osed warlike disposition of
the Highlanders, and unwarlike of the ancient Irish. Those arguments are
still much weaker than the authorities. Nations change very quickly
in these particulars. The Britons were unable to resist the Picts and
Scots, and invited over the Saxons for their defence, who repelled those
invaders; yet the same Britons valiantly resisted, for one hundred
and fifty years, not only this victorious band of Saxons, but infinite
numbers more, who poured in upon them from all quarters. Robert Bruce,
in 1322, made a peace, in which England, after many defeats, was
constrained to acknowledge the independence of his country; yet in no
more distant period than ten years after, Scotland was totally subdued
by a small handful of English, led by a few private noblemen. All
history is full of such events. The Irish Scots, in the course of two or
three centuries, might find time and opportunities sufficient to settle
in North Britain, though we can neither assign the period nor causes
of that revolution. Their barbarous manner of life rendered them much
fitter than the Romans for subduing these mountaineers. And, in a
word, it is clear, from the language of the two countries, that the
Highlanders and the Irish are the same people, and that the one are a
colony from the other. We have positive evidence, which, though from
neutral persons, is not perhaps the best that may be wished for, that
the former, in the third or fourth century, sprang from the latter; we
have no evidence at all that the latter sprang from the former. I shall
add, that the name of Erse, or Irish, given by the low country Scots
to the language of the Scotch Highlanders, is a certain proof of the
traditional opinion delivered from father to son, that the latter people
came originally from Ireland.]

[Footnote 2: NOTE B, p. 90. There is a seeming contradiction in ancient
historians with regard to some circumstances in the story of Edwy and
Elgiva. It is agreed, that this prince had a violent passion for his
second or third cousin, Elgiva, whom he married, though within the
degrees prohibited by the canons. It is also agreed, that he was
dragged from a lady on the day of his coronation, and that the lady was
afterwards treated with the singular barbarity above mentioned. The only
difference is, that Osborne and some others call her his strumpet, not
his wife, as she is said to be by Malmsbury. But this difference is
easily reconciled for if Edw