Annals of such patriots of the distinguished family of Fraser, Frysell, Sim-son, or Fitz-Simon, as have signalised themselves in the public service of Scotland

v^uii more ancient antiquaries assert, that our an-
cestors came from Ireland, and they from Spain,
Greece, and Egypt ; whilst some of our modern
antiquaries make them originally Scythians. In the
times of Ca?sar and Tacitus, the inhabitants of South
Britain gave no account of their first, settlements in
the inland. Yet these distinguished historians ob-
serve, that they resembled the Gauls in their devo-
tion ; their religious rites were the same as in Gaul,
performed by the Druids in their Gaelic or Sceltic,
which was of old the language of the west of Eu-
rope, as it is now of the Highlands of Scotland, of
AYales and Ireland, though the Welsh is> greatly cor-
rupted by Saxon words.
It has been the misfortune of Scotland, that none
who wrote the history of its antiquities, understood
its ancient language, which has made our most learned
antiquaries stumble on blunders, which a very su-
perficial knowledge of the Gaelic would have pre-
vented ; as, for instance, they have derived Drudies
from Drus, an oak, and thence infer, that they per-
formed their religious rites under an oak tree: whereas,
the Druids deemed it unworthy of the Deity to be