It was by the Britons shall be his death.
A.D. 971-995.
Kenneth, son of Malcolm, king of Alban.
The succession to the throne of Alban now fell to Kenneth, the son of Malcolm and brother of Dubh, and his first act seems to have been to retaliate upon the Britons for the death of his predecessor, but this he did not effect without loss. He is said by the Pictish Chronicle to have immediately laid waste the territory of the Britons to a great extent, while a party of his foot-soldiers were cut off with great slaughter in the moss of the Cornag, the water which gives its name to Abercorn.[[521]] His attention, however, was soon directed to the more important field of Northumbria. When the kingdom came to an end in 954, and the government of an earl substituted, the first earl appointed was Osulf, who ruled over both provinces, but he was succeeded in 966 by Oslac, and soon after Northumbria was divided into two earldoms, Oslac ruling at York and the southern parts, while Eadulf, called Yvelchild, was placed over the Northumbrians from the Tees to Myrcforth, or the Firth of Forth.[[522]] Immediately after the unsatisfactory expedition against the Strathclyde Britons, the Scots are recorded in the Pictish Chronicle to have laid waste Saxonia or the northern part of Northumbria as far as Stanmore, Cleveland, and the pools of Deira, that is, the part of Northumbria which had been placed as a separate earldom under Eadulf; and in order to protect himself against the Britons, Kenneth fortified the fords of the river Forth, which at this time separated his kingdom from that of Strathclyde.[[523]] In the following year Kenneth repeated his invasion of Northumbria, and is said to have carried off a son of the king of the Saxons, by whom Earl Eadulf is probably meant. We now lose the invaluable guidance of the Pictish Chronicle, which appears to have been compiled in Kenneth’s reign, at Brechin, as it breaks off with the intimation that this king gave the great city of Brechin to the Lord,[[524]] and leaves the years of his reign unfilled up, while it contains no record of his death; but, on the other hand, we recover the Irish annalist, Tighernac, the hiatus in whose annals terminates with the year 973. In 975 he tells us that Domnall, son of Eoain, king of the Britons, went on a pilgrimage. The Welsh Chronicle, the Brut y Tywysogion, which records the same event, calls him Dunwallaun, king of Strathclyde, and states that he went to Rome.[[525]] He is the same Domnaldus who was king of the Cumbrians when Eadmund ravaged the country in 945, and was the son of that Eugenius, king of the Cumbrians, who fought in the battle of Brunnanburg. Kenneth too appears to have had to contend against the claims of the sons of Indulph to succeed to their father in preference to that form of the law of Tanistry which had hitherto regulated the succession, by which it alternated between the two branches of the Scottish royal family; for Tighernac records that Amlaiph or Olaf, the son of Indulph, king of Alban, was slain in the year 977, by Kenneth, son of Malcolm.[[526]] The English chroniclers, however, add some events to the reign of Kenneth, of a much more questionable character, the chief of which is that the district of Lothian was ceded to Kenneth by King Eadgar, to be held by him as a fief of the English crown. This statement first appears in the Tract on the arrival of the Saxons, attributed to Simeon of Durham. It is there said that when Eadgar set the two earls, Oslac and Eadulf, over Northumbria, giving the latter the territory from the Tees to the Firth of Forth, these earls, with the bishop, brought Kenneth, king of the Scots, to King Eadgar, and when he had done homage to him, Eadgar gave him Lothian and sent him home with honour.[[527]] This Chronicle was made use of by John Wallingford, who wrote nearly a century later, and thus elaborates the story:—‘Kenneth, the king of Scotland, hearing from common report, and the praises of the two earls, Oslach and Eadulf, and Elfsi, bishop of Durham, of the greatness of King Eadgar, desiring greatly to see him, asked and obtained a safe-conduct to London, that he might converse with him. Thus conducted at the command of the king by the two earls and the bishop, Kenneth, the king of Scotland, came to London, and was honourably received by King Eadgar, and treated with high consideration. While they were conversing familiarly and pleasantly together, Kenneth suggested to Eadgar that “Louthion” was a hereditary possession of the kings of Scotland, and therefore ought to belong to him. King Eadgar being unwilling to do anything hurriedly, for fear of repenting of what he had done afterwards, referred the cause to his counsellors.
‘These men having been well instructed in the wisdom of their ancestors ... unless the king of Scotland should consent to do homage for it to the king of England ... and chiefly because the means of access to that district for the purposes of defence are very difficult, and its possession not very profitable.... Kenneth, however, assented to this decision, and sought and obtained it on the understanding that he was to do homage for it; and he did homage accordingly to King Eadgar, and further was obliged to promise under pledges, in solemn form, that he would not deprive the people of that region of their ancient customs, and that they should still be allowed to use the name and language of the Angles. These conditions have been faithfully observed to the present day, and thus was settled the old dispute about Louthion, though a new ground of difference still often arises.’[[528]]
The older English chroniclers know nothing whatever of this cession of Lothian by King Eadgar to Kenneth, and it is quite inconsistent with the account given by Simeon of Durham himself of how the Scottish kings acquired it. The Saxon Chronicle, though it mentions the cession of Cumbria to Malcolm, has no hint of this transaction, while the Pictish Chronicle presents us with a totally different picture of the relations between Kenneth and the two earls who shared the Northumbrian territories between them. There he appears only as endeavouring to wrest the country north of the Tees from one of them. We may therefore dismiss this tale as having no foundation in fact, and as one of those spurious narratives arising out of the controversy as to the dependence of Scotland. That the kings of Alban of the line of Kenneth mac Alpin asserted some claim to the territory south of the Firth of Forth seems however to have some foundation, otherwise it is difficult to account for the fact that they no sooner become possessed of the Pictish throne than, instead of consolidating their power over the Pictish kingdom, they at once attack Saxonia or the Northumbrian districts on the south side of the Firth of Forth. Kenneth, the founder of their house, is said to have invaded it six times. Giric is said to have conquered Bernicia. We find Constantin, son of Aedh, in alliance with the northern Saxons, and in conjunction with Anlaf Cuaran invading Northumbria. Malcolm, son of Donald, overruns the country as far as the Tees. Edinburgh and the district around it are given up by the Angles to Indulph, and Kenneth, of whom we are treating, twice repeats a similar invasion; but if these invasions of Northumbria were connected with any supposed claim to its possession, it was not Lothian alone but the whole of Bernicia that they claimed. Upon what right such a claim could have been based, whether upon the extent to which the previous kings of the Picts had obtained possession of part of that territory, or whether upon some ground peculiar to their dynasty, and involving, as Wallingford asserts, the assertion of a hereditary right, it is difficult to say. There is no doubt that not long before the accession of Kenneth mac Alpin to the Pictish throne the kingdom of Northumbria seems to have fallen into a state of complete disintegration, and we find a number of independent chiefs, or ‘duces’ as they are termed, appearing in different parts of the country and engaging in conflict with the kings and with each other, slaying and being slain, conspiring against the king and being conspired against in their turn, expelling him and each other, and being expelled. Out of this confusion, however, one family emerges who appear as lords of Bamborough and for a time govern Bernicia. Galloway, with which Kenneth’s family was connected, and out of which he emerged to claim the Pictish throne, was nominally a part of Bernicia, and under Anglic rule; and it is not impossible that among the chiefs who at this time appear to have asserted their position against the king of Northumbria, and to have practically ruled over different districts, one of Scottish descent, either from his connection with Galloway or from some connection in the female line with the Northumbrians, may have for the time obtained such a right to the rule over Bernicia as might give rise to a claim on the part of his descendants;[[529]] but be this as it may, we may hold it as certain that no cession of any part of this territory, in addition to what had been acquired by Indulph, had been made at this time to Kenneth son of Malcolm.
But if Kenneth did not add permanently to his kingdom on the south, we find that the districts beyond the Spey, on the north, had again fallen under the dominion of the Norwegian earl of Orkney. The earl who ruled at this time was Sigurd ‘the Stout.’ He was the son of Hlodver, the previous earl of Orkney, whose father Thorfinn, called the ‘Skull-cleaver,’ was the son of Earl Einar, and by his marriage with Grelauga, daughter of Dungadr or Duncan, the jarl of Caithness, had brought that district to the Norwegian earls of Orkney. But although they appear to have claimed Caithness as now forming an integral part of their dominions as Norwegian earls, and maintained possession of it as such, the kings of Alban seem also to have asserted a right to a sovereignty over it as one of the dependencies of their kingdom. By Grelauga Earl Thorfinn had five sons, three of whom were successively earls of Orkney. Havard, the eldest son, succeeded him, and was slain by his wife; and we find that when Liotr, the second brother, was earl of Orkney, another brother, Skuli, went to Scotland, and obtained a right to the earldom of Caithness from the king of the Scots. This led to a conflict between the brothers, in which Skuli was supported by the Scottish king and a Scottish earl called Magbiodr, and a battle ensued in which the Scots were defeated and Skuli slain. Earl Liotr then took possession of Caithness, and remained at war with the Scots, when Earl Magbiodr again came from Scotland with an army, and met him at Skidamyre in Caithness, where a hotly-contested battle took place, in which Liotr was victorious, but was mortally wounded. Hlodver, the only surviving brother, succeeded to the earldom, but died of sickness, and was buried at Hofn in Caithness. Sigurd, his son, succeeded him about the year 980, and was, we are told, a powerful man and a great warrior. He kept Caithness by main force from the Scots, and went every summer in war expeditions to the Sudreys or Western Isles, to Scotland, and to Ireland.[[530]]
Soon after Sigurd’s succession we find Finleikr, a Scotch jarl, entering Caithness with a large army, and challenging Earl Sigurd to meet him in battle at the same Skidamyre in Caithness where Magbiodr had met the former earl. He was no doubt the Finlaic, son of Ruaidhri, Mormaer of Moreb or Moray, whose death Tighernac records in the year 1020, and Magbiodr was probably the Maelbrigdi who is mentioned as his brother, and had been the previous Mormaer.[[531]] Sigurd drew an army together, but it was inferior in numbers until he obtained the aid of the ‘Bondir’ or allodial possessors of Orkney, by restoring to them the full right to their allodial lands, which had been taken from them by Earl Einar, and then went to battle with Earl Finleikr, whom he entirely defeated. Sigurd seems to have followed up his victory by overrunning the provinces north of the Spey, as we find him in 989 in possession of the four provinces of Moray, Ross, Sudrland or Sutherland, and Dali.[[532]] The district to which the name of Dali is here given was probably that part of Argathelia which had borne the name of Dalriada, a name which still lingered in connection with it, and appears in the Irish annalists for the last time at this period; and the acquisition of this district by Sigurd seems to have brought him in contact with the rulers of the Western Isles, who had hitherto possessed it. These were also Norwegians; and the kings of Norway appear to have claimed tribute from the islands, and to have attempted from time to time to maintain a direct dominion over them by means of jarls or earls, while at other times they appear under the rule of a Danish king of the Isles. In 973 we find a king Maccus or Magnus, whom Florence of Worcester calls king of many islands; and in the Irish Annals he is called son of Aralt, who was son of Sitriucc, lord of the Danes of Limerick.[[533]] He died about 977, and we then find his brother Godred or Goffraigh, son of Aralt, called king of Innis Gall or the Western Isles. These kings were descended from Inguar or Imhair, the ancestor of the Danish kings of Dublin, termed from him Hy Imhair; and thus, while the Danes gave kings to Dublin, Waterford, and Northumbria, the Norwegians gave earls to Orkney, which they colonised, and possessed the Innse Gall, Sudreys, or Western Isles,—the island of Man appearing to have been a bone of contention between the two.[[534]]
At the time that Sigurd came into contact with Godred or Godfrey mac Aralt he had entered into a short struggle with the Danes of Dublin for the possession of Man and the Isles. In 986 the Ulster Annals tell us that the Danes came with three ships to ‘Airer Dalriatai,’ or the coast lands of Dalriada, but that the attack was successfully resisted, the Danes were taken, 140 of them were hung, and the rest thrust through, and in the same year I Columcille was plundered by the Danes on Christmas Eve, and the abbot slain, with fifteen of the brethren. In the following year a battle is fought at the Isle of Man against Gofrath mac Aralt and the Danes, in which a thousand of them were slain, and in the same year a great slaughter was made of the Danes who had pillaged Iona.[[535]] Godred or Gofra had, however, now to encounter Sigurd, earl of Orkney. The events of this war are partly detailed to us in the Nial Saga in connection with the adventures of Grim and Helgi, the sons of Nial of Iceland. The narrative commences with the sons of Nial leaving Iceland in a ship with Olaf Ketilson of Elda, and Bardi the White. They are driven southward by a strong north wind, and so thick a mist came over them that they knew not where they were till the shoal water showed them they must be near land. They ask Bardi if he knows what land they would be nearest, who says that with the wind they had had it might be the Islands of Scotland or Ireland. Two nights after they enter a fiord, when they see land on both sides and breakers within. Here they anchor, and next morning are attacked by thirteen ships coming out of the fiord commanded by Griotgard and Snaekolf, sons of Moldan, from Duncansby in Caithness. The battle is then described, and they are hard bestead, when, looking to seaward, they see ten vessels coming from the southward round the promontory. They row hard towards them, and in the first of the ships they see a man by the mast clad in a silken kirtle, with a gilded helmet and gold-studded spear. This was Kari Solmundson, one of Earl Sigurd’s courtiers, who had been taking scat or tribute from the Sudreys from Earl Gilli. The battle is then renewed, and the sons of Earl Moldan are both slain. The sons of Nial then accompany Kari to Hrossey or the Mainland of Orkney, where he presents them to Sigurd, and tells him he found them fighting in the fiords of Scotland with the sons of Earl Moldan. These fiords of Scotland must be the numerous sea lochs which intersect the west coast; and as the fiord in question lay between Orkney and the Sudreys, had land on both sides, and a fleet coming from the south would be seen passing on looking to seaward, the description seems to answer to Loch Broom in the north-west of Ross-shire. The sons of Nial are passing the winter with Sigurd, when he receives news that two Scotch earls, Hundi and Melsnati, had entered the Norwegian territory on the mainland and slain Havard of Threswick, Sigurd’s brother-in-law, who was probably its Norwegian governor. This territory, we are told, consisted of the rikis or provinces in Scotland of Ros, Moray, Sudrland, and Dali, Caithness being considered as belonging to Orkney and not to Scotland. Earl Sigurd collects a large army and lands in Caithness, and a great battle takes place between him and the earls at Duncansness, when the Scots are defeated, Earl Melsnati slain, and Earl Hundi driven to flight, who is pursued till they learn that Earl Melkolf is collecting another army at Duncansby, when, finding themselves not in a position to meet a second army, the Norwegians return to Orkney. In the following summer Kari goes on an expedition with the sons of Nial, makes war in many places, and is everywhere victorious. They encounter Godred, king of Man, and vanquish him. Kari then goes to Norway with the scat or tribute to Earl Hakon of Norway. In the following summer they make a second expedition and harry all the Sudreys. Thence they go to Kintyre, land there, fight with the landsmen and carry off plunder. Then they go south to Wales, hold on for the Isle of Man, again meet Godred, fight with him, and slay Dungall, his son. Thence they go north to Koln or Colonsay, where they find Earl Gilli, and stay with him a while. Then Earl Gilli accompanies them to the Orkneys to meet Earl Sigurd, who gives him his sister Nereide in marriage, and he returns to the Sudreys and the sons of Nial to Iceland.[[536]] Such is a short outline of this curious narrative, from which we may gather that the tenure by which Earl Sigurd held his mainland possessions, extending to the river Spey, was a very precarious one, and appears to have been more an assertion of dominion over the native Mormaers, who took every opportunity to throw off the yoke. In the Western Islands we find an Earl Gilli having his principal seat in Colonsay, and paying scat or tribute to Sigurd, while Godred, who is obviously the Gofraigh mac Arailt, the Danish king of Innse Gall of the Ulster Annals, has his residence in Man. We also see that the Earl of Orkney paid scat or tribute to Earl Hakon of Norway. The name Gilli indicates that he was a native,[[537]] and not a Norwegian, and that the Sudreys did not so much differ from the mainland possessions in being merely subject and tributary to the Norwegians as in being actually colonised by them. The Ulster Annals record in 989 the death of Gofraigh mac Arailt, king of Innse Gall in Dalriatai, the Dali of Nials Saga, which gives us the date of the conclusion of this war, by which the temporary occupation of the Western Isles by the Danes of Dublin appears to have been brought to an end.[[538]]
If Kenneth was thus unable to extend his territories either south of the Firth of Forth or beyond the Spey on the north, we may well suppose that during a long reign of twenty-four years he could do much to consolidate the power of the Scots within these limits. Of the two great branches of the descendants of Kenneth mac Alpin who gave kings alternately to Alban, the senior house, of which he was the head, seems to have had its main interest in the provinces north of the Tay, while the junior house was more particularly connected with that of Fife and the other provinces south of it. We find the kings of the former house invariably confronted with the people called the Men of Moerne or the Mearns (viri na Moerne), as those of the latter were with the Men of Fortrenn (firu Fortrenn). Thus Donald, son of Constantin, is slain at Dun Fother, or Dunotter. His son Malcolm, too, is killed by the men of the Moerne at Fetteresso, and Kenneth, son of Malcolm, founds the church of Brechin in this part of the kingdom. On the other hand, the two conflicts which Constantin, son of Aedh, had with the Northmen—one against the Norwegians in his third year, and the other against the Danes in his eighteenth year—are fought by the men of Fortrenn. After the reign of Constantin we hear no more of the men of Fortrenn, who had now apparently become merged in the general population; but Kenneth, like his father and grandfather, is doomed to find his end in the same quarter. Tighernac, in recording his death in 995, merely tells us that he was slain by his own subjects, to which the Ulster Annals add the significant expression ‘by treachery.’[[539]] We have not now the assistance of the Pictish Chronicle, but the later chronicles tell us that he was slain in Fotherkern, now Fettercairn, in the Mearns, by the treachery of Finvela, daughter of Cunchar, earl of Angus, whose only son Kenneth had killed at Dunsinnan;[[540]] and this is confirmed by St. Berchan, who places his death on the moorland plain at the foot of the Mounth or great chain of the so-called Grampians.
He will bend his steps, no neighbourly act,