VALUE OF SCOTTISH TRADITION. 121 



have occupied the still more southern ranges, which we 

 know he also inhabited ; but whether this was so or 

 not, few persons, I presume, are likely to deny that the 

 Hamilton and Chillingham cattle are either his relatives 

 or descendants. The only question can be his own 

 extraction. Tradition carries him back to the times of 

 the Pictish kings ; while ancient historians describe him, 

 though still existing when they wrote, yet as verging 

 towards extinction, and in olden times much more 

 numerous. The Vice-President * of the Scottish Society 

 of Antiquaries admits, led thereto by discoveries made of 

 late years, that the Urus {Bos primigenius) may have 

 existed in the North of Scotland for several hundred 

 years after Christ. So that history and tradition would 

 seem to unite in carrying the wild bull back to a time 

 when, in the North of Scotland at least, the Urus may 

 have been still there, and thus tend to confirm the 

 general belief that the one is descended from the other 

 — a belief much strengthened by the osteological ex- 

 aminations of Professor Putimeyer and others, and 

 by the remarkable resemblance the wild cattle bear, as 

 we have seen, to the Hungarian and other races of 

 Eastern Europe, the admitted descendants of the 

 ancient Urus. 



And it should be borne in mind that these Scottish 

 traditions do not represent the fading arid changing 

 memories of some Lowland district, but the recollections of 

 an ancient and remote mountain race, which until 1745 

 never was completely conquered, and which had handed 

 down for centuries, from father to son, its language, 

 its history, its songs, and its customs. All of these had 



* Dr. John Alexander Smith : "Proceed. Soc. Antiq , Scotland," vol. ix., 

 part ii., p. 587, &c. 



