Sutherland and of Caithness respectively, Mr. Curle has classified
their visible remains, and may, let us hope, with the aid of
legislation, save those relics from the roadmaker or dykebuilder.
Lastly, such superstitions, or survivals of beliefs, as remain in the
north of Scotland from early days have been collected, arranged, and
explained by the late Mr. George Henderson in an able book on that
subject.[3] Enquiries such as these, however, belong to the provinces
of archæology and folk-psychology, and not to that of history, still
less to that of contemporary history, which began in the north,
as elsewhere, with oral tradition, handed down at first by men of
recording memories, and then committed to writing, and afterwards
to print; and both in Norway and Iceland on the one hand, and in
the Highlands on the other such men were by no means rare, and were
deservedly held in the highest honour.

Writing arrived in Sutherland and Caithness very late, and was not
even then a common indigenous product. Clerks, or scholars who could
read and write, were at first very few, and in the north of Scotland
hardly any such were known before the twelfth century of our era,
save perhaps in the Pictish and Columban settlements of hermits and
missionaries. Of their writings, if they ever existed, little or
nothing of historical value is extant at the present time. But the
_Orkneyinga, St. Magnus_, and _Hakon's Sagas_, when they take up their
story, present us with a graphic and human and consecutive account
of much which would otherwise have remained unknown, and their story,
though tinged here and there with romance through the writers' desire
for dramatic effect, is, so far as the main facts go, singularly
faithful and accurate, when it can be tested by contemporary
chronicles.