Chapter VI: The Kingdom of Scone (2)

After the two kings Drest and Talorgan, who are said to have reigned jointly, the Pictish Chronicle has Uven, son of Unuist, who reigned three years. He is obviously the Eoganan, son of Aengus, who ruled over Dalriada for thirteen years, and probably succeeded Drest as king of the southern Picts. We find, therefore, the principle of male succession making a further step in advance, as the sons of both the previous kings, Constantin and Angus, thus reign after them over part at least of the Pictish nation; but in his reign the Picts were doomed to receive so crushing a blow from the Danish pirates that it seems to have almost exterminated the family connected with Fortrenn, and paved the way for the successful attempt of the son of Alpin the Scot to place himself on the throne of the Picts. In the ancient Tract on the wars of the Gaedheal with the Galls we are told that in the year 839 there came to Dublin threescore and five ships, and Leinster was plundered by them to the sea and the plain of Bregia, extending from Dublin to Drogheda. After the plundering of Leinster and Bregia they went northwards, when the people of Dalriada gave battle to this fleet, and Eoganan, son of Aengus, king of Dalriada, was slain in that battle. The Danes seem from this to have attempted to invade Scotland through Dalriada; but in recording the same event the Ulster Annals tell us that a battle was fought by the Gentiles against the men of Fortrenn, in which Eoganan son of Aengus, Bran son of Aengus, Aed son of Boanta, and others innumerable, were slain.[428] These two notices taken in combination very clearly show us that at this time the people of Dalriada and the men of Fortrenn were the same, and that Eoganan, the son of Aengus, ruled over both.

[Sidenote: A.D. 839.
Kenneth MacAlpin invades Pictavia.]

The Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that ‘Kynadius succeeded his father Alpin in his kingdom, and that in the seventh year of his reign, which corresponds with the year 839, while the Danish pirates, having occupied the Pictish shores, had crushed the Picts, who were defending themselves, with a great slaughter, Kynadius, passing into their remaining territories, turned his arms against them, and having slain many, compelled them to take flight, and was the first king of the Scots who acquired the monarchy of the whole of Alban, and ruled in it over the Scots.’[429] The allusion here to the defeat of the men of Fortrenn by the Danes is obvious, and this account certainly conveys the impression that Kenneth acted in concert with them, if he did not merely take advantage of the great defeat of the Picts to renew the attempt his father had made.

Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan make Kenneth the immediate successor of Eoganan in Dalriada, but the Pictish Chronicle places two kings as reigning over the Picts—Wrad, son of Bargoit, who reigned three years, and Bred one year; so that, while the events of the year 839 appear to have placed him in possession of Dalriada, they did not, as the Chronicle of Huntingdon implies, establish him on the throne of the Picts. Bred is the last of the line of Pictish kings in the Pictish Chronicle, and the reigns of himself and his predecessor, amounting to four years, bring us to the year 844. This was the twelfth year of Kenneth’s reign, and the Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that ‘in his twelfth year Kenneth encountered the Picts seven times in one day, and having destroyed many, confirmed the kingdom to himself.’[430]

[Sidenote: A.D. 844.
Kenneth mac Alpin becomes king of the Picts.]

This is the true year of Kenneth’s possession of the Pictish kingdom, and it is with this year that the Pictish Chronicle commences his reign. Here we are told that ‘Kinadius, son of Alpin, the first of the Scots, governed Pictavia happily for sixteen years. Two years, however, before he came to Pictavia, he acquired the kingdom of Dalriada.’[431] The name of the father of Bred, the last king of the Picts, is not given in the Pictish Chronicle, but in the later chronicles he is called Brude, son of Ferat, and his reign limited to one month. He is followed in these chronicles by three kings whose reigns amount to six years. These are Kinat, son of Ferat, one year; Brude, son of Fotel, two years; and Drest, son of Ferat, three years; and the latter is said to have been slain by the Scots ‘at Forteviot according to some, and at Scone according to others,’[432] and he is followed by Kenneth mac Alpin, who reigns sixteen years. This would bring his accession to the Pictish throne down to the year 850, and this is in fact the era upon which all the late calculations as to the duration of the kingdom of the Scots are based. It is possible that these kings may have existed and maintained a six years’ struggle with Kenneth before the last of them was slain; but they rest upon authority which cannot be considered trustworthy. The length of the reign assigned to Kenneth of sixteen years by the same chronicler is quite inconsistent with the introduction of these supposed kings; and the year 844 remains as undoubtedly the true era of the accession of the Scottish race to the Pictish throne. In the seventh year of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, or 851, he is said in the Pictish Chronicle to have transferred the relics of Saint Columba to a church which he had built.[433] This was no doubt the final carrying out of the arrangement by which the supremacy of Iona was to be transferred in Ireland to Kells, and in Scotland to Dunkeld. It is there that Kenneth had either completed a church begun by Constantin, or founded a new church, and a portion of Saint Columba’s relics was now transferred to each place. The subsequent events of Kenneth’s reign are given in the Pictish Chronicle in very general terms. He is said to have invaded Saxonia or Lothian six times, and to have burnt Dunbar and Melrose, usurped presumably by the Angles, while the Britons are said to have burnt Dunblane, and the Danes to have laid waste Pictavia as far as ‘Cluanan’ or Cluny and Dunkeld.[434] There is, however, no record of these events to be found elsewhere.

[Sidenote: The Gallgaidhel.]

During the latter years of Kenneth’s reign, a people appear in close association with the Norwegian pirates, and joining in their plundering expeditions, who are termed Gallgaidhel. This name is formed by the combination of the two words ‘Gall,’ a stranger, a foreigner, and ‘Gaidhel,’ the national name of the Gaelic race. It was certainly first applied to the people of Galloway, and the proper name of this province, Galwethia, is formed from Galwyddel, the Welsh equivalent of Gallgaidhel. It seems to have been applied to them as a Gaelic race under the rule of Galls or foreigners; Galloway being for centuries a province of the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria, and the term ‘Gall’ having been applied to the Saxons before it was almost exclusively appropriated to the Norwegian and Danish pirates. Towards the end of the eighth century the power of the Angles in Galloway seems to have become weakened, and the native races began to assert their independent action. The bishopric, which had been founded by the Angles in 727, ceases with Beadulf, the last Bishop, about the year 796; and William of Malmesbury tells us that he could find no record of any subsequent bishop, because the bishopric soon ceased being situated in the remote corner of the Angles, and having become exposed to the attacks of the Scots or Picts.[435]

In the Islands Landnamabok we are told that ‘Harold the Fairhaired, king of Norway, subdued all the Sudreys or Western Isles, so far west that no Norwegian king has since conquered farther except King Magnus Barefoot; but he had no sooner returned than vikings, both Scottish and Irish, cast themselves into the islands, and made war, and plundered far and wide. When King Harold heard this he sent westward Ketill Flatnose, the son of Bjarnan Bunu, to reconquer the islands.’ Ketill departed for the west, and subdued all the Sudreys. He made himself king over them.[436] The Laxdaela Saga, however, makes Ketill a petty king in Norway, who left it on the extension of Harold’s kingdom, and on arriving in Scotland with his vessel, was well received there by men of rank, as he was both a celebrated man and of high descent. They offered him any possessions he pleased, so that Ketill settled there with all his kindred. Ketill, however, must have settled in the Sudreys before Harold’s time, as his daughter Audur married Olaf the White, who became king of Dublin in 852; and in 856 we find a notice in the Ulster Annals of a great war between the Gentiles and Maelsechnaill along with the Gallgaidhel who were with them, and in 857 a victory by Imair and Amlaiph, against Caittil Finn with the Gallgaidhel in Munster.[437] Caittil Finn is no doubt the same person as Ketill Flatnose, and the Gallgaidhel those Scotch and Irish vikings whom he had brought under his authority. There is no doubt that the name of Gallgaidhel was applied to the Gaelic population of the Western Isles called Innse Gall or the islands of the Galls, and the name, which originally belonged exclusively to the Gallwegians when under Anglic dominion, was extended to the islanders when under that of the Norwegians. In the fragments of Irish Annals published by the Irish Archæological Society, we are told that in 852 ‘a battle was given by Aedh, king of Ailech, the most valiant king of his time, to the fleet of the Gallgaidhel. They were Scots and foster-children of the Northmen, and at one time used to be called Northmen. They were defeated and slain by Aedh, and many of their heads carried off by Niall with him; and the Irish were justified in committing this havoc, for these men were wont to act like Lochlans;’ and again, in 858, that ‘the Gallgaidhel were a people who had renounced their baptism, and were usually called Northmen, for they had the customs of the Northmen, and had been fostered by them, and though the original Northmen were bad to the churches, these were by far worse in whatever part of Erin they used to be.’[438]

The name, however, as applied to a territory, continued to be exclusively appropriated to Galloway.

The Pictish Chronicle adds that Kenneth died ‘tumore ani,’ on the Ides of February on the third of the week, in his palace of Forteviot, on the river Earn, and this fixes 860 as the year of his death. St. Berchan says of him—

Seventeen years of warding valour,
In the sovereignty of Alban,
After slaughtering Cruithneach, after embittering Galls,
He dies on the banks of the Earn.[439]

Flann Mainistrech says of him that he was the first king who possessed the kingdom of Scone, of the Gaidhel; and by the Ulster Annals, the Annales Cambriæ, and others, in recording his death, he is invariably called king of the Picts.[440] He appears to have had two sons, Constantin and Aed, and three daughters, one married to Run, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, another married to Amlaimh or Olaf the White, the Norwegian king of Dublin, and a third, Maelmaire, married to Aedh Finnliath, king of Ireland, who died in 879.[441]

[Sidenote: Obscurity of this period of history.]

There is no more obscure period in the annals of the northern kingdoms than the latter part of the eighth and the first half of the ninth centuries, and no more difficult question than to ascertain the nature and true character of that revolution which placed a Scottish race in possession of the kingdom of Scone. For this period we lose the guidance of the great Anglic historian Bede, and of the Irish annalist Tighernac. When we refer to trustworthy sources of information, we can find no record of any revolution at this time. They exhibit to us only the great confusion into which these kingdoms were thrown by the incessant depredations of the Norwegian and Danish piratical hordes. In the oldest and most authentic lists of kings we find Kenneth mac Alpin and his descendants following the Pictish kings as belonging to the same series. By the annalists who record the events of this period Kenneth is simply termed king of the Picts. The historical documents which make any direct statement on the subject, with one exception, belong to an artificial system of history, constructed after the eleventh century to serve the purposes of a political and ecclesiastical controversy, and cannot be trusted to afford us anything but distorted fragments of true history, and we are left with the solitary statement of Flann Mainistrech, that Kenneth was the first king who gave the kingdom of Scone to the Gaidheal.

[Sidenote: Causes and nature of revolution which placed Kenneth on the
throne of the Picts.]

That Kenneth mac Alpin was a Scot by paternal descent, and that the succession to the throne of the Pictish kingdom of Scone was eventually perpetuated in his race, may be held to be as certain as any event of that period can be ascertained; but the slender record we possess of the events of his reign does not exhibit them to us as implying the conquest of one nation by another, still less of the Picts by the Scots of Dalriada, as is usually assumed. The name of Kenneth’s father, Alpin, shows that he was of the Pictish race by maternal descent, and that he may have had a claim to the throne, but these events exhibit themselves to us more as a war of succession—in which Alpin and his son Kenneth were supported in their claim to the throne not only by a party among the Picts, but by the remains of the Scots of Dalriada who were still to be found in the country,—than as a foreign invasion. During the reigns of Kenneth and his three successors, they were simply kings of Scottish paternal descent, ruling over the same kingdom and the same people who had previously been governed by those of Pictish race. The country of which Scone was the capital was still _Cruithintuath_, or Pictavia its Latin equivalent. The people were still the men of _Fortrenn_ or the Picts, and the deaths of these kings of Scottish race were still recorded as those of kings of the Picts. The period was one very favourable to such a change being easily and quietly made. The Picts had no repugnance to any of their kings being paternally of foreign descent, so that they represented a Pictish royal family, and were held to belong to a Pictish tribe through their mothers. The old Pictish law of succession too, had broken down, among the southern Picts at least, under Anglic influence, and the right of the sons of Pictish kings to ascend the throne had been more than once recognised. Shortly after Alpin had put forward his claim, the Picts of Fortrenn had sustained a most crushing blow from the Danes, and were as completely prostrated by them as the Scots of Dalriada had been a century before by the powerful Pictish king Aengus mac Fergus. That it was followed by a rising everywhere of the remains of the Scots of Dalriada we may well believe, but an additional and very potent element existed among his means of support. The ban against the Columban clergy who had been so long dispossessed of their foundations in the territories of the southern Picts had been partially removed by the foundation of Dunkeld, which probably gave them some footing again in the country, and they may have now gladly seized upon such an opportunity as the combination of a king of Scottish race claiming the throne with the temporary prostration of the most powerful tribe among the Picts to make an effort to recover them. The Pictish Chronicle clearly indicates this as one of the great causes of the fall of the Pictish monarchy. It says, ‘For God thought them worthy to be made aliens from and stript of their hereditary possessions as their perverseness deserved, because they not only spurned the rites and the precepts of the Lord, but also refused to allow themselves to be placed on an equal footing with others.’[442] This appears to refer very plainly to the original expulsion of those of the Columban clergy who would not conform to the decree issued by Nectan, king of the Picts, and to the Roman usages it enforced, as well as to the ban which had been kept up against them till it was partially relaxed by Constantin when he founded Dunkeld; and when Kenneth transferred the relics of Saint Columba to Dunkeld, they seem to have regained their footing as far as he could effect it, as we find that the abbot of Dunkeld was placed at the head of the Pictish Church.[443]

[Sidenote: Where did the Scots come from?]

Two questions still remain to be solved. The first is, Where was the kingdom of his father Alpin, and where did Kenneth rule during the first six years after his father’s death in 832? Not in the kingdom of the Picts, for he only obtained the Pictish throne in the twelfth year of his reign, in the year 844. Not in Dalriada, for he did not obtain that kingdom till after the year 839, and two years before he became king of the Picts. If, then, he did not commence his reign either in Dalriada or in Pictavia, it must have been in some part of Scotland south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, or else he must have been in Irish Dalriada or elsewhere in Ireland. The later chronicles tell us that ‘with wonderful eagerness he led the Scots from Ergadia into the land of the Picts,’[444] but this is part of that artificial system by which the later kingdom of the Scots was, by the suppression of a century, connected immediately with the earlier Scottish kingdom of Dalriada. The earliest tradition which indicates this appears to have at one time formed a part of the Pictish Chronicle. In narrating the events of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, there are in this chronicle some expressions which show that this part of it had once been preceded by an account of the mode in which he obtained the Pictish throne.[445] The compiler, however, of one of the later chronicles obviously had a copy of the Pictish Chronicle before him. It was also known to Ranulph Higden, who used it in his Polychronicon, and in both the events of Kenneth’s reign are preceded by what is obviously a traditionary account of how the Scots obtained possession of the Pictish kingdom.[446] The same tale appears also in the chronicle contained in the Scalachronica, where it also precedes the account of the reign of Kenneth, and it was likewise known to Giraldus Cambrensis, who narrates part of it.[447] Comparing the four editions of this narrative with each other and with the expressions in the Pictish Chronicle referring to it, we can make a fair approximation to what this lost passage of the chronicle contained. It seems to have commenced with Bede’s statement that in the course of time the Scots came from Ireland under their leader Reuda, and obtained a settlement either by permission or by force among the Picts. We are then told that the Scots inhabited Galloway, to which Giraldus adds that they afterwards effected an extension of their territories, and the Scalachronica ‘as also Argyll and others of the Isles.’ The Scots thus living in conjunction with the Picts, and having obtained from them a district to inhabit, contrive a plot against them. They invite the magnates of the Picts, according to Scalachronica, to a great council, and coming privately armed they slew the great lords of the Picts, and afterwards sent for others and slew them; according to the other editions, to a banquet where they had undermined the seats, and having withdrawn the supports the sitters fell into the hollow places prepared for them, and were slain without difficulty; and profiting by this treachery the Scots took their land reaching from sea to sea, which is now called Scotia; and thus Kenneth, son of Alpin, invaded Pictavia and destroyed the Picts.[448] This, of course, can only be viewed as a traditionary account, but it seems to contain a reference to the subsequent history of the Scots of Dalriada, after they were driven out by the Picts. It narrates Alpin’s invasion of Galloway with his Scots, and then repeats from Bede the first settlement of the Scottish colony, stating that they inhabited Galloway along with the Picts. His son Kenneth acquires the kingdom of Dalriada, and the Scots again emerge and extend themselves into Argyll and the Isles. Kenneth then invades the kingdom of the Picts, but does not finally subdue it till five years after; and in place of this we have the story of the plot by which he treacherously slays the principal nobles of the Picts. St. Berchan in his so-called prophecy alludes to this tale, but adds it to a reference to a war, and removes the scene of it to Scone. He says—

A man who shall feed ravens, fight battles;
His name was the conqueror.
He is the first king who possessed in the east
Of the men of Erin in Alban.
It was by strength of spears and swords,
By violent deaths, by violent fates,
By him are deceived in the east the firm ones.
He shall dig in the earth, cunning the art,
(With) dangerous goad blades, death and pillage,
In the middle of Scone of high shields.[449]

Now the Scalachronica places it in the time of Drust, son of Feradach, the last king of the Picts, who was slain at Scone by treason. This would bring the event to the year 850, after Kenneth had been already six years in possession of the Pictish throne.

We may gather from this tale that Kenneth emerged from Galloway where the last remnant of the Scots of Dalriada disappear from history nearly a century before; and if the appearance of the Norwegians on the scene had led the people of Galloway, as well as Scots from other quarters, to adopt the same piratical life under the name of Gallgaidhel, we can readily understand that Kenneth, taking advantage of the crushing blow inflicted on the Picts of Fortrenn by the Danes, would be readily joined by Scots from all quarters in regaining the kingdom of Dalriada, and prosecuting his father’s claim to the throne of the Picts.

But there is another legend which appears also to refer to this period. It is that contained in the life of St. Cadroë. We are there told, after that part of the legend which relates to the settlement of the Scots in Ireland, that many years passed when the Scots crossed the Irish Channel and took possession of Iona, and then continuing their voyage enter the region of Rossia, evidently the province of Ross, by the river Rosis, which is also evidently the river Rasay, the old name of the Blackwater, which flows from a small lake called Loch Droma,[450] on the ridge separating the eastern and western watershed, and flows through the long valley leading from near the head of Loch Broom till it falls into the river Conan, some miles above Dingwall. From thence they proceed southward to Rigmoneth, the old name for St. Andrews, and to Bellathor, which must have been situated at or near Scone. There is no record of any Scots ever having reached St. Andrews or Scone till the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, and this part of the legend seems to refer to this time; but the previous part of it is obviously ecclesiastical in its character, and it is probable that it rather belongs to the return of the Columban clergy, who may have gone from Ireland to Iona and thence by Ross-shire to Rosemarkie, an old Columban foundation, from which they had been dispossessed by Boniface, and finally to Rigmoneth in Fifeshire and Bellachoir in Perthshire; and in this view it is difficult to avoid connecting it with the legend of St. Adrian, who, like St. Boniface, is brought from the east and lands in the eastern parts of Scotland then occupied by the Picts, having with him six thousand and six hundred and six persons, composed of confessors, clerics, and lay people. These men with their bishop did many signs in the kingdom of the Picts, afterwards desired to have a residence in the Isle of May, where the Danes, who then devastated the whole of Britain, came and slew them.[451] Their martyrdom is connected with a Danish invasion in 875. The east part of Scotland in which they had their first settlement was evidently Fife. Their arrival is almost coincident with the invasion of the kingdom of the Picts by the Scots under Kenneth, and the large number who are said to have come shows that the traditionary history was really one of the immigration of a people. Hector Boece, in referring to this legend, tells us that while some write that they were Hungarians, others say that they were a company collected from Scots and Angles.[452] It is perhaps not an unreasonable conclusion that the Scots invaded the Pictish territories in two bands—one under Kenneth across Drumalban against the southern Picts, and the other from sea by Loch Broom against the northern Picts.

[Sidenote: What was Kenneth mac Alpin’s paternal descent?]

The second question we have to solve is, To what family of the Scots of Dalriada did Kenneth, by paternal descent, belong? The ordinary pedigree, which traces his descent through the kings of Dalriada of the Cinel Gabhran, and identifies his father Alpin with Alpin son of Eachach, the last of the Dalriadic kings, is not older than the twelfth century, and is unquestionably artificial; but we have indications that two other lines of descent were attributed to him. St. Berchan, in his so-called prophecy, after a few stanzas which refer to Conall, the son of Comgall, the king of Dalriada who received Saint Columba as narrated by Adamnan, passes at once to the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, with these words:—

A son of the clan of his son will possess
The kingdom of Albany by virtue of his strength.

Conall, according to the Tract on the Men of Alban, had seven sons,[453] from any one of whom Kenneth may have descended, and this would attach him to that tribe of the Dalriads termed the Cinel Comgall, from whom the district of Cowall takes its name; but the same tract contains another statement, which seems to present to us a more authentic notice of his descent. According to this tradition, from Eachach Buidhe, son of Aedain, the king of Dalriada inaugurated by Saint Columba, there branched off two clans, ‘the clan Fergusa Gall, son of Eachach Buidhe, or the Gabhranaigh, and the clan Conall Cerr, son of Eochaid Buidhe, who are the men of Fife in the sovereignty; that is, the clan of Kenneth, son of Alpin, son of Aidan.’[454] This has all the appearance of a genuine fragment which has been preserved from some older source. The reference to Fife, which appears to have been the province which mainly supported the claim of this family, and in which Rathelpin, or the Fort of Alpin, was situated, and the appearance of a Conall, son of Aidan, in Kintyre, in 807, by whom Conall, son of Tadg, the then Pictish governor of Dalriada was slain,[455] and who was probably a son of the same Aidan here made father of Alpin, gives great probability to it. We may therefore conclude that Kenneth mac Alpin belonged to the Cinel Gabhran, but was descended from a different branch than that which had furnished the kings of that race to Dalriada.

[Sidenote: A.D. 860-864.
Donald, son of Alpin, king of the Picts.]

Kenneth mac Alpin was succeeded by his brother Donald, who, according to the Pictish Chronicle, held the same kingdom for four years. His death is recorded by the Annals of Ulster four years after that of Kenneth, with the same title of king of the Picts. He died, according to the Pictish Chronicle, at his palace of Cinn Belachoir, on the ides, or 13th, of April. St. Berchan says of him—

Three years to the king,
And three months, who shall number them?
On Loch Adhbha shall be his grave:
He dies of disease suddenly.

The later chronicles differ as to the place of his death. By some he is said to have died at Rath Inveramon, and by others to have been slain at Scone. These names, however, can all be referred to localities in the immediate neighbourhood of Scone, and probably belonged to the defences and possessions of that central seat of the monarchy.[456] The only event recorded in his reign is the curious notice in the Pictish Chronicle that in his time the Gaedhel established with their king in Forteviot the rights and laws of the kingdom of Edus, son of Echdach.[457] The reference is here unquestionably to that Aedfin, son of Eachach, whose death as king of the Dalriads is recorded by the Annals of Ulster in 778, and who appears to have been the last of the Scots who attempted to make any stand against the rule of the Picts over Dalriada, and by his kingdom that of the Scots of Dalriada must be meant. Among the rights and laws now established was probably the law of succession among the Scots, which is usually termed the law of Tanistry, and which, in its preference of the male over the female succession, was opposed to that of the Picts. This law, as we have seen, had to some extent been partially introduced among the southern Picts before the accession of Kenneth, and would therefore now be established at Forteviot with less difficulty.

[Sidenote: A.D. 863.
Constantin mac Kenneth, king of the Picts.]

It was in accordance with this law that Donald was succeeded by Constantin, son of Kenneth mac Alpin, who reigned sixteen years. The Pictish Chronicle records that in his first year Maelsechnaill, king of Ireland, died, and his death took place on Tuesday the 30th November 863,[458] which gives us the true commencement of this reign. After two years Amlaibh with his Gentiles laid waste Pictavia, and occupied it from the kalends of January to the feast of St. Patrick—that is, from the first of January to the 17th of March; and in the following year, while withdrawing with his booty, he was attacked and slain by Constantin.[459]

The Ulster Annals record the same event when they tell us that in 866 Amlaiph and Aiusle went to Fortrenn with the Galls of Erin and Alban, and laid waste all Cruithintuaith, of which name Pictavia is here the Latin equivalent, and took hostages.[460] This Amlaib, or Amlaiph, was Olaf the White, king of Dublin, who had married a daughter of Kenneth mac Alpin; and his occupation of the country and the hostages he took may have been in connection with some claim through his wife; but his death did not really take place till some years after,[461] for we find from the Ulster Annals that in the year 870 Alclyde was besieged by the Northmen under the same Amlaiph, along with Imhair, another of their kings, and destroyed after a four months’ siege. Another annalist tells us that after having wasted the people who were in the citadel by hunger and thirst, and succeeded in drawing off the water from the well that was in it, the Northmen entered upon them and first carried off all the riches that were within it, and afterwards a great host of prisoners were brought into captivity.[462] On this occasion they appear to have also attacked both the Picts of Galloway and the Angles of Bernicia, for in the following year we are told that Amlaiph and Imhair returned to Dublin from Alban with two hundred ships, and a great booty of men, Angles, Britons, and Picts, was brought with them to Ireland in captivity.[463] After this we hear no more of Amlaiph or Olaf the White of Dublin. In 872 the Ulster Annals tell us that Artgha, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, was slain by the advice of Constantin.[464] This was Arthgal, a lineal descendant of Dunnagual, whose death was recorded in 760, and the father of that Run who married the daughter of Kenneth mac Alpin.[465] We thus see that after the death of the last of this line, who is called king of Alclyde, in 750, and the subjection of his kingdom to the Angles, it now again reappears as an independent kingdom with the new designation of that of the Britons of Strathclyde. It was probably in connection with this event that St. Berchan, in referring to the battles fought by Constantin, says—

The hazard through which three battles are gained
Against the Gentiles of pure colour (the Fingall).
The fourth battle, the battle of Luaire,
Against the king of the Britons of green standard.[466]

Luaire is probably Carlowrie in West Lothian.

Simeon of Durham tells us that in 875 the host of the Danes who had ravaged the east coast of Britain divided itself into two bands, one of which under Halfdan marching into the region of the Northumbrians laid it waste, and wintering near the river Tyne brought the whole country under their dominion, and destroyed the Picts and the people of Strathclyde. These were probably the Picts of Galloway, and in reference to this the Ulster Annals tell us of a conflict between the Picts and the Dubhgalls in 875, in which a great slaughter of the Picts was made.[467] The people here called of Strathclyde are in the Saxon Chronicle, in recording the same event, termed Stræcled Wealas, and this name is rendered by Ethelwerd into the Latin Cumbri, which is the first appearance of the term of Cumbri or Cumbrians as applied to the Britons of Strathclyde.[468] In the meantime Olaf the White, the Norwegian king of Dublin, had left a son by his wife Audur the Wealthy, daughter of Ketill Flatnose or Caittil Fin, who was called Thorstein the Red, and he appears on his father’s death to have commenced making piratical expeditions, infesting Scotland far and wide, and usually obtaining victory. His attacks were directed against the northern provinces, and he is said in the Islands Landnamabok to have conquered ‘Katanes and Sudrland,’ or Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than half of Scotland, and to have reigned over these districts until he was betrayed by the Scotch and slain in battle. In the Laxdaela Saga, on the other hand, he is said to have at length become reconciled with the king of the Scots, and obtained possession of the half of Scotland, over which he became king.[469] It is hardly to be supposed that Constantin could have had any real authority over these northern regions, or that the power of the kings of Kenneth mac Alpin’s race could have at this time extended beyond the provinces of the southern Picts. He therefore probably merely permitted what he could not prevent, and indeed may have viewed a Norwegian conquest of the provinces of the northern Picts as favourable to his cause as the Danish defeat of the men of Fortrenn had been to that of his father. Thorstein’s kingdom, however, lasted only one year. The Pictish Chronicle refers to it when it says that the Northmen passed an entire year in Pictavia, and the Ulster Annals record in 875 that Ostin or Thorstein, son of Amlaiph, king of the Northmen, was treacherously slain by the people of Alban.[470]

Constantin, however, was doomed himself to fall in the following year under an unexpected onslaught by the Danes. Ever since the Danes, or Dubhgall, first came to Ireland there had been a contest between them and the Norwegians or Fingall for superiority, and in 877 a battle took place between them in which the Norwegians had the victory. The Danes, being for the time driven out of Ireland, went to Alban or Scotland. They appear to have entered the Firth of Clyde, and, penetrating through the country watered by the Teith and Forth, attacked the province of Fife. A battle took place between them and the Scots at Dollar, which must have been unfavourable to the latter, as the Danes are said to have driven and slaughtered them through Fife, as far as the north-east corner, where, at a place called Inverdufatha, now Inverdovet, in the parish of Forgan, they gained a battle over the men of Alban. Constantin was slain and a great multitude with him. The earth is said on this occasion to have burst open under the men of Alban.[471]

This is the first appearance in the Pictish Chronicle of the term ‘Scotti’ or Scots being applied to any portion of the inhabitants of Pictavia, and it seems to have been used with reference to those of the province of Fife in particular, but the Ulster Annals record the death of Constantin as king of the Picts.[472]

[Sidenote: A.D. 877-878.
Aedh, son of Kenneth, king of the Picts.]

He was succeeded by his brother Aedh, who reigned only one year. The Pictish Chronicle says of him that the shortness of his reign left nothing memorable to record, but that he was slain in the town of Nrurim. St. Berchan says of him—

He dies without bell, without communion,
In the evening in a dangerous pass.

And the Ulster Annals record in 878 that Aedh, son of Cinador, king of the Picts, was slain by his own people.[473]

With Aedh died the last of Kenneth’s sons, and thus far the succession of the kings of his race had not only followed the law of Tanistry, but did not vary from that modification of the Pictish law which had been already sanctioned among the southern Picts, and had admitted the sons of previous kings in a similar order to fill the Pictish throne; but now the two modes of royal succession were again in conflict. By the law of Tanistry the succession opened to Donald, son of Constantin and grandson of Kenneth; by the Pictish law, when strictly observed, to Eocha, son of Run, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, whose mother was Constantin’s sister. Both of these claimants to the throne appear to have been under age, and there had not yet been an instance of a lineal male descendant in the third generation being permitted to succeed to the Pictish throne. The great defeat and slaughter which befell the Scots under Constantin had probably, for the time, weakened the Scottish interest, while the heir, according to their law, had the additional disqualification of being too young to reign.

[Sidenote: A.D. 878-889.
Girig mac Dungaile and Eochodius, son of Run.]

The Pictish party prevailed, and Eocha, the Briton, was placed on the throne, but as he appears also to have been too young to reign alone, another king was associated with him as his governor.[474] The Pictish Chronicle calls him ‘Ciricius,’ but leaves a blank for his father’s name; but in the Irish version he is called Giric, son of Dungaile; and by Flann Mainistrech, Girg, son of Dungaile. In the Latin lists it is corrupted to Grig, but in the Chronicle of St. Andrews it appears as Carus. By the Albanic Duan he is omitted altogether, and the Ulster Annals do not mention him, which leads to the suspicion that he was an intruder in the Scottish line, and was not of that race. His name is evidently the British name Curig, and under this form St. Ciricus, a martyr of Tarsus, was introduced into the British calendar, and has several churches in Wales dedicated to him. It was no doubt from Girig, son of Dungaile, being named after him that the eclipse on his day in the calendar is recorded as taking place during this reign. As governor to Eocha, and as bearing a British name, the presumption is that he was also a Briton, and the name of Dungaile, borne by his father, was the same name as that of Dunnagual, who appears in the Welsh Genealogies annexed to Nennius as the father of Arthgal and grandfather of Run; Girig was therefore in all probability Eocha’s paternal granduncle.[475]

The Pictish Chronicle places the death of Aed, son of Neil, king of Ireland, in his second year, and Aed died on 8th November 879, and we are told that in his ninth year an eclipse of the sun took place on St. Ciricus’s day. His day in the calendar is the 16th of June, and an eclipse of the sun actually took place on that day in the year 885. These notices give us sufficiently the true chronology of his reign, but the Pictish Chronicle records none of the events of it, and simply says that after a reign of eleven years Eochodius with his tutor is now expelled from the kingdom.[476] The later chronicles supply this defect so far as to give us in general terms two events of his reign. The first is that he brought under subjection to himself the whole of Bernicia and part of Anglia;[477] and there may possibly be some foundation for the statement, to a partial extent at least, when we consider the position in which the kingdom of Northumbria was placed during his reign, and the changes which apparently followed it.

During the reign of Eadberht, in the middle of the eighth century, the kingdom of Northumbria had apparently attained to a position of as great power as that to which it had been raised in the previous century by Ecgfrid. The two provinces of Deira and Bernicia were united under his rule; the territories of the Britons south of the Solway Firth and the province of Galloway on the north were parts of his kingdom; he had himself added to it Kyle and the adjacent districts, and in conjunction with Aengus, the equally powerful king of the Picts, had enforced the submission of the Britons of Alclyde, when after a reign of twenty-one years he, in the year 758, abdicated his throne in favour of his son Oswulf, and took the tonsure. His son was in the following year treacherously slain by his own people, and with him ended the direct descendants of Ida. The kingdom seems then to have fallen into a state of disorganisation, and has thus been well described:—‘One ealdorman after another seized on the government, and held it till his expelled predecessors returned with a superior force, or popular favour and successful treason had raised up a new competitor.’ And thus it continued till the end of the century, when the arrival of the Northmen added an additional element of confusion. In 867 the monarchy completely broke down. In the previous year a large fleet of Danish pirates, under the command of Halfdan, Inguar, and Hubba, the sons of Ragnar Lodbrog, had arrived on the coast of England, and had wintered in East Anglia, and this year they invaded Northumbria, and took possession of the city of York. The Northumbrians had just expelled their king Osbryht, and placed Alla on the throne, but the former was now recalled, and the two kings, uniting their forces, attempted to wrest the city of York from the Danes, and were both slain. The Danes then took possession of the whole of Northumbria as far as the river Tyne, and placed Ecgbert as king over the Northumbrians north of the Tyne. After a reign of six years Ecgbert died, and was succeeded by Ricsig. It was in his time that, 875, Halfdan, with his Danes, again entered Northumbria, and brought the whole country under his dominion. In the following year Ricsig died, and Halfdan is said by Simeon of Durham to have placed a second Egbert over the Northumbrians beyond the Tyne. He is said to have reigned only two years. But notwithstanding, in 883, or seven years after, when Halfdan dies, we are told by Simeon that by the advice of the abbot Eadred, Guthred, son of Hardicnut, was made king, and reigned at York; but Ecgbert ruled over the Northumbrians. There is no mention of this second Ecgbert either in his History of the Church of Durham or of the Archbishops of York, and he appears, with his inconsistent dates, to be a mere reproduction of the Ecgbert who was placed over the Northumbrians north of the Tyne in 867, introduced to fill up a period when the historian did not know or did not care to tell who really ruled over Bernicia at that time.

This is, however, the period of Girig’s reign, and he may, like his predecessor Kenneth, have overrun Lothian and obtained possession of Bamborough, the chief seat of the Bernician kings, which lies at no great distance from the south bank of the Tweed; and Simeon himself indicates this when he tells us in his History of the Church of Durham that during the reign of Guthred ‘the nation of the Scots had collected a numerous army, and among other deeds of cruelty had invaded and plundered the monastery of Lindisfarne.’[478] His object too may have been to free the Britons, his own countrymen, from the Anglic yoke, and certainly, if he conquered Bernicia, and perhaps that part of Anglia which consisted of the British possessions extending from the Solway to the Derwent, their reunion with the kingdom of the Strathclyde Britons, as well as the freedom of Galloway from Anglic supremacy, would be the natural result. The second event attributed to him is that he first liberated the Scottish Church, which till that time had been in servitude according to the custom and usage of the Picts, and this has probably more foundation in fact. That Girig found it necessary to win over the Scottish clergy to his cause, or at least not to oppose him, is probable enough, and he seems to have freed the Church from those secular exactions and services to which the clergy of most churches were at this time subjected. The Anglic Church had not long before been freed from similar services by King Ethelwulf, and the later Pictish Church was closely connected with that of Northumbria.[479] A curious memorial of Girig, and of his relation to the Scottish Church, remains in the church in the Mearns which bears the name of Eglisgirg, or Greg’s church, and was dedicated to St. Ciricus, from whom it came to be called St. Cyrus.[480]

The gratitude of the Scottish Church for the boon they had obtained from Girig seems to have shown itself in this, that in the artificial history to which the interests of an ecclesiastical controversy had so large a share in giving birth, the usurper of foreign race, who had for a time intruded upon the line of Scottish kings descended from Kenneth mac Alpin, and been after a few years driven out, fills a prominent position, as Gregory the Great, solemnly crowned at Scone, and one of the most powerful of the early Scottish kings.

-----

Footnote 369:

At vero provinciæ Nordanhymbrorum, cui rex Ceoluulf præest, quatuor
nunc episcopi præsulatum tenent; Wilfrid in Eboracensi ecclesia,
Ediluald in Lindisfaronensi, Acca in Hagustaldensi, Pecthelm in ea quæ
Candida Casa vocatur, quæ nuper multiplicatis fidelium plebibus in
sedem pontificatus addita, ipsum primum habet antistitem. Pictorum
quoque natio tempore hoc et fœdus pacis cum gente habet Anglorum et
catholicæ pacis ac veritatis cum universali ecclesia particeps
existere gaudet. Scotti qui Brittaniam incolunt suis contenti finibus
nil contra gentem Anglorum insidiarum moliuntur aut fraudium.
Brettones, quamvis et maxima ex parte domestico sibi odio gentem
Anglorum, et totius Catholicæ ecclesiæ statum pascha minus recte
moribusque improbis impugnent; tamen et divina sibi et humana prorsus
resistente virtute, in neutro cupitum possunt obtinere propositum:
quippe qui quamvis ex parte sui sint juris, nonnulla tamen ex parte
Anglorum sunt servitio mancipati.—Bede, B. v. c. xxiv.

Footnote 370:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 421.

Footnote 371:

Martyrology of Donegal at 16th March.

Footnote 372:

Bede, _Hist. Ec._ B. v. c. xxi.

Footnote 373:

In a charter by Malcolm IV. to the canons of Scone, it is said to be
‘in principali sede regni fundata’ (_Scone Chart._ No. 5); and in
narrating the foundation of the monastery by Alexander I., Fordun
says, in his earliest compilation, ‘Fundata enim est, ædificata et
dedicata, ut dictum est, apud Sconam, ubi antiqui reges, Cruthne primo
Pictorum rege, sedem regni Albaniæ constituerant,’ which he afterwards
alters to ‘quam fundatum ædificavit loco, quo reges antiquitus tam
Scoti quam Picti sedem regni primam constituerunt.’—Fordun, _Chron._,
ed. 1871, pp. 430, 227. This shows the tradition that it was at an
early period the principal seat of the kingdom. The Pictish Chronicle
records a meeting at Scone between Constantine, king of Scotland, and
the bishop of St. Andrews, in which the laws of the Church were
regulated, and adds, ‘ab hoc die collis hoc meruit nomen, id est,
Collis Credulitatis.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 9. The word
‘meruit’ does not imply that it was then first named, and it appears,
as we shall see, in 728, under the name of Caislen Credi or Castellum
Credi, that is, the Castle of Belief. At Scone, too, William the Lion
decreed in council with his magnates that the Church should be
maintained in its laws, rights, and privileges.—_Act. Parl. Scot._
vol. i. p. 60.

Footnote 374:

See _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 136. Tighernac has at 713, ‘Cinaedh
mac Derili et filius Mathgernan jugulati sunt. Tolarg mac Drostan
ligatus apud fratrem suum Nechtan regem.’ As Nechtan was son of
Derili, he could not have been brother of Tolarg, son of Drostan, and
the expression ‘fratrem suum’ must refer to Cinaedh, who was also son
of Derili, and was probably slain by Tolarg. Again, in 734 the Ulster
Annals have, ‘Talorggan filius Drostan comprehensus alligatus juxta
aciem Ollaigh;’ and in 739 Tighernac has ‘Tolarcan mac Drostan rex
Athfhotla a bathadh la h’Aengus’ (drowned by Angus). The process of
change in the name is first Athfhotla—then Atheodle—then Atholl.

Footnote 375:

Qui lapis in eodem monasterio reverenter ob regum Albaniæ
consecrationem servatur. Nec uspiam aliquis regum in Scocia regnare
solebat, nisi super eundem lapidem regium in accipiendum nomen prius
sederet in Scona, sede vero superiori, videlicet, Albaniæ constituta
regibus ab antiquis.—Fordun, _Chron._ ed. 1871, vol. i. p. 294.

Footnote 376:

See the author’s Tract on the Coronation Stone in the _Proceedings of
the Society of Antiquaries_, vol. viii. p. 68, and separately
published by Messrs. Edmonston and Douglas, 1869, for an analysis of
these legends.

Footnote 377:

In the sixth and seventh lives of Saint Patrick we are told that he
brought with him from Rome a stone altar (altare lapideum), which had
been consecrated by the Pope, and that when crossing to Ireland a
leper wished to be taken on board, but being refused admission by the
sailors, Saint Patrick threw the stone altar into the sea, and desired
the leper to sit upon it, which he did, and it floated with him to
Ireland (here called ‘tabula lapidea’).—Colgan, _Tr. Th._ 71, 123. It
is again mentioned as following him through the air, and as having
been left at Domhnach Patraicc, where it was the subject of special
veneration. In the Tripartite Life it is called his ‘Lec’ or stone. In
the lives of St. Bridget it is said that when a girl she made a stone
altar (altare lapideum), and an angel came and perforated it at the
four corners and placed it upon four wooden legs.—Colgan, _Tr. Th._ p.
538.

In the sixth life of Saint Patrick we are told that he came to Cashel,
and at his preaching the king of Munster believed and was baptized;
and then follows this sentence: ‘Remansit in loco illo tabula lapidea,
super quam Sanctus fortasse celebraverat divina sacramenta; vocatur
autem ab Hibernicis Leac Phadruig, id est, lapis Patricii: super quam
ob reverentiam illius solent reges Casselenses in principatum
promoveri, et in regni solium sublimari.’—Colgan, _Tr. Th._ 82.

It was customary among the Celtic as well as other races that their
kings and chiefs should be inaugurated standing upon a rock or large
natural stone, but the coronation stone was a movable slab kept in the
church, and the use of it formed part of the religious ceremony, the
king sitting upon it while he is being consecrated, and the coronation
of the Cashel kings appears to be the only strictly analogous case.

Footnote 378:

717 Expulsio familiæ Iæ trans dorsum Britanniæ a Nectono rege.—_Tigh._

Footnote 379:

724 Clericatum (N)echtain regis Pictorum, Druxst post eum
regnat.—_Tigh._

Footnote 380:

719 Cath Finglinne itir da meic Fearchar Fata (between the two sons of
Fearchar Fata), in quo Ainbhceallach jugulatus est die quinti ferie
Id. Septembris.—_Tigh._

Footnote 381: