CHAPTER VI.

THE KINGDOM OF SCONE.

[Sidenote: State of the four kingdoms in 731.]

When Bede closes his history, forty-six years after the defeat and death of Ecgfrid, and we lose his invaluable guidance through the annals of this obscure period, he leaves us with this important record of the position of the four kingdoms at that time:—‘In the province of the Northumbrians, where king Ceoluulf reigns, four bishops now preside; Wilfrid in the church of York, Ediluald in that of Lindisfarne, Acca in that of Hagustald, Pecthelm in that which is called ‘Candida Casa,’ which, from the increased number of believers, has lately become an additional episcopal see, and has him for its first prelate. The Picts also at this time have a treaty of peace with the nation of the Angles, and rejoice in being united in catholic peace and truth with the universal church. The Scots that inhabit Britain, satisfied with their own territories, meditate no plots or conspiracies against the nation of the Angles. The Britons, though they, for the most part, through domestic hatred, are adverse to the nation of the Angles, and wrongfully, and from wicked custom, oppose the appointed Easter of the whole Catholic Church; yet, from both the Divine and human power firmly withstanding them, they can in no way prevail as they desire; for though in part they are their own masters, yet partly they are also brought under subjection to the Angles.’[369]

[Sidenote: Alteration in their relative position.]

Causes, however, had already been in operation during the latter part of this period, which were destined soon after its termination to alter very materially the relative position of these kingdoms. During the entire period of a century and a half which had now elapsed since the northern Picts were converted to Christianity by the preaching of Saint Columba, there is hardly to be found the record of a single battle between them and the Scots of Dalriada. Had they viewed each other as hostile races, it is difficult to account for the more powerful nation of the Picts permitting a small colony like the Scots of Dalriada to remain in undisturbed possession of the western district where they had settled. Prior, indeed, to the mission of Saint Columba we find the king of the northern Picts endeavouring to expel them, but after that date there existed a powerful element of peace and bond of union in the Columban Church. It was in every respect a Scottish Church, with a Scottish clergy supplied from Ireland. The Columban foundations had spread over the whole nation of the Picts. They owed their civilisation to its influence, and intrusted the education of their children to its monastic schools; and the Columban church of the Picts was, along with the Columban monasteries in the north of Ireland, under the jurisdiction of the abbot of Hii or Iona. As long, therefore, as this powerful influence lasted, the Picts were content to remain at peace with the Scots of Dalriada, and to view them as forming, as it were, one state along with the Pictish provinces in a Christian confederacy; but the king who now reigned over the Picts, Nectan, son of Derili, was led to adopt a course which worked an entire revolution in the ecclesiastical relations of the Picts and Scots, and led, as its inevitable result, to a change in their friendly relations.

[Sidenote: Legend of St. Bonifacius.]

In the reign of this Nectan it is reported that a missionary named Bonifacius, who came from Rome, landed in the Firth of Forth, and made his way through Pictavia till he came to a place called Restinoth. Here he met Nectan, king of the Picts, with his army, who, with his nobles and servants, received from Bonifacius the sacrament of baptism. The king gave the place of his baptism, which he dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to Bonifacius. Many people were indoctrinated there into the Christian faith, and he employed himself in the erection of churches there and in other places. The legend tells us that Bonifacius was an Israelite descended from the sister of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and a native of Bethlehem; that he was accompanied by six other bishops—Benedictus, Servandus, Pensandus, Benevolus, Madianus, and Principuus; two virgins, abbesses, Crescentia and Triduana; seven presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, seven acolytes, seven exorcists, seven lectors, and seven door-keepers; that he founded one hundred and fifty temples of God, consecrated as many bishops, and ordained a thousand presbyters; that he converted and baptized thirty-six thousand people of both sexes, and died on the 16th of March.[370] This is of course mere legend, and when reduced to its probable meaning amounts to no more than this, that he brought over the king of the Picts and many of his people from the Columban Church to conformity with the Church of Rome. He is termed in the calendars Kiritinus; his day is the same with that in the Irish calendars of Curitan, bishop and abbot of Rossmeinn, and he is said to have been one of the saints who became security for the Cain Adomnan,[371] which places him at this time. Bonifacius was therefore in reality probably a missionary from that part of the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome, and the church of Restinoth or Restennet being dedicated to St. Peter is an indication of the character of his mission.

[Sidenote: Nectan, son of Derili, conforms to Rome.]

This legend is clearly connected with the statement Bede makes towards the close of his narrative—and here he is narrating events which happened during his own life—‘that at this time,’ that is, in the year 710, ‘Naitan, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain, taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the error by which he and his nation had till then held in relation to the observance of Easter, and submitted together with his people to celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection. In order that he might perform this with the greater ease and authority, he sought assistance from the nation of the Angles, whom he knew to have long since formed their religion after the example of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church. Accordingly he sent messengers to the venerable man Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which stands at the mouth of the river Tyne at the place called Jarrow, desiring that he would write him a letter containing arguments, by the help of which he might the more powerfully confute those that presumed to keep Easter out of the due time; as also concerning the form and manner of the tonsure for distinguishing the clergy; not to mention that he himself possessed much information in these particulars. He also prayed to have architects sent him to build a church in his nation after the Roman manner, promising to dedicate the same in honour of the blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and that he and all his people would always follow the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic Church, as far as they could ascertain the same in consequence of their remoteness from the Roman language and nation.’ Bede then gives us the letter addressed by Abbot Ceolfrid to ‘the most excellent lord and most glorious king Naitan,’ of which there is strong reason to think he was himself the author, being at the time a monk at Jarrow, and thus concludes the narrative:—‘This letter having been read in the presence of king Naitan and many others of the most learned men, and carefully interpreted into his own language by those who could understand it, he is said to have much rejoiced at the exhortation, insomuch that, rising from among his great men who sat about him, he knelt on the ground giving thanks to God that he had been found worthy to receive such a present from the land of the Angles; and, said he, I knew indeed before that this was the true celebration of Easter, but now I so fully know the reason for the observance of this time, that I seem convinced that I knew very little of it before. Therefore I publicly declare and protest to you who are here present, that I will for ever continually observe this time of Easter, together with all my nation; and I do decree that this tonsure which we have heard is most reasonable shall be received by all the clergy in my kingdom. Accordingly he immediately performed by his regal authority what he had said. For the cycles of nineteen years were forthwith, by public command, sent throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learnt, and observed, the erroneous revolutions of eighty-four years being everywhere obliterated. All the ministers of the altar and the monks adopted the coronal tonsure; and the nation being thus reformed, rejoiced, as being newly placed under the direction of Peter, the most blessed prince of the apostles, and made secure under his protection.’[372]

[Sidenote: Establishment of Scone as the capital.]

There is strong reason for concluding that the scene of this assembly, where we see the king of the Picts surrounded by his nobles and his learned men, was no other than Scone, which had then become, as it was afterwards, the principal seat of the kingdom, and that from the Mote Hill of Scone issued now, as similar decrees issued afterwards, that public decree which regulated the form of the Christian Church among the Picts; that it was here too that Nectan dedicated his church to the Holy Trinity; and that it was from these events and the scene enacted there that the Mote Hill came to be known as the ‘Hill of Belief.’[373]

[Sidenote: The seven provinces.]

The reference too to the provinces of the Picts, combined with the statement in the legend that the Roman mission, as it may be called, had seven bishops at its head, leads us to conclude that the division of the kingdom of the Picts into seven provinces existed at this time. A tract of the twelfth century tells us that the territory anciently called ‘Albania,’ from the Picts, ‘Pictavia,’ and now corruptly ‘Scotia,’ was in ancient times divided by seven brethren into seven parts. ‘The principal part was Enegus and Moerne (now Angus and the Mearns or Kincardineshire), so called from Enegus, the eldest of the brothers. The second part was Adtheodle and Gouerin (now Atholl and Gowry). The third, Sradeern and Meneted (now Stratherne and Menteith). The fourth, Fif and Fothreve (now Fife and Kinross). The fifth, Marr and Buchen (now Mar and Buchan). The sixth, Muref and Ros (now Moray and Ross). The seventh, Cathanesia citra montem and ultramontem (now Sutherland and Caithness). That each province had a sub-province within it, and that these seven brothers were seven kings having seven sub-kings under them.’ These seven brothers are different from the seven sons of Cruithne of the Pictish legend, as the eldest is here called Angus, but they are obviously merely the ‘eponymi’ of the people of seven provinces. That this division can belong to no later period is apparent from the omission of that part of the western districts which formed the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada; and of the sub-kings we find one noticed at this very time,—Talorgan, son of Drostan, who is mentioned by Tighernac as flourishing from 713 to 739, when his death is recorded as ‘Rex Athfhotla’ or king of Atholl.[374] Four of these provinces composed the territory of the southern Picts, and the district of Gowrie forms the central region in which they all meet, and here on the east bank of the Tay was Scone, the principal seat at this time of the kingdom of the Picts.

[Sidenote: The Coronation Stone.]

It was at Scone too that the Coronation Stone was ‘reverently kept for the consecration of the kings of Alban,’ and of this stone it was believed that ‘no king was ever wont to reign in Scotland unless he had first, on receiving the royal name, sat upon this stone at Scone, which by the kings of old had been appointed the capital of Alban.’[375] Of its identity with the stone now preserved in the coronation chair at Westminster there can be no doubt. It is an oblong block of red sandstone, some 26 inches long by 16 inches broad, and 10½ inches deep, and the top is flat and bears the marks of chiselling. Its mythic origin identifies it with the stone which Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel, and then set up there for a pillar and anointed with oil, which, according to Jewish tradition, was afterwards removed to the second temple, and served as the pedestal for the ark. Legend has much to tell of how it was brought from thence to Scotland, but history knows of it only at Scone.[376] It too may have been connected with the legend of Bonifacius. We find that the principal Irish missionaries frequently carried about with them a slab or block of stone, which they used as an altar for the celebration of the Eucharist, and which was usually termed a stone altar. In places where it had been used for this purpose by any celebrated saint, and remained there, it was the object of much veneration among the people, and is the subject of many of the miracles recorded in the acts of the saint. Saint Patrick’s stone altar is frequently mentioned in his acts, and, in the only strictly analogous case to the coronation stone of the Scotch kings—that of the kings of Munster, who were crowned on the rock of Cashel, sitting upon a similar stone—the belief was that this coronation stone had been the stone altar of Saint Patrick on which he had first celebrated the Eucharist after the conversion and baptism of the king of Cashel. It is therefore not impossible that the coronation stone of Scone may have had the same origin, and been the stone altar upon which Bonifacius first celebrated the Eucharist after he had brought over the king of the Picts and his people from the usages of the Columban Church to conformity with those of the Roman Church, and possibly re-baptized him. The legend that it had been the stone at Bethel, which became the pedestal of the ark in the temple, and brought from thence, may have also a connection with the statement in the legend of Bonifacius that he was an Israelite and a native of Bethlehem, and had come from thence to Rome.[377]

[Sidenote: Expulsion of the Columban clergy.]

Be this as it may, the fact that Nectan and his people had at this time conformed to the Anglican Roman Church as contradistinguished from the Columban, and had issued a decree requiring the adoption of the Roman usages by the clergy of his kingdom, based as it is upon the personal knowledge of Bede, who lived at the time and records it, is undoubtedly historical. Nectan appears to have failed to obtain the submission of the Columban clergy to his decree, and some years after, in 717, he took the strong step of expelling them from the kingdom, and driving them across Drumalban, which then formed the boundary between the southern Picts and the Scots of Dalriada.[378] This opened the Columban foundations in the territory of the Picts to Scottish clergy who belonged to that part of the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome, and were not under the jurisdiction of Hii or Iona, as well as to such clergy from the kingdom of Northumbria as were disposed to adventure themselves once more into the Pictish country; and seven years afterwards, in the year 724, Nectan himself became a cleric, and was succeeded on the Pictish throne by Druxst.[379] The step thus taken by Nectan of dispossessing the Columban Church of the foundations it had possessed for a century and a half, and of driving its clergy out of the kingdom, naturally placed the kingdom of the Scots of Dalriada and that of the Picts in direct antagonism to each other, and arrayed the clergy under the jurisdiction of Iona against the latter, while the contest between the Dalriads and the Britons had for the time ceased. That, however, between the two great tribes of the Dalriads themselves—the Cinel Loarn and the Cinel Gabhran—still continued. In 719 Ainbhceallach, the son of Fearchar Fata, who had reigned one year after his father, and been expelled by his brother Sealbach, and sent bound to Ireland, appears to have made an effort to recover his position at the head of the Cinel Loarn, and a battle took place at Finglen on the Braes of Loarn, near Lochavich, between the brothers, in which Ainbhceallach was slain.[380] Tradition has preserved a record of this battle in the name _Blar nam braithrean_, or the battle-field of the brothers. In the same year a naval battle took place between the Cinel Gabhran under Dunchadh, son of Becc, the chief of that branch of the tribe which possessed the south half of Kintyre, and were descended from Conaing, son of Aidan, and the Cinel Loarn under Sealbach, at a place called Arddanesbi, probably the Point of Ardminish on the island of Gigha, in which the latter was defeated and several of the chiefs of his vassal tribes were slain. Dunchadh did not long enjoy his victory, for his death is recorded two years after, in which he is designated king of Kintyre.[381] In 722 the death of Beli, son of Alpin, king of Alclyde, is also recorded, and in the following year Sealbach becomes a cleric, and resigns his throne to his son Dungal.[382] Sealbach is the first of those chiefs, subsequent to the death of Domnall Brecc in 642, who bears the title of king of Dalriada, which shows that the kingdom of Dalriada had now been reconstituted, and that the chiefs of the Cinel Loarn had made good their right to occupy the throne along with the head of the Cinel Gabhran. Of the events of the reign of Drust two only are recorded, which seem to show an opposition between the party of Nectan, the previous king, and that of Drust. In 725, Simal, the son of Drust, is taken and bound, and in 726 Drust retaliates by subjecting the cleric Nectan to a similar fate.

[Sidenote: Simultaneous revolution in Dalriada and the kingdom of the Picts.]

There now follows a revolution in the two kingdoms of the Dalriads and the Picts, which takes place simultaneously. In the one Dungal of the Cinel Loarn is driven from the throne, and Eochaidh, who now appears as the head of the Cinel Gabhran, succeeds him. In the other Drust is driven from the throne and succeeded by Alpin.[383] These were brothers. Eochadh was the son of that Eochaidh, the grandson of Domnall Brecc, who died in 697, and Alpin was another son of the same Eochaidh, but his name shows that he had a Pictish mother, through whom he derived his claim to the Pictish throne.[384] The expulsion of Dungal from the throne of Dalriada seems to have called forth his father Sealbach from his monastery to endeavour to regain it. In 727 there is recorded a conflict at Ross-Foichen, or the promontory of Feochan, at the mouth of Loch Feochan, between him and the family of Eachdach, the grandson of Domnall, in which several of the two Airgiallas were slain.[385] Sealbach was unsuccessful, as Eochaidh remained in possession of the throne till his death is recorded as king of Dalriada in 733.[386] If, however, the revolution in Dalriada in 726 led to a renewed contest between the Cinel Gabhran under Eochaidh and the Cinel Loarn under Sealbach, that which took place in the kingdom of the Picts was followed by a still more determined struggle for supremacy which broke out, apparently, between several of the Pictish tribes, and led to the final establishment of a new family on the Pictish throne, the head of which was destined to terminate the Dalriadic kingdom. The parties to this struggle were Alpin, the reigning king, and Drust, his predecessor, who seem to have had their main interest in the central region about Scone; Nectan, the son of Derili, who, once more entering into secular life, endeavoured to regain his crown; and seems to have been connected with the more northern districts; and Aengus, son of Fergus, who is identified with the province of Fortrenn, and appears to have been the founder of a new family. The first collision was at ‘_Monaigh Craebi_’ or Moncrieffe, a name which belongs to a hill separating the valley of the Earn from that of the Tay, not far from the junction of the two rivers, between Aengus and Alpin, in which battle Aengus was victorious, and wrested the country west of the Tay from Alpin, whose son was slain in the conflict. The second collision was between Alpin and Nectan at ‘Caislen Credi’—the Castle of Belief, or Scone, the capital of the kingdom—when Alpin was again defeated, his territories and all his men were taken, and Nectan obtained the kingdom of the Picts while Alpin fled.[387] The sympathies of the Irish chronicler were with Alpin, as he terms this battle _Cath truadh_, an unfortunate battle. In the following year Angus attacked Nectan, who now bore the title of king of the Picts, and seems to have fled before him, as the final conflict took place on the bank of a lake formed by the river Spey, then termed Loogdeae, but now Loch Inch, between Nectan and an army Angus had sent in pursuit of him, in which Aengus’s family were victorious, and the officers of Nectan were slain,—Biceot son of Moneit, and his son, and Finguine son of Drostan, and Ferot son of Finguine, and many others.[388] Angus himself, who now called himself king of the Picts, encountered Drust at a place called Dromaderg Blathmig, which has been identified as the Redhead of Angus, near Kinblethmont, where Drust was slain on the 12th day of August.[389] The last battle fought in this struggle was in 731, between Brude, son of Aengus, and Talorcan, son of Congus, in which the latter was defeated and fled across Drumalban into Lorn,[390] and in the following year Tighernac records the death of Nectan, son of Derili.

[Sidenote: A.D. 731-761. Aengus mac Fergus, king of the Picts.]

Aengus was now firmly established on the Pictish throne, and his reign of thirty years is variously dated from 729 or from 731, according as the battles in the one or the other year are held to have finally confirmed his rule over the kingdom of the Picts. The death of Eachach, king of Dalriada, two years after, again opened the throne to the race of Loarn, and Muredach, the son of Ainbhceallach, assumed the chiefship of the Cinel Loarn, while Dungal, son of Selbaig, took possession of the throne of Dalriada; and in the same year the fleet of Dalriada was summoned to Ireland to assist Flaithbertach, king of Ireland, who had been defeated in battle by Aeda Allan, head of the Cinel Eoghan, and afterwards his successor on the throne of Ireland, and many of the Dalriads were slain and others drowned in the river Bann. Dungal, who appears to have accompanied them on his way to invade Culrenrigi, an island of the Cinel Eoghan, found Brude, the son of Aengus, in Toragh, a church founded by Saint Columba, in Tory island off the coast of Donegal, and violated the sanctuary by dragging him from it, which drew down upon him the wrath of Aengus, who in the following year invaded Dalriada and destroyed a fort called Dun Leithfinn, but which cannot now be identified, after having wounded Dungal, who fled to Ireland from his power. At the same time Tolarg, the son of Congus, was delivered into his hands by his own brother and drowned by his orders, and Talorgan, the son of Drostan, was taken near Dunolly and bound.[391]

A still more formidable attack was made by Aengus, the Pictish king, upon Dalriada, two years after, when in 736 he is recorded to have laid waste the entire country, taken possession of its capital Dunad, burnt Creic, a fort, the remains of which are still to be seen on the promontory of Craignish, and thrown the two sons of Sealbach, Dungal and Feradach, into chains; and shortly after his son Brude, who had been taken prisoner by Dungal, the king of Dalriada, died.[392] On this occasion Aengus appears to have obtained entire possession of Dalriada, and to have driven the two branches of its people, the Cinel Loarn under Muredach and the Cinel Gabhran under Alpin, the brother of Eochaidh, to extremity, for the former appears to have burst from Dalriada upon the Picts who inhabited the plain of Manann between the Carron and the Avon, in a desperate attempt to take possession of their country or to draw Aengus from Dalriada, and was met on the banks of the Avon at Cnuicc Coirpri in Calatros, now Carriber, where the Avon separates Lothian from Calatria, by Talorgan, the brother of Aengus, and defeated and pursued by him with his army, and many of his chief men slain.[393]

At this time the Northumbrians were at enmity with the Picts. Ceoluulf, the king of Northumbria, had followed the fashion of the time, and become a monk in Lindisfarne in the year 737. He was succeeded by his cousin Eadberct, the son of his father’s brother; and we are told, in the short chronicle annexed to Bede, that in 740 Aedilbald, king of Mercia, unfairly laid waste part of Northumbria, its king, Eadberct, being occupied with his army against the Picts.[394] It is probable that Aengus had excited the hostility of the king of Northumbria by stirring up the Picts of Lothian and Galloway to revolt, and that Eadberct may have encouraged if not invited the Scots of Dalriada to occupy their country. Alpin is said by all authorities to have reigned four years after Dungal, which brings us to the year 740, when he invaded Galloway with the part of the Dalriadic nation which followed him, and was slain there, after having laid waste and almost destroyed the country of the Picts. The Ulster Annals thus record it in 741:—Battle of Drum Cathmail between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads against Innrechtach.[395] The locality of this battle appears to have been in Galloway, not far from Kirkcudbright, and Innrechtach was probably the leader of the Galloway Picts. One of the Chronicles appears to have preserved the traditionary account of his death when it tells us that he was slain in Galloway, after he had destroyed it, by a single person who lay in wait for him in a thick wood overhanging the entrance of the ford of a river as he rode among his people.[396] The scene of his death must have been on the east side of Loch Ryan, where a stream falls into the loch, on the north side of which is the farm of Laight, and on this farm is a large upright pillar stone, to which the name of Laight Alpin, or the grave of Alpin, is given.[397] In the same year we have the short but significant record of the crushing of the Dalriads by Aengus, son of Fergus.[398]

[Sidenote: Suppressed century of Dalriadic history.]

By all the Chronicles compiled subsequent to the eleventh century, Alpin, son of Eochaidh, is made the last of the kings of Dalriada; but the century of Dalriadic history which follows his death in 741 is suppressed, and his reign is brought down to the end of the century by the insertion of spurious kings. The true era of the genuine kings who reigned over Dalriada can be ascertained by the earlier lists given us by Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan in the eleventh century, and the Annals of Tighernac and of Ulster, which are in entire harmony with each other. These earlier lists place nine kings during this century which followed the death of Alpin, whose united reigns amount to ninety-eight years. There is unfortunately a hiatus in the Annals of Tighernac from the year 765 to the year 973; but during the thirty years from 736 to 765 Tighernac records no king of Dalriada. In the remaining seventy-six years of the suppressed century, the Annals of Ulster mention only three kings of Dalriada, the first of whom corresponds with the second name in the list of nine kings given by the earlier Chroniclers, and he may have been a Scot;[399] but the seven who follow him bear the most unequivocal marks of having been Picts, and this shows us that the effect of Aengus’s repeated invasions and final conquest of Dalriada was to make it a Pictish province: his entire possession of the country having led the remains of both the Cinel Loarn and the Cinel Gabhran to seek settlements elsewhere; while during the reign of his successor one attempt only appears to have been made to restore the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.[400]

The list of Pictish kings in the later Chronicles bears also marks of having been manipulated for a purpose, but here fortunately we have the trustworthy guide of the Pictish Chronicle, which belongs to the tenth century, and is evidently untainted. For the Anglic history our invaluable guide Bede leaves us in 731, and the short chronicle annexed to his work in 765, as does also the continuator of Nennius in 738; and we have now to resort to the works of Simeon of Durham, as the best source remaining to look to for Northumbrian events. For the Britons of Alclyde we have merely the short notices contained in the chronicle annexed to Nennius, usually termed the _Annales Cambriæ_, and the Welsh Chronicle called the Brut y Tywysogyon.

These nations had now resumed their normal relation to each other—east against west—the Picts and Angles again in alliance, and opposed to them the Britons and the Scots. Simeon of Durham tells us that in 744 a battle was fought between the Picts and the Britons, but, by the Picts, Simeon usually understands the Picts of Galloway, and this battle seems to have followed the attack upon them by Alpin and his Scots. It was followed by a combined attack upon the Britons of Alclyde by Eadberct of Northumbria, and Aengus, king of the Picts. The chronicle annexed to Bede tells us that in 750 Eadberct added the plain of Cyil with other regions to his kingdom.[401] This is evidently Kyle in Ayrshire, and the other regions were probably Carrick and Cuninghame, so that the king of Northumbria added to his possessions of Galloway on the north side of the Solway the whole of Ayrshire. In the same year the Picts of the plain of Manann and the Britons encountered each other at Mocetauc or Magedauc, now Mugdoch in Dumbartonshire, where a great battle was fought between them, in which Talorgan, the brother of Aengus, who had been made king of the outlying Picts, was slain by the Britons.[402] Two years after, Teudubr, the son of Bile, king of Alclyde, died, and a battle is fought between the Picts themselves at a place called by Tighernac ‘Sreith,’ in the land of Circin, that is, in the Strath in the Mearns, in which Bruide, the son of Maelchu, fell. As his name is the same as the Bruide, son of Maelchu, who was king of the northern Picts in the sixth century, this was probably an attack upon Aengus’s kingdom by the northern Picts.[403]

Eadberct, king of Northumbria, and Aengus, king of the Picts, now united for the purpose of subjecting the Britons of Alclyde entirely to their power, and in 756 they led an army to Alclyde, and there received the submission of the Britons on the first day of August in that year. Ten days afterwards, however, Simeon of Durham records that almost the whole army perished as Eadberct was leading it from Ovania, probably Avendale or Strathaven in the vale of the Clyde, through the hill country to Niwanbyrig or Newburgh.[404] The Britons of Alclyde thus passed a second time under subjection to the Angles, which continued some time, as in 760 the death of Dunnagual, the son of Teudubr is recorded, but he is not termed king of Alclyde.[405] In the year 761 Tighernac records the death of Aengus mac Fergus, king of the Picts, after a reign of thirty years; and the chronicle annexed to Bede, which places his death in the same year, adds that ‘from the beginning of his reign to the end of it he showed himself a sanguinary tyrant of the most cruel actions.’[406]

[Sidenote: Foundation of St. Andrews.]

Nevertheless, it is to the reign of this Angus, son of Fergus, that the foundation of the monastery of Kilrimont or St. Andrews properly belongs. According to the earliest form of the legend, the king of the Picts, Ungus son of Uirguist by name, with a large army, attacks the Britannic nations inhabiting the south of the island, and cruelly wasting them arrives at the plain of Merc (Merse). There he winters, and being surrounded by the people of almost the whole island with a view to destroy him with his army, he is, while walking with his seven ‘comites,’ surrounded by a divine light, and a voice, purporting to proceed from St. Andrew, promises him victory if he will dedicate the tenth part of his inheritance to God and St. Andrew. On the third day he divides his army into twelve bodies, and proving victorious returns thanks to God and St. Andrew for the victory, and wishing to fulfil his vow, he is uncertain what part of his territory he is especially to dedicate as the principal city to St. Andrew, when one of those who had come from Constantinople with the relics of St. Andrew arrives at the summit of the King’s Mount, which is called Rigmund. The king comes with his army at a place called Kartenan, is met by Regulus the monk, a pilgrim from Constantinople, who arrives with the relics of St. Andrew, at the harbour called Matha. They fix their tents where the royal hall now is, and King Aengus gives the place and city to God and St. Andrew to be the head and mother of all the churches in the kingdom of the Picts.[407] The later and more elaborate legend contained in the Register of St. Andrews tells substantially the same tale, but adds that Hungus, the great king of the Picts, fought against Adhelstan, king of the Saxons, and was encamped at the mouth of the river Tyne, and that St. Andrew appeared to him in a dream; that the king of the Picts divided his army into seven bodies, and defeated the Saxons, slaying their king Adhelstan, whose head he cut off. King Hungus returns with his army to his own country, taking Adhelstan’s head with him, and affixed it on a wooden pillar at the harbour called Ardchinnechun, now the Queen’s Harbour, after which the Saxons never ventured to attack the Picts. In the meantime Regulus the bishop, with the relics of St. Andrew, arrives in the land of the Picts, at a place formerly called Muckros, and now Kilrimont. From thence they go to Fortevieth, where they find the three sons of Hungus, Howonam and Nectan and Phinguineghert, and because their father was then engaged in an expedition into the regions of Argathelia and they were anxious for his life, they dedicate to God and St. Andrew the tenth part of the city of Fortevieth. They then go to Moneclatu, now called Monichi, and here they find Queen Finche, who bears a child to King Hungus called Mouren, and Queen Finche gives the house and whole royal palace to God and St. Andrew. They then cross the Mounth, and come to a lake called Doldencha, now Chondrochedalvan. Here they meet King Hungus returning from his expedition, who does honour to the relics of St. Andrew, and gives that place to God and St. Andrew, and builds a church there. The king then crosses the Mounth and comes to Monichi, where he builds a church, and then to Fortevieth, where he also builds a church, and after that to ‘Chilrymont,’ where he dedicates a large part of that place to God and St. Andrew for the purpose of building churches and oratories.[408] It is unnecessary to follow this legend further. The places here mentioned can be identified without difficulty, and are simply those where churches dedicated to St. Andrew existed. Chilrymont is the modern St. Andrews, the principal church dedicated to the apostle St. Andrew in honour of his relics. Monichi is Eglis Monichti in the county of Forfar, also dedicated to St. Andrew, and Chondrochedalvan is Kindrochet in Braemar, which is also dedicated to him. The war with the Saxons refers to that period in the reign of Aengus when he was at war with Eadberct, king of Northumberland; the expedition into Argathelia, to his invasion of Dalriada in 736. His sons living at Fortevieth, and giving a tenth part of the city, shows his connection with the province called Fortrenn, in which it was situated; and the appearance for the first time during Aengus’s reign of an abbot of Ceannrigmonaidh, whose death Tighernac records in 747, fixes the foundation to his reign.[409]

These legends must, of course, be taken only for what they are worth, and in analysing them it is necessary to distinguish between that portion which belongs to the history of the relics of St. Andrew and what is obviously connected with the foundation of St. Andrews. The events in this portion of the legend are thus not inconsistent with those of the reign of Aengus, son of Fergus, and we may accept them so far as to conclude that, as in the reign of Nectan, son of Derili, the Columban monks had been superseded by a clergy from that portion of the Irish Church which had conformed to the Roman usages, and from the Anglic Church established by Wilfrid, and the veneration of Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles, had replaced the dedication of the churches to their local founders, according to the custom of the Columban Church; so in the reign of Aengus, son of Fergus, another clerical immigration from the same quarter had brought in the veneration of St. Andrew, and founded a church in honour of his relics at the place first called ‘Ceannrighmonaigh,’ and afterwards from the church ‘Cellrighmonaidh,’ corrupted to Kilrymont, which commended itself so much to the Pictish nation that it, in its turn, superseded the veneration of St. Peter. St. Andrew was adopted as their patron saint, and the church of St. Andrews became their national church; and these legends emerged from this church in the form we have them, as they felt the importance of claiming for its foundation an antiquity superior to that of Iona.

[Sidenote: A.D. 761-763. Bruide mac Fergusa, king of the Picts.]

Aengus was succeeded, in accordance with the Pictish law, by his brother Bruide, who reigned only two years, and died in 763. He is termed by Tighernac king of Fortrenn.[410] [Sidenote: A.D. 763-775. Ciniod, son of Wredech, king of the Picts.] His successor was Ciniod, son of Wredech, who reigned twelve years. Eadberct, the king of Northumbria, abdicated his throne in 758, and was succeeded by his son Osulf, who had reigned only one year when he was slain, and by his own people; and in 759, Ethelwald, called Moll, became king; and in the third year Simeon tells us a battle was fought between him and Oswine, one of his generals, at Eldun near Melrose,[411] in which Oswine was slain, which shows that Ethelwald’s kingdom still extended at least as far as East Lothian. After a six years’ reign, Ethelwald was succeeded in 765 by Alcred, a descendant of Ida through a concubine. Ciniod had reigned only five years over the Picts, when a battle is recorded in Fortrenn between him and Aedh.[412] This is the first appearance of that Aed called by Flann Mainistrech the plunderer, and by the Albanic Duan the high lord,[413] and is the first of those kings of Dalriada who appear in the Annals of Ulster, where he is termed Aed Finn, son of Ecdach. He was probably a Scot who attempted to restore the Dalriadic kingdom after the strong grasp of Angus mac Fergus over it was withdrawn. Aedh’s death is recorded in 778, and in 781 that of his brother Fergus, but the latter does not appear among the list of kings in Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan, and therefore was either only nominally king or reigned in Irish Dalriada, and three years after the last tie which bound the Scots to Dalriada was severed. The founders of the colony, the three sons of Erc, are stated in all the chronicles to have been buried in Iona, and in 784 their remains were exhumed and carried to the city of Taillten, in Meath, in Ireland, the ancient cemetery of the kings of Ulster.[414]

Ciniod, the king of the Picts, appears at this time to have been in close connection with the Angles, for Simeon of Durham tells us that in 774 King Alcred, by the design and consent of all his connections, being deprived of the society of the royal family and princes, changed the dignity of empire for exile. He went with a few of the companions of his flight first to the city of Bamborough, and afterwards to the king of the Picts, Cynoth by name; and Ethelred, the son of his predecessor, occupied the throne of Northumbria for six years; and in the following year he tells us that ‘Cynoth, king of the Picts, was taken from the whirl of this polluted life.’[415] His death in the same year is more quietly recorded in the Ulster Annals.

[Sidenote: A.D. 775-780. Alpin, son of Wroid, king of the Picts.]

Ciniod was succeeded by Alpin, son of Wroid, who appears to have obtained possession of part of the Northumbrian territory north of the Tweed, as after a reign of three or four years his death is recorded in 780 as that of Elpin, king of the Saxons.[416] This is the more probable as he is followed by Drest, son of Talorgen, who reigns four or five years, and Talorgen, son of Aengus, who reigns two and a half. The accession of the latter, however, was contrary to the Pictish law, being the son of a previous king; and we find that this was a case of disputed succession, the northern Picts supporting the one, and the other being accepted by the southern Picts, as king during the first half of the reign of Drest, till he was slain in 782; for the Ulster Annals in that year record the death of Dubhtolargg, king of the Cismontane Picts.[417] This was the first break in upon the Pictish law of succession, and the intercourse with the Saxons, and the influence exercised by them, probably led the southern Picts to view with more favour a male succession.

[Sidenote: A.D. 789-820. Constantin, son of Fergus, king of the Picts.]

Drest, whose death is not recorded, appears to have been succeeded by Canaul, son of Tarla, or Conall, son of Taidg, who reigned five years, till in 789 or 790 he is attacked by Constantin, son of Fergus, and the result of a battle between them was that Conall, son of Taidg, was defeated and fled, and the victor Constantin became king of the Picts.[418] Conall, son of Taidg, appears to have taken refuge in Dalriada, where at this time Domnall, son of Constantin, was ruler under the Picts, and to have eventually governed there himself for four years, as Domnall is followed in the list by two Conalls who are said to be brothers, the first ruling two and the second four years, and the end of the government of the latter corresponds with the year 807, when the Ulster Annals record the assassination of Conall, son of Taidg, by Conall, son of Aedain, in Kintyre.[419] Constantin, son of Fergus, the king of the Picts, appears now to have assumed the rule in Dalriada himself, as his name follows that of the second Conall in the lists, and retained it for nine years.

[Sidenote: Norwegian and Danish pirates.]

In the meantime, a new race appeared on the scene, who were destined to cut off for several centuries, to a great extent, the intercourse which had hitherto prevailed between Scotland and Ireland, and materially to influence the history of both countries. They make their first appearance in the year 793 in an attack upon the island of Lindisfarne. Simeon of Durham tells us that their approach was heralded by ‘fearful prodigies which terrified the wretched nation of the Angles; inasmuch as horrible lightnings and dragons in the air and flashes of fire were often seen glancing and flying to and fro; which signs indicated the great famine and the terrible and unutterable slaughter of multitudes which ensued,’ and he gives the following graphic account of their attack upon Lindisfarne. ‘In the same year, of a truth, the Pagans from the northern region came with a naval armament to Britain like stinging hornets, and over-ran the country in all directions like fierce wolves, plundering, tearing, and killing not only sheep and oxen, but priests and levites, and choirs of monks and nuns. They came, as we before said, to the church of Lindisfarne, and laid all waste with dreadful havoc, trod with unhallowed feet the holy places, dug up the altars, and carried off all the treasures of the holy church. Some of the brethren they killed, some they carried off in chains, many they cast out naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea.’[420] They seem to have been mainly attracted to those islands where monastic establishments were to be found as affording richest plunder; and the scene above depicted by Simeon was no doubt repeated at the sack of each monastery.

In the following year they ravaged the harbours of King Ecgfrid, and plundered the monastery at the mouth of the river Wear; but, says Simeon, ‘St. Cuthbert did not allow them to depart unpunished, for their chief was there put to a cruel death by the Angles, and a short time afterwards a violent storm shattered, destroyed, and broke up their vessels, and the sea swallowed up very many of them; some, however, were cast ashore and speedily slain without mercy; and these things befel them justly, since they heavily injured those who had not injured them.’[421]

Another body of these pirates directed their attacks against the Western Isles in 794, when the Ulster Annals record that these islands were utterly laid waste by a people to whom they apply the general term of Gentiles, and the church of Iona is plundered by them. In 796 Osuald the Patrician, who had been appointed to the kingdom of Northumbria by some of the chiefs of that nation on the death of King Ethelred, who was slain in that year on the 18th of April, was twenty-seven days after expelled from the kingdom, and with a few followers retired to the island of Lindisfarne, and thence went by ship with some of the brethren to the king of the Picts, Constantin. In 798 the northern pirates took spoils of the sea between Erin and Alban, which no doubt implies that the Western Isles were again laid waste by them. In 802 I-Columchill, or Iona, is burnt by them, and in 806 the community of Iona, amounting to sixty-eight persons, are slain by them.[422] Besides the general term of Gentiles, that of Gall, the Irish word for stranger, was likewise applied to them, and two nations were distinguished as Finngaill, white or fair-haired Galls, and Dubhgaill, black or dark-haired Galls—the former being Norwegians, to whom also the term of Lochlannach, or people of Lochlann, was applied, and the latter, Danes.[423] Iona, when thus ravaged by these pirates, and its community almost entirely cut off by them, was still the head of all the Columban churches, and this catastrophe seems to have led to a resolution to remove the seat of the supremacy to a safer locality. This was not to be found in any of the Western Isles, and the respective claims of Scotland and Ireland were solved by the foundation in each country of a church which should be supreme over the Columban monasteries in that country. In Ireland, accordingly, a new church was commenced in the year following the slaughter of the Iona monks, at a place called Cennanus, in Meath, now Kells, which had been given to the Columban Church three years before, and the church was finished in the year 814. In Scotland the position selected was at the pass where the Tay makes its way through the barrier of the Grampians; and here, while Constantin ruled over both Dalriada and the Picts, he founded the Church of Dunkeld,[424] in which he may possibly have put the brethren from Lindisfarne who took refuge with him in 796.

[Sidenote: A.D. 820-832. Aengus, son of Fergus, king of Fortrenn.]

On his death, which took place in 820,[425] his brother Aengus, who had ruled over Dalriada during the last four years of Constantin’s reign, succeeded him as king of the Picts, and ruled over both kingdoms for the first five years of his reign, in the last year of which we find recorded the martyrdom of Blathmhaic, son of Flann, by the Gentiles in Hi Coluimcille. During the remainder of his reign we find Dalriada governed successively by Aed, son of Boanta, and by his own son Eoganan. It is to this Aengus, son of Fergus, that the later chronicles have erroneously attributed the foundation of St. Andrews; but as the kings of this family are termed kings of Fortrenn, and are found bearing the same names, it is probable that they belonged to the royal family of which the first Aengus, son of Fergus, was the founder, and which appears to have been peculiarly connected with the province of Fortrenn. The death of Aengus, son of Fergus, is recorded by the Ulster Annals in 834,[426] and again we find a conflict between the old Pictish law of succession and the custom more recently introduced of permitting the sons of previous kings to occupy the throne, for the Pictish Chronicle tells us that Drest, son of Constantin, and Talorgan, son of Wthoil, reigned jointly for three years. The former, who was the son of Constantin mac Fergus, was probably accepted by the southern Picts, while those of the northern provinces were more tenacious of the old law, and supported a king the name of whose father was not borne by any of the previous kings.

[Sidenote: A.D. 832. Alpin the Scot attacks the Picts, and is slain.]

We find, however, at this time a third competitor, who appears to have asserted his right to rule over the southern Picts. This was Alpin, of Scottish race by paternal descent, but whose Pictish name shows that his maternal descent was from that race. We are told in the Chronicle of Huntingdon that ‘in the year 834 there was a conflict between the Scots and Picts at Easter, and many of the more noble of the Picts were slain, and Alpin, king of the Scots, remained victorious, but being elated with his success, he was, in another battle fought on the 20th of July in the same year, defeated and decapitated.’[427]

Alpin seems to have made this attempt at the head of those Scots who were still to be found in the country, and was probably supported by a part of the Pictish nation who were favourable to his cause. Tradition points to the Carse of Gowrie as the scene of his attempt, and Pitalpin, now Pitelpie, near Dundee, as the locality of the battle in which he was defeated and slain; and the occurrence of a place near St. Andrews called Rathalpin or the Fort of Alpin, now Rathelpie, seems to indicate that it was in the province of ‘Fib’ or Fife that he found his support and established himself after his first success.

[Sidenote: A.D. 836-839. Eoganan, son of Aengus.]

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:

719 Cath maritimum Arddeanesbi etir Dunchadh mac Becc cum genere Gabrain et Selbach cum genere Loarn et versum est super Selbacum ii. Non. Octobris die iii. ferie, in quo quidem comites corruerunt. 721 Duncadh (mac) Becc Ri Cindtire mortuus est.—_Tigh._ See note ^{385} as to the meaning of ‘comites’ here. Duncadh was the son of Becc, grandson of Duncadh, son of Conaing, son of Aidan, by his son Conall Chail, whose death in 681 is thus recorded by Tighernac:—Bass Conaill Chail mac Dunchadh in Cindtire.

Footnote 382:

722 Beli filius Elfin moritur.—_An. Cam._ Bili mac Elphine rex Alochluaithe moritur.—_Tigh._

723 Clericatus Selbaigh regis Dalriada.—_Tigh._

Footnote 383:

725 Simal filius Druist constringitur.—_Tigh._

726 Nechtain mac Derili constringitur apud Druist regem. Dungal de regno ejectus est et Druist de regno Pictorum ejectus et Elphin pro eo regnat. Eochach mac Eachach regnare incipit.—_Tigh._

Footnote 384:

Flann Mainistrech has ‘nine kings over Albain from the death of Donald, son of Aed, to the death of Aeda Allan, son of Fergal, king of Ireland, that is from 642 to 743,’ the last two of whom are Selbach mac Ferchair and Eochaidh Angbaidh, or the valiant; and from the death of Aeda Allan to the death of Aeda Finnleith, that is, from 743 to 879, he has ‘thirteen kings over Alban,’ the first two of whom are Dungal mac Selbach and Alpin mac Eachach. This leaves no room for doubt as to the period when these four kings reigned, and agrees exactly with the Irish Annals. The Albanic Duan omits the stanza following Ainbhcellach, and containing Selbach and Eochach, and then has ‘Dungal dein seven years, Alpin four years.’ Dungal had reigned both before and after Eochaidh, as we shall see; and as Eochach is also called son of Eochach by Tighernac, this leaves no doubt that he and Alpin were brothers.

Footnote 385:

727 Congressio Irroisfoichne, ubi quidam ceciderunt _den dibh Airgiallaibh_ inter Selbacum et familiam Echdach nepotis Domhnaill.—_An. Ult._ This term ‘Airgialla’ is the same word as that applied to the territory said to have been acquired from the Picts in Ulster by the three Collas in the fourth century, of which Emhan or Emania was the capital. It was called Oirgialla or Airgialla, from which comes the modern name of Oriel; but this Airgialla cannot here be meant, for in the tract on the Men of Alban we are told that ‘the armed muster of the Cinel Loarn was 700 men; but it is of the Airgialla that the seventh hundred is’ (_acht is dinaibh Airgiall in Sechtmadh cet._—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 313). This name was therefore likewise applied to two districts whose people were subject to the Cinel Loarn, and contributed 100 men to their armed muster, and were probably the ‘Comites’ who fought along with Sealbach in 719. This leads us to look to the origin of the name. ‘Gialla’ is a hostage, and the tribes who owed fealty to the head of a superior tribe gave hostages for the fulfilment of their obligation. When any failure took place in their duty, these hostages were fettered. Thus, at the king’s table, as described in the Crith Gablach, sat on one side the hostages, and at the extreme end the forfeited hostages or pledges in fetters (see Introduction to O’Curry’s _Lectures_, p. cccli); and in the Pictish legends Finach takes hostages (Gialla) of the Cruithnigh, and Fiachna mac Baedan fetters the hostages of Erin and Alban.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 24, 320. Now we learn from the Book of Rights that it was a privilege of the kingdom of Airgialla that ‘their hostages were not bound in fetters nor in chains, save that they swear by the hand of the king that they will not then make their escape’ (see _Book of Rights_, p. 135); and a tract on Oirghialla states that whenever the hostage of the Oirghialla was fettered, golden chains were used for the purpose, and that it was hence they were called Oirghialla, _i.e._ of the golden hostages. The Airgialla of Dalriada were therefore districts which owed fealty to the Cinel Loarn, but possessed the same privileges which gave that name to the Irish Airgialla; and the central districts between the territories of the Cinel Loarn, Cinel Gabbran, and Cinel Comgall, situated on both sides of Loch Awe, and occupied by the remains of the older population, were probably the districts known by the name of the two Airgiallas.

Footnote 386:

733 Eochach mac Eochach ri Dalriada et Conall mac Concobair mortui sunt.—_Tigh._

Footnote 387:

728 Cath Monaigh Craebi itir Piccardachaib fein (between the Picts themselves) _i.e._ Aengus et Alpine issiat tuc in cath (fought that battle), et ro mebaigh ria (the victory was with) n Aengus et ro marbhadh mac Alpin andsin (and the son of Alpin was slain there) et ro gab Aengus nert (and Angus took his person). Cath truadh itir (an unfortunate battle between the) Piccardachaebh ac Caislen Credhi et ro mebaigh ar in (and the victory was against the same), Alpin et ro bearadh a cricha et a daine de uile (and his territories and all his men were taken), et ro gab Nechtan mac Derili Righi na Picardach (lost the kingdom of the Picts).—_Tigh._ The Ulster Annals add,—‘ubi Alpinus effugit.’

Footnote 388:

729 Bellum Monitcarno juxta stagnum Loogdae inter hostem Nechtain et exercitum Aengusa et exactatores Nechtain ceciderunt, id est, Biceot mac Moneit et filius ejus et Finguine mac Drostain, Ferot mac Finguine et alii multi. Familia Aengusia triumphavit.—_An. Ult._ The Stagnum Loogdeae is mentioned in Adamnan’s _Life of St. Columba_, and what is there stated, taken in connection with this battle, seems to place it on the Spey. See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, pp. 258, 357. Exactor was a term applied to the Saxon thane.

Footnote 389:

Cath Dromaderg Blathmig etir Piccardachaibh, _i.e._ Druist et Aengus Ri na Piccandach et ro marbhadh (was slain) Drust andsin in dara la deg do mi Aughuist (there on the twelfth day of the month of August).—_Tigh._ Dromaderg Blathmig means ‘the red ridge of Blathmig.’

Footnote 390:

Cath etir mac Aengusa et mac Congusa sunt Brudheus vicit Talorcum fugientem.—_Tigh._ 732 Nechtan mac Derili mortuus.—_Tigh._

Footnote 391:

733 Dungal mac Selbaich dehonoravit Toraic cum traxit Brudeum ex ea et eadem vice insulam Culrenrigi invasit.—_An. Ult._ The corresponding entry in Tighernac is corrupt.

Muredhach mac Ainbhcellach regnum generis Loarn assumit.—_Tigh._

Flaithbertach classem Dalriada in Iberniam duxit et cædes magna facta est de eis in insula Honie ubi hi trucidantur viri Concobar mac Lochene, et Branchu mac Brain et multi in flumine dimersi sunt de eis in Banna.—_Tigh._

734 Tolarg mac Congusa a brathair fein dia gabhail et tuc illaimh na Piccardach et ro baighed leoseden h. e. (taken by his own brother and delivered into the hands of the Picts, and he was drowned by them).—_Tigh._

Talorgan filius Drostain comprehensus alligatur juxta arcem Ollaigh. Dunleithfinn destruitur post vulnerationem Dungaile et in Hiberniam a potestate Aengusii fugatus est.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 392:

736 Aengus mac Fergusa rex Pictorum vastavit regiones Dailriata et obtinuit Dunad et combussit Creic et duos filios Selbaiche catenis alligavit, id est, Dongal et Feradach, et paulo post Brudeus mac Aengusa mic Fergusa obiit.—_Tigh._

Footnote 393:

736 Bellum Cnuicc Coirpri i Calathros uc etar Linndu inter Dalriatai et Fortrenn et Talorgan mac Ferguso filium Ainbhceallach fugientem cum exercitu persequitur in qua congressione multi nobiles ceciderunt.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 394:

740 Eratque rex eorum Eadberctus occupatus cum suo exercitu contra Pictos.—Bede, _Chron._

Footnote 395:

741 Bellum Droma Cathmail inter Cruithniu et Dalriati for Innrechtac.—_An. Ult._ The only notice the author has been able to find of a place called Cathmail is in a poem attributed to Saint Columba in honour of Saint Cormac ua Liathan, mentioned in Adamnan’s Life, when he came to Iona. One stanza is this:—

When the blooming sweet man had arrived At Cross Cormac, at his church, Then rang the soft-toned bell Here at the city of Cathmail.

(See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, orig. edit., p. 270.) The translation has been made a little more literal, and the only church which bears Cormac’s name in Scotland is Kirk Cormac, in the parish of Kelton in Galloway, some miles north of Kirkcudbright. The writer of the Statistical Account says that ‘its surface abounds with small hills of a conical figure called _Drums_;’ and ‘on the north-east is the green hill of Dungayle, whose summit was once crowned with a strong fort.’ Dungayle is probably a corruption from _Dun G-cathmhail_, the aspirated consonants being quiescent.—_N. S. A._ vol. iv. pp. 144-5.

Footnote 396:

Cesty fust tue en Goloway, com il le avoit destruyt, de un soul hom qi ly gayta en un espesse boys en pendaunt al entree dun ge de un ryvere, com chevaucheoit entre ses gentz.—_Scalachron._

Footnote 397:

Chalmers identifies Laight Alpin with an old ruin in Loch Doon called Laight Castle, founding on a charter by William the Lion to the town of Ayr, which implies that Laight Alpin was on the border between Ayrshire and Galloway; but the name really belongs to the farms of Meikle and Little Laight on the eastern shore of Loch Ryan, and the stone is on the very line of separation between the counties of Ayr and Wigtown.

Footnote 398:

741 Percussio Dalriatai la Aengus mac Ferguso.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 399:

See the introduction to Fordun’s Chronicle, vol. ii., for a full exposition of the manipulation of the Chronicles at this time. The three kings given in the Ulster Annals are—A.D. 778 Aedfinn mac Ecdach rex Dalriati mortuus est. 781 Fergus mac Echach ri Dalriati defunctus est. 792 Donncorci rex Dalriatai obiit. The form ‘rex Dalriati’ and ‘Dalriatai’ means rather king of the Dalriads than of Dalriada. The Annals of Ulster have in 700 ‘Fiannain nepos Duncho rex Dalriati,’ who was evidently of the Irish Dalriada; and the Annals of the Four Masters, which have the same four, call the first ‘Toisech’ and the other three ‘Tighearn Dalriada,’ or Lords of Dalriada; and, as these annals contain Irish events only, the compilers evidently considered them all as belonging to Irish Dalriada. Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan have an Aed among their kings, whose time corresponds with the first of these kings.

Footnote 400:

Pinkerton, who was the first to see the difference between the statement in the Albanic Duan and the latter Chronicle, and to give the preference to the former, quotes from the Annals of Ulster the following:—A.D. 740, Death of Dunlaing, son of Duncan, king of the sept of Argyle (Argal); and A.D. 811, Angus, son of Dunlaing, king of Argyle (Ardgail), died; and argues from them that these were the remains of the Dalriads who continued to possess part of the country of Argyll (vol. ii. p. 127). He quoted, however, from a bad copy of the Annals of Ulster. In the original the word is Ardgail, a district in Meath, in Ireland, and has no connection with the name Argyll. See also the introduction to Fordun’s Chronicle, ed. 1872, vol. ii. p. xlvi note.

Footnote 401:

744 Factum est prælium inter Pictos et Britones.—Sim. Dun. _Hist. Regum_. 750 Eadberctus campum Cyil cum aliis regionibus suo regno addidit.—Bede, _Chron._

Footnote 402:

750 Cath etir Pictones et Britones, id est a Talorgan mac Fergusa et a brathair et ar Piccardach imaille friss (and his brother and a slaughter of Picts with him).—_Tigh._ 750 Bellum inter Pictos et Brittones id est, Gueith Mocetauc et rex eorum Talorgan a Brittonibus occiditur.—_An. Cam._ It is plain that these were the same Picts whom Muredach the Dalriad attacked in 736, as Talorgan appears at their head on both occasions.

Footnote 403:

752 Taudar mac Bile Ri Alochlandaih (Alochluaithe) mortuus est. Cuth a sreith in terra Circin inter Pictones invicem in quo cecidit Bruidhi mac Maelchon.—_Tigh._ Circin was the name of one of the seven sons of Cruithne, and of the seven districts which bore the same names. It enters into Magh Girgin as the plain of Circin, softened to Moerne or Mearns.

Footnote 404:

756 Eadberht rex, xviii. anno regni sui, et Unust rex Pictorum duxerunt exercitum ad urbem Alcluth. Ibique Brittones in deditionem receperunt prima die mensis Augusti. Decima autem die ejusdem mensis interiit exercitus pene omnis quem duxit (Eadberhtus) de Ouania ad Niwanbirig, id est, ad novam civitatem.—_Sim. Dun._

Footnote 405:

760 Dunnagual filius Teudubr moritur.—_An. Cam._

Footnote 406:

761 Aengusa mac Fergusa rex Pictorum mortuus.—_Tigh._ Oengus Pictorum rex obiit, qui regni sui principium usque ad finem facinore cruento tyrannus perduxit carnifex.—Bede, _Chron._ There seems to have been some doubt as to the year of his death, as Simeon of Durham has at 759, ‘Ipso quoque anno Unust Pictorum rex defunctus est;’ and Tighernac enters his death twice, having also at 759, Aengus ri Albain mortuus; but 761 seems to be best supported.

Footnote 407:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 138.

Footnote 408:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 183.

Footnote 409:

Mors Tuathalain Abbas Cindrighmonaigh.—_Tigh._ The events of the reign of this Hungus, including the foundation of St. Andrews, are, by the artificial system by which this part of the history has been manipulated, removed back to the fourth century; but as a war with a Saxon king at that early period was too monstrous, that part of the legend is transferred to a later Hungus. A chronicle, however, annexed to a MS. of Wynton, gives us very nearly the true date. ‘The zeire of God sevyn hunder lxi., ye relikis of Sanct Androw ye apostle com in Scotland’ (_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 387). Adhelstan, with whom the battle was fought, is supposed to have given his name to Athelstaneford on the Tyne in East Lothian. If the name is historical, and not merely taken from the later Athelstane who invaded Scotland in the tenth century, it must have belonged to a ‘dux’ or commander under the king of Northumbria, and the name of Aedlsing occurs in the genealogies of the Bernician family annexed to Nennius about this time, who may be the person meant.

Footnote 410:

763 Bruidhi Ri Fortchernn (Fortren, _An. Ult._) mortuus est.—_Tigh._

Footnote 411:

Cujus tertio anno inchoante, gravissimum juxta Eldunum secus Melros gestum est bellum octavo idus Augusti, in quo cecidit Oswine post triduum, prima feria. The place meant is the Eildon Hill near Melrose. The Saxon Chronicle calls the place Edwine’s Cliffe.

Footnote 412:

768 Bellum i Fortrinn ittir Aedh et Cinaedh.—_An. Ult._ The Annals of the Four Masters record this as a battle between Aedh and Cinaedh, son of Flann, Leinster men, where Aedh was slain, but there was no place called Fortrenn in Leinster. It is probably a mere speculative identity by the compilers.

Footnote 413:

The word used by Flann, ‘Airgnech’ in one MS. and ‘Airectech’ in another, both formed from the verb Airce, to plunder or rob. The Duan has ‘Aodh na Ardfhlaith.’

Footnote 414:

784 Adventus reliquiarum filiorum Eirc ad civitatem Tailten.—_An. Ult._ ‘The chiefs of Ulster before Conchobar were buried at Tailte, namely, Ollamh Fotla and seven of his sons and grandsons and others of the chiefs of Ulster.’—_Tract on Cemeteries in Lebor na Huidri_, p. 38.

Footnote 415:

Sim. Dun. 775 Rex Pictorum Cynoth ex voragine hujus cœnulentæ vitæ eripitur.

775 Mors Cinadhon regis Pictorum.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 416:

Elpin rex Saxonum moritur.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 417:

782 Dubhtolargg rex Pictorum citra Monoth periit.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 418:

789 Bellum inter Pictos ubi Conall mac Taidg victus est et evasit et Constantin victor fuit. 790 Vel hic bellum Conall et Constantin secundum alios libros.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 419:

807 Jugulatio Conall mac Taidg o Conall mac Aedain i Ciunntire.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 420:

Sim. Dun. _Hist. Regum_, ad an. 793.

Footnote 421:

Sim. Dun. _Hist. Reg._, ad an. 794.

Footnote 422:

794 Vastatio omnium insolarum Britanniæ a gentibus.—_An. Ult._ Orcain (plunder of) Iæ Coluimchille.—_An. Inis._

798 Indreda mara doaibh eene etir (spoils of the sea taken by them between) Erinn agus Albain.—_An. Ult._

802 Hi Coluimbea cille a gentibus combusta est.—_An. Ult._

806 Familia Iæ occisa est a gentibus, .i. lx. octo.—_An. Ult._

Ochtar is da fithchid dona Mannachaibh an Aoi Choluimchille do mharbbadh do Lochlannaibh (forty-eight of the number of Icolumkill slain by the Lochlanns).—_An. Inisf._

Footnote 423:

See Dr. Todd’s _War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_, Int. p. xxx, for a good account of these names.

Footnote 424:

807 Constructio novæ civitatis Coluimcille in Cennanus.—_An. Ult._ 814 Ceallach abbas Iæ finita constructione templi Cenindsa reliquit principatum et Diarmicius alumpnus Daigri pro eo ordinatus est.—_An. Ult._ Some of the chronicles state that Garnard, son of Donald, king of the Picts, founded Abernethy 225 years and 11 months before the church of Dunkeld was built by Constantin, king of the Picts.—(_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 201.) Garnad reigned from 584 to 599, which places the foundation of Dunkeld between 809 and 824, but Constantin ruled over Dalriada from 807 to 816, and died in 820, which fixes its foundation to the same period.

Footnote 425:

820 Custantin mac Fergusa rex Fortren moritur.—_An. Ult._

825 Martre Blaimhicc meic Flainn o Gentib in Hi. Coluim Cille.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 426:

834 Aengus mac Fergusa rex Fortrenn moritur.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 427:

Anno ab incarnatione Domini octingentesimo tricesimo quarto congressi sunt Scotti cum Pictis in sollempnitate Paschali. Et plures de nobilioribus Pictorum ceciderunt. Sicque Alpinus Rex Scottorum victor extitit, unde in superbiam elatus ab eis, altero concerto bello, tercio decimo kal. Augusti ejusdem anni a Pictis vincitur atque truncatur.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 209.

Footnote 428:

_War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_, pp. 13, 226. 839 Bellum re genntib for firu Fortrenn (by the Gentiles against the men of Fortrenn) in quo Euganan mac Oengusa et Bran mac Oengusa et Aed mac Boanta et alii pene innumerabiles ceciderunt.—_An. Ult._ In the Albanic Duan Aedh rules for four years over Dalriada and Eoghanain thirteen, in all seventeen years. But Aengus ruled till 825, and Eoganan is slain in 839, which gives only fourteen years, so that it is plain that Aed, son of Boanta, governed Dalriada during three of the years of Eoganan’s rule, which is exactly the length of his reign over the Picts.

Footnote 429:

Cujus filius Kynadius successit in regno patris qui vii^o regni sui anno, cum piratæ Danorum, occupatis littoribus, Pictos sua defendentes, strage maxima pertrivissent, in reliquos Pictorum terminos transiens, arma vertit et multis occisis fugere compulit, sicque monarchiam totius Albaniæ, quæ nunc Scotia dicitur, primus Scottorum rex conquisivit et in ea primo super Scottos regnavit.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 209. The Chronicle of Huntingdon says Kynadius reigned twenty-eight years, and in order to adjust the chronology of his reign it is necessary to ascertain the true year of his death. This we can fortunately do. The Ulster Annals place it in 858, the Annales Cambriæ in 856, but the Pictish Chronicle tells us that he died on the Ides or thirteenth of February, on a Tuesday. Now the thirteenth of February fell on a Tuesday in the year 860, which is the true year of his death. This gives 832 in place of 834 as the commencement of his reign and the year of his father Alpin’s death, and 839 as his seventh year. 832 is also the correct year of the death of Aengus, son of Fergus, for his predecessor Constantin died in 820, and Aengus is said in the Pictish Chronicle to have reigned only twelve years.

Footnote 430:

Qui anno xii^o regni sui septies in una die cum Pictis congruitur multisque pertritis regnum sibi confirmat et regnavit xxviii. annis.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 209. Twelve years and the sixteen of the Pictish Chronicle make it twenty-eight.

Footnote 431:

Kinadius igitur filius Alpini, primus Scottorum rexit feliciter istam annis xvi. Pictaviam.... Iste vero biennio antequam veniret Pictaviam, Dalrietæ regnum suscepit.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 8.

Footnote 432:

Iste occisus est apud Fertheviot, secundum quosdam Sconam, a Scottis.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 151.

Footnote 433:

Septimo anno regni sui, reliquias Sancti Columbæ transportavit ad ecclesiam quam construxit.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 8.

Footnote 434:

Invasit sexies Saxoniam et concremavit Dunbarre atque Mailros usurpata. Britanni autem concremaverunt Dubblain atque Danari vastaverunt Pictaviam ad Cluanan et Duncalden.—_Ib._ p. 8. In the Lodbrokar-quida, or death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok, it is said, in v. 12, ‘At Bartha-firdi down from our points distilled the dew (of death).’ Barthafirdi may be the Firth of Tay, and the allusion may be to the invasion of Danes under Ragnar.

Footnote 435:

Nec præterea plures alicubi reperio, quod cito defecerit episcopatus, quia extrema, ut dixi, Anglorum ora est, et Scottorum vel Pictorum depopulationi opportuna.—_Gest. Pont._ Lib. iii. § 115. The last mention of Beadulf is in 795.

Footnote 436:

Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis, p. 66.

Footnote 437:

Collectanea, p. 67. 856 Cocadh mor ettir Gennti et Maelsechnall con Gallgaidhel leis.—_An. Ult._ 857 Roiniud ren Imar et ren Amlaiph for Caittil Find con Gallgaidhel hi tiribh Mumhan.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 438:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 403, 404.

Footnote 439:

_Ib._ p. 84.

Footnote 440:

Cinaet mac Ailpin. Ise cet righ rogab righe Scoinde do Gaidelaib.—_Flann._ 856 Cemoyth rex Pictorum moritur.—_An. Cam._ 858 Cinaeth mac Ailpin rex Pictorum mortuus est.—_An. Ult._ 858 Cionaodh mac Ailpin rex Pictorum moritur.—_Fragm. An._

Footnote 441:

For the first daughter the authority is the Pictish Chronicle. Pinkerton reads this name Ku, mistaking K for R, and overlooking the stroke over the u which marks an n. He has been followed by all subsequent writers. The second appears from the Fragments of Irish Annals, p. 172. The Ulster Annals have at 917 Mailmaire inghen Cinaeda mac Alpin mor.

Footnote 442:

Deus enim eos pro merito suæ malitiæ alienos ac otiosos hereditate dignatus est facere, quia illi non solum Domini missam ac preceptum spreverunt, sed et in jure æquitatis aliis æqui parari noluerunt.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 8.

Footnote 443:

The Annals of Ulster have at 865 Tuathal mac Artguso primus episcopus Fortrenn et abbas Duincaillenn dormivit.—_Ib._ p. 391.

Footnote 444:

Hic mira caliditate duxit Scotos de Argadia in terra Pictorum.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 174.

Footnote 445:

‘Kinadius igitur filius Alpini primus Scottorum rexit feliciter _istam_ annis xvi. Pictaviam.’ Pictavia has not been before mentioned. ‘Pictavia autem a Pictis est nominatur; _quos, ut diximus, Cinadius delevit_.’

Footnote 446:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 299. Higden, _Polychronicon_, ed. ii. 148. That this statement in both was taken from the Pictish Chronicle appears from its concluding thus: ‘Kynadius filius Alpini perfidens Pictaviam invasit, Pictos delevit et Saxones sexies expugnavit et terram dudum Anglicis subactam quæ est a mari Scotiæ usque ad Mailros quæ est in ripa Twedæ fluminis suo dominio subjugavit.’ The sympathy of the compilers of this account too is with the Picts.

Footnote 447:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 163 and 202.

Footnote 448:

This expression, ‘Pictos delevit,’ which terminates the omitted account, obviously corresponds with the expression in the Pictish Chronicle, ‘quos, ut diximus, Cinadius delevit.’ It is evidently to the slaughter of the Pictish nobles by this stratagem that the expression refers.

Footnote 449:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 83. The translation is slightly altered.

Footnote 450:

It is not impossible that this immigration, whether secular or ecclesiastic, may have been aided by the king of Ireland, and that the following notices refer to it:—

819 Mors Aedha mac Neill juxta vadum duorum mirabilium (Athdaferta) in Campo Conaille.—_An. Ult._

Mors Aeda meic Neill Righ Temrach for sluagud (king of Tara while carrying on war) in Alban.—_Inisf._

Aodh Oirdnighe mac Neill Frasaigh na Righ atteamhair da bliaghain is fiche gur eag ag (king of Tara twenty-two years till he died at) Athdaferta a Tirconaill. Acht abaraiddrong do na Seanchaibh gur accaith Droma do torcraidhe (but other senachies say that was in the battle of Droma that he was slain).—_Inisf._ The battle of Droma seems connected with the statement that he carried on war in Alban when he was slain. This would give 819 as the date of this invasion.

Footnote 451:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 424.

Footnote 452:

_Ibid._ Alii ex Scotis Anglisque collectis.—Boethii _Hist. Fol._

Footnote 453:

_Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p. 309.

Footnote 454:

I sunn condrecaidh Clann Fergusa Guill mic Eachach Buide .i. Gabranaig agus Clann Conaill Cirr mic Eachach Buide .i. Fir Fibe fris in rigraid .i. Clann Cinaeda mic Ailpin mic Aedain.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 315.

Footnote 455:

See _ante_, p. 302.

Footnote 456:

This is shown in the Tract on the Coronation Stone, p. 35.

Footnote 457:

In hujus tempore jura ac leges regni Edi filii Ecdach fecerunt Goedeli cum rege suo in Fothuirthabaicth.

Footnote 458:

‘Primo ejus anno Maelsechnaill rex Hibernensium obiit.’ The Annals of Ulster have Maelsechnaill’s death in 861, but the 30th November fell on a Tuesday in 863, showing that the Annals of Ulster are at this time usually two years behind the true date, as in the years of Kenneth’s and Donald’s deaths.

Footnote 459:

Post duos annos vastavit Amlaib cum gentibus suis Pictaviam et habitavit eam a kalendis Januarii usque ad festum Sancti Patricii. Tertio iterum anno Amlaib trahens cetum a Constantino occisus est.

Footnote 460:

866 Amlaiph et Aiusle do dul i Fortrenn con Gallaibh Erenn et Alban et con rinnriset Cruitintuait n-uile et con tugsat an giallo.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 461:

See Fragments of Annals, _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 405. ‘Fortrenn was plundered and ravaged by the Lochlanns, and they carried off many hostages with them as pledges for tribute, and they were paid tribute for a long time after;’ and p. 172 for his wife being a daughter of Kenneth. His death is not recorded in the Irish Annals. He is mentioned up to 870, but not later.

Footnote 462:

870 Obsessio Aileccluithe a Nordmannis .i. Amlaiph et Imhair ii. reges Nordmannorum obsederunt arcem illam et destruxerunt in fine 4 mensium arcem et prædaverunt.—_An. Ult._

Arx Alclut a gentibus fracta est.—_An. Camb._ See also Fragments of Annals, _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 405.

Footnote 463:

871 Amlaiph et Imhar do thuidhecht a frithisi du Athacliath a Albain dibh cedaib long (came again to Athacliath from Alban with 200 ships), et præda maxima hominum Anglorum et Britonum et Pictorum deducta est secum ad Hiberniam in captivitate.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 464:

872 Artgha rex Britannorum Sratha-Cluaidhe consilio Constantini filii Cinaedo occisus est.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 465:

The descent of these kings is given in the Welsh Genealogies attached to Nennius.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 15.

Footnote 466:

_Ib._ p. 85.

Footnote 467:

Predictus exercitus (Danorum Repadun deseruit) seseque in duas partes divisit. Una pars cum Haldene ad regionem Nordanhymbrorum secessit et eam vastavit et hiemavit juxta flumen quod dicitur Tine et totam gentem suo dominatui subdidit et Pictos atque Strathduccenses depopulati sunt.—_Sim. Dun._ 875 Congressio Pictorum for Dubgallu et strages magna Pictorum facta est.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 468:

And oft ge hergode on Pehtas and on Stræcled Wealas.—_Sax. Chron._ _ad an._ 875.

Ast crebrius inducunt Pihtis bellum Cumbrisque.—_Ethelwerd Chron._

Footnote 469:

_Collect. Reb. Alb._ pp. 66, 69.

Footnote 470:

Normanni annum integrum degerunt in Pictavia.—_Pict. Chron._ 875 Ostin mac Amlaiph regis Nordmannorum ab Albanensibus per dolum occisus est.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 471:

Tract on the Wars of the Gaidhil with the Gaill, p. 232. What the concluding sentence alludes to it is impossible now to say. ‘Paulo post ab eo bello in xiiij ejus facto in Dolair inter Danarios et Scottos. Occisi sunt Scotti co Ach Cochlam.’—_Pict. Chron._ The notice of Constantin’s reign by St. Berchan is defective, a few lines being lost in the concluding part, but there are still preserved the last two lines, which are significant enough—

On Thursday, in pools of blood, On the shore of Inbhirdubhroda.

The Chronicle of St. Andrews has ‘Interfectus est a Norwegiensibus in bello Inverdufatha,’ which is obviously the same name as Inbhirdubhroda: the one meaning the Inver of the black ford, the other, of the black road. A record of this battle seems preserved in a charter in the Chartulary of St. Andrews, p. 274, where mention is made of the ‘congeries lapidum juxta viam de Inverdoveth versus Sanctum Andream.’ By another chronicle it is corrupted to ‘de Werdofatha,’ and supposing that ‘Wer’ was meant for ‘Wem,’ a cave, the Chronicum Elegiacum translates it Nigra specus, and from this the story that king Constantin was killed in a cave seems to have arisen. But St. Berchan leaves no doubt that Inbhir is the first part of the word, and the ancient Tract on the wars of the Gaidhel with the Gaill is conclusive that Constantin was killed in battle. Cochlam is probably the place called Kathlock, Cathlok, Catholok, between Kilmany and Inverdovat.

Footnote 472:

876 Constantin mac Cinaeda rex Pictorum moritur.—_An. Ult._

Footnote 473:

Ejus etiam brevitas nil historie memorabile commendavit, sed in civitate Nrurim est occisus. 878 Aedh mac Cinador rex Pictorum a sociis suis occisus est.—_An. Ult._ The later chronicles say that he was slain in battle in Strathallan by his successor Grig; but though he may have been slain in battle, it is certainly inconsistent with the earlier notices that his successor should have slain him. In a pass in the heights which separate Strathallan from Glenartney is a place called Blairnroar. The word Blair usually marks a battlefield, and here there are several upright stones and a cairn, in which several stone coffins were found.—_N.S.A._ vol. x. p. 326. The name is here misprinted Blairinroan.

Footnote 474:

Eochodius autem filius Run regis Britannorum nepos Cinadei ex filia regnavit annis xi. Licet Ciricium filium alii dicunt hic regnasse; eo quod alumpnus ordinatorque Eochodio fiebat.—_Pict. Chron._ Arthgal, Eocha’s grandfather, died in 872, and he could hardly have been born before 865. Donald could not have been born much before that date, if so early.

Footnote 475:

Chalmers announces without hesitation that Girig, or Grig as he calls him, was the Maormor of the extensive country between the Dee and Spey, and this has been repeated by most subsequent historians as if it were undoubted; but he gives no authority for it, and appears to have founded it upon the tradition that Gregory the Great, as he was called, died at Dunadeer in the Garioch. Such traditions, however, are the creation of our fabulous historians. The later chronicles give him a reign of twelve years, and add ‘mortuus est in Dundeorn.’ But one form of these chronicles extends his reign to eighteen years, and this is followed by Fordun, who changes Dundeorn to Donedoure, converted by tradition to Dunadeer. That the place meant was Dundurn on the Earn appears from St. Berchan, who calls him MacRath, or the son of Fortune, and says

By him shall be attacked the powerful house, Ah! my heart! _on the banks of the Earn_, Red shall be the colour of the house before him. He shall fall by the men of Fortrenn.

Footnote 476:

Ac in ix. ejus anno, in ipso die Cirici, eclipsis solis facta est. Eochodius cum alumpno suo expulsus est nunc de regno.—_Pict. Chron._

Footnote 477:

Hic subjugavit sibi totam Berniciam et fere Angliam.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 288. This is the reading of what is evidently a better copy of the Chronicle of St. Andrews than that in the register, which reads ‘Hiberniam totam et fere Angliam,’ and has been followed by the later chronicles. There is no trace of any conquest of Ireland, and Hibernia seems to have been substituted for Bernicia.

Footnote 478:

Gens Scottorum, innumerabili exercitu coadunato, inter cætera suæ crudelitatis facinora, Lindisfarnense monasterium sæviens et rapiens invasit: contra quos dum rex Guthredus, per Sanctum Cuthbertum confortatus, pugnaturus staret, subito terra dehiscens hostes vivos omnes absorbuit.—Sim. Dun. _Hist. Ec._ c. 28.

Footnote 479:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 174, and Preface to the _Statuta Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ_, by Dr. Joseph Robertson, vol. i. p. xiv.—‘Et hic primus dedit libertatem Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ quæ sub servitute erat ad illud usque tempus ex constitutione et more Pictorum.’

Footnote 480:

William the Lion gives to the Priory of St. Andrews ‘Ecclesiam Sancti Cirici de Eglesgirg’ (Chartulary of St. Andrews, p. 218); and at p. 348 we find ‘Ecclesia Sancti Cyrici martyris de Eglisgirg.’