were situated, and which formed the three small sheriffdoms of these names. It is not at all unlikely that that king, or his successor William the Lion, should have adopted the policy of interposing between the native population, ‘who,’ Fordun tells us, ‘would, for neither prayers nor bribes, neither treaties nor oaths, leave off their disloyal ways, or their ravages among their fellow-countrymen,’ and the frontier of the province a tract of country, garrisoned, as it were, with the more settled people of the lowlands. [Sidenote: Norwegian kingdom of the Isles.] But if this silent and gradual immigration of the Teutonic people thus took place into the southern and eastern districts of the country north of the Forth and Clyde, and either absorbed its Celtic inhabitants or gradually drove them back into the more mountainous regions, the latter were exposed to a more direct assault from another people of Teutonic race on the north and west, which, however, did not produce the same permanent effect upon the population. This was that strange and sudden appearance in the northern and western seas of a piratical horde of sea-robbers, which issued from the Scandinavian countries lying to the north of Germany. The first to make their appearance were the Danes, and though they repeatedly ravaged the Western Isles and destroyed the Christian monasteries, they effected permanent settlements only in Ireland, and in the northern provinces of England forming the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. They were followed by the Norwegians, who appear to have been more attracted by the islands surrounding Scotland, and thus came more immediately in contact with the Gaelic population of Scotland. They entirely occupied the islands of Orkney and Shetland, which they colonised; and took possession of the Western Isles, without, however, driving out or absorbing the previous inhabitants of Gaelic race. By the Gaelic people these northern ravagers were termed either _Geinnte_ or Gentiles as being pagans, or _Gall_ or Strangers as being foreigners, and the two races of the Danes and Norwegians were distinguished by the terms _Dubhgeinnte_ or _Dubhgall_, that is, black pagans or black strangers, and _Finngeinnte_ or _Finngall_,[20] white pagans or white strangers, and the Western Islands were termed _Innsigall_, or the Islands of the Strangers, while the Norwegians themselves called them the Sudreys or Southern Islands, to distinguish them from the Nordereys or Northern Islands, that is, the Orkney and Shetland Islands.[21] [Sidenote: The Gallgaidheal.]