9
sixth century, and by a gradual progress overspreading the land from west to
east, gave the law and their name to the ancient dominions of the Pictish
people, whose language became amalgamated with the kindred dialect of the
Irish. Every circumstance with regard to the Scots, a Gaelic people, their
origin, their country, their lineage, their speech, their history, has been dis-
puted by self-believing men, with such obstinate perseverance, as to scatter over
the truth a vast mass of opiniative uncertainties. But demonstration has finally
silenced on this topic the tongue of disputation (z); and historical verity has
now displayed the Irish origin of the Scots, their subsequent migration to
Argyle, in 603 A.D., their following annals and ultimate ascendancy within a
mountainous country which had given them a settlement (a).
Thus, at the late commencement of the twelfth century, the ample limits of
Scotland was inhabited, as we have seen, by the Celtic descendants of the abo-
riginal Britons, by the Gaelic Scots who had overspread the land, by the Anglo-
Saxons of Lothian, and by the Gothic Scandinavians on the coast of Caithness.
At that epoch a new but mixed people came in upon all those Celts and Goths.
Anglo-Saxons and  Anglo-Normans, English and Flemings, settled in every
district in Scotland and by a slow progress became the respectable progeni-
tors of the present inhabitants, who speak the English tongue which is not older
than the twelfth century.    By tracing the colonization of all those lineages and
exhibiting examples of their languages, it was rendered impossible in the face
of such demonstration for ignorance to mistake the origin of the people, or for
learning to misrepresent the analogy of their speech (b).    No one need now be
surprised when he seen in the maps of every shire in Scotland, specimens of
the languages of all those people, however different their tongues may be in
their derivations or dialects.    Yet lexicographers who cannot be trusted with
a sentence doubt demonstration, and  glossarists who are not to be charged
with a, word disbelieve self-evident truths.
§ VI. Of new kings and new Laws."] With those new people during the
the Seoto-Saxon period a sort of new dynasty of kings, new laws, and new
(z) Caledonia, i. bk. ii. eh. vi.
(a) Ib. p. 271-3. The faet being thus established puts an end to a thousand fictions and
faneies about the antiquity of the Seots and the length of the royal line. Many treatises of various
erudition have been thereby confuted and several narratives of imaginary tales under the name of
Scottish histories have been ineidentally exploded. See Nicolson's Scots Hist. Library throughout.
(b) Nicolson's Scots Hist. Lib. ch. i.-iii. Caledonia, i. book iii. ch. xi.; book iv. ch. i., of the Saxon
colonization of proper Scotland.
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