Celtic Scotland (Volume 3); A History of Ancient Alban (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE SEVEN PROVINCES OF SCOTLAND. During the Celtic period of her history we find Scotland Scotia into exhibiting a distribution of her population in separate dis- provmces. i which is very analogous to what existed in Ireland at the same period. The latter country appears from a very early period to have been divided into five provinces, and these provinces of Udlah or Ulster, Laighean or Leinster, Mumhan or Munster, and Connacht or Connaught, with Midhe or Meath, were ruled by provincial kings under the Ardri, or supreme king of Ireland, who had his royal seat at Teamhar or Tara in Meath. Seven pro- In the same way the earliest account we possess of the the eighth provincial distribution of the population of Scotland tells us century. Transmarine Scotland,1 or the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, was anciently divided by seven brothers into seven provinces, and that the principal of these was Enegus with Moerne, so called from Enegus, the firstborn of the brothers. This name of Enegus or Angus, now represented by the county of Forfar, is no doubt the same with the ancient Celtic personal name of Angus; and Moerne, now called Mearns, or the county of Kincardine, is a corruption of the old Gaelic name Maghgherghin, that is, the plain of Gergin, and is alluded to under that namein one of the old Lives of St. Patrick.2 The second province was Adtheodle and Gouerin, or Atholl and Gowry. The old form of this name of Adtheodle was Athfodla, in which form it appears in the Annals of Tighernac, and Gouerin was probably Gabhrin, a name analogous to the old name of the district of Ossory in Leinster, which is called Gabhran, pronounced Gowran.3 The third was Sradeern and Mended, or Stratherne and Menteath, and there seems no doubt that the former ...