Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

vi PREFACE,
which, if they could not eftablifh a new and
more rational fyftem, would at leaft cxpofe
the abfurdity of the old.
It was not altogether from a partiality
to his own country that Dr. Macpherfon
gave the firft place to Scotland, in his dif-
quifitions. Though the Scots have as jufl
prctenfions to a high antiquity as any nation
in Europe, yet their origin is peculiarly in-
volved in darknefs. It was the misfortune
of North Britain to have been almofl: totally
deftitute of letters, at a time when monkifli
learning, and thofe religious virtues which
arofe from afcetic aufterities, greatly flou-
rifhed in Ireland, and among the Saxons in
England. This was the cafe in the feventh
and eight centuries, the asra in which the
Hibernian fyftems of antiquity were form-
ed. The fennachies and fileas of Ireland
made then a property of the Scots of Bri-
tain, and, fecure of not being contradided
by an illiterate, and I may fay, an irreligious
race of men, affumed to themfelves the dig-
nity of being the mother-nation. The par-
tiality of Bede for his holy cotemporaries of
Ireland is well known. The good man be-
lieved and retailed whatever lidions were
didated to him by the religious of a nation
for vi'hom he had the greatefl regard for their
orthodoxy. The