ormac of Tara, and the son-in-law of that monarch of Ireland?

From what part of Pictland did King Cormac obtain, in the third century,
the skilled mill-wright, Mac Lamha, to build for him that first
water-mill which he erected in Ireland, on one of the streams of Tara?
And is it true, as some genealogists in this earthly world believe, that
the lineal descendants of this Scottish or Pictish mill-wright are still
millers on the reputed site of this original Irish water-mill?

The apostate Picts (_Picti apostati_) who along with the Scots are
spoken of by St. Patrick in his famous letter against Coroticus, as
having bought for slaves some of the Christian converts kidnapped and
carried off by that chief from Ireland, were they inhabitants of
Galloway, or of our more northern districts? And was the Irish sea not
very frequently a "middle passage" in these early days, across which St.
Patrick himself and many others were carried from their native homes and
sold into slavery?

Was it a Pictish or Scottish, a British or a Roman architect that built
"Julius' howff," at Stenhouse (_Stone-house_) on the Carron, and what
was its use and object?

Were our numerous "weems," or underground houses, really used as human
abodes, and were they actually so very dark, that when one of the
inmates ventured on a joke, he was obliged--as suggested by "Elia"--to
handle his neighbour's cheek to feel if there was any resulting smile
playing upon it?

When, and by whom were reared the Titanic stone-works on the White
Caterthun, and the formidable stone and earth forts and walls on the
Brown Caterthun, on Dunsinane, on Barra, on the Barmekyn of Echt, on
Dunnichen, on Dunpender, and on the tops of hundreds of other hills in
Scotland?

How, and when, were our Vitrified Forts built? Was the vitrification of
the walls accidental, or was it not rather intentional, as most of us
now believe? In particular, who first constructed, and who last occupied
the remarkable Vitrified Forts of Finhaven in Angus, and of the hill of
Noath in Strathbogie? Was not the Vitrified Fort of Craig-Phadric, near
Inverness, the residence of King Brude, the son of Meilochon, in the
sixth century; and if so, is it true, as stated in the Irish Life of St.
Columba, that its gates were provided with iron locks?

When, by whom, and for what object, were the moats of Urr, Hawick,
Lincluden, Biggar, and our other great circular earth mounds of the same
kind, constructed? W