A new edition of this the third and last volume of Celtic Scotland having now been called for, the author is glad to have this opportunity of correcting any mistakes of the press which have occurred in it. As this volume deals with the early land tenures and social condition of the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, in which a number of obsolete terms and old Celtic words occur, it is peculiarly liable to mistakes of this kind, and the author has revised the text in this view with great care, but he does not find that he has any material alteration to make in the views he has expressed, or the conclusions he has come to, as these are, in fact, the outcome of years of careful research into this very obscure subject. EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH ROW, _7th July 1890_. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. This volume completes the task which the author set before himself of illustrating the history of Scotland during the Celtic period, when it bore the name of Alban, and of endeavouring to dispel those fables which have hitherto obscured it. Like the other volumes, this third volume forms in itself a substantive work. Its title is ‘Land and People,’ and its subject, ‘The early land tenures and social condition of the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland’ (vol. i. p. 28). The real history of a country may be said only truly to commence when we come to deal with the social and political organisation of its population. The ethnology of the nations which compose it—the history of its kings, their reigns, and the various wars in which they engaged—the extension or restriction of the frontiers of their kingdom—the introduction of Christianity and the establishment of a Christian Church, are all great landmarks and important features of its history; but still they are merely the outward bulwarks of the kingdom as a whole, and present it to us in its external relations only. Till we know something of the distribution within the country of the various races which formed its population, their relative growth and decay, their social organisation, and the extent to which its peculiar features were preserved, and influenced and coloured the future condition of the entire population formed by the amalgamation of its various elements, we know little of its real history.