CLASSES AND BREEDS OF BRITISH HORSES. 517 



given in pledge to King James III. as the dowry of his wife 

 Margaret, the daughter of Christian, King of Denmark ; 

 and, in 1472, they were annexed to the Crown of Scotland, 

 by an act of the Scottish Parliament. The early conque- 

 rors of these islands were pirates ; and, fighting on foot, 

 made little use of the Horse in battle ; so that the horses of 

 the country were probably few in numbers. Those which it 

 now possesses are small, although, in the progress of culti- 

 vation, others of a larger size have been introduced. They 

 are mostly of a dull black colour marked with white, or 

 dun marked with the dark streak along the spine, charac- 

 teristic of a widely diffused family. A few are white, and 

 some piebald, which has been ascribed to the wreck of a 

 number of white German stallions, which took place in the 

 latter part of last century. 



The Hsebudes of the Roman geographers, by an early error 

 of transcription, changed into Hebrides, consist of two groups 

 of Islands ; the first, the Outer Hebrides, consisting of Lewis, 

 Harris, and others, lying out in the western ocean, and ex- 

 tending in a long chain of about 140 miles ; the second, the 

 Inner Hebrides, lying nearer the coastj and stretching from 

 Bute, in the Firth of Clyde, to Skye on the coast of Ross. 

 These numerous and gloomy islands were, beyond a doubt, pos- 

 sessed by the same Celtic race which peopled the other parts 

 of Britain, as is attested by the existing names of places and 

 natural objects, which have survived many bloody changes, 

 and by the like rude monuments as extend from Cornwall to 

 the ancient Ore, from Wilts to the mountains of Kerry. 

 But the same ferocious seamen who ravaged the northern 

 islands, formed settlements in these. In the Outer Hebrides, 

 Scandinavian names have generally supplanted the Gaelic, 

 and the language of the people is mixed with the Frisian and 

 Norse. The Inner Hebrides were not so long and wholly 

 subject to these strangers, and the Gaelic names accordingly 

 prevail over the Scandinavian. The conquerors of these 

 islands cared for the sea, and made little use of horses. 



