for real liberty
and the supremacy of law, than the individual independence which
the Norseman had left his native land to preserve; and though both
feudalism and the blind obedience to authority then enjoined by the
Catholic Church are no longer approved or required, and have long
been rightly discarded, yet they served their purpose in their day,
by evolving from the wild blend of Gaels and Norsemen, which held the
land, a civilised people free from many of the worse, and endowed with
many of the better qualities of either race.

NOTES

_The following abbreviations are used:

H.B. for Hume Brown's History of Scotland.

O.S. for Orkneyinga Saga.

O.P. for Origines Parochiales.

F.B. for Flatey Book.

O. and S. for Tudor's Orkney and Shetland.

B.N. Burnt Njal.

And see List of Authorities (ante) for full titles of Books referred
to. Save where otherwise stated the references to the Sagas
are to the chapters not pages_.

NOTES

CHAPTER I.

[Footnote 1: _Rhind Lectures_ 1883 and 1886, and see _The County of
Caithness_, pp. 273-307.]

[Footnote 2: _Royal Commission 2nd Report, 1911_, and _3rd Report,
1911_; see also Laing and Huxley's _Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_,
1866.]

[Footnote 3: _Survivals in Belief among the Celts_, 1911.]

[Footnote 4: _Tacitus, Agricola_ 22-28.]

[Footnote 5: Coille-duine, or Kelyddon-ii.]

[Footnote 6: _H.B._, vol. i, p. 5.]

[Footnote 7: Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times_, p. 222. Two plates
of brass found in Craig Carrill Broch. Copper 84%, tin 16%.]

[Footnote 8: See Laing and Huxley's _Prehistoric Remains in
Caithness_, Laing ascribes a much greater antiquity to the _Burgs_,
pp. 60-61. See Skene, _Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 157-160 as to a
legend of their Scythian origin, and p. xcvi and p. 58.]

[Footnote 9: See Reeves' Life, and see _H.B._, vol. i, pp. 12-15; also
Dr. Joseph Anderson's _Scotland in Early Christian Times_, 1879, p.
139.]

[Footnote 10: _H.B._, vol. i, pp. 10-17.]

CHAPTER II.

[Footnote 1: See MacBain's note at p. 157 of Skene's _Highlanders of
Scotland_.]

[Footnote 2: For the boundaries of Sutherland, see Sir R. Gordon's
_Genealogie of the Earles_, pp. i and 2, and map hereto.]

[Footnote 3: In Ness the subjacent stone is too near the surface to
have ever admitted of the growth of large trees.]

[Footnote 4: Scrope, _Days of Deerstalking_, 3rd edit., pp. 374-377.]

[Footnote 5: Curie's _Inven