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]]
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)