The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

388 THE HIGHLANDERS [excursus
was no change of race or language at the so-called Scottish
Conquest, which was no conquest at all, but a mere matter
of succession on Kenneth's part according to Pictish law. This
may be called the " Uniformitarian "
theory of early Scottish
history : nobody conquered anybody, and the great Pictish
nation was, as before, in language and race, the main body
of the Scottish Kingdom, and most certainly ancestors of the
present-day Scottish Highlanders — at any rate the Northern
Picts were 'Jso. The Southern Picts he allows in 1837 to be
conquered by Kenneth Mac Alpin, but in Celtic Scotland he only
admits that Britons were between the Tay and the Forth— -the
Britons of Fortrenn being mentioned in the Irish Chronicles—
and gave Kings to the Picts, as the Kings' lists compelled him
to admit ; but these Britons were Cornish (Damnonii of Corn-
wall and Dumnonii of mid-Scotland, according to Ptolemy's
geography, were likely the same people in Skene's view). This
very plausible theory has for the last sixty years
held the field
in Scottish history ; indeed, the popular historians know no
other. The County histories of Messrs. Blackwood, of course,
hold by Skene's theories ; and the two latest historians of Scot-
land—Dr. Hume Brown and Mr. Andrew Lang — regard the
Picts as purely Gaels, and kill off the Dalriads in the time of the
terrible Pictish King, Angus Mac Fergus (about 740). The
obscurity of Kenneth Mac Alpin's succession is insisted upon.
"
Mr. Lang, -as might be expected, is really funny " on the
subject. Writing about Prof Zimmer's expression that the
Scots " took away the independence of the Picts," he says :—
" We might as easily hold that James VI. took away the independence
of the English by becoming King, as that Kenneth
Mac Alpin, a Pict by female descent [?], did as much for the
Picts." Dr. Skene has retarded the progress of scientific research
into early Scottish history for at least a generation. This sort
of thing, as shown by Lang's case, will go on for many a day yet,
let Celtic scholars do what they like.
Modern Celtic scholars have reverted to the old position of the
Chronicles. Respect for the authority of contemporaries like Bede
and Cormac, and, we may add, Adamnan, compels them so to do,
not to mention the authority of the Chronicles ; philological facts,
scientifically dealt with, and considerations of customs, especially