Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/176

 clxviii PREFACE. tine the Great. The interval between the death of Alpin, the last Scottish king of Daliiada, and the ac- cession of Kenneth Mac Alpin, the first Scottish king who ruled over the Picts, extending to a century of Pictish rule in Dalriada, and during which time the foundation of St. Andrews really took place, is suppressed, and Alpin is made the immediate pre- decessor of Kenneth, and identified with his father, so as to unite the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada with the subsequent Scottish kingdom of Kenneth ; and, finally, the chain of connexion between them is completed by a genealogy of William the Lyon, in which his pedigree is taken through Kenneth Mac Alpin and the Scottish kings of Dal- riada to Ireland through a long catalogue of Irish names. By this device, the monarchy of Scotland appears as a continuous Scottish kingdom as far back as the beginning of the sixth century, while the foundation of St. Andrews is removed to a period two centuries earlier. The artificial nature of this junction of separate lists is apparent from the expression of primus rex Scottorum being connected with the name of Kenneth Mac Alpin. This was true, when he was considered as the suc- cessor of the old Pictish kings, — and though himself of the race of the Scots, removed by a century from the last Scottish king of Dalriada, — but it was quite inconsistent with the supposition that he was the immediate successor of the Dalriadic Scots. This difficulty appears to have struck the compilers of