However they may have first found their way to Ireland, these Celtic Scots have never been addicted, like their Teutonic neighbours, to long sea-voyages. One acquainted with the agricultural resources of the north of Ireland at the present day might question the inducement of a people to leave that region for the sake of settling in the west of Scotland. But it is observable of the Celts, as of other indolent races, that the elements of value to them are not the resources capable of development through industry and enterprise, but those which offer the readiest supply of some of the necessaries of life. Thus they are to be found near the peat-bog, which bears on its surface a cake of inferior fuel immediately accessible, while the industrious races settle over the coal-seam, which gives nothing promptly, but affords a rich reward to enterprise and exertion. In their new homes the Scots would find abundant fuel. But the geological character of the country would also supply them with a limited quantity of alluvial soil fit for immediate cultivation. It was found on the deltas of the mountain-streams, on the narrow straths around their margin, and occasionally in hollows containing alluvial deposits, which might have been the beds of ancient lakes. These patches of fruitful ground the first immigrants would find ready for use. Modern agriculture has indeed been able to add very little to their area, and has wisely determined that sheep-farming is the proper use of those tracts of mountain among which the alluvial patches are thinly scattered. It is a curious coincidence worth remembering, that those very lands in northern Ireland which the ancestors of the Scottish Highlanders abandoned, were afterwards eagerly sought and occupied by Scottish Lowlanders as a promising

field of industrial enterprise. Thus there were Scots in Ireland and Scots in Britain, and a practice arose among British writers of calling the latter Atta-cotti, which has been explained to mean the hither Scots, or the Scots of this side. But to keep clear of confusion in wandering among the old authorities, it is also necessary to remember that there were among these Scots Dalriads both in Ireland and Argyle, and in each country a territory called Dalriada. It has naturally enough been questioned whether the migration from Ireland can have been extensive enough to account for so large a Gaelic-speaking population as that of the west and north of Scotland became. It seems never to have been seriously doubted, however, that the language of these people was fundamentally the Irish Celtic; and indeed it was ever called by the Teutonic Scotch, Irish, Ersh, or Erse. We shall see that in the time of Columba the properly Irish colony of Scots did not spread beyond the latitude of Iona, and that the country northward was part of the dominion of the king of the Picts. But there is good reason to believe that the Irish was a spreading language. Such as it was, it was completed for the uses of a people who occupied a far higher grade in civilisation than any of their neighbours, except the Romanised Britons, whose day was passing away just as the Scots were spreading and prevailing. It was a language not only calculated for the public and domestic uses of civilisation, but it became a literary language earlier than any of the Teutonic tongues. Devotional books and histories were written in it, and it spread the Bible, and even classic authors in translations. The obscurity in which the language of the Picts has rested is itself evidence that, whether Celtic or Teutonic, it

had not reached the same grade, or become available for

That this spread among
We know, historically,

the same services, as the Irish. the Picts we can only infer. that in the west, group after group of Norse invaders were absorbed into the Irish-speaking population. Although the Norsemen were conquerors of the Highland region, and gave it monarchs and lords, the more civilised language absorbed the ruder though fundamentally stronger, and all spoke the Irish together. Thus, in language, the Teutonic became supreme in the eastern lowlands, the Celtic among the western mountains. From a general view of the whole question, an impression—but nothing stronger than an impressionis conveyed, that the proportion of the Teutonic race that came into the use of the Gaelic is larger than the proportion of the Celtic race that came into the use of the Teutonic or Saxon. Perhaps students of physical ethnology may thus account for the contrasts of appearance in the Highlands: in one district the people being large-limbed and fair, with hair inclined to red; in others, small, lithe, and dusky, with black hair.

Whether it was by this absorption or otherwise, the Scottish Dalriada became a powerful state. When it was in close intercourse with the mother country, the name of Scot became common to the inhabitants of either they might come from Ireland or from Argyle. These came to be distinguished from the Irish as the Scots of Albania. Sometimes authors speak of the two Scotias, the larger and the smaller. It is not safe to count that the word Scot must mean a native of present Scotland, when the period dealt with is earlier than the

1 Columba is called "utriusque Scotia patronus," Ireland being Major Scotia.-Colgan, Thaumaturga.

middle of the twelfth century. Marianus, a great ecclesiastic in Germany, who was among the earliest of the medieval authors to attempt a general history of the world, lived in the latter part of the eleventh century. He was called Marianus Scotus. He speaks of himself and his country, from which he was obliged to migrate on account of religious disputes, but he does not tell which of the Scotlands he was born in. He speaks of others of his countrymen as Scoti, and in the midst of all narrates the death of King Duncan in Scotia. By that time Ireland had become more divided and disintegrated than it was of old, while the colony of Irish Scots in Albania had been enlarging, and absorbing neighbouring territory. Through this process, and a concurrence of historical events, the descendant of the chief of British Dalriada became a monarch reigning over a large and tolerably compact state. By a sort of law of attraction, the term Scotia gradually loosened its hold on the old country, and, attaching itself entirely to the new, gave it the name by which it is known in history.

CHAPTER VI.

Heathendom.

DRUIDISM THE POPULAR SOLVER OF DIFFICULTIES-INQUIRY HOW FAR IT EXISTED AND HAD INFLUENCE-THE BRIEFNESS AND UNCERTAINTY OF CÆSAR'S ACCOUNT THE IMPORTANCE ATTRIBUTED TO IT-FAINTNESS OF OTHER ANCIENT REFERENCES-NECESSITY OF HELPING THEM BY MODERN IMAGINATION-UNKNOWN AS OPPONENTS TO THE EARLY SAINTS AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES— THE MAGI AS ENCOUNTERED BY THESE-THE MAGI IN SCOTLAND —DOMESTIC REVELATIONS ABOUT ONE OF THEM-HOW FAR THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE NORSE EDDAS PREVAILED IN SCOTLAND-ITS SPIRIT AS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE PEOPLE-PREVALENCE OF MANHOOD OVER CUNNING ABSENCE OF THE IMPURITIES INCIDENT TO OTHER PAGAN SYSTEMS-ITS DOMESTICITY-ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PHYSICAL AS WELL AS THE MORAL CONDITIONS OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS--INCOMPATIBILITY WITH CLASSICAL AND ORIENTAL SYSTEMS.

To all inquiries as to the religion from which the inhabitants of North Britain were converted when they became Christians, there has generally been an easy answer, Of course it was from Druidism. That term has been used in history much in the same way as the names of general but undefined causes have been used in physics-to bring out a complete result without the trouble of inquiry. It is thus that we have had the theories of antipathies and affinities, animal spirits, the sensorium, phlogiston, and the like; and