Caesar and Tacitus, not to mention a multitude of other Greek and Roman authors, were guided by like inferences.

But, besides these primitive facts, which lie in a very remote antiquity, it is a matter of positive and undoubted testimony, that the Roman province of Britain, during the time of the lower empire, was much infested by bands of robbers or pirates, whom the provincial Britons called Scots or Scuits; a name which was probably used as a term of reproach, and which these bandits themselves did not acknowledge or assume.

We may infer, from two passages in Claudian, and from one in Orosius, and another in Isidore, that the chief seat of these Scots was in Ireland.

That some part ot the Irish freebooters migrated back to the north-west parts of Britain, whence their ancestors had probably been derived in a more remote age, is positively asserted by Bede, and implied in Gildas.

I grant, that neither Bede nor Gildas are Caesars or Tacituses; but such as they are, they remain the sole testimony on the subject, and therefore must be relied on for want of better: happily, the frivolousness of the question corresponds to the weakness of the authorities.