VII. Comparison between the Highland Clans and the Afghaun Tribes. Written in 1816 by Sir Walter Scott, 456 VIII. Legendary Descent of the Highland Clans, according to Irish MSS., 458 INDEX, 493 ILLUSTRATIVE MAP. Scotland, with the ancient divisions of the land, _to face the Title_ BOOK III. _LAND AND PEOPLE_. ——————●—————— CHAPTER I. SCOTLAND IN THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER THE THIRD. [Sidenote: Consolidation of the provinces of Scotland into one feudal monarchy completed in this reign.] The brightest and most prosperous period in the annals of Scotland was undoubtedly that during which she was under the rule of the dynasty of kings which sprang from the union of the Celtic king Malcolm Ceannmor with the Saxon princess Margaret. It was during this period of upwards of a century and a half that the different provinces of Scotland were welded into one feudal monarchy, and the various races which inhabited them, and upon the allegiance of each of whom the kings of this race had hereditary claims, were fused into one mixed population combining the peculiar qualities of each. The reign of Alexander the Third, the last king of this old Celtic dynasty of Scottish kings, saw the concentration of the various provinces of Scotland into one compact kingdom finally completed by the cession of the Isles in the year 1266. Scotland now presented the same geographical platform which it ever after possessed. The various races which composed its population occupied in the main the same relative position. The kingdom of Scotland could now be no longer viewed as a limited Gaelic kingdom, possessing dependencies peopled by British, Anglic, or Scandinavian communities, but had become a feudal monarchy, the dominant element of which was Teutonic, while the Celtic population was either restricted to the wilder and more mountain regions, or formed the under class of serfs and tillers of the soil. It would seem as if the task of amalgamating the discordant elements of the population, and of concentrating the semi-independent provinces which they peopled, had no sooner been completed than the dynasty which effected it was to pass away, and a war of succession was to follow, which was still further to root up her ancient institutions, and to throw the kingdom still more into the hands of kings and nobility of an alien race.