After these preliminary notes, we may now again glance at the Scots,
who were destined, from small beginnings, by a series of strange turns
of fortune and superior state-craft, in time to conquer and dominate
all modern Scotland north of the Forth, then known as Alban.
The Scots, as already stated, had come over from Ulster and settled in
Cantyre about the end of the fifth century, and for long they had only
the small Dalriadic territory of Argyll, and even this they all but
lost more than once. At the same time, after 563, they had a most
valuable asset in Columba, their soldier missionary prince, and his
_milites Christi_, or soldiers of Christ, who gradually carried their
Christianity and Irish culture even up to Orkney itself, with many a
school of the Erse or Gaelic tongue, and thus paved the way for
the consolidation of the whole of Alban into one political unit by
providing its people with a common language.
But in order to live the Scots had been forced to defeat many foes,
such as the Britons of Strathclyde, whose capital was at Alcluyd
or Dunbarton,[16] the Northumbrians on the south, and the Picts of
Atholl, Forfar, Fife and Kincardine, which comprised most of the
fertile land south of the Grampians.
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