In Scotland, it seems to me, myth has played a far more important part in history than it has in England. Indeed, I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it. I believe that three consecutive myths have successively filled the 400 years of Scottish history from the 16th century to the 20th. The political myth, the literary myth and the sartorial myth, which is with us still.

These myths, though they may explode on contact with the evidence, are nevertheless historically important. It became a part of the national honour to maintain them - at least until a new myth should be imported to drive them out.

The early history of all countries is obscure; but the mist which envelops the early history of Scotland is unique, both in density and duration. It was thickened and prolonged by national pride and deliberate myth-making. As late as the end of the 18th century, the racial origins of the Scots and their relationship with the Irish was a matter of learned dispute; and the ablest scholars were led, by blind or interested guides, and by deliberate forgeries, into the grossest errors.

In 1729, the first and greatest of Scottish antiquaries, Father Thomas Innes - an exiled Catholic priest and Jacobite who stood outside the interested intellectual establishment of Scotland - had destroyed the basis of the Scottish myths. But his work was barely noticed; and in 1776 even Edward Gibbon, misled by “two learned and ingenious Highlanders”, would be totally wrong about the origin of the Scots. A few years later Gibbon would discover another and better guide. John Pinkerton, whom he would patronise and encourage, would prove to be the ablest Scottish antiquary after Innes. But he too would fall into error when he came to the origin of the Picts. It was not until the late 19th century that the mists of myth would be scientifically cleared away and at least the outline of early Scottish history become visible.

Until the late 11th century, at least, Scottish history was preserved, with reasonable accuracy, in record or memory, and commemorated by the bards who recited royal succession lists on ceremonial occasions. But from that time the mists began to gather and that outline was gradually obscured and distorted by an ever-thickening cloud of mythology: a cloud that would not be effectively dispersed till another seven centuries had passed.

The process began spontaneously among the Scots as a bid to capture history, like everything else, from the Picts. It was quickened by an external force: the national struggle with England for independence. It was consecrated, in the 16th century, by the most advanced thinkers of the time: the cultivated, cosmopolitan Scottish humanists of the Renaissance.

For the 200 years between Kenneth MacAlpin in the mid-9th century and Malcolm III in the later 11th century we have, essentially, two kinds of sources that tell us something of how the Scots recorded and interpreted their history. Lists of kings in the royal succession were preserved: these would be recited publicly at enthronements and no doubt on other important occasions. The length and continuity of the royal succession, thus proclaimed, would emphasise the crucial role played by the monarchy in the fortunes of its people. There were also folk memories, stories about the origin and character of the people, which crystallised occasionally as fragments embedded in the chronicles kept by monks, but which might also appear in connection with the king-lists.

The information in the king-lists is narrow; that in the folk stories wider, but also woollier. These two kinds of sources, exiguous as they are, reveal, separately or in conjunction, at least an outline of the Scottish self-image as it developed.

Of the king-lists there are several versions, reflecting the periodic need to revise and update them, and also their copying and deposit in different parts of the country - not to mention their diffusion outside Scotland itself - and, of course, the hazards of their survival or destruction.

The process of copying and revision always entailed a risk of scribal error: through misreading, misspelling, or accidental omission or intrusion of names. Another technical problem was just how to display, for the unified monarchy of later times, its inheritance from the earlier dual monarchies: from the parallel monarchies of the Picts and the Scots, which had coexisted for some 300 years.

The problem could be dealt with in different ways: there were separate lists of Pictish kings and of Dalriadan kings, and lists which attempted a combination. It is by tracing the changes made to these king-lists over time that we can observe the gradually developing current that was, in the end, to sweep the Picts out of the historical record, and produce, instead, an ever-longer and more glorious past for the Scots.