What may be called the Celtic period of Scottish history has been peculiarly the field of a fabulous narrative of no ordinary perplexity; but while the origin of these fables can be very distinctly traced to the rivalry and ambition of ecclesiastical establishments and church parties, and to the great national controversy excited by the claim of England to a feudal supremacy over Scotland, still each period of its early history will be found not to be without sources of information, slender and meagre as no doubt they are, but possessing indications of substantial truth, from which some perception of its real character can be obtained. [Sidenote: Critical examination of authorities necessary.] Before the early history of any country can be correctly ascertained, there is a preliminary process which must be gone through, and which is quite essential to a sound treatment of the subject; and that is a critical examination of the authorities upon which that history is based. This is especially necessary with regard to the early history of Scotland. The whole of the existing materials for her early history must be collected together and subjected to a critical examination. Those which seem to contain fragments of genuine history must be disentangled from the less trustworthy chronicles which have been tampered with for ecclesiastical or national purposes, and great discrimination exercised in the use of the latter. The purely spurious matter must be entirely rejected. It is by such a process only that we can hope to dispel the fabulous atmosphere which surrounds this period of Scottish history, and attempt to base it upon anything like a genuine foundation. The first to attempt this task was Thomas Innes, a priest of the Scots College in Paris, who published in 1729 his admirable Essay on the ancient inhabitants of Scotland. In this essay he assailed the fabulous history first put into shape by John of Fordun and elaborated by Hector Boece, and effectually demolished its authority; but he attempted little in the way of reconstruction, and merely printed a few of the short chronicles, upon which he founded, in an appendix. Lord Hailes, who in 1776 published his _Annals of Scotland, from the Accession of Malcolm_ III., _surnamed Canmore, to the Accession of Robert_ I., abandons this period of Scottish history altogether, with the remark that his Annals ‘commence with the accession of Malcolm Canmore, because the history of Scotland previous to that period is involved in obscurity and fable.’