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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: proportion of the folk of Scotland: occupying the eastern and
the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the
Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the
north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should
have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own
ancestors is already strange: that it should have begotten
this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the
chronicler's error was merely nominal? that what he told, and
what the people proved themselves so ready to receive, about
the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and
perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue,
Ballads |
