And the scholiast adds, ‘That is a city which is in North Britain—viz., Ailcluaide,’—the ancient name of Dumbarton. This accords so far with what we gather from his own Confession, that he was a native of the Roman province in Britain; and we find the same place obviously referred to in an old poem preserved in the Black Book of Caermarthen under the name of Nevtur.^[813]

The hymn then proceeds:—

This corresponds with his own statement in his Confession; but here the scholiast adds other names to his family, and for the first time connects them with Armorica in Gaul. His statement is as follows:—‘This was the cause of the servitude of Patrick; his father was Calpuirnn; Conches, daughter of Ochmuis, was his mother and of his five sisters, namely, Lupait and Tigris and Liamain and Darerca, and the name of the fifth was Cinnenum. His brother was Sannan. They all went from the Britons of Alcluaid, across the Iccian sea southwards, on a journey to the Britons who are in the sea of Icht, namely, the Britons of Letha, because they had brethren there at that time. Now, the mother of these children, namely, Conches, was of the Franks, and she was sister to Martin. At that time came seven sons of Sectmaide, king of Britain, in ships from the Britons; and they made great plunder on the Britons, viz., the Britons of Armuric Letha, where Patrick with his family was, and they wounded Calpuirnn there, and carried off Patrick and Lupait with them to Ireland. And they sold Lupait in Conaille Muirthemne, and Patrick in the north of Dal-araidhe.’^[814] Here Patrick is brought from Alcluaid, the place of his birth, to Armorica, in order to be carried off from thence by Britons and not by Scots; and Armorica is thus thrust somewhat violently into his own narrative, where he distinctly implies that he was made captive in the place of his birth.

We are then introduced to Germanus, and told of Patrick that

Here the scholiast introduces the mission of Palladius and the consecration of Patrick by Amathorex the bishop, whom he identifies with Amator, bishop of Auxerre, who was the predecessor of Germanus, and died A.D. 418. He also makes Patrick accompany Germanus to Great Britain in 429, leaving little doubt that the whole connection of Patrick with Germanus has been transferred to him from the acts of Palladius. The author of the hymn gives sixty years as the period during which Patrick preached to the Irish.^[816] He mentions Armagh as the seat of his primacy, and Dun Lethglasse, or Down, as a great church, and implies that he died there; but the scholiast indicates Sabhall Patraic, or Saul, as the place of his death. In the concluding lines of the hymn we find the strange statement—

And the comment of the scholiast is equally remarkable. He says that the other Patrick was Sen Patrick. ‘It is what Patrick, the son of Calpuirnn, promised to Sen Patrick, that together they would go to heaven. And it is related that Patrick was from the xiii. (xvi.) of the kalends of April to the ninth of the kalends of September upon the field, and angels around him, praying to Sen Patrick.’^[817] We are here introduced to two Patricks, and a second Patrick has been created, to whom the acts of the historic Patrick, so far as they have as yet been compiled, have been transferred, while the latter retires into the background under the designation of Sen Patrick, or old Patrick. Their original identity, however, is obscurely hinted at in the hymn, when they are made to ascend to heaven together. The two Patricks likewise appear in the ninth century in the Felire of Angus the Culdee; and here the second Patrick comes forward, under the 17th of March, as the great apostle of Ireland, and the older Patrick retires to the 24th of August, when he is designated the tutor of the former. The stanzas which commemorate them may be thus rendered. On the 17th of March we have

On the 24th of August we have

The chronology of the second Patrick was formed by adding the sixty years, during which, according to the hymn attributed to Fiacc of Sleibhte, he preached to the Irish, to the year 432, when, according to Tirechan, his mission commenced, which gives 492 as the termination of his work. His death would thus fall on 17th March 493, and it is so placed in an old quatrain quoted by Tighernac—

The second Patrick thus created, with a life which lasted one hundred and twenty years and terminated in 493, is now regarded as the Apostle of Ireland, and to him are appropriated the leading features of his career, while the Patrick of the older lives retains nothing but his designation of Sen Patrick. How much, however, the separate existence of this older Patrick embarrassed the martyrologists, we see from the glosses upon the Felire of Angus the Culdee, which are comparatively of much later date, and now first connect him with Glastonbury. The gloss on the word Srenat is ‘that is, in Gloinestir of the Gael in Saxan, that is, in Britannia.’^[821] The gloss on the last line is ‘Tutor of Patraic of Macha;’^[822] and on the margin of the MS. is written the following note:—‘That is, old Patrick of Ros-dela in Magh Locha; but it is more true that he is in Glastonbury of the Gael, in the south of England, for the Scots were dwelling there on a pilgrimage. But his reliques are in Ulster. Sen Patraic in Armagh.’^[823]

Besides the metrical life attributed to Fiacc of Sleibhte, Colgan has collected and printed six prose lives, seven in all. Four of the prose lives—the second, third, fourth and seventh—are anonymous, the fifth life bears to be by a certain Probus, and the sixth by Jocelyn of Furness, whose date is known. It is the latest of the six, and must have been written about the year 1185. These lives fall naturally into two groups.^[824] The first, consisting of Colgan’s second and fourth lives, must have been written after the Book of Armagh and the metrical life attributed to Fiacc, but before the compilation of the glosses added to the latter. They give Nemthor as the place of Patrick’s birth, and place it in the plain of Taburna, thus identifying it with the Bannaven Taberniæ of his Confession. They make him to be carried into captivity from thence by an Irish fleet; but they introduce a number of incidents, connected with his childhood, which bear the usual miraculous character. They know nothing of the story told by the scholiast in Fiacc’s hymn, of the transference of the family from Alclyde to Armorica; but the fourth life opens with the strange statement that some thought St. Patrick was sprung from the Jews; that, when they were dispersed after the fall of Jerusalem, a part of them took refuge in Armorica among the Britons, and from thence his parents migrated to the regions of Strathclyde; but this statement is peculiar to this life. Both of these lives make Patrick thirty years old when he went to Germanus, with whom he studied thirty years, and state that he preached to the Irish for sixty years, thus adopting the chronology of the second Patrick.

The second group consists of the life by Probus, Colgan’s third life, the Tripartite life, and that by Jocelyn. These were all compiled later than the tenth century, and that by Probus appears to be the oldest. He was acquainted with the Book of Armagh, part of the lives contained in which are inserted verbatim; but he was also acquainted with the glosses to the hymn of Fiacc, for he inserts the story of the migration of Patrick’s family to Amorica. He places his birth in the Roman province (in Britanniis), in the village of Bannauc of the Taburnian region, which region he considers to be also the Nentrian province, where giants are said to have formerly inhabited. But the main addition to the incidents of Patrick’s life, which characterises this group, is his connection with St. Martin of Tours. The scholiast on the hymn attributed to Fiacc had already made his mother Conches St. Martin’s sister, and St. Patrick is now made to reside for four years with him at Tours, where he was instructed in the rules of monastic life, and received the tonsure; but, as St. Martin died in 397, the date is too early for St. Patrick. On the other hand, it is probably true of St. Ninian, who is also said to have been a nephew of St. Martin and associated with him, and with the dates of whose life it is more consistent. Probus, however, seems to have preserved one incident which is true of the historic Patrick, when he states that, after he was ordained priest by a bishop, whom he calls St. Senior, he preached to the Irish before the mission of Palladius, and before his own consecration as a bishop. This short analysis of the lives of St. Patrick will be sufficient to show how the real events in the life of the historic Patrick, so far as they can be ascertained, were gradually overlaid by spurious additions, till at length the legendary life of a spurious Patrick, as we now have it, was developed out of it.

Besides the great legendary apostle of the Irish, the virgin St. Bridget seems also to occupy a prominent place in Irish hagiology. That she was a historic character, belonging to the earliest period of the Irish Church, there seems little reason to doubt, and it is exceedingly probable that St. Patrick himself in his Confession alludes to her when he says, ‘There was one blessed Scotic maiden, very fair, of noble birth and of adult age, whom I baptized; and after a few days she came to me, because, as she declared, she had received a response from a messenger of God desiring her to become a virgin of Christ and to draw near to God. Thanks be to God, on the sixth day from that, she with praiseworthy eagerness seized on that state of life which all the virgins of God likewise now adopt;’ but her life too was now overlaid with spurious tales and fabulous incidents, till it assumed an aspect far removed from its probable reality. Space will not permit us to analyse these lives, or to enter further into the history of the origin and development of the great hagiologic literature of Ireland; suffice it to mention that the two oldest lives of Bridget are attributed to Bishop Ultan, under whose auspices Tirechan compiled his Annotations, and to Cogitosus, who can now be identified with the father of Muirchu, who wrote the second life in the Book of Armagh.

Besides the Lives of St. Columba by Cummene and Adamnan in the seventh century, the oldest lives in the Scotch hagiology of which we can fix the dates, are the Life of St. Ninian by Aelred, who died in the year 1166, the Life of St. Kentigern, of which a fragment only remains, which was written during the episcopate of Herbert, who was bishop from 1147 to 1164, and that by Jocelyn of Furness, written at the request of his namesake, who was bishop of Glasgow from 1174 to 1199. These lives therefore belong to the twelfth century, when the manipulation of the old chronicles of Scotland had already commenced, which laid the foundation of that fictitious scheme of history, both civil and ecclesiastic, which was reduced to a system by John of Fordun; and to some extent they bear the marks of that influence. The Life of Servanus, however, which has been preserved in the Marsh MSS. in Dublin, belongs probably to a somewhat earlier period. With the exception of these lives, we are dependent almost entirely upon the lections in the ‘Propria Sanctorum’ of the Aberdeen Breviary, and on the works of Dempster and Camerarius, for notices of the Scottish saints; but the former were compiled after Fordun’s great work, and are tainted by the false chronology of his Chronicle; and the two latter works, after the publication of Hector Boece’s work, and are under the influence of the fictitious history elaborated by him. The dates attached to the saints in the Scotch Calendar are in the main fictitious, and cannot be depended on.

Such is a short view of the hagiologic literature of Ireland and Scotland, which forms so remarkable a feature in the literature of the church. Its bearing upon the education of the people presents an equally important feature. In the later part of the eighth and in the ninth centuries we find a new functionary appearing in the monasteries, and gradually superseding the Scribhnigh, or scribe. This was the Ferleiginn, lector or man of learning, whose functions were more closely connected with education. He appears first in Clonmacnois; and we find in 794 the death of ‘Colgu Ua Duineachda Ferleiginn of Cluainmicnois, he who composed the Scuaip-Chrabhaidh,’ recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters. There is no doubt that he is the ‘Colcu lector in Scotia,’ to whom Alcuin wrote an epistle.^[825] It appears from his life that he was ‘supreme moderator and prælector of the school of Clonmacnois, and that he arrived at such eminence in learning and sanctity that he was called chief scribe and master of the Scots of Ireland.’^[826] In the following century the Ferleiginn appears also at Armagh, and we are told that in the year 876 Maelrobha, son of Cuimmhach, abbot of Armagh, was taken prisoner by the Galls of Loch-Cuan, as was also the Ferleiginn, Mochta.^[827] During the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries these lectors, or Ferleiginn, are repeatedly mentioned in the Irish Annals in connection with the various monasteries in Ireland.^[828] They also appear in the Columban monasteries both of Ireland and of Scotland. In 992 we find the death of ‘Dunchadh ua h-Uchtain, Ferleighinn of Cenannus,’ or Kells, recorded; and in 1034 ‘Macnia ua h-Uchtain, Ferleighinn of Kells, is drowned coming from Alban with the bed of Columcill and three of Patrick’s relics, and thirty persons along with him.’^[829] In Scotland he appears in the early part of the reign of David I., in connection with the Columban monastery of Turbruad, or Turriff, founded by Comgan, where ‘Domangart, Ferleginn Turbruad, or of Turriff, witnesses a charter by Gartnait, Mormaer of Buchan, and Eta his wife, to the church of Deer;’Deer;’^[830] and we find him at Iona in 1164, when the Ferleighinn Dubside appears among the prominent functionaries of the monastery.^[831] In the following century the name of Ferleiginn is still preserved in connection with the church of St. Andrews and its schools. Between the years 1211 and 1216, a controversy which arose between the prior of St. Andrews and his convent, on the one part, and the master of the schools and the poor scholars of the city of St. Andrews, on the other, in regard to certain lands and dues which the latter claimed, was amicably settled ‘with the assent and goodwill of Master Laurence, who was both archdeacon and Ferleyn of the said city;’ and the prior and canons became bound ‘to pay to the foresaid Laurence the Ferleighinn (Ferlano) and his successors, at the house of the Ferleighinn (in domo Ferlani) of the said city, for the use of the poor scholars,’ certain dues from these lands. ‘Thus was agreement made between the parties, and by authority confirmed, so that neither archdeacon nor Ferleighinn (Ferlanus), nor master of the schools, nor poor scholars, shall hereafter move controversy against the same.’^[832]

These scholars seem to have been the lowest order of the ecclesiastical community, and to have been clerics who were undergoing a course of training and instruction to fit them for performing the service of the church. Their Pictish name was Scolofthes, as we learn from Reginald of Durham, who mentions the clerics of the church (of Kirkcudbright), the Scolofthes as they are called in the Pictish speech, and gives ‘Scholasticus, a scholar,’ as its Latin equivalent. We find them under the name of Scolocs in three of the churches belonging to St. Andrews. In the church of Ellon, which was of old the capital of the earldom of Buchan, they appear in 1265 as holding certain lands under the bishop of St. Andrews; and in 1387 the church lands of Ellon are called the Scolog lands, and were hereditary in the families of the Scologs who possessed them. An inquest regarding these lands, held in that year, bears that from one quarter or fourth part of these lands ‘there are to be found for the parish church of Ellon four clerks with copes and surplices, able to read and sing sufficiently;’ another quarter or fourth part ‘is bound to find a house for the scholars;’ a third ‘is bound to find twice in every year twenty-four wax candles for the ‘park’ or ‘perk,’ that is, the bracket or corbel before the high altar; and the fourth quarter is bound to find a smithy. These lands are indiscriminately called the ‘Scolog lands’ and the ‘Scholar lands,’ and are described as ‘lying in the schoolry (Scolaria) of Ellon.’ The Scolocs are also found in the church lands of Arbuthnot in the Mearns, which they likewise held of the see of St. Andrews. Here, in an inquest regarding the lands of the Kirkton of Arbuthnot, held in the year 1206, we find the ecclesiastical territory held by certain tenants called parsons, who had subtenants under them, having houses of their own and cattle which they pastured on the common; and the tenants of these lands are termed by several of the witnesses Scolocs, and are also termed the bishop’s men. These Scolocs were finally ejected altogether from the land which they appear to have tilled. They also appear at the neighbouring church of Fetteresso, likewise belonging to the bishop of St. Andrews.^[833] The name of Scoloc is also found in connection with one of the Columban monasteries in Ireland; for in one of the charters preserved in the Book of Kells, which must have been granted between the years 1128 and 1138, we find that among the functionaries of the monastery, after the Coärb of Columcille, or the abbot, the Sacart or priest, the Ferleiginn or lecturer, the Aircennech or Erenagh of the house of guests, and the Fosaircennech or vice-Erenach, appears the Toisech na Scoloc, or Chief of the Scologs, Aengus O’Gamhna.^[834]

Whether there existed in Ireland a pagan literature, in the proper sense of the term, prior to the introduction of Christianity, and whether the art of writing was known in any shape to its pagan population, is a very difficult question, and one into which it is not necessary for our purpose to enter. |Art of writing introduced.|But whether there existed among them an ante-Christian civilisation of any kind or not, there can be no doubt that the early Celtic Church, such as we have found it to be, must have been a powerful agent in civilising the people, and not less in fixing a standard of language; and the earliest lives of St. Patrick certainly attribute to him the introduction of the written alphabet. Thus Tirechan, having mentioned that Patrick had consecrated three hundred and fifty bishops in Ireland, adds: ‘Of presbyters we cannot count the number, because he used to baptize men daily, and to read letters and abgetoriæ, or alphabets, with them; and of some he made bishops and presbyters, because they had received baptism in mature age.’^[835] Of the two alphabets known to have existed among the Irish, the one now called the Irish alphabet, and supposed to be peculiar to the Irish language, is, as Dr. Todd well remarks, nothing more than the Roman alphabet, which was used over all Europe in the fifth and some following centuries. The other, called the Ogham, which is mainly confined to inscriptions upon stone monuments, though it occasionally appears in MSS.,^[836] is of the same character as the Scandinavian Runes, and has now also been clearly shown to have a post-Christian origin.^[837]

Before letters were introduced, however, there could have been no fixed standard of language. Each Tuath, or tribe, had probably its own variety of the common speech; but these all, no doubt, belonged to that branch of the Celtic language called Gaelic. There would thus be as many varieties of the spoken Gaelic as there were independent tribes.^[838] The tendency of language at this stage is to go through a process of corruption and decay. It is then easily modified by surrounding circumstances and affected by external influences, which an oral literature, consisting of the songs and legends of a rude people, is powerless to control. This tendency would be arrested only when a written and cultivated language was formed under the influence of the Christian Church, and a common standard of the language, in its most perfect shapes and preserving its older forms, was established, which was spoken and written by the cultivated class of the community, and to a knowledge of which a portion of the people were raised by education. Under its influence the numerous varieties of the spoken language became more assimilated, until at length we find that in the main there remain only four forms of the vernacular Irish, which were peculiar to the four great provinces of Munster, Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught, into which the country was divided. There was also an old division of Ireland by a line drawn across the island from Dublin to Galway into two parts, termed respectively Leth Cuinn and Leth Mogha. This division was known to Bede, who distinguished between the northern provinces of the Scots and the nations of the Scots dwelling in the northern districts of Ireland.^[839] The northern half contained the provinces of Connaught and Ulster and the old province of Meath, which is now included in Leinster, and the seaboard of which formed the plain of Bregia, or Magh Bregh, mentioned more than once by Adamnan.^[840] The southern half consisted of the old provinces of Leinster and Munster; and the difference in the spoken language between the northern and southern Irish was somewhat more marked.

The peculiarities in the spoken Gaelic of the four provinces are thus expressed in the following sayings current in most parts of Ireland:—

The Munster man has the accent without the propriety.

The Ulster man has the propriety without the accent.

The Leinster man has neither the propriety nor the accent.

The Connaught man has both the accent and the propriety.^[841]

The difference in these four dialects is mainly in words, pronunciation, and idiom; but the grand difference between the vernacular Irish of the northern and that of the southern part of Ireland consists in the position of the accent, in the vowel sounds, and in the form of the verb. In the north the primary accent is on the root of the word, or the first syllable, and the secondary accent on the termination; but in the south the primary accent is on the termination, and the secondary accent on the root, if short.^[842] The vowel sounds vary very much, their most perfect pronunciation being in Connaught. In the verb, the analytic form—or that in which the verb has a common form for all the persons, and these are expressed by separate pronouns, while the auxiliary verb is more employed—is used in the spoken language of the north, and principally in Ulster. The synthetic or inflected form, which is the more ancient, is generally used in the south of Ireland; and in this respect it approaches more closely the forms of the written or cultivated language, and shows a less degree of corruption than the vernacular of the north.

In the written Irish, the more ancient verbal forms have been preserved in their entirety, and there is a complete system of inflections, with a very copious vocabulary, of which several glossaries have been preserved. The most ancient is that attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennan, king and bishop of Cashel, who was killed in the year 903; and the greater part of it undoubtedly belongs to that period.^[843] There has also been preserved an ancient Grammar termed Uraicecht na m-Eiges, or Precepts of the Poets, which is certainly not much later in date;^[844] but Zeuss’ great work, the Grammatica Celtica, exhibits the grammar of this written language in its most complete shape, as he has constructed it from materials furnished by MSS. of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Such being, in the main, the position of the Gaelic language in Ireland and the relation between the written and cultivated language and the spoken dialects, we find that Scotland presents to us, in connection with the distribution of her languages, somewhat peculiar phenomena, which are more difficult of solution. If a line is drawn from a point on the eastern bank of Loch Lomond, somewhat south of Ben Lomond, following in the main the line of the Grampians, and crossing the Forth at Aberfoil, the Teith at Callander, the Almond at Crieff, the Tay at Dunkeld, the Ericht at Blairgowrie, and proceeding through the hills of Brae Angus till it reaches the great range of the Mounth, then crossing the Dee at Ballater, the Spey at lower Craigellachie, till it reaches the Moray Firth at Nairn—this forms what was called the Highland Line, and separated the Celtic from the Teutonic-speaking people. Within this line, with the exception of the county of Caithness which belongs to the Teutonic division, the Gaelic language forms the vernacular of the inhabitants, and beyond it prevails the broad Scotch. The one is as much a dialect of Irish, and is substantially the same language, as the other is of the Anglic or Anglo-Saxon. There are small and unimportant provincial varieties observed in both; yet each forms essentially one dialect; and Scotch Gaelic must be viewed as simply a provincial variety of the spoken Gaelic, of the same class as the provincial varieties of the vernacular Gaelic in Ireland. It exhibits some differences which are peculiar to itself. In other points it corresponds with one or other of the Irish dialects. The primary accent in Scotch Gaelic is invariably on the first syllable of the word, and the analytic form of the verb, with the use of the auxiliary verb, is preferred to the synthetic. In these respects it corresponds with the spoken language of the north of Ireland, and its vowel sounds approach most nearly to those of the Connaught dialect. Scotch Gaelic is, in fact, so far, more closely allied to the northern Irish than the latter is to the spoken language of the south; but there are other peculiarities of Scotch Gaelic which seem due to influence from another quarter. It forms the genitive plural of some nouns by adding the syllable an, in which it resembles Welsh forms. It does not use that phonetic change of the initial consonant, termed by Irish grammarians ‘eclipsis.’ It drops the final vowel in some substantives, and the future tense of its verb resembles the present tense of the Irish verb, while for the present it uses the auxiliary with the present participle. These peculiarities Scotch Gaelic shares with Manx, or the Gaelic of the Isle of Man; and it indicates that this vernacular form of Gaelic had been arrested at a somewhat later stage in its process of disintegration than the northern dialects of Irish.

The whole of the mountain region of Scotland with its islands within the Highland line, with the exception of Caithness, thus possessing a dialect of spoken Gaelic which must be ranked with the vernacular dialects of Ireland, the natural inference is that it must at all times have been peopled by a homogeneous race. But when we inquire into the elements which enter into its early population, we find that, prior to the ninth century, it consisted, in name at least, of two different races. In that part of Argyllshire which formed the kingdom of Dalriada, with the islands south of the promontory of Ardnamurchan, were the Scots, who unquestionably immigrated from Ireland in the beginning of the sixth century; while the whole of the rest of this region, with the islands north of Ardnamurchan, was peopled by the Pictish tribes. If these two races were not homogeneous, the question arises, How did this Gaelic dialect spread over the whole of it? To this question Irish writers usually return a very short and ready answer. They tell us that the Irish colony of Scots spread gradually over the western districts; that in the ninth century they subjugated the Picts; that the Pictish population was superseded by the Scottish; and that the language spoken by the Highlanders was invariably termed by them Erse or Irish. This solution will not, however, stand the test of investigation. The former part of the statement, when compared with the ascertained facts regarding the relative position of the two races, requires an assent to a philological proposition which is almost impossible; and the latter assertion is not true. It is obvious from the statements of both Adamnan and Bede that, as late as the eighth century, the Scots of Dalriada were still confined within those mountain barriers which separated them from the great Pictish race; and, however we may view the revolution which took place in their relative position, it is obvious that the spoken dialect which prevailed over the rest of the Highlands prior to the ninth century, whatever it was, could not have been derived from the Scots of Dalriada. But is it credible that a language spoken in such a mountainous and inaccessible region as the northern and eastern Highlands, with the islands north of Ardnamurchan, could have so entirely disappeared as to leave not a trace even in its topography? Though we do not possess written evidence of the early speech of this part of the country, we have a record in the names of its great natural features—its mountains, its lochs, and its great rivers; and all experience tells us that, though the population of a country may change, these generally remain unaffected by it, and retain the stamp of its earliest race, by whom these names were imposed. We find that the names of farms and homesteads, houses and villages, may change and bear the impress of each succeeding population; but those of the grand and unchangeable features of a country bearing the physical aspect of Scotland remain unchanged, and these names, throughout the whole of the districts peopled by the northern Picts, are unmistakably Gaelic. There may enter into these names some vocables which are not intelligible in the modern vernacular Gaelic; but it must be recollected that the names were imposed at a much earlier stage of the language, and we usually find that they are obsolete words of the same language, and are preserved in the old glossaries.^[845]

But, further, the phenomena exhibited in these districts of Scotland, in the relation of the early races which peopled it to the language which we find at a later period pervading the whole range of country, are not very dissimilar from those which appear to have existed at a much earlier period in the north of Ireland. There we find the tradition that the Pictish race once extended over the whole of the north of Ireland; and the remembrance of the Pictish kingdom of Ulster, with its capital of Emhan Macha, or Emania, is preserved almost to historic times. The remains of this Pictish race still existed, within the historic period, in the smaller kingdom of Dalnaraidhe, or Dalaradia, and in the plain of Bregia in Meath; and their close connection with the Picts of Scotland was not dissevered till the middle of the sixth century. Here, too, we have an extended Pictish race, over which however the race of the Scots were more rapidly, and at a much earlier period, superinduced, and the same phenomena of the spoken language of the whole country forming one dialect of that branch of Celtic termed Gaelic, while there is no trace of any other language having prevailed. We may therefore infer that the language spoken by the Pictish race which peopled the Highlands and Islands likewise belonged to the Gaelic branch of the Celtic, and that, like the Irish, before a cultivated standard of language was formed by the introduction of letters, it was characterised by local varieties of speech, and that there were as many dialects, in the most limited sense of the term, as there were districts and tribes. We do not find, however, that St. Columba, when he commenced his mission among the Picts, had any difficulty in conversing freely with them, or preaching the Word intelligibly to them. There are only two instances mentioned by Adamnan where he had to call in the aid of an interpreter, and in both cases it was resorted to in preaching the Word of Life, and not in conversing. These are the cases of the old chief of the Geona cohort, who came by sea to the north end of Skye, and of a peasant in the province of the Picts;^[846] but we are not told to what part of the country these men belonged, and the dialect of one part may have been more removed from the Irish form of it than that of another.

A very powerful agency, however, was soon brought to bear upon the language of that part of the country, that, namely, of the Christian Church. Whatever may have been the case in Ireland, it is unquestionably to the Columban Church issuing from Ireland that the northern Picts owed the introduction of letters and of a written language. For centuries her clergy were entirely Scottish, and the instruction of the people and the education of the young was in the hands of the Scottish monks of the Columban Church. By them the standard of the written Irish was introduced. It became the language of the church, the monastery and the school. There was, probably for generations, not a Pictish child, who secured any education at all, who had not learned his alphabet and been taught to read by a Scottish monk. And with the spread of knowledge and of cultivation there must have arisen a coalescing of the numerous varieties of the vernacular into one spoken dialect, and the assimilation of the whole to the cultivated language of Ireland. Towards the close of the period during which this Celtic Church was predominant, and just before its extinction, we have a specimen of the written language of the Columban Church in the Book of Deer. It is a MS. which belonged to the church of Deer, one of the few Columban monasteries in the Pictish territory which retained its clerical character throughout. It contains the Gospel of St. John, portions of the other three Gospels, the fragment of an office for the visitation of the sick, and the Apostles’ Creed, all in Latin, and is written in a character which may be ascribed to the ninth century. A few of the rubrics in the office for the visitation of the sick are, however, in Irish, and, as was usual in such monasteries, there are written on the blank pages notices in Gaelic, written in the Irish character, giving the legend of the foundation of the church, and memoranda of the different grants of lands and privileges made to it. These are all in the same handwriting, and appear to have been written in the early part of the reign of David I. They thus furnish us with a specimen of the written language of the period, and, though it possesses some unimportant peculiarities, it is unquestionably identic with the written Irish of the period.^[847] Not long after, we find the vernacular Gaelic appearing under the name of the Albanic, or language of Alban, and exhibiting some of the peculiarities of the Scotch Gaelic. Jocelyn of Furness, who wrote in the twelfth century, gives us in his Life of Kentigern two etymologies of the saint’s name. One is unquestionably from Cymric, or the Welsh language; but in the other the interpretation is derived from the Gaelic. He says that ‘not in vain, but of set purpose, had he been called Kentigern by Servanus, because by the will of the Lord he sought to become the head lord of all, for Ken is “caput” in Latin, and the Albanic Tyern is interpreted “dominus.” in Latin.’^[848] Cen, now Ceann, however, is ‘the head’ both in Irish and Scotch Gaelic, and Tyern is the phonetic spelling of Tighearn, Lord, in Scotch Gaelic, the Irish form of which is Tighearna, thus showing the elision of the final vowel peculiar to Scotch Gaelic. The written language, however, he appears to term Scotic, when he says that he had ‘found a little volume, written in the Scotic dialect, filled from end to end with solecisms, but containing at greater length the life and acts of the holy bishop.’^[849]

During the last two and a half centuries of this period the intercourse between the north and west of Scotland and Ireland had, to a great extent, been interrupted by the Norwegian conquest of the Western Isles, and the formation of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles; but the rise of the Celtic chief Somerled, and the foundation of the dynasty of Gaelic Lords of the Isles in his descendants, renewed the intercourse with Ireland; and we find that, during the three centuries in which these powerful Celtic kinglets ruled over the western Highlands and Islands, there was not only a close political connection with Ireland, but the literary influence was equally close and strong, and Ireland was resorted to for instruction in the literature and written language of the country. It was at the commencement of this period, that the name of Scotia became finally and absolutely transferred from Ireland to Scotland, and superseded the older name of Alban, or Albania; and, during the whole of this period, the name applied to the Gaelic language of Scotland was that of Scotic, or Scotch. We find abundant evidence of this during the earlier portion of this period, when the term ‘Scotice’ is invariably applied to the Gaelic forms of the names of places. Thus, in the ‘Descriptio Albaniæ,’ in the twelfth century, the river Forth is said to be called ‘Scottice Froch, Brittanice Werid, Romane vero Scottewattre,’ the term Roman being here curiously enough applied to the Anglic. A charter by William the Lion mentions that spring near Karel ‘quæ Scotice Tobari nuncupatur;’ and the same designation for the Gaelic language of Scotland appears frequently in the Chartularies, while the term Anglic is used for the Teutonic. Thus, in a perambulation of the lands of Kingoldrum in Forfarshire, in 1256, we have ‘Hachethunethouer quod Anglice dicitur Midefeld,‘ and ‘Marresiam quamdam quæ Scotice dicitur Moynebuche.’^[850] And in the fourteenth century Fordun gives us a very distinct account of the distribution of the vernacular dialect in his day. He says, ‘The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech. For two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish (Scotica) and the Teutonic (Theutonica); the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech (Scoticæ linguæ) inhabits the Highlands and outlying districts.’^[851]