Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/202

 cxoiv PEEFACE. to repossess the churches in Scotland of which they had been deprived in the early part of the preced- ing century. It would appear, therefore, that these several bodies were combined in the revolution which overthrew the Pictish kingdom, and placed Kenneth Mac Alpin, with his Scots, on the throne ; and this exactly corresponds with the indications given us of the causes which led to this revolution ; for the Picts had, according to the " Irish Annals," sustained a great defeat from the Danish pirates, and Galloway was the very region to which Alpin the last king of Scottish Dalriada had fled, and which he had subdued, while the return of the Scottish clergy, who had been expelled by Nectan, king of the Picts, and their recovery of their old benefices, formed an important element in the foundation of the new kingdom. Such considerations are offered more as specula- tions than as positive deductions from historic facts ; but in this attempt to discriminate between what are artificial alterations made in the structure of these old chronicles and hsts of kings to suit the exigencies of a controversy in which the feelings of the nation, and the supposed honour of the country, were deeply involved, and what are the fragments of real history conveyed under the form of legendary narrative, it may not, it is hoped, be considered foreign to the object of this Preface to place them, such as they are, before the reader. The Editor has gone over the ground of the early