The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. II] OFSCOTLAND 17
king converted by St. Columba. That they possessed the
extreme north of Britain is also clear from Nennius, who in
Tertia insula sita est in extremo limite
describing Britain says, "'
orbis Britannia^ ultra Pictos et
"
^ vocatur Orcania insula ; and
that they still possessed these territories as late as the eighth
century is proved from the life of St. Findan, written in the
ninth century, where the author relates that the saint was carried
away captive from Ireland by the Norwegian pirates in the end
of the eighth centur}-, and adds " ad quasdam venire insulas
juxta Pictorum gentem quas Orcades vocant." ^
Western
T\\& western boundary of the Picts appears at all
Txmndary. times to have been, partly a ridge of hills, termed
Drumalban, which separated them from the Scots, as the
southern part of the boundary, and as the northern part the sea
from the Linne Loch to Cape Wrath. Thus the Scottish
chronicles invariably mention that P^ergus the First, King of the
Scots, ruled over the districts extending from Di'uvialban to
Inni-sgall, or the Hebrides. Drumalban.
Adomnan, who wrote in
, • • •
i
r i i
i
the begmnmg 01 the seventh century, mentions the
Pictorum plebe et Scotorum Britanniae "
quos utrosque dorsi
"
and in talking of the Picts, he
montes Britannici disterminant ;
invariabl)' describes them as being " ultra dorsum Britanniae."
The phrase dorsum Brittanniai used by him is plainly a mere
Latin translation of the Gaelic word Drumalban.
Tighernac implies that the same mountain-ridge was their
mutual boundary in the year 717, in which year he mentions the
expulsion of the Monks of lona by King Nectan, " trans dorsum
Britannia." The Chronicon Rythmicum mentions the Scots as
having inhabited " ultra Drumalban " till the reign of Kenneth.
It thus appears that Drumalban, or the dorsum Britanniae was
the invariable boundary of the Picts and Scots, south of the
Linne Loch, from the year 503 down to the eighth century.
There is no range of hills now bearing this name, but we find it
frequently mentioned in older writers. The earliest description
of Scotland which contains any allusion to its mountain ranges
is entitled " De situ Albaniae quae in se figuram hominis habet,"
and is supposed to have been written by Giraldus Cambrensis,
"Nennius c. 2.
"
*Goldasti Aleman. rerum Script.
Vita Findani, p. 318,
B