Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/65

 PEEFACE. Ivii ing, however, with the reign of Malcolm the Fourth. The " Chronicle of Melrose " appears to have been written in the reign of Alexander the Third, and terminates with the year 1270, which was probably about the time when the " Cronicon Elegiacum" was completed. There is reason, however, to think that part of the Cronicon is much older, and was composed by Ailred, Abbot of Rievaux, as John, Abbot of Peterborough, refers, under the year 975, to a chronicle, " in libro sancti Aldredi abbatis " qui intitulatur Epitaphium regum Scotorum." Ailred died in the second year of King William the Lyon, in the year 1166, and he probably composed that part of the chronicle which terminates with Mal- colm the Fourth, and concludes with these lines — " Quatuor hii reges jam sunt in pace sepulti, In tuinbaque jaceut Rex ubi Malcolmus." This part of the chronicle may have been written by him in the year succeeding Malcolm's death, viz., 1165, and continued by another hand in the reign of Alexander the Third. Part of the Cronicon also is inserted in " Wyn- " toun's Chronicle," along with part of a prose chro- nicle, and more of it by the continuators of Fordun in the " Scoticronicon." The Editor has collated the copy in the Bodleian MS. with that in the " Chro- " nicle of Melrose," and in " Wyntoun's Chronicle."^ ^ The Editor has not collated with the MSS. of Fordun, because he considers these copies, like every document inserted in For- dun's history, tainted with altera- tions made to adapt them to /