Two years after Cuilean succeeds in expelling Dubh, and in the same year the Ulster Annals record his death.[[519]] The later chronicles relate a strange story that Dubh was slain in Forres, that his body was hidden under the bridge of Kynlos, and that the sun did not shine till it was found. These chroniclers usually remove the scene of the battles in which these kings were slain from their southern localities to the northern districts of Scotland. It is, however, possible that in this case, when Dubh was expelled from the kingdom, he may have taken refuge in the country beyond the Spey, and had been slain at Kynlos, while the fact that an eclipse of the sun was visible there on the 10th of July 967 may have given rise to the tradition. Of Cuilean’s reign, which lasted four years and a half, we know nothing further than that he and his brother Eochodius or Eocha were slain by the Britons in the year 971.[[520]] The later chronicles are here in accord with the older, for they state that he was slain in Laodonia or Lothian, that is probably the part of Lothian which his father had acquired from the Angles, by Andarch, son of Donvald, on account of his daughter. St. Berchan names these two kings Dubh or black and Fionn or white, and considers that during Dubh’s life they reigned jointly.
Two kings after that over Alban,
Both of them at mutual strife,
Fionn and Dubh together.
Woe! who took them in joint reign,
Nine years for them in their reign.
He terms the latter ‘Dubh of the three black divisions,’ which implies that he had the support of only three of the provinces. Of Fionn or Cuilean he says—
The grave of Fionn on the brink of the waves
A spear shall sever (life);
In a strange high valiant land,