[Footnote 20:  Liber Pluscardensis, X, c. xxii.  Cf.  App.  A.]

[Footnote 21:  Scoti-chronicon, XV, c. xxi.  Cf.  App.  A.]

[Footnote 22:  Greater Britain, VI, c. x.  Cf.  App.  A. The keenness of the fighting is no proof of racial bitterness.  Cf. the clan fight on the Inches at Perth, a few years before Harlaw.]

[Footnote 23:  Scotorum Historiae, Lib.  XVI.  Cf.  App.  A.]

[Footnote 24:  Rerum Scotorum Historia, Lib.  X. Cf.  App.  A.]

[Footnote 25:  Top.  Hib., Dis.  III, cap. xi.]

[Footnote 26:  Britannia, section Scoti.]

[Footnote 27:  Mahoun = Mahomet, i.e. the Devil.]

[Footnote 28:  The Editor of the Scottish Text Society’s edition of Dunbar points out that “Macfadyane” is a reference to the traitor of the War of Independence: 

  “This Makfadzane till Inglismen was suorn;
   Eduard gaiff him bath Argill and Lorn”.

  Blind Harry, VII, ll. 627-8.

]

[Footnote 29:  “Far northward in a nuke” is a reference to the cave in which Macfadyane was killed by Duncan of Lorne (Bk.  VIII, ll. 866-8).]

CHAPTER I

RACIAL DISTRIBUTION AND FEUDAL RELATIONS

c. 500-1066 A.D.

Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, it has been customary to speak of the Scottish Highlanders as “Celts”.  The name is singularly inappropriate.  The word “Celt” was used by Caesar to describe the peoples of Middle Gaul, and it thence became almost synonymous with “Gallic”.  The ancient inhabitants of Gaul were far from being closely akin to the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, although they belong to the same general family.  The latter were Picts and Goidels; the former, Brythons or Britons, of the same race as those who settled in England and were driven by the Saxon conquerors into Wales, as their kinsmen were driven into Brittany by successive conquests of Gaul.  In the south of Scotland, Goidels and Brythons must at one period have met; but the result of the meeting was to drive the Goidels into the Highlands, where the Goidelic or Gaelic form of speech still remains different from the Welsh of the descendants of the Britons.  Thus the only reason for calling the Scottish Highlanders “Celts” is that Caesar used that name to describe a race cognate with another race from which the Highlanders ought to be carefully distinguished.  In none of our ancient records is the term “Celt” ever employed to describe the Highlanders of Scotland.  They never called themselves Celtic; their neighbours never gave them such a name; nor would the term have possessed any significance, as applied to them, before the eighteenth century.  In 1703, a French historian and Biblical antiquary, Paul Yves Pezron, wrote a book about the people of Brittany, entitled Antiquite de la Nation et de la Langue des Celtes autrement