[130] A.F.M., 3922. The Masters attribute the institution to Ollamh Fodla, into whose claims I will not enter; but it is very evident, I think, that they alluded to an institution well known at least in tradition. The word Toshach simply means “captain” or “leader”—dux; the Irish Taisigeacht meaning “captaincy,” “leadership,” or “precedency.” When the office of dux, originally elective, became hereditary, according to the invariable principle of “divided authority” so characteristic of all the Celtic communities, it remained permanently in the family of the eldest cadet of the clan, the Tighern farthest removed from the chieftainship. The “Captains of Galloway” and the “Thanes of Ross” were probably known in their native tongue as Toshachs—captains by right of office—for though the oldest cadet and the thane, in his military capacity, were known as Toshachs, it by no means follows that a Toshach was necessarily either one or the other.
[131] Reg. Magest. Stat. Alex. II., c. 15. In some respects the Irish Oirrigh—under-king—resembled the Mormaor; but he was a tributary king, reigning in “right of blood,” not a royal official, though in certain cases he appears to have acted as a Maor.
[132] Fordun, l. 4, c. 48. Compare Appendix N (Thanes).
[133] Reg. Prior. St. And. p. 114.
[134] Fordun, to whom such a being as a married abbot would have been an abomination, metamorphosed the ancestor of the royal family of Scotland into an Abthane, asserting that the word Abbas could only be a clerical error for Abthanus, an officer whom he places over all the king’s Thanes, l. 4., c. 43. The contemporary Tighernach, however, Wynton, and the author of the Chronicle in the Reg. Prior. St. And. (Innes, Ap. 5), were ignorant that Crinan was known under any other title but that of abbot, and though Abthanages are to be met with in the charters, I have never yet chanced to light upon an Abthane. Such a name, in fact, would have been simply applicable to the maor of an abbot instead of the king—the holder of an ecclesiastical Thanage.
[135] Heimsk. Saga 7, c. 100 to 107. Ork. Saga, in Col. de Reb. alb., p. 340.
[136] Ork. Saga, Col. de Reb. alb., p. 341.
[137] Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 9. The fifth year of Canute’s son, Harold, fell in 1040.
[138] Dyrness appears to mean Turness, in the isle of Hoy, not Durness the north-western extremity of Sutherlandshire.
[139] Torfnes, south of Bœfiord, seems to mean Burghead on the Moray Firth; Breida Fiord was the Dornoch Firth. The account of these transactions is from the Ork. Saga, in Col. de Reb. alb., as above. Kali Hundison, the name given in the Saga to the successor of Malcolm and opponent of Thorfin, can mean no other than Duncan. Vide Appendix P.