Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/123

 PEEFACE. cxv hill fort of Dunadd as its chief seat, called also, from its situation in the centre of the moss of Crinan, Dunmonaidh, or the fort of the moss. And in the centre of Scotland these four kingdoms met in a sort of neutral ground or debateable land, extending from the river Forth to the river Almond, and comprising the modern counties of Stirling and Linlithgow, which was occupied by a mixed population of Picts, Angles, and Britons, and into which the kings of the Scots frequently- carried their arms. In it lay the small districts of Calatria and Manann ; and within its limits, the different races generally encountered each other in the struggle for the mastery, and most of the battles were fought. In these contests the Scots and the Britons usually combined, on the one hand, and the Angles and Picts on the other, — the nations of the west against the nations of the east. Here, during the reign of Oswald, Donald Brec was defeated in the year 638, according to Tighernac, in the battle of Glenmairison,^ and Etin, probably Caeredin, was besieged, and here, two years after the death of Oswald, who, after a reign of eight years, was slain by Penda, king of the Mercians, at a place called by Bede, Maserfelth, in a battle, which is called, in the additions to the " Historia Brito- " num," the battle of Cocboy, on the 5th of August ' Glenmairison must not be confounded with Glenmoriston in Inverness-shire. The transactions are clearly in the south, and a misplaced entry of the same trans- action under G78 implies that it was in Calathros.