it do not merit a higher name) is founded both on the
Irish language, which is a very different dialect from the Welsh, and
from the language anciently spoken in South Britain; and on the
vicinity of Lancashire, Cumberland, Galloway, and Argyleshire, to that
island. These events, as they passed long before the age of history
and records, must be known by reasoning alone, which in this case
seems to be pretty satisfactory: Caesar and Tacitus, not to mention a
multitude of other Greek and Roman authors, were guided by like
inferences. But besides these primitive facts, which lie in a very
remote antiquity, it is a matter of positive and undoubted testimony,
that the Roman province of Britain, during the time of the lower
empire, was much infested by bands of robbers or pirates, whom the
provincial Britons called Scots or Scuits; a name which was probably
used as a term of reproach, and which these banditti themselves did
not acknowledge or assume. We may infer from two passages in
Claudian, and from one in Orosius, and another in Isidore, that the
chief seat of these Scots was in Ireland. That some part of the Irish
freebooters migrated back to the north-west parts of Britain, whence
their ancestors had probably been derived in a more remote age, is
positively asserted by Bede, and implied in Gildas. I grant that
neither Bede nor Gildas are Caesars or Tacituses; but such as they
are, they remain the sole testimony on the subject, and therefore must
be relied on for want of better: happily, the frivolousness of the
question corresponds to the weakness of the authorities. Not to
mention, that if any part of the traditional history of a barbarous
people can be relied on, it is the genealogy of nations, and even
sometimes that of families. It is in vain to argue against these
facts from the supposed warlike disposition of the Highlanders, and
unwarlike of the ancient Irish. Those arguments are still much weaker
than the authorities. Nations change very quickly in these
particulars. The Britons were unable to resist the Picts and Scots,
and invited over the Saxons for their defence, who repelled those
invaders: yet the same Britons valiantly resisted for one hundred and
fifty years, not only this victorious band of Saxons, but infinite
numbers more, who poured in upon them from all quarters. Robert
Bruce, in 1322, made a peace, in which England, after many defeats,
was constrained to acknowledge the independence of