Chapter II: The Kingdom of Scotland--843–900

The history of Scotland as a kingdom may be said in general terms to begin with the accession of the family of Kintyre; but the Scotland of the period of the MacAlpin dynasty, both in the extent of the territory to which Kenneth actually succeeded, as well as in the nature of his authority over the remainder of the kingdom, bore only a partial resemblance to the more compact feudal monarchy of a later era. Gaul, before the achievements of Julius Cæsar annexed that country to the dominion of Rome, must have presented an example of a pure Celtic system of government; and the features of that system, as described in the Commentaries of the conqueror, are plainly traceable amongst the kindred Celtic populations of the British Isles. The greater states, such as the Ædui, appear to have been aristocratic confederacies, generally exercising a sort of leadership over a number of lesser dependencies, electing annually a magistrate, judge, or _Vergobreith_, to govern with royal authority, and the power of life and death, and guarding, with jealous care, against the perpetuation of this authority as a hereditary appanage in any one family. In other confederacies this second phase had been brought about with more or less permanent success, and Tasgetius was re-established by Cæsar in the “_kingdom_” which his ancestors had acquired over the Carnutes--a proceeding which within three years cost him his life--whilst Cavarinus was confirmed in a similar hereditary authority over the Senones, which appears to have descended to his brother Moritasgus from their joint forefathers. Occasionally a number of the leading states were united in one great confederacy under a temporary head, chosen for the occasion, who was invested with royal authority over every member of the alliance, and obedience enforced to his behests by the exaction of hostages. As war was the bond of union in such confederacies, the character of the supreme leader was military not judicial; he was the _Toshach_ not the _Vergobreith_; the _War-king_, exercising the same authority over the whole confederacy with which every _Duke_ or _Toshach_ was invested by each member of the alliance over their separate contingents. Attempts had not been wanting to convert this temporary authority into a permanent supremacy, as in the case of Celtillus, the father of Vercingetorix; but Cæsar records no instance of success in a course of policy which would evidently have laid the foundation of a wider and far more formidable _kingdom_ than any that had been established by the mere conversion of the _elective_ into the _hereditary_ principle within the boundaries of a single state. In all these features of the government of the greater states of Gaul, there is nothing that can be considered peculiar to the people of that country alone. The annual _Vergobreith_ is but the counterpart of the _Princeps_ chosen in the German assemblies, and dispatched with a hundred _Comites_ to administer justice amongst the confederated clans. Aristocratic confederacies, occasionally united under the rule of one head, or _Heretoga_, prevailed amongst the continental Saxons in the days of Beda, and probably of Charlemagne; a judge, perhaps elective, still governed the Visigoths at the close of the fourth century, when an infant king was the hereditary ruler of the Ostragoths; whilst Maraboduus is an example that the authority of a permanent magistrate had occasionally prevailed over the elective principle amongst the Germans, even before the days of Tacitus, when the government of a king was not unknown amongst that people.[25]

The true peculiarity of the Celtic system, the “balance of power,” is to be found in that singular principle of divided authority, which is surely traceable to the original separation of the two leading classes, and their mutual jealousy of encroachment, a jealousy which seems to have settled into a fixed principle of policy in the Celtic system of government long after its probable cause had been forgotten. Every state, every group of clans, every family even, was thus divided; _two_ confederacies took the lead amongst the whole people; and if the Ædui or the Sequani lost their pre-eminence, the Rhemi or the Arverni stept into the vacant place; for the undivided supremacy of _one_ confederacy--_un_balanced power--would have been totally contrary to all Celtic precedent.[26] Three leading characters are traceable amongst the Gauls,--one hereditary, the _Princeps_ or head of the race, the _Cen-Cinnitd_ or _Pen-Cenedl_ of later times; two elective, the _Judex_, supreme magistrate or _Vergobreith_, and the _Dux_ or _Toshach_, the leader of the host. These characters are equally recognisable amongst the early Germans, amongst whom they were probably known as the _Cyning_ or _Konung_, the head of the kindred--the _Lagaman_ and the _Heretoga_; and they existed to a recent date in every Celtic clan long after the elective had given place to the hereditary principle, as the chief, the _Toshach_, and the judge, _Brehon_ or _Deempster_. As amongst the Germans so amongst the Gauls, the head of the lineage was not necessarily the leader of the host, though the offices were not unfrequently united in the same person. Sedulius was _dux et princeps_ (captain and chief) of the Lemovices; and Vertiscus “_princeps_,” or chief of the confederacy of the Rhemi, was also “_præfectus_” (captain or _toshach_) of their cavalry.[27] But here the resemblance ceases, for the German _Lagaman_--the _princeps_ who was elected in the assembly, and dispatched with a hundred _Gasinds_ or _Comites_ to judge the people--never appears to have necessarily laid aside his military authority. Athanaric was _Dux_ as well as _Judex_ of the Visigoths; and the Frank Gasind of a later period united in his own person both military and judicial functions, as _Graf_, _Count_ or _Judex Fiscalis_. Such was not the case amongst the Celts, who appear to have separated the judicial from the military office--authority from power--with all that jealous care in which may be traced the anxiety of the original founders of the system to preserve an equal balance between two rival castes. The _Vergobreith_ amongst the Ædui was strictly prohibited from crossing the frontiers of the confederacy,[28] and was of course incapacitated from holding the office of _Toshach_ during the continuance of his supreme magistracy. That this prohibition lasted only during the year of office is evident from the example of Cotus, who, failing in his attempt to succeed his brother Vedeliacus as _Vergobreith_, appears immediately afterwards as _Toshach_ of the Æduan cavalry. As the _Vergobreith_ was inaugurated by the Druids,[29] and as that class monopolized the whole administration of the laws, it is very evident that the noble who was chosen for the supreme magistracy resigned his military character during his year of office, and was enrolled, as it were, for that period amongst the ranks of the Druids. Had such a personage existed as a permanent and hereditary _Vergobreith_ giving law to the whole Celtic race, this sacred character would have become equally permanent and hereditary, and the ruler of the Celtic people would have resembled, in this respect, the monarchs of the great eastern empires of antiquity.[30] The Gauls, however, never appear to have arrived, in historical times, at the same point of unity in their political, as in their religious, constitution; and the Hierophant, or Arch-Druid, elected for life, stood alone, and without any parallel, amongst the equestrian order. Long after the introduction of Christianity, and a thousand years after the time of Cæsar, the old principle of separating the judicial from the military functions is still clearly discernible in the Welsh “Laws of Howel Dha.” Two officers were appointed over every royal _Commot_, the _Cynghellwr_ and the _Maer_, the former administering justice, the latter collecting the royal dues and following the king to battle; and the same system is traceable in Gaelic Scotland, where, under the Teutonic disguise of _Thane_ and _Deempster_, it is easy to discover the types of the Cymric Maer and Cynghellwr.

The Celtic principle of division, or balance of power, is recognisable amongst the Cymri both in their older confederacies of _Deur_ and _Bryneich_, and in the later _Gwynnedd_ and _Dyved_, or North and South Wales; but it is in Ireland that the best examples are afforded of this singular peculiarity of the continual subdivision of authority. The whole country was divided as usual into North and South, or _Leth Cuin_ and _Leth Mogh_, the latter containing _Muimhean_ and _Laighean_--Munster and Leinster--each again subdivided into North and South, or _Thomond_ and _Desmond_, _Tuath-Laighean_ and _Deas-gabhar_. Ulster and Connaught were the _two_ historical provinces of the north of Ireland, _two_ kingdoms are traceable in legendary Ulster, and after _Uladh_ had ceased to share in the sovereignty of the North, _two_ families, the _Dalaraide_ and _Dal-fiatach_, long contested the supremacy within the circumscribed boundaries of the province. No sooner had the great family of the Hy Nial succeeded in monopolizing the supreme power than it was at once divided into the usual separate branches of Northern and Southern Hy Nial, each gradually subdivided into the clans of Eogan and Conal, of Colman and of Aodh Slane. The predominance of a single race was, as of old, the signal for its subdivision, even the smallest clan being subject to the divided authority of a chief and a toshach.

Once every year the Gallic Druids were accustomed to meet in solemn convention at a spot within the confines of the Carnutes, which was looked upon as the centre of Gaul, and had there been such a magistrate as an annual _Vergobreith_ chosen to rule over the whole Gallic race, it is probable that he would have been inaugurated in this assembly in the same manner as the Æduan Druids consecrated the provincial _Vergobreith_, who ruled for his allotted year over that confederacy. A similar convention is traceable in Ireland under the name of the _Feas Temora_, or “Feast of Tara,” a place chosen probably for its centrical situation; and he who “held the feast” was the acknowledged _Ardrigh_ of the whole nation, the “tribes of Tara” originally holding their lands on condition of quartering the king and his followers on the occasion of the great festival. This convention, undoubtedly in its origin a Druidical meeting like the solemn assembly within the borders of the Carnutes, was still existing in Ireland in historical times, dying out towards the close of the seventh century; though the Irish annalists long continued to give the title of “king of Tara” to the _Ardrigh_, who claimed the supreme authority over the whole Irish people.

The invariable Celtic principle of “division” is plainly traceable amongst the population of Northern Britain in their separation from a very early period into Caledones and Mæatæ, Dicaledones and Vecturiones, and latterly into Northern and Southern Picts. Towards the middle of the third century, when Dion wrote, the form of their government was still “democratic;” in other words, the various states or confederacies into which the Pictish people were divided, like the early Gauls and Southern Britons, were still ignorant of the principle of one elective or hereditary ruler.[31] The earliest bond of union may probably be traced to the time when they united under one common leader to resist or assail the Roman legionaries; and out of the _Dux_ or _Toshach_ elected for the occasion, like Galgacus, and exercising a paramount though temporary authority, arose the _Ardrigh_ or supreme king, after some popular or ambitious chieftain had prolonged his power by successful wars, or procured his election to this prominent station for life. The nature of the sovereignty thus established, which was fully recognised in the days of Columba, resembled the dominion of the Ardrigh amongst the kindred Gael of Ireland, or of the Unben amongst the earlier Cymri, differing in a remarkable manner from the royal authority as it existed amongst the Welsh of a later age. _Breith_, or _Law_, was at the root of the later Welsh system. Privilege was _Breint_, the noble or man of privilege amongst the Southern Welsh, _Breyr_; the king, _Breen-hyn_--the senior _Brehon_ or _Lawgiver_, the hereditary instead of the elective _Vergobreith_. In the laws of Howel Dha, the representative of the Druid, or of the noble enrolled amongst the Druids, the _Cynghellwr_ who “divided with the _Brenin_” evidently took precedence of the _Maer_, the representative of the military noble; whilst the _Rhy_, and _Twysawg_, or _Rex_ and _Dux_ (though met with in the Welsh dictionaries), are never found in these laws. With the Gael, however, it was the _Righ_ and the _Toshach_ who were most prominent; the _Brehon_ had no such intimate connection with the throne or with the privileged classes, and in the charter of king Robert Bruce to the Thane of Cawdor, it was the _Judex_ who held his lands under the Thane or _Toshach_. The Gaelic _Ardrigh_ represented the permanent _Toshach_, not the _Vergobreith_, the permanent holder of the office of _Vercingetorix_, the head of a wide confederacy bound together less by the ties of blood, or by an authority confirmed by the sacerdotal order, than by the actual power of the supreme ruler confirmed by the exaction of hostages.[32]

The different tribes enumerated by Ptolemy, and subsequently known as the Northern and Southern Picts, appear at some early period to have coalesced into seven lesser confederacies, answering to the “Pictish Provinces” of Beda. Allusion is evidently made to these principalities in the old verses ascribed by tradition to Columba, enumerating the seven sons of _Cruithne_--characters of the same description as the sons of Hellen--“Cait, Ce, Ciric of the hundred clans, Fiv, Fidach, Fodla, Fortreim.” In _Fiv_ “the forest,” and in _Cait_, there is little difficulty in recognising “the ancient kingdom of Fife,” and a province of which the north-eastern extremity still retains the name of Caith_ness_, the point or promontory of _Caith_. Meaningless alike in Gaelic and in Welsh, _Caith_ is probably the Celtic form of _Ketje_, “the end” or “extremity” in Lappish, a relic of a time when an Ugrian population regarded this province as their northern limit. The recollection of _Fortreim_ was long preserved in the Deanery of _Fortrev_ or _Fotheriff_, lying along the banks of the Forth, from which river the name was most probably derived. _Fodla_ or _Fotla_, a word sometimes used amongst the Irish Gael as synonymous with Ireland, or their native home, survives in _Athfodla_ or _Atholl_; whilst the appellation of _Fidach_, or “the woody” may be safely conjectured to have belonged to that province which was once known to the Romans under the ancient British epithet of _Celydon_, or “the forest district.” No clue remains to identify _Ce_ and _Ciric_, which may have answered to the provinces upon the coast included between the Grampian range and the eastern and northern seas. Nothing whatever is known of these seven provinces beyond the bare fact of their existence, though long after they had been broken up into earldoms, or united by conquest to the possessions of the crown, the tradition of this ancient sevenfold division of the Pictish kingdom, and of the rights of the provincial princes in electing a paramount _Ardrigh_, appears to have been revived amongst a party of the Scottish nobles for the purpose of adding to their overgrown power at the expense of their youthful king.[33]

The Pictish king was elective, unless he formed an exception to the universal rule prevailing amongst the Teutonic as well as the Celtic tribes in early times. The theory of election, indeed, pervaded all the institutions of the Gaelic people, who seem to have nominally chosen their heads of houses and chiefs of clans, as well as their _Flaiths_, _Oirrighs_, and _Ardrigh_, or their princes, provincial kings, and the supreme ruler of the whole nation. Brother succeeded to brother upon the throne, and the law of primogeniture, as amongst the early Germans, was only partially recognised, each “full-born” son having a claim upon the inheritance of his father, though the universal custom of “fosterage” led to the same results as Cambrensis deplored amongst his countrymen in Wales. Each child was placed in the family of a dependant, who regarded such a charge as a mark of the highest confidence and honour; and even in the seventeenth century, men of rank and station in the Scottish Highlands still esteemed it a privilege to educate in this manner one of the children of the head of their lineage. The child thus adopted shared in the property of his foster-father on the same footing as his foster-brethren, who profited in return from the protection and support of their more illustrious connection, and thus was formed a tie which generally proved a far surer bond of union than even the actual existence of blood relationship. The “fosterers” of the royal race must have invariably been chosen from amongst the greater nobles, each of whom, from mingled motives of affection and self-interest, was ever too ready to support the claims of his own foster-son, or _Dalt_, upon the supreme power; and the continual contests about the succession to the throne, which arose in this age in every country in Western Europe, are traceable less to the inveteracy of fraternal hatred than to the jealous rivalry of interested partizans, which must have been engendered by such a system of fosterage. Gradually, however, except in cases of incapacity, or where one of the junior members of the family far exceeded the rest in prowess or popularity, the precedency of the eldest-born grew into the rule, the contrary course becoming the exception.[34]

Upon the accession of a new monarch, he ascended the Sacred Stone, preserved inviolate for such occasions, and was inaugurated in the presence of the clergy and the laity by the principal bishop of the nation. Originally it is probable that the Druids were the necessary assistants on such occasions, their prerogatives passing to the clergy; for Columba is said by his biographer, Adamnan, to have “ordained” Aidan king of the Dalriads, an expression which cannot mean that Aidan’s title to the royal dignity was based upon the authority of the Abbot of Iona, but rather that the sanction of the sacerdotal order, which appears to have been considered indispensable to all political authority amongst the Celtic people from time immemorial, had been transferred upon the fall of the old religion, from the Druidical to the Christian priesthood.[35] Close to the _Ardrigh_, with his right foot planted on the same stone of honour, stood the _Righdomna_ or _Tanist_, the heir-apparent of the monarchy, who seems to have been nominated on the same occasion in pursuance of the true Celtic principle of “a divided authority,” the office being immediately filled up, in case of the premature death of the _Tanist_ during the lifetime of the reigning sovereign--a fatality of very frequent occurrence--the same rule being as applicable to the chieftain of the smallest territory as to the chosen leader of the nation. The power of the _Ardrigh_ over the provincial kings must have depended upon his ability to enforce it, and to exact the hostages which were invariably necessary to secure the obedience of the subordinate princes. _Can_ and _Cuairt_, or tribute and visitation, were amongst his rightful dues; in other words, in addition to the payment of a stipulated tribute, the _Oirrighs_ were bound to entertain the _Ardrigh_ and his followers in his annual progresses for a certain stated period in every year; a burdensome system of free-quarters by no means peculiar to the Celtic people, which could be exacted by every petty chieftain from the occupants of all the territory over which his influence extended.[36] The authority of the early Pictish kings over the various provinces of the confederacy was probably identical with that of the Irish _Ardrigh_ over the subordinate principalities of _Leth Cuin_ and _Leth Mogh_, and may be compared to the dominion exercised by Kent, Wessex, or Mercia, over the remaining South Humbrian kingdoms, at a time when either state was liable to exchange the situation of a ruling power for a subordinate and comparatively dependent position.[37]

After the union of the two branches of the Pictish nation under one elective sovereign, the next step in the progress of their amalgamation was to confirm the preponderance of one state, and thus render the elective monarchy hereditary in one family. In the attempts to accomplish this object, which were made by the elder Angus and his successors, the ancient sevenfold division of the nation appears to have been broken up and destroyed, and the real conquest of the Pictish people to have been effected. The tradition of a conquest is far too strong to allow it to be looked upon as a mere fable, though the total silence of all the early authorities, and the relative position of the Picts and the Dalriads render it utterly impossible that the insignificant tribe of Kintyre, occupying only a very small portion of the modern county of Argyle, could have conquered and exterminated the whole remaining population of North Britain beyond the Forth and Clyde. A very slight acquaintance, however, with early history, where it borders on the legendary and traditionary periods, will confirm the truth of the remark, that events which may have really happened are frequently misplaced and transferred to a wrong epoch, very often owing their misplacement to a wish to build up the fame of some favourite hero, by attributing to him the merit of every important action of several different periods. Scottish history abounds with instances of such misplacement, and the Scottish conquest is of the number; but by keeping strictly to the scanty records left by the annalists who lived nearest to the period in question, it will be found that the reign of the elder Angus offers the closest resemblance to an era of victory and conquest. His annexation of Atholl and the Lennox, of Lorn, and perhaps also of Kintyre, must have extended his authority to the western coast of Argyle, whilst his successive victories over three kings of the Picts appear to have enlarged his frontiers in the opposite direction, by establishing his predominance over the neighbouring district of Fife.[38] The modern shires of Perth, Fife, Stirling, and Dumbarton, with the greater part of the county of Argyle, may therefore be said to have formed the actual Scottish kingdom to which Kenneth succeeded, conquered originally by the elder Angus, and subsequently consolidated by his successors Constantine and the younger Angus, the union of the three provinces, of Fife, Atholl, and Fortreim under one family, paving the way for the permanent supremacy of the princes of the ruling race over the remaining provincial kings; and as Alpin, the father of Kenneth, was in later days confounded with the opponent of the elder Angus, so the triumphs of the latter monarch were gradually transferred to the earliest prince of the MacAlpin dynasty after the numerous and varied tribes who united in acknowledging the supremacy of Kenneth’s successors had identified their own origin with the Dalriad ancestry of their line of kings.

THE LINE OF KINTYRE:--

_Kenneth the First_ 843–859.
_Donald the First_ 859–863.

Never were the qualities more needed which earned for the first Kenneth the title of “the Hardy,” than during the sixteen years of his turbulent reign; for his kingdom was exposed to hostilities on every side. The Britons of Strath Clyde burnt Dunblane; the Danes carried their ravages to Dunkeld in Atholl, and to Cluny in Stormont, and if Ragnar Lodbroc is not the mere creation of some northern scald, it was probably under the leadership of that renowned sea-king that they destroyed the monastery of the Pictish Constantine. The Scottish king proved equal to the occasion, and six times leading his followers across the “Scots-water,” he repulsed the Britons, harried the Lothians, burnt Dunbar, and seized upon Melrose, stifling any doubts about his claim to the throne in the plunder of the fertile lowlands of “Saxony.”[39]

Iona, during the vicissitudes of this stormy era, had been far too much exposed to escape the fury of the northern pirates, and the revered asylum of Columba’s brotherhood, participating in the misfortunes of Lindisfarne, was deserted at an early period under the repeated attacks of the Pagan foe, neither island ever recovering the importance that had once attached to their hallowed shores. The destruction of Dunkeld, which had been destined by its founder to replace both Iona and Abernethy, gave occasion to the solitary peaceful action attributed to the Scottish sovereign, who, collecting the relics of Columba from the localities to which they had been borne for security, enshrined them in a new church at Dunkeld,[Sidenote: A. D. 849.] rebuilding the monastery on the same spot as had been chosen for the original foundation. An alliance with the Britons of Strath Clyde, whose prince, Cu, received the hand of his daughter in marriage, completes the record of Kenneth’s actions; and ten years after the restoration of Dunkeld he died in his capital [Sidenote: A. D. 859.] of Dunfothir or Forteviot, the victim of a painful and lingering disease.[40]

Donald MacAlpin succeeded his brother, and for four years filled the throne of Scotland, nothing being recorded of his short reign with the exception of a council at Forteviot, in which the “Laws of Aodh the Fair,” [Sidenote: A. D. 863.] of Kintyre, were confirmed by “the Gael” and their king.[41]

_Constantine the First_, 863–877.

Constantine, the son of Kenneth, and the first inheritor of the name of his Pictish ancestor, ascended the throne of Scotland at an era when the efforts of Gorm, Eric, and Harald Harfager to consolidate the petty states of Scandinavia into the respective kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, had given a fresh stimulus to the incursions of the Vikings upon the British Isles, by dispossessing and driving from their homes many of the minor chieftains who refused to submit to their authority. Ireland as well as Britain had suffered from the attacks of these marauders as early as the close of the eighth century, but it was not before the middle of the following century that the Northmen first established themselves permanently in the former country, principally in Dublin and its neighbourhood, where the recollection of one branch of the invaders is still retained in the name of the adjacent district of Fingall.[42]

[Sidenote: A. D. 850]

About ten years after the first settlement of the Norsemen a fresh fleet arrived off the Irish coasts, under the command of leaders claiming to belong to “the royal race of Lochlan,” to whom the native annalists have given the name of Du Gall, or Black Strangers, in contradistinction to their predecessors the Fin Gall or White Strangers, epithets which were derived probably from some long forgotten distinction in dress or armour rather than from any difference in personal appearance or in nationality.[43] Driven from Dublin and from their settlements upon the coast of Uladh, the Fingall collected in great numbers from every quarter, and soon returned with their whole force to re-assert their lost ascendancy; but a combat between the two fleets, which is said to have lasted during three days and nights, confirmed the superiority of their rivals, and in the following year Olave the Fair, the son of Ingiald, an Upland chieftain of the same race as Harald Harfager, landed with his followers [Sidenote: A. D. 854.] amongst his countrymen, and at once assumed the lead over all the Northmen of Ireland. In alliance with the Norwegian Olave was the Danish Ivar or Ingvar, the most renowned warrior amongst all the northern chieftains, whom tradition has made a son of Ragnar Lodbroc, and the ruthless avenger of his slaughter.[44]

For several years after the arrival of the confederates their ravages were confined to the provinces of Ireland, until at length, in the same year in which Ivar and Halfdan first established themselves upon [Sidenote: A. D. 866.] the coasts of East Anglia, the storm burst upon the dominions of Constantine, and from the 1st of January to St. Patrick’s day, Olave and Auisle carried fire and sword throughout the region bordering on the Forth. [Sidenote: A. D. 870.] After a lapse of four years Olave again revisited the Scottish shores, and in company with Ivar laid siege to the rock of Dumbarton, capturing and destroying the ancient bulwark of the Britons of Strath Clyde after a lengthened blockade of four months, the sole means available to an unskilful age against a _Dun_ so strongly situated. The confederates then marched southwards to join their countrymen in England; once more a king of Saxon race was sacrificed to the manes of Ragnar, and the fate of the Northumbrian Elli was inflicted upon the East Anglian martyr Edmund; nor was it until the close of the following year [Sidenote: A. D. 871.] that the allies returned to Dublin laden with the spoil of the Saxon, the Briton, and the Scot, and leaving behind them a fearful track of misery and bloodshed to mark the most lengthened and direful of all their inroads. Olave lost his life shortly afterwards in an obscure skirmish, fought, according to some accounts, in Scotland; and the death of Ivar in 873, [Sidenote: A. D. 873.] after surviving his confederate for only a few months, released the Saxon and Scottish princes from the ablest and most ruthless of their foes.[45]

Amongst the earlier opponents of Olave and Ivar in the course of their Irish wars was a certain Caittil the Fair, [Sidenote: A. D. 857.] probably the same person as Ketil Biornson, who established himself in independence amongst the islands along the western coasts of Scotland belonging to the mixed Scandinavian and Gaelic race who were known under the name of the Gallgael. His daughter Auda was subsequently married to his former rival Olave, and upon the death of her husband after his return to Dublin she sought the protection of Ketil in the Hebrides, whilst her son, Thorstein the Red, early treading in the footsteps of his father, pursued the career of a Viking.[46]

After the establishment of the power of Harald Harfager by the successful battle of Hafursfiord, many of his vanquished opponents fled to the Orkneys and the Shetland isles, periodically infesting the Norwegian coasts in revenge for their defeat and expulsion; and to put an end to these piratical inroads Harald at length fitted out a numerous fleet, devoting an entire summer to extirpating the hostile Vikings from the creeks and bays in which they sought shelter from his vengeance. In one of the numerous conflicts occurring during this expedition, Ivar, a son of Harald’s favourite and most trusted friend Rognwald, Jarl of Mœri, lost his life, and as some compensation for the death of his son the king bestowed his own conquests upon the father. Rognwald, however, preferring to return to his Norwegian home, transferred the royal donation to his brother Sigurd, who was accordingly confirmed as Jarl, and left behind, on the departure of the king, in possession of the Orkneys and the Shetland isles.

Not content with his newly acquired island territories Jarl Sigurd was ambitious of a wider dominion, and entering into an alliance with Thorstein Olaveson, the confederates employed their united force in invading the northern provinces of Scotland. The whole of the country as far as the banks of the Oikel,[47] embracing the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, was overrun and conquered by the allies, two Scottish magnates falling in an unavailing resistance; Meldun, whose wife, the daughter of an Irish king, became with her son the slave of Auda,[48] affording in their altered fortunes a striking example of the strange vicissitudes of the age; and Malbride “with the buck-tooth,” whose singular fate--if the Saga can be relied upon--avenged him after death upon the author of his misfortunes. Sigurd is said to have slain the last-named chieftain in single combat, and with the savage ferocity of the times to have cut off the head of his victim, suspending it in triumph from his saddle-bow, in which position the projecting tooth of the slaughtered chieftain is supposed to have inflicted so severe a wound upon the Jarl’s leg as ultimately to cause his death, and he was buried by his followers upon the banks of the Oikel, at the extreme limits of his conquests.

Though deprived of his ally, the Jarl of Orkney, Thorstein failed not to follow up his success, and whilst victory attended the banner of the king of the Dugall in the extreme north, the difficulties of Constantine must have been materially increased by the inroads of Halfdan [Sidenote: A. D. 875.] upon his opposite frontiers, who established himself in Northumbria during the same year, and made incessant incursions upon the neighbouring “Picts” and Britons.[49] A decisive defeat at Dollar, on the borders of Perthshire and Fife, at length forced the Scottish king to submit to the alternative imposed at a later period upon both the English Edmunds, the whole of the northern provinces were made over to the son of Olave, and Constantine purchased a temporary peace at the price of half of his dominions.[50]

The success of Thorstein was destined to be ephemeral, the very year of his triumph witnessing the close of his adventurous career. Attacked unexpectedly by the followers of Constantine, he appears to have fallen in an unequal contest; Halfdan was driven from his Northumbrian conquests, perishing soon afterwards in Ireland, and the death of Sigurd’s son Guttorm delivering his father’s earldom once more into the hands of the independent Vikings, the power of the Norsemen was broken up for a time, and the threatening cloud which had loured so darkly over Scotland melted away from the horizon.[51]

[Sidenote: A. D. 877.]

But the career of Constantine was also approaching its conclusion, and he had little time to profit by the events which had released him from his enemies. As his whole reign had been passed in a continual struggle to protect his country from the Northmen, so it was at length closed with honour on the battle-field in repulsing a hostile landing upon the coast of Fife; though tradition has hinted at a darker tale, that after repelling with success the enemy’s attack he was captured by a party of the retreating Norsemen, and sacrificed by a lingering and cruel death in the gloomy recesses of the Black Cave near Crail.[52]

_Aodh (Hugh)_ 877–878.
_Eocha_ } { 878–889.
_Cyric (Grig)_ } { 878–896.
_Donald the Second_ 889–900.

In the British Islands, as indeed in every quarter to which the Norsemen penetrated, a change may be dated from their earliest incursions; and whilst in Ireland they broke the power of the Hy Nial, and taught the dynasties of Munster and of Connaught to aspire to the supremacy which had hitherto been the undisputed prerogative of the princely families of Ulster and of Meath; in England the remnants of independent sovereignty were overwhelmed and swallowed up in the flood, the line of Cerdic in Wessex, which alone was strong enough to bear up against the torrent, becoming from that very cause the sole representative in the eyes of the Saxon people of the ancient royalty of their race. Scotland, where the monarchy, though of comparatively recent date, was destined eventually to survive the crisis, appeared towards the close of the ninth century to be fast verging towards the fate of Ireland; for though Thorstein perished before his power was consolidated, the cession of the northern provinces to that enterprising sea-king revived the recollection of former independence, and many years elapsed before the authority of the Scottish kings was once more successfully asserted over the ancient territories of the northern Picts. On the accession of Aodh, or Hugh, the surviving son of Kenneth, his pretensions were disputed by Cyric--or Grig--MacDungal, a chieftain whose residence at Dundurn, or Dunadeer, in the Garioch, marks his pre-eminence amongst the northern magnates whose allegiance had been transferred to Thorstein.[53] The contest for superiority between north and south was decided in the neighbourhood of Strathallan, the locality of the battle-field, [Sidenote: A. D. 878.] within the dominions of Aodh, appearing to point to Cyric as the aggressor: victory declared in favour of the northern leader, and his opponent, wounded and a prisoner, was conveyed for security to the fortress of Inverury, where he died of his wounds after a few weeks’ captivity. Either the victor was content with asserting his own independence, or policy may have prevented him from aspiring to the vacant throne; for he appears to have been satisfied with reviving the divided sovereignty of former times; and by associating in the government a scion of the royal race of Kenneth, Eocha of Strath Clyde, a son of the British prince Cu, he may have sought to propitiate the hostile chieftains of the south, whilst the real authority over both kingdoms must have remained with the conqueror of Strathallan.[54]

Similar motives may possibly have dictated the benefaction to the church of St. Andrews, which has caused the name of Cyric to be handed down in the register of the ancient priory as “the Liberator of the Scottish Church, which had hitherto remained in a dependant and subservient position, according to the prevailing custom of the Picts.” The boon thus vaguely recorded by the grateful monks of the priory appears to have been nothing more than the transfer of the privileges which had latterly belonged to Dunkeld to the monastery endowed by the younger Angus; and St. Andrews, a diocese of the southern Picts, and often known in later days as pre-eminently the “bishopric of the Scots,” owed her primacy over the other Scottish bishoprics to the donation of a prince of the northern provinces.[55]

[Sidenote: A. D. 889.]

Upon the death of Eocha after an eventless career of eleven years, Donald, the son of Constantine, assumed his cousin’s place, and for seven years shared with Cyric the supreme authority over Scotland, on the same terms, apparently, as his predecessor the British prince. A decisive victory over a body of the Northmen, who were defeated at Collin on the banks of the Tay, signalized the commencement of the new reign, avenging the destruction of the Scottish capital of Forteviot, burnt by the invaders in the course of their inroads; and as the situation of the ruined town must have exposed it to the attacks of the pirates of the western seas, it appears to have been abandoned from this period, and the residence of the sovereign being transferred for security to the eastern bank of the Tay, the dignity of “the Royal City” belonged henceforth to Scone.[56]

The few remaining years of the century passed away without events--none at least have been recorded--Cyric died peacefully at Dunadeer after a [Sidenote: A. D. 896.] reign of eighteen years, and it was left for the chroniclers of a later age to encircle his memory with a halo of fabulous glory, and to oppose his triumphs, as the conqueror of England and Ireland, to the pretensions founded by the first Edward upon the exploits of the British Arthur.[57] No successor arose amongst the Northern Picts to emulate the policy of their departed leader, and Scotland, gradually recovering from the shock of Thorstein’s conquests, ceased for ever after the death of Cyric to be subject to a divided authority. Henceforth Donald ruled without a rival during the brief remainder of his reign; but though no competitor appeared from beyond the Grampian range to assert his equality with the representative of Constantine and Kenneth, the recollection of their early independence long survived in full force amongst the northern clans, and a continual struggle between the divisions of the ancient Pictish kingdom can still be traced after the lapse of centuries. The death of Donald, [Sidenote: A. D. 900.] who survived Cyric for only four years, would appear to have been brought about through this inveterate feud, for he is supposed to have been killed in the town of Forres, and he may have lost his life in the hostile province of Moray in attempting to re-establish the royal authority over the revolted districts of the north.[58]