The Pictish party prevailed, and Eocha, the Briton, was placed on the throne, but as he appears also to have been too young to reign alone, another king was associated with him as his governor.[[474]] The Pictish Chronicle calls him ‘Ciricius,’ but leaves a blank for his father’s name; but in the Irish version he is called Giric, son of Dungaile; and by Flann Mainistrech, Girg, son of Dungaile. In the Latin lists it is corrupted to Grig, but in the Chronicle of St. Andrews it appears as Carus. By the Albanic Duan he is omitted altogether, and the Ulster Annals do not mention him, which leads to the suspicion that he was an intruder in the Scottish line, and was not of that race. His name is evidently the British name Curig, and under this form St. Ciricus, a martyr of Tarsus, was introduced into the British calendar, and has several churches in Wales dedicated to him. It was no doubt from Girig, son of Dungaile, being named after him that the eclipse on his day in the calendar is recorded as taking place during this reign. As governor to Eocha, and as bearing a British name, the presumption is that he was also a Briton, and the name of Dungaile, borne by his father, was the same name as that of Dunnagual, who appears in the Welsh Genealogies annexed to Nennius as the father of Arthgal and grandfather of Run; Girig was therefore in all probability Eocha’s paternal granduncle.[[475]]
The Pictish Chronicle places the death of Aed, son of Neil, king of Ireland, in his second year, and Aed died on 8th November 879, and we are told that in his ninth year an eclipse of the sun took place on St. Ciricus’s day. His day in the calendar is the 16th of June, and an eclipse of the sun actually took place on that day in the year 885. These notices give us sufficiently the true chronology of his reign, but the Pictish Chronicle records none of the events of it, and simply says that after a reign of eleven years Eochodius with his tutor is now expelled from the kingdom.[[476]] The later chronicles supply this defect so far as to give us in general terms two events of his reign. The first is that he brought under subjection to himself the whole of Bernicia and part of Anglia;[[477]] and there may possibly be some foundation for the statement, to a partial extent at least, when we consider the position in which the kingdom of Northumbria was placed during his reign, and the changes which apparently followed it.
During the reign of Eadberht, in the middle of the eighth century, the kingdom of Northumbria had apparently attained to a position of as great power as that to which it had been raised in the previous century by Ecgfrid. The two provinces of Deira and Bernicia were united under his rule; the territories of the Britons south of the Solway Firth and the province of Galloway on the north were parts of his kingdom; he had himself added to it Kyle and the adjacent districts, and in conjunction with Aengus, the equally powerful king of the Picts, had enforced the submission of the Britons of Alclyde, when after a reign of twenty-one years he, in the year 758, abdicated his throne in favour of his son Oswulf, and took the tonsure. His son was in the following year treacherously slain by his own people, and with him ended the direct descendants of Ida. The kingdom seems then to have fallen into a state of disorganisation, and has thus been well described:—‘One ealdorman after another seized on the government, and held it till his expelled predecessors returned with a superior force, or popular favour and successful treason had raised up a new competitor.’ And thus it continued till the end of the century, when the arrival of the Northmen added an additional element of confusion. In 867 the monarchy completely broke down. In the previous year a large fleet of Danish pirates, under the command of Halfdan, Inguar, and Hubba, the sons of Ragnar Lodbrog, had arrived on the coast of England, and had wintered in East Anglia, and this year they invaded Northumbria, and took possession of the city of York. The Northumbrians had just expelled their king Osbryht, and placed Alla on the throne, but the former was now recalled, and the two kings, uniting their forces, attempted to wrest the city of York from the Danes, and were both slain. The Danes then took possession of the whole of Northumbria as far as the river Tyne, and placed Ecgbert as king over the Northumbrians north of the Tyne. After a reign of six years Ecgbert died, and was succeeded by Ricsig. It was in his time that, 875, Halfdan, with his Danes, again entered Northumbria, and brought the whole country under his dominion. In the following year Ricsig died, and Halfdan is said by Simeon of Durham to have placed a second Egbert over the Northumbrians beyond the Tyne. He is said to have reigned only two years. But notwithstanding, in 883, or seven years after, when Halfdan dies, we are told by Simeon that by the advice of the abbot Eadred, Guthred, son of Hardicnut, was made king, and reigned at York; but Ecgbert ruled over the Northumbrians. There is no mention of this second Ecgbert either in his History of the Church of Durham or of the Archbishops of York, and he appears, with his inconsistent dates, to be a mere reproduction of the Ecgbert who was placed over the Northumbrians north of the Tyne in 867, introduced to fill up a period when the historian did not know or did not care to tell who really ruled over Bernicia at that time.
This is, however, the period of Girig’s reign, and he may, like his predecessor Kenneth, have overrun Lothian and obtained possession of Bamborough, the chief seat of the Bernician kings, which lies at no great distance from the south bank of the Tweed; and Simeon himself indicates this when he tells us in his History of the Church of Durham that during the reign of Guthred ‘the nation of the Scots had collected a numerous army, and among other deeds of cruelty had invaded and plundered the monastery of Lindisfarne.’[[478]] His object too may have been to free the Britons, his own countrymen, from the Anglic yoke, and certainly, if he conquered Bernicia, and perhaps that part of Anglia which consisted of the British possessions extending from the Solway to the Derwent, their reunion with the kingdom of the Strathclyde Britons, as well as the freedom of Galloway from Anglic supremacy, would be the natural result. The second event attributed to him is that he first liberated the Scottish Church, which till that time had been in servitude according to the custom and usage of the Picts, and this has probably more foundation in fact. That Girig found it necessary to win over the Scottish clergy to his cause, or at least not to oppose him, is probable enough, and he seems to have freed the Church from those secular exactions and services to which the clergy of most churches were at this time subjected. The Anglic Church had not long before been freed from similar services by King Ethelwulf, and the later Pictish Church was closely connected with that of Northumbria.[[479]] A curious memorial of Girig, and of his relation to the Scottish Church, remains in the church in the Mearns which bears the name of Eglisgirg, or Greg’s church, and was dedicated to St. Ciricus, from whom it came to be called St. Cyrus.[[480]]
The gratitude of the Scottish Church for the boon they had obtained from Girig seems to have shown itself in this, that in the artificial history to which the interests of an ecclesiastical controversy had so large a share in giving birth, the usurper of foreign race, who had for a time intruded upon the line of Scottish kings descended from Kenneth mac Alpin, and been after a few years driven out, fills a prominent position, as Gregory the Great, solemnly crowned at Scone, and one of the most powerful of the early Scottish kings.
[369]. At vero provinciæ Nordanhymbrorum, cui rex Ceoluulf præest, quatuor nunc episcopi præsulatum tenent; Wilfrid in Eboracensi ecclesia, Ediluald in Lindisfaronensi, Acca in Hagustaldensi, Pecthelm in ea quæ Candida Casa vocatur, quæ nuper multiplicatis fidelium plebibus in sedem pontificatus addita, ipsum primum habet antistitem. Pictorum quoque natio tempore hoc et fœdus pacis cum gente habet Anglorum et catholicæ pacis ac veritatis cum universali ecclesia particeps existere gaudet. Scotti qui Brittaniam incolunt suis contenti finibus nil contra gentem Anglorum insidiarum moliuntur aut fraudium. Brettones, quamvis et maxima ex parte domestico sibi odio gentem Anglorum, et totius Catholicæ ecclesiæ statum pascha minus recte moribusque improbis impugnent; tamen et divina sibi et humana prorsus resistente virtute, in neutro cupitum possunt obtinere propositum: quippe qui quamvis ex parte sui sint juris, nonnulla tamen ex parte Anglorum sunt servitio mancipati.—Bede, B. v. c. xxiv.
[370]. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 421.
[371]. Martyrology of Donegal at 16th March.
[372]. Bede, Hist. Ec. B. v. c. xxi.