Of the men of Erin in Alban.
It was by strength of spears and swords,
By violent deaths, by violent fates,
By him are deceived in the east the firm ones.
He shall dig in the earth, cunning the art,
(With) dangerous goad blades, death and pillage,
In the middle of Scone of high shields.[[449]]
Now the Scalachronica places it in the time of Drust, son of Feradach, the last king of the Picts, who was slain at Scone by treason. This would bring the event to the year 850, after Kenneth had been already six years in possession of the Pictish throne.
We may gather from this tale that Kenneth emerged from Galloway where the last remnant of the Scots of Dalriada disappear from history nearly a century before; and if the appearance of the Norwegians on the scene had led the people of Galloway, as well as Scots from other quarters, to adopt the same piratical life under the name of Gallgaidhel, we can readily understand that Kenneth, taking advantage of the crushing blow inflicted on the Picts of Fortrenn by the Danes, would be readily joined by Scots from all quarters in regaining the kingdom of Dalriada, and prosecuting his father’s claim to the throne of the Picts.
But there is another legend which appears also to refer to this period. It is that contained in the life of St. Cadroë. We are there told, after that part of the legend which relates to the settlement of the Scots in Ireland, that many years passed when the Scots crossed the Irish Channel and took possession of Iona, and then continuing their voyage enter the region of Rossia, evidently the province of Ross, by the river Rosis, which is also evidently the river Rasay, the old name of the Blackwater, which flows from a small lake called Loch Droma,[[450]] on the ridge separating the eastern and western watershed, and flows through the long valley leading from near the head of Loch Broom till it falls into the river Conan, some miles above Dingwall. From thence they proceed southward to Rigmoneth, the old name for St. Andrews, and to Bellathor, which must have been situated at or near Scone. There is no record of any Scots ever having reached St. Andrews or Scone till the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, and this part of the legend seems to refer to this time; but the previous part of it is obviously ecclesiastical in its character, and it is probable that it rather belongs to the return of the Columban clergy, who may have gone from Ireland to Iona and thence by Ross-shire to Rosemarkie, an old Columban foundation, from which they had been dispossessed by Boniface, and finally to Rigmoneth in Fifeshire and Bellachoir in Perthshire; and in this view it is difficult to avoid connecting it with the legend of St. Adrian, who, like St. Boniface, is brought from the east and lands in the eastern parts of Scotland then occupied by the Picts, having with him six thousand and six hundred and six persons, composed of confessors, clerics, and lay people. These men with their bishop did many signs in the kingdom of the Picts, afterwards desired to have a residence in the Isle of May, where the Danes, who then devastated the whole of Britain, came and slew them.[[451]] Their martyrdom is connected with a Danish invasion in 875. The east part of Scotland in which they had their first settlement was evidently Fife. Their arrival is almost coincident with the invasion of the kingdom of the Picts by the Scots under Kenneth, and the large number who are said to have come shows that the traditionary history was really one of the immigration of a people. Hector Boece, in referring to this legend, tells us that while some write that they were Hungarians, others say that they were a company collected from Scots and Angles.[[452]] It is perhaps not an unreasonable conclusion that the Scots invaded the Pictish territories in two bands—one under Kenneth across Drumalban against the southern Picts, and the other from sea by Loch Broom against the northern Picts.