Flann Mainistrech says of him that he was the first king who possessed the kingdom of Scone, of the Gaidhel; and by the Ulster Annals, the Annales Cambriæ, and others, in recording his death, he is invariably called king of the Picts.[[440]] He appears to have had two sons, Constantin and Aed, and three daughters, one married to Run, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, another married to Amlaimh or Olaf the White, the Norwegian king of Dublin, and a third, Maelmaire, married to Aedh Finnliath, king of Ireland, who died in 879.[[441]]
Obscurity of this period of history.
There is no more obscure period in the annals of the northern kingdoms than the latter part of the eighth and the first half of the ninth centuries, and no more difficult question than to ascertain the nature and true character of that revolution which placed a Scottish race in possession of the kingdom of Scone. For this period we lose the guidance of the great Anglic historian Bede, and of the Irish annalist Tighernac. When we refer to trustworthy sources of information, we can find no record of any revolution at this time. They exhibit to us only the great confusion into which these kingdoms were thrown by the incessant depredations of the Norwegian and Danish piratical hordes. In the oldest and most authentic lists of kings we find Kenneth mac Alpin and his descendants following the Pictish kings as belonging to the same series. By the annalists who record the events of this period Kenneth is simply termed king of the Picts. The historical documents which make any direct statement on the subject, with one exception, belong to an artificial system of history, constructed after the eleventh century to serve the purposes of a political and ecclesiastical controversy, and cannot be trusted to afford us anything but distorted fragments of true history, and we are left with the solitary statement of Flann Mainistrech, that Kenneth was the first king who gave the kingdom of Scone to the Gaidheal.
Causes and nature of revolution which placed Kenneth on the throne of the Picts.
That Kenneth mac Alpin was a Scot by paternal descent, and that the succession to the throne of the Pictish kingdom of Scone was eventually perpetuated in his race, may be held to be as certain as any event of that period can be ascertained; but the slender record we possess of the events of his reign does not exhibit them to us as implying the conquest of one nation by another, still less of the Picts by the Scots of Dalriada, as is usually assumed. The name of Kenneth’s father, Alpin, shows that he was of the Pictish race by maternal descent, and that he may have had a claim to the throne, but these events exhibit themselves to us more as a war of succession—in which Alpin and his son Kenneth were supported in their claim to the throne not only by a party among the Picts, but by the remains of the Scots of Dalriada who were still to be found in the country,—than as a foreign invasion. During the reigns of Kenneth and his three successors, they were simply kings of Scottish paternal descent, ruling over the same kingdom and the same people who had previously been governed by those of Pictish race. The country of which Scone was the capital was still Cruithintuath, or Pictavia its Latin equivalent. The people were still the men of Fortrenn or the Picts, and the deaths of these kings of Scottish race were still recorded as those of kings of the Picts. The period was one very favourable to such a change being easily and quietly made. The Picts had no repugnance to any of their kings being paternally of foreign descent, so that they represented a Pictish royal family, and were held to belong to a Pictish tribe through their mothers. The old Pictish law of succession too, had broken down, among the southern Picts at least, under Anglic influence, and the right of the sons of Pictish kings to ascend the throne had been more than once recognised. Shortly after Alpin had put forward his claim, the Picts of Fortrenn had sustained a most crushing blow from the Danes, and were as completely prostrated by them as the Scots of Dalriada had been a century before by the powerful Pictish king Aengus mac Fergus. That it was followed by a rising everywhere of the remains of the Scots of Dalriada we may well believe, but an additional and very potent element existed among his means of support. The ban against the Columban clergy who had been so long dispossessed of their foundations in the territories of the southern Picts had been partially removed by the foundation of Dunkeld, which probably gave them some footing again in the country, and they may have now gladly seized upon such an opportunity as the combination of a king of Scottish race claiming the throne with the temporary prostration of the most powerful tribe among the Picts to make an effort to recover them. The Pictish Chronicle clearly indicates this as one of the great causes of the fall of the Pictish monarchy. It says, ‘For God thought them worthy to be made aliens from and stript of their hereditary possessions as their perverseness deserved, because they not only spurned the rites and the precepts of the Lord, but also refused to allow themselves to be placed on an equal footing with others.’[[442]] This appears to refer very plainly to the original expulsion of those of the Columban clergy who would not conform to the decree issued by Nectan, king of the Picts, and to the Roman usages it enforced, as well as to the ban which had been kept up against them till it was partially relaxed by Constantin when he founded Dunkeld; and when Kenneth transferred the relics of Saint Columba to Dunkeld, they seem to have regained their footing as far as he could effect it, as we find that the abbot of Dunkeld was placed at the head of the Pictish Church.[[443]]
Where did the Scots come from?
Two questions still remain to be solved. The first is, Where was the kingdom of his father Alpin, and where did Kenneth rule during the first six years after his father’s death in 832? Not in the kingdom of the Picts, for he only obtained the Pictish throne in the twelfth year of his reign, in the year 844. Not in Dalriada, for he did not obtain that kingdom till after the year 839, and two years before he became king of the Picts. If, then, he did not commence his reign either in Dalriada or in Pictavia, it must have been in some part of Scotland south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, or else he must have been in Irish Dalriada or elsewhere in Ireland. The later chronicles tell us that ‘with wonderful eagerness he led the Scots from Ergadia into the land of the Picts,’[[444]] but this is part of that artificial system by which the later kingdom of the Scots was, by the suppression of a century, connected immediately with the earlier Scottish kingdom of Dalriada. The earliest tradition which indicates this appears to have at one time formed a part of the Pictish Chronicle. In narrating the events of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, there are in this chronicle some expressions which show that this part of it had once been preceded by an account of the mode in which he obtained the Pictish throne.[[445]] The compiler, however, of one of the later chronicles obviously had a copy of the Pictish Chronicle before him. It was also known to Ranulph Higden, who used it in his Polychronicon, and in both the events of Kenneth’s reign are preceded by what is obviously a traditionary account of how the Scots obtained possession of the Pictish kingdom.[[446]] The same tale appears also in the chronicle contained in the Scalachronica, where it also precedes the account of the reign of Kenneth, and it was likewise known to Giraldus Cambrensis, who narrates part of it.[[447]] Comparing the four editions of this narrative with each other and with the expressions in the Pictish Chronicle referring to it, we can make a fair approximation to what this lost passage of the chronicle contained. It seems to have commenced with Bede’s statement that in the course of time the Scots came from Ireland under their leader Reuda, and obtained a settlement either by permission or by force among the Picts. We are then told that the Scots inhabited Galloway, to which Giraldus adds that they afterwards effected an extension of their territories, and the Scalachronica ‘as also Argyll and others of the Isles.’ The Scots thus living in conjunction with the Picts, and having obtained from them a district to inhabit, contrive a plot against them. They invite the magnates of the Picts, according to Scalachronica, to a great council, and coming privately armed they slew the great lords of the Picts, and afterwards sent for others and slew them; according to the other editions, to a banquet where they had undermined the seats, and having withdrawn the supports the sitters fell into the hollow places prepared for them, and were slain without difficulty; and profiting by this treachery the Scots took their land reaching from sea to sea, which is now called Scotia; and thus Kenneth, son of Alpin, invaded Pictavia and destroyed the Picts.[[448]] This, of course, can only be viewed as a traditionary account, but it seems to contain a reference to the subsequent history of the Scots of Dalriada, after they were driven out by the Picts. It narrates Alpin’s invasion of Galloway with his Scots, and then repeats from Bede the first settlement of the Scottish colony, stating that they inhabited Galloway along with the Picts. His son Kenneth acquires the kingdom of Dalriada, and the Scots again emerge and extend themselves into Argyll and the Isles. Kenneth then invades the kingdom of the Picts, but does not finally subdue it till five years after; and in place of this we have the story of the plot by which he treacherously slays the principal nobles of the Picts. St. Berchan in his so-called prophecy alludes to this tale, but adds it to a reference to a war, and removes the scene of it to Scone. He says—
A man who shall feed ravens, fight battles;
His name was the conqueror.
He is the first king who possessed in the east