not till 1266 that the western isles definitely passed from Norway to the Scottish crown.  The English had employed several opportunities of allying themselves with these discontented Scotsmen; but Mr. Freeman’s general statement, already quoted, that “the true Scots, out of hatred to the Saxons nearest them, leagued with the Saxons farther off”, is very far from a fair representation of the facts.  We have seen that Highlander and Islesman fought under David I at the battle of the Standard, against the “Saxons farther off”, and that although the death of Comyn ranged against Bruce the Highlanders of Argyll, numbers of Highlanders were led to victory at Bannockburn by Earl Randolph; and Angus Og and the Islesmen formed part of the Scottish reserves and stood side by side with the men of Carrick, under the leadership of King Robert.  During the troubles which followed King Robert’s death, the Lords of the Isles had resumed their general attitude of opposition.  It was an opposition very natural in the circumstances, the rebellion of a powerful vassal against a weak central government, a reaction against the forces of civilization.  But it has never been shown that it was an opposition in any way racial; the complaint that the Lowlands of Scotland have been “rent by the Saxon from the Gael”, in the manner of a racial dispossession, belongs to “The Lady of the Lake”, not to sober history.  All Scotland, indeed, has now, in one sense, been “rent by the Saxon” from the Celt.  “Let no one doubt the civilization of these islands,” wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, “for Portree possesses a jail.”  The Highlands and islands have been the last portions of Scotland to succumb to Anglo-Saxon influences; that the Lowlands formed an earlier victim does not prove that their racial complexion is different.  The incident of which we have now to speak has frequently been quoted as a crowning proof of the difference between the Lowlanders and the “true Scots”.  Donald of the Isles had a quarrel with the Regent Albany, and, in 1408, entered into an agreement with Henry IV, to whom he owned allegiance.  But this very quarrel arose about the earldom of Ross, which was claimed by Donald (himself a grandson of Robert II) in right of his wife, a member of the Leslie family.  The “assertor of Celtic nationality” was thus the son of one Lowland woman and the husband of another.  When he entered the Scottish mainland his progress was first opposed, not by the Lowlanders, but by the Mackays of Caithness, who were defeated near Dingwall, and the Frasers immediately afterwards received what the historians of the Clan Donald term a “well-merited chastisement".[55] Donald pursued his victorious march to Aberdeenshire, tempted by the prospect of plundering Aberdeen.  It is interesting to note that, while the battle which has given significance to the record of the dispute was fought for the Lowland town of Aberdeen in a Lowland part of Aberdeenshire, the very name of the town is Celtic, and the district