of the Pictish king Echdhe Eachbeoil and the intimate connection between the Cruithnigh on both sides of the Irish Channel has been preserved to us in the very ancient document called Cormac’s Glossary, where, under the word ‘Fir, _i.e_. find’ or white, we are told—‘This, then, was the appearance of the cows of Echaid Echbel from Alban which Curoi captured, that is, white cows with red ears;’ and another MS. adds—‘These cows, then, of Echaid Echbel used to come to graze from Ard-Echdai Echbeil, from Alban into the district of Dalriatta, and they used to be in Seimne Ulad. Curoi, however, carried them off by force from the Ulad or Ulster men.’[149] We thus see how completely the idea of a close connection, amounting to identity both of race and nation, between the Pictish inhabitants of North Britain and the Cruithnigh of Ireland, runs through these popular tales, and expresses a true state of matters which goes far to explain the supposed conquests and settlements under the Irish kings of the mythic and heroic period in Scotland. Although attributed to kings of the different races into which the descendants of Milesius were supposed to be divided, we can see that there is always a tendency to connect them with the Cruithnigh of Ulster. Thus the Fothadhs are by one account of the race of Ith, and by another Cruithnigh of Ulster. When we read of the sons of Nemhead settling in Dobhar and Iardobhar in North Britain, under Braodn the son of Fergus Leithderg, we are reminded at once of the historic king of the Picts, Brude, son of Urgust or Fergus. When we are told that the Tuatha De Danaan proceeded from the same district and bestowed upon Ireland the three designations of Eire, Fodla, and Banba, from the names of the three queens of their three last kings, we cannot avoid noticing that these three names are likewise preserved in Scotland in the river Earn;[150] in Fodla, one of the seven districts named after the seven sons of Cruithnigh, and which is preserved in Athfotla, the old name of Atholl; and in Banff. We see too that whenever a Scot is said during this mythic period to have settled in Alban he is usually said to be the son of the daughter of a Pictish king, and to have inherited through his mother. Thus Colla Uais, of the race of Eremon, has a Pictish mother, and so have the two sons of Corc, king of Munster; and there is reason to suppose that among the Pictish tribes marriage was exogamous and that the son of a Pictish mother even by a stranger was held to belong to the tribe of his mother. Other points of a connection between these Irish legends and those of Scotland also suggest themselves. In the story of the insurrection of the Attachtuatha, or servile tribes of Ireland, against the Milesian Scots, we are told that the nobility of the latter were cut off at a great banquet given by the Attachtuatha, and that none escaped except three nobles who were in their mothers’ womb. This same legend is reproduced