his History of Scotland, already mentioned, describes (chap. xi.) several of the Beltane customs surviving yet in the north from Druidic times, and points out their resemblance to the rites of the ancient peoples who worshipped by fire in Asia. From this it would appear as if the Druids were about to be counted among the priesthoods which, like those found by Paul at Athens, taught the worship of "an unknown God." It seems, indeed, very clearly proved that the Celtic race in Scotland worshipped a Supreme Being through the medium of fire. This fact sufficiently accounts for the absence of divine machinery from the poems of Ossian, and renders valueless Macpherson's data drawn from such a circumstance. Against the tradition of complete extermination, too, quoted by the latter, it may be noticed that the "sons of the rock," or Druids, are frequently mentioned by Ossian. Had the object of their worship been something tangible it could hardly have escaped allusion.
A more definite means of fixing a date occurs in the poem of "Comala." There it is narrated how Fingal in his youth defeated Caracul on the banks of the Carun. If this Caracul (Gaelic, Fierce-eye) was, as there exists no good reason to doubt, the son of the Roman emperor Severus, it makes Fingal a young man of eighteen or twenty in the
