The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

APPEND.] OF SCOTLAND 167
The succession of the earl of Orkney to Caithness, therefore,
caused the dismemberment of that district from Scotland, and
that event took place, as appears from the Sagas, about the
year 925, from which period Caithness must have ceased to
form one of the seven provinces of Scotland. The only other
variation which we discover, is, that a part of the province of
Fife appears afterwards, under the name of Fortreve, which was
previously the name of the province consisting of Stratherne and
Menteth. From this it is plain that the Scots actually colonized
the latter province, and that the remnant of the Pictish tribe
which had possessed it, took refuge in the neighbouring province
of Fife, to a part of which they gave their name, and where they
remained, as well as the relics of the tribe of Fife, entire under
a dominant Scottish population. The province of Angus seems
to have continued under its Pictish chief as a tributary province,
the Pictish Chronicle frequently recording the death of the
Maormor of Angus, a title peculiar to the Picts,' along with
that of the kings of Scotland.
The new arrangement, then, of the seven provinces, by
which Argyll became a province in place of Caithness, could
not have taken place prior
that date, and subsequent
to
to
the year 925, while previous to
the Scottish conquest, we find
that the representation of the Picts as a nation by their Senatus
still continued. The preservation of the system of the seven
provinces, taken in connexion with these facts, thus proves that
the Scots were incorporated into the Pictish system, and that the
provinces of the Northern Picts were preserved entire, while the
Scots came in place of the Southern Picts, of whom alone probably
the Maormor of Angus retained a voice in the national council.
Such, then, was the constitution of the Scottish monarchy
established on the overthrow of the Southern Picts, and adopting
the constitutional form of the conquered kingdom ; preserving,
until the introduction of the Saxon laws in the twelfth century,
the national council of seven great chiefs, by whom the right of
the king to the throne was judged, under the hereditary kings
of Scottish lineage, who filled the throne of the united nation,
and thus gave the name of Scot and Scotia, formerly confined
to the tribe from which they took their origin, to the whole
country which submitted to their rule.