THE FOUR KINGDOMS.
[Sidenote: Result of Ethnological inquiry.]
The result of our inquiry into the ethnology of Britain and the race and
language of the occupants of its northern districts, hasty and general
as, from the limits of this work, it has necessarily been, may be thus
summed up:—
The Celtic race in Britain and Ireland was preceded by a people of an
Iberian type, small, dark-skinned, and curly-haired. They are the people
of the long-headed skulls, and their representatives in Britain were the
tin-workers of Cornwall and the Scilly Islands, who traded with Spain,
and the tribe of the Silures in South Wales, and, in the legendary
history of Ireland, the people called the Firbolg. The Celtic race
followed them both in Britain and in Ireland. These are the people of
the round-headed skulls, and consisted of two great branches, whose
language—the British and the Gadhelic—though possessing evident marks
that they had a common origin, and that both branches belonged
originally to one race, is yet distinguished by marked dialectic
differences. Each of these great branches again was divided into
varieties. Of the Gadhelic branch, one was a fair-skinned, large-limbed,
and red-haired race, and were represented in Britain by the people of
the interior whom the Romans thought to be indigenous, and who, after
the Roman province was formed, were called by them the Picts or painted
people. They are represented in the legendary history of Ireland by the
Tuatha De Danann and by the Cruithnigh, a name which was the Irish
equivalent of the Latin ‘Picti,’ and was applied to the Picts of
Scotland, and to the people who preceded the Scots in Ulster, and were
eventually confined to a district in the eastern part of it. The other
variety was a fair-skinned brown-haired race, represented in the
legendary history as the race of Milidh or Milesius, and, after the
fourth century, known by the name of Scots.
The other great branch of the Celtic race, which extended itself over
the whole of that part of Britain which became subject to the Roman
power, and was incorporated into a province of the Roman Empire, were
those we have termed British, and resembled the Gauls in their physical
appearance. The two varieties of their language in Britain are
represented by the Cornish and the Welsh.
The Celtic race was followed by a Teutonic people, who were of the low
German race, and issued from the low-lying country along the north coast
of Germany, extending from the Rhine to the Cimbric Chersonese. After
assailing the Roman province during the last half-century of its
existence, when they were known by the name of Saxons, they made
settlements during the first half of the fifth century in what was
called the Saxon Shore, and along the east coast from the Humber to the
Firth of Forth. These earliest settlers consisted partly of Frisians,
but mainly of the people called ‘Angli,’ who were part of a
confederation of tribes who bore the general name of Saxons, and were
followed at a later period by those who seemed to have belonged to the
people originally called Saxons.
[Sidenote: The four kingdoms.]
Out of these Celtic and Teutonic races there emerged in that northern
part of Britain which eventually became the territory of the subsequent
monarchy of Scotland, four kingdoms within definite limits and under
settled forms of government; and as such we find them in the beginning
of the seventh century, when the conflict among these races, which
succeeded the departure of the Romans from the island, and the
termination of their power in Britain, may be held to have ceased, and
the limits of these kingdoms to have become settled.
North of the Firths of Forth and Clyde were the two kingdoms of the
Scots of Dalriada on the west and of the Picts on the east. They were
separated from each other by a range of mountains termed by Adamnan the
Dorsal ridge of Britain, and generally known by the name of Drumalban.
It was the great watershed which separated the rivers flowing eastward
from those flowing westward, and now separates the counties of Argyll
and Perth. The northern boundary appears to be represented by a line
drawn from the mouth of Loch Leven through the district of Morvern,
separating the old parish of Killecolmkill from that of Killfintach,
then through the island of Mull by the great ridge of Benmore, and by
the islands of Iona and Colonsay to Isla, where it separated the eastern
from the western districts of the island.[283]
[Illustration:
THE
FOUR KINGDOMS
_W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh & London._
]
[Sidenote: Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.]
The Scottish colony was originally founded by Fergus Mor, son of Erc,
who came with his two brothers Loarn and Angus from Irish Dalriada in
the end of the fifth century, but the true founder of the Dalriadic
kingdom was his great-grandson Aedan, son of Gabran. It consisted of
three tribes, the Cinel Gabran, the Cinel Angus, and the Cinel Loarn,
which were called the ‘three powerfuls of Dalriada.’ The Cinel Gabran
consisted of the descendants of Fergus, whose son Domangart had two
sons, Gabran and Comgall, and their possessions consisted of the
district of Cowall, which takes its name from Comgall, that of Cindtire
or Kintyre, which then extended from the river Add, which flows into the
bay of Crinan, to the Mull of Kintyre, and included Knapdale and the
small islands of this coast. The Cinel Angusa settled in Isla and Jura,
while the names of their townships which have been preserved embrace the
eastern half of the island only. The Cinel Loarn possessed the district
of Lorn, which takes its name from them and extends from Loch Leven to
the point of Ashnish. Between the possessions of the Cinel Loarn and
those of the Cinel Gabhran extended what is now the great moss of
Crinan, called in Gaelic ‘Monadhmor;’ and on the bank of the river Add,
which meanders through it, there rises an isolated rocky hill, the
summit of which bears the mark of having been strongly fortified, while
the great stones and cairns on the moss around it preserve the record of
many an attempt to take it. This fortified hill was called Dunadd, a
name which it still retains, and was the capital of Dalriada. It was
also called, from the moss which surrounds it, Dunmonaidh. The
possessions of these Dalriadic tribes surrounded a small district
extending from the districts of Lorn, Kintyre, and Cowal, to Drumalban,
in the centre of which was the lake of Loch Awe. As this territory was
not included in the possessions of any of these tribes, it probably
still retained its original population, and contained the remains of the
earlier inhabitants before the arrival of the Scots. The kings of this
small kingdom of Dalriada all belonged to the race of Erc, and succeeded
each other according to the Irish law of Tanistry, which often assumed
the form of an alternate succession from the members of two families
descended from the common ancestor. In Dalriada it alternated first
between the descendants of Gabran and Comgall, the two grandsons of
Fergus, and afterwards between the Cinel Gabran and Cinel Loarn.[284]
[Sidenote: The kingdom of the Picts.]
The remaining districts north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde formed
the kingdom of the Picts. Throughout the whole course of their history
as an independent nation there seems to have been a twofold division of
this people, and they were eventually distinguished from each other as
the northern and the southern Picts. Bede tells us that they were
separated from each other by steep and rugged mountain chains, and he
terms in one place the northern Picts, the Transmontane Picts.[285] This
mountain range can only refer to the great chain termed the Mounth,
which extends across the island from Ben Nevis in Lochaber, till it
terminates near the east coast between Aberdeen and Stonehaven. The
whole country north of this range from sea to sea belonged to the
northern Picts, who appear to have been purely Gaelic in race and
language. The southern Picts are said by Bede to have had seats within
these mountains, which refers no doubt to the districts intersected by
the lesser chains which extend from the main range towards the
south-east, and from the barrier of the so-called Grampians. These
districts consist of the Perthshire and Forfarshire Highlands, the
former of which is known by the name of Atholl. The western boundary of
the territory of the southern Picts was Drumalban, which separated them
from the Scots of Dalriada, and their southern boundary the Forth. The
main body of the southern Picts also belonged no doubt to the Gaelic
race, though they may have possessed some differences in the idiom of
their language; but the original population of the country extending
from the Forth to the Tay consisted of part of the tribe of Damnonii,
who belonged to the Cornish variety of the British race, and they appear
to have been incorporated with the southern Picts, and to have
introduced a British element into their language. The Frisian
settlements, too, on the shores of the Firth of Forth may also have left
their stamp on this part of the nation. The former are probably the
Britons of Fortrenn of the Pictish legends, and the latter have
apparently left a record of their presence in the term of the Frisian
Shore, known as the name of a district on the south of the Firth of
Forth; and the name of Fothrik, applied to a district now represented by
Kinross-shire and the western part of Fifeshire, may preserve a
recollection of their Rik or kingdom.
The Picts seem to have preserved a tradition that the whole nation was
once divided into seven provinces, whose names were derived from seven
sons of Cruithne, the ‘eponymus’ of the race, and the reference to Saint
Columba, as perpetuating this in a stanza, relegates it to this period.
Of these names five can be recognised. In Fib we have Fife, Fodla enters
into the name of Atholl, Circinn into that of the Mearns, Fortrenn was
certainly the district from the Tay to the Forth, and Caith was the
district of Cathenesia, originally of great extent, and embracing the
most northern part of the island from sea to sea.
The seat of government appears to have been sometimes within the
territory of the southern Picts, and at others on the north of the great
chain of the Mounth. When we can first venture to regard the list of the
Pictish kings preserved in the Pictish Chronicle as having some claim to
a historical character, we find the king having his seat apparently in
Forfarshire; but when the works of Adamnan and Bede place us upon firm
ground, the monarch belonged to the race of the northern Picts, and had
his fortified residence near the mouth of the river Ness.
When we examine the historical part of the list of the Pictish monarchs,
we find that it exhibits a very marked peculiarity in the order of
succession. We see brothers, sons of the same father, succeeding each
other, but it does not present a single instance, throughout the whole
period of the Pictish kingdom, of a son directly succeeding his father.
Bede gives us the law of succession thus: ‘That when it came into doubt
they elected the king rather from the female than from the male royal
lineage, a custom,’ he says, ‘preserved among the Picts to his
day.’[286] It is thus stated in the poem attached to the Irish Nennius,
‘that from the nobility of the mother should always be the right to the
sovereignty;’ and in the prose legends, ‘that the regal succession among
them for ever should be on the mother’s side.’ ‘That not less should
territorial succession be derived from men than from women for
ever;’[287] ‘so that it is in right of mothers they succeed to
sovereignty and all other successions.’ ‘That they alone should take of
the sovereignty and of the land from women rather than from men in
Cruithintuath for ever.’ ‘That of women should be the royal succession
among them for ever.’[288] These statements, when compared with the
actual succession, lead to this, that brothers succeeded each other in
preference to the sons of each, not an unusual feature in male
succession; but, on their failure, the contingency alluded to by Bede
arose, and the succession then passed to the sons of sisters, or to the
nearest male relation on the female side, and through a female. This,
however, does not exhaust the anomalies exhibited in this list of kings,
for we find that the names given as those of the fathers of the kings
differ entirely from those of their sons, and in no case does a son who
reigns bear the same name as that of any one of the fathers in the list.
The names of the reigning kings are in the main confined to four or five
names, as Brude, Drust, Talorgan, Nechtan, Gartnaidh, and these never
appear among the names of the fathers of kings, nor does the name of a
father occur twice in the list. Further, in two cases we know that while
the kings who reigned were termed respectively Brude and Talorcan, the
father of the one was a Briton, and of the other an Angle.[289] The
conclusion which Mr. M‘Lennan, in his very original work on primitive
marriage, draws from this is, that it ‘raises a strong presumption that
all the fathers were men of other tribes. At any rate there remains the
fact, after every deduction has been made, that the fathers and mothers
were in no case of the same family name;’[290] and he quotes this as a
reason for believing that exogamy prevailed among the Picts. But this
explanation, though it goes some way, will not fully interpret the
anomalies in the list of Pictish kings. The only hypothesis that seems
to afford a full explanation is one that would suppose that the kings
among the Picts were elected from one family clan or tribe, or possibly
from one in each of the two divisions of the northern and southern
Picts; that there lingered among the Picts the old custom among the
Celts, who, to use the language of Mr. M‘Lennan, ‘were anciently lax in
their morals, and recognised relationship through mothers only;’[291]
that intermarriage was not permitted in this royal family or tribe, and
the women had to obtain their husbands from the men of other tribes, not
excluding those of a different race;[292] that the children were adopted
into the tribe of the mother, and certain names were exclusively
bestowed on such children. Such an hypothesis seems capable of
explaining all the facts of the case; and if the male child thus adopted
into the tribe of the mother became king, and was paternally of a
foreign race, it will readily be seen how much this would facilitate the
permanent occupation of the Pictish throne by a foreign line of kings.
It would only be necessary that one king, who was paternally of a
foreign tribe, and whose succession to the throne could not be opposed
in conformity with the Pictish law of succession, should become powerful
enough to alter the succession to one through males, and perpetuate it
in his own family. Although the Pictish people might resist to the
utmost their subjection to a foreign nation, and would make every effort
to throw off the yoke, there would be nothing in the mere occupation of
the throne by a family of foreign descent, who derived their succession
originally through a female of the Pictish royal tribe, to arouse their
national feeling to any extent against it.
The death of Brude mac Mailchon, the king of the northern Picts, whom
Saint Columba converted, is recorded by Tighernac in the year 584,[293]
after a reign of thirty years; and as no battle is mentioned between him
and the Dalriads after the arrival of Saint Columba, it seems probable
that the boundaries of the respective kingdoms by the Picts and Scots of
Dalriada were amicably settled by the same influence which procured the
recognition of the independence of Dalriada at the convention of
Drumceitt. Brude was succeeded by Gartnaidh, who is called son of
Domelch, who reigned eleven years, and his death took place in 599,[294]
two years after that of Saint Columba himself. He is succeeded by
Nectan, who bears the unusual designation of grandson of Uerd, and who
occupied the throne at the beginning of the sixth century.[295]
[Sidenote: Kingdom of the Britons of Alclyde.]
The districts south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and extending to
the Solway Firth on the west and to the Tyne on the east, were possessed
by the two kingdoms of the Britons on the west and of the Angles of
Bernicia on the east. The former extended from the river Derwent in
Cumberland in the south to the Firth of Clyde in the north, which
separated the Britons from the Scots of Dalriada. The British kingdom
thus comprehended Cumberland and Westmoreland, with the exception of the
baronies of Allerdale or Copeland in the former and Kendal in the
latter, and the counties of Dumfries, Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark, and Peebles,
in Scotland. On the east the great forest of Ettrick separated them from
the Angles, and here the ancient rampart of the Catrail which runs from
the south-east corner of Peeblesshire, near Galashiels, through the
county of Selkirk to the Peel Hill on the south side of Liddesdale,
probably marked the boundary between them. The population of this
kingdom seems to have belonged to two varieties of the British race,—the
southern half, including Dumfriesshire, being Cymric or Welsh, and the
northern half having been occupied by the Damnonii who belonged to the
Cornish variety. The capital of the kingdom was the strongly-fortified
position on the rock on the right bank of the Clyde, termed by the
Britons Alcluith, and by the Gadhelic people Dunbreatan, or the fort of
the Britons, now Dumbarton; but the ancient town called Caer Luel or
Carlisle in the southern part must always have been an important
position. The kingdom of the Britons had at this time no territorial
designation, but its monarchs were termed kings of Alcluith, and
belonged to that party among the Britons who bore the peculiar name of
Romans, and claimed descent from the ancient Roman rulers in Britain.
The law of succession seems to have been one of purely male descent.
[Sidenote: Kingdom of Bernicia.]
Of Aedilfrid, who at this time ruled over Bernicia, and soon after
extended his sway over Deira also, it is told us by Bede that he
‘conquered more territories from the Britons, either making them
tributary, or expelling the inhabitants and planting Angles in their
places, than any other king;’ and to his reign we attribute the greatest
extension of the Anglic power over the Britons. He appears to have added
to his kingdom the districts on the west between the Derwent and the
Mersey, thus extending Deira from sea to sea, and placing the
Northumbrian kingdom between the Britons of the north and those of
Wales. The river Tees appears to have separated Deira from Bernicia, and
the Angles of Bernicia, with whom we have more immediately to do, were
now in firm possession of the districts extending along the east coast
as far as the Firth of Forth, originally occupied by the British tribe
of the Ottadeni and afterwards by the Picts, and including the counties
of Berwick and Roxburgh and that of East Lothian or Haddington, the
rivers Esk and Gala forming here their western boundary. The capital of
Deira was York, and that of Bernicia the strongly-fortified position on
the coast nearly opposite the Farne Islands, crowning a basaltic rock
rising 150 feet above the sea, and accessible only on the south-east,
which was called by the Britons Dinguayrdi, by the Gael Dunguaire, and
by the Angles Bebbanburch after Bebba the wife of Aedilfrid, now
Bamborough. About half-way along the coast, between Bamborough and
Berwick-on-Tweed, lay, parallel to the shore, the long flat island
called by the Britons Ynys Medcaud, and by the Angles Lindisfarne.[296]
[Sidenote: The debateable lands.]
In the centre of Scotland, where it is intersected by the two arms of
the sea, the Forth and the Clyde, and where the boundaries of these four
kingdoms approach one another, is a territory extending from the Esk to
the Tay, which possessed a very mixed population, and was the scene of
most of the conflicts between these four states. Originally occupied by
the tribe of the Damnonii, the northern boundary of the Roman province
intersected it for two centuries and a half, including part of this
tribe and the province, and merging the rest among the barbarians. On
the fall of the Roman power in Britain, it was overrun by the Picts, and
one of the earliest settlements of the Saxons, which probably was
composed of Frisians, took place in the districts about the Roman wall.
It was here that during the sixth century the main struggle took place.
It falls naturally into three divisions. The first extends from the Esk
and the Pentland Hills to the Roman wall and the river Carron. This
district we find mainly peopled by Picts, the remains probably of those
who once occupied the eastern districts to the southern wall, and
preserved a kind of independence, while the rest were subjected by the
Angles.
From the Picts the Angles give the hills which formed its southern
boundary the name of the Pehtland, now Pentland hills. Near its
south-eastern boundary was the strong natural position called by the
Britons Mynyd Agned and also Dineiddyn, and by the Gael Dunedin. Nine
miles farther west, the Firth of Forth is narrowed till the coast
approaches within two miles of that of Fife, and affords a ready means
of access; and on the south shore of the upper basin of the Forth, and
near the termination of the Roman wall, was the ancient British town of
Caeredin, while in the Forth itself opposite this district was the
insular town of Giudi. The western part of this territory was known to
the Welsh by the name of Manau Guotodin, and to the Gael as the plain or
district of Manann, a name still preserved in Sliabhmanann, now
Slamanan, and this seems to have been the headquarters of these Picts.
Between them and the kingdom of the Picts proper lay a central district,
extending from the wall to the river Forth, and on the bank of the
latter was the strong position afterwards occupied by Stirling Castle;
and while the Angles of Bernicia exercised an influence and a kind of
authority over the first district, this central part seems to have been
more closely connected with the British kingdom of Alclyde. The northern
part, extending from the Forth to the Tay, belonged to the Pictish
kingdom, with whom its population, originally British, appears to have
been incorporated, and was the district afterwards known as Fortrenn and
Magh Fortrenn.
[Sidenote: Galloway.]
Finally, on the north shore of the Solway Firth, and separated from the
Britons by the lower part of the river Nith, and by the mountain range
which separates the counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown from those of
Dumfries and Ayr, were a body of Picts, termed by Bede, Niduari; and
this district, consisting of the two former counties, was known to the
Welsh as Galwydel, and to the Irish as Gallgaidel, from which was formed
the name Gallweithia, now Galloway.
[Sidenote: A.D. 606.
Death of Aidan, king of Dalriada; Aedilfrid conquers Deira,
and expels Aeduin.]
Three years after the great battle in which Aidan was defeated at
Dawstone in Liddesdale, he died, leaving his throne to his son Eocha
Buidhe, or the yellow-haired, whom Saint Columba had named as his
successor;[297] and in the same year Aedilfrid, king of Bernicia,
attacked Aeduin, who had succeeded his father Aella in Deira when a
child, and had barely attained majority, and drove him from his throne,
thus uniting Deira to Bernicia, over which he reigned twelve years. A
change likewise soon took place among the Pictish kings, and in the year
612 Nectan appears to have been displaced by Cinioch or Cinadon, son of
Luchtren, who from the Gaelic form of his name probably belonged to the
northern Picts.[298] Five years afterwards Aeduin, who, after wandering
as a fugitive in different parts of Britain, had finally taken refuge
with Redwald, king of the East Angles, succeeded in persuading him to
assist him to recover his throne.
[Sidenote: A.D. 617.
Battle between Aeduin and Aedilfrid.]
A large army was accordingly raised, and meeting Aedilfrid, who was
advancing against him with inferior force, he attacked him and slew him
on the borders of the kingdom of Mercia, on the east side of the river
called Idlae or Idle, a small river which falls into the Trent. Aeduin
thus not only regained his kingdom in the year 617, but obtained
possession of both provinces of Deira and Bernicia, which had been under
the rule of Aedilfrid, and in his turn drove out his sons, who, with
many of the young nobles of their party, took refuge with the Scots of
Dalriada or with the Picts. The eldest of the sons, Eanfrid, appears to
have fled for protection to the king of the Picts; and the second,
Osuald, who was then of the same age that Aeduin had been when he was
expelled, went to the island of Iona, where Bede tells us he was
instructed in the Christian faith and baptized by the seniors of the
Scots. Aeduin, too, with his whole nation was converted to Christianity
by Paulinus in the eleventh year of his reign. Bede classes Aeduin among
the kings of the Anglic natives who possessed imperial authority, and he
is the first of the Northumbrian kings to whom such power is attributed:
he says that he ruled over all the people both of the Angles and the
Britons who inhabit the island, and in another place, that none of the
Angles before him had brought under subjection all the borders of
Britain that were provinces either of themselves or the Britons.[299]
These expressions must not be taken literally, and are not altogether
consistent with the similar statement with regard to his predecessor
Aedilfrid, but they undoubtedly imply that he was one of the most
powerful of the Northumbrian monarchs, and at least retained all the
acquisitions of his predecessors, while he has left his name in one
district, which shows that he had extended the limits of the
Northumbrian kingdom in one direction at least. The oldest form of the
name of Edinburgh is Edwinesburg,[300] which leads us to infer that he
had added the district from the Esk to the Avon at least, of which it
was the chief stronghold, to his kingdom. The country extending from the
river Avon to the range of the Lammermoor hills was called by the Saxons
‘Lothene,’ and by the Gael ‘Lethead,’ and appears also under the name of
the province of Loidis, a name which was afterwards extended as far
south as the Tweed.[301]
[Sidenote: A.D. 627.
Battle of Ardcorann between Dalriads and Cruithnigh.]
The Irish annalists record in the year 627 the battle of Ardcorann, in
which the Dalriads were victorious, and Fiachna, son of Deman, was slain
by Conadh Cerr, king of Dalriada.[302] Fiachna mac Deman was the king of
the Cruithnigh of Dalaradia in Ireland, and the battle was probably
fought in Ireland, Conadh Cerr, king of Dalriada, coming to the
assistance of the Irish Dalriads; but Conadh Cerr was the son of Eochadh
Buidhe, who was still alive, and he would appear to have transferred the
throne of Dalriada to his son. The explanation will probably be found in
the record of another battle fought two years afterwards, also in
Ireland, called the battle of Fedhaeoin or Fedhaeuin. This battle was
also fought between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads, and the latter were
defeated. On the side of the victors were Maelcaith mac Scandail, king
of the Cruithnigh of Ulster, Dicuill mac Eachach, king of a tribe of
Cruithnigh, and Eochadh Buidhe; and, on the other, Conad Cerr, king of
Dalriada, and two grandsons of Aidan, who were slain.[303] Eochadh
Buidhe is here on the side of the Cruithnigh and opposed to two of his
own sons, one of them leading the Dalriads; but the Annals of Ulster,
quoting an old book called the Book of Cuanac, record the death of
Eochadh Buidhe, king of the Picts, in the same year, and this
corresponds with the length of his reign as given in the Albanic Duan,
where a king of the Picts is mentioned who does not appear in the list
of Pictish monarchs. The inference is that he was king of the Picts of
Galloway, and it would appear that in the course of his reign Eochadh
had either obtained authority over them or acquired a right to that
province, and placed his son Conadh Cerr on the throne of Dalriada
proper; and thus, when a war broke out between the Cruithnigh and the
Dalriads of Ireland, the anomaly occurred of the father fighting on the
one side with his Picts, and the sons with the Dalriads on the other.
[Sidenote: A.D. 629.
Domnall Breac becomes king of Dalriada.]
On the death of Conadh Cerr in 629, his brother Domnall Breac succeeded
him as king of Dalriada, while the rule over the Picts, which gave to
Eochaidh Buidhe his title of king of the Picts, probably passed by the
Pictish law of female succession to another family.
[Sidenote: A.D. 631.
Garnaid, son of Wid, succeeds Cinaeth mac Luchtren as king of
the Picts.]
The death of Cinaeth mac Luchtren, king of the Picts, is recorded by
Tighernac in 631,[304] and he was succeeded by a family of three
brothers, Garnaid, Bredei, and Talore, sons of Wid or Foith, who
followed each other on the Pictish throne during the next twenty-two
years. In the meantime a storm was gathering on the borders of
Northumbria, which was soon to burst upon Aeduin and bring his powerful
kingdom with his own life to an end. Among those British kings who had
been subjected to the authority of the Northumbrian king was a king of
the Britons termed by Bede ‘Caedwalla.’ He is described by Bede as a man
who, though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was yet
so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour that he spared neither
women nor children in his wars.[305] This British king resolved not only
to throw off all subjection to Northumbria, but to cut off the whole
nation of the Angles within the borders of Britain. He was enabled to
attempt this enterprise by having secured the support of Penda, whom
Bede calls a most warlike man, of the royal race of the Mercians,[306]
who had just ascended the throne of that nation. Penda and his whole
nation were still pagans and idolaters, and probably viewed the
establishment of Christianity as the religion of Northumbria with much
hostility; and Caedwalla, though nominally a Christian, had all the
hatred of the Welsh Church towards the Anglic Christians and their
church, with whom they held no communication.
[Sidenote: A.D. 633.
Battle of Haethfeld. Aeduin slain by Caedwalla and Penda.]
A great battle was fought between these leaders and Aeduin in a plain
called by Bede Haethfeld, now Hatfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire,
on the 12th of October in the year 633, in which Aeduin was himself
killed, and all his army either slain or dispersed. His son Osfrid also
fell in the same war, and another son Eadfrid was obliged to go over to
Penda.[307] In the genealogies and chronicle attached to Nennius this
battle is called the battle of Meicen, and both Osfrid and Eadfrid are
said to have been slain in it; and it is added that none of Aeduin’s
race escaped, and the victor is termed Catguollaun, king of Guenedotia
or North Wales. Bede tells us that a great slaughter was made at this
time of the church and nation of the Northumbrians, and the more so
because one of the commanders by whom it was done was a pagan, and the
other a barbarian more cruel than a pagan, and that the province of
Deira fell on Aeduin’s death to Osric, son of his uncle Aelric, who was
a Christian, being one of those whom Paulinus had converted; while
Eanfrid, the eldest son of Aedilfrid, who had taken refuge on the
accession of Aeduin with the Picts, and had there been instructed in the
Christian religion by the Scottish monks, returned on Aeduin’s death to
Bernicia and took possession of his father’s kingdom. We are told,
however, by Bede that both kings, as soon as they obtained possession of
their kingdoms, renounced their Christianity and returned to their
former paganism, but were soon after slain by Caedwalla, who first
surprised and killed Osric, who had besieged him in the city of York,
and after having reigned for a year over the provinces of the
Northumbrians, also killed Eanfrid, who came to him with only twelve
soldiers to sue for peace, when he was probably advancing upon
Bamborough. That year, adds Bede, is to this day looked upon as unhappy
and hateful to all good men, as well on account of the apostasy of the
Anglic kings who had renounced the sacraments of their faith, as of the
outrageous tyranny of the British king.[308]
[Sidenote: A.D. 634.
Battle of Hefenfeld. Osuald becomes king of Northumbria.]
After the death of Eanfrid, his brother Osuald advanced from the north
with an army small indeed in number, as Bede tells us, but strengthened
with the faith of Christ, and north of the Tweed, and encountered the
army of the Britons, which was greatly more numerous, at a place near
the Roman wall called in the Anglic tongue Devisesburn, where a complete
victory was gained, and the impious commander of the Britons was slain.
The field of battle, Bede tells us, was also called Hefenfelth, or the
heavenly field, and was not far from Hexham, in the vale of the Tyne. It
has been identified with a place called St. Osualds, close to the wall,
and about seven or eight miles north of Hexham; and the British
commander must have been driven across the wild moor on the south side
of the wall through the Tyne, until he was overtaken at a distance of
eight or nine miles from the battlefield, and slain at a little stream
called Devisesburn, a tributary of the Rowley water. This battle is
termed in the additions to Nennius the battle of Catscaul, and it has
been well suggested that this name may be intended for Cad-ys-gual, the
battle at the wall. It is somewhat remarkable that while Bede names
Caedwalla whenever he has occasion to mention him, he does not name him
as the commander who was slain at this battle. Adamnan, who was born in
624, and was therefore ten years old when the battle was fought, tells
us that the day before the Saxon ruler Osuald went forth to fight
Catlon, a very valiant king of the Britons, he saw Saint Columba in a
vision, who told him to march out from his camp to battle the following
night, when his foes would be put to flight and his enemy Catlon
delivered into his hands; and that the next night King Osuald went forth
from his camp to battle, and had a much smaller army than the numerous
hosts opposed to him, yet he obtained an easy and decisive victory, for
King Catlon was slain, and the conqueror on his return after the battle
was ever after ordained by God emperor of all Britain. Adamnan adds that
he had this narrative from the lips of his predecessor, the abbot
Failbe, who solemnly declared that he had himself heard King Osuald
relate it to the Abbot Segine.[309] We can hardly have better evidence
than this as to the events of the battle, whatever may be said as to the
vision, and Tighernac likewise names Catlon, king of the Britons, as
King Osuald’s opponent,[310] but the name given to Caedwalla in
recording the battle in which he slew King Aeduin was not Cathlon but
Chon. In the Genealogies annexed to Nennius, Caedwalla is termed
Catguollaun, king of Guenedotia, while King Osuald’s opponent is named
Catgublaun, king of Guenedotia. It is therefore not impossible that the
impious commander of Bede may not have been Caedwalla himself, and that
there may be some truth in the account given in the Welsh Bruts that the
Caedwalla, who slew Aeduin, survived for many years after; but this is
not a matter which much affects our narrative so far as it concerns the
history before us.
[Sidenote: A.D. 635.
Battle of Seguise between Garnait, son of Foith, and the
family of Nectan.]
About the same time the family of that Nectan, king of the Picts, who
had been dispossessed in 612 seem to have made an effort to recover the
throne, for the Annals of Inisfallen have in 634 the death of Aengus,
son of Nechtan, and Tighernac records in 635 the battle of Seguise, in
which Lochene, son of Nechtan Cennfota, and Cumuscach, son of Aengus,
fell. These names are purely Gaelic forms, and ‘Cennfota’ is a Gaelic
epithet, meaning long-headed. The Annals of Ulster have the death of
Gartnait, son of Foith, in the same year, and say he fell in this
battle, which seems to leave little doubt that it was a contest for the
throne.[311] The battle was probably fought on the west bank of the Tay,
a few miles above Dunkeld, at a place now called Dalguise; and on the
east side of the river, immediately opposite that place, a cairn once
stood about thirty feet in diameter, which contained a single stone
coffin, and near it two high upright stones, while at a small distance
from the cairn were found a few rude stone coffins. These may have been
memorials of the battle. Gartnaidh was succeeded by his brother Bredei,
son of Uid or Foith.
[Sidenote: A.D. 634.
Battle of Calathros, in which Domnall Breac was defeated.]
In the same year in which the battle was fought which placed Osuald on
the throne of Bernicia, Domnall Breac, king of the Scots of Dalriada,
appears to have made an attempt to wrest the district between the Avon
and the Pentland Hills from the Angles,—whether as having some claim to
it through his grandfather Aidan, or, what is more probable, as a leader
of the Britons, but was defeated at Calathros,[312] or Calatria, now
Callander—a name applied to a small district between the Roman wall and
the Avon; and Bede, who ranks Osuald after Aeduin among those who held
imperial authority in Britain, tells us that he held the kingdom within
the same boundaries.[313]
Cummen the Fair, who was abbot of Iona from 657 to 669, tells us in his
Life of Saint Columba, which is still preserved, that, when the saint
inaugurated Aidan as king of Dalriada, and placed his hands upon his
head, and blessed him, he prophesied of his sons, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren, thus addressing him:—‘Believe unhesitatingly, O
Aidan, that none of thy enemies shall be able to resist thee, unless
thou first act unjustly towards me and my kin. Wherefore exhort thy sons
with these words, lest they lose the kingdom,’ which, he adds, took
place, for they transgressed the injunction of the man of God, and lost
the kingdom. Adamnan, who is also a contemporary authority for the
events of this period, quotes this passage, somewhat amplifying it, and
adds—‘Now this prophecy hath been fulfilled in our own times in the
battle of Roth, in which Domnall Breac, the grandson of Aidan, ravaged
without the slightest provocation the territory of Domnall, the grandson
of Ainmuireg; and from that day to this (between 690 and 700) they have
been trodden down by strangers.’[314] The battle termed by Adamnan,
Roth, was the battle of Magh Rath, fought in 637 between Domnall, son of
Aed, king of Ireland, and Congal Claen, king of Uladh, that is of the
Cruithnigh of Dalaradia, and appears to have been a great struggle
between the Cruithnigh and kindred tribes with the dominant Scots of the
race of Hy Neill. Congal Claen applied for assistance both to the
Britons and to the king of Scottish Dalriada, and was supported by a
large auxiliary force. His claim upon Domnall Breac arose probably from
the connection of his father, Eochadh Buidhe, with the Picts, and the
gravamen of the charge against the Dalriadic king was that, by the
settlement at the convention of Drumceatt, the hostings and expeditions
of Scotch Dalriada were to belong to the king of Ireland, and by ranging
himself on the side of the Cruithnigh against him, he not only violated
that condition, but assailed the head of the family to which Saint
Columba belonged.[315]
[Sidenote: A.D. 638.
Battle of Glenmairison, and siege of Edinburgh.]
In the following year Domnall Breac seems to have made another attempt
to wrest the territory between the Avon and the Pentlands from the
Angles; and Tighernac records in 638 the battle of Glenmairison, or
Glenmureson, which is probably the small stream now called the Mureston
Water which flows from the Pentlands into the Linhouse Water near
Midcalder, in which his people were put to flight, and the siege of
Edinburgh.[316] During these wars there appears to have been hitherto a
combination of the Britons of Alclyde and the Scots of Dalriada against
the Angles and the Pictish population subject to them. It was, in fact,
a conflict of the western tribes against the eastern, and of the
Christian party against the pagan and semi-pagan, their common
Christianity forming a strong bond of union between the two former
nations, and after the death of Rhydderch Hael in 603 the Dalriadic
kings seem to have taken the lead in the command of the combined forces.
Rhydderch, we are told, but on no better authority than that of Jocelyn
of Furness in the twelfth century, was succeeded by his son Constantine;
but the throne of Alclyde had by this time passed to another branch of
the same family, and from whatever cause it arose, a breach now took
place between the Britons and the Scots, and we find the British king
and the king of Dalriada in a hostile position to one another, and
brought into violent conflict, which ended in the fate which Saint
Columba predicted for any descendant of King Aidan who should attack
[Sidenote: A.D. 642. Domnall Brecc slain in Strathcarron.] the head of
the house of Hy Neill overtaking Domnall Breac, who, in December in the
year 642, was slain in the upper valley of the river Carron, which was
known afterwards as the forest of Strathcawin, by Oan, king of the
Britons, in the fifteenth year of his reign.[317] Dalriada seems to have
fallen into a state of anarchy on the death of Domnall Breac. During the
remainder of this century we find no descendant of Aidan recorded
bearing the title of king of Dalriada; and it is probable, from
Adamnan’s remark that from that day to this they have been trodden down
by strangers, that the Britons now exercised a rule over them.[318]
The same year which saw Domnall Breac slain in Strathcarron likewise
brought Osuald’s reign over Northumbria to a disastrous end. His first
effort, on finding himself firmly seated on the throne, had been to
re-establish the Christian Church in his dominions, and to drive back
the flow of paganism and apostasy which had overspread the country. He
naturally turned to the form of Christianity in which he had been
educated, and sent to the elders of the Scots, desiring them to send him
a prelate who might instruct the nation of the Angles once more in the
Christian faith, and ere long received Bishop Aidan from them for this
purpose. The account of this mission belongs more to the History of the
Early Christian Church in Scotland, and will be there more fully
noticed. It is sufficient for our present purpose to say that his
episcopal seat was fixed in the island of Lindisfarne, which the king
gave him for the purpose. ‘From that time,’ says Bede, ‘many came from
the region of the Scots into Britain, and preached the Word to those
provinces of the Angles over which King Osuald ruled, and they among
them who had received priests’ orders administered the sacrament of
baptism. Churches were built. The people joyfully flocked to hear the
Word. Possessions and lands were given of the king’s bounty to build
monasteries. The Anglic youth were instructed by their Scottish masters,
and there were greater care and attention bestowed upon the rules and
observance of regular discipline. Most of those that came to preach,’
adds Bede, ‘were monks, and Bishop Aidan himself was a monk of the
island called Hii,’ and now, corruptly, Iona.[319]
Bede sums up his account of his reign by saying, ‘In short, he brought
under his dominion all the nations and provinces of Britain, which are
divided into four languages—namely, the Britons, the Picts, the Scots,
and the Angles;’[320] but this general expression must be taken as
qualified by the statement Bede had previously made in contrasting him
with the other Northumbrian kings in his enumeration of those who held
imperial authority, that he had the same extent under his rule as his
predecessor Aeduin, and it implies no more than that he had brought all
the people within the then limits of the Northumbrian kingdom under his
subjection, to whatever race they belonged. Bede, however, is stating a
more definite result of his reign when he adds that, through his
management, the provinces of the Deiri and the Bernicians, which till
then had been at variance, were peacefully united and moulded into one
people.
[Sidenote: A.D. 642.
Osuald slain in battle by Penda.]
These fair prospects, however, were soon to be overcast, for his old
enemy Penda, the pagan king of the Mercians, having resolved to renew
the struggle and make a second attempt to crush the Christian kingdom of
the Northumbrians, Osuald appears to have anticipated the attack, and
was killed in a great battle with the Mercians, which was fought at a
place called by Bede Maserfelth, but to which the continuator of Nennius
gives the name of Cocboy, on the 8th day of August in the year 642. It
is believed to have taken place at Oswestry, formerly Oswaldstree, in
Shropshire. Thus perished a king who was looked upon as the greatest and
most Christian ruler of the Northumbrians, in the ninth year of his
reign and the thirty-eighth of his age.[321]
[Sidenote: A.D. 642-670.
Osuiu, his brother, reigns twenty-eight years.]
Osuald was succeeded by his brother Osuiu, then only about thirty years
old, and during the first twelve years of his reign he had to maintain a
struggle for very existence with the victorious king of the Mercians,
who appears, as on the former occasion, to have combined with the
Britons, as Tighernac records a battle between Osuiu and the Britons
early in his reign.[322] Bede tells us that he was also exposed to much
trouble by his own son, Alchfrid, and also by Oidiluald, the son of his
brother Osuald, who may have thought he had a better right to the
throne. Osuiu placed governors over the province of Deira, the first
being Osuini, son of that Osric who had reigned a few months over Deira
after the death of Aeduin, and restricted his own immediate rule to his
hereditary province of Bernicia, where he had trouble enough to maintain
himself; for we find during the episcopate of Aidan, who died in 651,
the army of the Mercians, under Penda, ravaging the country of the
Northumbrians far and near, and attacking the royal city of Bamborough,
and not being able to take it either by assault or by siege, Penda
encompassed it on the land side with the materials of the wooden houses
in the neighbourhood, which he had broken up and set on fire with a view
to burn the town; and Bede tells us that Aidan, who was in one of the
Farne Islands, perceived the flames and smoke blown by the wind above
the city walls, and by his prayers produced a change of wind, which blew
them back on the besiegers, and obliged them to raise the siege.[323] On
another occasion, some years after Aidan’s death, we find Penda again
coming into this part of Bernicia with his hostile army, destroying all
he could with fire and sword, and burning the village and church in
which Aidan died, and which was a royal residence not far from
Bamborough.[324] It is plain from these incidental notices that Penda
and his army had Bernicia very much at their mercy, and were continually
in the occupation of the country; and their irruptions became so
intolerable at last, that Osuiu offered him a very large gift of royal
ornaments and money to purchase peace if he would cease to ravage and
destroy the provinces of his kingdom, but Penda refused to grant his
request, and resolved to destroy and extirpate all his nation;[325] and
so desperate became his position, that he appears to have taken refuge
in the insular city of Giudi in the Firth of Forth. Penda followed him
with his army, composed both of Mercians and of Britons, and Osuiu was
compelled to ransom the city by giving Penda all the riches which were
in it and in the neighbouring region as far as Manau, which he
distributed among the kings of the Britons who were with him; but having
raised a small army, and the enemy, who enormously outnumbered them,
probably not anticipating an attack, and being in a false security,
Osuiu fell upon them unexpectedly in the night and entirely defeated
them; Penda himself and the thirty royal commanders who were with him
being slain, and Catgabail, king of Guenedotia or North Wales, alone
escaping. Bede tells us that this battle took place on the 15th of
November in the thirteenth year of King Oswiu’s reign, that is in the
year 654, and that it was fought near the river Winuaed, which
overflowed its banks so that many more were drowned in the flight than
were destroyed by the sword, and that the war was thus brought to a
conclusion in the region of Loidis; on the other hand, the continuator
of Nennius says that Penda was slain in the plain of Gai, and that it
was called the slaughter of the plain of Gai, and places it evidently
between the city Judeu, by which Bede’s insular city of Giudi on the
Firth of Forth can alone be meant, and Manau, which lay between the
Pentlands and the Roman wall. There is no doubt that on the only other
occasion on which Bede mentions the region of Loidis[326] he means
Leeds, but it is equally certain that Lothian was likewise called the
province of Loidis; and if we suppose that Bede here means the northern
province of Lothian and not the district of Leeds, it at once reconciles
the two accounts. That this is the probable view we may gather from
this, that Leeds was in Deira, and a battle fought there is inconsistent
with the extent to which it is evident Penda had invaded the kingdom. On
the other hand, Florence of Worcester tells us that Penda’s attack was
upon Bernicia. It was here that we find Penda from time to time ravaging
the country, and it was this kingdom which was more immediately under
the rule of Osuiu.[327] The word Winuaed means Battleford, and the river
meant by it is probably the Avon, which divides the province of ‘Loidis’
from the district of ‘Calatria,’ called in the Irish Annals ‘Calathros,’
and by the Britons ‘Catraeth’—a district comprehending the parishes of
Falkirk, Muiravonside, and Polmont; and traces of the name may still be
found in the Fechtin’ Ford about a mile above Manuel, and the Red Ford
half a mile farther up.
The result of this great and unexpected victory was, Bede tells us, that
Osuiu both delivered his own people from the hostile depredations of the
pagans, and, having cut off their wicked head, converted the nation of
the Mercians and the adjacent provinces to the Christian faith.
[Sidenote: Dominion of Angles over Britons, Scots, and Picts.]
Bede ranks Osuiu as the seventh king of the nations of the Angles who
possessed imperial power, and sums up the result of his reign by saying
that ‘he held nearly the same dominions for some time as his
predecessors, and subdued and made tributary the greater part of the
nations of the Picts and Scots which possess the northern part of
Britain.’[328] He thus not only freed his own kingdom from the
incursions of the Mercians, and found himself at last in the full and
quiet possession of it, but he materially added to his dominions. In the
south he obtained possession of Mercia for three years, and in the north
extended his sway not only over the Britons but over the Picts and
Scots; and thus commenced the dominion of the Angles over the Britons of
Alclyde, the Scots of Dalriada, and the southern Picts, which was
destined to last for thirty years. By the fall of Penda and the defeat
and slaughter of his British allies, the Britons of Alclyde naturally
fell under his sway. Tighernac records the death of no king of Alclyde
during this period till the year 694, and the Ulster Annals, after
recording in 658 the death of Gureit or Gwriad, king of Alclyde,[329]
have also a blank during the same time. The Scots of Dalriada naturally
fell under his dominion along with the Britons, and we have the
testimony of Adamnan that they were trodden down by strangers during the
same period. But while these nations became tributary to the Angles
during this period of thirty years, the mode in which the king of
Northumbria dealt with the Picts shows that their dominion over them was
of a different kind, and that they viewed that part of the nation which
was subject to them as now forming part of the Northumbrian kingdom. The
way for this was prepared by the accession of Talorcan, son of Ainfrit,
to the throne of the Picts on the death of Talore, son of Wid, or
Ectolairg mac Foith, as Tighernac calls him, in 653.[330] Talorcan was
obviously the son of that Ainfrait, the son of Aedilfrid, and elder
brother of Osuald, who on his father’s death had taken refuge with the
Picts, and his son Talorcan must have succeeded to the throne through a
Pictish mother. At the time, then, when Osuiu thus extended his sway
over the Britons and Scots there was a king of the Anglic race by
paternal descent actually reigning over the Picts. Tighernac records his
death in 657,[331] and Bede tells us that within three years after he
had slain King Penda, Osuiu subjected the greater part of the Picts to
the dominion of the Angles.[332] It is probable, therefore, that he
claimed their submission to himself as the cousin and heir on the
paternal side of their king Talorcan, and enforced his claim by force of
arms. How far his dominion extended it is difficult to say, but it
certainly embraced, as we shall see, what Bede calls the province of the
Picts on the north side of the Firth of Forth, and, nominally at least,
may have included the whole territory of the southern Picts; while
Gartnaid, the son of Donnell or Domhnaill, who appears in the Pictish
Chronicle as his successor, and who from the form of his father’s name
must have been of pure Gaelic race, ruled over those who remained
independent.
But while Osuiu’s dominion now remained on the whole free from all
disturbance from hostile invasion or internal revolt, it was not
destined to continue long without being shaken by dissensions from
another quarter, and one of those great ecclesiastical questions soon
arose, which, in its results, materially affected the current of our
history. The Church which Osuald had established in Northumbria, and
which had now existed as the national form of religion for thirty years,
was an offshoot from the Scottish Church which owned the monastery of
Hii or Iona as its head, and followed the customs and rules of that
Church; but the great extension of Christianity from Northumbria over
the southern states of the Angles which followed the death of Penda,
brought it more directly in contact with the southern Church, which
owned Saint Augustine as its founder, and conformed in its customs to
the Roman Church from which he had derived his mission.
Colman, who had succeeded Finan in 660 as bishop of Lindisfarne, at this
time presided over the Scottish Church of Northumbria. Wilfrid was at
the head of the Roman party. The points on which the churches differed
were the proper time for keeping Easter, the form of the tonsure, and
other questions concerning the rules of ecclesiastical life—questions
then thought, and especially the first, as of vital importance. Osuiu,
Bede tells us, having been instructed and baptized by the Scots, thought
nothing better than what they taught, but his son Alchfrid, who then
governed Deira, having been instructed in Christianity by Wilfrid, a
most learned man, who had first gone to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical
doctrine, and spent much time at Lyons with Dalfin, archbishop of Gaul,
and receiving from him also the coronal tonsure,[333] had given him a
monastery which had been founded at Ripon for the Scots, who quitted it
rather than alter their customs.
In order to settle this dispute, a great council was held in 664 at
Strenaeshhalc, now Whitby, the details of which belong more to the
history of the Church. Suffice it to say that it led to Osuiu submitting
with his nation to Wilfrid, and conforming to the Roman customs, while
Colman withdrew with his Scots and those who adhered to him, and went
back to Scotia to consult with his people what was to be done in this
case.[334] He went first to Hii or Iona on leaving Lindisfarne in 664,
taking with him part of the relics of Saint Aidan, and having the rest
interred in the sacristy of the church at Lindisfarne, and in 668 passed
over to Ireland accompanied by the sons of Gartnaith, who took with them
the people of Skye, that is the Columban clergy there, and returned two
years afterwards.[335]
On the departure of the Scots, the episcopal see was removed from
Lindisfarne to York, where it had been originally placed by Paulinus,
and Wilfrid was made bishop of York, but did not obtain possession of
the diocese till 669, when we find him administering the bishopric of
York, and of all the Northumbrians, and likewise of the Picts, as far as
the dominions of King Osuiu extended,[336] an expression which
undoubtedly implies that the Picts were not merely tributary to the
Angles, but that their territory formed at this time a constituent part
of Osuiu’s dominions.
[Sidenote: A.D. 670.
Death of Osuiu, and accession of Ecgfrid his son.]
In the following year, Osuiu the king of the Northumbrians, died, and
was succeeded in both Bernicia and Deira by his son Ecgfrid, whose
accession was soon followed by an attempt on the part of the Picts to
throw off the Anglic yoke. The account of this insurrection is preserved
to us alone by Eddi, in his Life of St. Wilfrid, who wrote a few years
before Bede compiled his history. [Sidenote: A.D. 672. Revolt of the
Picts.] He tells us that ‘in the first years of his reign the bestial
people of the Picts, despising their subjection to the Saxons, and
threatening to throw off the yoke of servitude, collected together
innumerable tribes from the north, on hearing which Ecgfrid assembled an
army, and at the head of a smaller body of troops advanced against this
great and not easily discovered enemy, who were assembled under a
formidable ruler called Bernaeth, and attacking them made so great a
slaughter that two rivers were almost filled with their bodies. Those
who fled were pursued and cut to pieces, and the people were again
reduced to servitude, and remained under subjection during the rest of
Ecgfrid’s reign.’[337] Such is Eddi’s account, from which it appears to
have been an insurrection of the southern Picts who were under the
Anglic yoke, in which they were aided by the northern part of the nation
who remained independent. The two rivers may have been either the Forth
and the Teith, which join their streams a little above Stirling, or the
Tay and the Earn, which unite in the Firth of Tay at Abernethy, having a
low-lying plain forming the parish of Rhynd between, and the battle
probably took place in the second year of Ecgfrid’s reign, as Tighernac
records in that year the expulsion from the kingdom of Drost, who had
succeeded his brother Gartnaith as king of the Picts.[338] Eddi then
tells us that Ecgfrid attacked and defeated Wlfar, king of the Mercians,
and drove him from his kingdom, an event not narrated by Bede, but which
must have happened before Wlfar’s death in 675, and adds that ‘Ecgfrid’s
kingdom was thus enlarged both in the north and the south, and that,
under Bishop Wilfrid, the churches were multiplied both in the south
among the Saxons, and in the north among the Britons, Scots, and Picts,
Wilfrid having ordained everywhere presbyters and deacons, and governed
new churches.’[339] It was probably at this time that the monastery of
Aebbercurnig or Abercorn was founded in that part of Lothian which
extends from the Esk to the Avon as a central point for the
administration of the northern part of his diocese, which included the
province of the Picts held by the Angles of Northumbria in subjection.
[Sidenote: A.D. 678.
Wilfrid expelled from his diocese.]
In 678 Bede tells us that a dissension broke out between King Ecgfrid
and Bishop Wilfrid, who was driven from his see. His diocese was divided
into two; Bosa was appointed bishop of the province of Deira, having his
episcopal seat at York; and Eata over that of the Bernicians, and his
seat either in the church of Hagustald or Hexham, or in that of
Lindisfarne. Three years afterwards Wilfrid’s diocese was still further
divided and two additional bishops added—Tunberct for the church of
Hagustald, Eata remaining at Lindisfarne, and Trumuin over the province
of the Picts which was subject to the Angles.[340]
[Sidenote: Expulsion of Drost, king of the Picts, and accession of
Brude, son of Bile.]
On the failure of these great attempts to recover their independence in
672, that part of the Pictish nation which had not been brought under
subjection to the Angles appears to have expelled their unsuccessful
monarch, Drost, the brother and successor of Gartnaith, son of Domnall,
from the kingdom, and to have elected Bredei, son of Bile, to fill the
vacant throne.[341] Bredei was paternally a scion of the royal house of
Alclyde, his father Bile appearing in the Welsh genealogies annexed to
Nennius as the son of Neithon and father of that Eugein who slew Domnall
Breac in 642. His mother was the daughter of Talorcan mac Ainfrait, the
last independent king of the Picts before they were subjected by
Osuiu.[342] The object in placing him on the throne may have been to put
the true successor of Talorcan, according to the law of Pictish
succession, in competition with any claim the Anglic monarch may have
had as representing him in the male line. Bredei began his reign in the
extreme north, as eight years after we find the siege of Dunbaitte or
Dunbeath, in Caithness, recorded in 680. In the following year he
advanced beyond the range of the Mounth toward the south, as we have in
681 the siege of Dunfoither or Dunnotter, near Stonehaven; and in 682 we
are told by Tighernac that the Orkney Islands were laid waste by
Bruidhe.[343]
In the meantime the little kingdom of Dalriada was in a state of
complete disorganisation. We find no record of any real king over the
whole nation of the Scots, but each separate tribe seems to have
remained isolated from the rest under its own chief, while the Britons
exercised a kind of sway over them, and, along with the Britons, they
were under subjection to the Angles. The most northerly part of Dalriada
was the small state called Cinel Baedan, or Kinelvadon, which was a part
of the larger tribe of the Cinel Eochagh, one of the three subdivisions
of the Cinel Loarn, but separated from the rest by the great arm of the
sea called Linnhe Loch. The head of this little tribe was at this time
Fearchar Fada, or the Tall, the lineal descendant of Baedan, from whom
the tribe took its name, who was son of Eochaidh, grandson of
Loarn.[344] He appears to have commenced an attempt to throw off the
authority of the Britons, and with it that of the Angles, but at first
unsuccessfully. The first encounter with the Britons was in 678, when
the Dalriads were defeated. At the same time the battles of Dunlocho,
Liaccmaelain and Doirad Eilinn were fought, the latter of which can
alone be placed with any certainty, Doirad Eilinn being obviously the
island of Jura.[345]
[Sidenote: A.D. 684.
Ireland ravaged by Ecgfrid.]
Bede tells us that in the year 684 Ecgfrid sent Berct, his general, with
an army into Ireland, and laid waste a part of the country, not even
sparing the churches or monasteries, in spite of the advice of the most
reverend father Ecgberct, an Anglic priest, who had been trained in
Ireland, and lived much among the Scots and Picts; and we learn from the
Irish Annals that the scene of this devastation was the plain of Breg,
or the districts along the eastern shore from Dublin to Drogheda.[347]
It seems difficult to suppose that Ecgfrid should have made so wanton an
attack upon the Irish without some motive, and it seems probable that he
either suspected that the Scots of Dalriada were obtaining help from
their countrymen in Ireland, or wishing, by striking this blow, to
prevent the Irish from supporting them in their attempt to recover their
independence.
[Sidenote: A.D. 685.
Invasion of kingdom of Picts by Ecgfrid; defeat and death at
Dunnichen.]
Be this as it may, Bede tells us that in the following year King Ecgfrid
led an army to ravage the province of the Picts, and that, the enemy
feigning a retreat, he was led into the straits of inaccessible
mountains and slain with the greatest part of the forces which he had
taken with him, on the 20th day of May, in the fortieth year of his
age,[348] that is, in the year 685. The continuator of Nennius tells us
that Ecgfrid made war against the descendants of his father’s brother,
who was king of the Picts, and called Bridei, and fell there with the
whole strength of his army, the Picts with their king being victorious,
and that from the time of this war it was called the battle of Lingaran.
Tighernac places the devastation in Ireland in the year 685, and this
battle, which he calls the battle of Duin Nechtain, in the year 686. He
agrees with Bede in stating that it took place on the 20th of June, and
adds that it was fought on a Saturday, but as the 20th of June fell on a
Saturday in the year 685, it is evident that Bede’s date is the correct
one. Simeon of Durham says that the battle was fought at a place called
Nechtan’s Mere, and the Annals of Ulster add the further fact that
Ecgfrid had burnt Tula Aman and Duin Ollaig.[349] Ecgfrid appears
therefore to have crossed the Forth at Stirling, and advanced through
Perthshire to the Tay, where he burnt the place called Tula Aman at the
mouth of the river Almond where it falls into the Tay. He seems at the
same time to have sent a detachment from his army into Dalriada, where
he burnt Duinollaig, now Dunolly, the chief stronghold of the Cinel
Loarn. He then followed the retreating army of the Picts along the level
country bounded on the north-west by the range of the Sidlaw hills, and
in attempting incautiously to penetrate through the mountain range at
Dunnichen was surrounded and defeated, his army being almost entirely
cut off and himself slain. There was a lake, now drained, called the
Mire of Dunnichen, where the battle was fought, and has left its record
in the numerous stone coffins which have been found in the
neighbourhood.[350]
An Irish annalist has preserved to us the following lines, attributed to
Riagal of Bangor:—
‘This day Bruide fights a battle for the land of his grandfather,
Unless the Son of God will it otherwise, he will die in it:
This day the son of Ossa was killed in battle with green swords,
Although he did penance, he shall lie in Hi after his death:
This day the son of Ossa was killed, who had the black drink.
Christ heard our supplications, they spared Bruide the brave.’[351]
[Sidenote: Effect of the defeat and death of Ecgfrid.]
The effect of this crushing defeat of the Anglic army, accompanied by
the death of their king, was to enable those who had been under
subjection to them at once to recover their independence; and Bede thus
sums it up:—‘From that time the hopes and strength of the Anglic kingdom
began to fluctuate and to retrograde, for the Picts recovered the
territory belonging to them which the Angles had held, and the Scots who
were in Britain and a certain part of the Britons regained their
liberty, which they have now enjoyed for about forty-six years.’[352]
The difference in the expressions used with regard to the Picts and
those employed towards the Scots and Britons shows that while the latter
were merely tributary to the Angles, the former had actually been
incorporated with their kingdom; but the result secured the full
independence of both, which they had retained during the forty-six years
which elapsed from the death of Ecgfrid to the termination of Bede’s
history; and thus terminated the thirty years’ subjection of the Picts,
the Scots of Dalriada, and the Britons of Alclyde, to the Angles; and
as, after the defeat of Aedan with his army of Scots and Britons at
Dawstane, it was said that no Scot durst after that attack the kingdom
of the Angles, so now we are told that the Angles never afterwards were
in a position to exact a tribute from the Picts.[353]
[Sidenote: Position of the Angles and Picts.]
Some portion of this period of forty-six years elapsed before the mutual
relations of the Angles and Picts on the one hand, and the Scots and
Britons on the other, became fixed within definite limits, and their
internal government completely reorganised. The Angles by this defeat
lost the Pictish territory Osuiu had added to their kingdom thirty years
before; but the previous boundaries of the Northumbrian kingdom seem to
have been retained, and we are told by Bede that Aldfrid, the successor
of Ecgfrid, ‘nobly retrieved the ruined state of the kingdom though
within narrower bounds.’[354] The whole Pictish nation north of the
Firth of Forth, which Bede terms the Province of the Picts, was now once
more independent, but the kingdom of the Angles still extended,
nominally at least, to the Avon; and though we are told that ‘among the
many Angles who there either fell by the sword or were made slaves, or
escaped by flight out of the country of the Picts, the most reverend man
of God, Trumuini, who had received the bishopric over them, withdrew
with his people that were in the monastery of Aebbercurnig’ or Abercorn,
Bede adds that it was ‘seated in the country of the Angles, but close by
the arm of the sea which divides the territories of the Angles and the
Picts.’[355]
Seven years after the battle of Dunnichen, Bruide, son of Bile, the king
of the Picts, died.[356] He is termed by Tighernac king of Fortrenn,
from which it would appear that after the re-establishment of the
Pictish kingdom in its independence he had made the district of Fortrenn
his principal seat, to which he was no doubt led by his paternal
connection with the Britons, and this term of Fortrenn now came to be
used as synonymous with the kingdom of the Picts.
Adamnan held the abbacy of Hii or Iona at the time that Bruide died, and
the Irish Life of Adamnan contains the following strange legend:—‘The
body of Bruide, son of Bile, king of the Cruithnigh, was brought to Ia
(Iona), and his death was sorrowful and grievous to Adamnan, and he
desired that the body of Bruide should be brought to him into the house
that night. Adamnan watched by the body till morning. Next day, when the
body began to move and open its eyes, a certain devout man came to the
door of his house and said, “If Adamnan’s object be to raise the dead, I
say he should not do so, for it will be a degradation to every cleric
who shall succeed to his place, if he too cannot raise the dead.” “There
is somewhat of right in that,” said Adamnan, “therefore, as it is more
proper, let us give our blessing to the body and to the soul of Bruide.”
Thus Bruide resigned his spirit to heaven again, with the blessing of
Adamnan and the congregation of Ia. Then Adamnan said—
Many wonders doth he perform,
The King born of Mary:
He takes away life (and gives)
Death to Bruide, son of Bile;
It is rare,
After ruling in the kingdom of the north,
That a hollow wood of withered oak (an oak coffin)
Is about the son of the king of Alcluaith.’[357]
He was succeeded by Taran, son of Entefidich, who seems to have belonged
to a different section of the Picts, and not to have been generally
accepted by the nation, as in the year following his accession we have
again a siege of Dun Foither or Dunnotter, and after a short reign of
four years he is driven from the throne.[358] Taran was succeeded by
Bridei, son of Dereli. In the year following Tighernac records a battle
between the Saxons and the Picts, in which Brechtraig, son of Bernith,
is slain. Bede in his Chronicle also records that Brerctred, a royal
commander of the Northumbrians, was slain by the Picts,[359] and we are
told in the Ulster Annals that, a year after, Taran took refuge in
Ireland. Brechtraig appears to have been the son of that Bernaeth who
headed the insurrection of the Picts in 672, and seems to have made an
effort to recover the influence of the Angles over the Picts, which was
successfully resisted. Aldfrid, King of Northumbria, died in 705, and
was succeeded by his son Osred, a boy of eight years old; and in the
following year Tighernac records the death of Brude, son of Dereli,[360]
who was succeeded by his brother Nectan, son of Dereli, according to the
Pictish law of succession. Five years after his accession, the Picts of
the plain of Manann, probably encouraged by the success of the
neighbouring kingdom of the Picts in maintaining their independence
against the Angles, rose against their Saxon rulers. They were opposed
by Berctfrid, the prefect or Alderman of the Northumbrians, whose king
was still only in his fourteenth year. The Picts, however, were defeated
with great slaughter, and their youthful leader Finguine, son of
Deleroith, slain. The Saxon Chronicle tells us that this battle was
fought between Hæfe and Cære, by which the rivers Avon and Carron are
probably meant, the plain of Manann being situated between these two
rivers.[361] These Picts appear to have been so effectually crushed that
they did not renew the attempt, and we do not learn of any further
collision between the Picts and the Angles during this period.
[Sidenote: Position Scots and Britons.]
The Scots of Dalriada and a party of the British nation, we are told,
recovered their freedom, the Angles still maintaining the rule over the
rest of the Britons. The portion of their kingdom which became
independent consisted of those districts extending from the Firth of
Clyde to the Solway, embracing the counties of Dumbarton, Renfrew,
Lanark, Ayr, and Dumfries, with the stronghold of Alclyde for its
capital: but the Angles still retained possession of the district of
Galloway with its Pictish population, and Whitehern as their principal
seat, as well as of that part of the territory of the Britons which lay
between the Solway Firth and the river Derwent, having as its principal
seat the town of Carlisle, which Ecgfrid had, in the same year in which
he assailed the Picts, given to Saint Cuthbert, who had been made bishop
of Lindisfarne in the previous year, that is, in 684.[362]
Eight years after the death of Ecgfrid, Tighernac records the death of
Domnal mac Avin, king of Alclyde. He was probably the son of that Oan or
Eugein who slew Domnall Breac in 642,[363] and had, on the defeat and
death of Ecgfrid, recovered his father’s throne. He was succeeded by
Bile, son of Alpin, and grandson of the same Eugein.
[Sidenote: Contest between Cinel Loarn and Cinel Gabhran.]
Although the Scots of Dalriada had thus obtained entire independence,
they did not immediately become united under one king. Their freedom
from the yoke of the Britons and Angles was followed by a contest
between the chiefs of their two principal tribes, the Cinel Loarn and
the Cinel Gabhran, for the throne of Dalriada. On the death of Domnall
Breac, when the Britons obtained a kind of supremacy over the Dalriads,
his brother Conall Crandamna, and his sons Mailduin and Domnal Donn,
appear to have been at the head of the Cinel Gabhran, but Fearchar Fata,
the chief of the principal branch of the Cinel Loarn, had, as we have
seen, taken the lead in the attempt to free Dalriada from the rule of
strangers. The death of Domnall Donn, the son of Conall Crandamna, is
recorded in 696, and that of Fearchar Fata in 697. The former was
succeeded by Eocha, the grandson of Domnall Breac, who was slain in the
same year, and the latter by his son Ainbhcellaig, who in the following
year was expelled from the kingdom, after Duinonlaig or Dunolly had been
burnt, and was sent bound to Ireland;[364] but none of these leaders of
the Cinel Loarn or the Cinel Gabhran bore the title of king of
Dalriada.[365] On the expulsion of Ainbhcellaig we find his brother
Sealbach at the head of the Cinel Loarn, and in 701 he destroys Dun
Onlaigh, and cuts off the Cinel Cathbath, a rival branch of the tribe of
Loarn.[366] Three years after, the slaughter of the Dalriads in
Glenlemnae, or the valley of the Leven, is recorded, but whether it was
in the valley of the river Leven, which divides Lorn from Lochaber, and
flows into Loch Leven there, or whether it was the Leven in
Dumbartonshire, cannot be fixed with any certainty. In 707, Becc,
grandson of Dunchada, was slain. He was the head of a branch of the
Cinel Gabhran, who possessed the south half of Kintyre, and were
descended from Conaing, one of the sons of Aidan, to whom it was given
as his patrimony.[367]
[Sidenote: Conflict between the Dalriads and the Britons.]
The Dalriads appear soon after to have carried the war into the British
territory, for we have, in 711, a conflict of the Dalriads and Britons
at Loirgeclat, by which Loch Arklet, on the east side of Loch Lomond, is
probably meant, in which the Britons are defeated. In 712 Sealbach
besieges Aberte or Dunaverty, the main stronghold of the south half of
Kintyre, the patrimony of the branch of the Cinel Gabhran of which the
descendants of Conaing, son of Aidan, were the head. In 714 Dunolly is
rebuilt by Sealbach, and three years afterwards there is again a
conflict between the Britons and Dalriads, at the stone which is called
Minvircc, and the Britons are again defeated.[368] In the valley at the
head of Loch Lomond which is called Glenfalloch there is a place called
Clach na Breatan, or the stone of the Britons, which is now at the
separation of Dumbartonshire from Perthshire, but originally marked the
northern boundary of the territory of the Britons, and was probably the
scene of this conflict.
During the rest of the period of forty-six years which succeeded the
defeat and death of Ecgfrid, no further collision between the Britons
and the Dalriads is recorded, and each nation remained within the limits
of its own proper kingdom.
-----
Footnote 283:
The oldest of the Latin Chronicles says that Fergus, first king of
Dalriada, reigned ‘a monte Drumalban usque ad mare Hibernie et ad
Inchegal’ (_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 130), apparently excluding the
islands; but the tract _De Situ Albaniæ_, of the same date, has it ‘a
monte Brunalban usque ad Mare Hiberniæ,’ and adds, ‘Deinde reges de
semine Fergus regnaverunt in Brunalban sive Brunhere’ (_Ib._ p. 137).
Brunalban seems to be the district on the east side of the range now
called Breadalban, and Brunhere is probably Bruneire, and meant for
the district on the west side of the range. There are two glens both
called Glenlochy, the one proceeding from the range eastward to Loch
Tay, the other westward to Loch Awe, and the former is called in
charters Glenlochy Alban, to distinguish it from the other. We have
therefore the term Alban applied to the country beyond the frontier of
Dalriada, and the term Eire to Dalriada as being a colony of Scots
from Eire. The south part of Morvern was called Kinelvadon or
Cinelbhadon, from Badon, a son of Loarn, and therefore belonged to
Dalriada. On the shoulder of the hill in Mull called Benmore, which
forms the pass from the northern to the southern part of the island
and is called Mamchlachaig, there are two cairns. The one on the north
is called Carn Cul ri Alban, or the cairn with its back to Alban, and
the other Carn Cul ri Erin, or the cairn with its back to Eire. There
is a similar cairn on Iona and another on Colonsay, both called Carn
Cul ri Eirin, which seem to mark the boundary. If Iona was exactly on
the boundary which separated Dalriada from the Picts, it is obvious
how Bede’s statement that it was given to Saint Columba by the Picts
who inhabit the adjacent districts, is not inconsistent with that of
Tighernac, that it was immolated to him by the king of Dalriada. The
expression is ‘offeravit.’ See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, orig. ed., p. 434,
for a judicious examination of this point.
Footnote 284:
This account is taken from the Tract ‘On the Men of Alban’ (_Chron.
Picts and Scots_, p. 308). The Cinel Comgall, from whom Cowall takes
its name, formed properly a fourth tribe, being descended from a
brother of Gabran, but they appear to have been incorporated with the
Cinel Gabran. The Cinel Loarn consisted of three smaller tribes—the
Cinel Fergus Salach, the Cinel Cathbath, and the Cinel Eachadh, to
whom the three subdivisions of Lorn—Nether Lorn, Mid-Lorn, and Upper
Lorn—may be severally assigned. Dr. O’Donovan identified Dunmonaidh,
the traditionary capital of Dalriada, with Dunstaffnage, but evidently
upon mere conjecture. Dr. Reeves, in his edition of _Adamnan_, rightly
identifies it with Dunadd.
Footnote 285:
Eis quæ arduis atque horrentibus montium jugis, ab australibus eorum
sunt regionibus sequestratæ (B. iii. c. iv.).
Erat autem Columba primus doctor fidei Christianæ transmontanis Pictis
ad aquilonem (B. v. c. ix.).
Footnote 286:
Ut, ubi res perveniret in dubium, magis de feminea regum prosapia,
quam de masculina regem sibi eligerent; quod usque hodie apud Pictos
constat esse servatum.—Bede, B. i. c. 1.
Footnote 287:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 40, 45, 126.
Footnote 288:
_Ibid._ pp. 319, 328, 329.
Footnote 289:
Brude mac Bile and Talorcan mac Ainfrait. This will appear afterwards.
Footnote 290:
M‘Lennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 129.
Footnote 291:
Cæsar says of the Britons of the interior, ‘Uxores habent deni
duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus,
parentesque cum liberis; sed, si qui sunt ex his nati, eorum habentur
liberi, quo primum virgo quæque deducta est.’—(B. v. c. 14.) Dio, as
reported by Xiphiline, attributes a similar custom to the Caledonians
and Mæatæ, when he says that they have wives in common, and rear the
whole of their progeny. It is obvious that such a custom must have
given rise to the feeling, that the only certainty of a child
belonging to a particular family was to look to the mother, not the
father, as the link which connected him with it; and that the Pictish
system would naturally spring out of it; but it is probable Cæsar and
Dio represented a custom as it appeared to them, without understanding
it.
Footnote 292:
When the father of the children adopted was king in a nation where
male succession prevailed, the eldest son appears to have remained in
the father’s tribe, and succeeded to his throne, while the children
adopted alone non-Pictish names. We shall find this to be the case
where the kings were of foreign race.
Footnote 293:
584 Mors Bruidhe mac Mailchon Righ Cruithneach.—_Tigh._
Footnote 294:
599 Bas Gartnaidh regis Pictorum.—_Tigh._
Footnote 295:
In the Latin lists this king is confounded with the older Nectan, and
called the son of Irb and the founder of Abernethy.
Footnote 296:
Bamborough is about sixteen miles south-east of Berwick. The Holy
Island is about nine miles from Berwick, and is four miles long and
two broad. The channel between it and the mainland is left dry at low
water.
Footnote 297:
A.D. 606 Bas Aedhan mac Gabhrain anno xxviii. regni sui, aetatis vero
lxxiv.—_Tigh._
Footnote 298:
Nectan is said to have reigned 20 years, and Cinioch 19; together 39
years. Tighernac, however, records the death of the previous king
Gartnaidh in 599, and of Cinadon in 631, giving an interval of only 32
years. Cinioch therefore began to reign in 612, and as Tighernac does
not record the death of Nectan as king of the Picts, he must then have
been displaced.
Footnote 299:
Majore potentia cunctis qui Brittaniam incolunt, Anglorum pariter et
Brettonum populis, præfuit (B. ii. c. v.). Nemo Anglorum ante eum
omnes Britanniæ fines, qua vel ipsorum vel Brettonum provinciæ
habitant, sub ditione acceperit (B. ii. c. ix.).
Footnote 300:
In the foundation charter of Holyrood by David I., he called it
‘Ecclesia Sancti Crucis Edwinesburgensis.’ Simeon of Durham calls it
Edwinesburch.
Footnote 301:
It is called ‘Lothene’ in the Saxon Chronicle, and appears to be meant
by Lethead in the ancient poem in _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 127.
Florence of Worcester calls it ‘Provincia Loidis,’ and the Chronicle
of Melrose the same. It appears, as we shall see, under the name of
‘Regio Loidis’ in 654. In its limited extent it was the district
between the Avon and the Lammermoors. In the foundation charter of
Holyrood, David the First grants to its monks the tenth of all the
marine animals which might be thrown ashore ‘ab Avon usque ad
Colbrandspath,’ with the tenth of his pleas and other dues within the
same limits; and in a charter of Rolland, son of Uchtred, some lands
in Lauderdale are described as ‘usque ad divisas de Laodonia versus
Lambermor.’ This district now consists of the three counties of East,
Mid, and West Lothians. Simeon of Durham refers to it in its large
extent when he has ‘pervenit apud fluvium Twedam, qui Northymbriam et
Loidam disterminat.’—Sym. Dun. Surtees ed., p. 127.
Footnote 302:
A.D. 627 Cath Airdcoraind in Dalriada [Lachtnene mac Toirbene Abbach]
victores erant in quo cecidit Fiachna mac Demain la Conadh Cerr Ri
Dalriada.—_Tigh._ The words within brackets belong to another year and
have dropped in by mistake.
Footnote 303:
A.D. 629 Cath Fedhaeoin in quo Maelcaith mac Scandail Rex Cruithnin
victor erat. Dalriada cecidit. Concad Cer Rex Dalriada cecidit et
Dicuill mac Eachach Rex Ceneoil Cruithne cecidit et nepotes Aidan, id
est, Regullan mac Conaing et Failbe mac Eachach [et Osseric mac
Albruit cum strage maxima suorum]. Eochadh Buidhi mac Aidan victor
erat.—_Tigh._ The words in brackets do not belong to this event. The
Ulster Annals add, ‘Mors Eochach Buidhe regis Pictorum filii Aedain,
sic in libro Cuanac inveni.’ In the tract on the battle of Magh-Rath
we are told that Eochadh Buidhe married the daughter of Eochaidh
Aingces Ri Bretain. This is a Gaelic and not a British name, and a
king of the Picts of Galloway may be meant, through whose daughter
Eochadh Buidhe acquired his right.
Footnote 304:
Bas Cinaetha mac Luchtren regis Pictorum.—_Tigh._
Footnote 305:
Quamvis nomen et professionem haberet Christiani, adeo tamen erat
animo ac moribus barbarus, ut ne sexui quidem muliebri vel innocuæ
parvulorum parceret ætati.—B. ii. c. 20.
Footnote 306:
Viro strenuissimo de regio genere Merciorum.—_Ib._
Footnote 307:
Bede, ii. c. 20. The chronicle annexed to Nennius dates this battle in
630, and Tighernac in 631, when he has ‘Cath itir Etuin mac Ailli
regis Saxonum, qui totam Britanniam regnavit, in quo victus est a Chon
rege Britonum et Panta Saxano;’ but Tighernac dates Anglic events two
or three years before Bede.
Footnote 308:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._ B. iv. c. 1.
Footnote 309:
Adamnan, _Vit. Col._ Book i. c. 1.
Footnote 310:
632 Cath la Cathlon et Anfraith qui decollatus est, in quo Osualt mac
Etalfraith victor erat et Catlon rex Britonum cecidit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 311:
635 Cath Seghuisse in quo cecidit Lochene mac Nechtain Cennfota et
Cumascach mac Aengussa.—_Tigh._ Bellum Seguse in quo cecidit Lochne
mac Nechtain Ceannfotai agus Cumuscach mac Aengusso agus Gartnait mac
Oith.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 312:
678 Cath i Calitros in quo victus est Domhnall breacc.—_Tigh._ The
battle is entered under wrong year, being after Domnall Breac’s death;
but as Tighernac, who records his death at 642, repeats it at 686, it
may be held to have taken place eight years before his death. The
cause of these misplaced entries will be afterwards noticed.
Footnote 313:
Iisdem finibus regnum tenuit.—B. ii. c. v.
Footnote 314:
Pink. _Vit. SS._ p. 30. Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._ B. iii. c. vi.
Footnote 315:
An ancient historical romance called the Battle of Magh Rath was
published in the original Irish, with a translation and notes, for the
Irish Archæological Society, by Dr. O’Donovan, which may be consulted
with advantage, but it contains the anachronism of Congal Claen
applying to Eochadh Buidhe as the then reigning king of Dalriada, who
had died eight years before. Mr. Burton has strangely misrepresented
the Dalriadic history, arising probably from a too superficial
examination of the Irish Annals, and a want of acquaintance with Irish
names and words, which he rarely gives correctly. In vol. i. p. 289,
he states of Aidan that by his descent from Riadha he belonged to the
race of the Hy Neill, but this is a mistake. The Dalriads belonged to
an entirely different branch of the Scots from the Hy Neill. He says
that Aidan justified Saint Columba’s prophetic fears by emancipating
his territory from dependence on the monarchs of Ireland, but it was
Saint Columba himself who effected this emancipation at the Council of
Drumceatt. He says that Domnall Brecc contemplated the subjugation of
Ireland, and implies that the Dalriadic kings put forward some
pretensions to the Irish throne, of which there is not the least
trace. The only successor of Domnall Brecc whom Mr. Burton notices is
Eocha, or Auchy as he calls him, son of Aodhfin, in 796, a fictitious
king who never existed.
Footnote 316:
638 Cath Glinnemairison in quo mundert Domnall Bricc do teichedh (the
people of Domnall Brecc fled) et obsessio Etin.—_Tigh._ The Ulster
Annals have Glenmureson. Glenmoriston in Inverness-shire is of course
out of the question, and the only name in a suitable situation is the
Mureston Water, in the parishes of West and Mid Calder, on the south
bank of the Almond, and between it and the Mureston Water are four
barrows or tumuli, near which, according to common tradition, a great
battle was fought in early times between the Picts and Scots.—_N. S.
A._ vol. i. p. 373. That Etin here is Edinburgh need not be doubted.
Footnote 317:
642. Domnall-brecc in cath Srathacauin in fine anni in Decembre
interfectus est xv. regni sui ab Ohan rege Britonum.—_Tigh._ The
Annals of Ulster have in the same year ‘Domhnall-breacc in bello
Sraith Cairinn in fine anni in Decembre interfectus est ab Hoan rege
Britonum.’ The upper part of the Vale of the Carron, through which the
river flows after rising in the Fintry hills, is called Strathcarron,
but it also bore the name of Strathcawin. Thus in the Morton
Chartulary there is a charter by Alexander II., which mentions ‘Dundaf
et Strathkawan que fuerunt foresta nostra’ (Ap. to Pref., vol. i. p.
xxxiv). Dundaf adjoins Strathcarron. The letter h in Ohan or Hoan is
redundant. The name is Oan, a form of Owen, or Eugein. There is in the
Welsh poem of the Gododin a stanza which obviously relates to this
event. It is repeated in the poem with some verbal variations, but it
may be thus rendered:—
I saw the array that came from Pentir (Kintyre);
It was as victims for the sacrifice they descended.
I saw the two out of their town they did fall,
And the men of Nwython brought destruction;
I saw the men beaten or wounded who came with the dawn,
And the head of Dyvnwal Vrych ravens devoured it.
The author is indebted to Professor Evans of New York for pointing out
that Pentir is the Welsh equivalent of Cindtire, or Kintyre, and for
correcting the erroneous rendering of the first lines in the _Four
Ancient Books of Wales_.—See _Archæologia Cambrensis_ for April 1874,
p. 122.
Now this Oan who slew Domnall Breacc is evidently the Eugein who
appears in the Welsh genealogies attached to Nennius as the ancestor
of the later kings of Alclyde—(see _Chron. Picts and Scots_, Pref.
xcv), and who was son of Beli, son of Neithon, who is obviously the
Nwython of the poem, and by his men the Strathclyde Britons are meant.
The Annals of Ulster have, at 649, ‘Cocat huae Naedain et Gartnait
meic Accidain’ (war of the grandson of Naedan and Gartnaidh son of
Accidan). The grandson of Naedan was no doubt Oan or Eugein, and his
opponent a Pict.
Footnote 318:
Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan place five kings during this
period—Conall Crandomna, and Dungall or Dunchad mac Duban, who reign
jointly ten years; Domnall Donn thirteen years, Mailduin mac Conall
seventeen years, and Fearchan Fada twenty-one years—in all sixty-one
years, which brings us to the end of the century; but Tighernac
records the death of Conall Crandomna in 660, Mailduin mac Conall
Crandomna in 689, and Fearchar Fada in 697, simply, without adding to
their names the title Ri Dalriada. Conall Crandomna was brother of
Domnall Breacc, and his reigning jointly with Dungall or Dunchad, of
another line, shows how the little kingdom was broken up. Domnall Donn
and Mailduin were his sons, but Fearchan Fada was of the Cinel Loarn.
Footnote 319:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._ B. iii. c. iv. Tighernac has at 632 ‘Inis Metgoit
fundata est,’ but he antedates Anglic events three years.
Footnote 320:
Denique omnes nationes et provincias Brittaniæ, quæ in quatuor
linguas, id est, Brettonum, Pictorum, Scottorum, et Anglorum divisæ
sunt, in ditione accepit.—B. iii. c. vi.
Footnote 321:
Tighernac has at 639, recte 642, simply ‘Cath Osuailt contra Panta, in
quo Osualt cecidit,’ which rather implies that he was the attacking
party.
Footnote 322:
642, recte 645, Cath Ossueius inimun (between him) et Britones.
Footnote 323:
Bede, B. iii. c. xvi.
Footnote 324:
_Ib._ c. xvii.
Footnote 325:
Bede, B. iii. c. xxiv.
Footnote 326:
B. ii. c. xiv. There is a slight variation in the expression. In the
one case it is ‘regio quæ vocatur Loidis,’ and in this simply ‘regio
Loidis.’
Footnote 327:
Bede says that ‘prope fluvium Winuaed pugnatum est,’ and ‘Hoc autem
bellum rex Osuiu in regione Loidis tertio decimo regni sui anno,
decimo septimo die kal. Decembrium cum magna utriusque populi
utilitate confecit.’
The continuator of Nennius, ‘Et ipse (Osguid) occidit Pantha in Campo
Gaii et nunc facta est Strages Gai campi et reges Britonum interfecti
sunt qui exierant cum rege Pantha in expeditione usque ad urbem quæ
vocatur Judeu. Tunc reddidit Osguid omnes divitias quæ erant cum eo in
urbe, usque in Manau, Pende et Penda distribuit ea regibus Britonum,
id est, Atbret Judeu. Solus autem Catgabail rex Guenedote regionis cum
exercitu suo evasit de nocte consurgens; qua propter vocatus est
Catgabail Catguommed.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 13.
It is obvious that the event in the second sentence preceded the
first, and that it was a night attack.
Florence of Worcester says that Penda with thirty legions and an equal
number of noble chiefs entered Bernicia for the purpose of attacking
Oswy.
There is a very ingenious paper by Mr. D. W. Nash, in the _Cambrian
Journal_, vol. iv., Second Series, p. 1, in which, identifying this
battle with the battle of Catraeth, which forms the subject of the
poem of the Gododin, he was the first to point out the probability of
the scene of the battle being in the north. He identifies the town
Judeu with Bede’s Giudi, but supposes it to be the same as Jedburgh,
and endeavours to show from the poem itself that it relates to this
battle. The author concurs with him so far that the battle in which
Penda was slain took place in the north, and that by the ‘regio
Loidis’ Lothian is meant, and he can hardly doubt that the name ‘Gaius
Campus’ is merely a Latin rendering of Catraeth; but he cannot agree
in the identification with Jedburgh, because Catraeth was evidently on
the sea-shore, and Bede, whose authority cannot be questioned, places
Giudi in the Firth of Forth. He can discover no resemblance between
the incidents in the poem and this battle, though the locality may be
the same. Tighernac has at 656 ‘Cath Pante regis Saxonum in quo ipse
cum xxx regibus cecidit. Ossiu victor erat.’ The Chronicle annexed to
Nennius has in 656 ‘Strages Gaii Campi,’ and in 657, ‘Pantha occisio,’
thus placing the battle and the death of Penda in two different years,
but this is against all authorities.
Footnote 328:
Æqualibus pene terminis regnum nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorum
quoque atque Scottorum gentes, quæ septentrionales Brittanniæ fines
tenent, maxima ex parte perdomuit, ac tributarias fecit.—B. ii. c. v.
Footnote 329:
658. Mors Gureit regis Alocluaithe.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 330:
A.D. 653 Bass Ferich mac Totalain et Ectolairg mac Fooith regis
Pictorum.—_Tigh._
Footnote 331:
A.D. 657 Bas Tolarcain mac Ainfrith Ri Cruithne.—_Tigh._
Footnote 332:
Idem autem rex Osuiu tribus annis post occisionem Pendan regis,
Mercionum genti, necnon et cæteris australium provinciarum populis
præfuit: qui etiam gentem Pictorum maxima ex parte regno Anglorum
subjecit.—B. iii. c. xxiv.
Footnote 333:
Bede, B. iii. c. xxv.
Footnote 334:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. xxvi. His expression is ‘in Scottiam regressus est.’
In another place (B. iv. c. iv.) he says ‘Interea Colmanus, qui de
Scottia erat episcopus, relinquens Britanniam, tulit secum omnes quos
in Lindisfarnensium insula congregaverat Scottos; sed et de gente
Anglorum viros circiter triginta, qui utrique monachicæ conversationis
erant studiis imbuti. Et relictis in ecclesia sua fratribus aliquot,
primo venit ad insulam Hii, unde erat ad prædicandum verbum Anglorum
genti destinatus. Deinde secessit ad insulam quandam parvam, quæ ad
occidentalem plagam ab Hibernia procul secreta, sermone Scottico
Inisboufinde, id est, insula vitulæ albæ, nuncupatur. In hanc ergo
perveniens, construxit monasterium, et monachos inibi, quos de utraque
natione collectos adduxerat, collocavit.’ It might be thought that by
the expression ‘in Scottiam regressus,’ Bede considered Hii or Iona as
being in Scottia, but Bede elsewhere uses Scottia invariably for
Ireland, and in narrating Saint Columba’s mission to Iona he says,
‘venit de Hibernia Britanniam.’ He therefore probably, when he says
Colman was de ‘Scottia,’ meant that he came from Ireland and returned
there eventually, merely visiting Iona on his way.
Footnote 335:
A.D. 668. Navigatio Colman Episcopi cum reliquiis sanctorum ad insulam
Vaccæ Albæ in quo fundavit ecclesiam et navigatio filiorum Gartnaith
ad Hiberniam cum plebe Scith.—_Tigh._
670 Venit gens Gartnait de Hibernia.—_Tigh._ For the Columban
settlements in Skye see Reeves’s _Adamnan_, edit. 1874, p. 274.
Colman’s course to Iona can be traced by the dedications. Menmuir and
Fearn in Forfarshire are dedicated to St. Aidan, and he is himself
patron saint of Tarbet in Easter Ross.
Footnote 336:
Wilfrido administrante episcopatum Eboracensis ecclesiæ, necnon et
omnium Nordanhymbrorum, sed et Pictorum, quousque rex Osuiu imperium
protendere poterat.—B. iv. c. iii.
Footnote 337:
Nam in primis annis ejus, tenero adhuc regno, populi bestiales
Pictorum feroci animo subjectionem Saxonum despiciebant, et jugum
servitutis a se abjicere minabantur, congregantes undique de utribus
et folliculis Aquilonis innumeras gentes, quasi formicarum greges in
æstate de tumulis ferventes, aggerem contra domum cadentem muniebant.
Quo audito Rex Ecgfridus humilis in populis suis, magnanimus in
hostes, statim equitatu exercito præparato, tarda molimina nesciens,
sicut Judas Maccabæus in Deum confidens, parva manu populi Dei contra
enormem et supra invisibilem hostem cum Bernhaeth subaudaci Regulo
invasit, stragemque immensam populi subruit, duo flumina cadaveribus
mortuorum replens, ita (quod mirum dictu est) ut supra siccis pedibus
ambulantes, fugientium turbam occidentes persequebantur, et in
servitutem redacti populi, usque ad diem occisionis regis, subjecti
jugo captivitatis jacebant.—Eddii _Vit. S. Wilf._ c. xix. The name
Bernhaeth has all the appearance of a Saxon name, and it is hardly
possible to avoid the suspicion that he is the same person as the
father of ‘Brectred dux regius Norndanhymbrorum,’ who was slain by the
Picts in 698, and who is called by Tighernac, filius Bernith. He may
have been the Anglic ruler over the subjected Picts who had joined
them, and may have provoked the insurrection in order to make himself
independent.
Footnote 338:
672 Expulsio Drosto de regno.—_Tigh._
Footnote 339:
Sicut igitur Ecgfrido Rege religioso regnum ad Aquilonem et Austrum
per triumphos augebatur: Ita beatæ memoriæ Wilfrido Episcopo ad
Austrum super Saxones et Aquilonem super Britones et Scotos, Pictosque
regnum ecclesiarum multiplicabatur; omnibus gentibus carus et
amabilis, ecclesiastica officia diligenter persolvebat et omnibus
locis presbyteros et diaconos sibi adjuvantes abundanter ordinavit,
inter seculares undas fluctuantes moderate novas ecclesias
gubernabat.—Eddii _Vit. S. Wilf._ c. xxi.
Footnote 340:
Trumuini ad provinciam Pictorum, quæ tunc temporis Anglorum erat
imperio subjecta.—Bede, _H. E._ B. iv. c. xii. Later writers who knew
of no Picts but those of Galloway have made it Trumuin’s diocese, but
there can be no doubt that Bede throughout refers to the province of
the Picts north of the Firth of Forth.
Footnote 341:
Bredei reigned twenty-one years, and died in 693, which places the
beginning of his reign in this year.
Footnote 342:
This is proved by the poem afterwards quoted, attributed to Adamnan,
in which he is called ‘the son of the king of Alcluaith;’ and in
another poem, attributed to Riagal of Bangor, he is said to fight for
the land of his grandfather. The continuator of Nennius calls him the
‘fratruelis’ of Ecgfrid, that is, the son or descendant of his
father’s brother; and Anfrait, the father of Talorcan, was the brother
of Osuiu, the father of Ecgfrid. It is curious to see how very little
of real Pictish blood he had.
Footnote 343:
A.D. 680 Obsessio Duinbaitte.—_An. Ult._ A.D. 681 Obsessio Duin
Foither.—_Ib._
A.D. 682 Orcades deletæ sunt la Bruidhe.—_Tigh._
Footnote 344:
The genealogy is given in the Tract on the Men of Alban.—_Chron. Picts
and Scots_, p. 316.
Footnote 345:
A.D. 678 Interfectio generis Loairn itirinn, id est, Feachair fotai et
Britones qui victores erant.—_Tigh._
In 683, however, he appears to have advanced more successfully, and to
have been enabled to act in concert with Bredei, as in that year we
have the sieges of Dunatt and Dunduirn recorded.[346] The one was
Dunadd, the principal seat of the Dalriads, and a strong fort in the
Moss of Crinan. The other was an equally strong position crowning an
eminence at the east end of Loch Earn, which was the principal
stronghold of the district of Fortrenn. We now find Bredei, called in
the Irish Annals king of Fortrenn, and this success seems to have
aroused King Ecgfrid of Northumbria to the necessity of once more
attacking and subduing the Picts.
Bellum Duinlocho et bellum Liaccmaelain et Doirad Eilinn.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 346:
A.D. 683 Obsessio Duinatt et Duinduirn.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 347:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._ B. iv. c. 26. A.D. 685. Saxones Campum Breg vastant
et ecclesias plurimas in mense Junii.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 348:
Siquidem anno post hunc proximo idem rex, cum temere exercitum ad
vastandum Pictorum provinciam duxisset, multum prohibentibus amicis et
maxime beatæ memoriæ Cudbercto qui nuper fuerat ordinatus episcopus,
introductus est, simulantibus fugam hostibus, in angustias
inaccessorum montium, et cum maxima parte copiarum quas secum
adduxerat, extinctus anno ætatis suæ quadragesimo, regni autem quinto
decimo, die tertiadecima kal. Juniarium.—B. iv. c. 62.
Footnote 349:
686 Cath Duin Nechtain xx^o die mensis Maii Sabbati dei factum est in
quo Ecfrit mac Ossu, rex Saxonum, xv anno regni sui consummato magna
cum caterva militum suorum interfectus la Bruidhi mac Bile rege
Fortrenn.—_Tigh._ At rex Ecgfridus anno quo fecerat hunc venerabilem
patrem ordinari episcopum, cum maxima parte copiarum quas ad
devastandam terram Pictorum secum duxerat, secundum prophetiam ejusdem
patris Cuthberti extinctus est apud Nechtanesmere, quod est stagnum
Nechtani, die xiii. Kal. Juniarum anno regni sui xv. cujus corpus in
Hii insula Columbæ sepultum est.—Sim. Dun. _de Dun. Ec._ B. i. c. ix.
Et combussit Tula Aman Duin Ollaigh.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 350:
See the _N. S. A._, vol. ii. p. 146, for the tradition of the battle
and a notice of these stone coffins.
Footnote 351:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 402.
Footnote 352:
Ex quo tempore spes cœpit et virtus regni Anglorum fluere, ac retro
sublapsa referri. Nam et Picti terram possessionis suæ quam tenuerunt
Angli, et Scotti qui erant in Brittania, Brettonum quoque pars
nonnulla, libertatem receperunt, quam et hactenus habent per annos
circiter quadraginta sex.—B. iv. c. 26.
Footnote 353:
Et nunquam addiderunt Saxones Ambronum ut a Pictis vectigal
exigerent.—Nennius Con. _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 11.
Footnote 354:
Distructumque regni statum, quamvis intra fines angustiores, nobiliter
recuperavit.—B. iv. c. xxvi.
Footnote 355:
Inter plurimos gentis Anglorum vel interemptos gladio vel servitio
addictos, vel de terra Pictorum fuga lapsos, etiam reverendissimus vir
Dei Trumuini, qui in eos episcopatum acceperat, recessit cum suis qui
erant in monasterio Aebbercurnig, posito quidem in regione Anglorum,
sed in vicinia freti quod Anglorum terras, Pictorumque disterminat.—B.
iv. c. xxvi. Trumuin appears to have fled himself from the province of
the Picts, but, instead of remaining at Abercorn, to have retreated
from thence with its monks, as too near the Pictish territory. In
fact, as it had been but recently established in connection with the
bishopric over the Picts which he had now lost, he had no object in
remaining there.
Footnote 356:
A.D. 693 Bruidhe mac Bile rex Fortrend moritur et Alpin mac
Nechtain.—_Tigh._
Footnote 357:
_Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p. 408.
Footnote 358:
A.D. 694 Obsessio Duin Fother.—_An. Ult._ A.D. 697 Tarachin _ar na
scriss as a flaithius_ (driven from the lordship).—_Tigh._
Footnote 359:
A.D. 698 Cath etir Saxones et Pictos ubi cecidit filius Bernith qui
dicebatur Brechtraig.—_Tigh._ 698 Berctred dux regius Nordanhymbrorum
a Pictis interfectus.—Bede, _Chron._ 699 Tarain ad Hiberniam
fugit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 360:
706 Brude mac Derile mortuus est.—_Tigh._
Footnote 361:
711 Strages Pictorum in campo Manand ab Saxonis ubi Findgaine mac
Deleroith immatura morte jacuit.—_Tigh._ 711 Berctfrid præfectus cum
Pictis pugnavieum regnatt.—Bede, _Chron._ 710. In the same year the
Aldorman Beorhtfrith fought against the Picts between Hæfe and
Cære.—_Sax. Chron._ in Thorpe’s trans.
Footnote 362:
Bede’s expression in referring to Candida Casa or Whitherne as ‘locus
ad provinciam Berniciorum pertinens’ (B. iii. c. iv.), implies that it
still belonged to the Northumbrians; and Simeon of Durham, in his
history of St. Cuthbert, says that King Ecgfrid gave him in 685
‘villam quæ vocatur Creca ... et quia videbatur parva terra, adjecit
civitatem quæ vocatur Luel, quæ habet in circuitu quindecim milliaria,
et in eadem civitate posuit congregationem sanctimonialium, et
abbatissam ordinavit et scholas constituit.’‘—Ed. Surtees, p. 141. The
Angles would have been entirely separated from Galloway, and could not
have communicated with it, if they had not possessed the south shore
of the Solway Firth also.
Footnote 363:
694 Domnall mac Avin rex Alochluaithe moritur.—_Tigh._
Footnote 364:
696 Jugulatio Domhnaill filii Conaill Crandamnai.—_An. Ult._ 697
Fearchar Fota moritur.—_Tigh._ Euchu nepos Domhnall jugulatus
est.—_An. Ult._ 698 Combustio Duin Onlaig. Expulsio Ainbhcellaig filii
Ferchar de regno et vinctus ad Hiberniam vehitur.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 365:
These kings are included in the list of kings of Dalriada in the
Synchronisms of Flann Mainistrech, and in the Albanic Duan; but as
their joint reigns amount to 64 years, while from the death of Domnall
Brecc in 642, to the expulsion of Ainbhcellaig in 698, there are only
56, it is plain that they were not all consecutive reigns, but ruled
over different parts of Dalriada at the same time.
Footnote 366:
701 Destructio Duin Onlaigh apud Sealbach. Jugulatio generis
Cathboth.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 367:
Tighernac has, in 621, ‘Cath Cindelgthen in quo ceciderunt da mic
Libran mic Illaind mic Cerbaill. Conall mac Suibne victor erat et
Domnall breacc cum eo. Conaing mac Aedan mic Gabrain diversus est.
Bimudine eiceas cecinit.’ The poem may be thus translated:—
‘The resplendent billows of the sea,
The sun that raised them
My grief, the pale storms (are)
Against Conang with his army
The woman of the fair locks
Was in the Curach with Conang.
Lamentation pursueth with us
This day at Bili Tortan.’
In the tract on the Men of Alban the descendants of Conang are called
‘the men of the half portion of Conang, or half of the _tuath_ or
barony.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 315.
Footnote 368:
701 Destructio Duin Onlaigh apud Sealbach. Jugulatio generis
Cathboth.—_An. Ult._ 704 Strages Dalriada in Glenlemnae.—_Tigh._ 707
Becc nepos Duncadho jugulatur.—_An. Ult._ 711 Congressio Brittonum et
Dalriadha for Loirgeclat ubi Britones devicti.—_Tigh._ 712 Obsessio
Aberte apud Selbacum.—_An. Ult._ 714 Duin Onlaig construitur apud
Selbacum.—_Tigh._ 717 Congressio Dalriada et Britonum in lapide qui
vocatur Minvircc et Britones devicti sunt.—_Tigh._