BRETTS AND SCOTS, TliE L..tws OF THE (Lat. Leges inter Brettos et Scotos, old Fr. Lusage de Seotis et de Bretis), the name given, in the 13t11 c., to a code of laws in the Celtic tribes in Scotland. The '" Scots" were the Celtic people dwelling in the western and more mountainous districts n. of the Forth and the Clyde, who, when it became necessary to distinguish them from the Teutonic inhabitants of the low try, received the names of "the wild Scots," "the Irishry of Scotland," and, more recently, "the Scotch highlanders." The " Bretts" were the remains of the British or Welsh people, who were at one time the sole or chief inhabitants of the region now divided into the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Selkirk, burgh, Dumfries, and Cumberland. This province was for some centuries an pendent kingdom, known by the names of "Cambria," " Cumbria," " Strathclyde," and " Strathclyde and Regd." It became, about the middle of the 10th c., a tributary principality held of the king of the English, by the heir of the king of the Scots. It so continued till after the beginning of the 12th c., when Cumberland having been incorporated with England, the gradual absorption of the rest of the territory into the dominions of the king of the Scots seems to have been imperceptibly completed. last " prince of Cumbria" named in record was the brother and heir of king Alexander I. of Scotland, "the earl David," as lie was called, who, on his brother's death in 1121, himself became king of the Scots. No more is heard of Cumbria as a principality; but " the Welsh" continue to be named among its inhabitants, in the charters of king David's. grandsons—king Malcolm the maiden (1153-65), and king William the lion (1163-1214). And they seem .to have less of their 'ancient-Celtic- laws until after tit beginning of the 14th century. It was not till the year 1305 that an ordinance of king Edward I. of England, who appeared then to have reduced all Scotland to his subjec tion, decreed " that the usages of the Scots and the Bretts be abolished, and no more used." It is unknown how far this prohibition took effect. Of the code which it pro
scribed, only a fragment has been preserved. It was first printed by sir John Skene; in his Regiam (Edin. 1609). But by far the best edition is that of Mr. Thomas Thomson and Mr. Cosmo Innes, in the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 299-301 (Edin. 1844), where the laws are given in three languages—Latin, French, and English. The French version. which is the oldest, is printed from a manuscript of about 1270, formerly in the public library at Bern, in Switzerland, now in the register house at Edinburgh. The fragment of the " laws of the Bretts and the Scots" thus published, is of much the same nature as the ancient laws of the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh, and other nations of Western Europe. It fixes the erg, or price at which every man was valued, according to his degree, from the king down to the churl, and which, if he were slain, was to be paid to his kindred by the homicide or his kindred. The cro of the king was 1000 cows; of the king's son, or of an earl, 150 cows; of an earl's son or of a thane, 100 cows; of a thane's son, 66i cows; of the nephew of a thane, or of an ogthiern, 44 cows and 21i pence; and of a villain or churl, 16 cows—all persons of lower birth than a thane's nephew, or an ogthiern, being accounted villains or churls. The cro of the married woman was less by a third than the cro of her husband. The cro of the unmarried woman was as much as the cro of her brother. Other chapters fix every man's kelehyn or gelchach, gallnes, and enauch—Celtic terms not yet satisfactorily interpreted, but apparently equivalent to the fyldwite, mend, and manbot of the Anglo Saxon, as the cro of the Bretts and Scots appears to answer to the wergild of the English. A chapter "of blood-drawing"—corresponding with the blodwyte of the Auglo-Saxons— fixes the fine to be paid for a blow to the effusion of blood, according to the degree of the person wounded and the place of the wound.