Matheson Collection > Clan Donald > Volume 1

26 THE CLAN DONALD.
even some of those that are territorially connected
with the Western Isles in modern times, such as the
^hicleans and Mackenzies, are remnants of the
ancient system of Northern Pictland. On the other
liand, Dr Skene, in the course of his artrument,
makes an assertion which it is impossible to accept.
He maintains that in the eleventh century the
whole Highlands, including Argyll, were inhabited
by the Northern Picts, of whom the Gall-Gael were
an important tribe. Such a statement as this
implies either the extinction of the Scoto-Celtic
race in the Kingdom of Dalriada after 844 a.d., or
a wholesale migration of that stock into the territory
of the Southern Picts. There does not appear to be
historical evidence for any such extraordinary occur-
rence. A Dalriadic population occupied Argyll for
500 years previous to the reign of Kenneth Mac-
Alpin, and when the union of the Kingdoms took
place, they must have been the preponderating
element in that region. That the race should have
made an exodus out of Dalriada between the ninth
and eleventh centuries is a supposition that makes
excessive demands upon the most vivid historical
imagination.
The proofs adduced in support of these aver-
ments, however much truth they may contain,
cannot be regarded as justifying the conclusions.
The statement that the MacDonalds Avere indigenous
in Argyll, as shown by the Orkneyinga Sagas, and
that tliis was the tradition of the Clan, as the letter
of James MacDonald of Dunnyveg illustrates, seem
rather beside the question. From 1596 backwards
to the founding of the Dalriadic Kingdom in the
fifth and sixth centuries, or to the ninth or even the
eleventh century, was a period of time sufficiently