THE KINGDOM OF SCONE.
[Sidenote: State of the four kingdoms in 731.]
When Bede closes his history, forty-six years after the defeat and death
of Ecgfrid, and we lose his invaluable guidance through the annals of
this obscure period, he leaves us with this important record of the
position of the four kingdoms at that time:—‘In the province of the
Northumbrians, where king Ceoluulf reigns, four bishops now preside;
Wilfrid in the church of York, Ediluald in that of Lindisfarne, Acca in
that of Hagustald, Pecthelm in that which is called ‘Candida Casa,’
which, from the increased number of believers, has lately become an
additional episcopal see, and has him for its first prelate. The Picts
also at this time have a treaty of peace with the nation of the Angles,
and rejoice in being united in catholic peace and truth with the
universal church. The Scots that inhabit Britain, satisfied with their
own territories, meditate no plots or conspiracies against the nation of
the Angles. The Britons, though they, for the most part, through
domestic hatred, are adverse to the nation of the Angles, and
wrongfully, and from wicked custom, oppose the appointed Easter of the
whole Catholic Church; yet, from both the Divine and human power firmly
withstanding them, they can in no way prevail as they desire; for though
in part they are their own masters, yet partly they are also brought
under subjection to the Angles.’[369]
[Sidenote: Alteration in their relative position.]
Causes, however, had already been in operation during the latter part of
this period, which were destined soon after its termination to alter
very materially the relative position of these kingdoms. During the
entire period of a century and a half which had now elapsed since the
northern Picts were converted to Christianity by the preaching of Saint
Columba, there is hardly to be found the record of a single battle
between them and the Scots of Dalriada. Had they viewed each other as
hostile races, it is difficult to account for the more powerful nation
of the Picts permitting a small colony like the Scots of Dalriada to
remain in undisturbed possession of the western district where they had
settled. Prior, indeed, to the mission of Saint Columba we find the king
of the northern Picts endeavouring to expel them, but after that date
there existed a powerful element of peace and bond of union in the
Columban Church. It was in every respect a Scottish Church, with a
Scottish clergy supplied from Ireland. The Columban foundations had
spread over the whole nation of the Picts. They owed their civilisation
to its influence, and intrusted the education of their children to its
monastic schools; and the Columban church of the Picts was, along with
the Columban monasteries in the north of Ireland, under the jurisdiction
of the abbot of Hii or Iona. As long, therefore, as this powerful
influence lasted, the Picts were content to remain at peace with the
Scots of Dalriada, and to view them as forming, as it were, one state
along with the Pictish provinces in a Christian confederacy; but the
king who now reigned over the Picts, Nectan, son of Derili, was led to
adopt a course which worked an entire revolution in the ecclesiastical
relations of the Picts and Scots, and led, as its inevitable result, to
a change in their friendly relations.
[Sidenote: Legend of St. Bonifacius.]
In the reign of this Nectan it is reported that a missionary named
Bonifacius, who came from Rome, landed in the Firth of Forth, and made
his way through Pictavia till he came to a place called Restinoth. Here
he met Nectan, king of the Picts, with his army, who, with his nobles
and servants, received from Bonifacius the sacrament of baptism. The
king gave the place of his baptism, which he dedicated to the Holy
Trinity, to Bonifacius. Many people were indoctrinated there into the
Christian faith, and he employed himself in the erection of churches
there and in other places. The legend tells us that Bonifacius was an
Israelite descended from the sister of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and a
native of Bethlehem; that he was accompanied by six other
bishops—Benedictus, Servandus, Pensandus, Benevolus, Madianus, and
Principuus; two virgins, abbesses, Crescentia and Triduana; seven
presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, seven acolytes, seven
exorcists, seven lectors, and seven door-keepers; that he founded one
hundred and fifty temples of God, consecrated as many bishops, and
ordained a thousand presbyters; that he converted and baptized
thirty-six thousand people of both sexes, and died on the 16th of
March.[370] This is of course mere legend, and when reduced to its
probable meaning amounts to no more than this, that he brought over the
king of the Picts and many of his people from the Columban Church to
conformity with the Church of Rome. He is termed in the calendars
Kiritinus; his day is the same with that in the Irish calendars of
Curitan, bishop and abbot of Rossmeinn, and he is said to have been one
of the saints who became security for the Cain Adomnan,[371] which
places him at this time. Bonifacius was therefore in reality probably a
missionary from that part of the Irish Church which had conformed to
Rome, and the church of Restinoth or Restennet being dedicated to St.
Peter is an indication of the character of his mission.
[Sidenote: Nectan, son of Derili, conforms to Rome.]
This legend is clearly connected with the statement Bede makes towards
the close of his narrative—and here he is narrating events which
happened during his own life—‘that at this time,’ that is, in the year
710, ‘Naitan, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of
Britain, taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings,
renounced the error by which he and his nation had till then held in
relation to the observance of Easter, and submitted together with his
people to celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection. In
order that he might perform this with the greater ease and authority, he
sought assistance from the nation of the Angles, whom he knew to have
long since formed their religion after the example of the holy Roman and
Apostolic Church. Accordingly he sent messengers to the venerable man
Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul,
which stands at the mouth of the river Tyne at the place called Jarrow,
desiring that he would write him a letter containing arguments, by the
help of which he might the more powerfully confute those that presumed
to keep Easter out of the due time; as also concerning the form and
manner of the tonsure for distinguishing the clergy; not to mention that
he himself possessed much information in these particulars. He also
prayed to have architects sent him to build a church in his nation after
the Roman manner, promising to dedicate the same in honour of the
blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and that he and all his
people would always follow the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic
Church, as far as they could ascertain the same in consequence of their
remoteness from the Roman language and nation.’ Bede then gives us the
letter addressed by Abbot Ceolfrid to ‘the most excellent lord and most
glorious king Naitan,’ of which there is strong reason to think he was
himself the author, being at the time a monk at Jarrow, and thus
concludes the narrative:—‘This letter having been read in the presence
of king Naitan and many others of the most learned men, and carefully
interpreted into his own language by those who could understand it, he
is said to have much rejoiced at the exhortation, insomuch that, rising
from among his great men who sat about him, he knelt on the ground
giving thanks to God that he had been found worthy to receive such a
present from the land of the Angles; and, said he, I knew indeed before
that this was the true celebration of Easter, but now I so fully know
the reason for the observance of this time, that I seem convinced that I
knew very little of it before. Therefore I publicly declare and protest
to you who are here present, that I will for ever continually observe
this time of Easter, together with all my nation; and I do decree that
this tonsure which we have heard is most reasonable shall be received by
all the clergy in my kingdom. Accordingly he immediately performed by
his regal authority what he had said. For the cycles of nineteen years
were forthwith, by public command, sent throughout all the provinces of
the Picts to be transcribed, learnt, and observed, the erroneous
revolutions of eighty-four years being everywhere obliterated. All the
ministers of the altar and the monks adopted the coronal tonsure; and
the nation being thus reformed, rejoiced, as being newly placed under
the direction of Peter, the most blessed prince of the apostles, and
made secure under his protection.’[372]
[Sidenote: Establishment of Scone as the capital.]
There is strong reason for concluding that the scene of this assembly,
where we see the king of the Picts surrounded by his nobles and his
learned men, was no other than Scone, which had then become, as it was
afterwards, the principal seat of the kingdom, and that from the Mote
Hill of Scone issued now, as similar decrees issued afterwards, that
public decree which regulated the form of the Christian Church among the
Picts; that it was here too that Nectan dedicated his church to the Holy
Trinity; and that it was from these events and the scene enacted there
that the Mote Hill came to be known as the ‘Hill of Belief.’[373]
[Sidenote: The seven provinces.]
The reference too to the provinces of the Picts, combined with the
statement in the legend that the Roman mission, as it may be called, had
seven bishops at its head, leads us to conclude that the division of the
kingdom of the Picts into seven provinces existed at this time. A tract
of the twelfth century tells us that the territory anciently called
‘Albania,’ from the Picts, ‘Pictavia,’ and now corruptly ‘Scotia,’ was
in ancient times divided by seven brethren into seven parts. ‘The
principal part was Enegus and Moerne (now Angus and the Mearns or
Kincardineshire), so called from Enegus, the eldest of the brothers. The
second part was Adtheodle and Gouerin (now Atholl and Gowry). The third,
Sradeern and Meneted (now Stratherne and Menteith). The fourth, Fif and
Fothreve (now Fife and Kinross). The fifth, Marr and Buchen (now Mar and
Buchan). The sixth, Muref and Ros (now Moray and Ross). The seventh,
Cathanesia citra montem and ultramontem (now Sutherland and Caithness).
That each province had a sub-province within it, and that these seven
brothers were seven kings having seven sub-kings under them.’ These
seven brothers are different from the seven sons of Cruithne of the
Pictish legend, as the eldest is here called Angus, but they are
obviously merely the ‘eponymi’ of the people of seven provinces. That
this division can belong to no later period is apparent from the
omission of that part of the western districts which formed the Scottish
kingdom of Dalriada; and of the sub-kings we find one noticed at this
very time,—Talorgan, son of Drostan, who is mentioned by Tighernac as
flourishing from 713 to 739, when his death is recorded as ‘Rex
Athfhotla’ or king of Atholl.[374] Four of these provinces composed the
territory of the southern Picts, and the district of Gowrie forms the
central region in which they all meet, and here on the east bank of the
Tay was Scone, the principal seat at this time of the kingdom of the
Picts.
[Sidenote: The Coronation Stone.]
It was at Scone too that the Coronation Stone was ‘reverently kept for
the consecration of the kings of Alban,’ and of this stone it was
believed that ‘no king was ever wont to reign in Scotland unless he had
first, on receiving the royal name, sat upon this stone at Scone, which
by the kings of old had been appointed the capital of Alban.’[375] Of
its identity with the stone now preserved in the coronation chair at
Westminster there can be no doubt. It is an oblong block of red
sandstone, some 26 inches long by 16 inches broad, and 10½ inches deep,
and the top is flat and bears the marks of chiselling. Its mythic origin
identifies it with the stone which Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel, and
then set up there for a pillar and anointed with oil, which, according
to Jewish tradition, was afterwards removed to the second temple, and
served as the pedestal for the ark. Legend has much to tell of how it
was brought from thence to Scotland, but history knows of it only at
Scone.[376] It too may have been connected with the legend of
Bonifacius. We find that the principal Irish missionaries frequently
carried about with them a slab or block of stone, which they used as an
altar for the celebration of the Eucharist, and which was usually termed
a stone altar. In places where it had been used for this purpose by any
celebrated saint, and remained there, it was the object of much
veneration among the people, and is the subject of many of the miracles
recorded in the acts of the saint. Saint Patrick’s stone altar is
frequently mentioned in his acts, and, in the only strictly analogous
case to the coronation stone of the Scotch kings—that of the kings of
Munster, who were crowned on the rock of Cashel, sitting upon a similar
stone—the belief was that this coronation stone had been the stone altar
of Saint Patrick on which he had first celebrated the Eucharist after
the conversion and baptism of the king of Cashel. It is therefore not
impossible that the coronation stone of Scone may have had the same
origin, and been the stone altar upon which Bonifacius first celebrated
the Eucharist after he had brought over the king of the Picts and his
people from the usages of the Columban Church to conformity with those
of the Roman Church, and possibly re-baptized him. The legend that it
had been the stone at Bethel, which became the pedestal of the ark in
the temple, and brought from thence, may have also a connection with the
statement in the legend of Bonifacius that he was an Israelite and a
native of Bethlehem, and had come from thence to Rome.[377]
[Sidenote: Expulsion of the Columban clergy.]
Be this as it may, the fact that Nectan and his people had at this time
conformed to the Anglican Roman Church as contradistinguished from the
Columban, and had issued a decree requiring the adoption of the Roman
usages by the clergy of his kingdom, based as it is upon the personal
knowledge of Bede, who lived at the time and records it, is undoubtedly
historical. Nectan appears to have failed to obtain the submission of
the Columban clergy to his decree, and some years after, in 717, he took
the strong step of expelling them from the kingdom, and driving them
across Drumalban, which then formed the boundary between the southern
Picts and the Scots of Dalriada.[378] This opened the Columban
foundations in the territory of the Picts to Scottish clergy who
belonged to that part of the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome,
and were not under the jurisdiction of Hii or Iona, as well as to such
clergy from the kingdom of Northumbria as were disposed to adventure
themselves once more into the Pictish country; and seven years
afterwards, in the year 724, Nectan himself became a cleric, and was
succeeded on the Pictish throne by Druxst.[379] The step thus taken by
Nectan of dispossessing the Columban Church of the foundations it had
possessed for a century and a half, and of driving its clergy out of the
kingdom, naturally placed the kingdom of the Scots of Dalriada and that
of the Picts in direct antagonism to each other, and arrayed the clergy
under the jurisdiction of Iona against the latter, while the contest
between the Dalriads and the Britons had for the time ceased. That,
however, between the two great tribes of the Dalriads themselves—the
Cinel Loarn and the Cinel Gabhran—still continued. In 719 Ainbhceallach,
the son of Fearchar Fata, who had reigned one year after his father, and
been expelled by his brother Sealbach, and sent bound to Ireland,
appears to have made an effort to recover his position at the head of
the Cinel Loarn, and a battle took place at Finglen on the Braes of
Loarn, near Lochavich, between the brothers, in which Ainbhceallach was
slain.[380] Tradition has preserved a record of this battle in the name
_Blar nam braithrean_, or the battle-field of the brothers. In the same
year a naval battle took place between the Cinel Gabhran under Dunchadh,
son of Becc, the chief of that branch of the tribe which possessed the
south half of Kintyre, and were descended from Conaing, son of Aidan,
and the Cinel Loarn under Sealbach, at a place called Arddanesbi,
probably the Point of Ardminish on the island of Gigha, in which the
latter was defeated and several of the chiefs of his vassal tribes were
slain. Dunchadh did not long enjoy his victory, for his death is
recorded two years after, in which he is designated king of
Kintyre.[381] In 722 the death of Beli, son of Alpin, king of Alclyde,
is also recorded, and in the following year Sealbach becomes a cleric,
and resigns his throne to his son Dungal.[382] Sealbach is the first of
those chiefs, subsequent to the death of Domnall Brecc in 642, who bears
the title of king of Dalriada, which shows that the kingdom of Dalriada
had now been reconstituted, and that the chiefs of the Cinel Loarn had
made good their right to occupy the throne along with the head of the
Cinel Gabhran. Of the events of the reign of Drust two only are
recorded, which seem to show an opposition between the party of Nectan,
the previous king, and that of Drust. In 725, Simal, the son of Drust,
is taken and bound, and in 726 Drust retaliates by subjecting the cleric
Nectan to a similar fate.
[Sidenote: Simultaneous revolution in Dalriada and the kingdom of the
Picts.]
There now follows a revolution in the two kingdoms of the Dalriads and
the Picts, which takes place simultaneously. In the one Dungal of the
Cinel Loarn is driven from the throne, and Eochaidh, who now appears as
the head of the Cinel Gabhran, succeeds him. In the other Drust is
driven from the throne and succeeded by Alpin.[383] These were brothers.
Eochadh was the son of that Eochaidh, the grandson of Domnall Brecc, who
died in 697, and Alpin was another son of the same Eochaidh, but his
name shows that he had a Pictish mother, through whom he derived his
claim to the Pictish throne.[384] The expulsion of Dungal from the
throne of Dalriada seems to have called forth his father Sealbach from
his monastery to endeavour to regain it. In 727 there is recorded a
conflict at Ross-Foichen, or the promontory of Feochan, at the mouth of
Loch Feochan, between him and the family of Eachdach, the grandson of
Domnall, in which several of the two Airgiallas were slain.[385]
Sealbach was unsuccessful, as Eochaidh remained in possession of the
throne till his death is recorded as king of Dalriada in 733.[386] If,
however, the revolution in Dalriada in 726 led to a renewed contest
between the Cinel Gabhran under Eochaidh and the Cinel Loarn under
Sealbach, that which took place in the kingdom of the Picts was followed
by a still more determined struggle for supremacy which broke out,
apparently, between several of the Pictish tribes, and led to the final
establishment of a new family on the Pictish throne, the head of which
was destined to terminate the Dalriadic kingdom. The parties to this
struggle were Alpin, the reigning king, and Drust, his predecessor, who
seem to have had their main interest in the central region about Scone;
Nectan, the son of Derili, who, once more entering into secular life,
endeavoured to regain his crown; and seems to have been connected with
the more northern districts; and Aengus, son of Fergus, who is
identified with the province of Fortrenn, and appears to have been the
founder of a new family. The first collision was at ‘_Monaigh Craebi_’
or Moncrieffe, a name which belongs to a hill separating the valley of
the Earn from that of the Tay, not far from the junction of the two
rivers, between Aengus and Alpin, in which battle Aengus was victorious,
and wrested the country west of the Tay from Alpin, whose son was slain
in the conflict. The second collision was between Alpin and Nectan at
‘Caislen Credi’—the Castle of Belief, or Scone, the capital of the
kingdom—when Alpin was again defeated, his territories and all his men
were taken, and Nectan obtained the kingdom of the Picts while Alpin
fled.[387] The sympathies of the Irish chronicler were with Alpin, as he
terms this battle _Cath truadh_, an unfortunate battle. In the following
year Angus attacked Nectan, who now bore the title of king of the Picts,
and seems to have fled before him, as the final conflict took place on
the bank of a lake formed by the river Spey, then termed Loogdeae, but
now Loch Inch, between Nectan and an army Angus had sent in pursuit of
him, in which Aengus’s family were victorious, and the officers of
Nectan were slain,—Biceot son of Moneit, and his son, and Finguine son
of Drostan, and Ferot son of Finguine, and many others.[388] Angus
himself, who now called himself king of the Picts, encountered Drust at
a place called Dromaderg Blathmig, which has been identified as the
Redhead of Angus, near Kinblethmont, where Drust was slain on the 12th
day of August.[389] The last battle fought in this struggle was in 731,
between Brude, son of Aengus, and Talorcan, son of Congus, in which the
latter was defeated and fled across Drumalban into Lorn,[390] and in the
following year Tighernac records the death of Nectan, son of Derili.
[Sidenote: A.D. 731-761.
Aengus mac Fergus, king of the Picts.]
Aengus was now firmly established on the Pictish throne, and his reign
of thirty years is variously dated from 729 or from 731, according as
the battles in the one or the other year are held to have finally
confirmed his rule over the kingdom of the Picts. The death of Eachach,
king of Dalriada, two years after, again opened the throne to the race
of Loarn, and Muredach, the son of Ainbhceallach, assumed the chiefship
of the Cinel Loarn, while Dungal, son of Selbaig, took possession of the
throne of Dalriada; and in the same year the fleet of Dalriada was
summoned to Ireland to assist Flaithbertach, king of Ireland, who had
been defeated in battle by Aeda Allan, head of the Cinel Eoghan, and
afterwards his successor on the throne of Ireland, and many of the
Dalriads were slain and others drowned in the river Bann. Dungal, who
appears to have accompanied them on his way to invade Culrenrigi, an
island of the Cinel Eoghan, found Brude, the son of Aengus, in Toragh, a
church founded by Saint Columba, in Tory island off the coast of
Donegal, and violated the sanctuary by dragging him from it, which drew
down upon him the wrath of Aengus, who in the following year invaded
Dalriada and destroyed a fort called Dun Leithfinn, but which cannot now
be identified, after having wounded Dungal, who fled to Ireland from his
power. At the same time Tolarg, the son of Congus, was delivered into
his hands by his own brother and drowned by his orders, and Talorgan,
the son of Drostan, was taken near Dunolly and bound.[391]
A still more formidable attack was made by Aengus, the Pictish king,
upon Dalriada, two years after, when in 736 he is recorded to have laid
waste the entire country, taken possession of its capital Dunad, burnt
Creic, a fort, the remains of which are still to be seen on the
promontory of Craignish, and thrown the two sons of Sealbach, Dungal and
Feradach, into chains; and shortly after his son Brude, who had been
taken prisoner by Dungal, the king of Dalriada, died.[392] On this
occasion Aengus appears to have obtained entire possession of Dalriada,
and to have driven the two branches of its people, the Cinel Loarn under
Muredach and the Cinel Gabhran under Alpin, the brother of Eochaidh, to
extremity, for the former appears to have burst from Dalriada upon the
Picts who inhabited the plain of Manann between the Carron and the Avon,
in a desperate attempt to take possession of their country or to draw
Aengus from Dalriada, and was met on the banks of the Avon at Cnuicc
Coirpri in Calatros, now Carriber, where the Avon separates Lothian from
Calatria, by Talorgan, the brother of Aengus, and defeated and pursued
by him with his army, and many of his chief men slain.[393]
At this time the Northumbrians were at enmity with the Picts. Ceoluulf,
the king of Northumbria, had followed the fashion of the time, and
become a monk in Lindisfarne in the year 737. He was succeeded by his
cousin Eadberct, the son of his father’s brother; and we are told, in
the short chronicle annexed to Bede, that in 740 Aedilbald, king of
Mercia, unfairly laid waste part of Northumbria, its king, Eadberct,
being occupied with his army against the Picts.[394] It is probable that
Aengus had excited the hostility of the king of Northumbria by stirring
up the Picts of Lothian and Galloway to revolt, and that Eadberct may
have encouraged if not invited the Scots of Dalriada to occupy their
country. Alpin is said by all authorities to have reigned four years
after Dungal, which brings us to the year 740, when he invaded Galloway
with the part of the Dalriadic nation which followed him, and was slain
there, after having laid waste and almost destroyed the country of the
Picts. The Ulster Annals thus record it in 741:—Battle of Drum Cathmail
between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads against Innrechtach.[395] The
locality of this battle appears to have been in Galloway, not far from
Kirkcudbright, and Innrechtach was probably the leader of the Galloway
Picts. One of the Chronicles appears to have preserved the traditionary
account of his death when it tells us that he was slain in Galloway,
after he had destroyed it, by a single person who lay in wait for him in
a thick wood overhanging the entrance of the ford of a river as he rode
among his people.[396] The scene of his death must have been on the east
side of Loch Ryan, where a stream falls into the loch, on the north side
of which is the farm of Laight, and on this farm is a large upright
pillar stone, to which the name of Laight Alpin, or the grave of Alpin,
is given.[397] In the same year we have the short but significant record
of the crushing of the Dalriads by Aengus, son of Fergus.[398]
[Sidenote: Suppressed century of Dalriadic history.]
By all the Chronicles compiled subsequent to the eleventh century,
Alpin, son of Eochaidh, is made the last of the kings of Dalriada; but
the century of Dalriadic history which follows his death in 741 is
suppressed, and his reign is brought down to the end of the century by
the insertion of spurious kings. The true era of the genuine kings who
reigned over Dalriada can be ascertained by the earlier lists given us
by Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan in the eleventh century, and
the Annals of Tighernac and of Ulster, which are in entire harmony with
each other. These earlier lists place nine kings during this century
which followed the death of Alpin, whose united reigns amount to
ninety-eight years. There is unfortunately a hiatus in the Annals of
Tighernac from the year 765 to the year 973; but during the thirty years
from 736 to 765 Tighernac records no king of Dalriada. In the remaining
seventy-six years of the suppressed century, the Annals of Ulster
mention only three kings of Dalriada, the first of whom corresponds with
the second name in the list of nine kings given by the earlier
Chroniclers, and he may have been a Scot;[399] but the seven who follow
him bear the most unequivocal marks of having been Picts, and this shows
us that the effect of Aengus’s repeated invasions and final conquest of
Dalriada was to make it a Pictish province: his entire possession of the
country having led the remains of both the Cinel Loarn and the Cinel
Gabhran to seek settlements elsewhere; while during the reign of his
successor one attempt only appears to have been made to restore the
Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.[400]
The list of Pictish kings in the later Chronicles bears also marks of
having been manipulated for a purpose, but here fortunately we have the
trustworthy guide of the Pictish Chronicle, which belongs to the tenth
century, and is evidently untainted. For the Anglic history our
invaluable guide Bede leaves us in 731, and the short chronicle annexed
to his work in 765, as does also the continuator of Nennius in 738; and
we have now to resort to the works of Simeon of Durham, as the best
source remaining to look to for Northumbrian events. For the Britons of
Alclyde we have merely the short notices contained in the chronicle
annexed to Nennius, usually termed the _Annales Cambriæ_, and the Welsh
Chronicle called the Brut y Tywysogyon.
These nations had now resumed their normal relation to each other—east
against west—the Picts and Angles again in alliance, and opposed to them
the Britons and the Scots. Simeon of Durham tells us that in 744 a
battle was fought between the Picts and the Britons, but, by the Picts,
Simeon usually understands the Picts of Galloway, and this battle seems
to have followed the attack upon them by Alpin and his Scots. It was
followed by a combined attack upon the Britons of Alclyde by Eadberct of
Northumbria, and Aengus, king of the Picts. The chronicle annexed to
Bede tells us that in 750 Eadberct added the plain of Cyil with other
regions to his kingdom.[401] This is evidently Kyle in Ayrshire, and the
other regions were probably Carrick and Cuninghame, so that the king of
Northumbria added to his possessions of Galloway on the north side of
the Solway the whole of Ayrshire. In the same year the Picts of the
plain of Manann and the Britons encountered each other at Mocetauc or
Magedauc, now Mugdoch in Dumbartonshire, where a great battle was fought
between them, in which Talorgan, the brother of Aengus, who had been
made king of the outlying Picts, was slain by the Britons.[402] Two
years after, Teudubr, the son of Bile, king of Alclyde, died, and a
battle is fought between the Picts themselves at a place called by
Tighernac ‘Sreith,’ in the land of Circin, that is, in the Strath in the
Mearns, in which Bruide, the son of Maelchu, fell. As his name is the
same as the Bruide, son of Maelchu, who was king of the northern Picts
in the sixth century, this was probably an attack upon Aengus’s kingdom
by the northern Picts.[403]
Eadberct, king of Northumbria, and Aengus, king of the Picts, now united
for the purpose of subjecting the Britons of Alclyde entirely to their
power, and in 756 they led an army to Alclyde, and there received the
submission of the Britons on the first day of August in that year. Ten
days afterwards, however, Simeon of Durham records that almost the whole
army perished as Eadberct was leading it from Ovania, probably Avendale
or Strathaven in the vale of the Clyde, through the hill country to
Niwanbyrig or Newburgh.[404] The Britons of Alclyde thus passed a second
time under subjection to the Angles, which continued some time, as in
760 the death of Dunnagual, the son of Teudubr is recorded, but he is
not termed king of Alclyde.[405] In the year 761 Tighernac records the
death of Aengus mac Fergus, king of the Picts, after a reign of thirty
years; and the chronicle annexed to Bede, which places his death in the
same year, adds that ‘from the beginning of his reign to the end of it
he showed himself a sanguinary tyrant of the most cruel actions.’[406]
[Sidenote: Foundation of St. Andrews.]
Nevertheless, it is to the reign of this Angus, son of Fergus, that the
foundation of the monastery of Kilrimont or St. Andrews properly
belongs. According to the earliest form of the legend, the king of the
Picts, Ungus son of Uirguist by name, with a large army, attacks the
Britannic nations inhabiting the south of the island, and cruelly
wasting them arrives at the plain of Merc (Merse). There he winters, and
being surrounded by the people of almost the whole island with a view to
destroy him with his army, he is, while walking with his seven
‘comites,’ surrounded by a divine light, and a voice, purporting to
proceed from St. Andrew, promises him victory if he will dedicate the
tenth part of his inheritance to God and St. Andrew. On the third day he
divides his army into twelve bodies, and proving victorious returns
thanks to God and St. Andrew for the victory, and wishing to fulfil his
vow, he is uncertain what part of his territory he is especially to
dedicate as the principal city to St. Andrew, when one of those who had
come from Constantinople with the relics of St. Andrew arrives at the
summit of the King’s Mount, which is called Rigmund. The king comes with
his army at a place called Kartenan, is met by Regulus the monk, a
pilgrim from Constantinople, who arrives with the relics of St. Andrew,
at the harbour called Matha. They fix their tents where the royal hall
now is, and King Aengus gives the place and city to God and St. Andrew
to be the head and mother of all the churches in the kingdom of the
Picts.[407] The later and more elaborate legend contained in the
Register of St. Andrews tells substantially the same tale, but adds that
Hungus, the great king of the Picts, fought against Adhelstan, king of
the Saxons, and was encamped at the mouth of the river Tyne, and that
St. Andrew appeared to him in a dream; that the king of the Picts
divided his army into seven bodies, and defeated the Saxons, slaying
their king Adhelstan, whose head he cut off. King Hungus returns with
his army to his own country, taking Adhelstan’s head with him, and
affixed it on a wooden pillar at the harbour called Ardchinnechun, now
the Queen’s Harbour, after which the Saxons never ventured to attack the
Picts. In the meantime Regulus the bishop, with the relics of St.
Andrew, arrives in the land of the Picts, at a place formerly called
Muckros, and now Kilrimont. From thence they go to Fortevieth, where
they find the three sons of Hungus, Howonam and Nectan and
Phinguineghert, and because their father was then engaged in an
expedition into the regions of Argathelia and they were anxious for his
life, they dedicate to God and St. Andrew the tenth part of the city of
Fortevieth. They then go to Moneclatu, now called Monichi, and here they
find Queen Finche, who bears a child to King Hungus called Mouren, and
Queen Finche gives the house and whole royal palace to God and St.
Andrew. They then cross the Mounth, and come to a lake called Doldencha,
now Chondrochedalvan. Here they meet King Hungus returning from his
expedition, who does honour to the relics of St. Andrew, and gives that
place to God and St. Andrew, and builds a church there. The king then
crosses the Mounth and comes to Monichi, where he builds a church, and
then to Fortevieth, where he also builds a church, and after that to
‘Chilrymont,’ where he dedicates a large part of that place to God and
St. Andrew for the purpose of building churches and oratories.[408] It
is unnecessary to follow this legend further. The places here mentioned
can be identified without difficulty, and are simply those where
churches dedicated to St. Andrew existed. Chilrymont is the modern St.
Andrews, the principal church dedicated to the apostle St. Andrew in
honour of his relics. Monichi is Eglis Monichti in the county of Forfar,
also dedicated to St. Andrew, and Chondrochedalvan is Kindrochet in
Braemar, which is also dedicated to him. The war with the Saxons refers
to that period in the reign of Aengus when he was at war with Eadberct,
king of Northumberland; the expedition into Argathelia, to his invasion
of Dalriada in 736. His sons living at Fortevieth, and giving a tenth
part of the city, shows his connection with the province called
Fortrenn, in which it was situated; and the appearance for the first
time during Aengus’s reign of an abbot of Ceannrigmonaidh, whose death
Tighernac records in 747, fixes the foundation to his reign.[409]
These legends must, of course, be taken only for what they are worth,
and in analysing them it is necessary to distinguish between that
portion which belongs to the history of the relics of St. Andrew and
what is obviously connected with the foundation of St. Andrews. The
events in this portion of the legend are thus not inconsistent with
those of the reign of Aengus, son of Fergus, and we may accept them so
far as to conclude that, as in the reign of Nectan, son of Derili, the
Columban monks had been superseded by a clergy from that portion of the
Irish Church which had conformed to the Roman usages, and from the
Anglic Church established by Wilfrid, and the veneration of Saint Peter,
the prince of the apostles, had replaced the dedication of the churches
to their local founders, according to the custom of the Columban Church;
so in the reign of Aengus, son of Fergus, another clerical immigration
from the same quarter had brought in the veneration of St. Andrew, and
founded a church in honour of his relics at the place first called
‘Ceannrighmonaigh,’ and afterwards from the church ‘Cellrighmonaidh,’
corrupted to Kilrymont, which commended itself so much to the Pictish
nation that it, in its turn, superseded the veneration of St. Peter. St.
Andrew was adopted as their patron saint, and the church of St. Andrews
became their national church; and these legends emerged from this church
in the form we have them, as they felt the importance of claiming for
its foundation an antiquity superior to that of Iona.
[Sidenote: A.D. 761-763.
Bruide mac Fergusa, king of the Picts.]
Aengus was succeeded, in accordance with the Pictish law, by his brother
Bruide, who reigned only two years, and died in 763. He is termed by
Tighernac king of Fortrenn.[410] [Sidenote: A.D. 763-775.
Ciniod, son of Wredech, king of the Picts.] His successor was Ciniod,
son of Wredech, who reigned twelve years. Eadberct, the king of
Northumbria, abdicated his throne in 758, and was succeeded by his son
Osulf, who had reigned only one year when he was slain, and by his own
people; and in 759, Ethelwald, called Moll, became king; and in the
third year Simeon tells us a battle was fought between him and Oswine,
one of his generals, at Eldun near Melrose,[411] in which Oswine was
slain, which shows that Ethelwald’s kingdom still extended at least as
far as East Lothian. After a six years’ reign, Ethelwald was succeeded
in 765 by Alcred, a descendant of Ida through a concubine. Ciniod had
reigned only five years over the Picts, when a battle is recorded in
Fortrenn between him and Aedh.[412] This is the first appearance of that
Aed called by Flann Mainistrech the plunderer, and by the Albanic Duan
the high lord,[413] and is the first of those kings of Dalriada who
appear in the Annals of Ulster, where he is termed Aed Finn, son of
Ecdach. He was probably a Scot who attempted to restore the Dalriadic
kingdom after the strong grasp of Angus mac Fergus over it was
withdrawn. Aedh’s death is recorded in 778, and in 781 that of his
brother Fergus, but the latter does not appear among the list of kings
in Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan, and therefore was either only
nominally king or reigned in Irish Dalriada, and three years after the
last tie which bound the Scots to Dalriada was severed. The founders of
the colony, the three sons of Erc, are stated in all the chronicles to
have been buried in Iona, and in 784 their remains were exhumed and
carried to the city of Taillten, in Meath, in Ireland, the ancient
cemetery of the kings of Ulster.[414]
Ciniod, the king of the Picts, appears at this time to have been in
close connection with the Angles, for Simeon of Durham tells us that in
774 King Alcred, by the design and consent of all his connections, being
deprived of the society of the royal family and princes, changed the
dignity of empire for exile. He went with a few of the companions of his
flight first to the city of Bamborough, and afterwards to the king of
the Picts, Cynoth by name; and Ethelred, the son of his predecessor,
occupied the throne of Northumbria for six years; and in the following
year he tells us that ‘Cynoth, king of the Picts, was taken from the
whirl of this polluted life.’[415] His death in the same year is more
quietly recorded in the Ulster Annals.
[Sidenote: A.D. 775-780.
Alpin, son of Wroid, king of the Picts.]
Ciniod was succeeded by Alpin, son of Wroid, who appears to have
obtained possession of part of the Northumbrian territory north of the
Tweed, as after a reign of three or four years his death is recorded in
780 as that of Elpin, king of the Saxons.[416] This is the more probable
as he is followed by Drest, son of Talorgen, who reigns four or five
years, and Talorgen, son of Aengus, who reigns two and a half. The
accession of the latter, however, was contrary to the Pictish law, being
the son of a previous king; and we find that this was a case of disputed
succession, the northern Picts supporting the one, and the other being
accepted by the southern Picts, as king during the first half of the
reign of Drest, till he was slain in 782; for the Ulster Annals in that
year record the death of Dubhtolargg, king of the Cismontane Picts.[417]
This was the first break in upon the Pictish law of succession, and the
intercourse with the Saxons, and the influence exercised by them,
probably led the southern Picts to view with more favour a male
succession.
[Sidenote: A.D. 789-820.
Constantin, son of Fergus, king of the Picts.]
Drest, whose death is not recorded, appears to have been succeeded by
Canaul, son of Tarla, or Conall, son of Taidg, who reigned five years,
till in 789 or 790 he is attacked by Constantin, son of Fergus, and the
result of a battle between them was that Conall, son of Taidg, was
defeated and fled, and the victor Constantin became king of the
Picts.[418] Conall, son of Taidg, appears to have taken refuge in
Dalriada, where at this time Domnall, son of Constantin, was ruler under
the Picts, and to have eventually governed there himself for four years,
as Domnall is followed in the list by two Conalls who are said to be
brothers, the first ruling two and the second four years, and the end of
the government of the latter corresponds with the year 807, when the
Ulster Annals record the assassination of Conall, son of Taidg, by
Conall, son of Aedain, in Kintyre.[419] Constantin, son of Fergus, the
king of the Picts, appears now to have assumed the rule in Dalriada
himself, as his name follows that of the second Conall in the lists, and
retained it for nine years.
[Sidenote: Norwegian and Danish pirates.]
In the meantime, a new race appeared on the scene, who were destined to
cut off for several centuries, to a great extent, the intercourse which
had hitherto prevailed between Scotland and Ireland, and materially to
influence the history of both countries. They make their first
appearance in the year 793 in an attack upon the island of Lindisfarne.
Simeon of Durham tells us that their approach was heralded by ‘fearful
prodigies which terrified the wretched nation of the Angles; inasmuch as
horrible lightnings and dragons in the air and flashes of fire were
often seen glancing and flying to and fro; which signs indicated the
great famine and the terrible and unutterable slaughter of multitudes
which ensued,’ and he gives the following graphic account of their
attack upon Lindisfarne. ‘In the same year, of a truth, the Pagans from
the northern region came with a naval armament to Britain like stinging
hornets, and over-ran the country in all directions like fierce wolves,
plundering, tearing, and killing not only sheep and oxen, but priests
and levites, and choirs of monks and nuns. They came, as we before said,
to the church of Lindisfarne, and laid all waste with dreadful havoc,
trod with unhallowed feet the holy places, dug up the altars, and
carried off all the treasures of the holy church. Some of the brethren
they killed, some they carried off in chains, many they cast out naked
and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea.’[420] They seem
to have been mainly attracted to those islands where monastic
establishments were to be found as affording richest plunder; and the
scene above depicted by Simeon was no doubt repeated at the sack of each
monastery.
In the following year they ravaged the harbours of King Ecgfrid, and
plundered the monastery at the mouth of the river Wear; but, says
Simeon, ‘St. Cuthbert did not allow them to depart unpunished, for their
chief was there put to a cruel death by the Angles, and a short time
afterwards a violent storm shattered, destroyed, and broke up their
vessels, and the sea swallowed up very many of them; some, however, were
cast ashore and speedily slain without mercy; and these things befel
them justly, since they heavily injured those who had not injured
them.’[421]
Another body of these pirates directed their attacks against the Western
Isles in 794, when the Ulster Annals record that these islands were
utterly laid waste by a people to whom they apply the general term of
Gentiles, and the church of Iona is plundered by them. In 796 Osuald the
Patrician, who had been appointed to the kingdom of Northumbria by some
of the chiefs of that nation on the death of King Ethelred, who was
slain in that year on the 18th of April, was twenty-seven days after
expelled from the kingdom, and with a few followers retired to the
island of Lindisfarne, and thence went by ship with some of the brethren
to the king of the Picts, Constantin. In 798 the northern pirates took
spoils of the sea between Erin and Alban, which no doubt implies that
the Western Isles were again laid waste by them. In 802 I-Columchill, or
Iona, is burnt by them, and in 806 the community of Iona, amounting to
sixty-eight persons, are slain by them.[422] Besides the general term of
Gentiles, that of Gall, the Irish word for stranger, was likewise
applied to them, and two nations were distinguished as Finngaill, white
or fair-haired Galls, and Dubhgaill, black or dark-haired Galls—the
former being Norwegians, to whom also the term of Lochlannach, or people
of Lochlann, was applied, and the latter, Danes.[423] Iona, when thus
ravaged by these pirates, and its community almost entirely cut off by
them, was still the head of all the Columban churches, and this
catastrophe seems to have led to a resolution to remove the seat of the
supremacy to a safer locality. This was not to be found in any of the
Western Isles, and the respective claims of Scotland and Ireland were
solved by the foundation in each country of a church which should be
supreme over the Columban monasteries in that country. In Ireland,
accordingly, a new church was commenced in the year following the
slaughter of the Iona monks, at a place called Cennanus, in Meath, now
Kells, which had been given to the Columban Church three years before,
and the church was finished in the year 814. In Scotland the position
selected was at the pass where the Tay makes its way through the barrier
of the Grampians; and here, while Constantin ruled over both Dalriada
and the Picts, he founded the Church of Dunkeld,[424] in which he may
possibly have put the brethren from Lindisfarne who took refuge with him
in 796.
[Sidenote: A.D. 820-832.
Aengus, son of Fergus, king of Fortrenn.]
On his death, which took place in 820,[425] his brother Aengus, who had
ruled over Dalriada during the last four years of Constantin’s reign,
succeeded him as king of the Picts, and ruled over both kingdoms for the
first five years of his reign, in the last year of which we find
recorded the martyrdom of Blathmhaic, son of Flann, by the Gentiles in
Hi Coluimcille. During the remainder of his reign we find Dalriada
governed successively by Aed, son of Boanta, and by his own son Eoganan.
It is to this Aengus, son of Fergus, that the later chronicles have
erroneously attributed the foundation of St. Andrews; but as the kings
of this family are termed kings of Fortrenn, and are found bearing the
same names, it is probable that they belonged to the royal family of
which the first Aengus, son of Fergus, was the founder, and which
appears to have been peculiarly connected with the province of Fortrenn.
The death of Aengus, son of Fergus, is recorded by the Ulster Annals in
834,[426] and again we find a conflict between the old Pictish law of
succession and the custom more recently introduced of permitting the
sons of previous kings to occupy the throne, for the Pictish Chronicle
tells us that Drest, son of Constantin, and Talorgan, son of Wthoil,
reigned jointly for three years. The former, who was the son of
Constantin mac Fergus, was probably accepted by the southern Picts,
while those of the northern provinces were more tenacious of the old
law, and supported a king the name of whose father was not borne by any
of the previous kings.
[Sidenote: A.D. 832.
Alpin the Scot attacks the Picts, and is slain.]
We find, however, at this time a third competitor, who appears to have
asserted his right to rule over the southern Picts. This was Alpin, of
Scottish race by paternal descent, but whose Pictish name shows that his
maternal descent was from that race. We are told in the Chronicle of
Huntingdon that ‘in the year 834 there was a conflict between the Scots
and Picts at Easter, and many of the more noble of the Picts were slain,
and Alpin, king of the Scots, remained victorious, but being elated with
his success, he was, in another battle fought on the 20th of July in the
same year, defeated and decapitated.’[427]
Alpin seems to have made this attempt at the head of those Scots who
were still to be found in the country, and was probably supported by a
part of the Pictish nation who were favourable to his cause. Tradition
points to the Carse of Gowrie as the scene of his attempt, and Pitalpin,
now Pitelpie, near Dundee, as the locality of the battle in which he was
defeated and slain; and the occurrence of a place near St. Andrews
called Rathalpin or the Fort of Alpin, now Rathelpie, seems to indicate
that it was in the province of ‘Fib’ or Fife that he found his support
and established himself after his first success.
[Sidenote: A.D. 836-839.
Eoganan, son of Aengus.]
After the two kings Drest and Talorgan, who are said to have reigned
jointly, the Pictish Chronicle has Uven, son of Unuist, who reigned
three years. He is obviously the Eoganan, son of Aengus, who ruled over
Dalriada for thirteen years, and probably succeeded Drest as king of the
southern Picts. We find, therefore, the principle of male succession
making a further step in advance, as the sons of both the previous
kings, Constantin and Angus, thus reign after them over part at least of
the Pictish nation; but in his reign the Picts were doomed to receive so
crushing a blow from the Danish pirates that it seems to have almost
exterminated the family connected with Fortrenn, and paved the way for
the successful attempt of the son of Alpin the Scot to place himself on
the throne of the Picts. In the ancient Tract on the wars of the
Gaedheal with the Galls we are told that in the year 839 there came to
Dublin threescore and five ships, and Leinster was plundered by them to
the sea and the plain of Bregia, extending from Dublin to Drogheda.
After the plundering of Leinster and Bregia they went northwards, when
the people of Dalriada gave battle to this fleet, and Eoganan, son of
Aengus, king of Dalriada, was slain in that battle. The Danes seem from
this to have attempted to invade Scotland through Dalriada; but in
recording the same event the Ulster Annals tell us that a battle was
fought by the Gentiles against the men of Fortrenn, in which Eoganan son
of Aengus, Bran son of Aengus, Aed son of Boanta, and others
innumerable, were slain.[428] These two notices taken in combination
very clearly show us that at this time the people of Dalriada and the
men of Fortrenn were the same, and that Eoganan, the son of Aengus,
ruled over both.
[Sidenote: A.D. 839.
Kenneth MacAlpin invades Pictavia.]
The Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that ‘Kynadius succeeded his father
Alpin in his kingdom, and that in the seventh year of his reign, which
corresponds with the year 839, while the Danish pirates, having occupied
the Pictish shores, had crushed the Picts, who were defending
themselves, with a great slaughter, Kynadius, passing into their
remaining territories, turned his arms against them, and having slain
many, compelled them to take flight, and was the first king of the Scots
who acquired the monarchy of the whole of Alban, and ruled in it over
the Scots.’[429] The allusion here to the defeat of the men of Fortrenn
by the Danes is obvious, and this account certainly conveys the
impression that Kenneth acted in concert with them, if he did not merely
take advantage of the great defeat of the Picts to renew the attempt his
father had made.
Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan make Kenneth the immediate
successor of Eoganan in Dalriada, but the Pictish Chronicle places two
kings as reigning over the Picts—Wrad, son of Bargoit, who reigned three
years, and Bred one year; so that, while the events of the year 839
appear to have placed him in possession of Dalriada, they did not, as
the Chronicle of Huntingdon implies, establish him on the throne of the
Picts. Bred is the last of the line of Pictish kings in the Pictish
Chronicle, and the reigns of himself and his predecessor, amounting to
four years, bring us to the year 844. This was the twelfth year of
Kenneth’s reign, and the Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that ‘in his
twelfth year Kenneth encountered the Picts seven times in one day, and
having destroyed many, confirmed the kingdom to himself.’[430]
[Sidenote: A.D. 844.
Kenneth mac Alpin becomes king of the Picts.]
This is the true year of Kenneth’s possession of the Pictish kingdom,
and it is with this year that the Pictish Chronicle commences his reign.
Here we are told that ‘Kinadius, son of Alpin, the first of the Scots,
governed Pictavia happily for sixteen years. Two years, however, before
he came to Pictavia, he acquired the kingdom of Dalriada.’[431] The name
of the father of Bred, the last king of the Picts, is not given in the
Pictish Chronicle, but in the later chronicles he is called Brude, son
of Ferat, and his reign limited to one month. He is followed in these
chronicles by three kings whose reigns amount to six years. These are
Kinat, son of Ferat, one year; Brude, son of Fotel, two years; and
Drest, son of Ferat, three years; and the latter is said to have been
slain by the Scots ‘at Forteviot according to some, and at Scone
according to others,’[432] and he is followed by Kenneth mac Alpin, who
reigns sixteen years. This would bring his accession to the Pictish
throne down to the year 850, and this is in fact the era upon which all
the late calculations as to the duration of the kingdom of the Scots are
based. It is possible that these kings may have existed and maintained a
six years’ struggle with Kenneth before the last of them was slain; but
they rest upon authority which cannot be considered trustworthy. The
length of the reign assigned to Kenneth of sixteen years by the same
chronicler is quite inconsistent with the introduction of these supposed
kings; and the year 844 remains as undoubtedly the true era of the
accession of the Scottish race to the Pictish throne. In the seventh
year of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, or 851, he is said in the
Pictish Chronicle to have transferred the relics of Saint Columba to a
church which he had built.[433] This was no doubt the final carrying out
of the arrangement by which the supremacy of Iona was to be transferred
in Ireland to Kells, and in Scotland to Dunkeld. It is there that
Kenneth had either completed a church begun by Constantin, or founded a
new church, and a portion of Saint Columba’s relics was now transferred
to each place. The subsequent events of Kenneth’s reign are given in the
Pictish Chronicle in very general terms. He is said to have invaded
Saxonia or Lothian six times, and to have burnt Dunbar and Melrose,
usurped presumably by the Angles, while the Britons are said to have
burnt Dunblane, and the Danes to have laid waste Pictavia as far as
‘Cluanan’ or Cluny and Dunkeld.[434] There is, however, no record of
these events to be found elsewhere.
[Sidenote: The Gallgaidhel.]
During the latter years of Kenneth’s reign, a people appear in close
association with the Norwegian pirates, and joining in their plundering
expeditions, who are termed Gallgaidhel. This name is formed by the
combination of the two words ‘Gall,’ a stranger, a foreigner, and
‘Gaidhel,’ the national name of the Gaelic race. It was certainly first
applied to the people of Galloway, and the proper name of this province,
Galwethia, is formed from Galwyddel, the Welsh equivalent of
Gallgaidhel. It seems to have been applied to them as a Gaelic race
under the rule of Galls or foreigners; Galloway being for centuries a
province of the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria, and the term ‘Gall’
having been applied to the Saxons before it was almost exclusively
appropriated to the Norwegian and Danish pirates. Towards the end of the
eighth century the power of the Angles in Galloway seems to have become
weakened, and the native races began to assert their independent action.
The bishopric, which had been founded by the Angles in 727, ceases with
Beadulf, the last Bishop, about the year 796; and William of Malmesbury
tells us that he could find no record of any subsequent bishop, because
the bishopric soon ceased being situated in the remote corner of the
Angles, and having become exposed to the attacks of the Scots or
Picts.[435]
In the Islands Landnamabok we are told that ‘Harold the Fairhaired, king
of Norway, subdued all the Sudreys or Western Isles, so far west that no
Norwegian king has since conquered farther except King Magnus Barefoot;
but he had no sooner returned than vikings, both Scottish and Irish,
cast themselves into the islands, and made war, and plundered far and
wide. When King Harold heard this he sent westward Ketill Flatnose, the
son of Bjarnan Bunu, to reconquer the islands.’ Ketill departed for the
west, and subdued all the Sudreys. He made himself king over them.[436]
The Laxdaela Saga, however, makes Ketill a petty king in Norway, who
left it on the extension of Harold’s kingdom, and on arriving in
Scotland with his vessel, was well received there by men of rank, as he
was both a celebrated man and of high descent. They offered him any
possessions he pleased, so that Ketill settled there with all his
kindred. Ketill, however, must have settled in the Sudreys before
Harold’s time, as his daughter Audur married Olaf the White, who became
king of Dublin in 852; and in 856 we find a notice in the Ulster Annals
of a great war between the Gentiles and Maelsechnaill along with the
Gallgaidhel who were with them, and in 857 a victory by Imair and
Amlaiph, against Caittil Finn with the Gallgaidhel in Munster.[437]
Caittil Finn is no doubt the same person as Ketill Flatnose, and the
Gallgaidhel those Scotch and Irish vikings whom he had brought under his
authority. There is no doubt that the name of Gallgaidhel was applied to
the Gaelic population of the Western Isles called Innse Gall or the
islands of the Galls, and the name, which originally belonged
exclusively to the Gallwegians when under Anglic dominion, was extended
to the islanders when under that of the Norwegians. In the fragments of
Irish Annals published by the Irish Archæological Society, we are told
that in 852 ‘a battle was given by Aedh, king of Ailech, the most
valiant king of his time, to the fleet of the Gallgaidhel. They were
Scots and foster-children of the Northmen, and at one time used to be
called Northmen. They were defeated and slain by Aedh, and many of their
heads carried off by Niall with him; and the Irish were justified in
committing this havoc, for these men were wont to act like Lochlans;’
and again, in 858, that ‘the Gallgaidhel were a people who had renounced
their baptism, and were usually called Northmen, for they had the
customs of the Northmen, and had been fostered by them, and though the
original Northmen were bad to the churches, these were by far worse in
whatever part of Erin they used to be.’[438]
The name, however, as applied to a territory, continued to be
exclusively appropriated to Galloway.
The Pictish Chronicle adds that Kenneth died ‘tumore ani,’ on the Ides
of February on the third of the week, in his palace of Forteviot, on the
river Earn, and this fixes 860 as the year of his death. St. Berchan
says of him—
Seventeen years of warding valour,
In the sovereignty of Alban,
After slaughtering Cruithneach, after embittering Galls,
He dies on the banks of the Earn.[439]
Flann Mainistrech says of him that he was the first king who possessed
the kingdom of Scone, of the Gaidhel; and by the Ulster Annals, the
Annales Cambriæ, and others, in recording his death, he is invariably
called king of the Picts.[440] He appears to have had two sons,
Constantin and Aed, and three daughters, one married to Run, king of the
Britons of Strathclyde, another married to Amlaimh or Olaf the White,
the Norwegian king of Dublin, and a third, Maelmaire, married to Aedh
Finnliath, king of Ireland, who died in 879.[441]
[Sidenote: Obscurity of this period of history.]
There is no more obscure period in the annals of the northern kingdoms
than the latter part of the eighth and the first half of the ninth
centuries, and no more difficult question than to ascertain the nature
and true character of that revolution which placed a Scottish race in
possession of the kingdom of Scone. For this period we lose the guidance
of the great Anglic historian Bede, and of the Irish annalist Tighernac.
When we refer to trustworthy sources of information, we can find no
record of any revolution at this time. They exhibit to us only the great
confusion into which these kingdoms were thrown by the incessant
depredations of the Norwegian and Danish piratical hordes. In the oldest
and most authentic lists of kings we find Kenneth mac Alpin and his
descendants following the Pictish kings as belonging to the same series.
By the annalists who record the events of this period Kenneth is simply
termed king of the Picts. The historical documents which make any direct
statement on the subject, with one exception, belong to an artificial
system of history, constructed after the eleventh century to serve the
purposes of a political and ecclesiastical controversy, and cannot be
trusted to afford us anything but distorted fragments of true history,
and we are left with the solitary statement of Flann Mainistrech, that
Kenneth was the first king who gave the kingdom of Scone to the
Gaidheal.
[Sidenote: Causes and nature of revolution which placed Kenneth on the
throne of the Picts.]
That Kenneth mac Alpin was a Scot by paternal descent, and that the
succession to the throne of the Pictish kingdom of Scone was eventually
perpetuated in his race, may be held to be as certain as any event of
that period can be ascertained; but the slender record we possess of the
events of his reign does not exhibit them to us as implying the conquest
of one nation by another, still less of the Picts by the Scots of
Dalriada, as is usually assumed. The name of Kenneth’s father, Alpin,
shows that he was of the Pictish race by maternal descent, and that he
may have had a claim to the throne, but these events exhibit themselves
to us more as a war of succession—in which Alpin and his son Kenneth
were supported in their claim to the throne not only by a party among
the Picts, but by the remains of the Scots of Dalriada who were still to
be found in the country,—than as a foreign invasion. During the reigns
of Kenneth and his three successors, they were simply kings of Scottish
paternal descent, ruling over the same kingdom and the same people who
had previously been governed by those of Pictish race. The country of
which Scone was the capital was still _Cruithintuath_, or Pictavia its
Latin equivalent. The people were still the men of _Fortrenn_ or the
Picts, and the deaths of these kings of Scottish race were still
recorded as those of kings of the Picts. The period was one very
favourable to such a change being easily and quietly made. The Picts had
no repugnance to any of their kings being paternally of foreign descent,
so that they represented a Pictish royal family, and were held to belong
to a Pictish tribe through their mothers. The old Pictish law of
succession too, had broken down, among the southern Picts at least,
under Anglic influence, and the right of the sons of Pictish kings to
ascend the throne had been more than once recognised. Shortly after
Alpin had put forward his claim, the Picts of Fortrenn had sustained a
most crushing blow from the Danes, and were as completely prostrated by
them as the Scots of Dalriada had been a century before by the powerful
Pictish king Aengus mac Fergus. That it was followed by a rising
everywhere of the remains of the Scots of Dalriada we may well believe,
but an additional and very potent element existed among his means of
support. The ban against the Columban clergy who had been so long
dispossessed of their foundations in the territories of the southern
Picts had been partially removed by the foundation of Dunkeld, which
probably gave them some footing again in the country, and they may have
now gladly seized upon such an opportunity as the combination of a king
of Scottish race claiming the throne with the temporary prostration of
the most powerful tribe among the Picts to make an effort to recover
them. The Pictish Chronicle clearly indicates this as one of the great
causes of the fall of the Pictish monarchy. It says, ‘For God thought
them worthy to be made aliens from and stript of their hereditary
possessions as their perverseness deserved, because they not only
spurned the rites and the precepts of the Lord, but also refused to
allow themselves to be placed on an equal footing with others.’[442]
This appears to refer very plainly to the original expulsion of those of
the Columban clergy who would not conform to the decree issued by
Nectan, king of the Picts, and to the Roman usages it enforced, as well
as to the ban which had been kept up against them till it was partially
relaxed by Constantin when he founded Dunkeld; and when Kenneth
transferred the relics of Saint Columba to Dunkeld, they seem to have
regained their footing as far as he could effect it, as we find that the
abbot of Dunkeld was placed at the head of the Pictish Church.[443]
[Sidenote: Where did the Scots come from?]
Two questions still remain to be solved. The first is, Where was the
kingdom of his father Alpin, and where did Kenneth rule during the first
six years after his father’s death in 832? Not in the kingdom of the
Picts, for he only obtained the Pictish throne in the twelfth year of
his reign, in the year 844. Not in Dalriada, for he did not obtain that
kingdom till after the year 839, and two years before he became king of
the Picts. If, then, he did not commence his reign either in Dalriada or
in Pictavia, it must have been in some part of Scotland south of the
Firths of Forth and Clyde, or else he must have been in Irish Dalriada
or elsewhere in Ireland. The later chronicles tell us that ‘with
wonderful eagerness he led the Scots from Ergadia into the land of the
Picts,’[444] but this is part of that artificial system by which the
later kingdom of the Scots was, by the suppression of a century,
connected immediately with the earlier Scottish kingdom of Dalriada. The
earliest tradition which indicates this appears to have at one time
formed a part of the Pictish Chronicle. In narrating the events of
Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, there are in this chronicle some
expressions which show that this part of it had once been preceded by an
account of the mode in which he obtained the Pictish throne.[445] The
compiler, however, of one of the later chronicles obviously had a copy
of the Pictish Chronicle before him. It was also known to Ranulph
Higden, who used it in his Polychronicon, and in both the events of
Kenneth’s reign are preceded by what is obviously a traditionary account
of how the Scots obtained possession of the Pictish kingdom.[446] The
same tale appears also in the chronicle contained in the Scalachronica,
where it also precedes the account of the reign of Kenneth, and it was
likewise known to Giraldus Cambrensis, who narrates part of it.[447]
Comparing the four editions of this narrative with each other and with
the expressions in the Pictish Chronicle referring to it, we can make a
fair approximation to what this lost passage of the chronicle contained.
It seems to have commenced with Bede’s statement that in the course of
time the Scots came from Ireland under their leader Reuda, and obtained
a settlement either by permission or by force among the Picts. We are
then told that the Scots inhabited Galloway, to which Giraldus adds that
they afterwards effected an extension of their territories, and the
Scalachronica ‘as also Argyll and others of the Isles.’ The Scots thus
living in conjunction with the Picts, and having obtained from them a
district to inhabit, contrive a plot against them. They invite the
magnates of the Picts, according to Scalachronica, to a great council,
and coming privately armed they slew the great lords of the Picts, and
afterwards sent for others and slew them; according to the other
editions, to a banquet where they had undermined the seats, and having
withdrawn the supports the sitters fell into the hollow places prepared
for them, and were slain without difficulty; and profiting by this
treachery the Scots took their land reaching from sea to sea, which is
now called Scotia; and thus Kenneth, son of Alpin, invaded Pictavia and
destroyed the Picts.[448] This, of course, can only be viewed as a
traditionary account, but it seems to contain a reference to the
subsequent history of the Scots of Dalriada, after they were driven out
by the Picts. It narrates Alpin’s invasion of Galloway with his Scots,
and then repeats from Bede the first settlement of the Scottish colony,
stating that they inhabited Galloway along with the Picts. His son
Kenneth acquires the kingdom of Dalriada, and the Scots again emerge and
extend themselves into Argyll and the Isles. Kenneth then invades the
kingdom of the Picts, but does not finally subdue it till five years
after; and in place of this we have the story of the plot by which he
treacherously slays the principal nobles of the Picts. St. Berchan in
his so-called prophecy alludes to this tale, but adds it to a reference
to a war, and removes the scene of it to Scone. He says—
A man who shall feed ravens, fight battles;
His name was the conqueror.
He is the first king who possessed in the east
Of the men of Erin in Alban.
It was by strength of spears and swords,
By violent deaths, by violent fates,
By him are deceived in the east the firm ones.
He shall dig in the earth, cunning the art,
(With) dangerous goad blades, death and pillage,
In the middle of Scone of high shields.[449]
Now the Scalachronica places it in the time of Drust, son of Feradach,
the last king of the Picts, who was slain at Scone by treason. This
would bring the event to the year 850, after Kenneth had been already
six years in possession of the Pictish throne.
We may gather from this tale that Kenneth emerged from Galloway where
the last remnant of the Scots of Dalriada disappear from history nearly
a century before; and if the appearance of the Norwegians on the scene
had led the people of Galloway, as well as Scots from other quarters, to
adopt the same piratical life under the name of Gallgaidhel, we can
readily understand that Kenneth, taking advantage of the crushing blow
inflicted on the Picts of Fortrenn by the Danes, would be readily joined
by Scots from all quarters in regaining the kingdom of Dalriada, and
prosecuting his father’s claim to the throne of the Picts.
But there is another legend which appears also to refer to this period.
It is that contained in the life of St. Cadroë. We are there told, after
that part of the legend which relates to the settlement of the Scots in
Ireland, that many years passed when the Scots crossed the Irish Channel
and took possession of Iona, and then continuing their voyage enter the
region of Rossia, evidently the province of Ross, by the river Rosis,
which is also evidently the river Rasay, the old name of the Blackwater,
which flows from a small lake called Loch Droma,[450] on the ridge
separating the eastern and western watershed, and flows through the long
valley leading from near the head of Loch Broom till it falls into the
river Conan, some miles above Dingwall. From thence they proceed
southward to Rigmoneth, the old name for St. Andrews, and to Bellathor,
which must have been situated at or near Scone. There is no record of
any Scots ever having reached St. Andrews or Scone till the reign of
Kenneth mac Alpin, and this part of the legend seems to refer to this
time; but the previous part of it is obviously ecclesiastical in its
character, and it is probable that it rather belongs to the return of
the Columban clergy, who may have gone from Ireland to Iona and thence
by Ross-shire to Rosemarkie, an old Columban foundation, from which they
had been dispossessed by Boniface, and finally to Rigmoneth in Fifeshire
and Bellachoir in Perthshire; and in this view it is difficult to avoid
connecting it with the legend of St. Adrian, who, like St. Boniface, is
brought from the east and lands in the eastern parts of Scotland then
occupied by the Picts, having with him six thousand and six hundred and
six persons, composed of confessors, clerics, and lay people. These men
with their bishop did many signs in the kingdom of the Picts, afterwards
desired to have a residence in the Isle of May, where the Danes, who
then devastated the whole of Britain, came and slew them.[451] Their
martyrdom is connected with a Danish invasion in 875. The east part of
Scotland in which they had their first settlement was evidently Fife.
Their arrival is almost coincident with the invasion of the kingdom of
the Picts by the Scots under Kenneth, and the large number who are said
to have come shows that the traditionary history was really one of the
immigration of a people. Hector Boece, in referring to this legend,
tells us that while some write that they were Hungarians, others say
that they were a company collected from Scots and Angles.[452] It is
perhaps not an unreasonable conclusion that the Scots invaded the
Pictish territories in two bands—one under Kenneth across Drumalban
against the southern Picts, and the other from sea by Loch Broom against
the northern Picts.
[Sidenote: What was Kenneth mac Alpin’s paternal descent?]
The second question we have to solve is, To what family of the Scots of
Dalriada did Kenneth, by paternal descent, belong? The ordinary
pedigree, which traces his descent through the kings of Dalriada of the
Cinel Gabhran, and identifies his father Alpin with Alpin son of
Eachach, the last of the Dalriadic kings, is not older than the twelfth
century, and is unquestionably artificial; but we have indications that
two other lines of descent were attributed to him. St. Berchan, in his
so-called prophecy, after a few stanzas which refer to Conall, the son
of Comgall, the king of Dalriada who received Saint Columba as narrated
by Adamnan, passes at once to the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, with these
words:—
A son of the clan of his son will possess
The kingdom of Albany by virtue of his strength.
Conall, according to the Tract on the Men of Alban, had seven sons,[453]
from any one of whom Kenneth may have descended, and this would attach
him to that tribe of the Dalriads termed the Cinel Comgall, from whom
the district of Cowall takes its name; but the same tract contains
another statement, which seems to present to us a more authentic notice
of his descent. According to this tradition, from Eachach Buidhe, son of
Aedain, the king of Dalriada inaugurated by Saint Columba, there
branched off two clans, ‘the clan Fergusa Gall, son of Eachach Buidhe,
or the Gabhranaigh, and the clan Conall Cerr, son of Eochaid Buidhe, who
are the men of Fife in the sovereignty; that is, the clan of Kenneth,
son of Alpin, son of Aidan.’[454] This has all the appearance of a
genuine fragment which has been preserved from some older source. The
reference to Fife, which appears to have been the province which mainly
supported the claim of this family, and in which Rathelpin, or the Fort
of Alpin, was situated, and the appearance of a Conall, son of Aidan, in
Kintyre, in 807, by whom Conall, son of Tadg, the then Pictish governor
of Dalriada was slain,[455] and who was probably a son of the same Aidan
here made father of Alpin, gives great probability to it. We may
therefore conclude that Kenneth mac Alpin belonged to the Cinel Gabhran,
but was descended from a different branch than that which had furnished
the kings of that race to Dalriada.
[Sidenote: A.D. 860-864.
Donald, son of Alpin, king of the Picts.]
Kenneth mac Alpin was succeeded by his brother Donald, who, according to
the Pictish Chronicle, held the same kingdom for four years. His death
is recorded by the Annals of Ulster four years after that of Kenneth,
with the same title of king of the Picts. He died, according to the
Pictish Chronicle, at his palace of Cinn Belachoir, on the ides, or
13th, of April. St. Berchan says of him—
Three years to the king,
And three months, who shall number them?
On Loch Adhbha shall be his grave:
He dies of disease suddenly.