’Twas shut till they came against him.
Alas! the Gael again,
The Gael gathered around him,
The day on which he will be killed by us
At his stone of blood between two glens,
Not far from the banks of the Earn.
St. Berchan’s expression, ‘Alas! the Gael again,’ seems to imply that on this occasion Malcolm, son of Kenneth, brought against him the men of Moerne, who appear to have occupied an important position in the population of the kingdom of Alban throughout the entire history of her kings.
[481]. If Donald was under age in 878 when the succession, according to this law, opened to him, it is probable that the cause of the revolution was his arriving at an age sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the law, which demanded that the throne should only be filled by an adult. Kenneth dying in 860, supposing him born in 800, and his son Constantin in 830, Donald could not have been born before 860, but if born in 864, he would be twenty-five in 889.
[482]. See Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis, pp. 65, 66; also Anderson’s edition of the Orkneyinga Saga, p. 204. Thorstein died in 875, and Sigurd could not have become earl till after the battle of Hafursfiord, which made Harald Harfagr master of Norway. The chronology of Harald Harfagr’s reign can be tolerably well made out from his Saga. He was born in 853, and became king at the age of ten in 863. When old enough to marry, he vows, at the instigation of his bride, not to cut his hair till he became master of all Norway, and this is accomplished by the battle of Hafursfiord. His hair had then been uncut ten years. After he had ruled over all Norway for ten years he is said to have been forty years of age. He was therefore twenty years old when he made the vow, and thirty when he fought the battle of Hafursfiord, which places it in the year 883, and some years after Sigurd became earl of Orkney. The following passage in the Pictish Chronicle under the reign of Donald appears to refer to this invasion: ‘Normanni tunc vastaverunt Pictaviam.’