Similarly, George Buchanan speaks of Harlaw as a raid for
purposes of plunder, made by the islanders upon the mainland.[24] These
illustrations may serve to show how Scottish historians really did look
upon the battle of Harlaw, and how little do they share Mr. Burton's
horror of the Celts.
When we turn to descriptions of Scotland we find no further proof of the
correctness of the orthodox theory. When Giraldus Cambrensis wrote, in
the twelfth century, he remarked that the Scots of his time have an
affinity of race with the Irish,[25] and the English historians of the
War of Independence speak of the Scots as they do of the Welsh or the
Irish, and they know only one type of Scotsman. We have already seen the
opinion of John Major, the sixteenth-century Scottish historian and
theologian, who had lived much in France, and could write of his native
country from an _ab extra_ stand-point, that the Highlanders speak Irish
and are less respectable than the other Scots; and his opinion was
shared by two foreign observers, Pedro de Ayala and Polydore Vergil. The
former remarks on the difference of speech, and the latter says that the
more civilized Scots have adopted the English tongue. In like manner
English writers about the time of the Union of the Crowns write of the
Highlanders as Scotsmen who retain their ancient language. Camden,
indeed, speaks of the Lowlands as being Anglo-Saxon in origin, but he
restricts his remark to the district which had formed part of the
kingdom of Northumbria.
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