Simeon of Durham tells us that in 875 the host of the Danes who had ravaged the east coast of Britain divided itself into two bands, one of which under Halfdan marching into the region of the Northumbrians laid it waste, and wintering near the river Tyne brought the whole country under their dominion, and destroyed the Picts and the people of Strathclyde. These were probably the Picts of Galloway, and in reference to this the Ulster Annals tell us of a conflict between the Picts and the Dubhgalls in 875, in which a great slaughter of the Picts was made.[[467]] The people here called of Strathclyde are in the Saxon Chronicle, in recording the same event, termed Stræcled Wealas, and this name is rendered by Ethelwerd into the Latin Cumbri, which is the first appearance of the term of Cumbri or Cumbrians as applied to the Britons of Strathclyde.[[468]] In the meantime Olaf the White, the Norwegian king of Dublin, had left a son by his wife Audur the Wealthy, daughter of Ketill Flatnose or Caittil Fin, who was called Thorstein the Red, and he appears on his father’s death to have commenced making piratical expeditions, infesting Scotland far and wide, and usually obtaining victory. His attacks were directed against the northern provinces, and he is said in the Islands Landnamabok to have conquered ‘Katanes and Sudrland,’ or Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than half of Scotland, and to have reigned over these districts until he was betrayed by the Scotch and slain in battle. In the Laxdaela Saga, on the other hand, he is said to have at length become reconciled with the king of the Scots, and obtained possession of the half of Scotland, over which he became king.[[469]] It is hardly to be supposed that Constantin could have had any real authority over these northern regions, or that the power of the kings of Kenneth mac Alpin’s race could have at this time extended beyond the provinces of the southern Picts. He therefore probably merely permitted what he could not prevent, and indeed may have viewed a Norwegian conquest of the provinces of the northern Picts as favourable to his cause as the Danish defeat of the men of Fortrenn had been to that of his father. Thorstein’s kingdom, however, lasted only one year. The Pictish Chronicle refers to it when it says that the Northmen passed an entire year in Pictavia, and the Ulster Annals record in 875 that Ostin or Thorstein, son of Amlaiph, king of the Northmen, was treacherously slain by the people of Alban.[[470]]
Constantin, however, was doomed himself to fall in the following year under an unexpected onslaught by the Danes. Ever since the Danes, or Dubhgall, first came to Ireland there had been a contest between them and the Norwegians or Fingall for superiority, and in 877 a battle took place between them in which the Norwegians had the victory. The Danes, being for the time driven out of Ireland, went to Alban or Scotland. They appear to have entered the Firth of Clyde, and, penetrating through the country watered by the Teith and Forth, attacked the province of Fife. A battle took place between them and the Scots at Dollar, which must have been unfavourable to the latter, as the Danes are said to have driven and slaughtered them through Fife, as far as the north-east corner, where, at a place called Inverdufatha, now Inverdovet, in the parish of Forgan, they gained a battle over the men of Alban. Constantin was slain and a great multitude with him. The earth is said on this occasion to have burst open under the men of Alban.[[471]]
This is the first appearance in the Pictish Chronicle of the term ‘Scotti’ or Scots being applied to any portion of the inhabitants of Pictavia, and it seems to have been used with reference to those of the province of Fife in particular, but the Ulster Annals record the death of Constantin as king of the Picts.[[472]]
A.D. 877-878.
Aedh, son of Kenneth, king of the Picts.
He was succeeded by his brother Aedh, who reigned only one year. The Pictish Chronicle says of him that the shortness of his reign left nothing memorable to record, but that he was slain in the town of Nrurim. St. Berchan says of him—
He dies without bell, without communion,
In the evening in a dangerous pass.
And the Ulster Annals record in 878 that Aedh, son of Cinador, king of the Picts, was slain by his own people.[[473]]
With Aedh died the last of Kenneth’s sons, and thus far the succession of the kings of his race had not only followed the law of Tanistry, but did not vary from that modification of the Pictish law which had been already sanctioned among the southern Picts, and had admitted the sons of previous kings in a similar order to fill the Pictish throne; but now the two modes of royal succession were again in conflict. By the law of Tanistry the succession opened to Donald, son of Constantin and grandson of Kenneth; by the Pictish law, when strictly observed, to Eocha, son of Run, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, whose mother was Constantin’s sister. Both of these claimants to the throne appear to have been under age, and there had not yet been an instance of a lineal male descendant in the third generation being permitted to succeed to the Pictish throne. The great defeat and slaughter which befell the Scots under Constantin had probably, for the time, weakened the Scottish interest, while the heir, according to their law, had the additional disqualification of being too young to reign.
A.D. 878-889.
Girig mac Dungaile and Eochodius, son of Run.