Chapter I: The Early History--Before A. D. 843

Britain, dimly recognisable in the vague accounts given by Hecatæus of a large island off the coast of Gaul inhabited by a sacred race of _Hyperboreans_, and sometimes even disputing with Iceland the questionable honour of having been known as _Ultima Thule_, owes her first introduction within the pale of authentic history to the ambitious policy of the Cæsars. The historian, however, finds little worth recording about the northern districts during the Roman occupation of the island, and that little belongs rather to the province of the antiquary. A transitory gleam of light is shed upon the subject by the pen of Tacitus; [Sidenote: A. D. 80–4.] but the campaigns of Agricola were unproductive of results, and northern Britain again sinks into obscurity until the Emperor Hadrian deemed it necessary for the protection of the Roman province to throw up a turf rampart across the narrowest portion of the island, extending from the Solway to the Tyne. [Sidenote: A. D. 120.] Twenty years later another was added between the Forth and Clyde, connecting the old line of forts erected by Agricola, and known, from the reign in which it was built, as the Wall of Antonine; but after a fruitless struggle of sixty years the whole of the district between these walls was abandoned by Severus, when he raised a third rampart, built of stone, immediately to the northward of the original bulwark. [Sidenote: A. D. 208.] From this period the Roman province was bounded by the southern wall, and though towards the close of the fourth century the energy of Theodosius reasserted the dominion of the empire over the district between Forth and Tyne, [Sidenote: A. D. 369.] which now received the name of Valentia in honour of the Emperor Valens, the newly-established province was soon relinquished, and about the opening of the following century Britain was finally abandoned by her ancient masters. Long before this period the incursions of the northern tribes upon the Roman province [Sidenote: A. D. 407.] had become incessant, and some idea may be formed of the distance to which they occasionally penetrated, from the account left by Ammianus Marcellinus, that Theodosius, after landing at _Rutupe_, the modern Richborough, was obliged to fight his way through Kent, swarming with their hostile bands, before he could reach the capital, Augusta, described by the historian as “an old town formerly known as London.” Their earlier title of Caledonians had by this time disappeared, and they were generally known as Picts, a name including the two great divisions of Vecturiones and Dicaledones, answering apparently to the later confederacies of northern and southern Picts.[1]

Britain after the departure of the legionaries appears to have suffered her full share of the calamities of that disastrous epoch, and the episodes of invasion and conquest enacted throughout the continental provinces of the expiring empire were repeated with similar results, within the narrower limits of her ancient island dependency. A continuous stream of Teutonic invaders poured without ceasing upon her shores, Jutes, Saxons, and Frisians peopling the south-eastern coasts, whilst further towards the north swarmed the Anglian tribes who were destined to fix an imperishable name upon the island. Towards the middle of the sixth century an additional impetus appears to have been given to the torrent of Anglian invasion by the arrival of Ida, the reputed founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, and leader of the Bernician Angles, whose descendants formed so important an element in the Teutonic population of southern Scotland. No record of his prowess is to be found in the annals of his countrymen; his name alone survives with that of his forgotten foe, “the dark lord”--Dutigern; but the precipitate flight of the British bishop from York, the sudden extinction of Christianity throughout the diocese, the name of _Gwrth Bryneich_--or Bernicia’s thraldom--by which the famous fortress of Bamborough was known amongst the conquered people, and the ominous title of “the Flame-Bearer,” applied to the mighty Angle in the lays of the hostile bards, sufficiently attest the ruthless energy with which he extended the dominion of his race from the marshy plains of Holderness to the distant islets of the Forth.[2] From the Humber to the Tyne the country was known amongst the Britons as _Deheubarth_, or “the southern part,” whilst beyond that river and the ruins of the southern wall, the district stretching to the Forth was distinguished as _Bryneich_, or “the country of the braes;” and it was within the boundaries of the latter province that the Anglian population of the Lothians first established themselves as conquerors in the land which their descendants still occupy.

Ida fell in battle, slain, say the British authorities, by Owen of Reged, whose father Urien, the favourite hero of the bards, and a warrior from whom many a laurel has been stolen to adorn the chaplet of the fabulous Arthur, was hailed unanimously as leader of a confederacy which was to drive the invader from the soil. The tide of conquest was now rolled back upon the Angles, Bryneich was recovered, and the sons of Ida were driven from the land, when at the very moment of his triumph the bravest champion of his race fell by the dagger of “Llovan of the accursed hand,” and his death was fatal to his countrymen. Step by step the Angles recovered their ascendency, winning their way at the point of the sword, until the whole of the eastern coast was wrested from its original possessors, confined henceforth to the westward of “the Desert,” and the Northumbrian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia rose out of the ruins of the conquered British principalities.[3]

A solitary entry in the annals of the Irish abbot, Tighernach, affords the earliest historical testimony of the arrival of a small, but in many respects a remarkable, band of colonists, about fifty years before the settlement of an Anglian population in the Lothians, upon the rocky and indented coasts of southern Argyle. [Sidenote: A. D. 502.] Fergus Mor MacEarca, a chieftain of the Irish Gael, was their leader, and the north-eastern extremity of the modern county of Antrim, which, at that time, formed part of the territories of the Irish Picts, was the locality which they abandoned when they crossed the channel in their leathern coracles in search of another home upon the shores of Britain. Amidst the lakes and mountains to the southward of Loch Linne, Fergus and his followers fixed their new abode; and the limits of his petty kingdom, which were never enlarged, are still traceable in the names implanted by succeeding princes upon the dependent districts of Lorn, Cowal, and Kintyre. These principalities, with a few of the islands off the coast of southern Argyle, made up, collectively, the whole of the kingdom of Dalriada--for such was its real name; though in the Latin chronicles of a later age, Fergus and his descendants invariably appear under the more familiar appellation of “Kings of the Scots.” The annals of the Dalriads are totally devoid of interest before the reign of Conal, fourth in succession from Fergus Mor, who, by the shelter he afforded to the exiled Abbot of Durrow, indirectly furthered the conversion of the northern Picts to Christianity.[4]

It was in consequence of a feud between the leading clans of the royal race of Ireland, that the apostle of the northern Picts first quitted the home of his earlier years and dedicated the remainder of his life to the labours of a missionary. On the occasion of one of those great meetings of the clergy and laity of Ireland, to which such frequent allusion is made in her annals, a son of Aodh, king of Connaught, who happened to be present in full reliance upon a promise of immunity from Columba, was seized and put to death by order of Dermot MacKerval, lord of the southern Hy Nial, and at that time _Ardrigh_, or supreme king of Ireland. Columba, who was then abbot of Durrow, was also a member of the same great sept, and closely allied by birth to the king of one of the northern branches--the Clan Conal; and his kinsmen, bound by the usual ties of relationship to avenge the insult, uniting with the king of Connaught, inflicted so severe a defeat upon the aggressor, that his whole wrath was turned upon Columba, whom he caused to be excommunicated by the leading clergy of Meath. Dreading the further effects of his enemy’s vengeance, Columba bade adieu to his native land; and, under the curse of man, sought those shores to which, under the blessing of God, he was destined to become, indeed, a messenger of good tidings.[5]

Arriving with the usual complement of twelve followers, off the coast of Argyle, he obtained permission from Conal, king of the Dalriads, to appropriate the little island of Iona, and after employing himself for two years in establishing and regulating his brotherhood, he prepared to enter upon his allotted task, and to penetrate across the mountain barrier of Drumalban. [Sidenote: A. D. 565.] Not far from the spot where the river Ness issues from the parent lake of which it assumes the name, there still exist the vestiges of an ancient earthwork, ascribed by the tradition of the country to a Pictish king; and thither Columba and his companions bent their steps, for Bruidi MacMalcon, who at this time held supreme sway over both divisions of the Picts, held his court within the ramparts of this _Rath_ or _Dun_. As the arrival of the Christian missionary appears to have been expected, he was opposed by a number of the Pictish Druids, but as their hostility seems to have been limited to the use of incantations and enchantments, little real hindrance could have been offered to his progress, and he reached, without difficulty, the residence of the king. As the gates of the royal fortress close upon the little band, all knowledge ceases of the further proceedings of Columba; the bare record of the success of his mission has descended to posterity, and the people acquiescing, as in duty bound, in their sovereign’s renunciation of idolatry, both divisions of the Pictish people were henceforth united in belief.[6]

An interesting description of the disciples and successors of Columba has been handed down in the pages of a writer, whose difference with the Gaelic clergy in certain trivial points of faith did not blind him to the virtues and real merits of the earliest apostles of Christianity to his own heathen forefathers. Shut out in their distant northern home from the knowledge of synodical decrees, and constrained to seek their doctrine and rule of conduct in the writings of the prophets, the evangelists, and the apostles, the simple denizens of the sea-girt Iona were conspicuous for the purity of their unblemished morals, for their fervent attachment to their divine Master, and for their strict adherence to the precepts and traditions of the revered founder of the brotherhood. As they preached so they practised, their own blameless manner of life affording the best commentary on their doctrine; and when they issued forth from their monastery to baptise and to instruct, to convert the infidel and to strengthen the believer, the offerings forced upon them by the gratitude of the powerful and the rich were employed in relieving the wants of the poor and in alleviating the sufferings of the sick--in restoring freedom to the captive and in purchasing liberty for the slave. Such is the picture drawn by the venerable Beda of Aidan and his fellow-labourers in the work of converting the Angles of Northumbria; worthy inheritors of the virtues and devotion of Columba, and bright examples of the pure and simple piety inspired by the zeal of Patrick amongst the early fathers of his church.[7]

For about a century and a half after the arrival of Columba, Iona continued in the position of the leading monastery of the north, extending her authority over many parts of Ireland, and bidding fair at one time to establish a similar influence throughout southern Britain, until a dispute about matters of comparatively trivial importance abruptly severed her connection with Northumbria. A difference of opinion had long existed between the clergy of the Picts, Britons, and northern Irish, on the one hand, and the followers of Augustine amongst the Anglo-Saxons, on the other, together with the ecclesiastics of southern Ireland, who had been latterly brought to conform to the practice authorised by the see of Rome. The proper time for the celebration of the Easter festival, and the orthodox form of the clerical tonsure, were the subjects in dispute; and though the former was clearly a question of astronomical calculation, and the tonsure was a badge of Paganism in the days of the primitive church, both points originated frequent and animated discussions, and were debated in the seventh century as important matters of faith. [Sidenote: A.D. 664.] Colman and his followers, at the celebrated conference of Whitby, had bade adieu to their adopted country sooner than relinquish the practice they had inherited from their predecessors; and fifty years later a similar tenacity in favour of “ancient customs” brought about the expulsion of the clergy of Iona from the territories of the Pictish sovereign. Nectan MacDeriloi, in consequence of a difference of opinion with his clergy about the points in question, dispatched envoys to Ceolfred, abbot of Wearmouth, requesting his decision upon the matters in dispute, and, at the same time, inviting the assistance of Saxon architects to build a stone church after the approved Roman model. The abbot responded to both appeals, and though every vestige of the stone church has long since disappeared, the letter of Ceolfred may still be read in the pages of the historian Beda. It strengthened and confirmed the king in his own convictions, and [Sidenote: A.D. 717.] he decided that his clergy should conform accordingly; but they were as firm in their resolution as Colman; and Nectan, summarily ordering them across Drumalban, appears to have transferred to his recent foundation (which seems to have been Abernethy) the pre-eminence amongst the monasteries of northern Britain, which had hitherto been the peculiar prerogative of Iona.[8]

Whilst the arrival of the Angles upon the coasts of Valentia is dimly traceable in the scanty records of the period, and the settlement of the Dalriads in a portion of Argyle is historically noticed by the earliest annalist of Ireland, a barren and corrupt, but singularly accurate list of uncouth names is the sole record of the Pictish people before the opening of the seventh century, when the confusion resulting upon the death of the Northumbrian Ethelfrith compelled his children to seek a refuge amongst the friendly people of the north. The bitter spirit of animosity engendered in the Angles by their incessant hostilities with the Britons is hardly traceable in their early relations with the Picts, and accordingly a ready welcome was extended to the youthful exiles, who were instructed in the knowledge of the Christian faith by the Gaelic clergy, and sheltered for fifteen years beyond the protecting barrier of the Forth. The residence of the Northumbrian _Athelings_ amongst the Picts was productive of important consequences; Eanfred, the eldest of the brothers, became the husband of a Pictish princess--and their son Talorcan was numbered amongst the Pictish kings--whilst Oswald, after recovering his father’s throne, sought from amongst the instructors of his early youth those holy men through whose assistance he hoped to spread abroad amongst his people the blessings of the novel faith which he had learnt to prize so dearly.[9]

After the death of this amiable prince upon the fatal field of Winwed, the ties of affection and good will which had hitherto united the sons of Ethelfrith with the people who had sheltered them in adversity were severed during the reign of his harsher brother Oswy, and exchanged for the galling bonds of conquest. Province after province bowed to the Anglian yoke, until the majority of the neighbouring Pictish princes were ranged with the Dalriads, who shared the same lot, amongst the tributaries of the Northumbrian sovereign, and though they endeavoured to regain their liberty when [Sidenote: A. D. 670.] Egfrid ascended the throne, their premature attempt only served to rivet their fetters more securely. About eleven years later a yet more decisive step was taken towards the permanent annexation of the tributary Pictish provinces, and Egfrid, when he divided the overgrown diocese of Wilfrid into the Sees of York, Hexham, and Lindisfarne, appointed Trumwine to the bishopric of the Picts, choosing Abercorn, upon the southern bank of [Sidenote: A. D. 681.] the Forth, as the seat of the new Episcopate.[10]

Five years after the erection of the See of Abercorn, [Sidenote: A. D. 685.] for some unknown cause, Egfrid, repeating the ravages of his Irish expedition of the previous year, poured a mighty army across the Forth, burning the _Raths_ of Tulach-Aman, and Dun Ollaig. His progress was unopposed, and penetrating into the neighbouring province of Angus, he crossed the Tay without resistance, and skirted the base of the Grampian range until he approached the neighbourhood of Lin Garan or Nectan’s Mere, a little lake in the modern parish of Dunnichen. Here his antagonist, who was his cousin Bruidi, awaited with his followers the hostile onset, the signal overthrow of the invading force justifying the choice of the position. The victory was as glorious as its consequences were important, Egfrid and the greater part of his army were left upon the field, whilst few escaped from the scene of slaughter to carry back to Northumbria the tidings of her monarch’s fall. All that the conquests of thirty years had wrested from the Picts was lost for ever to the race of Ida, and the Saxon bishop, abandoning in terror his See of Abercorn, never rested in his hurried flight until within the walls of Whitby he had placed the whole breadth of Bernicia between himself and his rebellious flock. The Dalriads also recovered their former liberty, and even the Britons enjoyed a momentary independence, and through the losses and embarrassments entailed upon Northumbria by the disastrous overthrow of Egfrid, the pre-eminence of the Northern Angles received a fatal shock which the utmost efforts of succeeding princes failed altogether to repair.[11]

During the forty years which elapsed after the victory of Nectan’s Mere an occasional conflict with the Angles testifies to the embittered feelings which had arisen through Northumbrian aggression; and upon the abdication of Nectan, the correspondent of Ceolfred and somewhat arbitrary reformer of the Gaelic clergy, who after a reign of eighteen years relinquished his throne for the cloister, a contest seems to have arisen between four Pictish kings, which, after five years, terminated in the undisputed ascendancy of Angus Mac Fergus. [Sidenote: A. D. 730.] Fortune proved true to her favourite, whose alliance was courted at different periods by the Mercian and Northumbrian sovereigns, and in the results of his victories over his various competitors, and of his conquests over the Dalriads and the northern Britons, may be traced apparently the germs of the future kingdom of Scotland.[12]

Confined within the narrow district to the southward of Loch Linne and to the westward of the mountain range of Drumalban, the Dalriad princes exercised but little influence upon the great confederacy of the Picts, their usual opponents being the Britons, and in early times the Angles, against whom both Britons and Dalriads occasionally appear to have united. Their fleet is sometimes mentioned in the Irish annals, a hostile expedition against the Islesmen disclosing the limited extent of their dominion in the western seas.[13] The most prosperous era in the annals of the little kingdom coincides with Columba’s residence in Iona, after Conal, the early patron of the saint, was succeeded by Aidan Mac Gauran, the enterprising and able leader of the clans of Kintyre, the names of whose numerous battles, preserved in the annals and biographies of the period, amply testify to his warlike qualities without throwing much light on the causes of their display. His latest antagonist was the Northumbrian Ethelfrith, [Sidenote: A. D. 603.] from whom he received so severe a check at Degsa’s Stone, that the Angles were allowed henceforth to prosecute their career of conquest over the Britons without interference from the Dalriads, who with the exception of an occasional contest with their neighbours on the Clyde seem to have turned their attention to the opposite coasts of _Uladh_.[14] For a quarter of a century and upwards they were tributaries along with the Picts of the Northumbrian kingdom, regaining their independence after the battle of Nectan’s Mere, though it may be gathered from the words of Adamnan and from certain notices in the annalists, that the predominance in the kingdom passed about this time from Kintyre to the house of Lorn, whose chieftain, Selvach, seems to have rivalled Aidan in the number of his battles, fought generally, as in the case of the latter prince, against the Britons of Strath Clyde. [Sidenote: A. D. 723.] The abdication and death of Selvach were fatal to the supremacy of his house; the authority of his son, Dungal, being quickly confined [Sidenote: A. D. 730.] within the limits of the paternal inheritance, which he was destined a few years later to lose through a wanton outrage upon a connection of the formidable Angus. Bruidi, a son of the Pictish sovereign, appears to have fled for some cause to the island of _Toraic_, [Sidenote: A. D. 733.] where he was followed--or found--by Dungal, who forced him from the sanctuary in which he had taken refuge. The devastation of Lorn in the following year, and the destruction of the two [Sidenote: A. D. 734.] _Raths_ of Dunleven and Dunadd, attest the vigour with which Angus avenged the insult; Dungal and his brother Feredach were carried off in chains in the victor’s train, and two years later the defeat of Muredach, [Sidenote: A. D. 736.] the last known member of the family, upon the shores of Loch Linne, completed the ruin of the house of Lorn. The scanty records of the period throw no farther light upon the subject, Lorn and its princes disappear from history, and the success of Angus would appear to have extended not only to the conquest of the province in question, but to the temporary subjection of the entire kingdom of Dalriada.[15]

The alliance with Ethelbald the Proud seems to have involved Angus in a collision at different epochs with the West Saxons and the Northumbrians, though a connection of a more friendly nature arose at a later period with the Bernician Eadbert, one of the greatest restorers of the Northumbrian power, the alliance being probably based upon the mutual spoliation of the Britons. The conquests of Ethelfrith in the neighbourhood of Chester, and the victories of Edwin in the south-west of Yorkshire, when he drove Ceretic, or Caradoc, from the forest district of Elmete, appear to have made the first impression upon the lengthened tract of country to the westward of “the Desert,” the true home of the Cymri, extending from the Severn to the Clyde, in which a number of petty princes and kinglets long united in paying some sort of deference to the authority of one supreme king, or _Unben_.[16] The faint remains of a line of defence, dictated possibly by a recollection of imperial tactics, can still be traced towards the north-eastern frontier of this British territory under the name of the _Catrail or Pictswork ditch_, stretching from Peel Fell through the south-western portion of Roxburghshire to Galashiels in Selkirkshire; and to the westward of this barrier the Britons long remained upon a footing of comparative independence, after they had lost all hold upon the more open country in the vicinity.[17] Mercia, at the period of Edwin’s reign, was under the rule of Penda, a chieftain who, to a hatred and contempt of Christianity, joined an ardent desire of shaking off his dependence upon the kindred Angles beyond the Humber, and encouraging the designs of the British princes against the conqueror of Caradoc, he united the pagan warriors of Mercia with the Christian followers of Caswallon, re-establishing the supremacy of the Britons over the ancient city of York, by the defeat and death of Edwin, though the triumph was purchased at the price of the temporary extinction of Christianity. But the alliance between Christian and pagan was of evil omen, and the death of Caswallon in the following year destroyed the hopes of the Britons, though they again swelled the forces of the heathen Penda, when he lost his life near the Broad Arc, Cadwal of Gwynneth alone escaping from the field. Cadwallader, the last king whose authority is supposed to have been supreme, died of the pestilence in 664; and towards the close of the same century the conquests of Egfred extended the Northumbrian dominions to the western coast, and with his numerous donations of lands in the modern counties of Lancashire and Cumberland to the Northumbrian clergy, interposed a permanent barrier between the Britons of North Wales, Cumberland, and Strath Clyde.[18]

Henceforth the ancient confederacy of the Britons seems to have been broken up into the separate divisions of Wales, and English and Scottish Cumbria--or Cumberland and Strath Clyde--never again destined to be reunited under the authority of one supreme _Unben_. During the reign of the Northumbrian Alfred, the Angles began to extend their encroachments from the neighbourhood of Carlisle along the whole of the south-western coast, known in a later age as Galloway, their possessions in this quarter having increased, shortly before the death of Beda, to such an extent as to justify their usual policy of establishing a bishopric; and accordingly, Whithern, or Candida Casa, the traditional see of Ninian, was revived, and placed under the superintendence of a line of Anglian bishops, which was abruptly brought to a close about a century later. The successes of Eadbert reduced the fortunes of the Britons in this quarter to the lowest ebb. Kyle was rendered tributary to Northumbria, which already included Cunningham; [Sidenote: A. D. 756.] and shortly after the middle of the century, Alclyde or Dumbarton, the strongest bulwark of the Northern Britons, surrendered to the united forces of the Northumbrians and the Picts. The capture of Alclyde must have thrown the whole of the ancient British territories in the Lennox, which were subsequently included in the diocese of Glasgow, into the power of Angus, together with a great portion of the “debateable land” between Forth and Clyde, similarly included in the “Cumbrian” diocese; and the little principality of Strath Clyde was now completely hemmed in and surrounded by hostile territories, though the gradual decline of the Northumbrian power towards the close of the eighth century, enabled the petty state to struggle on for another hundred years in a precarious species of nominal independence.[19]

After the death of Angus MacFergus, king of the Picts, [Sidenote: A. D. 761.] who is stigmatized by a Saxon writer as “a bloody tyrant,” the history of the succeeding period again becomes obscure. Bruidi his brother followed him on the throne, which, after the death of Bruidi, and an interval of fifteen years, during which it was again occupied in succession by two brothers, reverted once more to the family of Angus in the persons of his son and grandson--Constantine MacFergus, [Sidenote: A. D. 789.] also probably a member of the same race, acquiring the supreme power towards the close of the century by driving out Conal MacTeige, who lost his life a few years later in Kintyre. The names of three kings of Dalriada attest the existence of the little kingdom, without throwing any further light upon its history, though from the character of a subsequent reference to Aodh “the Fair,” it may be conjectured that he was in some sense the restorer of the line of Kintyre. [Sidenote: A. D. 792.] After the death of Doncorcin, the last of these three princes, which happened shortly after the accession of Constantine, no further mention of the province will be found in any of the Irish annals which have hitherto been published.[20]

For thirty years and upwards, the supremacy of Constantine was undisputed, and he was succeeded upon his death by his brother Angus, his son Drost, and his nephew Eoganan in the same regular order which is subsequently observable amongst the early kings of Scotland. His reign was unquestionably an era of considerable importance, tradition connecting it with the termination of the Pictish monarchy, and representing Constantine as the last of the Pictish kings--a tradition which must have owed its origin to a vague recollection of some momentous change about this period. He and his brother Angus are numbered most suspiciously amongst the immediate predecessors of Kenneth MacAlpin in the “Duan of Alban,” the oldest known genealogy of the early kings of Scotland; whilst the name of Constantine, unknown amongst the paternal ancestry of Kenneth, was borne by his son and many of his race, who would thus appear to have looked for their title to the throne quite as much to their maternal as to their paternal line of ancestry--for the mother of Alpin, Kenneth’s father, was traditionally a daughter of the house of Fergus.[21] The foundation of Dunkeld, in Atholl, during the same reign, and of St. Andrews, in Fife, during the reign of the younger Angus, point to the incorporation of both those provinces amongst the dominions of the Pictish sovereigns; for it is observable that the erection of a monastery was generally coincident with the reduction under the royal authority of the province over which the newly instituted abbot exercised jurisdiction, the authority of the ecclesiastical superior confirming and sanctifying as it were the power of the sovereign; and it will be found that when regular dioceses were instituted in the twelfth century, the whole of Dalriada had long been incorporated amongst the districts acknowledging the jurisdiction of Constantine’s monastery of Dunkeld. The Anglian line of bishops also disappear during the same reign from the diocese of Whithern, and a population of Gaelic origin, distinguished from the earlier masters of the soil, whether of Cumbrian or Northumbrian race, is subsequently discovered in possession of the entire district.[22] The power of Northumbria was on the wane, her people, distracted by civil contests, were fast relinquishing the hold they had once acquired upon the districts to the westward of the Lothians; and as the Angles, weakened by internal discord, no longer opposed a formidable barrier to the Northern tribes, the latter, gradually increasing in power, seem to have been fast settling into a stronger and more compact kingdom, in which may be traced the nucleus of modern Scotland.

The erection of Dunkeld, the sole deed of Constantine that has descended to posterity, may be traced to the inroads of the Northern _Vikings_, who, four years after his accession, made their first recorded appearance upon the British coasts, ravaging in the same year Lindisfarne and Iona. A few of the Scottish monks who escaped with life bore with them the relics of their founder, distributing their sacred charge between the new foundation of the Pictish sovereign and another monastery raised at Kells in Ireland; whilst the pre-eminence throughout North Briton, which had passed to Abernethy from Iona, appears to have been again transferred from the former monastery, and vested in Dunkeld, which was destined in its turn, before the close of the century, to be eclipsed and supplanted by St. Andrews.[23]

[Sidenote: A. D. 839.]

The male line of the family of Fergus appears to have terminated in the sons of the younger Angus, Eoganan and Bran, who were both killed in a disastrous battle with the Northmen; and for three years the two sons of Bargoit, Feredach and Bruidi, reigned over the Picts, the death of Bruidi making way for the first prince of the line of Dalriada, [Sidenote: A. D. 843.] Kenneth MacAlpin, who seems to have ascended the throne in right of the maternal ancestry of his father. For the next two centuries the united people of the Picts and Scots acknowledged the dominion of the MacAlpin dynasty; and though Kenneth and his immediate successors were still recorded in the annals of the age under the original title of “Kings of the Picts,” from the opening of the tenth century the ancient name of _Pict_, gradually dying out, was superseded by the more familiar appellation of _Scot_, extending, in course of time, to every tribe and every race from the Tweed and the Solway to the Pentland Firth, whose chieftains and leaders, whether native noble, or feudal baron, owned the authority and followed the banner of the representatives of the princes of Kintyre.[24]