mensal land appropriated to the support of the dignity. The decision, founded on as having been given by the court of the king, that the earldom of Atholl was not partible, must have reference to that time when the last Celtic earl was represented by two co-heirs, and it appears to have been viewed as being governed by Celtic and not by feudal law. Hence the eldest sister, Isabella, was held to have right to the whole earldom.^[87] Isabella married Thomas de Galloway, brother of Alan, Lord of Galloway, by whom she had a son, Patrick; and after her first husband’s death, in 1232, Alan de Lundin, the Hostiarius or Doorward, and one of the most powerful barons of the time, appears as earl of Atholl, from which we may infer that he had married the widow, and held the title during her life. Patrick, the young earl, was, on his accession, miserably burnt to death at Haddington in the year 1242, and then we are told the earldom passed to his aunt Forflissa, who had married David de Hastings, a Norman baron.^[88]

While the succession to the earldom of Atholl thus shows the light in which the ancient Celtic earldoms were regarded, 76and the position they occupied in the eye of the common law of the land, those which had been either feudalised or created by the districts being erected into earldoms by the Crown, were in no different position from an ordinary barony, and were regulated by the feudal law, which was correctly laid down by Bruce, the lands being partible between co-heirs, but the dignity and the chief messuage belonging to the eldest co-heir. Of the former we have an example in the earldom of Caithness, which had become feudalised after the war between William the Lion and Harald, who, though of Scottish descent, had inherited through a Norwegian mother. On the death of John, earl of Caithness, the last of this line, in 1231, the title of earl passed with only one half of the lands of the earldom to Magnus, a son of the earl of Angus, while we find the other half of the earldom in the possession of the family of De Moravia, and on the death of the last earl of the Angus line this half was again divided, and Malise, earl of Stratherne, became earl of Caithness, possessing, however, one-fourth only of the lands of the earldom.^[89] In the same manner, when the earldom of Buchan, which had passed by marriage into the hands of the Norman family of Cumyn, was forfeited to the Crown, and the last earl was represented by two co-heirs, one-half of the lands of the earldom was given by King Robert Bruce to Sir John de Ross, son of the earl of Ross, who had married the younger daughter; and the other half, with the title of earl, was afterwards conferred upon Sir Alexander Stuart, second son of King Robert II.

Of the additional earldoms which had been created by the Crown and added to the older earldom, the earliest, that of Menteath, affords an example. This earldom, like that of Buchan, had passed by marriage into the hands of a Cumyn, 77and Walter Cumyn is termed Earl of Menteath as early as the year 1255. On his death in 1257 his widow married John Russell, an unknown Englishman, and the nobles of Scotland, irritated at this, accused her of the murder of her former husband, and imprisoned both her and her second husband. Walter Stewart then claimed the earldom in right of his wife, and by the favour of the nobles obtained it. On the death of the first Countess her right passed to William Cumyn, who had married her daughter, and a controversy arose between him and Walter Stewart, which terminated in the title being confirmed to the latter, with one half of the earldom, while the other half was erected into a barony in favour of William Cumyn. The partition at a later period of the earldom of Lennox, another of these created earldoms, likewise affords an example.

Such being the distinction between the old Celtic earldoms represented by the seven earls and those subsequently constituted, we learn also from the discussions which took place in the competition for the crown somewhat of the rights which they claimed as their privilege; for among the documents still preserved connected with the competition is an appeal on behalf of the seven earls of the kingdom of Scotland to Edward I., in which it is stated that, ‘according to the ancient laws and usage of the kingdom of Scotland, and from the time whereof the memory of man was not to the contrary, it appertained to the rights and liberties of the seven earls of Scotland and the “communitas” of the same realm, whenever the royal throne should become vacant de facto et de jure, to constitute the king, and to place him in such royal seat, and to confer upon him all the honours belonging to the government of the kingdom of Scotland.’^[90] And this function we find them evidently performing at the coronation of Alexander the Second.

78The only one of the seven provinces which was required to be brought into more direct connection with the Crown was the great district of Arregaithel or Argyll, and early in his reign Alexander annexed the northern part to the earldom of Ross, and placed that earldom in possession of a devoted adherent of his person. The district forming what was then called North Argyll consisted in a great measure of the territory of the old and powerful Celtic monastery of Apercrossan, and had passed into the hands of a family of hereditary lay abbots, who termed themselves Sagarts or priests of Applecross; and Ferquard Macintaggart, or the son of the Sagart or priest who had aided the young king in suppressing an insurrection of the Gaelic people of Moray and Ross in support of the pretensions of the MacWilliam and MacHeth families in the early part of his reign, was now created Earl of Ross, which thus became a feudal earldom held of the Crown, by a family who were among its most loyal supporters.^[91] The insurrection which took place a few years after in favour of Gillespic mac Eochagan, also of the family of MacWilliam, led to the rest of this great district being subdued and brought into the same relation with the Crown. The king, we are told by Fordun, led an army into Argyll. The men of Argyll were frightened. Some gave hostages and a great deal of money, and were taken back in peace, while others, who had more offended against the king’s will, forsook their estates and possessions and fled. But our lord the king bestowed both the land and the goods of these men upon his own followers ‘at will’; or, as Wyntoun expresses it—

79Those who fled appear to have taken refuge in Galloway, as we find Gilescop Macihacain witnessing a charter in Galloway with a cluster of Gaelic names along with him;^[92] and as one of these names can be connected with the district of Lochaber, while the family of that Roderic who joined with him in his rebellion appear to have had their main possessions in the district of Garmoran, extending from Ardnamurchan to Glenelg, the main seat of the rebellion appears to have been that central portion of the great region of Argyll which was said to pertain to Moravia or Moray, of which these districts formed a part. The native lords of this district were apparently those whom the king dispossessed, and whose possessions he gave to his own followers, and accordingly we find Lochaber soon after in the possession of the Cumyns. In South Argyll, on the other hand, the native lords appear to have submitted to the king, as the family of Dubhgal, the eldest son of Somerled, the great Celtic Lord of Argyll, seem to have remained in possession of the extensive district of Lorn; and it is at this time that we may fairly place a grant which appears to have been made of the lands in the interior which afterwards formed the lordship of Lochow to Duncan Mac Duine, the ancestor of the Campbells, a clan the head of which appears in the following reign as a close adherent of the Crown.^[93]

The seven earls of Scotland appear again as a body taking part in important transactions on two different occasions in this reign. In the first, which was the agreement between the kings of England and Scotland, by which a settlement of the claims of the latter was concluded in 1237, the seven earls among others became bound by oath to maintain the 80agreement. These were the earls of Dunbar, of Stratherne, of Lennox, of Angus, of Mar, of Atholl, and of Ross; and here we find the earls of Lennox, of Mar, and of Ross, coming in place of those of Fife, Menteath, and Buchan; but when the agreement was renewed seven years afterwards, in 1244, the seven earls who became bound that King Alexander would observe good faith were, Patrick Earl of Dunbar, Malcolm Earl of Fife, Malise Earl of Stratherne, Walter Cumyn Earl of Menteath, William Earl of Mar, Alexander (younger) Earl of Buchan, and David de Hastings Earl of Atholl;^[94] the Earls of Fife, Menteath, and Buchan again appearing among them, and those of Lennox, Angus, and Ross being omitted. We thus see that though the number of seven was always retained, the constituent members were not always the same, the latter being probably regulated by the respective positions of the earldom at the time, for in 1237 the earldom of Angus had passed by marriage into possession of one of the powerful family of Cumyn, but he had died in 1242, and the Countess of Angus had in 1243 replaced him with a Norman Baron, Gilbert de Umphraville, whom she took as her second husband.

In the elaborate and picturesque account which Fordun gives us of the coronation of Alexander the Third when a boy of eight years old, he does not give the seven earls, as a body, a part in the ceremonial, but simply says that the royal boy was accompanied by a number of earls, barons, and knights. The only earls he mentions by name are Walter Cumyn Earl of Menteath, Malcolm Earl of Fife, and Malise Earl of Stratherne; but it is probable that in a coronation in which the Celtic element loomed so largely, he did not intend to imply that this body did not play the same part which they did in the coronation of his father; and this we may reasonably infer, for he tells that in the second year of his 81reign a solemn ceremony took place at Dunfermline, when, in the presence of bishops and abbots, earls and barons, and other good men both clerics and laymen, the relics of Saint Margaret were enshrined at Dunfermline. The record of this transaction in the Chartulary of Dunfermline bears that it was done in presence of the seven bishops and seven earls of Scotland.^[95] It is obvious, however, that this body of the seven earls were gradually losing their separate corporate existence, and were no longer able to maintain in this reign the functions they exercised in previous reigns; for when the succession to the throne was settled upon the daughter of Alexander in 1284, we find them merged in the general ‘communitas,’ or feudal community of the kingdom, in which the entire body of the earls, now amounting to thirteen, appear. They take a part, but apparently not an influential one, in the discussions that took place after the death of the Maid of Norway between the competitors for the crown; and probably the last attempt they made to repossess themselves of the important position they formerly occupied in the affairs of the kingdom was when in 1297 they, in conjunction with John Comyn of Badenoch, invaded England at the head of a powerful army which met in Annandale and besieged Carlisle. The seven earls engaged in this expedition were the earls of Buchan, Menteath, Stratherne, Lennox, Ross, Atholl, and Mar;^[96] but the attempt resulted disastrously for them, for they were obliged to raise the siege and return to Scotland; and then again assembling at Roxburgh they made a second raid into the eastern part of England as far as the priory of Hexham, which they destroyed, and returned with a great 82booty to Scotland. They then besieged and took the castle of Dunbar, the earl of Dunbar having submitted to the king of England, but being besieged by the English in their turn the castle was taken, and three of the earls, viz., those of Menteath, Atholl, and Ross, were taken prisoners, with John Comyn and five other barons, with twenty-nine knights, two clerics, and eighty-three esquires, and confined in different castles in England.^[97]

After this we hear no more of the seven earls of Scotland. As a constitutional body possessing, or claiming to possess, separate privileges, they are merged in the general ‘Communitas regni,’ or Estates of the kingdom, the feudal ‘Curia regis’ consisting of all who held lands in chief of the Crown. As we have seen, when the succession to the Crown was settled towards the end of the reign of Alexander the Third, they take no part as a separate body, but are merged in the general assembly of the feudal baronage of the kingdom, consisting of thirteen earls and twenty-four barons, and six years afterwards there is a still fuller representation of the Estates of the kingdom, when a letter is addressed to Edward the First by the Communitas regni urging him to arrange a marriage of his son with the Maid of Norway. The body from whom this letter proceeds consists of the two bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, John Cumyn, and James, High Steward, the guardians of the kingdom; ten diocesan bishops; twelve of the thirteen earls, the earl of Fife being then a minor; twenty-three abbots of monasteries, eleven priors, and forty-eight barons holding of the Crown.^[98] Neither do they appear as a separate body in the great national protest addressed by the Communitas regni to the Pope in 1320, and signed on their behalf by eight of the earls and twenty-eight of the barons.^[99]

83The state, then, of the land, as thus exhibited to us in the reign of Alexander the Third, appears to have been this.—A large portion of the territory of the kingdom was now held in chief of the Crown by barons, very few of whom were of Celtic descent, on the feudal tenure of military service. Another portion of the territory formed the domain of the Crown. A third portion formed the territory possessed by the old earls of Scotland, and presented, in miniature, the same characteristics as the Crown land, being partly held of the earls by the vassals of the earldom, and partly forming his domain; and a very large extent of territory, probably not less than a third of the whole land, belonged to the Church, and formed the possessions either of the bishoprics, or of the great monasteries which had been founded by the kings of this dynasty, while the lands which had formed the territory of the old Celtic monasteries and had become secularised, now appear either in the possession of the Crown or of the monasteries under the name of ‘abthaniæ’ or abthainries.

In that part of Scotland which still retained, in the main, a Celtic population, we may expect to find the Celtic tenures still prevailing to a large extent, and still exhibiting many of their peculiar characteristics; but where the population had become in a large measure Teutonic, and where so much of the land was now held on feudal tenures by the great barons of the Crown, and by the Roman monastic orders, and where so many of the earldoms had passed by marriage into Norman families, it is more difficult to discover the traces of a Celtic occupation, and the peculiarities of the Celtic tenures under the feudal forms which shrouded them from observation. These we can only expect to find on that portion of land which formed the proper demesne of the Crown and of the old earls, and had been retained in their own possessions without the interposition of any feudal vassals between them and the actual occupiers of the soil.

84Of the mode in which the demesne land of the Crown was actually possessed, we have fortunately a very distinct account given to us by the old chronicler, John of Fordun. He refers it back to the period of Malcolm the Second, to whom nine spurious laws have been attributed, and supposes it to have originated with him; but this may be regarded as a mere theory, framed on the basis of the spurious history of Scotland, to account for a state of matters which existed in his own day, and we have only to separate the mythic part of his statement from what is obviously the result of his own observation. He tells us that ‘histories relate the aforesaid Malcolm to have been so open-handed, or rather prodigal, that while, according to ancient custom, he held as his own property all the lands, districts, and provinces of the whole kingdom, he kept nothing thereof in his possession but the Moothill of the royal seat of Scone, where the kings, sitting in their royal robes on the throne, are wont to give out judgments, laws, and statutes to their subjects. Of old, indeed, the kings were accustomed to grant to their soldiers in feu-farm more or less of their own lands, a portion of any province, or a thanage; for at that time almost the whole kingdom was divided into thanages. Of these he granted to each one as much as he pleased, either on lease by the year as tillers of the ground, or for ten or twenty years, or in liferent, with remainder to one or two heirs, as free and kindly tenants, and to some likewise, though few, in perpetuity, as knights, thanes, and chiefs, not however so freely, but that each of them paid a certain annual feu-duty to their lord the king,’^[100]

The first or mythic part of this statement corresponds with the spurious laws of Malcolm the Second, which thus commence—‘1. King Malcolme gave and distributed all his lands of the realm of Scotland amongst his men; 2. and reserved 85nathing in propertie to himselfe but the Royale dignitie and the Mute hill in the town of Scone,’^[101] and may be disregarded as belonging to the spurious history of Scotland. Whether there ever was a time when it could be said that the king possessed nothing but the Moothill of Scone, and in what sense it could be said that the whole kingdom was divided into thanages, and that the whole lands of the kingdom once belonged to the Crown, is a question that must be determined in the course of this inquiry; but when the old chronicler tells us by what class of persons the Crown lands were actually possessed, and by what species of tenure they held them, he is dealing with matters which still existed in his own day, and the characteristics of which he had every means of ascertaining if they were not perfectly familiar to him, and he gives us a very distinct account of them. He discriminates between three classes of persons as possessing these lands. The lowest class were the agricolæ or husbandmen, the actual cultivators of the soil, who were regarded as yearly tenants, and are, no doubt, the same class with those who are termed bondi and nativi in feudal charters. They were, in the eastern districts, the remains of the old Celtic population. The class next above them consisted of the liberi and generosi, who held land either on lease for ten or twenty years, or in liferent renewable for one or two lives. The former were probably equivalent to the liberi firmarii or free farmers, and the latter to the Rentallers or kindly tenants of the feudal holdings. The third class, who held directly of the Crown, were either milites or knights, who held a knight’s fee for military service, or thani, who held a thanage, or principes or magnates. And he defines a thanage to be a portion of the land of a province held ad feodofirmam,^[102] or in feu-farm, the holder 86of which was subject in payment of an annual ‘census’ or feu-duty. By the principes, he probably refers either to the Mormaers or Earls of the old Celtic earldoms, or to the position of the great Celtic vassals in the western districts as chiefs of clans.^[103] Fordun was himself connected with the northern counties of Kincardine and Aberdeen, where the older holdings of the thanage still maintained their position in the greatest degree even to his own day. He was a chaplain in the diocese of Aberdeen, and the Chartulary of that bishopric has preserved to us a rental of the Crown lands in the reign of Alexander the Third, which shows their extent and the nature of the holdings. In this rental we find the lands of Aberdeen, Belhelvy, Kintore, Fermartyn, Obyne, Glendowachy, Boyn, Munbre, and Natherdale, which are termed thanages; Convalt, which is termed a ‘dominium’ or lordship; Lydgat, Uchterless, and Rothymay, called baronies; and other lands which have no particular designation, with the towns of Aberdeen, Cullen, and Banff.^[104] We also learn that the upper part of the vales of the rivers Dee and Don formed the domain of the earldom of Mar, which consisted of the districts of Braemar, Strathdee, Cromar, and Strathdon, while an extensive territory on the Dee, which had formerly belonged to the earldom, was held in the reign of Alexander the Third by one of his most powerful feudal vassals, Alan the Doorward, to whose father it had been given as a compensation for a claim he had to the earldom of Mar; but though we do not find any of the lands of this earldom bearing the name of thanages, this denomination was still retained in the demesne of two of the more westerly earldoms. In Atholl we have the thanages of Glentilt, Crannich, Achmore, Candknock, while the great abthanrie of Dull belonged 87to the Crown; and in Stratherne we find the thanages of Strum and Dunning held under the earls, and that of Forteviot with the abthanrie of Madderdyn or Madderty in the Crown.

While in the eastern districts we find the older holdings which survived from the Celtic period though disguised under a Saxon nomenclature, which owes its origin probably to the reigns of Edgar and Alexander the First, explained in language more appropriate to feudal holdings, when we pass over to the western districts which still possessed a Celtic population where the Saxon terminology has not penetrated, we come in contact at once with the realities of the Celtic tribal system which the adoption of feudal forms little affected, and whose customs are therefore less disguised by feudal forms, while the relation of the different classes to each other, though nominally feudal, are practically tribal. Although, when the great district of Argyll was annexed to the Crown and other insurrections among the Gaelic tribes were repressed, grants of land were, to some extent, given to Norman barons, with a view to the more effectual suppression of the unruly inhabitants, they conveyed little beyond a bare feudal superiority and introduced no foreign resident element, and thus hardly influenced the Celtic tribes who remained the actual holders of the soil; and when, by the cession of the Isles in the reign of Alexander the Third, the Norwegian dominion over them was transferred to Scotland, we find that the great Celtic lords of the Southern Isles, who had held them as kings under the Norwegian Crown, retained the same position under the Scottish king. At the great meeting of the Community of Scotland, which settled the succession of the Crown in 1283, we see the heads of three great families descended from Somerled—viz. Alexander de Ergadia, Angus, son of Dovenald, and Alan, son of Rotheric—appearing among them, the first being the powerful Lord of Lorn, and the 88second the Lord of the Isles, while the third owned large territories both on the mainland and in the Isles.

One of the first acts of John Baliol, when his claim to the throne was preferred, was to assimilate the district of Argyll and the kingdom of the Isles to the system which prevailed in the rest of the kingdom, which was divided into sheriffdoms, in which the king was represented by the vicecomes or sheriff, and the Act of Parliament by which this was done will show how the land in these western regions was then held within eight years of the death of Alexander the Third.^[105] By this Act, which was passed in 1292, the sheriffdom of Skye was to consist of the lands of the earls of Ross in North Argail, that is, the western part of the present county of Ross, the lands of Glenelg, the Crown lands of Skye and Lewis (here the principal lords were the Macleods of Harris and Lewis though they are not named), the lands of Garmoran, with the islands of Egg and Rume (this had been the chief seat of the Lords of the Isles descended from Roderic, son of Reginald), and the islands of Uist and Barra, where the MacNeills were the principal possessors. The sheriffship of Lorn was to consist of the lands of Ardnamurchan and Kinnelbathyn or Morvern; the lands of Alexander de Ergadia, Lord of Lorn; of John de Glenurchy, of Gilbert M‘Naughton, of Malcolm MacIvor, 89of Dugald of Craignish, of John, son of Gilchrist of Radulph of Dundee, who was a Scrymgeour, whose ancestor had received a grant of Glassrie from Alexander the Second; of Gillespie M‘Lachlan, of the earl of Menteath who had a right to Knapdale, of Anegus, son of Dovenald the Lord of the Isles, and of Colin Campbell, Lord of Lochow; and the sheriffdom of Kintyre was to consist, besides the possessors of the district of Kintyre, of the lands of the Lamonts, of Thomas Cambel, and of Dunkan Duff, in Cowall, and of the island of Bute.

The occupation of the lands which formed the territory of the kingdom of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the Third, the mutual relation of the different races by which it was held, the connection of the Celtic portion of the population with the soil, the tenure by which they possessed it, and the different classes in their social organisation which it discloses, present to us the problem which we have to solve, and we have now to trace the history of the early institutions from which its phenomena were derived, and the extent to which they have been affected by internal change or by external influence.

But before entering upon this inquiry it may be well to see what legend or tradition tells us with regard to the Celtic portion of the population, with which we have now mainly to do. Such legends or traditions are either intended as a means of conveying some early facts in the history of the race in a popular form, or of clothing some truths in a symbolic dress, or they are merely the picturesque imaginations of their early sennachies or native historians. Those which relate to the Celtic population of Scotland are derived from two different sources. They are either Welsh or Irish, that is, they are the legends of either the Cymric or the Gaelic race, and in estimating their relative value it is necessary to take their probable origin and character into account. Some of them are 91what may be termed ethnic legends. They are designed to perpetuate the popular conception of the origin and early settlements of the race, but they are the creation of a period when there had been some progress in the culture of the people, and when they possessed a rude literature derived in the main from the spread of Christianity and the establishment of Christian institutions among them. Their authors felt the necessity of connecting the early history of the country with the events of Biblical or Classical history, and it assumed the shape of a fictitious narrative which belongs to the mythic period of their annals. Others again may be called linguistic legends, and were rude attempts to account for peoples nominally distinct, and from pride of race regarding each other as independent races, possessing the same language and using a cognate form of speech. Others were what may be truly called historical legends, and handed down in a more or less modified shape events which we have reason to think actually took place; while others again were purely artificial, and were simply the rude and fantasticfantastic creations of the popular mind, which felt the necessity of filling up the dark period of the annals of their race with imaginary events calculated to gratify their national feeling and their natural love of the marvellous.

The ethnic legends invariably connect the origin of the people with Biblical or Classical history, and assumes that some of the races which formed the oldest population of the country, and were really indigenous, had immigrated from some foreign land. We find it assuming two different shapes. In the one the different nations constituting the early population were separate colonies which proceeded from foreign countries and entered the land at different periods. Thus Bede tells us of the early population of Britain that it was first peopled by a colony of ‘Brittones’ who 92came from Armorica; that then the Picts came from Scythia, and the nation of the Scots came from Ireland; and he places these successive colonies prior to the Roman invasion of Britain. The legendary history of Ireland presents the early history of its population in the same aspect. The account of the successive colonies which occupied Ireland is supposed to have been narrated to Saint Patrick by her earliest historian Fintan, who lived before the Flood, and remained alive during the whole of the centuries which elapsed till the introduction of Christianity. The Book of Ballimote contains a poem supposed to have been written by him. If he was a real personage, he may have been Fintan Munnu, a celebrated Irish saint who died on 25th October 634, but the poem is no doubt a later composition, and a translation is here inserted as giving in short compass these successive peoplings of the island, and as a good specimen of their early legends.

As the learned historian has related, namely Fintan:—

The history of these successive colonies is elaborated with many details in the fictitious history of Ireland during the 94mythic period, but it is unnecessary for our purpose to enter into these details except in so far as they bear upon the legendary history of the people of Scotland.^[106]

Another form of the ethnic legend is one common to the early history of all countries during the mythic period. In it the race is personified in an eponymus who is the supposed ancestor and founder of it, and their supposed settlement in the country in which they are first found is prefigured in a marriage with a female whose name has an obvious relation to it, and thus an ethnic family is produced, the sons of which usually represent the territorial divisions of the country. This family has therefore a territorial as well as an ethnic meaning, and the filiation does not always imply affinity of race, but may indicate no more than the joint occupation of the country by the different tribes personified in the members of the ethnic family. We have an instance of this form of the legend in the well-known fable contained in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history, where Brutus, the eponymus of the Britons, appears as the first colonist in the island, and has three sons, Locrinus, Camber, and Albanactus, representing the Lloegry of England, the Cymry of Wales, and the people of Alban or Scotland, as well as in the older form of the legend, where Brutus and Albanus are brothers. In the Irish form Gathelus or Gaidelglas, the eponymus of the Gael, marries Scota the daughter of Pharaoh, by which the settlement of the Gael in Scotia or Ireland is prefigured, and his period is brought back so as to connect his history and that of his race with the Biblical narrative. His descendant Milesius, son of Bile, son of Breogan, is also said to have married Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, and actually settles the race in Ireland. We find, however, this feature of the legend, 95which represents the territorial divisions of the country by the sons of the supposed colonist, running through the whole of the first form of the legend. Thus Partholan, the first colonist after the flood, arrives with three sons, Rughruidhe, Slainge, and Laighlinne, and after their death he divides Ireland between four sons, Er, Orba, Fearann, and Feargna. The second colonist, Nemead, has a wife, Macha, from whom Ardmacha or Armagh takes its name, thus signifying the principal seat of the race; and he has three sons, Iarbheineoil, Fergus Leithdearg, and Starn, and Ireland is divided into three parts between Beothach son of Iarbheineoil, Briotan son of Fergus Leithdearg, and Simon son of Beoain son of Starn. The people of Nemead are then driven out of Ireland by the Fomoraigh or sea pirates, and depart in three bodies. One under Beothach goes to the north of Europe, another under Briotan to the north of Britain, and the third under Simon to Greece. The third colonists, the Firbolg, come from Greece under Dela, a descendant of Simon, and by him Ireland is divided into five districts between his five sons, Slainge, Gann, Seangan, Geannan, and Rughruidhe; and these were the five provinces of Ireland—Leinster, possessed by Slainge; Thomond and Desmond, the two divisions of Munster, by Gann and Seangan; Connaught by Geannan, and Ulster by Rughruidhe. Here we have a reproduction of two of the sons of Partholan in Slainge and Rughruidhe. We have again a threefold division of Ireland under the fourth colonists, the Tuatha De, supposed to be the descendants of Beothach, son of Iarbheineoil; and the three sons of Cearmadha Milbeoil their king—MacCuil, MacCeacht, and MacGreine—have three queens, Eire, Fodla, and Banba, which are simply the three oldest names in Ireland. Milesius too has three sons, Eber, Heremon, and Ir, of whom the former possessed the two Munsters, Heremon Leinster and Connaught, and Ir Ulster; and here again we find the same reproduction of 96previous names, for Eber has the same four sons, Er, Orba, Fearann, and Feargna,^[107] who are attributed to Partholan, and the descendants of Ir who occupied Ulster were termed the race of Rughruidhe from a descendant of that name. We also find that this filiation from the same parents does not imply identity of race, for the descendants of Ir, to whom the name of Rughruidhe especially belongs, and who peopled the north of Ireland, appear throughout the Irish Annals under the name of Cruithnigh, and were no other than the Picts who were settled in Ireland.

The form which the linguistic legend usually assumes is that of a colony of soldiers obtaining wives from another people whose language they adopt, and perhaps the most curious specimen is that told of the Britons of Armorica by Nennius. He tells us that when Maximus, who was declared emperor in Britain, went over to Gaul to maintain his pretensions, he withdrew from Britain its military force, and, unwilling to send his soldiers back to their wives, children, and possessions in Britain, settled them in Armorica, where they became the Armorican Britons, and some MSS. have the following addition:—These Armorican Britons, having laid waste and depopulated the country, took the wives and daughters of the previous inhabitants in marriage, but cut out their tongues that their children might not learn their mother tongue. Hence they were called Letewiccion or half speech.^[108] The meaning of this tale is, that identity of language is implied by the marriage of the leaders of one people with the wives and daughters of another, and a dialectic difference could only be accounted for by depriving the females 97of the power of speech. The story told by Bede that the Picts had no wives, and first asked them of the Britons and were refused, and then obtained them from the Scots, is likewise a legend, intended to account for that people, or at least the greater portion of them, speaking a Gaelic dialect; and in the same manner the oldest poem which narrates the settlement of the Milesian Scots in Ireland tells us that ‘Cruithne, the son of Cinge, took their women from them;’ and then after—

Here we have the same story of the Picts, as personified in their eponymus Cruithne taking their wives from the Milesians, and the latter replacing them by wives taken from the previous inhabitants of the Tuath De. The meaning is obviously linguistic, and such legends are intended simply to express a community of language between the supposed military colonies and the people from whom they obtained their wives.

Some of these legends have, however, a historical basis, such as those which relate to supposed settlements of the race of the Scots in Britain. These contain an element of truth, in so far as temporary settlements of the Scots took place in Britain in the fourth century, when they first appear in history, and joined the Picts, Saxons, and Attacotti in assailing the Roman province in Britain; and still more when a permanent settlement of the Scots on the west coast north of the Firth of Clyde undoubtedly took place in the beginning of the sixth century, and the small Scottish kingdom of Dalriada was formed.

Others of these legends, however, are undoubtedly purely artificial, and the entire legendary history of Ireland prior to 98the establishment of Christianity in the fifth century partakes largely of this character. It presents us with a minute detail of the colonies supposed to have preceded the settlement of the Scots, with the names and families of their leaders, the exact period, even to the day of the week, of their settlement, the duration of their occupation of the country, the succession of their kings, and the history of the extinction of the colony either by pestilence or expatriation. Then we have the reigns of 116 pagan kings of the Scots, who reigned during twenty-one centuries, given with an extraordinary minuteness and elaboration of detail, and the accompaniment of marvellous incidents, which betrays its legendary character. Ethnic and linguistic legends are of course interwoven in it, and it may contain fragments of history, such as the revolt of the Attachtuatha or servile classes against their lords, and the territorial changes in the divisions of the land and the location of the tribes which took place from time to time; but the marvellous character of the events continues to the establishment of Christianity, as we see in the narrative of the reigns of three last pagan kings, the first of whom, Niall, who reigned from 379 to 405, subjected all Britain and a great part of the Continent to his sway, and received hostages from nine kingdoms, whence he was called Niall of the nine Hostages; Dathy, who was killed by a flash of lightning at the foot of the Alps in the year 428; and Laogaire, who was slain by the elements between two mountains called Erin and Alban for refusing obedience to the mission of St. Patrick. The chronology of this legendary history, too, is entirely artificial, and though some parts of the narrative may have a historic basis, the dates assigned to them are as little to be trusted as the rest of the history itself. One of the tales contained in the Book of Ballimote, by which the knowledge of this wonderful history was supposed to have been preserved to historic times, will furnish a good example of what the imagination of its framers 99was capable of producing, and it has an interest for us from the connection it had with the great apostle of Scotland, as that of Fintan had with the apostle of Ireland. We are there told that the entire colony of Partholon’s people were destroyed by the plague, excepting one man, Tuan the son of Starn, the son of Seara, Partholon’s brother’s son, and God metamorphosed him into various forms, so that he lived from the time of Partholon to that of Columcille, to whom he related all the information, history, and conquests of Ireland that took place from Ceasair’s time to that period, and then we have the following poem:—

100These legends, however, though it has been thought to indicate their real character and to inquire how far they may be supposed to embody ethnologic and linguistic facts or to contain an element of historic truth, in reality concern us only in so far as they tend to throw light upon the constituent elements of the Celtic population of Scotland and the corresponding territorial divisions of the land. So far as regards the early Celtic peoples south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, we must turn in the first instance to the Cymric legends.^[110] They tell us that this population may be referred to three races, the Brython, the Romani, and the Gwyddyl. Thus in a poem contained in the Book of Taliessin we find them thus alluded to:—

Although the word Gwyddyl is in modern Welsh usually translated Irish, yet there can be no doubt that it was originally used in a much wider sense as the equivalent of the Irish word Gaidheal, and was applied to the whole Gaelic race wherever located. Of this there is ample evidence in the old Welsh poems. The Brython are, of course, the Brettones of Bede, or rather here that part of them which occupied the districts extending from the Derwent to the Clyde, and formed the ancient Cumbria. In the same poem they appear under their national name of Cymry, when it is said,

By the Romani, those leaders of the Britons are meant who were supposed to have derived their descent from the Roman military or civil commanders, as when Gildas tells us that the Britons ‘took arms under Ambrosius Aurelianus as their leader, who was of the Roman nation, and whose parents had been adorned with the purple;’purple;’^[112] and Nennius, who calls him Embres Guletic, says that his father was a consul of the Roman nation.^[113] We find also many of the great leaders of the Britons termed Guledig, the equivalent of the Latin Imperator, and usually expressed by the epithet Aurelius or Aurelianus; and to them no doubt the great national hero Arthur also belonged, who, according to Nennius, led the kings of the Britons against the Saxons as their Dux Bellorum,^[114] and whose actions, so far as they are historical, belong to this part of Britain. Of the last two races, the Brython and the Romani, we have an account in an old document, 102‘The Descent of the Men of the North.’^[115] Here the Cymry, who occupied the northern districts, are said to be the descendants of Coel Hen, or the aged, whose name is preserved in the central district of Ayrshire, now termed Kyle, and of his son, Ceneu. Their descendants appear to have consisted principally of three tribes. They are thus noticed: ‘Three hundred swords of the tribe of Kynvarch, and three hundred shields of Kynwydyon, and three hundred spears of the tribe of Coel. Whatever object they entered into deeply, that never failed.’ The leader of the tribe of Cynvarch, whose grandfather, Gorust Ledlwm, was either son of Coel or of his son Ceneu, was the celebrated Urien Reged, whom Nennius mentions under the name of Urbgen as fighting against Roderic, son of Ida, the founder of the Anglic kingdom of Bernicia, and known in the Welsh poems by the name of Flamddwyn or the Flamebearer. This tribe appears to have occupied the districts lying between the Northern Wall and the Forth, to which the names of Reged and of Mureif were applied. The second tribe was that of Kynwydyon, whose grandfather Garthwys was grandson of Ceneu. The four sons of Kynwyt Kynwdyon are given as the leaders, two of whom are termed Clydrud Eiddyn and Cadrod Calchvynyd, from which we may infer that this tribe was located partly in the district extending from the Esk to the Avon, in which Duneyddyn or Edinburgh, and Caereiddyn or Caredin, are situated, and partly in the district of which Calchvynyd or Kelso was the chief seat. The latter were probably the people afterwards termed the Tevidalenses. The rest of the descendants of Coel were grouped under the name of Coeling, and extended from the Clyde to Loch Ryan, their principal territories being the districts of Carrawg, Coel, and Canawon, which, under the modern form of Garrick, Kyle, and Cuningham, form the county of Ayr.

103After thus noticing the three tribes under which the supposed descendants of Coel were ranged, the descent of the Men of the North proceeds to give the pedigrees of those said to be of Roman descent. They are all deduced from Dyfnwal Hen, or the aged, who, in this document, is made the grandson of Macsen Guledig, or Maximus the Roman Emperor, but in the genealogies annexed to Nennius is said to be the grandson of Ceredig Guledig, whose ancestor Confer or Cynvor was the mythic father of Constantius, the father of the Emperor Constantine. These were obviously the Romani of the poem, and can be mainly traced in connection with the central districts of Annandale, Clydesdale, and Tweeddale. The principal race included among them was that of the provincial kings of Strathclyde, descended from Rydderch Hael, who is mentioned in Adamnan’s Life of Saint Columba as reigning in Alclyde or Dumbarton, and whose history is so intimately connected with that of Kentigern, the great apostle of Strathclyde.^[116]

To the race of the Gwyddyl or Gaidheal the old Welsh traditions undoubtedly attach the Ffichti or Picts, to whom they invariably give the name of Gwyddyl Ffichti.^[117] They occupied the small district extending from the Pentland or 104Pictland Hills to the river Carron, which was known to the Welsh as Manau Guotodin or Gododin, and to the Irish as the Plain of Manann, from whence they are said by Nennius to have driven out the sons of Cunedda, from whom the kings of North Wales were descended. They also possessed the larger district of Galloway, from the mouth of the Nith to the Irish Sea. This district takes its name from the term applied by the Welsh to its inhabitants, of Galwydel, from which the Latin form of Galwethia was formed;^[118] and we find the name of Scoti Picti, which is obviously a Latin rendering of the Welsh term Gwyddyl Ffichti, applied by the author of the Descriptio Albaniæ, who was certainly a Welshman, to the Picts, who, Bede tells us, formed the population of the western districts north of the Clyde, afterwards known by the name of Arregaithel, before the Scots formed their settlement of Dalriada there.

For the legendary origins of the tribes of transmarine Scotland, or the districts north of the Forth and Clyde, we must, however, mainly look to Irish sources, and we find them pervading nearly the whole of the mythic history of Ireland, and cropping up here and there in the course of its artificial chronology.

Alban, or Scotland, is first brought into connection with these legendary narratives of the primitive colonisation of 105Erin, or Ireland, in the history of the second colony—that of the Nemedians, or sons of Neimead. After a great battle with the sea-robbers termed the Fomoraigh, they were defeated, and none escaped save the crew of one ship, consisting of thirty men under three chiefs, Simon Breac, son of Starn, son of Neimead; Iobaath, son of Beothuigh, son of Iarbhanieoil, son of Neimead; and Briotan Maol, son of Fergus Leithdearg, son of Neimead. They then resolve to leave Ireland, and taking seven years to prepare for this emigration, they fit out three fleets, under their three leaders. One fleet, under Simon Breac, goes to Thrace. A second, under Iobaath, to the north of Europe; and the third, under Briotan Maol, to Dobhar and Iardobhar in the north of Alban, where they dwelt with their posterity. Now from this third colony the oldest legendary accounts bring two of the West Highland clans. These are the Clan O’Duibhn, or Campbells, and the Clan Leod, or MacLeods.^[119] The former clan first appear in the occupation of the central district of Dalriada encircling the lake of Lochaw, around which lay territories of the Dalriadic tribes of Lorn and Gabhran, and their oldest genealogies bring them from this Briotan, son of Fergus Leithdearg. The Clan Leod emerge, after the termination of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, in possession of Lewis, Harris, and the northern districts of Skye, and they are deduced from Laigh Laider, his brother, also a son of Fergus Leithdearg.

After remaining in Greece two hundred and sixteen years, the followers of Simon Breac, the first of the three leaders of the sons of Neimead, return to Ireland in three tribes—the Firbolg, Fir Domnan, and Fir Gaileoin, under five brothers, who divide Ireland into five provinces. They are in their turn conquered by the Tuatha De Danan, the descendants of 106the second tribe of the Nemedians, who, after remaining a long time in the north of Europe, where they possessed four cities—Falias, Gorias, Finias, and Murias—pass over into the north of Alban, where they remain seven years in the same districts of Dobhar and Iardobhar, which had been colonised by Briotan Maol, bringing with them from Falias the Lia Fal, or celebrated Coronation Stone; from Gorias, the sword used by their leader; from Finias, his spear; and from Murias, the mystic caldron of the Dagda. After remaining seven years in Alban, they go to Ireland and conquer the Firbolg in the great battle of Magh Tuireadh; and the few Firbolg who escaped this battle fly to the Western Isles, and occupy Arran, Isla, Rachrain, and other islands, where they remained till they were driven out by the Cruithnigh or Picts, and returned to Ireland, when they were received by Cairbre Niadhfher, king of Leinster under the Milesian Scots. Then follows the legendary settlement of the Scots under the three sons of Milesius, Heber, Heremon, and Ir, and their cousin Lughadh, son of Ith, before whom the mythic race of the Tuatha De Danan gave way. The transactions between them form one of the most picturesque of these Irish legends, the details of which need not be given here;^[120] but the Tuatha De Danan yield the plains of Erin to the Scots, retaining only the green mounds, known by the name of Sidh, and then 107being made invisible by their enchantments, became the Fir Sidhe, or Fairies, of Ireland.

With the mythic settlement of the Milesian Scots in Ireland commence the legends of the settlements of the Cruithnigh or Picts in Scotland; and as Ireland was divided into five provinces between five brothers, sons of the leader of Firbolg, and afterwards by the sons of Milesius, so we find in the legend an early division of Alban into seven provinces between the seven sons of Cruithne, the ‘eponymus’ of the Pictish race. Five of these provinces can be identified. Fibh, the eldest of the seven brothers, represents Fife; Fodla, the third, Athfhotla or Atholl; Fortrenn, corresponds with the district between the Tay and the Forth, consisting of Stratherne and Menteath, and which, as at one time the seat of the monarchy, gave its name to the kingdom of the Picts; Caith, with Caithness; and Circinn, with that district which included Maghghirghinn, or the plains of Circinn, a name corrupted into Moerne or the Mearns. The remaining two, Fidach and Ce, though the names cannot now be identified, obviously represent the intermediate districts of Ross, Moray, Buchan, and Mar. Another form of the legend represents the Cruithnigh or Picts coming from Ireland in the time of the sons of Milesius, under Cruithnechan, son of Cinge, son of Lochit, to assist the Britons of Fortrenn to fight against the Saxons, and the Britons yielded their clans and their swordland to them, that is, Cruithentuath, and they took possession of the land. The same legend assumes the form, in connection with the Picts of Dalaradia in Ulster, from whence they came, of twice eighteen soldiers of the tribes of Thracia who accompanied the sons of Milesius to Ireland, and cleared a swordland among the Britons, consisting first of Maghfortrenn or the plains of Fortrenn, and then of Maghghirghinn or the plains of Cirginn, or as another edition has it of Cruithentuath.^[121]

108In the long line of mythic pagan monarchs sprung from the sons of Milesius, two come prominently forward as waging war in Scotland, and hence termed kings of Erinn and Alban, and under the second of these a settlement is said to have been made. The first of these imaginary monarchs is Aengus, of the line of Heremon, termed Ollmucadh, from oll great, and mucadh swine, because he is said to have possessed the largest swine in his time in Ireland. According to the Annals of the Four Masters he reigned in the year of the world 3773, or 1421 years before the birth of Christ. He is said to have fought fifty battles against the Cruithentuath, or Picts of Scotland, and the Firbolg; twelve battles against the Longbardai, and four battles against the Colaisti, whoever they may be.^[122] The second was Reachtaidh Righdearg, or red-wristed, of the line of Heber, who is said in the same Annals to have reigned in the year of the world 4547, or 647 years before the birth of Christ. He led his forces to Alban under Forc and Iboth. ‘They gained great battles, so that great districts were laid waste in Alban, until the men of Alban submitted to Reachtaidh Righdearg, so that he was king of Erinn and Alban, and it was from them sprang the two tribes Tuath Forc and Tuath Iboth in Alban.’^[123]

These supposed settlements, however, become more frequent and distinct as we pass the birth of Christ and approach the historic period of this early Irish history. Between the Christian era and the fifth century, when Christianity was introduced into Ireland, and something like a true chronological history may be said to commence, two events come prominently forward in this mythic history. The first is the rising of the Attachtuatha or servile class of the population of Ireland, and their massacre of the nobles of Ireland. These Attachtuatha are said to have been the remains of the Firbolg 109and other colonists who preceded the arrival of the Milesian Scots and formed a population of subject tribes under them, and they have been improperly identified by the Irish historians with the Attacotti of the Roman historians, who were a British nation and belonged to a later period. The story as given in the Leabhar Gabhala, or Book of Conquests, is this.—On the death of Crimthan Nianair, king of Ireland, of the race of Heremon, about ten years after the birth of Christ, the nobility of Ireland were massacred at a great feast at Magh Cro, where they were entertained by the Attachtuatha. They were all cut off except three queens who were pregnant, and went over the sea. One was Baine, daughter to the king of Alban, who gave birth to Feredach Finn Fechtnach, the son of Crimthan. The second was Cruife, daughter to the king of Britain, and mother of Corb Olum of Munster; and the third was Aine, daughter of the king of Saxony, who was mother of Tipraide Tireach, king of the Cruithnigh of Ulster. The Attachtuatha then set up Cairpre Caitcheann, or cat-headed, one of their own race, as king, who reigned five years over Ireland. He was succeeded by his son Morann, who was a just and learned man, and he resolved to recall the three legitimate heirs. Feradach Finn Fechtnach was elected king, and the Attachtuatha swore by heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, and all the elements, that they would be obedient to them and their descendants as long as the sea surrounded Ireland. Feradach was succeeded by Fiatach Finn, also of the line of Heremon, and he by Fiacha Finnfolaidh, son of Feradach, who, after a reign of seventeen years, was killed by the provincial kings, at the instigation of the Attachtuatha, at the slaughter of Maghbolg. And again we have a repetition of the same story. The only person who escaped was his wife Ethne, daughter of the king of Alban, who was pregnant of his son Tuathal. Elim, son of Conra, king of the Cruithnigh of Ulster, who had on this occasion joined the Attachtuatha, 110then became king, and after a reign of twenty years was slain in the battle of Aichill by Tuathal, called Teachtmar or the acceptable, who came from Alban with a large force. Tuathal is said to have fought 133 battles against the Attachtuatha, whom he reduced to obedience in the various provinces. He altered the arrangement of the five provinces by uniting the two Munsters into one province, and formed a fifth province of Meath as mensal lands for the monarchy, by taking four portions from each of the other four provinces. Upon the portion taken from Munster he built Tlachtga, now called the Hill of Ward, and there the festival of the Fire of Tlachtga was held, and the Druids were wont to assemble On the portion taken from Connaught he established the chief seat at Uisneach, now Usnagh Hill, and there the great fair called the Convention of Uisneach was annually held in May. On the portion taken from Ulster he constructed Taillte, now Telltown, as the chief residence. It was here that alliances were made and contracts ratified, and the fair of Taillte was held. On the portion taken from Leinster the royal capital of Teamhar or Tara was established where the Feis Temrach was held every third year, the laws were ordained and published, and the Ardri or sovereign of Ireland was inaugurated. Tuathal is then said to have celebrated the Feis Temrach, at which the princes and chieftains of the kingdom assembled, who all swore by the sun and moon, and all the elements, visible and invisible, that they would never contest the sovereignty of Ireland with him or his race. Undoubtedly this formation of the province of Meath, with its four royal residences, survived to historic times, and has an unquestionable historic basis.

Another of its great landmarks is the contest which is supposed to have taken place in the second century between Conn Ced Cathach, or of the hundred battles, of the line of Heremon, and Eoghan Mor, called Modha Nuadhat, of the 111line of Heber, and which led to a division of Ireland into two parts separated from each other by a ridge termed Eisgir Riada, leading from Dublin across the island to Galway, composed of a line of gravel hills which existed long after. The northern half was termed Leth Cuinn or Conn’s half, and the southern Leth Mogha or Mogha’s half. This division is mentioned by the old chronicler Tighernac as having been made in the year 165,^[124] and is undoubtedly recognised by Bede when he distinguishes the northern province of the Scots from the nations of the Scots who dwell in the southern parts of Ireland.^[125] Cormac, son of Art, and grandson of Conn, is said to have sent a fleet across Magh Rein, or the plain of the sea, in the year 240, so that it was on this occasion that he obtained the sovereignty of Alban.^[126] He is said by Tighernac to have obtained the name Ulfata, or ‘the people of Ulster at a distance,’ because he banished the Pictish tribes of Ulster to Manann and Innsigall in the year 254.^[127]

These supposed settlements in Scotland during this mythic period were, however, not entirely confined to the kings of the lines of Heber and Heremon, sons of Milesius, but are also attributed to another line of kings descended from Lughaidh, son of Ith, who was father’s brother of Milesius. We read in an ancient tract that ‘these are the tribes of the Gael that are not of the sons of Miledh, nor of the Tuatha De Danann, nor of the Firbolg, nor yet of the Clann Neimhead, and that widely did this tribe spread throughout Erin and Alban. For it is boasted that Maccon obtained sway over the world, and it is certain that he conquered the west of Europe, without doubt that is Alban and France and Saxon land and the island 112of Britain. And it is boasted concerning Daire Sirchreachtach that he obtained sway over all the west of Europe; and some of the learned say that he won the whole world. And it is stated that Fathadh Canann obtained the government of the whole world from the rising to the setting sun, and (if it be true) that he took hostages of the streams, the birds, and the languages.’^[128] The first of these conquerors of the line of Ith, in point of time, was said to be this Daire Sirchreachtach. He had six sons, all called Lughaidh. The eldest was Lughaidh Laidhe. Another was Lughaidh Mal, ‘who won the world from Breatain Leatha or Armorica to Lochlann or Scandinavia, and from Innsi Orc or the Orkneys to Spain.’ The old tract called the Dinnseanchas, says of Carnn Mail in Ulster, ‘Whence was it named? It is not difficult to tell. It was otherwise called Carnn Luighdheach, from Lughaidh Mal, who was driven from Erinn with a fleet of seven ships; and from Alban he set out for Erinn with the great fleet of Alban, and they give battle to the Ulster men and defeated them. Every man that came into battle with Lughaidh carried a stone, and thus the carn was formed, and it was on it Lughaidh was standing while the battle was fought;’ and an old poem quoted in this tract says,

113Lughaidh Laidhe, the eldest son of Daire Sirchreachtach, was also called Macniadh, or son of the champion, and had a son Lughaidh, called Maccon, or the son of the dog. He is said by the Four Masters to have reigned in Ireland from the year 196 to 225. His sons were said to be the three Fothadhs—Fothadh Airctheach, Fothadh Cairptheach, and Fothadh Canann. The first is said to have been king of Ireland for one year in 289, and to have slain his brother; and of the third, Fothadh Canann, we are told that he obtained the government of the whole world from the rising to the setting sun, and took hostages of the streams, the birds, and the languages, and that from him descended the tribe of Mac Cailin, or the Campbells, in Scotland.^[130] These three brothers are by other books stated to be of the race of the Ui Eachadh of Uladh or Ulster, that is, of Pictish descent.

In the fourth century before Christ the three Collas play a great part in the mythic history of Ireland, and are likewise connected with a supposed settlement in Scotland. Cormac, the son of Aet, and grandson of Conn of the hundred battles, whom we have already adverted to, has a son, Cairbre Liffechair, so called from the river Liffey near which he was nursed, who likewise becomes Ardri of Erinn. He has two sons, Fiacha Sraibtaine and Eochaidh Doimlein. The former marries Aeifi, daughter of the king of the Gallgael, and was the father of Muredach Tirech, from whom the subsequent kings of Ireland of the race of Niall derived their descent. The latter marries Oilich, daughter of the king of Alban, called by some Vadoig, by others Uigari, and has three sons, Caerill, Muredach, and Aedh. These take the name of Colla, and are called respectively Colla Meann, Colla da Crioch, and Colla Uais. These Collas slay their uncle Fiacha, and Colla Uais becomes king of Ireland, but is driven from thence with his brothers in 326 by Muredach 114Tirech, and takes refuge with his paternal grandfather the king of Alban, from whom he receives Buannacht or military maintenance. Three hundred warriors were his host. After remaining three years in Alban the three brothers return to Erinn, each with a following of nine warriors, and having been reconciled with Muredach Tirech, who tells them they ought to conquer some territory as an inheritance, they are joined by seven ‘catha’ or battalions of the Firbolg of Connaught, and with their assistance attack the king of Ulster, march to the Carn of Achadhleithderg, from whence they fought seven battles, one on each day of the week, and on the last slay the king of Ulster, plunder and burn his capital, of Emania, and acquire a large territory as their swordland, which was termed Oirgialla, and was possessed by their descendants. This is the story of the three Collas, and in this manner the great Pictish kingdom, of which Emania was the capital, was supposed to come to an end in the year 331, and the Cruithnigh of Ulster confined to the district of Dalaradia on the east coast of Ulster. From Colla Uais the Sennachies both of Erinn and Alban deduced the descent of Somerled, who became the Regulus of Arregaidhel and of half of the Western Isles, and from whom sprang the potent clan of the MacDougalls, Lords of Lorne, and the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles.^[131]

The long line of mythic pagan kings of Ireland terminates with a group of three monarchs who succeeded each other, and are each said to have made extensive conquests beyond the bounds of their island kingdom. The first of these is Crimthan Mor mac Fidhaig, of the line of Heber, who reigned from 366 to 378, and is said to have extended his sway over Alban, Britain, and Gaul. Of him one of the oldest of the Irish documents, Cormac’s Glossary, says, under the word Mugeime, ‘that is the name of the first lapdog that was in 115Ireland. Cairbre Musc, son of Conaire, brought it from the east from Britain, for when great was the power of the Gael on Britain, they divided Alban between them into districts, and each knew the residence of his friend, and not less did the Gael dwell on the east side of the sea, as in Scotia or Ireland, and their habitations and royal forts were built there. Hence is called Duin Tradui, or the triple-fossed fort of Crimthan Mor, son of Fidach, king of Erinn and Alban to the Ictian Sea.’^[132] His successor was Niall Mor, or the great, who reigned from 378 to 405. He also extended his conquests over Alban, Britain, and Gaul, and was slain at the mouth of the Loire on the shore of the Ictian Sea. He was termed Niall naoighialla, or ‘of the nine hostages,’ as he received hostages from nine nations which he had subjected to his rule. The last of these great conquerors was Dathi, who reigned from 405 to 428. He, too, extended his conquests over Alban, Britain, and Gaul, and was killed by a flash of lightning at Sliabh Ealpa, or the foot of the Alps.^[133] He is said, in another document, to have been king of Erinn, Alban, Britain, and as far as the mountains of the Alps, where he went to revenge the death of his predecessor Niall, and was said by some to have been slain by the same arrow which killed the latter. His body was brought back to Erinn by his son, who gained nine battles by sea and ten by land by means of it, for when they exhibited the body they crushed their foes. Dathi is said to have fought many battles in Alban, viz., the battle of Magh Circain and the battle of Srath.^[134] A tale called ‘The Expedition of Dathi to the Sliabh n-Ealpa’ gives the following account of his invasion of Scotland:—‘He invites all the provincial kings and chiefs of Erinn to a great feast at Tara, and there decides upon making an expedition into Alban, Britain, and Gaul, following the foot-steps 116of his predecessors Crimthan Mor and Niall. His fleet assembles at Oirear Caoin, probably Donaghadee, where he embarks with his troops and sets sail for Alban. Immediately upon his landing Dathi sends his Druid to Feredach Finn, king of Alban, who was then at his palace of ‘Tuirrin brighe na Righ,’ calling on him for submission and tribute, or an immediate reason to the contrary on the field of battle. The king of Alban refused either submission or tribute, and accepted the challenge of battle, but required a few days to prepare for so unexpected an event. The time for battle at last arrived; both armies marched on Magh an Chairthé (the plain of the pillar stone) in Glenfeadha, Dathi at the head of his Gael, and Feredach leading a large force composed of Scots, Picts, Britons, Gauls, Northmen, and Gallgaidheal. A fierce and destructive fight ensued between the two parties, in which the forces of Alban were at length overthrown and routed with great slaughter. When the king of Alban saw the death of his son and the discomfiture of his army, he threw himself headlong on the ranks of his enemies, dealing death and destruction around him, but in the height of his fury he was laid hold of by Conall Gulban, a son of Niall naoighialla, who, taking him up in his arms, hurled him against the pillar stone and dashed out his brains.’brains.’ The scene of this battle has ever since been called Gort an Chairthé (the field of the pillar stone), and the Glen Glenn an Chatha or the battle glen. ‘Dathi set up a surviving son of the late king on the throne of Alban, and receiving hostages and submission from him, passed onwards into Britain and Gaul, in both of which countries he still received hostages and submissions wherever he proceeded on his march.’^[135]

Another of the legendary settlements in Alban is connected with the same Feredach Finn, king of the Cruithnigh of Alban, and may be placed about the same time. The story 117is this:—‘Daol, the daughter of Fiachra, king of Musgry, was the wife of Lughaidh, son of Oillill Flannbeg, king of Munster. She became enamoured of her stepson Corc, son of Lughaidh by a former wife, and on his refusal follows the example of Potiphar’s wife with Joseph, when Corc is banished by his father. He goes to Feredach, king of Alban, from whom he received great honours and his daughter in marriage, by whom he had two sons, Cairbre Cruithnecan and Maine Leamhna. The mother’s name was Leamhan Mongfionn, and these sons were settled in their mother’s patrimony. Cairbre Cruithnecan fixed on Maghghirghinn, or the plain of Circinn, and from him descended Ængus Eamhan, king of Alban. Maine fixed on Maghleamhna, or the plain of Leamhan, and from him are the Luimnigh Albain or people of the Levenach or Lennox.’Lennox.’ The river Leamhan or Leven took its name from Leamhan, daughter of Feredach Finn, who was drowned in it, and an old poem has been preserved by Muredach Albanach, several of whose compositions have been preserved in the Book of the Dean of Lismore, and who appears to have lived between 1180 and 1220.^[136] It was written in the time of Aluin og, Mormaer of Leamhain, or Lord of Lennox, who, there can be little doubt, was the same person with Alwyn, first Earl of Lennox, who was his contemporary. It is addressed to the river Leamhan or Leven, and refers to the same legend. The poem is so curious that it may be given at length.

Muredach Albanach sang thus:—

Such, then, being the record of these supposed conquests of Alban and settlements in the country presented to us in the early history of Ireland, their general effect upon the Gaelic population of Scotland is thus given in another ancient document preserved to us by the Sennachie McFirbis:—

The first group here given evidently belongs to the supposed settlement by Colla Uais of the race of Heremon, and consists of the great clans of the MacDonalds and MacDougalls, and their branches, descended from Somerled, the great Lord of Argyll, whose traditionary pedigree is deduced from Colla. The second as certainly comprises those supposed to be descended from the six sons of Erc, whose pedigree is deduced from Conaire, a king of Ireland;^[139] but among them are included 120the MacLeods, whose legendary origin, as we have seen, belongs to an older race. The third, said to be also descended from the race of Eremon, seems to be composed of those who could not be included in either of the two former groups, and likewise presents inconsistencies. The Mormaers of Athol were of the royal family, and afterwards Stewarts, and under the title of the Mormaer of Mair, and of Muirgeach og, by whom the earls of Lennox descended from Aluin og, son of Muredach, seem meant the race deduced from Corc, king of Munster, who was of the line of Heber, are here included among the descendants of the line of Heremon.

The turning-point in the chronology of the early history of Ireland may with some reason be fixed at the battle of Ocha, which was fought in the year 478, and placed the first Christian monarch on the throne of Ireland. It obviously separates the artificially-constructed history of the pagan period which makes so large a demand upon the assent of the historian from that succession of events which corresponds with all the historic dates we possess, and commends itself readily enough to our belief. With the change produced by that event all that is fantastic, improbable, and artificial ceases, and the incidents recorded are more natural and in better accordance with what we should expect to find. In the oldest records of Irish history it appears as a great era from which the dates of its events were reckoned, and is connected as such with another settlement of Scots in Alban. We are told by the synchronist Flann Mainistrech that twenty years elapsed from the battle of Ocha till the children of Erc, son of Echach Muinremhair, passed over into Alban, viz., the six sons of Erc, the two Anguses, the two Loarns, and the two Ferguses^[140].

The question then at once arises, To what extent have these legends a historic basis, and how far may we accept 121them as true elements in the history of the population of Scotland?

This question we may at once answer in so far as regards the last settlement in the series which we have extracted from that history. The passing over of the sons of Erc into Alban twenty years after the battle of Ocha is undoubtedly a true event. It was the foundation of the small Scottish kingdom of Dalriada on the west coast north of the Firth of Clyde by a colony of Scots, which took place in the year 498, and the death of its first king, Fergus mor mac Erce, is recorded by Tighernac in the year 501. The annals of this little kingdom may now be considered as well ascertained. But can we attribute the same certainty to the conquests supposed to have been made prior to the battle of Ocha? These present several features calculated to lead us to a different conclusion. On looking over the entire succession of those supposed conquests and settlements in Alban, we can hardly fail to recognise the same legends repeated at different times and cropping up in different forms. Thus the supposed conquests of the race of Lughadh, son of Ith, who were a different race from the Milesian Scots, and the settlement of Fothadh Canann, from which sprang the Clann Mhic Cailin or Campbells, seems merely a repetition of the much older settlement of the sons of Neimhead in the districts of Dobhar and Iardobhar in Alban, who were likewise a different race from the Milesian Scots, and from whom also sprang the Clann Mhic Cailin or Campbells; and when the Fothadhs appear not as of the race of Ith but as of the race of the Ui Eachach of Ulster, that is, Irial Glunmhar, son of Conall Cearnach, who had two sons, Forc and Iboth, they become Cruithnigh, and their settlement the same as that of the two tribes Tuath Forc and Tuath Iboth; and this again connects them with the supposed conquest by the mythic king Rechtgidh Righdearg, who in another document appears as Fothadh Righdearg. In the 122name Forc we can recognise the old name of the river Forth, which again connects them with the district between the Tay and the Forth, which appears to have been intended by the Dobhar and Iardobhar; but this is the same district which was called by the Picts Fortrenn, and to which, according to the Pictish legend, Cruithnechan, the son of Lochit, son of Cinge, came with his Picts to help the Britons of Fortrenn, and superseded them there; and this again corresponds with the statement that the descendants of Braodn, son of Fergus Leithdearg, who had occupied Dobhar and Iardobhar with his Nemedians, were driven out by the Cruithnigh. And when we are told that Cruithnechan settled his Picts in Magh Fortrenn and Maghghirghinn, we surely have the same legend repeated in the supposed settlement of the sons of Corc, king of Munster, when Cairpre Cruithnechan and Maine Leamhna settle in Maghghirghinn and Maghleamhna. We can see that under these legends there simply lies an attempt to express in these stories the popular conception of the ethnic relations of local tribes. While in these tales the true localities which form the scene of them are veiled under fictitious names which it is difficult to identify, there are others where the apparent distinctness and accuracy with which the localities are given cast an air of verisimilitude over the narrative, and lead to the supposition that there must have been some historic foundation for them; but in these cases it will generally be found that they are real historic events, which belong to the historic period, but have been transported to the imaginary realm of mythic narrative by some process arising from some fancied resemblance in the names of the actors. The most striking instance of this is in the tale of the conquests in Alban by the Dathi, the second last of the pagan monarchs of Ireland. The scene is laid in Maghghirghinn, but this name we know is the original form of the name corrupted into Mearns, and belongs to a district now represented by 123Kincardineshire, but which formerly appears to have included part of Forfarshire south of it and Mar on the north. Here he fought the battles of Srath and Maghghirghinn, and the other names mentioned in the story can also be identified.

Tuirrin, the palace of the Pictish king Feredach Finn, is no doubt the hill of Turin in the parish of Rescobie in Forfarshire, about 600 feet high, on the top of which, according to the writer in the old Statistical Account, ‘there has evidently been anciently a stronghold or place of defence, consisting of various extensive contiguous buildings, with a circular citadel of about forty yards in diameter. The situation has been well chosen, being secured by an impregnable rock in front, much like the face of Salisbury Crags, and of difficult access all around. It is now called Kemp or Camp Castle.’^[141] Glenfeadha finds its modern representative in Fithie in the adjoining parish of Farnell, where too we find Gort an Chairthé corrupted into Carcary. This battle seems, however, to have been an historic event, and to have really taken place in the eighth century, for the old chronicler Tighernac records, in the year 752, the battle of Strath, in the land of Circinn or Maghghirghinn, between the Pictones, in which Bruidhi, son of Maelchon, was slain.^[142] There, by an anachronism which it is difficult to explain, the well-known Bruidhe mac Maelchon, who died 200 years before, takes the place of Feredach Finn. This battle really took place in the reign of the great Pictish king Angus, son of Fergus; but we find in 763, eleven years after this battle was fought, the Pictish throne occupied by Cinadon, son of Feredach, and, at the same time, the prince who ruled over Dalriada, after its conquest by the Pictish monarch, is Muredach ua Dathi, or grandson of Dathi. The same battle appears a century later in Hector Boece’s fictitious narrative, where the 124Scots under their king Alpin defeat and slay on the same spot Feredach, king of the Picts.

When we see these Irish monarchs, however, not only conquering Alban and making settlements there, but extending their conquests over Britain and Gaul, and carrying their arms even to the foot of the Alps, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that we have here localised as Irish kings some of the Roman emperors connected with the Roman province in Britain, and some of their acts transferred to Ireland, and that this is the true source of many of these fabulous events, so far as there is any foundation for them at all. Thus we find a parallel to the revolt of the Attachtuatha, or servile tribes of Ireland, against the Milesian kings, which was finally suppressed by Tuathal Teachtmhar, in the insurrection of the serf population of Gaul, called the Bagaudæ in the reign of the emperor Diocletian, which was suppressed by his colleague Herculius Maximian. Cairbre Cinncait, who was enabled to seize the throne of Ireland as their leader, and reigned five years, has his counterpart in Carausius, who, by the help of these Bagaudæ, revolted against Maximian, and ruled for seven years in Britain as an independent emperor. Conn of the hundred battles, under whom Ireland became divided into two provinces, may be a shadow of Constantine the Great, in whose time the provinces of Britain were divided; and in Niall of the Nine Hostages, and Dathi the fighter of so many battles, who carried their arms to the foot of the Alps, we may possibly recognise Theodosius and Maximus, the emperors who preceded the termination of the Roman power in Britain, and fought battles in North Britain.

The Conquests in Alban under Crimthan Mor mac Fidhaigh, and his designation as king of Erinn and Alban, have perhaps a historic foundation of a different kind. The first really historical appearance of the Scots in Britain is in the year 360, when, in conjunction with the Picts, they attacked 125the Roman province in Britain. The attack was repeated by the Scots and Picts, who were now joined by the Attacotti and Saxons in 364, and they ravaged the whole province till the year 369, when they were driven back by Theodosius, and the province restored. Now the Annals of the Four Masters place the commencement of Crimthan’s reign in 366, and he reigned twelve years. The period of his supposed conquests in North Britain synchronises with the appearance of the Scots in Britain, as recorded by the Roman historian. So also the subsequent conquests under Niall Mor and Dathi, and the supposed settlement of the Munster Scots under Corc, king of Munster, with the three devastations of the province by the Picts and Scots recorded by Gildas, the first two of which were repelled by the Roman general Stilicho, and the last by the provincial Britons themselves. The period of these attacks extended from the year 360 to 409, but it is quite clear, from the concurrent testimony of all the authorities which record them, that the Scots were driven back to Ireland, and that they effected no permanent settlement in Britain till the end of the sixth century, when the Dalriadic colony was established in the southern part of the great western district of Arregaithel or Argyll.

We have then, prior to that date, merely temporary conquests in the province of Britain, commencing in 360, which afford the sole historic basis to these supposed settlements, and there is no reason to suppose that prior to 360 a single Scot ever set foot in North Britain. The connection between the two countries of Scotland and Ireland was, notwithstanding, a very intimate one. It is quite clear that prior to the settlement of the Scots in Dalriada, the great nation of the Cruithnigh or Picts formed the sole inhabitants of Britain north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde; but while we find them during the historic period likewise in possession of that part of the province of Ulster known as Dalnaraidhe or Dalaradia, and Uladh, extending 126from the Boyne along its eastern shore to the border of Irish Dalriada, and likewise of that part of Meath termed Maghbreg or Bregia, yet these early legends present them to us as forming the original inhabitants of the north of Ireland, and as constituting one great nation peopling the northern districts of Britain and Galloway on the east side of the Channel, and the whole province of Ulster and part of Meath on the western, while the Scots occupied the rest of Leinster and the whole of Connaught and Munster. The Cruithnigh of both countries were thus substantially one people, and remained so till the beginning of the seventh century, and during this time there must have been a constant intercommunication between the tribes on both sides of the Channel, as well as a community of early legends among them. Thus the Pictish Chronicle tells us that thirty kings of the name of Bruide ruled over Hibernia and Albania during a period of 150 years, and the Irish Nennius derives the statement from the books of the Cruithnigh, while an early legend of the Picts of Dalnaraidhe states that ‘thirty kings of the Cruithnigh ruled over Erin and Alban, viz., of the Cruithnigh of Alban and of Erin, viz., of the Dalnaraidhe from Ollamhan, from whence comes Mur Ollamhan at Teamhair or Tara to Fiacha mac Baedan, who fettered the hostages of Erin and Alban.’ This latter event was in the historic time, and must have occurred between 589 and 626, when Fiacha mac Baedan was king of Ulster. From this period may therefore be dated the political separation of the Picts of Alban from those of Erin, who had hitherto been governed as one nation. The same legend likewise informs us that ‘seven kings of the Cruithnigh of Alban governed Erinn in Teamhair or Tara. Ollamh was the name of the first king that governed Erinn at Teamhair and in Cruachan thirty years. It is from him Mur Ollamhan at Teamhair is; by him was the feast of Teamhair first instituted.’ Then, after naming his six successors, the 127legend adds, ‘These then are the seven kings that ruled over Erin of the Cruithnigh of Alban.’^[143] These seven kings, however, appear in the list of the mythic pagan kings of Ireland, and are placed as such by the Annals of the Four Masters as far back as from the year of the world 3883 to 4019, that is, from the year 1317 to 1181 before Christ, each of the seven kings reigning exactly thirty years. The first was Ollamh Fodla, who is, of course, said to be of the race of Ir, and to him is attributed the tribal organisation of his people; for according to the Annals of the Four Masters, ‘it was he also that appointed a Toisech over every Triocha Ceud or barony, and a Bruighigh over every Baile or township, who were all to serve the king of Erin.’ Under the name of Fodla he appears in the Pictish Chronicle as one of the seven sons of Cruithne, and two of his successorssuccessors, viz., Gede Ollgudach and Finnachta, appear in the list of the Pictish kings of Scotland among his immediate successors, and precede the thirty kings of the name of Brude. The numbers peculiar to the Pictish legends are seven, and thirty, and have, of course, no chronological significance.

But the most brilliant period of the mythic history of these Cruithnigh of Ulster was that when the champions of the Order of the Red Branch at Eamhain or Emania were supposed to have performed their great achievements. They are placed in the fabulous history about the commencement of the Christian era, and here we find abundant indications of the close connection between the Cruithnigh of Erin and of Alban. Among these ancient Irish tales are three which are termed the Three Sorrowful Stories of Erin, namely the story of the tragical fate of the children of Lir, the story of the children of Uisneach, and the story of the sons of Tuirinn.^[144]

128From the second of these tales we learn that about this time Cathbad, a Druid of the Picts of Ulster, has three daughters. The eldest, Dectcum, was the mother of the celebrated champion Cuchullin; the second, Albe, was the mother of Naisi, Ainle, and Ardan, the three sons of Uisneach; and the third, Finncaemh, was the mother of Conall Cearnach. These champions were all trained in a military school at Sgathaig in the island of Skye, kept by Aife and her father Scathaidh, and by Aife Cuchullin had a son, Connlaoch, whose history forms one of the Fenian tales. The place called Sgathaig can be still identified. On the west side of the parish of Slate in Skye, on an isolated rock overhanging the arm of the sea termed Loch Eishart, are the remains of an old castle now termed Dunscaich; and below it, at a little distance from the shore, is a small island on which is still to be seen one of those ancient vitrified forts which are so closely connected with these Fenian tales. It is likewise called Dunsgathaig or Dunscaich, and was no doubt the site of Aife’s supposed school. Looking across this arm of the sea, the magnificent and most picturesque range of the Coolins form the principal feature in the landscape, and hence the three sons of Uisneach, supposed to have been trained to the use of arms here, are termed in the tale ‘The Three Falcons of Sleibhe Cuillinn,’ that is, of the Coolin hills, now improperly termed Cuchullin hills.^[145] On their return to Ulster, Naisi, the eldest, falls in love with a fair girl Deirdri, who had been reared in a tower by Conchubhar, king of Ulster, with the view of making her his wife. Naisi carries her off, and, 129accompanied by his two brothers and one hundred and fifty warriors, goes to Alban, where they settled in a wild therein, and obtained maintenance of quarterage, that is, an appanage or land of maintenance to be held for service from the king of that country. The sons of Uisneach are said in the tale to have defended by the might of their hands a district and a half of Alban, and are called ‘the Three Dragons of Dunmonadh,’ which seems to have been the residence of the kings, as it afterwards was of the Scottish kings of Dalriada, and may be identified as the isolated hill in the Crinan Moss on the banks of the river Add, the top of which bears the remains of a strong fortification, and which was also called Dunadd. In another poem Naisi is said to have visited the daughter of the Lord of Duntreoin on his return from the north of Invernois or Inverness, and this is Duntroon, an old castle on the north side of Loch Crinan.

The place where the sons of Uisneach settled, and where they obtained their land of maintenance, was on the north shore of the arm of the sea called Loch Etive, where their seat was no other than that remarkable vitrified fort crowning the summit of a considerable hill on the shore of the bay of Ardmuchnish, now called Dun mac Sniochan, a corruption of the name Dun mhic Uisneachan, and to which Hector Boece gave the fanciful name of Beregonium. Here they are said to have had three booths of chase—one in which they prepared their food, one in which they ate it, and one in which they slept. Conchubhar now resolves to tempt them to return to Ulster, with the treacherous purpose of killing them and taking Deirdre, but is told that they will not come unless either Cuchullin, or Conall Cearnach, or Fergus, son of Roigh, another of the champions of the Red Branch, will go for them and ensure their safety. Cuchullin and Conall Cearnach both refuse, but Fergus agrees to go, finds them at Loch-n-Eite or Loch Etive, and at the Dainghion mhic n-Uisnech or fastness 130of the sons of Uisneach, and persuades them to return, much against the wish of Deirdre, who expresses her regret at leaving that eastern land with its delightful harbours and bays, its dear beauteous plains of soft verdure, and its sprightly green-sided hills, and then utters a beautiful lament on leaving that ‘beloved land, that eastern land, Alban with its wonders.’^[146] Deirdre tells Fergus that the sway of the sons of Uisneach in Alban is greater than that of Conchubhar in Erin, and her lament bears this out, for the scenery of it embraces the whole of the eastern part of Argyllshire from the Linnhé Loch to Loch Long, and among the places mentioned we can identify Glen Etive at the head of Loch Etive, Inistrynich in Loch Awe, Dun Suibhne or Castle Swen in Knapdale, Glenlaidhe, or Glenlochy, and Glenurchy at the east end of Loch Awe, Glenmasan and Glendaruel in Cowall.^[147] Alban now drops out of the tale, and it is unnecessary for our purpose to follow further the tragical fate of the sons of Uisneach after their return to Ulster. We find, however, that Conall Cearnach, another of these heroes of the Cruithnigh of Ulster, has left his traces in the same part of the country, for Dean Munro, in his description of the Western Isles in 1549, tells us of Dunchonill, one of the group of the Garveloch Isles which lie off the coast of Lorne—‘Dunchonill, are iyle so namit from Conal Kernache, are strength, which is alsmeikle as to say in Englische, are round castle.’ One of the legends of the Cruithnigh of Ulster tells us that Conall Cearnach married Loncetna, the daughter of Echdhe Eachbeoil of Alban, who was a Cruithnigh, by whom he had Irial Glinmar, and adds, ‘This was the cause which brought Cuchulain and Curoi son of Daire from Alban to Erin.’^[148] The mother of Curoi, we learn from other legends, was Moran 131Mannanach, the sister of Loncetna. A curious notice of the Pictish king Echdhe Eachbeoil and the intimate connection between the Cruithnigh on both sides of the Irish Channel has been preserved to us in the very ancient document called Cormac’s Glossary, where, under the word ‘Fir, i.e. find’ or white, we are told—‘This, then, was the appearance of the cows of Echaid Echbel from Alban which Curoi captured, that is, white cows with red ears;’ and another MS. adds—‘These cows, then, of Echaid Echbel used to come to graze from Ard-Echdai Echbeil, from Alban into the district of Dalriatta, and they used to be in Seimne Ulad. Curoi, however, carried them off by force from the Ulad or Ulster men.’^[149]

We thus see how completely the idea of a close connection, amounting to identity both of race and nation, between the Pictish inhabitants of North Britain and the Cruithnigh of Ireland, runs through these popular tales, and expresses a true state of matters which goes far to explain the supposed conquests and settlements under the Irish kings of the mythic and heroic period in Scotland. Although attributed to kings of the different races into which the descendants of Milesius were supposed to be divided, we can see that there is always a tendency to connect them with the Cruithnigh of Ulster. Thus the Fothadhs are by one account of the race of Ith, and by another Cruithnigh of Ulster. When we read of the sons of Nemhead settling in Dobhar and Iardobhar in North Britain, under Braodn the son of Fergus Leithderg, we are reminded at once of the historic king of the Picts, Brude, son of Urgust or Fergus. When we are told that the Tuatha De Danaan proceeded from the same district and bestowed upon Ireland the three designations of Eire, Fodla, and Banba, from the names of the three queens of their three last kings, we cannot avoid noticing that these three names are likewise 132preserved in Scotland in the river Earn;^[150] in Fodla, one of the seven districts named after the seven sons of Cruithnigh, and which is preserved in Athfotla, the old name of Atholl; and in Banff. We see too that whenever a Scot is said during this mythic period to have settled in Alban he is usually said to be the son of the daughter of a Pictish king, and to have inherited through his mother. Thus Colla Uais, of the race of Eremon, has a Pictish mother, and so have the two sons of Corc, king of Munster; and there is reason to suppose that among the Pictish tribes marriage was exogamous and that the son of a Pictish mother even by a stranger was held to belong to the tribe of his mother. Other points of a connection between these Irish legends and those of Scotland also suggest themselves. In the story of the insurrection of the Attachtuatha, or servile tribes of Ireland, against the Milesian Scots, we are told that the nobility of the latter were cut off at a great banquet given by the Attachtuatha, and that none escaped except three nobles who were in their mothers’ womb. This same legend is reproduced in the legendary history of Scotland, when the supposed destruction of the Picts by the Scots in the ninth century is said to have been effected in the same manner, the nobles of the Picts having been cut off by the Scots at a great banquet.^[151]

The twofold division of the Scots, supposed to have taken place in the reign of Conn of the hundred battles, has also its parallelism in Scotland; and if Bede recognised the division of Ireland into the two provinces of the Northern and the Southern Scots, he equally viewed the territory occupied by the great Pictish nation as consisting of the two provinces of the Northern and the Southern Picts, who were separated from each other ‘by steep and rugged mountain chains, within 133which the latter had seats,’ a description which can only apply to the great chain of the Mounth, extending from the Eastern Sea to the Western Sea, and separating the counties of Aberdeen and Inverness from those of Kincardine, Forfar, and Perth; and to those minor chains proceeding from it on the south, which, as they terminate in the more level country, form the great barrier of the so-called Grampians. Towards the end of the great Pictish kingdom we find Scone appearing as the principal seat and central point of the monarchy, and Fordun gives as one tradition ‘that it had been anciently fixed as the principal seat of the kingdom by both the Pictish and Scottish kings;’ and as another ‘that the ancient kings, even from the time of Cruithne, the first king of the Picts, had made it the seat of the kingdom of Alban.’^[152] Scone is situated on the left bank of the river Tay, and within the ancient district of Gouerin or Gowry, and the circumstances connected with this district, and with Scone as the ancient capital of Scotland, present features very analogous to those recorded in the legend by which the province of Meath was formed, and Teamhair or Tara constituted the chief seat of the monarchy. As Meath was situated where the four ancient provinces of Ulster, Connaught, Munster, and Leinster meet, so also Gowry is placed in a central position where the four ancient provinces of Alban—namely those of Stratherne and Menteath, of Atholl (to which it appears at one time to have been attached), of Angus and Mearns, and of Fife and Fothreve—touch each other. As the originally small district of Meath was enlarged into a province by adding four districts, each of which was taken from one of the other districts, so we find that there were four royal manors of Gowry, viz. those of Scone, Cubert, Forgrund, and Straderdel.^[153] These too surround a small 134central district, and each lies contiguous to one of the four provinces. Scone, forming the western district of Gowry, is separated by the river Tay from the old province of Fortrenn; Cubert or Coupar-Angus, on the north-east, adjoins Angus or Forfarshire; Forgrund, now Longforgan, on the south-east, is separated by the Tay from a parish in Fife bearing the same name; and Stratherdel or Strathardle, on the north, lies within the barrier of the Grampians, and stretches along the eastern boundary of Atholl. As Meath was the old mensal land set apart for the support of the Crown, so we find Gowry too appears to have been a Crown demesne; and as Teamhair or Tara was not only the place where the Ardri or sovereign of Ireland was inaugurated, and the laws of the kingdom framed and published, but was so completely regarded as the central point of the monarchy that the kingdom was often termed the Kingdom of Tara, so we find the ancient kings of Alban inaugurated and the laws of the kingdom promulgated at Scone; and when Kenneth, the first of the Scottish line, overthrew the Pictish dynasty, he is said in the oldest chronicler who records the event to have acquired ‘the kingdom of Scone.’^[154]

The population of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the Third was, as we have seen, of a very mixed character. The southern frontier of the kingdom had by this time been advanced to the Solway and the Cheviots, while the annexation of the Isles in his reign had extended its western boundary to its utmost limits. Over the whole of this extended territory the name of Scotland, originally limited to the country north of the Forth and Clyde, had now spread, and we find the area of this extended kingdom occupied by a population consisting of three different races. These were, in the mountainous region of the north and west, the Gael or Highlanders, the descendants of the Northern Picts of pure Gaelic race, and of the Gaelic Scots who had settled among them. The more fertile and level plains forming the eastern seaboard, extending from the Moray Firth to the Cheviots, had originally been possessed by the Southern Picts, a mixed race partly of Gael and partly of Britons, but the Angles of Northumberland had by degrees colonised the whole of it. On the west the Britons of Strathclyde had extended from the Clyde to the Solway, but had likewise given way to the Anglic colonisation; while Galloway west of the Nith was still occupied by a Gaelic people, who had encroached upon the British territory by occupying the district of Carrick in the south, the Northern Gael having likewise encroached on its northern frontier by spreading over the district of Lennox.

136The actual population of Scotland had thus consisted of three races—the two Celtic peoples of the Gael and the Brython or Britons, and the Teutonic people of the Angles. To these races had been added by King David the First and his successors the Norman barons, who were overlords of a great part of the territory of the kingdom, while a Norwegian population may to some extent have still lingered in the Western Isles. In endeavouring to ascertain the early social organisation of these three races, besides the few hints which historical documents afford, we have the advantage of an ancient code of laws of each race. For the Angles we have the Anglo-Saxon laws, and for the Britons the early laws and institutions of Wales, both published by the Record Commission.^[155] For the Gael we have the ancient laws of Ireland, commonly called the Brehon Laws, now in course of publication;^[156] and besides these there has been preserved a small code in Scotland termed the Laws of the Picts and Scots, and some fragments of ancient law retained in the hands of the different kings of the race of David I.^[157]

It is with the Celtic races alone that we have to do in this work, and principally with those of Gaelic race, who alone preserved a separate and independent existence in Scotland; and an examination of all those documents which tend to throw light upon the early social organisation of the Gaelic as well as of the Cymric race leads us to the conclusion that it was not territorial or purely patriarchal, but was based on the community or tribe. Among the people of Gaelic race the original social unit appears to have been the Tuath, a name originally applied to the tribe, but which came to 137signify also the territory occupied by the tribe community;^[158] but when we endeavour to ascertain the original constitution of the Tuath or tribe of the Gaelic race, we are met by a difficulty analogous to that which we have to encounter in investigating the history of their language. ‘The formation of the mother tongue belongs to the prehistoric period, and it is a process which, carried on in the infancy and growth of the social state, is concealed from observation. When its possessors first emerge into view and take their place among the history of nations, counter-influences have already been at work, their language has already entered upon its downward course, and we can only watch it in its process of decomposition and alteration, and reach its primitive condition through the medium of its dialects.’^[159] So it is with the tribe. We nowhere see it in its primitive form. When it first emerges in the historic period it has already entered upon a course of modification and change. Various influences have been at work, both internal, arising from the natural progress of society, and external, produced from the contact of foreign organisations, to alter existing forms and introduce new elements, and thus it undergoes a process of change which leads it further and further from its primitive constitution.

Two leading features of this process can, however, without difficulty be detected, and may be assumed as tolerably certain. These are, first, that private property in land did not exist at first, but emerged from a right of common property vested in the community. Personal property or individual property in moveables must at all times have existed, but real property or individual property in the soil is of much later origin, and 138is an excrescence upon the common use or property of the land occupied by the tribe, and is inconsistent with its original constitution. The second feature is, that the social unit was not the individual or the family but the community or tribe. The original bond of union between the members of the tribe was no doubt the belief in a common origin, a common descent from the eponymus, whether mythic or historic, from whom it took its name; but in the early period to which we must refer the pure primitive tribe, when the sanctions of marriage were unknown, and a loose relation between the sexes existed, which is faintly shadowed forth in a few scattered notices by the Roman authors of this relation among the Celtic inhabitants of Britain and Ireland, descent through the females rather than the males must have been viewed as the more certain link; and it is probable that here as elsewhere female succession preceded a representation through males, and that the sons belonged to the tribe of their mothers.^[160]

The early state of the tribe, however, soon became modified not only by internal changes but also by external influences. Of these external influences not the least powerful, and probably the first in order, was the introduction of Christianity and the adaptation of the Christian Church to the tribal system. The tribe was thus brought into contact with a higher civilisation and a purer code of morals. The lax relations between the sexes, which still survived, must have been checked and controlled, the sanction of marriage enforced, by which the father is placed in his legitimate position as head of the family, and the rights of the children were clearly defined, and the older connection of the members of the tribe through females reduced in some cases to an occasional right of succession through the mother, while in others it entirely disappeared.

139The oldest tenure by which land was held was that by the tribe in common. When the tribes passed from the hunting and nomad state to the pastoral, and became possessed of large herds of cattle, it was a natural consequence that each tribe should appropriate a special territory for their better management. The whole of the regulation of these ancient laws is evidently based upon the fact that cattle formed the principal property of the original tribes; and long after individual property in land had become an essential element in the constitution of the tribe, cattle still formed the standard of value by which everything was estimated. That a right of individual property in the cattle existed at a very early period seems very evident, but the land on which they were pastured was the common property of the tribe, and, after the cultivation of land began, the arable land was annually divided into lots, to one of which each member of the tribe had a right. The special district occupied by the tribe would thus consist of pasture land held by the tribe in common, on which each member had a right to pasture the cattle which belonged to him; arable land divided into lots which were annually or at certain periods assigned to him; and unoccupied and waste land remaining as the common property of the tribe.

These rights belonged, however, to the proper members of the tribe only, who were as such on an equality with each other; but there soon came, from other external influences, to be a distinction between those dwelling within the bounds of the Tuath of Saor or free, and Daor or unfree. The freemen of the tribe were alone recognised as possessing rights derived from the original constitution of the tribe. The origin of the class of the unfree is thus stated in connection with the legendary history of Ireland:—‘The first race of them were the remnant of the Firbolg themselves, together with the remnant of the Tuath De Danaan,’ the legendary people who preceded the Milesian Scots. ‘The second race, 140the people who passed from their own countries, they being descended from Saor chlann (or free tribes), who went under Daor-chios (servile rent) to another tribe. The third people were the race of the Saor chlann, whose land was converted into Fearann-chlaidhimh (sword-land or conquered country) in their own territory, and who remained in it in bondage under the power of their enemies. The fourth race were people of Saor chlann who passed into bondage for their evil deeds, and who lost their blood and their land through their evil deeds, according to the law. The fifth people were those who came from stranger soldiers, i.e. from external mercenaries who left property in Erin. The sixth race were the people who were descended from the bondmen who came with the Milesians into Erin,’ that is, who and their forefathers had always been bondsmen.^[161]

Besides this great distinction between the free and the unfree, the free members of the tribe contained within themselves one distinction which must have always existed among them, and the germs of others which became gradually more prominent as the operation of the causes which led to them more and more influenced the constitution of the tribe. That combination which produced the tribe must from the beginning have had leaders and other necessary office-bearers; some one among them must have had supreme authority as judge in time of peace, and the tribe must have had a competent leader in time of war. Such functionaries were necessary as bonds of union; without them the tribe could not have been kept together in anything like social union; and as the tie which bound the free members of the tribe together was the belief in a common origin—a common descent from a mythic eponymus from whom the tribe took its name—so the Ri or king, who was at the head of the tribe, held that position not merely by election but as the representative in the senior 141line of the common ancestor, and had a hereditary claim to their obedience. As the supreme authority and judge of the tribe he was the Ri or king. This was his primary function. Thus we are told that ‘it is lawful for a king to have a judge though he himself is a judge.’^[162] As the leader in war he was the Toisech or Captain, and bore the one or the other title as either function became most prominent, while in some cases these functions might be separated and held by different functionaries. Although the Ri or king derived his authority from his claim to be the senior representative of the common ancestor, the office was still, from the necessity of being filled by a properly qualified person, to a certain extent elective. It was hereditary in a certain family, but elective among the members of that family; and an additional safeguard against the tribe being left without a proper head was provided by another member of the family being elected Tanaist or successor to the Ri or king in the event of his death. That the hereditary character of this office existed from primitive times is apparent from this, that a somewhat similar law of succession prevailed in the early Irish Church, the abbot or head of the monastery being chosen from a particular family; and while the influence of the Church may have confirmed, if it did not establish, a strict descent in the male line in the tribe,^[163] a hereditary succession in the Church must have been derived from the close connection which had been formed between the Church and the tribe, and from the influence of the tribe upon the Church and not of the Church upon the tribe. While the whole of the land was still the common property of the tribe, the Ri or king had no separate possession of land, but in this respect was on an equality with the free members of the tribe, and entitled only to the same right of pasturage for his cattle on the pasture land and to the share of the 142arable land annually allotted to him; but in addition to this he was maintained in the dignity of his office at the expense of the tribe, and this right of maintenance, according as the tribe and its wealth increased, assumed various forms, one of which may have arisen from the influence of the Church, and given the first impulse to something like separate possession of land. When the Church was established in connection with a tribe, a grant of part of the tribe land and its separation from the rest became a necessity for the maintenance of the Church, and thus those Termon lands which form so marked a feature in the territorial position of the Irish Church, came into existence. Analogous to this, one form which this right of maintenance on the part of the Ri or king assumed was, that a portion of land was likewise separated from the common land of the tribe as mensal land for the support of the dignity of the Ri or king for the time being.

Another cause must also of necessity have produced distinction of position between the free members of the tribe. Such an equality as may be held to have existed originally among the members of the tribe can hardly have been preserved unless there was also an equality in their personal characteristics and their wealth in cattle. The natural operation of differences of character and wealth was to create distinctive classes among them. Those of superior abilities soon take the lead of others, and those whose prudence and sagacity enabled them to increase their possession of cattle must soon have occupied a more important position in the tribe, as their share of the annual allotment of land was regulated by the size of their herd. Thus there came to be recognised in the tribe a gradation of ranks founded upon the possession of personal wealth and importance. The lowest grade in the tribe was the Fer Midba or inferior man, of whom there were two classes. As soon as a member of the tribe reached the age of fourteen he was emancipated from the control 143of his parents and acquired certain rights, but was not vested with his full privileges till the encircling of the beard, that is, till he became twenty years old, when he was entitled to a separate residence (Sain trebhta) and a share of the tribe land (Sealbh). Above the Fer Midba was the Boaire or Cowlord, whose superior wealth in cattle, with the exclusive possession of a homestead, gave him a kind of nobility over the tribe’s man. Of the Boaire class there were six grades. The lowest rank, to which the title of Aire was given, was the Ogaire or young lord who had ‘newly taken householdship upon him.’ His property was reckoned by the number seven. He had seven cows with their bull, seven pigs with a boar, seven sheep, and a horse for work and riding. He possessed a house but no land in property. The land required for the support of seven cows was termed a Cow-land, and he left one cow at the end of the year in payment for it. He had the fourth part of a plough, and therefore his possession with the arable land attached to it formed probably the fourth part of a ploughgate, or thirty acres, equivalent to the husbandland in Scotland. The next higher grade was the tenant resident (Aithech ar athreba). He represented a small community of four or five, occupying jointly as much land and possessing in common as much stock as would entitle a single person to be a Boaire. He had ten cows, ten pigs, ten sheep, but, like the Ogaire, the fourth part of ploughing apparatus, which is here defined to be an ox or ploughshare, a goad, and a bridle. He was so named as occupying a part only of as much land as would entitle him to be called a Boaire along with others, the joint possession being sufficient for the purpose. Above him was the Boaire febhsa, so called ‘because it is from cows his rank as an Aire and his honor price are derived.’ He had land of the value of twice seven Cumhals, or forty-two cows. He had a house with a back house or kitchen, a share in a mill, a kiln, a barn, a sheephouse, 144a calf-house, and a pigstye. These are the seven houses from which each Boaire was rated, and formed the complete Rath or homestead. It was surrounded by a precinct or Maigne, which was a space as far as the Boaire could cast a spear with an iron head, or hammer, sitting at the door of his house, and was inviolable. The whole was usually enclosed by a ditch and earthen rampart. And he possessed twelve cows and half a plough. Land of the value of three times seven Cumhals or sixty-three cows, and the possession of twenty cows, two bulls, six bullocks, twenty hogs, twenty sheep, four house-fed hogs, two sows, and a riding-horse, made him a Bruighfer, and entailed upon him the burden of ‘receiving the king, bishop, poet, or judge from off the road,’ as well as all travellers. And here too the court of judgment was held for the tribe and the assembly of the tribe’s men. When the Boaire possessed so large an amount of stock as to be obliged to give off some to others he becomes a Ferfothla, and ‘the excess of his cattle which his own land cannot sustain, which he cannot sell for land, and which he does not himself require, he gives as the proportionate stock of tenants’ (Ceile). The highest grade of the Boaire was the Aire-coisring, who represented the people before the king and the synod.

The superior position in which the Boaire was placed towards the other members of the tribe, his more extensive stock, and the exclusive possession of his homestead, must have naturally led to a desire to retain the same land in his family, instead of being subjected to annual change; and the larger his possession the more easily he would obtain this, which was an inevitable step to the introduction of rights of private property in the land of the tribe. When the same family had retained possession of land for three generations it came at length to constitute a right of property, and thus a class of territorial lords was created whose position as Aires 145was based upon property in land. This right of property and all the privileges connected with it was termed Deis, and they formed a superior class of territorial magnates, who were termed Flaith or chieftains, and constituted an order termed the Grad Flaith, in contradistinction to the Grad Feine or inferior order.

In the division of these respective orders, if not in the actual introduction of an individual right of property in land, we can again trace the influence of the Christian Church. In one of the tracts forming the collection of laws termed the Brehon, but not one of the most ancient, the following account of these divisions is given:—‘How many divisions are there of these?—Seven. What is the division of the grades of a Tuath derived from?—From the similitude of ecclesiastical orders, for it is proper that for every order which is in the Church there should be a corresponding one in the Tuath.’ But this number of seven is purely arbitrary, for we are told that the grades of the Tuath consist of the ‘Fer Midba, the Boaire, the Aire desa, the Aire ard, the Aire tuise, the Aire forgaill, and the Ri or king. If it be according to the right of the Feinechus law, it is in such manner these seven grades are divided.’ But then follows—‘What is the division if it be not the Boaire with his eight divisions?’ that is, if the ‘Grad Feine,’ or inferior order consisting of eight divisions, is excluded; and the answer is—‘The Aire desa, the Aire echta, the Aire ard, the Aire tuise, the Aire forgaill, the Tanaist of the Ri or king, and the Ri or king.’ Here the number of seven is made up by adding to the Grad Flaith an Aire echta and the Tanaist.^[164]

As these ranks of the Grad Flaith possessed an increasing amount of stock beyond what their own land could maintain, one great characteristic of the order was their possessing 146tenants or Ceile, that is, persons of the inferior order to whom they gave their surplus stock in return for a food-rent, services, and homage; the gift being termed Taurcreic and the food-rent Besa. And as the territorial lords appropriated more and more land of the tribe as individual property, it is obvious that the land remaining for division among the freemen of the tribe must have been proportionately diminished, while the natural increase of the population must have increased the evil. An ancient tract tells us that ‘numerous were the human beings in Ireland at that time (A.D. 658-694), and such was their number that they used not to get but thrice nine ridges for each man in Ireland, viz., nine of bog, and nine of smooth or arable, and nine of wood;’ and we read in the Lebor na huidre that ‘there was not ditch nor fence nor stone wall round land till came the period of the sons of Aed Slane (the same period), but smooth fields. Because of the abundance of the households in their period, therefore it is that they introduced boundaries in Ireland.’^[165] Thus, as the land and the wealth in cattle of these Flaith or territorial lords increased, the freemen of the tribe who were still independent became poorer, and their lots diminished, and by degrees they began voluntarily to place themselves under these lords by accepting stock from them, in return for which they became their dependants. Where the Flath contributed merely an addition to the stock of the freeman who already possessed some, he became his Saer Ceile or free tenant, and had to return the value of a third of the stock annually for seven years; and besides this the tenant might be called upon to give certain services termed Manchaine, such as assisting in building a fort, reaping the harvest, or going on hostings, and had to pay a food-rent for his house, termed Bestigi, likewise did homage on paying his rent, termed Ureirge. Where the Flath furnished the entire stock for the tenant he had to give security 147for its return, and became his Daer Ceile or Bond-tenant, and had to pay a food tribute termed Biathad twice a year.^[166]

The Aire desa had ten such tenants, five bond and five free. He is described as ‘the son of an Aire and the grandson of an Aire, with the property of his house.’ The Aire echta seems to have ranked with the Aire desa. The Aire ard had twenty tenants or Ceile, ten bond and ten free. The Aire tuise, so called ‘because his race has precedence, and he takes precedence of the Aire ard,’ had twenty-seven tenants or Ceile, fifteen bond and twelve free; and the Aire forgaill or highest rank has forty tenants or Ceile, twenty bond and twenty free. Besides these Ceile or tenants, so constituted by voluntary contracts between the freemen and the Flath or chief, he had likewise Bothach or Cottiers and Fuiddhir, strangers, or broken men from other tribes, whom he settled upon his waste land in return for homage and service, and these, if they had remained nine times nine years on the land, became what were called Sencleithe or old standers.^[167]

This account of how the constitution of the tribe became modified and altered by the effect of internal change and external influence pretends to be nothing more than a speculative view of it, but we have now reached that stage in its progress when it fairly enough represents the tribe in the form in which we find it in the ancient Irish laws; but as these laws with their commentaries belong to different periods, some branches of them being obviously more modern than others, this must be borne in mind in endeavouring to extract a view of the organisation of the tribe from them.

The territory belonging to a tribe is now termed Tuath, the tribe itself Ciniol, as implying a race of men sprung from a common ancestor. The land of the tribe is now found in three different positions. There was first that part of the original territory of the tribe which still remained the Feacht 148Finne or common property of the tribe, and consisted of the common pasture lands, on which each freeman of the tribe had a right to pasture his cattle, and of the common tillage lands annually divided among those freemen who possessed cattle, a possession which entitled them to the usufruct of a share of the arable land and to a habitation in each township. The cattle each person had were termed his Cro, a name also applied to the enclosure in which they were housed, and the entire cattle of the tribe were termed their Creaght. Then, secondly, there was the official or mensal land set apart for the maintenance of the Ri or Toisech, the Tanist, and the other functionaries of the tribe, as the Bard, the Brehon or judge, the Sennachy or historian, etc.; and along with this land may be classed the Church land or Termon land given to the Church free of all imposition, which land was held to form a sanctuary. Lastly, there was the land held by individual ownership. This land was the Orba or inheritance land, which belonged to the Flaith or chiefs, and which was transmissible to their successors. The principal part of this land was retained by the chief in demesne, and on it he had settled the strangers called Fuidhir who consisted of two classes, Free and Bond, and formed a body of retainers entirely under his control; and here too were the Bothach or Cottiers, and those who by length of residence had become Sencleithe. The land not retained by himself was given off to freemen of the tribe to whom he had given stock either by Saer or by Daer stock tenure, and who thus became his Ceile or tenants.

The stronghold of the tribe was the Dun or fort, which the Ri alone had a right to occupy, and of which each king was bound to have at least three. The description given of it is as follows:—‘Seven score feet are the dimensions of the Dun every way; seven feet the thickness of the mound at top; twelve feet at bottom. Then only is he king, when 149he is encircled by the moat of servitude. Twelve feet is the breadth of its mouth and of its bottom, and its length is the same as the Dun. Thirty feet is its length on the outside.’^[168] The average number of fighting men which a tribe turned out on ordinary occasions appears to have been 700.^[169] The possessions of the Church within the territory of the tribe varied in extent from half a Ballyboe or ploughgate, till in some cases the Dun itself and the possessions of the king or chief were granted to found a monastery, and in those cases where the monastery was said to have consisted of 3000 monks, the tribe itself appears to have merged in the Church. There came to be a lay and a clerical progenies, and the head of the tribe appears to have been chosen alternately from the tribe of the land and the tribe of the patron saint.^[170] The free and bond Ceile then became free and bond Manachs, their position being substantially the same.

Such being the aspect in which the tribe is presented to us in the ancient laws of Ireland, it must not be assumed that these tribes, thus possessing a complete organisation in themselves, were at this period independent of each other. From even a much earlier period they seem to have been united in a constitutional framework, by which they formed a kind of federal nation. Several of these Tuaths were grouped together to form a still larger tribe, termed a Mortuath or great tribe, over whom one of the kings presided as Ri Mortuath. The normal number forming a Mortuath is in one place stated as three, and in another seven.

Then several of these Mortuath formed a province, called in Irish Cuicidh, or a fifth. The name is interpreted as implying that the Mortuath thus united were five in number, but the usual explanation is more probable, that as there were five provinces in Ireland—Meath, Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster—it means that each was the fifth part 150of Ireland. Over each province was the Ri Cuicidh, or provincial king, and then over the whole was the Ardri, or sovereign of all Ireland.

The succession to these several grades of Ri or king was the same as that of the Ri Tuath, and was regulated by the law of Tanistry, that is, hereditary in the family but elective in the individual, the senior of the family being usually preferred; but as, when the king was chosen, the Tanist would naturally be selected from the next most powerful branch of the family, it fell at length into an alternate succession between the two most powerful branches. This becomes at once apparent when we examine the actual succession of these kings as recorded in the Annals. The sovereignty over the whole of Ireland fell for several centuries into one branch of the great family called the Northern Hy Neill, and the throne was filled alternately from two branches of it. The succession of the kings of Munster shows the same peculiarity of an alternate succession between the descendants of two sons of the mythic founder of that kingdom, and furnished the illustration upon which a Dissertation on the Law of Tanistry, attributed to General Vallancey, but really written by Doctor John O’Brien, Bishop of Cloyne, was founded. The province of Ulster, where an ancient Pictish population was encroached upon and gradually superseded by Scottish tribes, exhibits the remarkable peculiarity of an alternate succession of the kings of Ulster between a family descended from its old Pictish kings and one of the earliest colonies of Scots, that of the Dalfiatach, who settled among them.^[171]

The tie which bound these groups together, and united the chain which connected the Ardri with the Ri Tuath, was the same which linked the latter with his dependent chiefs, and those with their Ceile. The dependence of one upon 151another possessed the invariable feature of a gift or subsidy from the superior to the inferior, and corresponding duties from the inferior to the superior. In one of the law tracts the gift from the superior appears as Taurcreic, or proportionate stock, and the return as Bestighi, or food-rent of the house, and ranges from a Taurcreic of five Seds, and a Bestighi of a wether, with its accompaniments, consisting of cakes, milk, and butter, as the lowest for the Fermidba to a Taurcreic of fifteen Cumhals, or forty-five cows, and a Bestighi of eight cows for the Ri Tuath.^[172] We derive the fullest information on this subject from the ancient tract termed the Book of Rights. We there see the gift or Tuarastach, as it is there called, made by the Ardri to the different provincial kings, by them to the kings of the respective Mortuath, and by the latter to the Ri Tuath; while the corresponding returns made by the inferior to the superior king consisted first of a small fixed rent, which in one case consisted of a Sgreaball, or threepence, from each Baile or township,^[173] and a tribute termed Cobhach, which included, in the case of Munster, a submission paid in cattle, termed Smacht, and a Biathad or refection; and each king was entitled to a maintenance when going beyond his own territory, called Coinnim, corrupted into Coigny; and besides these, service in war was due from each inferior tribe to the superior, distinguished into Feacht or expedition, and Sluaged or hosting. The number of fighting men each Tuath had to provide was 700, and each Mortuath three companies, or 2100 men.

Another feature of the ancient tribal system in Ireland, presented to us in the Brehon Laws, must not be overlooked, and that is the system of fines, in which respect it closely resembled not only similar regulations in the Welsh Laws but likewise in those of the Anglo-Saxons. In that early 152state of society the idea that the slaughter or injury of any of its members was a crime against the State, which required the punishment of the criminal in vindication of the law of the land, was entirely unknown. The slaughter or injury of the member of the tribe was considered as a loss to the tribe itself, which must be compensated for, and when compensation was made and accepted the criminal was free. Originally the compensation was probably simple retaliation, but afterwards this right of retaliation might be bought off by payment of a fine. That a tradition of this kind existed appears from a passage in the Introduction to the Senchus Mor, in which we are told that ‘retaliation prevailed in Erin before Patrick, and Patrick brought forgiveness with him. At this day we keep between forgiveness and retaliation; for as at present no one has the power of bestowing heaven as Patrick had at that day, so no one is put to death for his intentional crimes, so long as Eric fine is obtained; and whenever Eric fine is not obtained, he is put to death for his intentional crimes, and placed on the sea for his unintentional crimes.’ Sir Henry Maine, in commenting on this passage, justly remarks, that ‘it is impossible, of course, to accept the statement that this wide-spread ancient institution, the pecuniary fine levied on tribes or families for the wrongs done by their members, had its origin in Christian influences; but that it succeeded simple retaliation is in the highest degree probable.’^[174]

The system of fines was based in the main upon a fixed value put upon each person, estimated according to his position and rank, and expressed by a standard of value in cattle. This was his Enechlann or Honor price, and it enters as an element into all the pecuniary relations of the different members of the tribes with each other. This standard of value was expressed in two forms. First by what was termed a Set or Sed, by which single animals of different value were 153meant. The next was the Ri Set or milch cow, which was equal to two Samaiscs or three-year-old heifers or mules, and each Samaisc was equal to two Dairts or Colpachs, that is, two-year-old heifers or bulls, and the rule was that of every three Sets one must be of each kind.^[175] The other standard of value was the Cumhal, which originally meant a female bondslave, and was equal in value to three milch cows.

The Honor price of the Ogaire was three Seds, but they must be Seds of the cow kind. Five Seds that of a Boaire; ten Seds that of the Aire desa; fifteen that of the Aire ard; twenty that of the Aire tuisi; twenty-four that of the Aire forgaill; thirty Seds that of the Tanist or successor to the king of the tribe; and seven Cumhals, or twenty-one cows, that of the king himself. The king of a Mortuath has an additional Cumhal, or three cows more, to make up his Honor price. The Honor price of a son of each rank was equal to that of the rank immediately below it. The intentional slaughter, then, of one of these persons might be compensated by payment of the Eric fine, which was equal to the Honor price of the person slain. Other fines were the Dire fine for injury to a man’s property, and the Smacht or body fine. A share of these fines fell to the Flath or chief under whom the person injured was, and also to the king of the tribe, which formed no insignificant portion of his revenue.

In combination with the tribal organisation, there was also in Ireland an ancient system of fixed land measures adapted to it. The largest of these divisions was the Trichaced, which was considered as the normal extent of the Tuath or territory of a tribe. It contained thirty Bailebiataghs, and each Bailebiatagh twelve Seisrighs or ploughlands, also termed Ballyboes, and these were the townships, and the distribution 154of the land among the freemen of the tribe appears to have been separately allotted in each township to its occupants. An ancient poem,^[176] printed by Mr. O’Donovan in his edition of the Battle of Magh Lena, gives probably the oldest view of these land divisions over all Ireland, as it is attributed to the same Finntan who is said to have preserved the record of the ancient mythic colonisation of Ireland. The poem is thus translated by Mr. O’Donovan, the denomination of land being, however, retained untranslated:—

The Seisrigh or ploughgate, which represents the sown land, is here stated to contain 120 acres and twelve ploughgates, with as much pasture land as sustained 300 cows, or 156four herds of seventy-five each formed the Bailebiatagh. Thirty Bailebiataghs constituted a Tricha-ced, which would thus contain 43,200 acres; and as, according to the poem, there were 184 Tricha-ceds in Ireland, this represents about one-half of the acreage of the whole country, assuming that the ancient and modern acre was the same in extent. The other half would thus represent the waste lands, which were turned to no profitable account.

These measures of land make their appearance at an early period in the mythic history of Ireland, for it is recorded of Ollamh Fodla, one of the most remarkable figures who appears in this extraordinary catalogue of shadowy monarchs, and who is said to have flourished twelve centuries before Christ, that ‘it was he also that appointed a Toisech over every Tricha-ced, and a Brughaidh over every Baile, who were all to serve the king of Erinn.’^[177] They emerge also in the historic period in the tenth century, when a great fleet of Danes landed at Limerick and plundered and ravaged Munster, both churches and tribes (Cella ocus Tuatha), and their king is said to have ‘ordained kings (Rigu), chiefs (Taishechu), Maers and Reactdairidu or stewards in each land (Tir) and in each Tuath, as well as levied the Cis rigda, or dues of the kingdom,’ that is, confirmed the old tribal organisation, substituting Danes for Gael, so that there was ‘a king (Ri) for each Tir, a Toisech for each Tuath, an abbot for each Cill or church, a Maer for each Baile, and a Suairtleach in each Tigi or homestead.^[178] In the succeeding century it is told of Brian Boroimhe, the Munster king who reigned over Ireland from 1002 to 1014, and defeated the Danes in the great battle of Clontarf, that ‘during his time surnames were first given, and territories (Duchadha) allotted to the surnames, and the boundaries of every Tuath and every Tricha-ced were fixed.’^[179]

157But although these ancient measures of land are represented as possessing a definite and fixed extent, yet there seems to be little doubt that they varied very much in different parts of Ireland. Thus the unit of the Seisrigh or ploughgate seems to have been of two kinds—a larger measure of 120 acres in some parts of Ireland, and a smaller measure of 60 acres in other parts. We also find the Ballybiatagh consisting of sixteen Taths in place of twelve ploughgates, the Tath containing sixty acres.

But not only do these measures of land vary in size and denomination, but the Tuath or tribe territory appears also to have varied in different parts of Ireland as well as the constitution of the tribe possessing it. The publications of the Irish Archæological and Celtic Societies afford specimens of this in four of the provinces in Ireland. Thus the preface to the poems of John O Dugan, who died in 1372, opens with reference to Meath with the general statement—‘His country (Duthaidh) to every Ardrigh and to every Urrigh and to every Taoisech of a Tuath in Erin.’^[180] In the district of Corca Laidhe in Munster, which represented a Mortuath, instead of containing merely three or seven Tuaths, we find eight Tuaths mentioned, and of seven of these the head of the tribe is termed its Toisech, and bears the same name, while the Flaith or chiefs are called Oclaich Duthaich, or the champions of the territory. The first is the Duthaich or country of O Gillamichil, with seventeen Oclaich. Then we have the Tuath Ui Chonneid, with O Conneid as its Toisech, and five Oclaich. Then Tuath Ruis, with O Laeghaire as its Toisech, and eleven Oclaich or chiefs. Then Tuath O’n-Aenghusa, with O h-Aenghusa as its Toisech, and fourteen Oclaich. Then Tuath O’Fithcheallaigh, with O’Fithcheallaigh as its Toisech, and eight Oclaich. Then Tuath O’n Dunghalaigh, with O Dunghaill as its Toisech, and nine Oclaich. Then Tuath Ui-Dubhdaleithe, with O Dubhdaleithe 158as its Toisech and seven Oclaich. The boundaries of these several Tuaths are likewise given.^[181]

In the province of Connaught we have also an account of four of the great territories, which furnishes us also with some information regarding the constitution of the tribes there. In a tract printed in the appendix to ‘The Tribes and Customs of Hy Fiachraich’ we find the following statement:—‘Connaught (and, I suppose, other provinces) was anciently distinguished into countries called Doohie (Duthaidh) or Tyre (Tir), named from such and such families or nations inhabiting them, as in the barony of Athlone, Doohie Keogh, the country or nation of the Keoghs. In the barony of Ballintobber, Doohie Hanly, the country of the Hanleys, and betwixt Elphin and Jamestown, that sweet country Teer O Ruin (Tir Briuin) and Teer O Byrne, the country of the Beirns. These countries were subdivided into townlands (in some other parts of Ireland known by the name of ploughlands), which were called Ballys, as in Doohie Hanley Bally nengulluh, or Gyllstown, Ballygilleclinne, (the(the town of the Chlinnes), Ballyfeeny, etc.; and each townland was divided again into quarters, which are generally known and distinguished by certain meares and bounds, and for that reason the name of quarter is used as though it signified a certain measure; and now the lands here are generally set and let, not by the measure of acres but by the name of quarters, cartrons, and gnieves, a quarter being the fourth part of a townland, and a gnieve the sixth part of a quarter, and a cartron also the fourth part of a quarter (although in other parts of Ireland a quarter is the same part that a cartron is here, and a gnieve the fourth part of a cartron). I have been sometimes perplexed to know how many acres a quarter contains, but I have learned it is an uncertain measure, and anciently proportioned only by guess, or 159according to the bigness of the townland whereof it was a parcel.’^[182]

From the tract termed the ‘Hereditary Proprietors (Duthchusaigh) of the Clann Fiachrach’ we obtain some further information. The territory possessed by the tribe appears under different names. These are Triocha Cheud, Taoisidheacht, or territory ruled over by a Taoisech, Tuath, and Duthaidh.^[183] The first is the Triocha Ceud of Ceara, and over it were three kings, O’Muireadhaigh, O’Gormog, and O’Tighernaigh. It seems to have been exceptionally large. Then we have five districts termed Taoisidheacht. The first is that of O’h-Uada and O’Cinnchnamha. Then that of O’Cearnaigh, containing the twenty-four Ballys of the termon of Balla, and therefore nearly as extensive as a Triocha Ceud, but the expression Termon indicates it as being church land. Then that of Ui Ruadin and of him is the Dudhchus of O’Culachan. Then that of O’Birn and that of O’Gorrmghiolla, the latter containing seven Ballys and a half, or the fourth part of a Triocha Ceud. Then there are three Tuaths mentioned. First the Tuath of Partraighe, co-extensive with the parish of Ballyovey. Of this Tuath we have two accounts. The first shows us the Ri tuath and the Taoisech distinct, for O’Gaimiallaigh was its Ri and O’Dorchaidhe its Taoisech. By the second account it was the Taoisigheacht of O’Dorchaidhe alone. O’Banan of Bally Ui Banan and Magilin of Muine were two Mac Oglaichs or inferior chiefs. The Tuath of Magh na bethighe contained the seven Ballys of Lughortan, the Duthaidh of Mac an Bhainbh. The Tuath of Magh Fhiondalbha, containing fifteen Ballys or half a Triocha Ceud, was the Duthaidh of O’Cearnaigh. Then twelve Duthaidhs 160or Estates are given, all connected with surnames. Of these seven consist of one Bally only. The Duthaidh of O’h-Edhneachan consisted of three divisions, each containing three Ballys. The Duthaidh of O’Faghartaigh contained three Ballys, and that of O’Caomhan containing the seven Ballys of Roslaogh. All of these tribes possessed a common origin with one exception, for it is added ‘that there was found no Tuath without its hereditary proprietor of the race of Earc Culbhuidhe except this well-known Tuath Aitheachda,’ that is, tribe of the older subjected inhabitants, called Tuath Ruisen, the old name of Roslaog.^[184]

The Tribes and Customs of Hy Many, another great district of Connaught, throw further light on the subject. This district was considered to be a third part of the province of Connaught, and the patrimony of the Clann Ceallaigh or O’Kellys. In a tract giving an account of its boundaries we are told that it consisted of ‘seven Tricha, seven Tuaths, seven Ballys, and seven half Ballys;’^[185] and in the tract called the ‘Customs of Hy Many’ we read: ‘These are the tributaries of the Clann Ceallaigh: the O’Duibhginns, the O’Geibhennaighs, the MacCathails, the MacFloinns, Muintir Murchadhan, and the Clann Aedhagain, until they become Ollamhs to the Ardri or head of the whole race. These seven tributaries correspond with the seven Tricha;’ and it is added, that ‘the third part of the Cuigid or province of Connaught, that is, Hy Many, is to be their Duthaidh for ever.’ They have also the ‘marshalship of the forces’ (Marasgalacht a Sluag), as Saer clann or free tribes, and they are freed from the Sluaged, or hostings of spring and autumn. The seven Tuaths were apparently smaller divisions, and corresponding with them we have ‘the seven Oirrighi or sub-kings of Hy Many, viz., O’Conaill, and he has the same patrimony as Mac 161Chnaimhin and O’Dubhurrla; the Oirrighs of the Sil Anmchadha are the O’Madudhains; the Righs or rather Oirrighs of Maenmaigh are the Muintir Neachtain and the O’Maelallaidhs; the six Soghans with their Tricha; to whomsoever of them they cede the lordship he is called Oirrigh during his lordship,’ and this makes up the seven. Corresponding with the seven Ballys we find that ‘the seven Flaiths of Hy Many are these, viz., Mac Eidhigan, Flath of Clann Diarmada; MacGelli-Enan, Flath of Clann Flaithemael and of the Muintir Chinait; the Flaith of Clann Bresail is the Muintir Domhnallan, and the Flaith of Clann Duibgind is O’Duibgind, and O’Gabhrain is over Dal n-Druithne, and O’Docomhlan over RinnnaRinnna h-Eignide, and O’Donnchadha over Aibh Cormac Maenmuighe, and O’Mailbrigdi is Flath of Bredach.’ The seven half Ballys correspond with the seven principal Comharbas of Hy Many, and were the lands attached to seven churches. We have then the following curious account of the termination of the tribal system in Hy Many. An agreement is entered into in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on the 6th of August 1589, between ‘the Irish chieftains and inhabitants of Imany called the O’Kellie’s country,’ consisting of, first, the O’Kelly or head of the race; two O’Kellys, competitors for the name of Tanistshippe of O’Kelly; two other O’Kellys, and different chiefs bearing the names of O’Mannine, O’Concannon, O’Naghten, Mac Keoghe, O’Murry, O’Fallone, and Mac Gerraghte. It is there stated that ‘the territory of Imany, called O’Kelly’s Country, is divided into five principal barronyes, all which contain 665-1/2 quarters of land, each at 120 acres;’ and they agree ‘that the Captainshippe and Tanistshippe of the said country, heretofore used by the said O’Kellys, and all elections and Irish customary division of lands, shall be utterly abolished and extinct for ever.’ The O’Kelly is to have four quarters of land then in his possession, with a chief-rent out of other 162lands during his life, and the other two O’Kellys four quarters each.^[186]

The third great district or Mortuath of Connaught was that called ‘West, or H-Iar Connaught, the country of the O’Flahertys,’ and in connection with it we have a tract on the ‘territories of the hereditary proprietors of Muintir Murchadha of Clanfergail and Meadruidhe and Hy Briuin Seola and Hy Briuin Ratha and Muintir Fathy; their Toiseachs and high Mac Oglachs and Ollaves, that is, O’Halloran is Toiseach of the twenty-four Ballys of Clanfergail (or nearly a Triocha Ceud), and of these are O’Antuile and O’Fergus of Roscam. Mac Cingamain and Mac Catharnaigh are the two Toiseachs of Meadruidhe, having each their own people of the tribe subject to them. O’Dathlaoich is the Toiseach of the fourteen Ballys of the Hy Briuin Ratha (or half a Triocha Ceud), and of these are the O’Kennedies and the O’Duinns and the O’Innogs of Cnoctuadh and O’Laighin of Lackagh and O’Callanan, Comharba of Kilcahil,’ the latter being an ecclesiastical sept occupying church land. ‘O’Canavan was medical Ollamh of O’Flaherty in the Tuath of Toibrineadh, but others say it was O’Laighidh. The Flaith or chiefs of Hy Briuin Seola, with their correlatives, are O’Fechin, O’Balbhain, O’Duff, and O’Madudhain.’ This last tribe does not appear united under one head but broken up into septs. ‘O’Flaharty is Toiseach of the fourteen Ballys of Muintir Fathy, with their correlatives under them.’ We have then a list of the hereditary office-bearers of O’Flaherty, which it may be useful to insert as showing that this designation of Toiseach was not only applied to the hereditary leaders of tribes, but when coupled with a qualifying word designated a hereditary officer; thus Mac Gillagannain of Moyleaslainn is Toiseach scuir, or Master of the Horse to O’Flaherty. The O’Colgam of Bally Colgan are standard-bearers (go m-brataigh) of O’Flaherty. MacGinnain 163is the Comharba of Kilcoona. O’Maelampaill of Donaghpatraic is the Brehon or judge of O’Flaherty. O’Cleircin of Rathbuidbh, O’Laibacain, and O’Maoilin, are the Erenachs of Cillbile. The O’Dubains are the attendants (Lucht Comhideachta) of O’Flaherty at his common house. The MacKilkellys are the Ollamhs of O’Flaherty in history and poetry, and for this they have three half Ballys. O’Domnall of Ardratha is the Toiseach Comoil, or Master of the Feast of O’Flaherty, with his own correlatives under him—viz., O’Daigean of Ardfintain, who was O’Domhnall’s steward (Reachtaire), and O’Chichearan of Lis-chicheran, and O’Conlachtna of Ballyconlachtna, are the Beachadoir, or beekeepers, of O’Flaherty. O’Murgaile of Muinne-inradain is the high steward (Ardreachtaire) of O’Flaherty.’^[187] The king of Connaught, the head of the O’Connors, had similar officers; for we are told by O’Ferrall, in his Book of Pedigrees, under the O’Conor family, ‘that the king of Connaught kept twelve prince officers of the chief families of his country in his court, attending his person as his council, and to rule and govern as well his household as to manage the affairs of his kingdom in war and peace, and were called in Irish Taoisigh na Cruachan, or Toiseachs of Cruachan, the royal residence, which officers were hereditary from father to son. These chief lords had from the king certain subsidies for their services.’^[188]

These are given in detail in an ancient tract among the Stowe MSS. Four of them—viz., O’Flanagan, MacGerachty, O’Finnachty, and O’Maolbrennan—were termed royal Taoiseachs, and had each a subsidy of fifty milch cows and fifty sheep at Beltane, and fifty heifers and fifty pigs at Samheinn, as well as a domain of forty-eight Ballys; and of these officers, O’Flannagain had the high stewardship (Ardmaoraidacht), 164O’Feorinachtaigh was the Hostiarius or doorkeeper, and O’Maolbrennan was joint steward, and commanded the bodyguards. The other eight Toiseachs of inferior rank had a domain of twenty-four Ballys each, and of these O’Hanly had the guardianship of hostages and prisoners, O’Floinn the stewardship of the horse (Maoras Each), O’Flaithbertaigh and O’Maille the command of the fleet, MacDiarmad was high marschal, O’Teige was Taoiseach Teaghlach or marshal of the household, and O’Kelly was Taoiseach Seud or steward of the jewels.^[189]

The province of Ulster likewise presents us with the Tuath or tribe, several of which form a larger territory equivalent to the Mortuath. Thus a vast territory, consisting of the two districts of the Route and Glynnes, was granted by James I. in 1603 to the Earl of Tyrone, and was at that time subdivided into sixteen smaller districts termed Tuoghs or Tuaths, which are recited in the patent. The Route, which was co-extensive with the ancient territory of Dalriada—from which name indeed the modern word Route is a corruption—contained nine Tuoghs. These were the Tuogh between the Bandy or Bann and the Boys or Bush, containing six parishes; the Tuogh of Dunseverick and Ballenatoy; the Tuogh of Ballelagh; the Tuogh of Loughgill; the Tuogh of Ballemoney and Dromart, containing two parishes; the Tuogh of Killeoconway (Coil na g-Connmuigh), or the wood of O’Conway; the Tuogh of Killioquin, or the wood of O’Conn; the Tuogh of Killiomorrie, or the wood of O’Murry; and the Tuogh of Magheredunagh (Machaire Dun Eachdach), or plain of the fort of Eachdach, consisting of the parish now called Dunaghy. The district of the Glynnes consisted of seven baronies, six of which are termed Tuoghs. These were the Tuogh of Munerie, the Tuogh of Carey, the Tuogh of Glenmiconogh, the Tuogh of the Largie, the Tuogh of the Parke, and the Tuogh 165of the Larne. The entire acreage of the two districts of the Route and the Glynnes was 333,907 acres, giving an average of 20,869 acres to each.

The names of the tribes which were connected with these Tuoghs or Tuaths have not been preserved, but they are still retained in the district of North Clandeboy, which with South Clandeboy represented the ancient Dalnaraighe or territory of the Picts of Ulster. We find from an inquisition in 1605 that North Clandeboy consisted of twenty subdivisions, thirteen larger and seven smaller; the former are termed Tuoghs or Tuaths, and are named after the tribes occupying them. These are the Tuogh of Clanaghartie, containing the entire parish of Kilconriola and part of Ahoghill, and the Tuogh of Muntir Callie (Muintir Ceallaigh), or the tribe of Kelly, containing the rest of Ahoghill parish. These two together formed the barony of Lower Toome, and contained 36,000 acres. The Tuogh of Muntir Rividy, and the Tuogh na Fuigh. These two formed the barony of Upper Toome, and contained 64,000 acres. The Tuogh of Muntir Murigan (Muintir Mhuireagan), or the tribe of Murrigan. The Tuogh na Keart. The Tuogh of Moylinny, which is co-extensive with the barony of Upper Antrim, and contained 36,000 acres. The Tuogh of Killelagh. The Tuogh of Maghery-morne, the Tuogh of Braden IlandIland, and the Tuogh of Ballinlyny. These three formed the barony of Lower Belfast, and contain 56,000 acres. The Tuogh Cinament, containing part of the parish of Shankill, and the Tuogh of the Fall, containing the rest of Shankill and the parish of Drumbeg.^[190]

We have then a very instructive account of the counties of Monaghan and Fermanagh in a letter addressed by Sir John Davis, Attorney-General of Ireland, to the Earl of Salisbury in the year 1606. He states that Monaghan, otherwise called M‘Mahon’s country, ‘was divided into 166five baronies, viz., Dartry, Monaghan, Cremorne, Trough, and Donamayne; that these five baronies contain an hundred Ballybetaghs, viz., Dartrey 21, Monaghan 21, Cremorne 22, Trough 15, and Donamayne 21.’ These obviously represent Tuaths, four being about two-thirds, and the fifth the half of a Triocha Ceud. He then proceeds to tell us ‘that every Ballibetagh (which signifieth in the Irish tongue a town able to maintain hospitality) containeth 16 taths, each tath containeth 60 English acres or thereabout; so as every Ballibetagh containeth 960 acres, the extent of the whole containing 100 Ballibetaghs is 96,000 acres, besides the church lands.’ This territory having been forfeited to the Crown, four of the baronies were thus regranted to the M‘Mahons. ‘In the Dartrey five Ballibetaghs were granted in demesne to Bryan McHugh Oge McMahon, then reputed chief of his name, and the heirs-male of his body, rendering £30 rent, viz., £6 for each Ballibetagh; the other 16 Ballibetaghs were divided among the ancient inhabitants of that barony, some having a greater portion allotted and some a less; howbeit every one did render a yearly rent of 20s. out of every tath, whereof 12s. 6d. was granted to Bryan McHugh Oge McMahon as a chief rent in lieu of all other duties, and 7s. 6d. was reserved to the Crown; which plot was observed in every of the other baronies, so as out of every Ballibetagh containing 16 taths the lord had £10 and the king £6. In Monaghan, Ross Bane McMahon had likewise five Ballibetaghs granted unto him, with the like estate, rendering to the queen £30 rent, and the like chief rent out of nine Ballybetaghs more, and in the same barony Patrick McArt Moyle had three Ballybetaghs allotted unto him with the like estate, rendering £18 rent to the queen, and the like chief rent out of the other four.

‘In Cremorne, Ever McColla McMahon had five Ballybetaghs in demesne granted unto him, and the heirs-male of 167his body, rendering £30 rent to the Crown, and the like chief rent out of twelve other Ballybetaghs; and in the same barony one Patrick Duffe McColla McMahon had two Ballybetaghs and a half assigned to him in demesne, rendering £15 rent, and the like chief rent out of two other Ballybetaghs and a half.

‘In the Tuough, containing only fifteen Ballybetaghs, Patrick McKenna had three Ballybetaghs and twelve taths in demesne, given unto him, with the like estate, rendering £22 rent as aforesaid, and the like chief rent out of seven other Ballybetaghs; and in the same barony one Bryan Oge McMahowne, brother to Hugh Roe, had the like estate granted unto him in three Ballybetaghs, rendering £18 rent in like manner, and the like chief rent out of two other Ballybetaghs.’

These grants no doubt reflect the ancient occupation of the district, the various returns in kind and in service being commuted for a money payment, and the holdings being made direct from the Crown, part of each barony being held in demesne by the chiefs, and the rest by what Sir John calls the inferior inhabitants, who had, he says, likewise ‘their demesne and rents allotted to them, and their several portions of land granted unto them and to their heirs.’ Besides these temporal lands there were, he says, ‘the spiritual lands, which the Irish call Termons, which were granted to sundry servitors rendering 10s. to the Crown for every tath; which out of all the church lands amounted to £70 per annum or thereabouts,’ that is, to 140 taths, equal to about nine Ballybetaghs.

From the return with regard to the county of Fermanagh we obtain similar information, with some additional particulars deserving of notice. ‘For the lands of inheritance in Fermanagh,’ otherwise called Maguire’s Country, he says, ‘they stood not in the same terms as the lands in Monaghan. For the signorie or chiefry and the demesne lands, that were the 168inheritance of MacGuire himself, were reduced and vested in the Crown.’... But forasmuch as the greatest part of the inhabitants of that country did claim to be freeholders of their several possessions, who, surviving the late rebellion, had never been attainted, so as we could not clearly entitle the Crown to their land;’ and he adds, that ‘they held the same not according to the course of common law but by the custom of tanistry, whereby the eldest of every sept claimed a chiefry over the rest, and the inferior sort divided their possessions after the manner of gavelkind.’ Sir John tells us that, ‘First we thought it meet to distinguish the possessions, next to inquire of the particular possessors thereof. Touching the possessions,’ he says, ‘we found Fermanagh to be divided into seven baronies, viz., Magheryboy, Clanawley, Clankelly, Maghery, Stephanagh, Tirkennedy, Knockrinie,Knockrinie, and Lough Lurgh. Every of these baronies contains seven Ballybetaghs and a half of land, chargeable with McGuire’s rent, and other contributions of the country. Every Ballybetagh is divided into four quarters of land, and every quarter into four taths, so as a Ballybetagh containeth sixteen taths, as it doth in Monaghan, but the measure of this country is far larger; besides the freeland, whereof there is good quantity in every barony, is no parcel of the seven Ballybetaghs and a half, whereof the barony is said to consist. For these reasons Fermanagh, containing but fifty-one Ballybetaghs and a half of chargeable lands, is well-nigh as large an extent as Monaghan, which hath in it an hundred Ballybetaghs.’

‘Touching the freeland we found them,’ he says, ‘to be of three kinds—

‘1. Church land or termon lands, as the Irish call it.

‘2. The mensal land of McGuire.

‘3. Land given to certain septs privileged among the Irish, viz., the lands of the chroniclers, rimers, and gallo-glasses.

169‘The Church land was either monastery land, Corbe land, or Erenach’s land. The monastery land lay in the barony of Clanawley, and did not exceed two Ballybetaghs, but the lands belonging to the Corbes and Erenachs are of far greater quantity, and are found in every barony. They told me,’ he adds, ‘that the word Termon doth signify in the Irish tongue a liberty or freedom, and that all church lands whatsoever are called termon lands by the Irish, because they were ever free from all impositions and cuttings of the temporal lords, and had the privilege of sanctuary.’

McGuire’s mensal lands, he tells us, were ‘free from all common charges and contributions of the country, because they yielded a large proportion of butter and meal and other provisions for McGuire’s table, ‘and that though lying in several baronies did not in quantity exceed four Ballybetaghs, the greatest thereof being in the possession of one M‘Manus and his sept.’ The certainties of the duties or provisions yielded unto McGuire out of these mensal lands were set forth in an old parchment roll in the hands of one O’Brislan, a chronicler and principal Brehon of that country. It was not very large, but was written on both sides in a fair Irish character, and contained not only ‘the certainty of McGuire’s mensal duties, but also the particular rents and other services which were answered to McGuire out of every part of the country.’ ‘Besides these mensals,’ he adds, ‘McGuire had two hundred and forty beeves or thereabouts yearly paid unto him out of the seven baronies, and about his castle at Iniskillen he had almost a Ballybetagh of land, which he manured with his own churles. And this was McGuire’s whole estate in certainty, for in right he had no more, and in time of peace did exact no more. In time of war he made himself owner of all, cutting what he listed, and imposing as many bonachts or hired soldiers upon them as he had occasion to use. Concerning the free land of the third kind—viz., such land as is 170possessed by the Irish officers of this country, viz., chroniclers, galloglasses, and rimers—the entire quantities if it were laid down together, as it is scattered in sundry baronies, doth well-nigh make two Ballybetaghs and no more.’^[191]

This presents us with a graphic enough account of the state of the Irish tribe as it existed at the time Sir John Davis wrote; and we may supplement what he says as to the position of the Termon or Church lands, and their freedom from the burdens to which the other lands were subject, by two charters preserved in the Book of Kells. The first is a grant by Conchobhar O’Maelsechlann, king of Meath, in the eleventh century, by which he gave Kildelga with its territory and lands to God and to Columkille for ever, free of all claim for Cis or rent, Cobach or tribute, Fecht and Sluaged or expedition and hosting, and Coinnim from king or Toiseach, and the precise signification of Coinnim appears from the second charter granted in the succeeding century, by which the freedom of Ardbreacain was granted by Muirchertach O’Lochlainn, king of Ireland, Diarmaid O’Maelsechlann, king of Meath, and Aedh Mac Cu-Uladh, king of Laeghaire. The people of Laeghaire had a certain tribute on the Church, viz., one night’s Coinnmeda every quarter of a year. O’Lochlain, king of Ireland, and O’Maelsechlann, king of Meath, induced the king of Laeghaire to sell this night’s Coinnmeda for three ounces of gold. The Church, therefore, with its territory and lands, is free for two reasons, viz., on account of the general freedom of all churches, and on account of this purchase.’^[192]

We thus see that the leading features of the Irish tribes, as we have gathered them in the ancient laws, can to a great extent be recognised in the state of the native population of the country, as we find it presented to us at a later period in four of her great provinces.

Among the changes produced in the social organisation of the tribe by external influence and internal progress, not the least striking was the gradual development within it of the Finé or septs. Though the word Finé is undoubtedly used for the whole confraternity of the members of the tribe, viewed as a community united together by a supposed common origin, yet, in its strict technical sense, it was applied to those divisions of the tribe which may be called septs or clans.

As soon as the superior advance of some members of the tribe over the others in wealth and importance produced a relation of superior and dependant by the latter becoming Ceile or tenants of the former, while their possessions became hereditary in their families, the germ of the Finé or sept was formed. When the Boaire, or cow-lord, was led by wealth in cattle to give over the excess of his stock to other members of the tribe, who became his Ceile or dependants, a Finé in its most restricted sense was formed, and the Aire Coisring, as he was called, became also the Aire Finé, or head of an inferior sept.^[193]

The acquisition of part of the tribe land as the absolute property of individuals, and their advance as wealthy land as well as cattle owners, led to its further development. The Aire who owned an estate in land which raised him to the position of a Flath or chief, and was enabled to transmit it to his descendants, led to the settlement of his family and 172kinsfolk on the land. He was not considered as fully entitled to the privileges of a territorial lord unless his father and grandfather had likewise been an Aire; and when three generations had thus been settled on the land, the offshoots of these generations formed a group consisting of the nearest agnates of the chief, which would increase in number as the generations went on. These were the Ciné, or kinsfolk of the head of the tribe, and to them were added those freemen of the tribe who claimed a common origin with them, and who placed themselves under the chief as his Ceile or dependants.

The same causes which operated in the feudal system to lead the odal proprietors to commend themselves to an overlord as his vassals, and gradually extinguished the more ancient class of independent landholders, tended likewise in the Irish tribal system to absorb the original freemen of the tribe in the class of the Ceile or dependants of the chief, and thus to add to his following and to form a constituent part of the Finé or sept.

With the Saor Ceile, or free dependants, the basis was a mutual contract for a fixed period usually of seven years, by which the Flath or chief gave a portion of stock proportionate to the food-rent he was to receive in return, and was entitled along with this to the homage of the tenant during the subsistence of the contract, and to a certain amount of service in the erection of a Dun or fort, the reaping of his harvest, and the Sluaged or hosting; but the contract could be terminated and the parties to it return to their original relation to each other, either by the Ceile or tenant returning the stock he had received, or by the Flath reclaiming it. A more permanent connection was formed between him and the Daor Ceile or bond tenant. Here the Ceile placed himself formally under the protection of the Flath as his permanent follower, and this relation was formed by his receiving a certain number of Seds or cows, by way of subsidy or gift from the superior, and 173paying him a certain tribute termed Sed Taurclothe, or returnable Seds, as the price of his protection. This servitude was termed Aicillne, and the amount of the Seds was regulated by the Honor price. As soon as this relation was constituted, he received an additional amount of stock in proportion to the food-rent he had to return, in the same manner as in the case of the free Ceile.^[194] The real distinction probably was, that in the one case the Ceile was in a more independent position, and possessed stock of his own as well as a share of the tribe land, besides what he received from the Flath. In the other he was dependent upon what he received from the Flath for the whole of his stock. When the Flath reclaimed his stock from the free Ceile, the latter had the option of becoming a bond Ceile, if he preferred doing so to returning his stock, and the Flath was then bound to add the returnable Seds to the stock he had originally given, which constituted the relation between him and the Ceile as a permanent dependant. This process, therefore, not only led to the freemen of the tribe being gradually absorbed into the class of the dependants or following of the chief, but placed a powerful weapon in the hands of the latter, by which he could transform his temporary free Ceile into permanent and more servile dependants.

As the Flath, however, increased in wealth and power and his territory extended, he was not satisfied with drawing his dependants from the tribe of which he was himself a member, but added to his followers by settling stranger septs upon his waste lands, and thus still further augmented his power. These stranger septs formed that class termed Fuidhir, a name which from its resemblance to the word feud, and from the apparent analogy between the position of the Fuidhir with 174the vassals of the feudal system, has given rise to much speculation. These analogies are, however, more apparent than real, and there is probably no connection whatever beyond casual resemblance between the terminology of the two systems. In the oldest Glossary, that of Cormac, the term is applied to the superior instead of the dependant, and the name Fuithir is said to be from fo thir, he who gives land (tir) to a stranger; but in the Brehon Laws it is applied to those stranger septs settled upon the land, and, like all the dependants, consisted of the two classes of Saer and Daer, free and bond, according to the temporary or permanent character of the connection. With the exception that they were broken men from stranger tribes instead of members of the same tribe, their connection with the chief presented the same features with that of the native Ceile. Of these Fuidhir there were said to be seven classes, ranging from those who had land or wealth and became detached from their tribe, to those who fled to the chief of another tribe for protection, and had nothing to give but their labour. The better class, termed Fuidhir Grian, obtained possession of a Rath consisting of the usual five houses, received stock from the Flath similar to that given to the Ceile, and had a Lagenech or Honor price. These formed subordinate septs or Finé under the chief,^[195] and we are told that they ‘do not bear the liability of relationship unless there be five houses (Treabba) to relieve each other. If there be five houses with complete stock, they share the property of the Finé’ (Finnteada), and this is explained in the commentary to mean that ‘the Fuidhir gabla—that is, the Fodaor or natural bondsman (Daor)—does not bear the crimes of his relatives unless he has five houses to relieve him, that is, five who have stock consisting of a hundred head of cattle, and unless they belong to one chief. If there be five men of them, each man having 175a hundred of cattle, every one of them obtains his share of the dibadh land of each other, and pays for the crimes of others, like every free native, that is, when they have the five stocks of a hundred cattle and are under one chief.^[196] The lower class of Fuidhir were of four kinds, termed grui, gola, gabla, and gill de bas, and consisted of strangers who had lost their land by wars, or fled from having been guilty of bloodshed, and of hostages saved from death. Lower than these again were the Bothach or cottiers, likewise divided into the two classes of Saer and Daer according as they were either small occupiers of land or were prædial slaves, and probably were remains of the oldest population of the land.

The formation of the Finé or sept had thus a territorial basis, and the possession of the Deis or inheritance land, which gave its owner the rank of Aire, was also essential to his acquiring the privileges of the chief of a Finé. Thus we are told in one of the law tracts that ‘there are four deis rights prescribed for flaith or chiefs. The ancient protection of the Tuath is his office in the Tuath; the office of Tuisig or leader, or Tanaist Tuisig, whichever it be, of his Ceile gialnai or bond Ceile, his Saer Ceile, and his Sencleithe or ancient adherents; the punishment of every imperfect service; and the following of Bothach or cottiers and Fuidhir, whom he brings upon his land, because his wealth is greater and better. If there is service from them to the Flaith during nine times nine years, they are Bothach and Fuidhir, but after that they are ranked as Sencleithe or old adherents.’^[197]

The Finé, as thus constituted, was formed of two distinct classes;—one being members of the same tribe as the Flath, and consisted of his own immediate family and relations, and of his Saor and Daor Ceile; the other of stranger septs and broken men from other tribes, who were settled on the land, 176and formed a class of subordinate followers. The basis was a territorial one; but while the authority and privileges of the chief were derived from his deis, there was likewise a bond of union between him and the former class, derived from community of blood, and he added to his territorial rights the natural claim to their allegiance arising from his position as a hereditary chief of their Tuath, as well as the right to punish imperfect service. The most important of these services on the part of the Ceile was the duty of following their chief to war. The Book of Aicill, one of these law tracts, tells us, ‘A chief may enforce a Sloiged or hosting;’ and the commentator explains, ‘That is, there is a smacht fine, upon a Daor Ceile of the Gradfeine, that is, of the ranks below the Aires, for not going to it, and for coming away from it; double work upon the Saor Ceile of the Grad Feine for not going to it, and Honor price for coming away from it.’ Another and perhaps more ancient tract in the Brehon Laws gives us likewise a view of the Finé. There we are told, ‘These are the divisions of the Finé of each Flath or chief. His Fuidhir, his Ciniud or kinsfolk, his Gabail fodagniat (under which name his Ceile are comprised), all of whom go by the name of Flaith Finé, or the chiefs Finé or sept.’^[198]

That division of the Finé which was formed of those of the same tribe as the Flath or chief consisted of two distinct elements, the first being the Ciniud or near kinsmen of the Flath, and the second of those of the tribe who became his dependants and followers. The first, as descended from the original founder of the sept, had hereditary claims upon his land, as well as duties and privileges derived from kin to the chief, while the rights and duties of the latter were founded on contract; and here we come in contact with one of the 177most difficult and obscure features of the Finé constitution, viz., that institution by which the duties and the privileges arising from kindred with the chief are limited to an artificial group of seventeen persons, which again was divided into four lesser groups, termed respectively Geilfiné, Deirbhfiné, Iarfiné, and Indfiné. These formed the Duthaig Finé, or the sept in its narrowest sense. The Geilfiné consisted of five persons, and each of the others of four, making seventeen in all. Upon these four groups of kinsmen appears, in the first place, to have been imposed a joint responsibility for each member of it. Thus, we find in the Senchus Mor, that ‘the four nearest Finé bear the crimes of each kinsman of their stock, Geilfiné and Deirbhfiné, Iarfiné and Indfiné;^[199] and in a commentary on the Senchus Mor, they are termed ‘the four nearest Finé or families,’ that is, ‘because it is four Finés that sustain the liabilities of every person that is related to them intimately.’^[200] They likewise possessed mutual rights of succession in the dibad of the chief, or the land which passed to his kinsfolk. These rights are very elaborately stated in the Book of Aicill, but it is necessary to give them in detail in order to understand the nature of this grouping of the kinsfolk. In answer to the question, ‘What is the reciprocal right among Finé?’ we are told that ‘if the Geilfiné division become extinct, three-fourths of the dibad of the Geilfiné shall go to the Deirbhfiné, and one-fourth to the Iarfiné and the Indfiné—viz., three-fourths of the fourth to the Iarfiné, and one-fourth of it to the Indfiné.

‘If the Deirbhfiné division has become extinct, three-fourths of its dibad goes to the Geilfiné, and one-fourth to the Iarfiné and Indfiné’—that is, three-fourths of the fourth to the Iarfiné, and a fourth of it to the Indfiné.

‘If the Iarfiné division has become extinct, three-fourths of its dibad shall go to the Deirbhfiné, and one-fourth of it to 178the Geilfiné and Indfiné—that is, three-fourths of the fourth to the Geilfiné, and one-fourth of it to the Indfiné.

‘If the Indfiné has become extinct, three-fourths of its dibad shall go to the Iarfiné, and one-fourth of it to the Geilfiné and Deirbhfiné—that is, three-fourths of the fourth to the Deirbhfiné, and one-fourth of it to the Geilfiné.

‘If the Geilfiné and Deirbhfiné both become extinct, three-fourths of their dibad shall go to the Iarfiné, and one-fourth to the Indfiné.

‘If the Indfiné and Iarfiné both become extinct, three-fourths of their dibad shall go to the Deirbhfiné, and one-fourth to the Geilfiné.

‘If the Deirbhfiné and Iarfiné have both become extinct, three-fourths of their dibad shall go to the Geilfiné, and one-fourth to the Indfiné.

‘If the Geilfiné and Indfiné have both become extinct, three-fourths of the dibad of the Geilfiné shall go to the Deirbhfiné, and one-fourth of it to the Iarfiné; three-fourths of the dibad of the Indfiné shall go to the Iarfiné, and one-fourth to the Deirbhfiné.’

This seems to exhaust all possible combinations, and some provisions follow which are not very easily understood; but when it is added, ‘And the whole number of the seventeen men are then forthcoming, and if they be not, there shall be no partition, but the nearest of kin shall take it,’ the meaning seems to be that the group of seventeen persons must be made up in each case, but if that cannot be done, there is no partition of the dibad to the person nearest in degree to the extinct family.

We are also told that ‘the Geilfiné is the youngest and the Indfiné the oldest,’ and that ‘if one person has come up into the Geilfiné so as to make it excessive, that is, more than five persons, a man must go out of it up into the Deirbhfiné, and a man is to pass from one Finé into the 179other up as far as the Indfiné, and a man is to pass from that into the Duthaig n-Daine or community.’^[201]

It is exceedingly difficult to form anything like a clear conception of the true nature of what appears to be so highly artificial an arrangement, and it is probable that if it ever really existed in its entirety, it must soon have broken down under the various modifications which the natural progress of society brought to bear upon the community. So far as we can gather, there seems undoubtedly to have been the tie of kindred among themselves, and between them and the chief; and a portion of the territory of the Flath appears to have been assigned to them under the name of dibad, the portion occupied by each group being possessed in common by its members, so that it was only when the subordinate groups became extinct that a redistribution of it took place.

Of what members of the Finé, then, did each of these groups really consist? There seems to be no doubt as to the number which formed the members of each. The Geilfiné consisted of five persons only, who were nearest of kin to the chief, but these might be found either in the descending or ascending line, or were, in the strictest sense of the term, collateral. The descending line was termed Belfiné, and the Geilfiné consisted of the father, the son, the grandson, the great-grandson, and the great-great-grandson, to the fifth generation. The ascending line was termed Culfiné, or back family, and we are told that, viewed in this connection, the Geilfiné consisted of the father’s brother, and his son, to the fifth generation.^[202] The collateral relationship was termed Taobhfiné, or side family; and, according to Mr. O’Donovan and the authorities he refers to, the Geilfiné is defined as ‘the first or direct family; the father and his two sons, and two grandsons; collateral tribe.’ The Deirbhfiné as ‘the second tribe; the next in point of dignity to the Geilfiné; 180the two grandsons and their two sons.’ The Iarfiné as ‘the after family; two sons of grandsons and their sons, making four persons;’ and Indfiné as ‘the fourth and lowest division of a tribe.’^[203] He does not define the members of which it consists, but it may be inferred that he held it to consist of the two sons of great-grandsons and their sons, corresponding to the five generations of the Brehon Laws.

The father, who in each case was the head of the Geilfiné, is evidently the person frequently referred to in these Laws as the Geilfiné chief, and the other four members of this group were evidently his nearest agnates, according to the position of the family, but the members of the other three groups, as presented to us in these Laws, cannot be viewed as his descendants. The Deirbhfiné, Iarfiné, and Indfiné, were obviously collateral and contemporary with the Geilfiné, otherwise it is impossible that they could, on the one hand, have been jointly responsible for a kinsman, or, on the other, have shared in the succession of each as they became extinct; and we can gather from several expressions in the Laws that such was the case. Thus we find in the Senchus Mor the seventeen persons are termed relatives, and are defined in the commentary as ‘kinsmen’ (Bleogain),^[204] and these are distinguished as Tobach, Saigi, and Bleogain, or kinsmen in general.^[205] In another commentary these terms are thus defined: ‘Tobach, that is, the nearest kinsman, that is, the liability of his son and grandson. Saigi, that is, the middle kinsman, that is, the liability of a kinsman as far as seventeen. Bleogain, that is, kinsman, that is, the farthest kinsman or Cin.’^[206] The first obviously refers to the constituent members of the Geilfiné; the second to the three other groups; and the third to the remainder of the kin of the chief who did not belong to these artificial groups.

181Again, we are told that ‘the tribe property (Finntiu) is claimed backwards; it is divided between three Finé; an extern branch stops it, if the five persons perish. Except as regards the liability of relationship, if the family become extinct; except a fourth part to the Findfiné. From seventeen men out it is decided that they are not a Duthaig Finé, or tribe community,’ and this is explained in the commentary to mean that ‘the hereditary right of the Geilfiné group goes backwards to the Deirbhfiné, who have their share of it when it is divided among the three Finé, that is, the dibad land is divided between the three Finé groups, viz., the Deirbhfiné, the Iarfiné, and the Indfiné. An extern branch stops it, that is, the branch by which the land is detained is a branch that is hitherto extern to the Geilfiné, that is, the Deirbhfiné.’ The liability of relationship is explained that, ‘as they share the dibad land, so they shall pay for the crimes of their relatives.’ It is added that, ‘from the seventeen men out, it is then they are distinguished, so that they are not a Duthaig Finé or tribe community, but a Duthaig n-Daine, or a community of people.’^[207]

From these notices it is apparent that there underlies the formation of these groups the idea of five generations. These were expressed by the terms Athair, father, Mac, son, Ua, grandson, Earmua, great-grandson, Innua, great-great-grandson, and that each of the four groups was one generation less than the other, the Geilfiné, or white family, being the chiefs immediate family, including himself;^[208] but it must not be supposed that these degrees of relationship implied descent from the same individual, otherwise it would require that the five generations were alive at the same time. The idea rather is that it required five generations from the founder of the Finé to complete the group of seventeen persons. Thus his own immediate family, to the number of 182four, constituted his Geilfiné. Then as each new person was born into the Geilfiné, the older member passed into a new group termed Deirbhfiné, and this went on till the group extended to nine persons; then, as new members were born to these two, older members passed into another group called Iarfiné,; and so on, as new generations were added, till the group of Indfiné was formed, and the whole number of seventeen was completedcompleted, the members of each being fathers and sons, and representing the fourth and fifth generations from the common ancestor; and as generations went on, the kin or kinsfolk of the chief passed through the alembic of these four groups and disappeared into the commonalty of the Finé, leaving always a residuum of seventeen persons behind them. These relationships, then, meant not descent from the same individual but from the founder of the Finé, and expressed the distance of each group from the stem-line of hereditary chiefs, and the degrees of relationship between them and the chief for the time being. This view of the degrees of relationship, as connected with the five generations, seems to be implied in one of the regulations regarding ‘Saer stock tenure.’ We are there told that ‘if one chief has received stock from another, there shall be no returning of the Saer stock without Seds, in that case until one heir transmits to another.’ ‘If it is from the chief next to him he has taken it, it is grandson upon grandson, or great-grandson upon great-grandson, or the son of a great-grandson upon the son of a great-grandson, and the number of degrees which are between the person who gave the stock and the person to whom it is given, is the number of relatives who shall claim the stock without Seds of Saer stock.’^[209]

The Geilfiné were thus what was termed youngest cadets; and the Indfiné, the oldest cadets, recognised as forming part 183of the kin, and as longest separated from the chief, were the most powerful family next to his own.

The following table, in which the succession to the dibad land is included, will show this conception of the nature of these groups:—

184It is hardly possible that so complicated a system should have long remained intact through all the changes produced in the social system of these tribes by the mere course of time; and it probably, at least to some extent, broke down under the growing importance of the family of the oldest cadet, which became more and more independent the longer it was separated from that of the chief, and so would narrow the group which formed his kin; and thus we see that as it became the most powerful family next to his, there came to be alternate election of the king or chief from these two families, the head of the one being always nominated Tanist to the other.

Such being probably the nature of these groups, it becomes necessary to examine their relation to the Tuath and that of the Flath Geilfiné or Geilfiné chief to the Ri Tuath. We find in the Senchus Mor the following statement:—‘The head of each Finé, or the Ceannfiné, should be the man of the Finé who is the most experienced, the most noble, the most wealthy, the wisest, the most learned, the most powerful to oppose, the most steadfast to sue for profits and for losses.’ The two qualities of ‘most noble’ in race and ‘most wealthy’ in cattle can only be found united in the Flath or chief, and he is expected to possess the rest. We therefore find in the commentary ‘the head of each Finé’ defined to be ‘every one who is head chief of the Geilfiné.’ We are then told that ‘every person in a Tuath accepts equal stock or subsidy from the Flath Geilfiné or Geilfiné chief, and the Flath Geilfiné accepts stock or subsidy from the Ri Tuath, or else every person in the Tuath accepts it from the Ri Tuath, though it is from him that the Flath Geilfiné takes his Flaithius or chiefship.’^[210] We have here an alternative statement. In the one the members of the tribe take stock from the Geilfiné chief, that is, are his 185dependants. In the other they take stock directly from the Ri Tuath. These statements represent different states of the tribe; the older state, when the members of the tribe were equal and independent of each other, and the later when they had become dependent upon the Flath or chief; but both might exist at the same time, some taking stock from the chief and some from the king. There was this distinction between the chief and the king as regards Saer stock tenure, that the connection between the Flath and the Ceile was based upon contract, and the connection which was freely entered into might be dissolved by either party; but we are told in the Cain tsaorrthadh or law of Saer stock tenure, ‘a man need never accept of Daer stock from any other unless he likes it himself, and he need not accept even of Saer stock from any but his own king, and he cannot refuse taking Saer stock from his own king.’ And further, ‘he cannot separate from his own king at any time, either while he holds by Saer stock tenure or by Daer stock tenure.’^[211] And in the Cain Aigillne or law of Daer stock tenure we read, ‘The law does not require of a man to accept of Daer stock from his own chief or from an extern chief, or from his own king or from an extern king, but the law requires of him to take Saer stock from his own king. If he takes Daer stock, it should be from his own king.’^[212]

This power which the Ri Tuath possessed of forcing the members of the tribe to become his dependants in Saer stock tenure, and of retaining them permanently, enabled him to increase his dependants to any extent; and besides the Ceile whom he thus gathered around him he likewise settled Fuidhir or stranger septs upon his waste land in proportion to the extent of his territory and the amount of his wealth. He thus not only occupied the position of Ri Tuath or king of the tribe, with all its rights and privileges, but 186was likewise the Flath or chief of the most powerful sept within it.

The Flath Geilfiné or Geilfiné chief was likewise the chief of an entire Finé or sept. This is implied in a passage in the tract ‘Of the judgment of every crime,’ where we are told that ‘the reason why the crime goes upon the Deirbhfiné and the Iarfiné before it goes upon the Flath or chief, is because it is one chief that is over them, the Flath Geilfiné, and he is chief of four Finés or groups.’ Another passage in the Book of Aicill also shows that he was next in rank and power to the king, for it apportions the fines for injuring the roads of a Tuath between the Ri or king and the Flath Geilfiné, and adds, ‘What is the reason that there is more due to the Ri Tuath for injuring his principal road than his by-road, and that there is more due to the Geilfiné chief for injuring his by-road than his principal road? The reason is, the principal road is more the peculiar property of the Ri Tuath than the by-road, and the by-road is more the peculiar property of the Flath Geilfiné than the principal road.’^[213]

Where then are we to recognise the Flath Geilfiné among the Aires of a Tuath of the Grad Flath? The Geilfiné chief, as we see, received his stock or subsidy direct from the Ri Tuath, but there were only two of the Aires who were in this position, and in this respect the Aires of a Tuath fall into two divisions. The Aire Desa and the Aire Ard received their stock from a Flath, but the Aire Tuise and the Aire Forgaill from the Ri Tuath direct, and it is in this latter division we have to look for the Flath Geilfiné. The Aire Forgaill was the highest grade of the Aires, and is said to be so named ‘because it is he that testifies (Fortgella) to the grades in every case in which denial of a charge is sought, and because his quality is superior to that of his fellows;’ while the Aire Tuise is said to be so called ‘because 187his race has precedence,’ or, as it may be more literally rendered, ‘because he is Tuisech or leader from race’ (Toisech a Ciniul).^[214] The former, as the superior of the two, may probably be viewed as the Flath Geilfiné or Geilfiné chief, and exercised the judicial functions of a chief; while the latter, as the oldest cadet, led the forces of the clan when called out either by the chief or by the king on a Sluaged or hosting.

Although the position of Flath or chief of a sept, as well as that of Ri Tuath or head of the whole tribe, was hereditary in the family but elective in the person, there can be little doubt that the senior of the family, as representing the founder of it, was usually elected as entitled to the position, unless disqualified by some defect mental or physical, and this principle is recognised in the tract on Succession, where it is thus laid down:—‘The senior with the Finé or sept, dignity with the Flath or chief, wisdom with the Eclais or church;’ and this rule is thus illustrated in the commentary: ‘Ignorance was set aside for wisdom in the orders of the church. An Aitech or tenant of the Grad Feiné was set aside for a Flath or chief, a junior was set aside for the senior, that is, the person who is junior shall rise or walk out of the kingship or the abbacy or the Geilfiné chiefship before the person who is senior.’ And again—‘Age is rewarded by the Feiné, for where there are two Aires or lords of the same family who are of equal dignity and property, the senior shall take precedence.’ And again—‘The senior is entitled to noble election,’ but ‘if the kings be equally old and good, lots are to be cast between them respecting the kingship, but if one of them is older than the other he shall go into it.’ Finally, it is laid down that ‘the junior shares and the senior is elected,’ and that ‘it is according to desert they come into power, and it is according to the goodness of the branch itself and the goodness of the grade also, and the most worthy person of the 188branch shall go into it, that is, the best person of that branch. And the head of all according to the dera of the Finé, that is, that every one who is a head should be afterwards according to the Finé.’

The following commentary on the qualities required in a chief further illustrates the principles on which the selection is made:—‘The noblest, that is, in age or in race (Cenel). The highest, that is, in grade. The wealthiest, that is, in ploughing and reaping. The shrewdest, that is, in wisdom or in mind. The wisest, that is, in learning. Popular as to compurgation, that is, who has good friends with compurgators, that is, good friends outside the territory adhering to him. The most powerful to sue, that is, to prosecute for each of them. The most firm to sue for profits, that is, of the dibad property. And losses, that is, liabilities.’ Finally, ‘the body of each is his Finé, that is, the body of each person who is head is his Finé. There is no body without a head, that is, of themselves, over them, according to law.’^[215] It was the operation of this rule that led to brothers being preferred to sons, and when there was alternate succession the collateral in the same degree was preferred to the son of his predecessor, as being one degree nearer to the common ancestor.

The regulations for compelling attendance upon the Sluaged or hosting still further illustrate the relations between the king and the chief of a sept. They are contained in the Book of Aicill, and are as follows:—‘If a man of the Grad Flath, with his Daer Ceile, came away from it (that is, the hosting), or if the Ceile came away from it, if ordered by the chief, Honor price shall be paid for it, half of which goes to the king of the province and the other half is divided into three parts; one third goes to the king who is nearest the king of the province in upward gradation (that is, the king of a Mortuath), one-third to the Ri Tuath who is over those 189below, and one-third to the chiefs and intermediate chiefs (Flathaibh) who are between them in the middle,’ by which latter distinction the two divisions of the Aires of the Grad Flath are intended.

‘If it was a man of the Grad Flath and one Ceile that came away from it, Honor price is to be paid for it also; and the share which the Ceile should pay, if all the Ceile had been concerned in it, is what he is to pay now, and the remainder is to be paid by him (that is, the chief), and the same division is made of the half for the king of the province, and the other half is divided into three parts.’

‘If it was the Ceile themselves that came away from it without the chief’s leave, the Smacht fine or Honor price, which is due for it, is to be paid by them; one-third of it goes to the king of the province, and one-third to the chief whose Ceile came away, and the other third is to be divided into three parts, one-third of which goes to the king of the Tuath who is over them, and one third to the chiefs and intermediate chiefs who are in the middle between them;’ to which is added, ‘Whenever it is Smacht fine that is paid, it shall be paid according to the rank of the person who pays it; and whenever Honor price is paid, it shall be paid according to the rank of the person to whom it is paid.’

‘What is the reason that there is a greater fine upon the Grad Flath for not going to the hosting than upon the Grad Feiné? The reason is, The hosting or the Dun-building suffers a greater loss from the absence of the Grad Flath than from that of the Grad Feiné, and they are more needed, and it is right there should be a greater fine upon them.’ ‘What is the reason that there is a greater fine imposed upon them for coming away from it than for not going to it? The reason of it is, It is more dangerous for the king to be deserted outside in an enemy’s territory, than that they should not go out with him at first.’^[216]

190The tie between the chiefs and their dependants was still further strengthened by the custom of fosterage, by which the children of the upper classes were intrusted to a family belonging to the inferior ranks to be brought up and trained along with their own children. This custom prevailed from an early period among the Irish tribes, but it is obvious that such an institution could only have arisen after the distinction of ranks had been fully organised in the tribe. The influence of early association with the earlier stage in the constitution of the tribe, when its free members were in a state of independence and equality with each other, may have led to their regarding the children under age, and before they had acquired any independent rights and privileges, as occupying no better position, and so created a sentiment that they ought to be trained along with the children of a lower rank, long after the reality which gave rise to the feeling had ceased to exist. Be this as it may, we find the institution in full operation in these Ancient Laws, and the regulations connected with it forming part of the Senchus Mor. According to it there were two kinds of fosterage with the Finé which had not been annulled—fosterage for affection, and fosterage for payment. The clothing and the food of the children given to the inferior families to foster is minutely regulated. Those of the children of the Grad Feiné were to be black or yellow or grey, and old clothes were to be worn by the sons of an Ogaire, and new by the sons of a Boaire. The sons of an Aire desa were to wear clothes of a different colour every day, and of two different colours on Sunday, and to have both old and new clothes. The sons of the superior chiefs were to wear clothes of two colours every day, both old and new, and new clothes of two colours on Sunday; while the sons of the Aire Forgill, the highest of all, and of the king, were to have new coloured clothes at all times, and all embroidered with gold and silver. How far such regulations were ever practically 191observed may well be doubted, but those regarding food are probably enough. Porridge^[217] was to be given to them all, but the materials of which it is made and the flavouring vary according to the rank of the parents of the children. The sons of the inferior grades are fed to bare sufficiency on porridge made of oatmeal and butter-milk or water taken with salt butter. The sons of chiefs are fed to satiety on porridge made of barley-meal, upon new milk with fresh butter. The sons of kings are fed on porridge made of flour, upon new milk taken with honey. The food of all, however, was alike, till the end of a year or of three years.

The price of the fosterage of the son of an Ogaire is three Seds or three Samhaiscs, that is, three-year-old heifers; and for his daughter four Seds, a Sed in addition being given for the daughter, because the household arrangements for her accommodation are more extensive than for the sons. This was the lowest price given, and the Fer Midbuid, or man of the humblest rank, could not perform the fosterage for less. The boys were to be taught the herding of lambs, calves, kids, and young pigs, and kiln-drying, combing, and wood-cutting; and the daughters the use of the quern, the kneading-trough, and the sieve. The price of the fosterage of the son of a Boaire was five Seds, or three cows. The price of the fosterage of the son of an Aire was ten Seds, and instruction in the usual sciences is given him; that is, the sons were taught horsemanship, brann-playing, shooting, chess-playing, and swimming; and the daughters sewing and cutting-out, and embroidery. The price of the fosterage of the son of a king was thirty Seds, and the foster-sons were to have horses in time of races, and the foster-father was bound to teach them horsemanship.

192The relationship thus formed was considered most friendly, and was connected with the Geilfiné relationship, but the passage which states it is so obscure that it is difficult to attach a definite meaning to it. The children remained with the foster-father till the boys were seventeen and the girls fourteen. The age of the boys was divided into three periods. The first extended till he was seven years old; the second from seven to twelve years, and the third till he was seventeen. During the first period the foster-father might punish him for faults with castigation, and during the second with castigation without food, but for his first fault there were to be three threatenings without castigation, and after the age of twelve he had to make compensation in the usual way, with regard to which there are many minute regulations. On the termination of the fosterage the foster-father returned the children with a parting gift, which was regulated according to the Honor price; and in return, the foster-son was bound to maintain his foster-father in sickness or old age, in the same manner as he would maintain his own father and mother.

Such were the leading features of the system of fosterage as presented to us in the Senchus Mor.^[218]

The ancient topographical descriptions of some of the territories in the three provinces of Munster, Connaught, and Ulster, which have been printed by the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, and which have been already referred to as affording illustrations of the tribe system, so far as preserved, likewise indicate the existence of the Finé or sept. Thus in the district of Corca Laidhe in Munster, which consisted of eight Tuaths or tribe territories, in describing the district of Cuil-Cearnadha, it is added, ‘These are its hereditary tribes (Fineadha duchusa), O’Rothlain its Toiseach, and Ua Cuinn, Ua Iarnain, and Ua Finain,’ three septs. 193Again, of the country or Duthaich of Gillamichil, which formed a Tuath, we are told, ‘These were its hereditary leaders (Oclaich Duthaich), O’Duibharda, O’Dunlaing, Oh-Ogain, O’Dubhagan,’ etc. It is unnecessary to go through the whole of them, or the Oclaich Duthaich of the other Tuaths, as Mr. O’Donovan adds a note which sufficiently explains their relation to the tribe. He says that these Oglaich ‘were the petty chiefs, Kenfinies or heads of families,’ properly septs, ‘who held their lands by the same right of descent from the common ancestor as the chief, or rather Toiseach, himself; and they were called ’Oglaich, young heroes, because they were bound to assist him in his wars against his enemies at the heads of their respective clans.’^[219]

We have some information, too, regarding the Finé or sept in Connaught. Thus in the ‘Tribes and Customs of Hy Fiachraich’ we read that Fiachra, son of Eochaidh Muighmheadhoin, Ardri of Erin, colonised this district, and had a son, Amhalgaidh, from whose son, Fedhlim, sprang the Cineal Fedhlimidh, which consisted of ‘O Ceallachain, O Caithniadh, Mac Coinin, O Muimhneachain, Mac Fhionain, O Gearadhain, O’Conboirne. These are the Cineal Fedhlimidh of Jorrus.’ The Cineal Feidhlimidh here is the tribe occupying a Tuath, and the others are the Finé or septs of which it was composed. Then from ‘Aongus, son of Amhalgaidh, came the Cineal Aongusa in Hy-Amhalgaidh, viz., O Muireadhaigh, Taoisig of the Lagan.’ Here we have the Taoisech at the head of the Cineal or tribe, and then we are told that ‘of the descendants of Aongus are the people of Dun Finne, or fort of the Finé, viz. O Cuinn, MagOdhrain, O Comhdhan, O’Duibhlearga, O Bearga, O Blighe, O Duanma or Duanmaigh;’ and these were the Finé or septs. Amhalgaidh had other sons by Earca, daughter of Eochaidh, king of Leinster, the eldest of whom was Fergus, and his son Muireadhach 194was Rig Ua n-Amhalgaidh, or king of Hy-Amhalgaidh. The descendants of this Muireadhach possessed ‘the Triocha Ceud of Bac and of Gleann Nemthinne, and the half Triocha Ceud of Breudach. These are the hereditary tribes (Fineadhoigh Dudhchusa) of Bac, viz., O Lachtna, Taoisioc of the two Bacs and of the Gleann, and of them O Dubhagain and the Clann Firbisigh, O Maoilruaidh of Ardachaidh, and O’Cuimin of Lios Cuimin on the Muaidh. These are the families or septs (Fineada) of Breudach, viz., O Toghda, Taoiseach of Breudach, O Glaimin, O Luachaidh, and O Gilin.’^[220] Here we have two groups of Finé or septs, with a Toisech at the head of each. Lastly, from Aongus Fionn, another son of Amhalgaidh, are O’Gaibhtheachan, O’Flainn, and O’Maoilhiona, chiefs (Flaithe) of Calraighe Muighe h-Eleag.

In one of MacFirbis’s tracts he deduces the tribes and septs descended from Brian, the son and successor of Eochaidh Muighmeadoin, king of Connaught. He is said to have had ‘twenty-four‘twenty-four sons, and from Echean, one of them, descended the Cinel n-Echean or tribe of Echean, consisting of the septs of O’Biasta, O’Bli, O’Caisleorach, O’Ruanuidhen, and O’Fionnucain. From Fergus came the Cinel Fergusa of Echtge, consisting of the septs of O’Brain, O’Bruachain, O’Conrethe, and O’Cairriodha, Taoiseachs of Cinel Fergusa. From Erc Dearg, or the Red, came the Cinel Deirg in Connaught; from Esse or Essile came the Tuath Esille; from Aongus are the Cinel n-Aongusa of Galway, that is, the O’Hallorans with their branches; from Tenedh the Corco-Tenedh, and Muichead, from whom Corco-Muichead; from Cana, the O’Cananans in Uaithne; Neachtain, from Tir Neachtain, with their septs (Fineadhaibh); two Carbrys, viz., Carbry Conrith, from whom is descended St. Barry of Corc, and Carbry Aircheann, from whom the Hy Briuin Ratha in West Connaught; three Conalls, viz., Conall Oirisin, from 195whom the men of Umalia, Conall Glun, from whom the O’Monahans, Taoiseachs of the three Tuaths, and Conall Cortaine, from whom the O’Maolduibh; Eochaidh, from whom the Cinel n-Eachach; and Enna Eamalach, from whom Cinel n-Eanna; Duach Galach, the youngest, from whom the kings of Rath Cruachan are descended.’^[221]

In the province of Ulster we find, besides the Tuaths which formed the subdivisions of the larger districts and were equivalent to the tribe territories, that in some a smaller division is mentioned termed a Cinement. Thus in the district of the Glynnes, consisting of seven subdivisions, six are termed Tuoghs or Tuaths, and one is the ‘Cynamond of Armoy and Raghlin,’ containing the parish of Armoy and the island of Rathlin. Again, among the Tuoghs in North Clandeboy we find the ‘Cinament of Knockboynabrade;’ the ‘Cinament of Duogh Connor,’ containing the sixteen towns of Connor; the Cinament of Kilmahevet; the Cinament of Ballinowre, represented by the modern parish of Ballinowre, and containing 8000 acres; the Cinament of Carntall, Monksland, and Carnemony; the Cinament of Dirrevolgie, alias Fealaogh; and the Cinament of Clandermot, containing four Ballys or townlands.^[222] This word Cinament is derived from Cine, a sept, and Minand, a habitation or residence, and these smaller districts were obviously the possessions of septs or Finés which had become detached from their tribe, and thus we find the name of the Clan Dermot connected with one of them. Again, we find the Barony of Lower Castlereagh in South Clandeboy consisted of five smaller territories termed Slut Henrickies, Slut Kellies, Slut Hugh Bricks, Slut Bryan Boye, Slut Durnings, and Slut Owen mac Quin, the last two forming one district; but this word Slut is the Irish Sliocht or sept, and the names are corrupted from Sliocht 196Enri Caoich, or the sept of Henry the Blind; Sliocht Ceallaigh, or sept of the Kellies; Sliocht Aodh breac, or sept of Hugh the Freckled; Sliocht Briuin buidhe, or sept of Brian the Yellow; Sliocht Owen mhic Cuinn, or sept of Owen son of Conn.^[223]

Sir John Davis, in his Letter to the Earl of Salisbury, written about the same time, gives us a very clear account of the position of these septs in the counties of Fermanagh and Cavan. In Fermanagh he derived his information from certain of the clerks or scholars of that country, who knew all the septs and families and their branches, and the dignity of one sept above another, and what families or persons were chief of every sept, and who were next, and who were of third rank, and so forth, till they descended to the most inferior man in all the barony. Moreover, they took upon them to tell ‘what quantity of land every man ought to have by the custom of their country, which is of the nature of gavelkind, whereby, as their septs or families did multiply, their possessions have been from time to time divided and subdivided, and broken into so many small parcels as almost every acre of land had a several owner, who termeth himself a lord and his portion of land his country.’ ‘Notwithstanding, as McGuire himself had a chiefry over all the country, and some demesne that did ever pass to him only who carried that title, so was there a chief of every sept who had certain services, duties, and demesnes that ever passed to the Tanist of that sept, and never was subject to division.’ And in his return of the state of the county of Cavan he gives the following general account:—‘In the Irish countries, where the custom of Tanistry is not extinguished, the tenures are everywhere alike. There is first a general chieftain of every country or territory, which hath some demesne and some household provisions yielded unto him by all the inhabitants 197under him; every sept or surname hath a particular chieftain or Tanist, which hath likewise his peculiar demesne and duties, and these possessions go by succession or election, entirely without any division; but all the other lands holden by the inferior inhabitants are partable in course of gavelkind, wherein there is no difference made between legitimate sons and bastards.’^[224]

Such, then, being the leading features of the Tuath or tribe, and the Finé or sept, so far as we can gather them from the Ancient Laws of Ireland, and as we find them exemplified in the later condition of the country, which it is essential for our purpose to indicate, we must now pass over to the mainland of Great Britain, and examine how far we can likewise trace them in the Ancient Laws of its Welsh population; and here we see clearly enough that a tribal system possessing in the main the same characteristics lies at the foundation of their social organisation. It was likewise modified in the main by the same influences, but that of the Church was earlier encountered, and it could hardly escape being affected by another influence to which the Irish tribe was not exposed, viz., that of the Roman institutions during the period when the Welsh population formed a part of the Roman province—an influence, however, which would be more intense in the southern and eastern districts, and more superficial in the mountainous region of the west, and in the frontier districts between the Roman walls, whose Welsh population afterwards formed the kingdom of Strathclyde.

The Welsh codes which have been preserved are those of Gwynedd or North Wales, and Dyved and Gwent, the west and east divisions of South Wales. Besides these we have some fragments of Commentaries printed under the title of Anomalous Laws, and we have also the advantage of possessing a Latin version of the Laws of Dyved, which gives us the 198equivalent of the Welsh terms in the Latin of the feudal charters. The oldest of these codes are certainly the Laws of Gwynedd or North Wales, and they recognise the influence of the Church as establishing the sanction of marriage, requiring legitimacy in the sons, and introducing a law of primogeniture in the succession to land which did not exist in the Irish system, when it declares, ‘An innate Bon-eddig is a person who shall be complete as to origin in Wales both by the mother and by the father. The ecclesiastical law says again that no son is to have the patrimony but the eldest born to the father by the married wife.’ The rule was not, however, universally accepted, for it is added, ‘The law of Howel, however, adjudges it to the youngest son as well as to the oldest.’^[225]

These laws present to us the Cymric people, or Welsh population, who still maintained their independence, as in a more advanced stage of organisation than the Irish tribes are exhibited in the Brehon Laws. We find the land divided into Talaeth, or provinces, each under its Brenhin, or king, similarly to that of Ireland, and all under a Brenhin penrhaith, or supreme king; but while we can trace the original function of the king as judge of his people, the position of king had assumed a more modern aspect both as relates to his power and authority, and to his rights in connection with the land. The whole people are termed the Cenedl y Gymry, or race of the Cymry, and we can see that the organisation of each province was based upon an earlier tribal system, and that it must have been formed by a confederation of tribes similar to that of the Irish province. Indications of this earlier tribal system appear to be contained in ‘The Heads of the Social State’ attributed to Dyvnwal Moelmud, a mythic king. These tribes appear as Llwylh a Cenedl. We find also the same distinction of the people into bond 199and free, Caithion and Rydyon, the Latin equivalents of which were Nativi and Liberi, the latter alone representing the ancient free members of the tribe. These are termed in the Laws Boneddic Cancwynawl. They were pure Cymri both by father and mother, and the Latin equivalent was nobilis ingenuus. The head of the tribe was the Pencenedl, or prefectus generis, who is still recognised as a functionary in these Laws. According to the Triads of the Social State, the Pencenedl must be the oldest in the Cenedl so far as the ninth degree of kindred, who is in full strength of body and mind. The same process which in the case of the Irish tribe had created a class of territorial lords or Flaith, no doubt gave rise to the similar class whom we find fully developed in the Welsh law. These were the Uchelwyr or Breyr, sometimes termed Mab Uchelwyr, just as the Irish Flaith appear as Mac Oclaich, and their Latin equivalent was Optimates. When a family succeeded in retaining possession of the same portion of land for a certain period, they were recognised as proprietors of it, and entered the class of territorial lords. Thus in the Laws of Gwynedd, ‘Whosoever shall claim land and soil by kin and descent, let him show his kin and descent from the stock from whence he is derived; and if he be a fourth man, he is a proprietor because a fourth man becomes a proprietor;’ and in the Laws of Gwent, ‘a dadenhudd is the tilling by a person of land tilled by his father before him. In the fourth degree a person becomes a proprietor,—his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and himself the fourth.’^[226] The servile class consisted of two kinds. First, those of native race termed Taeog or Villanus, and the Caeth or prædial serf. The former class was analogous to the Daer Ceile or bond tenants, and the latter to the Sencleithe of the Irish.

Besides the occupiers of the soil, who were native members 200of the tribe, there was a class of foreign settlers analogous to the Fuidhir of the Irish, who were termed Alltudion or strangers, and were settled on the waste lands.

The land which formed originally the common property of the tribe now appears as consisting of the Tir Gwelyawg or inheritance land, similar to the Irish Orba. Part was held in demesne and cultivated by the Alltudion or stranger villains, and the Caethion, or prædial serfs; and part occupied by the Taeog, or native members of the tribe, who had become his tenants. There was also the Tir Bwrdd or mensal land, and the Tir Cylladus or geldable land, also termed Tir Cyfrif or register land, which was divided among the Aillt or native members of the tribe.^[227] The mode in which the land was occupied will, however, be better understood in connection with the system of land measurement which appears in these laws.

It is thus given in the Laws of Gwynedd. The smallest denomination of land was the Erw or acre. It was a ridge of land. The measure was what was termed the long yoke of sixteen feet, the breadth consisted of two yokes, and the length was thirty times its breadth. It thus contained 3413 square yards, that is, somewhat less than three-fourths of an imperial acre. The basis of this system is the number four. Four of these Erws formed a Tyddyn or man’s house, that is, the homestead of a single family, and four Tyddyns made a Randir or division of land. Four Randirs formed a Gavael, and four Gavaels the Tref or townland. Four Trefs made a Maenawl. Twelve Maenawls and two Trefs formed a Cymwd, and two Cymwds a Cantrev, so called because it thus contained one hundred Trefs. The Cymwd, however, appears to be the true unit in this system, for we are told that the two Trefs which it contained, besides the twelve Maenawls, were for the use of the Brenin or king. 201One was his Maertrev land, and the other for his waste and summer pasture. There were thus, we are told, four legal Erws of tillage in every Tyddyn; sixteen in every Randir; sixty-four in every Gavael; two hundred and fifty-six in the Tref; one thousand and twenty-four in every Maenawl; twelve thousand two hundred and eighty-eight in the twelve Maenawls. In the two Trefs which pertain to the court are to be five hundred and twelve Erws; the whole of that, when summed up, is twelve thousand and eight hundred Erws in the Cymwd,^[228] or about 9600 imperial acres.

The Tref thus, in the main, corresponds to the Ballyboe or ploughgate of the Irish system, and the fifty Trefs of the Cymwd were thus distributed among the people. Sixteen Trefs formed the Tir Cyfrif or register land, occupied by the Bonedic or free members of the tribe. Eight Trefs, or two Maenawls, were assigned to the Cynghellawr and the Maer who represented the king in the Cymwd, and divided the register land among the people. Twenty-four Trefs, or six Maenawls, were the Tir Gwelyawg or inheritance land, possessed by the free Uchelwyr; and the two Trefs which remained over were the king’s Tir Bwrdd or mensal land. Under the Uchelwyr there was a similar distribution of land, and it is obvious that what was originally the common land of the tribe, had now come to be viewed as the property of the king; and the Bonedic, or original free occupiers of the land, now appear as the king’s Aillts. Though, like the Irish Ceile, they came to occupy a dependent position in relation to the superior, their original mode of occupation of the soil remained unchanged, and the Maer and Cynghellawr are directed to share this land equally between all in the Tref or township, and on 202that account it is called Tir Cyfrif or register land. On the other hand, the sons succeeded equally to the Tir Gwelyawg or inheritance land, and if they failed, it went to their first and second cousins, after whom there was no further division, a succession very similar to the Irish Gavelcine.

This system of land-measures was not, however, uniform, for we are told that Bleddyn, a prince of Gwynedd and Powis, altered the size of the Tyddyn or smallest holding from four Erws to twelve Erws when held by an Uchelwr, eight Erws when held by an Aillt, and four when held by a Godaeog or superior Taeog,^[229] and in the Laws of Dyved we find a still greater variety. In these laws the Tref or township in the free manors is to consist of four Randirs, instead of sixteen as in the Laws of Gwynedd, and the Randir is to contain three hundred and twelve Erws, ‘so that the owner may have in the three hundred Erws arable pasture and fuel wood and space for buildings on the twelve Erws.’ The Erw, however, is smaller than that in the Laws of Gwynedd, for while it is of the same breadth, viz., the long yoke of sixteen feet, it is only sixteen times as long in place of thirty. Again, in place of the Maenawl containing a uniform quantity of four Trefs, the lowland Maenawl, where the land is more fertile, is to consist of seven Trefs, and the upland Maenawl thirteen.^[230] The land-measures as given in the Code of Gwent are very similar, but with some variations. There is the same direction that there are to be four Randirs in the Tref and three hundred and twelve Erws in the Randir, but the Erw contains eighteen rods of eighteen feet in place of sixteen yokes in the length, and there are to be thirteen Trefs in every Maenawl, except those of the Taeog Trefs, which contain only seven. Of the four Randirs in the free Tref three are for occupancy and the fourth pasturage for the three; but in 203the Taeog Tref there are only three Randirs, the third being pasturage for the other two.^[231]

The original rights of the free members of the tribe, on which their possession of the register land is based, are thus defined in the Triads of the Social State:—‘There are three original rights of every native Welshman (Cymro Cynwhynawl),—first, the possession, without restriction, of five Erws of land; second, a right of determining the constitutional law of the country under protection and in right of the Pencenedl; and third, a right to the freedom of the country in general, that is to say, that he be free to go whither he will without loss of privilege or verdict, unless when in actual service of the country, or of a court of law.’^[232]

The burdens upon the land and its possessors were as follows:—The sixteen Trefs in the Cymwd possessed by the Aillt paid a rent in kind, termed Dawnbwyd, which was similar to the Biatad or food-rent of the Irish system, and were subject to the Cylch and Dovraith of the superior, or refection and quartering, equivalent to the Conmedha or Coigny of the Irish. From the Trefs possessed by the Uchelwyr, and the two manors belonging to the Maer and Cynghellawr, the king received a Gwestva or food-rent, which corresponds to the Bestighi or food-rent of the house paid by every rank in the Irish tribe to the Ri Tuath; but in the Welsh system the payment in kind was, in part, commuted for a money payment, and we find no trace of the subsidy or gift of stock by the superior, in proportion to the return in the shape of food-rent, which characterises the whole relations of the different grades in the Irish tribe to each other.^[233]

Besides these regular burdens, there were two that may be termed casual. These were the Ebidiw or relief, payable 204to the superior by the heir of a defunct vassal; and secondly, the Amobr, Gobr Merch, or maiden fee, that is, a fee paid to the superior by the person subject to that payment on the marriage of a daughter. By the Welsh laws the Amobyrs of the daughters are said to be of equal amount with the Ebidiws of their fathers, and there were three Ebidiws—an Ebidiw of a pound, an Ebidiw of six score pence, and an Ebidiw of three score pence. The first was paid by the principal officers of the palace—by the Pencenedl and by the officers of the country, the Maer and the Cynghellawr. The second by the superior officers, the Uchelwr or Breyr, and the Gwahalaeth or son of a lord; and the third by the king’s Taeog, an Arddelwman and an Alltud whom the king has enfranchised.^[234]

Another important feature of the Irish tribe system is exactly reflected in the Welsh laws. The compensation for every injury, from the slaughter of a member of the tribe to the smallest loss, was by fines based upon a value or price put upon each person according to his position as regards rank and wealth. The fines are the Galanas for slaughter, equivalent to the Eric of the Irish; the Saraad, or fine for any personal injury or insult, which seems to be the Smacht of the Irish; the Dirwy and Camlwrw, equivalent to the Dire fines of the Irish. The Gwerth or price of the different ranks, equivalent to the Irish Honor price, and which regulated the Galanas, was as follows:—That of a king is defined in the Laws of Gwynedd as three times his Saraad. The Gwerth or value and Galanas of a Pencenedl is to be paid by thrice nine kine and thrice nine score kine, and his Saraad is thrice nine kine and thrice nine score of silver. The Gwerth or price and the Galanas of an Uchelwr was six score and six kine, and his Saraad six kine and six score of silver. That of a native Bonedic, or free member of a tribe, was three score and three 205kine, and his Saraad was three kine and three score of silver. That of a king’s Alltudd, or foreign settler, was the same. The Gwerth of the Alltudd of an Uchelwr, as well as his Saraad, was one half that of the king’s Alltudd. The Gwerth of a Caeth or bondman, if of the island, was one pound; if from beyond sea, one pound and six score pence, and his Saraad was twelve pence. The third of every Galanas belongs to the king, ‘for to him pertains the enforcing of it when the Cenedl may be unable to enforce it.’ The Dirwy was twelve kine or three pounds; and the Camlwrw, or fine for wrong, three kine or nine score pence.

So far the resemblance between the Irish and the Welsh tribe seems sufficiently marked, and we can also trace in the Welsh Laws the existence of the sept, though it does not come so prominently forward as in the Irish Laws. The Uchelwr or territorial lord, from which class alone the Pencenedl was elected, had under him a class of native Cymri who had become his Aillt or tenants, and had likewise settled upon his land, the Alltudion or stranger tenants, both bond and free, and his prædial serfs or Caethim. These formed his Teulu or sept, which was sufficiently numerous to turn out a military force of one hundred and twenty fighting men;^[235] and we find, though to a more limited extent, the same system by which the nearer relations of the chief formed an artificial group, which inherited his lands and were responsible for the crimes of its members. The law of succession in the Tir Gwelyawg or inheritance land was this—‘Three times shall the same patrimony be shared between three grades of a kindred. First, between brothers; the second time between cousins; the third time between second cousins; after that there is no propriate share of land;’land;’^[236] and in the Commentaries this is illustrated by the following figure,

which shows the similarity of the system with the Irish. The commentator adds, ‘The above figure guides a person to understand the arrangement and connection existing between him and his ancestors and his co-inheritors and his children. For the ancestors of a person are his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather; the co-inheritors are brothers and cousins and second cousins; the heirs of a person are those who proceed from his body, as a son, and a grandson and a great-grandson; and if a person be skilful in the use of the figure described above, when a person descended from any one of the three kins of the body of the original stock shall die without heir of his body, he will know who is to obtain the land of such a one according to law. For unto the third degree there is to be an appropriate sharing of land in the court of a Cymwd or Cantrey.’^[237]

These three kins of the Welsh Laws evidently represent the first two Finés of the Irish Laws, viz., the Geilfiné and Deirbhfiné, but the Welsh Law proceeds no further with the distribution than the first nine persons of the Irish group of seventeen. The same group was liable under the Welsh Laws for the crimes of its members, and the fines incurred by them, but the nine degrees are differently stated, in a manner 207which appears to extend it as far as the Irish system. We find in the Laws that ‘whoever shall confess Galanas, he and his kindred shall pay the whole of the Saraad and Galanas of the person killed;’ and then the kindred is thus defined: ‘Thus the grades of kindred are denominated which are to pay Galanas, or to receive payment. The first grade of the nine is the father and mother of the murderer or of the murdered. The second is a grandfather. The third is a great-grandfather. The fourth is brothers and sisters. The fifth is a cousin. The sixth is a second cousin. The seventh is a third cousin. The eighth is a relation in the fourth remove. The ninth is a relation in the fifth remove. The collateral relations in these grades are the nephews and uncles of the murderer or of the murdered. A nephew is a son of a brother or sister or of a cousin or of a second cousin, male or female. An uncle is a brother of a father or mother, or of a grandfather or grandmother, or of a great-grandfather or great-grandmother. This is the amount of the share of each of these; whoever may be nearer by one degree to the murderer, or to the murdered, than another, is to pay or to receive twice as much as the other; and so in respect to all the grades and their collateral members.’^[238]

The head of the sept was termed the Penteulu, but we have little information as to his relation towards the king or the Pencenedl, except that it was from the class of Uchelwyr that these were elected, and thus, as in the Irish system, they too had each their Teulu or sept.

There is but one allusion in the Welsh Laws to the system of fosterage, but it is sufficient to show that this custom also prevailed among the Welsh tribes. We find in the code of Gwynedd that ‘if an Uchelwr place his son to be reared with the Aillt of a lord, by the permission or by the sufferance of the lord, for a year and a day, that son is to have a 208son’s share of the Aillt’s land, and ultimately of his property.’^[239] The age of the boy, however, is distinguished into only two periods. First, from his baptism till he is seven years of age, during which time his father is to swear and pay for him, except the payment of Dirwy or Camlwrw for him to the king; because the king is not to have any Dirwy or Camlwrw for an error nor for the act of an idiot, and he is not endowed with reason; he must, however, indemnify the sufferer for his property. At the end of seven years he himself is to swear for his acts, and his father is to pay. From the time when a boy is born till he shall be fourteen years of age, he is to be at his father’s platter, and his father lord over him; and he is to receive no punishment but that of his father, and he is not to receive one penny of his property during that time, only in common with his father. At the end of fourteen years the father is to bring his son to the lord and commend him to his charge; and then the youth is to become his man, and to be on the privilege of his lord; and he is himself to answer every claim that may be made on him; and is to possess his own property; thenceforward his father is not to correct him, more than a stranger; and if he should correct him, upon complaint made by the son against him he is subject to Dirwy, and is to do him right for the Saraad. ‘From that age onward he is of the same privilege with an innate Boneddig.’^[240]

The preceding short analysis of the tribal organisation in its leading features, as presented to us in the ancient Irish and Welsh laws, is an indispensable preliminary to any inquiry into the ancient land tenure of the people of Scotland in Celtic times. Without it we should have been at a loss to discover the source and origin of many of the peculiar features it presents in later times.

In investigating the early social state of the Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain, we possess an advantage which does not attach to that of Ireland. For the Pagan period in the latter country we have no information except what is derived from native tradition; but in Britain we possess in addition a few incidental notices by contemporary writers of other countries, both as regards the native population of the Roman province and the Barbarian nations beyond its limits. These notices, few and general as they are, yet indicate the presence of a social organisation very similar to that of Ireland.

When we are told by one Greek writer ‘that its aboriginal tribes inhabit Britain, in their usages still preserving the primitive modes of life, and that they have many kings and princes;’^[241] by another, ‘that there are several states amongst them. Forests are their cities; for having enclosed an ample space with felled trees, here they make themselves huts and lodge their cattle;’^[242] when Cæsar tells us of the inhabitants of the interior, whom he calls indigenous, that ‘they did not resort to the cultivation of the soil for food, but were dependent upon their cattle and the flesh of animals slain in hunting for their food;’^[243] when Solinus reports of the inhabitants of the five Western Isles forming the southern group, that ‘they knew nothing of the cultivation of the ground, but lived upon fish and milk,’ which latter implies 210the possession of herds of cattle, ‘and that they had one king, who was not allowed to possess property;’^[244] when Tacitus speaks ‘of the numerous states beyond the Firth of Forth,’ and describes the great Caledonian army which Agricola encountered at the Mons Granpius as a federation of all the states of the northern population; and when we are told of the two great divisions of them in the third century—the Caledonians and the Mæatæ—‘that they inhabit mountains wild and waterless, and plains desert and marshy; that they live by pasturage and the chase, and that their state is chiefly democratical;’^[245]—we can see that they consisted of an aggregation of tribes occupying the land in common, and whose chief possessions consisted of cattle. When these writers add that they had their wives in common, they indicate at least that looser relation between the sexes which usually prevailed before the introduction of Christianity had invested a stricter rule of marriage with its sanction, and which led to a connection through females as being regarded with more favour than that through males.

When we come down, however, to Christian times, we find the existence of the Tuath both as the tribe and as the tribe territory fully recognised as characterising the social organisation of the population of Gaelic race. The ancient tract, termed the Amra Choluim Chilli, of Dallan Forgaill, preserved in the Liabhar na h-Uidre, contains repeated references to the Tuaths both in the sense of tribes and of their territories, and as regards the Pictish nation as well as the Dalriadic colony. Thus we are told that Saint Columba ‘illuminated countries and territories’ (Tir agus Tuatha), and that from him ‘the Tuaths used to be disciplined.’ Again, when it is said, ‘Through an idolatrous Tuath he meditated criminality,’ which is explained to mean, ‘when going through the Tuath or territories of the 211idols he would know their criminality towards God,’ it can only refer to the pagan nation of the Picts; and when we are told that ‘he sought seven Tuaths, viz., the five Tuaths of Erin, and two Tuaths in Alban,’ the latter must be identified with the territory given him by the Picts, who, according to Bede, inhabited the districts adjacent to Iona. In another passage, when St. Columba is referred to as ‘the son of Fedelimid for whom used to fight or whom used to serve the twenty Tuaths,’ the word is probably used in the sense of tribes, and it is still more plainly used in this sense, as existing among the southern Picts, when he is described as ‘the teacher who used to teach the tribes who were around Tai, that is, the name of a river in Alban,’ which can obviously be identified with the river Tay. In another passage they are referred to as the people of the Tay (Lucht Toi); and the Tuaths or tribes are indicated as existing both among the Dalriads and the Picts, when he is called ‘the champion who bound new things for the alliance of Conall, that is, the champion of the new things is not here for alliance, that is, for confirming the alliance of Conall, that is, between the Tuaths of Conall within, or at making their alliance with other Tuaths externally.’^[246] Conall was the king of Dalriada at the time when St. Columba came over from Ireland to Scotland, and the other Tuaths or tribes which were external to his kingdom can only refer to the neighbouring tribes of the Picts. The undoubted antiquity of this tract gives great value to these incidental references to the existence of the Tuath or tribe, not only among the Scots of Dalriada, where we might expect to meet them, but also among the two great races of the northern and southern Picts, and this is confirmed by other authorities of a later date. Thus, in the tract called ‘The Genealogy of Corca Laidhe,’ referred to in a previous 212chapter, we read that ‘Irial Glumnar, son of Conall Cearnach, had two sons, viz., Forc and Iboth. Rechtgidh Righdearg led them into Alban. They gained great battles, so that great districts were laid waste in Alban, until the men of Alban submitted to Rechtgidh Righdearg, so that he was king of Erin and Alban; and it was from them sprang the two Tuaths or tribes, Tuath Forc and Tuath Iboth in Alban.’^[247] Rechtgidh Righdearg was one of the mythic pagan kings of Ireland, and Irial Glumnar a traditionary hero of the Cruithnigh, or Picts of Ulster; but it is a fair inference from it that two Tuaths or tribes bearing the names of Forc and Iboth were known in Scotland, and the name Forc, which is the old form of that of the river Forth, indicates their situation on the northern shore of that river or estuary, that is, among the southern Picts. That a social organisation similar to the Irish tribal system prevailed among the southern Picts, to whom St. Columba’s mission was mainly directed, is confirmed by the Gaelic entries in the Book of Deer, which open with the statement that ‘Columba and Drostan, son of Cosgrach, his pupil, came from Hi, as God had shown them, unto Abbordoboir or Aberdour, and Bede the Cruthnech or Pict, who was Mormaer of Buchan, gave them that town in freedom for ever from Mormaer and Toisech;’ thus exactly corresponding to the grant of land to the church of Kells, quoted in a former chapter as free from rent, tribute, hosting, coigny, or any other claim of king or Toisech. Where there are Toisechs there are Tuaths, and the district of Buchan probably formed a Mortuath like the other districts ruled over by a Mormaer, the equivalent in Scotland of the Ri Mortuath of the Irish system.

The Scottish kingdom of Dalriada was at this time confined within very narrow limits, and could hardly claim a higher position than that of a Mortuath, as we find that it 213consisted of three tribes, termed, in the tract ‘Of the History of the Men of Alban,’ the three powerfuls in Dalriada. These were the Cinel Gabran, the Cinel Angus, and the Cinel Loarn, who traced their descent from the three sons of Eochaidh—Fergus, Angus, and Loarn—who led the colony from Irish Dalriada. We obtain from this tract some valuable information as to the constitution of these tribes. The Cinel Gabran occupied Kintyre in its old extent, including Knapdale, the district of Cowall, and the islands, that is, of Arran and Bute, and consisted of five hundred and sixty houses. The Cinel Angusa possessed Isla and Jura, and consisted of four hundred and thirty houses. The Cinel Loarn possessed the extensive district of Lorn, extending from Lochleven to the Point of Ashnish, and part of the opposite coast of Morvern, and consisted of four hundred and twenty houses. The districts thus occupied by these tribes surrounded an inner region, extending from the range of mountains called Drumalban to the arms of the sea termed Lochs Craignish and Crinan, consisting of the two districts of Lochaw and Ardskeodnish. This inner region seems to have been left to the older inhabitants of the country, and to have borne the name of Airgialla, possibly for the same reason that that name was applied to the extensive region in the heart of Ulster, wrested by the Scots under the three Collas from the Irish Picts.^[248] The houses of which these three tribes consisted seemed to have formed groups of twenty houses each, as we are told that their sea muster assigned twice seven benches or seats for rowers to each twenty houses, but the armed muster for the Sluaged or hosting was, for the Cinel Gabran three hundred men, for the Cinel Angusa five hundred men, and for the Cinel Loarn seven hundred men, but one hundred of these were furnished by the people of Airgialla.^[249]

214The only other districts of modern Scotland in which a Gaelic population remained are those of the Lennox and of Galloway, and in the latter we can trace the remains of the same tribal system. Thus in the year 1276 we find King Alexander the Third confirming a charter by which Neil, Earl of Carrick, granted and confirmed to Roland of Carrick and his heirs the right of being head of their kin in all pleas relating to kenkenoll and the office of bailie, and the leadership of the men of the country under the earl. This shows that the Cinel or tribe, with its head or Ceannchinel, had formerly existed among the Gaelic population of Galloway; and the same thing is indicated by some notices of lost charters preserved in the ancient Index published in 1798. Thus there is a charter by David II. to Donald Edzear of the captainship of Clanmacgowin, and a charter ‘anent the Clan of Muintircasduff,^[250] John M‘Kennedy captain thereof;’ this term of Captain being the equivalent of the Toisech of the Irish and Scottish Gael,^[251] and the word Muintir, or people, being one of the appellations of a tribe.

These indications of the existence of a tribal organisation analogous to that in Ireland among the Celtic population during the period when, with the exception of Saxon Lothian, both king and people were Celtic, comprise in the main the information we are able to gain from the most trustworthy sources available to us; but after the purely Celtic dynasty of kings of Scottish race came to an end in the eleventh 215century in the person of Malcolm the Second, this tribal system became exposed to powerful external influences, which greatly modified its character, and finally resulted in its disappearance in the eastern districts under feudal forms, and its passing over in the mountainous regions of the north and west into the clanship which was afterwards found there.

Soon after the death of Malcolm the Second the northern districts of Scotland fell under the dominion of the Norwegian Earl of Orkney, while the Celtic Mormaer of Moray reigned in a kingdom the centre of which was at Scone; but when the usurper was expelled by the heir through a female of the ancient line, and Malcolm Ceannmor was established on the throne by the powerful aid of the Angles of Northumberland under their Earl Siward, and the northern districts reverted to his sway on the death of the Norwegian Earl, Saxon influences became predominant; and the new dynasty, still more closely connected with the Saxons through the marriage of its founder with the Saxon Princess Margaret, found its support mainly in the Anglic population of Lothian, which now became the most important province of the extended monarchy. His son Eadgar reigned in reality as a Saxon monarch, and when on his death the kingdom was divided between his brothers Alexander and David, the former consolidated his kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde upon the basis of Saxon institutions, while the latter ruled over the districts of British Strathclyde and Anglic Lothian as a feudal lord, with Norman sympathies and supported by a powerful following of Norman nobles. During the reigns of Eadgar and Alexander there was a silent advance of Saxon colonisation, and a progressive assimilation of the people to Saxon customs, which led to a Saxon nomenclature being imposed upon their Celtic institutions which found analogous forms in the Saxon laws; and thus in the kingdom of Alexander the First we find the Celtic Mormaer 216appearing as Comes or Earl, while the name of Thanus or thane was applied to the Toisech,^[252] and the tribe territory is now termed Thanagium or Thanage. In the British district of Strathclyde the Celtic forms disappeared before the advancing feudalism of David; and when upon the death of his brother he became the first feudal king of all Scotland and its first lawgiver, the constitution of his kingdom was based upon the feudal system; and as its leading principle was that the king was feudal superior of all the territory, and all rights to land emanated from him, all land not given out as feudal holdings was held to be Crown land, and the tribe territories not placed under feudal lords, and now termed Thanages, were regarded as royal demesnes.^[253]

When Fordun, therefore, in the forty-third chapter of his fourth book, tells us that ‘of old almost the whole kingdom was divided into Thanages,’ he was not referring to that fabulous state of matters described in a previous chapter, when Thanes were supposed to be governors of provinces, with an Abthane over them as high steward—a state of matters which never existed in Scotland; but, as is evident from the context, to those smaller territories termed Thanages in his own day, and, viewing these Thanages as representing the more ancient Tuaths or tribe territories, he is reporting a genuine tradition of the tribal organisation which preceded the Saxon and feudal forms.

The principal fragments of the ancient tribal law which we find still preserved in the subsequent legislation were those relating to the fines paid in compensation for different offences, analogous to those contained in the Irish and Welsh Laws; and these afford us the best indications of the different 217ranks or grades of society in the old tribal system. We find in Scotland, as in Ireland and Wales, the broad distinction between the free and servile classes. Thus in the laws of King William the Lion there is preserved this fragment of the older system ‘of the law that is callyt weregylt. Of euery thief through all Scotland the weregehede is xxxiiii. ky and one half, whether he be a freeman or a serf (liber sive servus).’^[254]

Of the classes of freemen these laws regarding fines afford us complete information. Among the laws attributed to King David I. is a fragmentary code termed ‘Leges inter Brettos et Scottos.’ It is preserved in Latin, in Norman French, and in the vernacular Scotch. By the Bretti are meant the Britons of Strathclyde, and the term Scotti now comprehended the whole inhabitants of the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. David had ruled over the former as earl during the reign of Alexander the First, and on his accession to the throne seems in this short code to have recognised as law the system of fines which existed among his Celtic subjects both of Gaelic and of British race, and to have included them in a short code applicable to both. It contains the fines paid in compensation for slaughter, termed here Cro, a word signifying death; but it is said to be equivalent to the Galnes or Galanas of the Welsh laws, and also to the Enauch or Honor price of the Irish. Another fine for slaughter is called Kelchyn, and the fines for ‘Blude drawn’ seem to be the Saraad of the Welsh. They were termed Bludwyts in Saxon and Fuilrath in Gaelic.^[255]

The Cro of the King of Scotland is said to be one thousand ‘ky’ or three thousand ‘ore’ or ounces of gold, three ounces being the value of a cow, and his Kelchyn is one hundred ‘ky.’

218The Cro of the king’s son,—that is, the Tanist of the Irish Laws, or of an Earl of Scotland, who is thus placed in the same rank,—is seven score ‘ky’ and ten ‘ky.’ His Kelchyn is three score ky and six ky and two parts of a cow; and for Blude drawn, nine ky.

The Cro of the son of an Earl, or of a Thane, who is placed in the same rank, is one hundred ky. His Kelchyn, forty-four ky and twenty-one pence and two-thirds of a penny; and for Blude drawn, six ky.

The Cro of the son of a Thane is three score ky and six ky and two parts of a cow. His Kelchyn is less by a third than his father’s, and is twenty-nine ky and elevenpence and the third part of a halfpenny; and for Blude drawn, three ky.

The Cro of the nevow or grandson of a Thane, or of ane Ogethearn, is forty-four ky and twenty-one pence and two parts of a penny. His Kelchyn is not given, but for Blude drawn it is two ky and two parts of a cow.

We are then told that all these who are lower in the kyn (parentela) are callit Carlis (rustici, vilayn), and that the Cro of a Carl is sixteen ky, that he has no Kelchyn, and that the ‘Blud’ of a Carl is one cow.

We have also in this code a section ‘Of thaim that are slayn in the peace of the King and other lordis.’

‘Giff ony man be slayn in the peis of our lord the Kyng, til him perteins nine score ky.’

If in the peace of the sone of the King or of an Earl, four score and ten ky.

If in the peace of the son of an Earl or of a Thayn, three score ky.

If in the peace of the son of a Thane, forty ky; and if in the peace of a nevo or grandson of a Thane, twenty ky and two parts of a cow.’^[256]

The names of the different ranks here are analogous to the Irish system, where the son of each grade occupied the rank 219of the next inferior grade.^[257] The Earl was the Scottish Mormaer, the Ri Mortuath of the Irish. The Thanus or thane was the Toisech. The Ogethearn is the Irish word Ogthighearna, one of the names applied to the second class of the Gradflatha,^[258] or those Aires who received stock from a superior Aire. They were also called Oglaochs. The fines occupy an intermediate place between those of the Irish and of the Welsh Laws, but most resemble the latter; and the distinction between the free and bond classes and the rights of the kyn are clearly indicated from the following addition it made to the account of the Kelchyn fine:—‘If the wife of a freeman (liberi hominis) be slain, her husband shall have the Kelchyn, and her kyn shall have the Cro and the Galnes. If the wife of a Carl (rustici, vileyn) be slain, the lord in whose lands he dwells shall have the Kelchyn, and her kyn shall have the Cro and the Galnes.’

A fragment has also been preserved giving the merchet or maiden-fee paid to the superior on the marriage of the daughter of a dependant. It is the Amobr or Gobr merch of the Welsh Laws:—‘According to the assize of the land of Scotland, the merchet of every woman, whether she be a serf or mercantile, was one calf or three shillings. If she was the daughter of a freeman who was not lord of a township, her merchet was one cow or six shillings. If the daughter of the son of a thane or of a ochethiern, two cows or twelve shillings. If the daughter of an earl, twelve cows.’^[259]

The fines which were paid for abstaining from attending the king’s hosting are preserved in the Statutes of Alexander the Second, where the following ‘record was made at St. Johnstoun or Perth before the king be all the “dempsteris” (judices) of Scotland in the seventh year of the king’s reign, or A.D. 1221,‘ after the king had been in hosting at Inverness 220against Donald Neilson.’ They thus declare that ‘of those that remained away from the host, the king shall have the forfeiture of the erlis if their thanes’ (that is, the earls’ thanes) ‘remained from the host; but how much that forfalture should be was not determined. Of all others which remained at home—that is to say, of the lands of bischopis, abbotis, baronis, knychtis, and thaynis which hold of the king, the king alone ought to have the forfalture; that is to say, of a thane, vi cows and a calf; of an ochtyern, xv sheep or vi shillings; but the king tharof shall have but the one half, and the thane or the knycht the other half. Of a Carl, a cow and a sheep; and they also are to be divided between the king and the thane or the knycht.’ ‘But when by the leave of the thane or the knicht they remained behind the king, he shall have all the forfalt. For no earl nor sergand of the erlis in the land of any man holding of the king ought to come to raise that default but the Erl of Fyffe, and he shall not come as earl but as the Mair of the king of his rights to be raised within the earldom of Fyffe. Of the Cairlis, however, where the king and the earl divide betwixt them, the king and the earl shall have the one half and the thane the other half; but where the thane falls in forfalt it shall be divided between the king and the earl, as in the laws of King William is declared.’^[260]

The analogy between this arrangement and the system of fines for withdrawing from hosting contained in the Irish Laws will be apparent at once, and the different grades here given are the same as those in the code of David I., though adapted to a period when the thane appears as the vassal of the king or of the earl, and the ochtyern as the vassal of the thane.

The different ranks of the bondmen or unfree class have also been preserved in the code of laws termed Quoniam attachiamenta. They are there termed native-men (nativi), 221and we are told that there are several kinds of nativity or Bondage (nativitatis sive bondagii). For some are native-men of their grandfather and great-grandfather, which is commonly called de evo et trevo, whom their lord may claim to be naturally his native-men by narrating their progenitors, if their names are known, as his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father, who are challenged, declaring them to have been his native-men in such a township and in such a spot in that township, and to have made and rendered to him and his predecessors servile service in a servile land for many years; and this nativity or bondage may be proved by the kin of him who is challenged or by a good assize.

Another kind of bondage is similar to this, when any stranger receives servile land from any lord doing servile service for that land; and if he dies in that land and his son likewise dies in that land, and afterwards his son lives in the same land and dies there, then his whole posterity to the fourth degree shall be of servile condition to his lord, and his whole posterity may be proved in a similar manner.

The third kind of nativity or bondage is when a freeman, in order to have a lord or the maintenance (manutenencia) of any great man, gives himself up to that lord to be his native or bondman (nativum seu bondum) in his court by the hair of his forehead; and if he thereafter withdraws himself from his lord, or denies his nativitie to him, his lord may prove him to be his native-man before the justiciary by an assize, challenging him that he in such a day in such a year came to him in his court and gave himself up to be his man; and if any one is adjudged to be the native or bondman to any lord, that lord can seize him by the nose and reduce him to his former servitude, taking from him all his goods to the value of four pence.^[261]

These definitions of the different kinds of nativi or bondmen may no doubt apply to a later period than we are now 222referring to, and be more or less connected with feudal forms, but we may, notwithstanding, infer that they preserve the characteristics of the servile class in Celtic times; for, although the upper classes may in the Lowland districts have been superseded by Saxon or Norman proprietors holding their lands in feudal tenure, the servile occupiers of the soil of Celtic race who were attached to the land would remain and become the villains of the feudal lord; and so we find that wherever they appear in the Chartularies they possess Celtic names.

We see from the above description that their connection with their lord was of two kinds—first, by occupying under him servile land; and second, by placing themselves under him as personal bondmen; and of the former class, they were either natives by descent or strangers who had taken land from him, and the latter became native serfs after four generations. Here we recognise at once the Sencleithe or old adherents of the Irish law, and the Bond Fuidhir, who became Sencleithe after four generations. The latter class of personal serfs are the Mogha of the Irish and the Caeth of the Welsh Laws. The Celtic names by which these two classes were known in feudal times have also been preserved to us. Thus, in the Chartulary of Scone, King William the Lion grants a mandate directing that if the abbot of Scone or his sergands shall find in the lands or in the power of others any of the Cumlawes and Cumherbes pertaining to his lands, he may reclaim them;^[262] and in the Chartulary of Dunfermline, the foundation charter by King David the First grants that all his serfs and all his Cumerlache from the time of King Edgar shall be restored to the Church wherever they may be found, and the scribe interprets the word Cumer lache by fugitivi on the margin; and in a mandate by the same king to the same effect the title is ‘Of the fugitivi which are called Cumerlache.’^[263] In the 223last syllable of the name Cumherbes or Cumarherbe we can recognise the Irish word Orba, applied to that part of the tribe territory which had become the private property of the chiefs; and this name was no doubt applied to that class of serfs whose bondage was derived from their possessing servile land. They were the ascripti glebae of feudal times. The term Cumlawe or Cumarlawe is simply a translation of the Latin term manutenencia, which characterised the third kind of bondage above described, and whose tie to their master being a personal one, led to their frequently escaping from hard usage and being reclaimed as fugitives.^[264] Thus among the laws of King William the Lion we find one declaring that any one who detains a native fugitive man (nativi fugitivi) after he has been demanded by his true lord or his bailie, shall restore the said native-man with all his chattels, and shall render to his lord the double of the loss he has sustained.^[265]

As in Ireland and Wales, so also in Scotland, the ancient measures of land were closely connected with the tribal system, but here too we find them more greatly affected by external influences than in the two former countries. When we examine the most ancient land-measures of that part of Scotland lying north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, we do not find the same local varieties which can be traced in the different provinces of Ireland and Wales, but instead, a great and leading difference between those of the eastern and the western districts. In the eastern districts there is a uniform system of land denominations consisting of Davachs, Ploughgates, and Oxgangs, the davach consisting 224of four ploughgates, and each ploughgate of eight oxgangs; but as soon as we cross the great chain of mountains separating the eastern from the western waters, we find a different system equally uniform. The ploughgates and oxgangs disappear, and in their place we find davachs and penny lands. The portion of land termed a davach is here also called a Tirung or ounce land (unciata terra), and each davach or Tirung contains twenty penny lands.

The davach^[266] being the only denomination common to both parts of the country, we may infer that it belongs to the old Celtic system of land-measures, and that the others are foreign importations. Now we find in the ancient province of Lothian, which originally formed part of the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria and possessed an Anglic population, the land-measures consisted of Carucates or ploughgates, and Bovates or oxgangs. The oxgang contained thirteen acres, two oxgangs made a husband-land, and eight oxgangs a ploughgate, which thus consisted of 104 acres of arable land. On the other hand, in the islands of Orkney and in the district of Caithness, which were formerly a Norwegian earldom under the king of Norway, we find the land was valued according to a standard of value derived from the weight of silver, the unit being the ounce or Eyrir, eight ounces forming the Mörk or pound, and twenty pennings one ounce,^[267] and thus the land-measures consisted of Oers or ounce lands, the ounce lands containing either eighteen or twenty penny lands. They seem to have been so called, because under the Norwegian rule each homestead paid one penny as scat.

225It is therefore a fair inference that, with the Saxon colonisation, the Saxon denominations superseded the older Celtic lesser denominations, as forming the subdivisions of the Davach in the eastern districts, while in the western seaboard and in the islands, which were for a time under Norwegian rule, the Norwegian denominations replaced the Celtic, but in both cases they were adapted to the existing divisions of land, which could not be altered without interfering with the whole framework of society. The Carucate or ploughgate was a term known to the Irish system, and may likewise have existed in Scotland in Celtic times, as it appears in Highland charters under the name of Arachor, the Gaelic equivalent of the Latin Aratrum,^[268] but seems sometimes to have contained 160 acres in place of 104, and consisted of a definite measure of arable land with common pasture;^[269] and we find from a charter of a Carucate or ploughgate of land on the Nith, that the common pasture carried 24 cattle and 100 sheep,^[270] and the minor terms can probably still be traced in the topography of the districts. We have the words Ballin, Bal, from Baile, a town, entering into many local names in both parts of the country, as well as the word Teaghlach or family, corrupted into Tully and Tilly, as in Tullynessle, Tillymorgan, etc. Then in the east there are the Pits, the old form 226of which, as appears from the Book of Deer, was Pette or Pett. It is there uniformly connected with a personal name, as if it was applied to a single homestead, as in Pette mac Garnait, Pett mac Gobrig, and Pett Malduib, and the affix Pitt seems to have a similar meaning in the old entry in the Chartulary of St. Andrews, where we read of the ‘villula’ or homestead, which is called Pitmokane.^[271] In the western districts we find the penny land also entering into the topography, in the form of Pen or Penny, in such names as Pennyghael, Pennycross, Penmollach, while the halfpenny becomes Leffen, as in Leffenstrath; and if the group of twenty houses, which we found characterising the early tribe organisation in Dalriada, was the Davach, then we obtain the important identification of these houses or homesteads with the later penny lands. We find notices in the charters connected with this part of the country of the Shammark, equal to two penny lands, of Cow lands, probably the Irish Ballyboe, and of Horsegangs.^[272] When these western districts fell under the rule of the Scottish monarchs, the valuation of land called the Old Extent seems to have been to some extent introduced. In the eastern districts it corresponded so far with the land measures, that the ploughgate was the same as the forty shilling or a three-merk land;^[273] but the merk land in the west appears to have had no uniform relation to the penny land, though in Lochaber we find that five penny lands were equal to a forty-shilling land, which seemed to indicate that here also the ploughgate was the fourth part of a Davach, and consisted of five homesteads; on the other hand, we are told that each 227township in Isla consisted of two and a half merk lands.^[274] The state of these districts probably gave the Davachs and penny lands a fluctuating value, which depended more upon the pasture and the stock it carried than on the arable land. There is an old tradition that the Davach was land capable of pasturing 320 cows, and that a merk land was as much land as would graze twelve milch cows, ten yeld cows, including three-year-olds, twelve two-year-olds, twelve year-olds, four horses, four fillies, mares and followers, one hundred sheep, and eighty goats.^[275] The two systems of land measure appear to meet in Galloway, as in Carrick we find the measure by Penny lands, which gradually become less frequent as we advance eastward, where we encounter the extent by merks and pounds, with an occasional appearance of a penny land, and of the Bovate or oxgang in Church lands.

The burdens upon the land held by the community in Scotland seem to have been principally four. We find them still attaching to the Crown and the Church lands during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and they are analogous to those connected with the Irish tribe system. They were Cain, Conveth, Feacht, and Sluaged. The two former were fixed payments in kind. The two latter were services to which the possessor of the land was subject. They are rendered in Latin by the words expeditio and exercitus. We find these burdens in both of the leading divisions of the country north of the firths. Thus, by a deed dated at Lismore in the year 1251, Sir Ewen, son of Duncan de Erregathil (Argyll), granted to William, bishop of Argyll, fourteen penny lands in Lismore, free of all secular exactions and 228dues—viz., Cain, Coneveth, Feacht, Sluaged, and Ich—and of all secular services;^[276] and similarly Roger, bishop-elect of St. Andrews, granted between 1188 and 1198, when he was consecrated, the lands of Duf Cuper to the church and canons of St. Andrews, free of ‘of ‘Can et Cuneveth et exercitu et auxilio et ab omni servicio et exactione seculari.’^[277]

We find during this period that these dues and services were derived by the king from the Crown lands, and by the superiors from lands not held feudally. Thus King David grants to the monks of Dunfermline the tithe of his whole Can from Fif and Fothrif, likewise the tithe of his Can of Clacmannan, and the half of his tithe of Ergaithel (Argyll) and Kentir in that year, to wit, in which he receives Can from it, and these grants are repeated by his successor Malcolm IV.^[278] King David likewise grants to the church of Urchard (Urquhart) the tithe of the Can de Ergaithel de Muref, that is, that part of the great province of Ergadia or Ergaithel which belonged to Moray, extending from the Leven to the border of North Argyll.^[279] King William confirms to the bishop of Moray the Cana et Coneveta which his predecessors had received from those who held land of the bishops during the time of King David and King Malcolm;^[280] and in an agreement in 1225 between the bishop and Walter Cumyn of Badenoch, the bishop frees him from any claim he had for the tithe of the Can of his lord the king from the lands of Badenoch.^[281]

In Aberdeenshire we find the Earl of Mar granting to the bishop of St. Andrews the tithe of the ‘redditus’ or Can of his whole lands;^[282] and Thomas the Hostiary gives to the canons of Monimusk ten bolls of meal and ten stones of 229cheese from his lands of Outherheicht, which is afterwards called the Can of Houctireycht.^[283]

In Mearns or Kincardine Earl David of Huntingdon grants to the church and canons of St. Andrews the whole Kan and Kuneveth, which they were due him, from the lands of Ecclesgirg, and the services which his men of Eccleskirch were bound to render him.^[284] Then in the beginning of the thirteenth century the record of a dispute between the bishop of St. Andrews and the abbot of Arbroath is preserved to us in the chartulary of that church, regarding the lands of Fyvy, Tarves, Innerbondy, Munclere, Gamery, Inverugy, and Monedin, and the Can or redditus and Conevet of these lands, which the bishop resigns to the abbot free of every exaction, reserving to himself the ancient ‘redditus’ of Monedin, viz., three shillings and sixpence, and the portion of the Conevet which was wont to be paid at Bencorin or Banchory; and in the same Chartulary there is a grant by King William to the abbey of Arbroath of the ferry and ferrylands of Munros, to be held free ‘ab exercitu et expeditione et operatione et auxilio et ab omnibus consuetudinibus et omni servicio et exactione;’ and the earl of Angus grants them the lands of Portincraig in similar terms, as free ‘ab exercitu et expeditione et exactione multure et ab omnibus auxiliis et geldis et omnibus serviciis et exactionibus;’ the ‘exercitus’ and ‘expeditio’ being the Sluaged and Feacht of the Gaelic charters.^[285]

Then in Fife we find in a rental of the earldom a certain firma or rent which is termed Canus, with ten shillings of the Can of Abernethy; and in Stratherne we find the bishops of Dunkeld confirming to the canons of Inchaffray the lands of Maderty, which is called Abthan, and the freedom 230from the Cane and Coneveth which the clerics of Dunkeld were wont anciently to receive from these lands.

These notices will be sufficient to show that these Celtic burdens on land prevailed over the whole of the country north of the Firths, on the crown lands and those of the church, and on all lands which had not become the subject of feudal grants.

Passing then to the country south of the Firths, we find them equally prevalent, except in the great Anglic province of Lothian. Thus King David grants to the church of Glasgow the whole tithe of his Chan in the beasts and pigs of Strathegrive and Cuninghame, Kyle and Carrick, in each year, unless the king himself shall go to dwell there and consume his own Chan.^[286] These districts formed the greater part of the ancient British kingdom of Strathclyde, and this was an appropriate grant to the church of Glasgow, which had been its metropolitan church. Then we find the lords of Galloway granting lands in that district to the canons of Holyrood, free from all ‘Can and Cuneveht and from every exaction, custom, and secular service;’^[287] and finally, at a court held by the judges of Galloway at Lanerch in the reign of King William the Lion, in presence of the Lord of Galloway, it was adjudged that ‘when the king ought to receive his Can from Galloway he should issue his breve to the Mairs of Galloway, and the Mairs should go with the royal breve to the debtor of the Can and exact the Can from him. If he fail to pay, the Mair was to take the rod or staff, called the king’s staff, and take a distress for the king’s Can, and if the debtor removed the subject of the distress he was to pay for each ten cows fifteen cows, besides a hundred cows de misericordia; but if he delivered part of the Can, till after the Nativity he was to pay for each cow four shillings of cow-tax, and for each pig sixteen pence, and before the Nativity 231the debtor was to deliver cows worth forty pence, and if he stated on oath that he had no pigs, he was to pay for each pig seventeen pence.’^[288]

This last notice will explain in some degree what the burden termed Cain or Can really was, and how it was exacted. It consisted of a portion of the produce of the land, in grain when it was arable land, and in cattle and pigs when pasture land. It was in fact the outcome of the Bestighi or food-rent of the Irish laws, and the Gwestva of the Welsh laws, paid by every occupier of land to his superior. Over the whole of Scotland, except in Lothian, it was a recognised burden upon the crown lands and upon all land not held by feudal tenure, but it ceased as soon as the possessor of the land was feudally invested. Thus we find in the Moray Chartulary an agreement between the bishop of Moray and Thomas de Thirlestan, who had received a feudal grant of the lands of Abertarff, regarding a half-davach of land, which the bishop asserted belonged to the church, and regarding the tithes of the royal Can payable from the lands of Abertarff before his feudal investiture (ante infeodationem). There is a similar agreement between the bishop and James, son of Morgund, regarding certain lands in his fief of Abernethy, and regarding the tithes of the Can which was wont to be paid to the king from these lands before his feudal investiture, and another between the bishop and Gilbert the Hostiary regarding the tithes of the Can which he was wont to pay annually to the king from the lands of Strathbroc and Buleshe before his feudal investiture (ante infeodationem).^[289] The Can or Chan was so termed from the Gaelic word Cain, the primary meaning of which was ‘law.’ It was the equivalent of the Latin word canon, and like it was applied to any fixed payment exigible by law.^[290]

232Conveth was the Irish Coinmhedha or Coigny, derived, according to O’Donovan, from Coinmhe, which signifies feast or refection. It was the Dovraeth of the Welsh laws, and was founded upon the original right which the leaders in the tribe had to be supported by their followers. It came to signify a night’s meal or refection given by the occupiers of the land to their superior when passing through his territory, which was exigible four times in the year, and when the tribe territory came to be recognised as crown land, it became a fixed food contribution charged upon each ploughgate of land. Thus in the charter by King Malcolm the Fourth, confirming the foundation of the abbey of Scone, he grants to the canons from each ploughgate of the whole land of the church of Scone in each year, at the Feast of All Saints, for their Coneveth, one cow and two pigs, and four Camni of meal, and ten threaves of oats, and ten hens and two hundred eggs, and ten bundles of candles, and four pounds of soap, and twenty half meales of cheese.^[291]

In the reign of Alexander the Third this word seems to have assumed the form of Waytinga, and appears in the Chamberlain Rolls of his reign as a burden upon the Thanages. Thus the Chamberlain renders an account of the Waytingas of Forfar and Glammis, of the Waytinga of one night of Fettercairn, of the Waytingas of four nights in the year of Kinross, and ‘of the rent of cows of two years,’ that is to say, of the Waytingas of two nights in the year of Forfar, forty-eight cows, and of the Waytinga of (one) and a half nights of the Thanage of Glammis, twenty-seven cows.^[292]

233Another name for this exaction was Cuidoidhche, or a night’s portion, corrupted into Cuddiche or Cuddicke. It appears under this name mainly in the Highlands and Islands, and was continued as a burden on the lands to a late period. In the rentals of South and North Kintyre for 1505 we find, besides firma or rent, each township charged with a certain amount of meal, cheese, oats, and a mert or cow, pro le Cuddecht. A description of the Western Isles written between 1577 and 1595, has preserved a record of these payments. Lewis, a forty pound land, pays yearly 18 score chalders of victuall, 58 score of ky, 32 score of wedderis, and a great quantity of fishe, poultry, and white plaiding by their Cuidichies—that is, feasting their master when he pleases to come in the country, each one their night or two nights about, according to their land or labour. In Uist each merk land paid 20 bolls victual, besides other customs which are paid at the landlord’s coming to the Isle to his Cudicht; and in Mull each merk land paid yearly 5 bolls bear, 8 bolls meal, 20 stones of cheese, 4 stones of butter, 4 marts, 8 wedders, 2 merks of silver, and 2 dozen of poultrie by Cuddiche, whenever their master comes to them. Under the name of Conyow or Coigny it appears in Iona, when, in a contract between the bishop of the Isles and Lauchlan M‘Lean of Dowart, in 1580, the latter becomes bound that he ‘sall suffer na maner of persoun or personis to oppress the saidis landis of Ycolmekill (Iona) and Rosse, or tenantis thaireof or trouble or molest thame in ony sort with ather stenting, Conyow, gerig service or ony maner of exactioun.’^[293] In Atholl we find the vassals of Strathtay and their tenants ordered as late as in 1719 to pay their Cudeichs according to ancient use and wont. These included two pecks of corn, one threave of straw, and six shillings Scots for maintenance of the superior’s horses and servants who wait on them, out of each twenty shilling land; and in 1720 it is ordered that the 234accustomed corn and straw and other casualties paid yearly as Cuddeichs out of each merk land be taken up, excepting always the land laboured by the vassals for their own use.

A similar burden under different names emerges in Galloway, when in a charter by David II. to Sir John Heris, knight of the barony of Terreglis, in Dumfriesshire, in which it is declared ‘free of Sorryn and Fachalos unless officers come through it with a robber or with the head of a robber; and if they, the king’s officers, can pass beyond the barony before sunsetting, they shall have nothing for their expenses, and if they cannot pass beyond the barony before sunsetting they shall have hospitality for that night (hospicium ad hospitandum),’ etc. Sorren was a tax imposed in Ireland upon the possession of land for the clothing, feeding, and supporting the galloglasses and kernes. It was originally a night’s meal upon land passed through, and Fachalos was probably the Irish Fechtfele, which is explained as ‘the first night’s entertainment we receive at each other’s house.’^[294]

The Feacht and Sluaged (expeditio et exercitus) consisted of a general obligation, originally upon the members of the tribe, and afterwards upon the possessors and occupiers of what had been tribe territory, to follow their superiors and chiefs as well as the Ardri or sovereign in his expeditions and wars. They are usually termed expedition and hosting, and in Scotland the burden was apportioned upon the davach of land. It is probably this burden that is referred to in the Book of Deer, where we are told that the ‘Mormaer and Toisech immolated all the offerings to God and to devotion, and to Saint Columcille and to Peter the Apostle, free 235from all the burdens, for a portion of four davachs of what would come on the chief tribe residences generally and on the chief churches.’ These obligations seem to have constituted what is called in charters Scottish service (servitium Scoticanum), and were of two kinds, internal and external, the one representing the Feacht or expedition, and the other the Sluaged or hosting. We find them distinguished in a charter by Waldevus de Stratheihan to the church of St. Andrews of the lands of Blaregeroge, which are granted ‘free from all exaction and service, internal and external’ (sine omne exactione et servitio intrinseco et forinseco);^[295] and their connection with the Davach appears very clearly from three Charters, one by Alexander II. to the abbey of Scone of the lands of Magna et Parva Blar, which contains in the reddendo the clause, ‘rendering the external service only which pertains to five davachs of land, that pertaining to the sixth davach being remitted.’^[296] In another by the Earl of Stratherne to Willelmus de Moravia, the lands are granted free of ‘every service except the external Scottish service of our lord the king;’king;’^[297] and in a third charter by Alexander the Second to the abbey of Arbroath of the lands of Tarvays, consisting of four davachs and a half davach and quarter davach, they are granted ‘rendering the external service in the army which pertains to the said lands.’^[298] We have seen that the Feachtmara or sea expedition of each tribe in ancient Dalriada was attached to each twenty houses, corresponding to the twenty penny lands which formed the davach in the west, showing very clearly that even at this early 236period the Davach was the measure of land by which this burden was regulated.

Such, then, were the burdens connected with the ancient tribal organisation as depicted in the Irish and Welsh Laws which we find still attached to the thanages, as well as to all the crown and church lands not held on a feudal tenure. They consisted of, first, a share of the produce of the land and the stock, of the personal services of certain of the tenants, and of various fines, which were all included in the general term of Cain; secondly, of rights of entertainment and support for a certain number of nights in the year, under the name of Coinmhedha or Coneveth, Cuidoidhche or Cuddechie, Waytinga, Sorren, and Fachalos, and assessed on homesteads or penny lands in the west, twenty of which made a davach; and on Carucates or ploughlands in the east, four of which constituted the davach; thirdly, of the Feacht or expedition,—the burden of joining in expeditions within the kingdom or territory; and fourthly, of the Sluaged or Scottish service of hosting,—that is, the burden of attending the king’s army or host when assembled for the defence of the kingdom or for hostile invasion; and of all these burdens the various grades connected with the land had their Cuid or share in definite proportions.

These old Celtic tenures, however, became gradually more and more assimilated to feudal forms as the kingdom with its mixed population assumed more the aspect of a feudal monarchy, and its kings adapted the customs of their subjects of different race to the model of those of the feudal law. In this progress of adaptation we can trace two distinct stages,—one when the crown lands came to be considered as held upon a distinct tenure termed in England fee-farm, in Scotland feu-farm, and in Latin charters feodifirma; and again, when the War of Independence which followed on the death of the last of the kings of the race of Malcolm 237Ceannmor and the contest between the houses of Bruce and Baliol led to numerous confiscations of the land held by their partisans on both sides, and to the general conversion of the crown grants into feudal tenures for military service.

The tenure of crown lands in feodifirma, or feu-farm, appears in England as early as the reign of King John, and must have then been already well established, as one of the stipulations in the articles of the Barons which led to the great charter of liberties or Magna Charta, and repeated in the latter, is, that if any one holds of the king per feodifirmam, or on sokage or burgage tenure, and of another for military service, the king is not to have the custody of the heir or of his land who holds of another in fee by reason of his fee-farm, sokage, or burgage holding of the king, nor shall he have the custody of the latter unless the fee-farm owes military service;^[299] and in Scotland it was evidently recognised as a tenure holding of the Crown in the reigns of William the Lion and of Alexander the Second. The tenure in feu-farm or feodifirma was in fact an intermediate tenure between those who had merely the usufruct of land the right of property in which still remained with the granter, and those who held land as his vassal by a formal feudal grant for military service. Of the two words of which the name is composed, Firma—derived from the Saxon feorm—was the share of the produce of the land paid by a tenant to his landlord by way of rent; and to hold land ad firmam or in firma was equivalent to the modern leasehold tenure: it was constituted by a lease and completed by possession, and the tenant was called firmarius; but feodum is the feudal fief granted by charter and completed by seisin or infeftment. The tenure in feodifirma, therefore, was a feudal grant of land, not for military service, but for a firma or permanent rent, and was equally constituted by charter 238and seisin. Such lands were held ad feodifirmam, the annual payment was the feodifirma, and the holder was called feodifirmarius. These grants were supposed to resemble the Roman Emphyteusis, and the form still exists in Scotland in our modern feu-charter, in which the same expressions are used. In these the land is conveyed ‘in feu-farm, to be held in feu-farm fee and heritage for ever,’ for payment of an annual ‘feu-duty,’ and the granter is called the ‘feuar.’ It is, however, essentially a feudal holding, and differs from a mere tenancy by lease in this—that in the former the dominium utile of the land is conveyed by charter to the vassal, while in the latter the usufruct of the land is solely given, and the property of the soil remains with the granter.^[300]