[638]. It is obvious that in Magnus Barefoot’s Saga the expeditions made in the first and in the fifth years of his reign have been confounded together. Fordun in his Chronicle (vol. ii. p. 213) says in general terms:—‘While these three—namely Donald, Duncan, and Edgar too—were struggling for the kingdom in this wise, the king of the Noricans, Magnus, the son of King Olave, son of King Harold, surnamed Harfager, sweeping the gulfs of the sea with a host of seamen, subdued the Orkneys to his dominion, and the Mevanian islands both of Scotland and England, which indeed for the most part used to belong to Scotland by ancient right;’ to which Bower adds that it was by the assistance of Magnus that Donald Ban usurped the throne on the death of his brother King Malcolm. By all later writers the cession of the Isles is attributed to him, but in fact the connection between Donald Ban and the Western Isles is entirely fictitious, and belongs to our spurious history. The Saga distinctly states that the first agreement was made with Malcolm Ceannmor himself and not with Donald Ban, and this is confirmed by the Saga of Hacon iv., which tells us that Alexander ii. sent an embassy to King Haco to ask ‘if he would give up the territories in the Hebrides which King Magnus Barefoot had unjustly wrested from Malcolm, predecessor to the Scottish king;’ to which Haco replied that Magnus had settled with Malcolm what districts the Norwegians should have in Scotland or in the islands which lay near it. He affirmed, however, that the kings of Scotland had no sovereignty in the Hebrides at the time when King Magnus won them from King Godred.—Johnstone, Chronicle of Man, p. 41.
The date of the second expedition is fixed by the Saxon Chronicle, which places the accession of Eadgar in the year 1097; and in the following year, 1098, has, ‘Earl Hugh was slain in Anglesey by Vikings.’
[639]. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 170.
[640]. Chron. Man, ed. Munch, p. 7. The metrical prophecy attributed to Merlin, which seems to have been written not long after, has some lines evidently referring to Magnus’s conquest of the Isles, which may be thus translated (Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 117):—
Scotia will above all bewail the achievements of a famous leader,
Who will annex to himself lands bounded on all sides by the ocean.
The land, widowed of its regal lord, will be vacant
Twice three years and nine months.
Its ancient kings, just, bountiful, and rich,
Graceful and mighty, will Scotia mournfully bewail.