The history, ancient and modern, of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross : with the description of both, and of the firths of Forth and Tay, and the islands in them ... with an account of the natural products of the land and waters / By Sir Robert Sibbald.

  • Robert Sibbald
Date:
1803
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history, ancient and modern, of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross : with the description of both, and of the firths of Forth and Tay, and the islands in them ... with an account of the natural products of the land and waters / By Sir Robert Sibbald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/502 (page 9)
    ; ¢ CHAP. .] ANCIENT NAMES OF THE COUNTRY g and says, ‘ Fuere olim Vicomagi populi Pictici generis, qui s¢ sub Caledonia sedes tenuerunt; horum meminit Ptolo- “meus *.” Indeed Ptolomy mentioneth both these; but Boethius’ mistake is from a wrong copy of Ptolomy, printed at Ulma, anno Dom. 1486, which I have, in which I find the Otolini. And Gale, in his 15 Scriptores, “Says, some MSS. read it so also, which differs from. all the other copies, both Greck and Latin, which I have seen : for these usually have Ottedini, which the learn’d Drummond of Hawthorndenne, our countryman, in some MS. notes upott Cambden’s description of North Britain, saith is to be read Scottedini +, the two initial letters having been worn away in the parchment MS. he says has given rise to the reading Ottedini 5 ; for the other people he calls Vicomagi: Cc whileas animals which Britain produces; of pastures, covered with valuable flocke -and herds; of lakes, and pools, and rivers, stored with variety of fish. This distri comprehends Fife, Fothric and Ornevale, (qu. Strathore?) ~ _ principalities still replenished .with the same productions as in ancient times, except the woods, of which they were Jong ago (Boeth. wrote in the ‘sth century) in a great measure, divested,“by the Scottish kings, who, succeeding to these countries after the destruction of the Picts, were unable to expel the robbers, then very numerous, but by destroying the Soe which sheltered them.” x “ There was formerly a Pictish tribe called Vicomagi, who possessed the country under Caledonia, (4, e. to the south, and he eg places them in Stirlingshire,) of whom Ptolomy makes mention.” It were endless to attempt to correct the errors of Boethius. No such name as Otolinia, as Sir Robert remarks, ever belonged to any part of North Bri- _tain.. The Ottodeni, a people of Celtic origin, are placed in the map of Ptolomy to the south of the Forth ; the Vacomagi, a Pictish tribe, so far to the north as Morayshir e, in the very heart of Caledonia. 2 It is astonishing how fur national pride, and the bewildering influen¢e of theory, will mislead the strongest minds. Drummond, a man really learned and acute, to support the system of the great antiquity of the Scot~ “tish name, hazards a conje&ture in opposition to every MS. of Ptolomy, and all other ancient writers, and lends his authority to a falsehood, useless im itself, and not dificult to be detected. P