1S9 



sion of it either by treaty or conquest, ''amicitia autferro," and gave 

 it their name, their language, and their laws. The venerable Bede 

 accords with all our ancient Irish historians, in attesting the reality 

 of the Dalriadian settlement, which, it might be presumed, if facts 

 were M-anting to prove it, kept up a constant intercourse with the 

 mother country. Hill, in his Collection of ancient Erse Poems, says 

 truly, " if we may reason from a part to the whole, it is just to con- 

 clude that all the songs preserved in the Highlands relative to the 

 Fingallians are Irish. They are wholly confined to the western 

 coast of the Highlands opposite Ireland, and the very traditions of 

 the country themselves acknowledge the Fingallians to be origi- 

 nally Irish." 



Pinkerton in his Essay on the Origin of Scottish Poetry, agrees 

 with Hill. " I take Fingal and his heroes," says he, *' to have been 

 the leaders of the Scots from Ireland, as Odin and his heroes led the 

 Goths from Asia. This opinion is confirmed by the whole tradi- 

 tional poems in the Highlands, which, however stated by Mr. Mac- 

 pherson, always represent Fingal as contemporary with Saint Patrick, 

 who flourished about 430." (p. xli.) ' ion na ,\)i'ih,j liij 



Hume is of the same opinion. He observes that " the name of 

 Erse, or Irish, given by the low country Scots to the language of the 

 Scottish Highlanders, is a certain proof of the traditional opinion, 

 delivered from father to son, that the latter people came originally 

 from Ireland." " To this," continues Pinkerton, " it may be added, 

 that the old Scottish poets and writers uniformly call the Highlan- 

 ders, Irish." 



The argument then which Sir John Sinclair would found on the 

 concurring trJlditions of the inhabitants of the country, recoils against 

 himself, and lays his hypothesis prostrate. The traditions of Scotland 

 are corroborated by those of Ireland and her bards, her musicians, 



T 2 



