Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/34

 xxvi PEEFACE. the year 946 of the Christian era, and not with the year 976. It is therefore plain that the latter date is an interpolation, and that the passage originally ran, " a passione Christi peracti sunt auni Dcccc.xlvi " et V annus Eadmundi regis Anglorum." In pre- cisely similar terms, the date in the Harleian MS. is thus given : " a passione autem Christi peracti sunt " anni septingenti nonaginta sex, ab incarnatione " autem ejus anni sunt octingenti triginta unus," when, no doubt, the year 796 is the true date in- tended, and the later date is a subsequent interpola- tion. Some of the MSS. in the third class have the date from the Passion, of 8 7 9 in place of 796. When the date 946 in the Vatican MS. is said to be the fifth year of the reign of King Edmund, there must have been some reason for connecting that date with a pai'ticular year in the reign of a Saxon king. The Editor believes that reason to have been that, in the fifth year of King Edmund, he conquered the Welsh kingdom of Cumbria or Strath Clyde, and the con- quest may have brought the " Historia Britonum " to the knowledge of the Saxons. This conjecture is supported by the fact that the Paris MS., which almost entirely corresponds with the Vatican MS., is the only MS. of Nennius in which the proper names appear in the Saxon and not in the Welsh form. The Harleian ms. attaches to the text of Nennius' additions, consisting, first, of genealogies of the Saxon kings ; secondly, of a Welsh chronicle ; and thirdly, of Welsh genealogies. The Saxon genealogies are