In his Inside Track article ("Comparisons with Ireland do not help the debate", The Herald, June 20) Gerry Braiden, after commenting on the inextricable link between Scotland and Ireland, goes on to write, "which is why the mutual historic, social and political illiteracy about our respective [Celtic cousins] never fails to astound".
That is a reasonable analysis. However, he also wrote that the Scoti arrived from Ulster and set up Dal Riata around 500 AD. This is not history; it is an origin myth.
I refer to the article "Were the Scots Irish?" by Dr Ewen Campbell of Glasgow University, first published in Antiquity 75 in 2001. There is no archaeological or linguistic evidence for the myth and indeed the "historical" sources "are clearly origin legends of a type common to most peoples of the period, constructed to show the descent of a ruling dynasty from a powerful, mythical or religious figure".
Alan MacIntyre,
An t-Aillegan,
Barcaldine,
Oban, Argyll.
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