The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. V] OF SCOTLAND 59
fabulous notions of the present day, the author has gone to the
only genuine sources of the history of this early period now
extant, nanriely, the Norse Sagas, and the Annalists of Ireland,
which, although entirely unconnected, corroborate each other in
so remarkable a manner as to leave no doubt of the authenticity
of their details.
With the tenth century, the history of the Highlanders of
Scotland may, properly speaking, be said to commence. Pre-
viously to that period, they appear indeed under their distinctive
appellations of Dicaledones, Cruithne, or northern Picts, but still
they were not then marked out from the other tribes of Scotland
by any peculiarity of manners or of polity ;— of their internal
condition we know nothing ;—and their history in no degree
differed from that of Scotland generally.
The conquest of the southern Picts by the Scots of Argyll,
in which, if they were not assisted, at least they were not
opposed, by the northern Picts, produced the first remarkable
change in the internal state of Scotland. The inhabitants of
the Lowlands, from being a powerful and, comparatively,
civilized Celtic people, became a mixed race of Picts and Scots ;
their learning, their civilization, and their very name being lost
in the Scottish barbarism with which they were overrun, while
the Highlanders found, according to the usual fate of Celtic
policy, that, in prosecuting an internal feud, they had placed a
more formidable enemy in a situation of power which it was by
no means easy for them to resist, and that they had purchased
the defeat and ruin of their rival race of southern Picts by the
loss of their own independence. The history of Scotland, from
the Scottish conquest to the beginning of the tenth century, is
principally characterised by the gradual and steady progress of
the power and influence of the Scots in the plains of Scotland,
and by the resistance of the inhabitants of its mountains to
their domination, while both parties were equally exposed to the
harassing invasions of the northern pirates. The
Erection of . .
tiieNorwe- erection of the iSorwegian kingdom of the Isles and
gian kingdom ,, •
, , r ^ i i T r i
i
of the Isles Larldom 01 Orkney, m the end 01 the nmth century,
and
' -^
Earldom
'
"/ Oi'kney. produced the next change in the internal condition of
A.D. ^ °
888.
Scotland, and may be considered as throwing the
first distinct light on the history of the Highlands. Previously to