No sooner had they evacuated the island, than the Scots and Picts, regarding the country as their prey, attacked the Northern Wall and the adjacent country with great fury. Subdued by their own fears, the dispirited natives deserted their station, and left the country entirely open to the inroads of the victorious enemy, They addressed a letter of supplication to Rome; in which they pathetically deplored their hapless condition. "The Barbarians," ́said they, “chase us into the sea; the sea throws us back on the Barbarians; and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or by the waves."

To these moving complaints, the Britons received a desponding answer: The Romans pitied their allies; whom generosity alone, had they been able, would have induced them to assist. Reduced to despair, the Britons deserted their habitations, abandoned tillage, and, fleeing for shelter to their forests and mountains, suffered equally from the sword and from hunger. The invaders themselves began to feel the pressure of famine in a country which they had ravaged; and, being attacked by the Saxons, whom the Britons had invited to their assistance, they hastily retreated with their spoil beyond the Wall of Antoninus.

CHAPTER IV.

The Romanized tribes-extent of their kingdom-are conquered by the Angles. The Picts-their history obscure-they defeat the Saxons of Lothian. The Scots migrate from Ireland to Argyllshire—their wars with the Saxonsextent of their kingdom-they defeat and conquer the Picts.

UNAWED

NAWED any longer by the Romans, the Picts became the most potent people in the North of Caledonia, until conquered by their fortunate rivals the Scots. The five Romanized tribes assumed likewise the character of independence, and established their own government and laws. Their territory extended from the river Eden and the Solway Frith to the Northern Wall: It included Lidsdale, Tiviotdale, Dumfries, Galloway, Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, the middle and west parts of Stirlingshire, and the greater part of Dunbartonshire. Alcluyd, now Dunbarton, was the metropolis of this kingdom.

The Angles invaded it soon after the congenerous Saxons had seized South Britain. Though the Britons opposed their invaders with persevering bravery, the latter overran the country as far as

the Northern Wall, and concluded a treaty with the Picts. The enfeebled Britons soon sunk under the superior power of the Angles; and, in the beginning of the seventh century, Ethelfrid, a Northumbrian chief, entirely subdued them. Edwin, a rival contemporary, succeeded Ethelfrid. He was the most powerful chief of his time. He built, or probably fortified the Castle of Edinburgh; and from him the Scottish metropolis derived its name.

The history of the Picts, as far as it can be gleaned from annals and chronicles, is perplexed and obscure,-exhibiting generally a tissue of domestic faction and foreign war. According to the most authentic accounts, forty Pictish kings are said to have reigned after the abdication of the Romans, during a period of three hundred and forty years. The first Pictish monarch was Drust, the son of Erp; who for a long period rendered himself terrible to the Romanized Britons, and who, from his numerous and successful enterprises, acquired, in the poetical language of the day, the eulogium of "Drust of the Hundred Battles."

From their slow progress in civilization, the Picts could not maintain numerous armies. Their mode of warfare consisted of sudden invasions and hasty retreats. They crossed the Friths of Forth and Clyde in their currachs or canoes, and plundered their more civilized neighbours; but there is no historical evidence that they formed settlements within the Wall of Antoninus, or claimed rightful possession of the country on the south of it.

Towards the end of the seventh century, Egfrid, the Northum brian prince, attacked the Picts. Having crossed the Forth and the Tay, he advanced into Angus as far as Dunnichen, where he received a total defeat. Few of the Saxons escaped; and so complete was their overthrow, that the Tweed, for a short time, became the northern boundary of their principality. The Picts

were imprudently tempted by their success to make an ir

710.}ruption into Northumberland; but they sustained a defeat;

and Bredei, their king, was slain.*

After this overthrow, the Saxons of Lothian remained unmolested for a considerable period; but they gradually sunk into inA.D. Į significance: Their capital was sacked by the Picts and Saxons; and the respite from foreign war which they sub

756.

• The naval battle first recorded in British history, was fought on the West coast of Scotland, in 718, between two rival Scottish kings or chiefs.

B

sequently enjoyed must be attributed to the intestine discord which prevailed in the Pictish and Northumbrian states.

The history of the migration and settlement of the Scots has been hitherto deferred, that the succeeding narrative might remain unbroken.

A colony of the Scots, conducted by Fergus, Lorn, and Angus, the sons of an Irish chieftain, effected a permanent settlement in Argyllshire in the year of our Lord 503. The new settlers were denominated Dalriadini, from Dalriada, the Irish district whence they had migrated; and this appellation was common to the Scots even in the time of Bede.

From the want of contemporaneous writings, there scarcely occurs a period in history so intricate and dubious as the annals of the Scottish kings from their first settlement in Argyll till their subjugation of the Picts, comprehending a period of three hundred and forty years. The series and genealogy of the Scottish kings have been involved in peculiar perplexity, by the contests of the Irish and Scottish antiquarians for preeminence in antiquity as well as in fame.

The Scottish colonists were not numerous at first; but they rapidly multiplied, as they were soon joined by kindred tribes. The attention of the colonists must have been directed first to the distribution and regulation of their territory. Their government was at first patriarchal, with a nominal submission to the oldest chief; but contests for superiority inevitably followed, and terminated in sanguinary conflicts and revolutions.

Being a warlike people, they were frequently at variance with the Saxons, the Romanized Britons, and the Picts. Twenty-nine kings are said to have reigned before the renowned Kenneth Macalpine, the conqueror of the Picts. His father Alpine fell a sacrifice to his ambition. Having landed on the confines of Ayr, with the view of extending his conquests, he was slain in Galloway.

In the eighth century, a civil war desolated the Pictish kingdom, and proved destructive to its princes and chiefs, many of whom died in battle or by assassination. The Scots took advantage of these civil discords, and harassed the enfeebled Picts. At length, Kenneth Macalpine the Second, by conquest and inheritance, secured his accession to the Pictish throne, and united into one kingdom the whole country north of the Wall of Antoninus,

There is no historical evidence that the united kingdom of the Scots and Picts extended beyond the Northern Wall. After the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons, the princes of Northumberland possessed all the territory between the Humber and the Forth The Castle of Edinburgh, which commanded the adjacent country, continued in the hands of the Saxons till the defeat of Egfrid by the Picts, who then took possession of it. But the Saxons reconquered it soon after, and retained it till it was ceded to Indulf King of Scotland.

As a farther confirmation, all the names in this district are of Saxon origin, and the vernacular language is full of old English words and phrases. Lothian was annexed to Scotland, but not without bloody struggles, two centuries and a half after the union of the Scots and Picts..

The district now comprehended in Galloway was colonized from Ireland. It anciently included, not only the country known by that name, and the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, but nearly the whole of Ayrshire. After the subjugation of the kingdom of Alcluyd, it had its own princes and laws. For a considerable period, it was independent of Scotland; but it afterwards acknow ledged a feudatory dependence on that kingdom. This nominal submission supplied the Sovereign with rude and undisciplined soldiers, who added rather. to the terror than to the strength of his armies.

After the dissolution of the Heptarchy, Cumberland became, by an obscure title, an appendage of the Scottish crown..

BOOK THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

Kenneth the Second-invasion of the Danes. Donald the Third-war with the Saxons. Constantine the Second. Eth. Grig-his character. Donald the Fourth. Constantine the Third. Invasion of the Danes-of the English. The Scots defeated in England. Malcolm. Indulf. Duf. Culen. Kenneth the Third.

A.D.

KENNETH the SECOND.-Kenneth Macalpine having unit843. ed the Scots and Picts under one government, successfully employed his address in preserving the integrity of his dominions, and his valour in repelling his foreign enemies. He was an able and warlike prince. His power became extremely formidable to the Saxons of Lothian; whose territories he frequently invaded,violating their religious houses, and burning their castles. His dominions were assailed on the West by the Britons of Strathclyde, who burned Dunblane. The Danish pirates, under the ferocious Radnor Lodbrog, made a descent upon the Eastern coast, penetrated to Dunkeld, and plundered the country. Though that freebooter escaped the avenging sword of the Scots, he perished soon after in a conflict with the Northumbrian Saxons.

A.D. 850.

}

Kenneth is said to have been religious: For he removed the relics of St Columba from the island of Iona to a church which he had built at Dunkeld; and he transported the fatal stone, the palladium of Scottish independence, from Argyllshire to Scone. A code of spurious laws has been ascribed to him, though it does not appear that he enacted any laws, except some general regulations adapted to the peculiar and local cir cumstances and the dissimilar manners of his subjects. Kenneth died at Forteviot, the Pictish capital. He left a son and a daughThe latter made a prominent figure in the Irish annals of that period.

ter:

A.D.

DONALD the THIRD.-This prince succeded his brother, 859. S and inherited the martial spirit and talents of his family. The laws of succession were not then observed as they are now understood: It was judged more eligible that a prince of mature