The second book will deal with the Early Celtic Church of Scotland and its influence on the language and culture of the people. The ecclesiastical history of Scotland has shared the same fate with its civil history, and is deeply tainted with the fictitious and artificial system which has perverted both; but the stamp of these fables upon it is less easily removed. It has also had the additional misfortune of having been made the battle-field of polemical controversy. Each historian of the Church has viewed it through the medium of his ecclesiastical prepossessions, and from the standpoint of the Church party to which he belonged. The Episcopal historian feels the necessity of discovering in it his Diocesan Episcopacy, and the partisan of Presbyterian parity considers the principles of his Church involved in maintaining the existence of his early Presbyterian Culdees. One great exception must be made, however, in Dr. Reeves’s admirable edition of Adamnan’s _Life of St. Columba_, which has laid the foundation for a more rational treatment of the history of the early Church in Scotland. The subject of the third and last book will be the Land and People of Scotland. It will treat of the early land tenures and social condition of its Celtic inhabitants. The publication of the Brehon laws of Ireland now enables us to trace somewhat of the history and character of their early tribal institutions and laws, and of their development in Scotland into those communities represented in the eastern districts by the Thanages, and in the western by the Clan system of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. ----- Footnote 1: See Book i. chap. i. _infra_. Footnote 2: It will be seen from the title of this work that the author does not adopt what he ventures to call the pedantic affectation of using the form of Alba instead of Alban. The oldest form of the word is Albu, as that of the name for Ireland was Eriu. Thus, in the oldest Irish Glossary—that of Cormac—we have, _sub voce_ Trifod, ‘Eriu agus Manann agus Albu.’ The inflections are Eriu, _G._ Erenn, _D._ Eirinn, _A._ Erinn. Albu, _G._ Alban, _D._ Albain, _A._ Albain or Albu. In the later Irish documents the forms of Eire and Alba usually occur in the nominative. A nominative form derived from the genitive is, however, also found; and the names of places ending in a vowel seem to have a tendency to fall into this form in current speech. Thus we have Erin for Eiriu or Eire, Alban for Albu or Alba, Arann for Ara, Rathlin for Rechra, etc. In his _Irish Glosses_, Mr. Whitley Stokes has ‘Eirinnach (gl. Hibernigena), from the old name of this island, which is declined in the _Book of Leinster_ and _Lib. Hymn._ Nom. herinn (Maelmura Othna’s poem), Dat. dond erinn, Gen. and Acc. herenn (see Fiacc’s hymn. vv. 7, 8, 10, and the _Orthain_ at the end, and the quatrain from Marianus Scotus, Z. 944).’—(_Irish Glosses_, p. 66.)