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

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PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
From the term Scoti having been first used in the tliircl or fourth cen-
tury, Father Innes supposes that they may have emigrated to Ireland
in the interval between the reigns of Augustus or Tiberius and the
third or fourth century, and from the name, which he considers sjnonymous
with Scythse, he conjectures that the Scots came either from
Scandinavia or the Cirabrian Chersonesus. In support of this opinion
he thinks that the migration of the Scots from the north may be
inferred, I. From an extraordinary increase of population which
some writers believe to have been peculiar to the northern nations.
2. From the fact that tlie northern nations whose territories were
bounded by the sea, were often compelled to abandon their habita-
tions to more powerful neighbours, and forced to embark in quest of
new dwellings. 3. That as these northern maritime nations, during
the period in question, were so closely hemmed in by the liomans,
and as they had no means of discharging their superfluous population
among the nations behind them, already overburdened with their
own yearly increasing population, it was very natural that the most
warlike and resolute among them, impatient of being thus confined and
enclosed, should resolve to ])ut to sea in pursuit of new habitations, nor
had they a more natural course to choose than to the opposite coasts of
North Britain, or, if repulsed by the warlike Caledonians, to sail from
thence to Ireland, where they were more likely to succeed among a
people unaccustomed to foreigners. Nor could their coming to Ireland
be more seasonably placed than during these first ages of Christianity,
when the Roman empire was at the height of its power and extent.
Besides, the placing this invasion of Ireland in these first ages agrees
perfectly with the first appearance of these people in Britain in the
third or fourth age by the name of Scots, some time being required for
making themselves masters of Ireland before they could be in a condi-
tion to send out bodies of men in conjunction with the Caledonians, or
Picts, to attack the Roman empire in Britain towards the middle of the
fourth century, as mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus.*
But this theory of the northern origin of the Scots being in opposi-
tion to the Irish tradition, that Ireland was peopled from Spain, Innes
supposes that this tradition may have relation to other colonies, some of
which may probably have come from Spain to Ireland before the arrival
of the Scots. Yet even on the supposition that the Scots came origi-
nally from Sjiain, he maintains that sucli an hypothesis is not incom-
patibile with the period of their supposed invasion, or with their
alleged Scythian origin. For, as stated by Florusf and Orosius,J the
Romans, in the reign of Augustus, met with the greatest difficulties in
reducing the Cantabrians and Asturians, and other unconquered na-
tions in Galicia, in the northern parts of Spain opposite to Ireland, and
the greater part of the inhabitants of those parts chose rather to retire
« C'.-Am\ Kssuy, vil. ii. p. &«, et seq. t '^i'> '*•