John Bannerman (1932-2008) saw the history of Scotland from a Gaelic perspective, and his outstanding scholarship made that perspective impossible to ignore. As a historian, his natural home was the era between the Romans and the twelfth century when the Scottish kingdom first began to take shape, but he also wrote extensively on the MacDonald Lordship of the Isles in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while his work on the Beatons, the notable Gaelic medical kindred, reached into the early eighteenth century. Across this long millennium, Bannerman ranged and wrote with authority and insight on what he termed the 'kin-based society', with special emphasis upon its church and culture, and its relationship with Ireland.

This collection opens with Bannerman's ground-breaking and hugely influential edition and discussion of Senchus fer nAlban ('The History of the Men of Scotland'), which featured in his Studies in the History of Dalriada (1974), now long out of print. To this have been added all of his published essays, plus an essay-length study of the Lordship of the Isles which first featured as an appendix in Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture in the West Highlands (1977).

The book will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the Gaelic dimension to Scotland's past and present.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Section 1 Studies in the History of Dalriada
  • Preface
  • Abbreviations
  • The Dál Riata and Northern Ireland in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries
  • Notes on the Scottish Entries in the Early Irish Annals
  • Senchus Fer nAlban
  • Part I
    • Edition of Text
    • Text
    • Translation
    • Notes
    • Index of Personal Names
    • Index of Place and People Names
    • Appendix
    • Bibliography
  • Part II
    • Description
    • Biographical Notes
    • Placenames
    • Cenéla
    • Geographical Distribution of the Cenéla
    • The Cenél Loairn and the Airgialla
    • Later Accretion to the Senchus
    • Civil Survey
    • Army
    • Navy
    • Function of the Senchus
  • The Convention of Druim Cett
• Section 2 Studies in the History of Alba
  • 1 Comarba Coluim Chille and the Relics of Columba
  • 2 The Scottish Takeover of Pictland and the Relics of Columba
  • 3 MacDuff of Fife
  • 4 The King’s Poet and the Inauguration of Alexander III
  • 5 The Residence of the King’s Poet
• Section 3 Studies in the History of Late-Medieval Gaelic Scotland
  • 6 The Lordship of the Isles (1)
  • 7 The Lordship of the Isles (2): Historical Background
  • 8 Literacy in the Highlands
  • 9 The Scots Language and the Kin-based Society
  • 10 The Clàrsach and the Clàrsair
• Section 4 Studies of Gaelic Manuscripts and Texts
  • 11 The MacLachlans of Kilbride and their Manuscripts
  • 12 A Sixteenth-century Gaelic Letter
  • 13 Gaelic Endorsements of Early Seventeenth-century Legal Documents
  • 14 Two Early Post-Reformation Inscriptions in Argyll
• Index