In the ninth century the great outburst of piratical adventurers from the Scandinavian shores brought first the Danes and afterwards the Norwegians to Scotland, and the latter not only colonised the Orkney and Shetland Islands but became masters of the Western Isles, and from time to time of considerable districts on the mainland of Scotland. During the reigns of the earlier kings of this dynasty the Saxon influence was largely increased by those who either took refuge in Scotland from the power of the Norman Conqueror or were attracted by the connection of these kings through their mother with the Saxon royal family; while David the First introduced the Norman barons, who obtained large tracts of land on both sides of the Firths of Forth and Clyde under his auspices and that of his immediate successors. [Sidenote: Influence of foreign races on native population.] In estimating the extent to which these foreign elements influenced the original inhabitants, and how far they formed a permanent ingredient in the mixed population, it is necessary to keep in view the circumstances under which they obtained a footing in the country, and the peculiar features which characterised the intruders. Did they enter the country as colonists or as conquerors? If the former, did they come as military colonists? or did they bring their wives and families with them? Or, if the latter, did they amalgamate with the conquered population so as to form one people, the language and institutions of one or other obtaining the mastery over the whole? or did they exterminate or drive them out? or were the remains of the conquered people retained as a servile class under the conquerors? The first recorded settlements which have a historical basis were those of the Scots on the west coast and of the Angles on the east. Of these the Scots appear to have come more as colonists than as invaders. They were a tribe of Scots who came from the district of Dalriada in Ireland in the beginning of the sixth century, and brought that name with them which was applied to the southern part of the great western district of Argyll. They belonged to the same Gaelic race as the Pictish tribes among whom they were settled, and the oldest tradition as reported by Bede cannot tell whether ‘they secured to themselves these settlements by fair means or by force of arms.’[13] The conversion of the northern Picts to Christianity by the Irish missionary St. Columba, and the establishment of a Christian church among them under Scottish clergy, now formed a bond of union between them; and it is recorded by Bede that up to the time when he wrote his History their mutual boundaries had remained unaltered. In the same century the Angles of Bernicia, under the sons of Ida, who had founded that kingdom, obtained possession of the districts extending along the east coast as far as the Firth of Forth. They were a Pagan people, conquering a Christian population of a different race and language from