Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/57

 PEEFACE. xlix suspicion that the compiler was no other than Ailred, the biographer and panegyrist of King David, and the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Eievaux. That such a compilation was not foreign to his literary habits we know, as he wrote a genealogy of the kings of England, and a part of the " Chronicon Elegiacum," written probably in the same year, is attributed to him. 17. Description of Scotland. — This tract is Description of „,. . -TIT • Scotland. also one of the six pieces printed by Innes m his appendix, and it is now reprinted from the Colbertine MS. That this coUation was very ne- cessary appears from this, that Innes, in printing that part of it which gives the various theories for the etymology of the name Arregathel, has the following sentence : " Vel id circo quia Scoti ibi " habitabant primitus post redditum suam de " Hibernia," while in the original, the people named are not the Scoti only, but Scoti Picti. In the previous sentence he states that the Scoti "gener- " aliter Gattheli dicuntur," from which we may in- fer that he uses Scoti as equivalent to the Irish Gaidhecd, and to the Welsh Gwydchjl; and the expression Scoti Picti is simply the Latin render- ing of the Welsh Gwyddyl FJichti, The same statement occurs in this tract as in the chronicle, that the Scots had reigned for 315 years to the year when William the Lion succeeded to the throne, which places its composition in the same year. Innes was of opinion that this tract was