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4 '24 NOTES.most formidable danger ; but against Ireland (hry were do defenceat all, because the whole west coast of Britain lay open tothe Irish, and they could have landed to the south of either prsetenture.Indeed, the silly fiction that the Scots were Irish auxiliaries,never obtained, till the influence of the Irish ecclesiasticshad gained the ascendancy in Scotland, and on the declineof this influence, the fable was exploded.The venerable Bede?a writer of the eighth century, under the year 324, mentions theScots and Picts as invading the Roman province in the time ofHonorius, and calls both of them transmarine nations ;not (sayshe) that they were a people settledout of Britain^ hut they mai)be called transmarine^ hy beings as it tcere^ separated from theconquered province (Valentia) to the southward^ hy the two Firthsof Clyde and Forth.—See Gordon's Itin. p. 141. Tacitus, speakingof the same people, and of the same part of the country,says, Summotis velut in aliam insulam hostibiis— i. e. *' the eneiDybeing removed, as if into another island,'* In another place,speaking of that part of the island south of the Firths of Forthand Clyde, he calls it Britanmam ipsam— " Britain proper,"and that part north of these Friths, quasi aliam insulam^ as ifa'jother island. Is it then any wonder that men, totally ignorantof the geographical situation of the north of Scotland, shouldmistake it for an island totally distinct from Britain, and confoundit with Irelan