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

Of the ancient Pi^s and Scots. 3 op
the impatience with which they hved under the
yoke of a new government, that they were of
the Pidifh nation, and confequently that the do-
minions of that people extended much farther to-
wards the North than fome of the Scotlifh Iiiflo-
rians are willing to allow.
The Pids and Saxons were alternately maflers
of Laiidonia, or thofe more Eafterly countries
which lie between the frith of Edinburgh and the
river Tweed. We learn from Bede, that Ofwin,
brother to St. Ofwald, and the feventh King of
the Northumbrians, fubdued the Pidifh nation in
a great meafure, and made them tributary f. This
Prince began his reign in the year 642. His fon
Egfrid having formed a refolulion to carry his con-
■quefts beyond the Forth, invaded the Pidirti ter-
ritories, and was cut off, with the greateft part
of his army, in the year 685. A vidory fo de-
cifive produced great confequences. The Pids
of that age recovered what their predeceflbrs had
loft. The Eaftern counties, or Laudonia^ fell im-
mediately into their hands.
It appears from Bede, that the Saxons conti-
nued mailers of Galloway, when he finifhed his
Ecclefiaftical Hiftory. He gives an account of
Candida Caja^ or whitehorn, where a bifhop of
the Saxon nation was inftalled in his time. After
Bede's death, the Pids recovered Galloway like-
wife, or made a conquefl of it ; fo that before the
extindion of their monarchy, all the territories,
bounded on the one fide by the Forth and Clyde,
and on the other by the Tweed and Solway, fell
?nto their hands.
Bed. Hift. Ecclef lib. 2, cap. 5.
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