Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/197

 PREFACE. clxxxix us to the end of 843,^and in his twelfth year, which falls in the year 844, he defeated the Picts seven times in one day, and confirmed his kingdom. If he reigned twenty-eight years, this leaves sixteen years of his reign, which is the length of the reign given to him in the " Pictish Chronicle," after the last king of the Picts. The later chronicles add three more kings to the Picts, Kinat son of Ferat, one month, Brude son of Fotel, two years, and Drust son of Ferat, three years, whose joint reigns amount to six years, and the last of whom was slain at Scone. This brings us to the year 850, the era from which the dates are reckoned in the later chronicles, which seem to have regarded Scone as the centre of the kingdom, and framed their lists of kings with esjaecial reference to its occupation ; and this is the year to which the tale of the slaughter of Pictish nobles by the Scots at Scone belongs. If in these events, then, some fragments of real history have been handed down to us, the question naturally arises. Where did the Scots come from who founded this later Scottish kingdom under Kenneth Mac Alpin ? It is thus answered by the later chronicles, " Hie mii-a caUiditate duxit Scotos " de Ergadia in terra Pictorum ;" but this ob- viously belongs to the artificial system by which the later kingdom of the Scots was immediately connected with the earlier Scottish kingdom of Dalriada. The older documents are silent on the subject, with the exception of St. Berchan, who