sources that Ireland was the scene of continual wars and proscriptions, with their accompaniments of banishments and flights. The first Irishman noticed in history was a chief who visited the camp of Agricola to solicit aid against his countrymen. Of these internal wars, which lasted for two centuries, we have many notices under the name of rebellions of the plebeians, called the Athachthuach, the Attacoti of Ammianus. The truth of the Irish writers concerning the nature of this long struggle is confirmed by Ammianus, who first mentions the Attacoti. Many of these Attacotic tribes took service in the Roman army, and we can trace their cohorts to Illyrium and Italy. In this cruel war the Cruithens, if not the principals, were on the side of the vanquished and gave them aid, and we find the Irian or Cruithen kings of Ulster always the opponents of the usurping Heremonian Scots. In the annals of Tighernach, the most valuable of all the Irish chronicles, we find the notices of endless battles between the Heremonian kings and the kings of Ulster. The reign of Cormac, from A.D. 218 till 254, is but one long war, during which he expelled a portion of the Ultonians or Cruithens to the Isle of Man. It was probably about this time that other Ultonian exiles fled to Scotland and founded the kingdom of Fortren. The settlement of the banished Picts in Scotland is narrated in every Irish chronicle, as well as by Saxon and British writers. Whatever may be the previous wanderings ascribed to them, it is from Ireland that they take their ultimate departure. Where they first landed is not stated with accuracy, but they are said to have taken possession of the Orkneys and the Western Islands. According to an old poem already quoted

"The passed from us to dwell by valor in the beautifull land of Isla." This was merely the direction followed by the Dalriads in 503. It appears, however, that at first they spread to the north, and, in the time of St. Columba, Brudi, the Pictish king, appears to have had considerable influence in the Orkneys. In the Orkneyinga Saga we are told that the Norwegians found in the islands two classes of people, Peti or Picts, and Pappae or priests. Unless we admit the spread of the Picts to the northern extremity of Scotland, it will be difficult to explain the existence of the Irish language to the extremity of Caithness, for the influence of the Dalriads does not appear to have extended beyond the Caledonian Valley.

The union of the Northern and Southern Picts was merely the

fusion of two Celtic races, among whom, in the course of time, the Gaedhelic gradually superseded the British dialect. Thus, we still find in the countries inhabited by the Picts a mixture of local names partly Irish partly British. This mixture of names of the two dialects is to be found in the lists of Pictish kings. It is amusing to study the efforts of Pinkerton and Jamieson to reduce the names of the Pictish kings to Teutonic etymons, and to distort the most obvious Celtic words. If we abstract those irreducible names, which in their present orthography can be referred to no language whatever, we find many which present no difficulty. In the authentic list published by Innes we find names unquestionably Celtic, but of a different orthography from those of Ireland or Wales. Thus, Keniod, for Kenneth; Hungus, for Angus; Drust, for Trosdan; Wraid, for Feredach; Wurgust, for Fergus; Uven, for Eaghan. Talorg and Talorgan are unquestionably Welsh and not Irish, derived from tal, the face, as in Taliessin. To this Mr. Garnet adds a very acute remark— the Irish list of Pictish kings given in the Book of Ballymote agrees closely with the Chronicon Pictorum, even preserving the initial w and u where the Irish would require f. From this we may infer that the Chronicon Pictorum is an original document of the people of Fortren, and not borrowed from Irish sources. In the annals of Ulster we also find this peculiarity-that the Pictish names are changed into their Irish equivalents; thus, under A.D. 833, we find Angus Mac Fergus instead of Unuist filius Wurgust of the Chronicon Pictorum. This, with other evidence which has been quoted, proves not only that the language of the Picts could not be the Teutonic, but also that it was a dialect of the Celtic quite distinct from the Irish. While the names of the list appear to follow a British rather than an Irish orthography, there are very few of them which are exclusively British, such as Talorgan; but even this name is found in Ireland, for O'Talargh occurs in the Ann. Quat. Magist., under A.D. 674. On the other hand the forms of the names are far more Welsh than Irish. This is what might be anticipated if the Southern Picts were a British race, for their language would remain exempt from foreign influence until the time of Kenneth M'Alpin, when the Dalriad ascendancy commenced. Matters were different from this among the Northern tribes between Caithness and Loch Ness. The Irish Cruithens or Picts spread from the Western Isles to the east and north, and there the Irish language became so predominant that

scarcely a topographic name retains the British form.* The Dalriads of Argyle never possessed any political supremacy in the north of Scotland, and yet the Irish language became universal there. In this brief notice we have endeavoured to shew that the Cruithens or Picts were of Irish origin, and were originally rulers of that country. After a very long and obstinate resistance they yielded to the Heremonian Scots. They long remained the lords of Ulster, but even there they were crushed by the descendants of Heremon. They were then confined to the county of Down and part of Antrim, and their power was finally broken at the Battle of Moy Rath in the sixth century.

Apur crossan, or Aber-chesin, i.e., Applecross in Ross-shire, gives us the British form

Aber.

It had an Irish monastery, founded in the seventh century.

NO. IX.

MEMORIAL RELATIVE TO THE HOSPITAL OF

ST. NICHOLAS:

BY

MICHAEL CONNAL, Esq.

[Read at a Meeting of the Glasgow Archæological Society, on 7th November, 1859.]

THE title of Magister of this Hospital has been revived within the last few years-the Lord Provost of the city being recognised as the head of this ancient charitable institution.

The ruins of the Hospital were removed in 1805, in opening up a street running to the south and west of Kirk Street, and which street in its turn has been obliterated by the extension of the Gas Works; but the institution itself has survived the neglect of centuries, though the small sum which is annually distributed, in conformity with the will of the founder, leaves it but the shadow of a claim to be ranked as an asylum for the aged poor.

Sir Thomas Hope, advocate to King Charles I., gives a list, in his Minor Practicks, of twenty-eight hospitals which had once been in Scotland for the reception of strangers, or the maintenance of poor and infirm people. All these were governed by a superior, who was called Magister; a title, however, that since the Reformation, has been applied promiscuously, though anciently attributed to the superiors of canons; the words which he quotes being "qui onera regiminis pertabat et temporalium curam habebat, Magister appellabatur." The old writs to which he had access, disclosed to him, what we have no means now of confirming, an interesting feature of St. Nicholas' Hospital in Glasgow, that there were in it some waiting maids to attend the sick.

The obscurity which hung over the history of the Hospital excited the attention of the Town Council, and the memorial respecting it, which is embodied in this paper, was prepared in 1841 by the late chief Town Clerk, the venerable and learned Mr. Reddie.

The name of St. Nicholas appears to have been regarded with peculiar veneration in Scotland. From a remote period, churches, altars, and hospitals, had been erected to his honour in various parts of the country. In the Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis, published by the Maitland Club, there is a "Breve Chronicon," which embraces a list of forty-five memorable events, from 1067 to 1413, some of them of national importance, such as the Battle of Bannockburn-the death of King Robert the Bruce-the captivity of James I. in England; and amongst these, the year 1372 is signalised by "Ventus Sancti Nicolai," and it appears from this chronicle that the public and authorised veneration of St. Nicholas preceded that of St. Kentigern by 37 years.

The city of Aberdeen, however, took the lead in the veneration of St. Nicholas. He was regarded as her "glorious patron saint." In the Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, notices of the Church of St. Nicholas occur as far back as the year 1220. The Aberdeen Burgh Records, published by the Spalding Club, from 1449 to 1508 more particularly, comprise details respecting the festival of the Saint, when the provost, bailies, council, and communities of the burgh rode through the town in solemn procession.

Brand, in his "Popular Antiquities," quotes Morysin to shew that Papal Rome, in imitation of heathenism, fabricated celestial guardians for cities and peoples, and assigned Nicholas to Aberdeen. This scarcely, however, accounts for the popularity in Scotland, 500 years ago, of that saint of the Roman calendar, who was first Bishop of Lycia, in Asia Minor, and who died A.D. 343.

The monastery that now stands in the plain of Myra—that seaport town where the apostle Paul and his fellow prisoners embarked for Italy in a ship of Alexandria-claims to be the burial-place of St. Nicholas, and when the late Professor Edward Forbes visited it a few years ago, he found that the Russian Government had coveted the precious relics, and had removed them in a frigate to St. Petersburg during the Greek revolution, the Emperor replacing them by a gaudy picture.

The name of St. Nicholas, however, has associations nearer home. The Church of the Holy Cross at Peebles, as related by Fordun, was founded in the thirteenth century, on the spot where the remains of a human body were discovered, in a shrine of stone, in the immediate neighbourhood of a venerable cross, with the inscription, "Locus Sancti Nicholai Episcopi."