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.
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.
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.
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.
A.D. 820-832.
Aengus, son of Fergus, king of Fortrenn.