The different tribes enumerated by Ptolemy, and subsequently known as the Northern and Southern Picts, appear at some early period to have coalesced into seven lesser confederacies, answering to the “Pictish Provinces” of Beda. Allusion is evidently made to these principalities in the old verses ascribed by tradition to Columba, enumerating the seven sons of _Cruithne_--characters of the same description as the sons of Hellen--“Cait, Ce, Ciric of the hundred clans, Fiv, Fidach, Fodla, Fortreim.” In _Fiv_ “the forest,” and in _Cait_, there is little difficulty in recognising “the ancient kingdom of Fife,” and a province of which the north-eastern extremity still retains the name of Caith_ness_, the point or promontory of _Caith_. Meaningless alike in Gaelic and in Welsh, _Caith_ is probably the Celtic form of _Ketje_, “the end” or “extremity” in Lappish, a relic of a time when an Ugrian population regarded this province as their northern limit. The recollection of _Fortreim_ was long preserved in the Deanery of _Fortrev_ or _Fotheriff_, lying along the banks of the Forth, from which river the name was most probably derived. _Fodla_ or _Fotla_, a word sometimes used amongst the Irish Gael as synonymous with Ireland, or their native home, survives in _Athfodla_ or _Atholl_; whilst the appellation of _Fidach_, or “the woody” may be safely conjectured to have belonged to that province which was once known to the Romans under the ancient British epithet of _Celydon_, or “the forest district.” No clue remains to identify _Ce_ and _Ciric_, which may have answered to the provinces upon the coast included between the Grampian range and the eastern and northern seas. Nothing whatever is known of these seven provinces beyond the bare fact of their existence, though long after they had been broken up into earldoms, or united by conquest to the possessions of the crown, the tradition of this ancient sevenfold division of the Pictish kingdom, and of the rights of the provincial princes in electing a paramount _Ardrigh_, appears to have been revived amongst a party of the Scottish nobles for the purpose of adding to their overgrown power at the expense of their youthful king.[33]