Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/28

 XX PEEFACE. from Kenneth Macalpin to Kenneth, son of Mal- colm, with the leading events under each reign. Innes, however, was mistaken in supposing that this latter appears in the Colbertine MS. as a separate chronicle. AU three pieces are evidently transcribed as one chronicle, though possibly com- piled from different sources ; but there appears to be something omitted between the second and third division of the chronicle, as, in giving the events under the reign of Kenneth Macalpin, the expression occurs in the latter, " Pictavia autem a Pictis est " nominata quos ut diximus Cinadius delevit," while there is no mention of the destruction of the Picts in the previous part of the chronicle. "What the omitted part was, may be gathered from Higden's " Polichronicon," where his quotation of this very part of the chronicle is preceded by a short account of the destruction of the Picts by the treacherous slaughter of their nobles at a meeting with the Scots. It is the same account which is narrated at large by Giraldus Cambrensis in a chapter of his work, " De instructione Principum," printed in this collection (No. xxvii.), also, in the same connexion, in the chronicle extracted from the " Scalacronica " (No. XXXII.), and in the chronicle (No. xxxix.), in which it is given in the very words of Higden. On the margin of Giraldus' account is the expression, " De Pictis Scotorum prodicione cleletis," and the account in the latter chronicle concludes with the expression, " Sicque de duobus populis gens bellico-