Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Side 81
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between France and Scotland (see parallel texts above, lines 15ff), it
would appear that the author was writing in one of those periods of
Anglo-Scottish hostility when France and Scotland were aligned
against England. There are independent indications that the Asloan
version, which omits the word “now” in the reference to the alliance,
has here preserved the less correct reading, presumably because the
alliance was not operative at the time when Asloan made his copy.
(This, if correct, would point to the Asloan manuscript having been
written at some time in the 1520s, after the shifts in French foreign
policy which led to the collapse of Scottish support for the alliance
during the minority of James V.)55 All three texts testify, however, to
the statement that the expulsion of the Picts from Scotland occurred
seven hundred years ago: this is the passage to which the Royal copy
adds a specification showing that it was transcribed c. 1530.56 And all
three texts agree further in stating that the line of the Scottish kings
can be traced back eighteen hundred years to the time of Fergus: in
the words of the Dalhousie manuscript,
... thare is na land nor 3it nacio«n... pat standis in fredome sa lang tyme,
that is to say auchtene hunder 3ere and mare, vnconquest or subiect till ony
strange nacioun or king, as we do: bot euer vnder oure awin king... rycht lyne
descendand fra oure first king Fergus before said...57
The last phrase refers back to a Latin verse which is quoted earlier and
says explicitly that Fergus flourished 330 years before Christ
(“Christum ter centis ter denis prefuit annis”);58 taken at its face value
the passage might accordingly be supposed to mean that the author
was writing immediately after 1470. On the other hånd, the tradi-
tionally received date of the expulsion of the Picts was c. 840 - John of
Fordun assigns the event to the period between 839 and 84559 - and it
55 Cf. Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII, The Edinburgh History of
Scotland 3 (Edinburgh/London, 1965), pp. 17-21. The omission of now in Asloan may
be due to the exemplar rather than the scribe. For a contrary example see p. 77 and n. 69
below.
56 The Asloan Manuscript, I, 192/14-15; Chronicles of the Picts, p. 383/29-30; BM III,
40/18-19. Cf. p. 70 above.
57 From my own transcript; cf. BM III, 41/6-11.
58 BM III, 38/23. So also in the other two manuscripts.
59 Fordun, ed. Skene (as n. 4), pp. 145, 147.