Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/17

Rh Moreover, Lothian and Galloway, as well as the Bretts or Welsh of Strathclyde, long retained their special laws as distinct from the laws of Scotland, and these the king of the Scots bound himself to abide by and preserve. The charters of David I., Malcolm IV., and William the Lyon, were addressed to all their subjects, Normans, English, Scots, Galwegians, and Walenses, or Welsh of Clydesdale; and the same ethnical elements are distinguished by contemporary chroniclers as composing the army of David at the battle of the Standard.

Under the succeeding sovereigns of the line of Malcolm; down to Alexander III., the "English," that is to say, the Anglo-Saxon-speaking portion of their subjects, became ever the more important and predominant, and that with which the reigning line became more and more closely identified, and, as a consequence, the country south of the Firths, if not strictly Scotland, became, at least, the most important possession of the King of Scots. For exactly as the royal house adopted the language, and became identified with the sympathies and fortunes of its Anglo-Saxon territories, it lost the sympathies of its own ancient kinsmen, and the allegiance of its early cradle land; so that of the descendants of the Scots, Picts, Welsh, Galwegians, English, Normans, Flemings, and Northmen, out of which arose the Scottish nationality, the only section over whom the king of Scots no longer ruled was the Scots themselves—those Celtic clans of the north and west who, from the days of Edgar to those of James III., ignored the authority, and defied the arms of the