The Pictish king was elective, unless he formed an exception to the universal rule prevailing amongst the Teutonic as well as the Celtic tribes in early times. The theory of election, indeed, pervaded all the institutions of the Gaelic people, who seem to have nominally chosen their heads of houses and chiefs of clans, as well as their _Flaiths_, _Oirrighs_, and _Ardrigh_, or their princes, provincial kings, and the supreme ruler of the whole nation. Brother succeeded to brother upon the throne, and the law of primogeniture, as amongst the early Germans, was only partially recognised, each “full-born” son having a claim upon the inheritance of his father, though the universal custom of “fosterage” led to the same results as Cambrensis deplored amongst his countrymen in Wales. Each child was placed in the family of a dependant, who regarded such a charge as a mark of the highest confidence and honour; and even in the seventeenth century, men of rank and station in the Scottish Highlands still esteemed it a privilege to educate in this manner one of the children of the head of their lineage. The child thus adopted shared in the property of his foster-father on the same footing as his foster-brethren, who profited in return from the protection and support of their more illustrious connection, and thus was formed a tie which generally proved a far surer bond of union than even the actual existence of blood relationship. The “fosterers” of the royal race must have invariably been chosen from amongst the greater nobles, each of whom, from mingled motives of affection and self-interest, was ever too ready to support the claims of his own foster-son, or _Dalt_, upon the supreme power; and the continual contests about the succession to the throne, which arose in this age in every country in Western Europe, are traceable less to the inveteracy of fraternal hatred than to the jealous rivalry of interested partizans, which must have been engendered by such a system of fosterage. Gradually, however, except in cases of incapacity, or where one of the junior members of the family far exceeded the rest in prowess or popularity, the precedency of the eldest-born grew into the rule, the contrary course becoming the exception.[34]