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

38 Of the PiHiJh Monarchy.
who are placed between the firfl and fecond Fer-
gus.
Innes could not pofllbly believe that the anti-
quaries of Scotland were ib blind as to be caught
in a fnare ib very vifible, or idle enough to be put
off with a compliment lb vain and iliuiory. That
writer could not have imagined, without a manifell
felf-contradidion, that the very names of lb many
crowned heads, from Cathluan^ the founder of the
Pidifn monarchy, to 'Drejl^ in whofe time the
gofpel was preached by St. Ninian to the Pids,
could have been prelerved without the knowledge
of letters, preferved in the rhimes of bards, and
the traditionary flories of fennachies.
He could not have ferioufly entertained fuch an
opinion, and at the fame time fee very good rea-
fons for deftroying fo many Scottifh and Irifh
Kings promifcuoully, and without any mercy,
whofe exiftence depended on a fimilar authority.
But why were the Scottifh Kings deftroyed,
and the Pidifh monarchs fpared ? Why, becaufe
the annalifts, hiftorians, fennachies and antiquaries
of Ireland are univerfally agreed that the Pictifh
monarchy is coeval v.ith their own ; and Irifh
writers cannot be fufpefted of difhonefty or igno-
rance in a matter of this kind. ".They had no
private motives of their own, to invent this flory
of the antiquity of the Pidtifh fett'ement and
monarchy, They would not, without a neceility,
put a foreign people upon a level with their own,
in the two advantages upon which they chiefly
valued themfelves : and hence it follows, that the
Irifh writers mAift have had good information in
this affair *."
* Inn. Crit. EfT p. 140.
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