A history of the Highlands and of the Highland clans : with an ...

yt( HISTORY OP THE HTGHLANDS.
distributed lands, on wliich they auU tlieir followers settled. Most o(
the illustrious families in Scotland originated from this source.
INlalcolm Ceanmore had, before his accession to the throne, resided
for some time in England as a fugitive, under the protection of Edward
the Confessor, where he acquired a knowledge of the Saxon language;
« hich language, after his marriage with the princess Margaret, became
that of the Scottish court. This circumstance made that language
fashionable among the Scottish nobility, in consequence of which and of
the Anglo-Saxon colonization under David I., the Gaelic language was
altogether superseded in the Lowlands of Scotland in little more than
two centuries after the death of Malcolm. A topographical line of de-
marcation was then fixed as the boundary between the two languages,
which has ever since been kept up, and presents one of the most singu-
lar phenomena ever observed in the history of philology.
The change of the seat of government by Kenneth on ascending the
Pictish throne, from Inverlochay, the capital of the Scots, to Abernethy
also followed by the removal of the marble chair, the emblem of sover-
eignty, from Dunstaffnage to Scone, appears to have occasioned no detriment
to the Gaelic population of the Highlands; but when Malcolm
Ceanmore transferred his court about the year one thousand and sixty-
six to Dunfermline, which also became, in place of lona, the sepulchre of
the Scottish kings, the rays of royal bounty, which had hitherto diffused
its protecting and benign influence over the inhabitants of the Highlands,
were withdrawn, and left them a prey to anarchy and poverty. " The
people," says General David Stewart, " now beyond the reach of tlie
laws, became turbulent and fierce, revenging in person those wrongs for
which the administrators of the laws were too distant and too feeble to
afford redress. Thence arose the institution of chiefs, who naturally
became the judges and arbiters in the quarrels of their clansmen and
followers, and who were surrounded by men devoted to the defence of
their rights, tlieir property, and their power; and accordingly the chiefs
established within their own territories a jurisdiction almost wholly in-
dependent of their liege lord."*
The connexion which Malcolm and his successors maintained witli
England, estrangei\ still farther the Highlanders from the dominion o'
tlie sovereign and the laws; and their history, after the Gaelic population
uf the Lowlands had merged into and adopted the language of the
Anglo-Saxons, presents, with the exception of the wars between rival
clans, which will be noticed afterwards, nothing remarkable tiU their
first appearance on the military theatre of our national history in the
campaigns of Montrose, Dundee, and others. Of these campaigns and
other 'nteresting military achievements of the modern Highlanders, wp.
intend to give the details ; but before entering upon tliat important and
highly interesting portion of our labours, we mean to bring under the
• skcidies, I. aa