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command the more extensive prospect, & the more readily intercept coasting vessels. Skip-nes or Skipnish in Argylesbire, received its name, perhaps, from having been a common station of pirates. Regner is said to have disliked the Christian religion, therefore, he tauntingly calls an engagement ”odda messo i. e. the mass or matins of weapons.
XII. Bartha-firthi, seems to have been the mouth of the Tay, near Perth or Der-tha, in the neighbourhood of which, was Rath-inver-Amond, of old, the residence of the M’ Alpin kings. It is not unlikely, however, that the true reading shou'd be Breida-firtbi, or the firth of Forth, the common resort of the northern adventurers. The whole of that peninsula Iying between the Tay & Forth was particularly infested by the Scandinavians, at a very early period. An engagement on its coasts between two chieftains, very near the age of Fingal, is said to have been represented in needle work by the daughter of Haco, a celebrated sea-king, who fled to Scotland after the Battle of Roskild; and it is thus described in the Edda.
