The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. V] OF SCOTLAND 67
Midland Cruithne were driven out of their northern possessions
by the Cantese, and when the conquered portion of the tribe
must have taken refuge in other districts, probably to the west,
we see an otherwise unaccountable emigration of the Gens
Gartnaidh, or inhabitants of Wester Ross, to Ireland. The
Caledonians had
inference is unavoidable, that the vanquished
dispossessed them, and taken possession of their territories.
This tribe then, it is plain, inhabited the whole of the great
district of Argyll, with the exception of Dalriada ; and as at
the period of the Scottish conquest in 843 they surrounded
Dalriada on every side we can have little hesitation in ^ concluding
that they probably obtained possession of the relinquished
districts, and extended the name of Argyll over the whole.
Such is the natural deduction from the events obscurely
indicated in the Irish Annals, but that the fact was really so
is proved by another circumstance.
It will afterwards be shewn, that the. jurisdiction attached
to each of the Culdee monasteries, was exactly co-extensive
with the territories of the tribe in which the monastery was
situated, and that these jurisdictions were in number and extent
the same with the earliest bishoprics in Scotland. Now, the
bishopric of Dunkeld originally consisted just of the district
of AthoU and of Argyll, the latter of which was separated from
it in A.D. 1200, and formed into an independent diocese. This
is sufficient proof that some one tribe possessed at one time both
of these districts, and as Atholl was at all times the principal
possession of the Midland Cruithne or Caledonians proper, it
puts the fact that the name of Argyll was applied
to the
territories on the west coast, acquired at different times by
that tribe, beyond a doubt. The only other change which
had taken place in the relative situations of the tribes is, that
in place of the two tribes of the Lougai and Mertae, we find
the single earldom of Sutherland, and this change is certainly
to be attributed to the conquest of the northern districts by
Thorstein.
Although the districts of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and
Moray are certainly mentioned by the Sagas as forming a
from the nature
part of his kingdom in Scotland, yet it is plain,
of the country and the rapidity with which he overran the whole