Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/189

 PEEFACE. clxxxi undertook the task of weaving the whole into a formal history of the kingdom ; but while his nar- rative is thus distorted, Scots made to assume undue dimensions, both in antiquity and in import- ance, and a system of artificial dates applied to their history, yet as his narrative consists of frag- ments of genuine chronicles woven into a fictitious scheme of history, there can be no doubt that true events are often narrated, though accompanied by false dates. When John of Fordun narrates that the Scots were expelled in the year 360 by Hungus, son of Hurgust king of the Picts ; that this was immediately followed by the arrival of the relics of St. Andrew and the foundation of St. Andrews, and that after that the Scots returned and founded a new Scottish kingdom, he has in point of fact transplanted the true events of the century which mtervened between Alpin, the last king of Scottish Dalriada, and Kenneth Mac Alpin, the founder of the later Scottish kingdom, when a real Angus, son of Fergus, king of the Picts, conquered the Scots of Dalriada, received the relics of St. Andrew, and founded St. Andrews. That Fordun has in reality transplanted the events of this century to the earlier period is clear from this, that in the list of the Pictish kings he has Oengus, the son of Fergus, in his proper place, and seventy-nine years prior to him, Talargan filius Amfrud, who imme- diately preceded the Anglic conquest under Oswy ; while among the early kings he interpolates Hurgust