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

PREFACE. xi
tribe of the Scots to the South of the Clyde,
** In my youth," fays the holy St. Jerome,
" I faw in Gaul the Attacotti, a Britifli
people feeding on human bodie?. When
they found in the v/oods flocks of flieep or
hogs, or herds of cattle, they ufed to cut
off the buttocks of the herdfmen, and the
breafts of the women, looking upon thofe
parts of the body as the greateil danties*."
I have fuch a veneration for whatever has
fallen from the holy father, that I cannot
entertain a doubt of the truth of this fto-
ry, however incredible it might appear
from an uninfpired writer. The Irifh na-
tion, not content to deprive their pofterity
of Scotland of their antient bifhops, abbots,
prefbyters and hiftorians of any note, have
alfo endeavoured to rob them of their bar-
barous and wild men. O'Connor, a learned
diiTertator on the hiftory of Ireland, has,
in the name of his nation, claimed a right
to the Attacotti. I willi I could give them
to the gentleman ; for as the infamous label
of St. Jerome is tacked to them, they can do
little honour to the Scots of the prefent age.
It was in the fifth century that the in-
curfions of the Sects, as a feparate nation,
* Hieronym. con. Jovlnian. lib. 2.
into