obviously, there is a market for frauds:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descr ... of_Britain
https://books.google.com/books?id=OwJIA ... ge&q&f=fal
Nice footnotes on Druids, particularly page 21 on the triads,
and notes on mistletoe.
mention of Caledonians (Cruit) page 56
page 61 et seq
DeuCalidonian Ocean page 73
Agricola campaign page 86
mention of Venturiones, given as Vecturiones, page 58
The Description of Britain, also known by its Latin name De Situ Britanniae ("On the Situation of Britain"), was a literary forgery perpetrated by Charles Bertram on the historians of England. It purported to be a 15th-century manuscript by the English monk Richard of Westminster, including information from a lost contemporary account of Britain by a Roman general (dux), new details of the Roman roads in Britain in the style of the Antonine Itinerary, and "an antient map" as detailed as (but improved upon) the works of Ptolemy. Bertram disclosed the existence of the work through his correspondence with the antiquarian William Stukeley by 1748, provided him "a copy" which was made available in London by 1749, and published it in Latin in 1757. By this point, his Richard had become conflated with the historical Richard of Cirencester. The text was treated as a legitimate and major source of information on Roman Britain from the 1750s through the 19th century, when it was progressively debunked by John Hodgson, Karl Wex, B. B. Woodward, and J. E. B. Mayor. Effects from the forgery can still be found in works on British history and it is generally credited with having named the Pennine Mountains.
To sum this up, three centuries of text work on the Scotti, Caledonians, Vododin, and "Picts" are based on a literary forgery whose construction is still without a rigorous analysis. It is necessary to deconstruct this to its sources, with the "contemporary account" pulled out and taken apart.
This work was also used by Gibbons, so his work and conclusions will have to be worked through again, as it is based at least in part on this forgery.
The reason why that forgery was successful and effective was because it supported nationalist beliefs.
But don't let these facts stop any of you - carry on.
As far as I am concerned, please excuse me if I call horseshit; I think I'll go with that $125 volume from Oxford,
drop my "geological specimens" in the mail, look for records in the Vatican and eastern empire pertaining to events around 582 CE,
and simply wait for the excavation reports.