Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/61

 PEEFACE. liii which these calculations were made, this places the compilation of this chronicle in the year 1187. The transcript by James Gray, however, is a very bad one, and the proper names are most inaccurately given. 24. Description of Britain. — This description Description is printed from one of the Cottonian MSS. (Claudius, D. II.), and is here inserted for the notices of the provinces of Scotland which it contains. The MS. is probably not older than the fourteenth century, but the expression, " Albania que modo Scocia vocatur," points so plainly to the twelfth century, that the Editor has no hesitation in placing the compilation of the document at that period. 25. Layamon's Brut. — This extract from Laya- xiii. century. mon's " Brut" is inserted in illustration of the extract Brut."'°"^ from the Welsh Bruts, containing the Welsh legend of the settlement of the Picts. Sir Frederick Mad- den states, in the preface to his edition, that Laya- mon's " Brut " is taken from the Anglo-Norman metrical chronicle of the Brut translated from the well-known " Historia Britonum " of Geoffrey of Monmouth by Wace, but that it contains additions and amplifications which are not to be found in the original ; among these he includes the narrative of the settlement of the Picts in Caithness, and the introduction of the Irish language among them. It has therefore been inserted here to complete the collection of Pictish legends. The text and trans- lation of this passage are taken from Sii" Frederick