Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/104

 xcvi • PEEFACE. cates that before their arrival, the Picts were in the exclusive possession of that part of Scotland. The tradition of the settlement of the Picts is repre- sented to us in several distinct forms. By Bede, by the " Historia Britonum," and by the Welsh tradi- tions, they ajjpear as a people coming from Scjiihia, and acquiring first Orkney, and afterwards Caith- ness, and then spreading over Scotland from the north. In the "Pictish Chronicle" the Picti and the Scoti are both derived from the Albani of Albania in Asia, and are made two branches of the same people. In the additions to the Irish Nennius they appejir under the name of Cruithne, and are said to have been originally Agathyrsi, and to have taken possession of the islands Orkney, from whence they spread over the north of Britain, under their epomj- mus Cruithne, who had seven sons, who diaded the land into seven divisions ; from thence "a portion of them go to France, and buUd the city of Pictavis or Poitiers, and return from thence to Ireland, from whence they are once more driven to Scotland ; and part of this tradition appears in a more extended shape, and is said to have been taken from the books of the Picts (No. v., a. b. c.) In another form of the tradition, they come from Thrace, under six bro- thers, and land in Ireland, where a part remain and colonize the plain of Bregia, in Meath, and the rest go to Scotland, under the leading of Cathluan, from whom seventy kings reign in Scotland to Constantine,* the last of the Picts (No. v., D.) In another form, it