The historical account is to the effect, that the _Scots_ of Scotland were originally Irish, so that _Ire_land was the true and proper _Scot_land. It was Ireland where the Scots dwelt when the Picts came from Scythia, Ireland whence the Picts took their Scottish wives; and, finally, Ireland that gave its present Gaelic population to North Britain. Under a leader named _Reuda_ the Scots of Ireland sailed across the Irish Sea, penetrated far into the Firth of Clyde, settled themselves to the north of the Picts, drove that nation southwards, multiplied their kind in the Highlands, and called themselves _Dalriads_ (_Dalreudini_), since _Reuda_ was the name of their chief, and _daal_ meant _part_. The point where the Scots landed was just where the British and Pict areas joined, the parts about Alcluith or Dumbarton--"procedente autem tempore, Britannia post Brittones et Pictos, tertiam Scottorum nationem in Pictorum parte recepit, qui duce Reuda de Hibernia progressi vel amicitia vel ferro sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicarunt; a quo videlicet duce usque hodie _dalreudini_ vocantur, nam eorum lingua 'daal' _partem_ significat."--Hist. Eccl. i. 1. To agree with Beda in making the Gaels of Scotland intrusive, but to demur to his evidence, is, apparently, to substitute a bad reason for a good one without affecting the conclusion, _i.e._, gratuitously. We shall soon see how far this is the case. At present, I remark that all Scotland may have been British without having been wholly Pict; and that-- The parts of Scotland which were not Gaelic at the beginning of the Historical period and have not been so since, never were.[26] IX. _The Picts may or may not have been the British Kelts of Scotland: this depending upon the extent to which the gloss _penn fahel_ is a word belonging to the Pict tongue, or only a word belonging to a language spoken within the Pict territory._ Why should it not be Pict? Why disturb the inference by suggesting that they may be Pict only as _man_ or _woman_ are Welsh, _i.e._, words other than Pict, but words used in a Pict area just as English is spoken in the Welsh town of Swansea? I admit that, if we look only to the plain and straight-forward meaning of Beda, this refinement is unnecessary. There are, however, certain complications. _Daal_=_part_, is suspiciously like the German _theil_, the English _deal_, the Anglo-Saxon _dæl_, the Norse _del_, _dal_; indeed, it is a wonder that Beda took it for a foreign word. Hence, gloss for gloss, it is _nearly_ as good evidence for the Picts being German or Norse as _penn fahel_ is for their being Briton. I say _nearly_, because it is expressly stated to have been _Scotch_. But this it is not. What, then, is our next best explanation? To suppose it to have been a word used by a population other than Scotch, but on the Scotch frontier. Now this population was Pict. X.