[190] Sim. Dun. de Gestis and Chron. Sax. ad an. 1097. According to Fordun, l. 5, c. 30, the Banner of St. Cuthbert won the day, three knights, through its aid, defeating the whole of Donald’s army!
[191] Malm., as above. Innes, Ap. 4. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 108, and c. 8, l. 49. The Prior of Lochleven tells a singular tale about Donald, how in his blindness he enticed into his power the eldest son of David “a gangand chyld ... and wyth tympanys sharpe set till hys naylis ... thrystyd and swa handlyd the chyld ... quhil he deyd at the last,” and how “the modyr than that herd the cry ... for sorow gave the gast rycht thare.” As the latter part of the story is unquestionably false, it may be hoped that the whole tale is a fabrication. In the version of the same tale recorded by Orderic, the supposed murderer is an outcast priest, a pensioner on David’s charity. Vide Hailes’ Annals, vol. i., p. 112, note.
[192] Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108. Tigh. 1034. Gille, Jarl of the Sudreys, was either the nephew or the brother-in-law of Jarl Sigurd,—or both, as a marriage between an aunt and her nephew occasionally took place in the distant north.
[193] Tigh. 1052, 1061. Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 346. Seventy-five and sixty-five years have been given to Thorfin, but as he was five years of age when his father fell at Clontarf in 1014, and his own death occurred before the expedition of Harald Hardrade in 1066, he probably died at the age of fifty-five, in 1064.
[194] Chron. Man. 1047. The dates of this Chronicle are occasionally very inaccurate, but they are easily rectified. Godfrey Crovan conquered Man five years after the inroad of Malcolm the Third into Cleveland, i.e., in 1075.
[195] Tigh. 1072.
[196] Tigh. An. Ult. and A. F. M. ad an. 1075.
[197] Chron. Man. 1056. The abrogation of the Odallers’ rights appears to have been the first step invariably taken by Scandinavian conquerors. The result was taxation, the king or Jarl asserting his right to the land. This division of the island was probably the reason of the two Deemsters or Judges of Man.
[198] Chron. Man. An. Ult. and A. F. M. 1094. Godfrey is generally known in the Irish Annals as Meranach, or the Bad.
[199] An. Ult. 1087.