[99] Skene’s Chron. of Picts and Scots, p. cxv.
[100] Dr. Reeves supposes this to be Culross in Perthshire.—Maclauchlan.
[101] Dr. Skene, in his preface to the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, endeavours to prove, by very plausible reasoning, and by comparison of various lists of kings, that for a century previous to the accession of Kenneth to the Pictish throne, Dalriada was under subjection to the Anglian monarchy, and was ruled by Pictish sovereigns. In an able paper, however, read recently by Dr. Archibald Smith before the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, he shows that Argyleshire was invaded but not subdued by Ungus, king of the Picts, in 736 and 741. Dr. Smith supported his conclusion by reference to passages in the annals of Tigernach, of Ulster, and the Albanic Duan, which seemed to him to give an intelligible and continuous account of regal succession in Dalriada, but afforded no countenance to the theory of Pinkerton of the entire conquest of the Scots in Britain by Ungus, nor to the conclusion Dr. Skene has come to, viz., the complete supremacy of the Picts in the Scottish Dalriada, and the extinction of Dalriada as a Scottish nation from the year 741 to the era of a new Scottish kingdom founded by Kenneth Macalpin in the year 843. On the contrary, he was convinced that Aodh-fionn was the restorer of its full liberty to the crushed section of Lorn, and that he was, at the close of his career, the independent ruler of Dalriada as a Scottish nation.
[102] Scotland, vol. i. p. 329.
[103] See Skene’s preface to Chronicle of Picts and Scots, p. xcviii. et seq., for some curious and ingenious speculation on this point.
[104] We shall take the liberty of quoting here an extract from an able and ingenious paper read by Dr. Skene before the Soc. of Ant., in June 1861, and quoted in Dr. Gordon’s Scotichronicon, p. 83. It will help, we think, to throw a little light on this dark subject, and assist the reader somewhat to understand the nature and extent of the so-called Scottish conquest. “The next legend which bears upon the history of St. Andrews is that of St. Adrian, at 4th March. The best edition of this legend is in the Aberdeen Breviary, and it is as follows:—Adrian was a native of Hungary, and after preaching there for some time, was seized with a desire to preach to other people; and having gathered together a company, he set out ‘ad orientales Scotiæ partes que tunc a Pictis occupabantur,’ i.e., ‘to the eastern parts of Scotland, which were then occupied by the Picts,’—and landed there with 6,606 confessors, clergy, and people, among whom were Glodianus, Gayus, Minanus, Scobrandus, and others, chief priests. These men, with their bishop, Adrian, ‘deleto regno Pictorum,’ i.e., ‘the Pictish kingdom being destroyed,’—did many signs, but afterwards desired to have a residence on the Isle of May. The Danes, who then devastated the whole of Britain, came to the Island, and there slew them. Their martyrdom is said to have taken place in the year 875. It will be observed that they are here said to have settled in the east part of Scotland, opposite the Isle of May, that is in Fife, while the Picts still occupied it; that the Pictish kingdom is then said to have been destroyed; and that their martyrdom took place in 875, thirty years after the Scottish conquest under Kenneth M’Alpin. Their arrival was therefore almost coincident with the Scottish conquest; and the large number said to have come, not the modest twenty-one who arrived with Regulus, but 6,606 confessors, clergy, and people, shows that the traditionary history was really one of an invasion, and leads to the suspicion at once that it was in reality a part of the Scottish occupation of the Pictish kingdom. This suspicion is much strengthened by two corroborative circumstances: 1st, the year 875, when they are said to have been slain by the Danes, falls in the reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth Macalpin, in his fourteenth year, and in this year the Pictish chronicle records a battle between the Danes and the Scots, and adds, that after it, ‘occasi sunt Scotti in Coachcochlum,’ which seems to refer to this very slaughter. 2d. Hector Boëce preserves a different tradition regarding their origin. He says—‘Non desunt qui scribant sanctissimos Christi martyros Hungaros fuisse. Alii ex Scotis Anglisque gregarie collectos’—i.e., ‘Some write that the most holy martyrs of Christ were Hungarians. Others (say) that they were collected from the Scots and English.’ There was therefore a tradition that the clergy slain were not Hungarians, but a body composed of Scotti and Angli. But Hadrian was a bishop; he landed in the east of Fife, within the parochia of S. Regulus, and he is placed at the head of some of the lists of bishops of St. Andrews as first bishop. It was therefore the Church of St. Andrews that then consisted of clergy collected from among the Scotti and the Angli. The Angli probably represented the Church of Acca, and the Scotti those brought in by Adrian. The real signification of this occupation of St. Andrews by Scottish clergy will be apparent when we recollect that the Columban clergy, who had formerly possessed the chief ecclesiastical seats among the Picts, had been expelled in 717, and Anglic clergy introduced—the cause of quarrel being the difference of their usages. Now, the Pictish chronicle states as the main cause of the overthrow of the Pictish kingdom, a century and a half later, this very cause. It says—‘Deus enim eos pro merito suæ malitiæ alienos ac otiosos hæreditate dignatus est facere, quia illi non solum Deum, missam, ac præceptum spreverunt sed et in jure æqualitatis aliis aequi pariter noluerunt.’ I.e., ‘For God, on account of their wickedness, deemed them worthy to be made hereditary strangers and idlers; because they contemned not only God, the mass, and the precept (of the Church), but besides refused to be regarded as on the same equality with others.’ They were overthrown, not only because they despised ‘Deum missam et præceptum,’ but because they would not tolerate the other party. And this great grievance was removed, when St. Andrews appears at the head of the Scottish Church in a solemn Concordat with the king Constantine, when, as the Pictish Chronicle tells us, ‘Constantinus Rex et Cellachus Episcopus leges disciplinasque fidei atque jura ecclesiarum evangeliorum que pariter cum Scottis devoverunt custodiri.’ I.e., ‘King Constantine and Bishop Kellach vowed to preserve the laws and discipline of the faith and the rights of the churches and gospels, equally with the Scots.’ Observe the parallel language of the two passages. In the one, the ‘Picti in jure æqualitatis aliis,’ that is, the Scottish clergy, ‘aequi pariter noluerunt,’ and in the other the King and the Bishop of St. Andrews ‘vowed to preserve the laws and discipline of the faith,’ ‘pariter cum Scottis,’ the thing the Picts would not do. It seems plain, therefore, that the ecclesiastical element entered largely into the Scottish conquest; and a main cause and feature of it was a determination on the part of the Scottish clergy to recover the benefices they had been deprived of. The exact coincidence of this great clerical invasion of the parochia of St. Andrews by ecclesiastics, said by one tradition to have been Scots, and the subsequent position of St. Andrews as the head of the Scottish Church, points strongly to this as the true historic basis of the legend of S. Adrian.”
[105] Lib. ix. c. xxiv.
[106] O’Connor’s Dissert.
[107] Lib. viii. c. 45.
[108] Holland’s Camden, Ireland, p. 116.