Hector Boece, the Scottish historian, gives the following Latin couplet:— Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, qnocunque locatum, Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem; Of which Keating gives the following Gaelic:— Cineadh Scuit saor an fine, Mun budh breag an fhaisdine, Mar a fuighid an liagh-fhail, Dlighid flaitheas do ghabhail. Rendered thus in English— The Scots shall brook that realm as native ground, If weirds fail not, where’er this chair is found. So much for the _Lia Fail_. * * * * * There is a reluctance on the part of Irish writers to accept any theory that implies the colonisation of Ireland from Britain. On the contrary, they rather attempt to prove that the Scottish Gael emigrated from Ireland—a theory which appears to have been invented in the fifteenth century. It was afterwards adopted unquestioningly by Scottish antiquarians, with few exceptions, of whom James Macpherson of Ossianic fame was one. For some time the Highlanders generally accepted the theory, and almost all the Highland clans were somehow or other traced to an Irish original. _MacMhaighstir Alastair_ thus sings of the original country of the clans according to the belief of last century:— “There are thousands now in Alba As stout as are in any land; _The grey Gaels from Scota_, Who cheerful round your colours stand.” By _Scota_ Ireland is meant. All the elaborate and romantic chronicles by which Milesian and Spanish colonies are made to land on Irish soil were mostly manufactured by monks in the Middle Ages, and have no defensible historical foundation; the same may be affirmed of the alleged colonisation of Argyllshire by Irish Gaels. Some of the romances and the chronicles, however, suggest what appear to be reliable facts respecting the several races of Erin and Albin. Just as there were several tribes of Finians in ancient Eire, so there are different tribes of Celts in modern Ireland. A powerful pre-Celtic element, as in the north-west of Scotland, prevails in the south-west of Ireland. On the other hand a Norse element also prevails in the north-west of Scotland, which has largely entered into the population of the north of Ireland. The difference of character exhibited by the generic Irish and generic Scottish Celt is to be traced no doubt to the degrees of original difference in the blending of races. The Norse element has always been recognised by the more intelligent of the Highlanders. We find Mary MacLeod, the Harris poetess, born in 1569, addressing the Dunvegan chief of the day in these words:— “In counsel or fight, thy kindred Know these should be thine— Branch of _Lochlin’s_ wide-ruling And king-bearing line! And in Erin they know it Far over the brine; No Earl would in Albin Thy friendship decline.”