Ciniod was succeeded by Alpin, son of Wroid, who appears to have obtained possession of part of the Northumbrian territory north of the Tweed, as after a reign of three or four years his death is recorded in 780 as that of Elpin, king of the Saxons.^[416] This is the more probable as he is followed by Drest, son of Talorgen, who reigns four or five years, and Talorgen, son of Aengus, who reigns two and a half. The accession of the latter, however, was contrary to the Pictish law, being the son of a previous king; and we find that this was a case of disputed succession, the northern Picts supporting the one, and the other being accepted by the southern Picts, as king during the first half of the reign of Drest, till he was slain in 782; for the Ulster Annals in that year record the death of Dubhtolargg, king of the Cismontane Picts.^[417] This was the first break in upon the Pictish law of succession, and the intercourse with the Saxons, and the influence exercised by them, probably led the southern Picts to view with more favour a male succession.

Drest, whose death is not recorded, appears to have been succeeded by Canaul, son of Tarla, or Conall, son of Taidg, who reigned five years, till in 789 or 790 he is attacked by Constantin, son of Fergus, and the result of a battle between them was that Conall, son of Taidg, was defeated and fled, and the victor Constantin became king of the Picts.^[418] Conall, son of Taidg, appears to have taken refuge in Dalriada, where at this time Domnall, son of Constantin, was ruler under the Picts, and to have eventually governed there himself for four years, as Domnall is followed in the list by two Conalls who are said to be brothers, the first ruling two and the second four years, and the end of the government of the latter corresponds with the year 807, when the Ulster Annals record the assassination of Conall, son of Taidg, by Conall, son of Aedain, in Kintyre.^[419] Constantin, son of Fergus, the king of the Picts, appears now to have assumed the rule in Dalriada himself, as his name follows that of the second Conall in the lists, and retained it for nine years.

In the meantime, a new race appeared on the scene, who were destined to cut off for several centuries, to a great extent, the intercourse which had hitherto prevailed between Scotland and Ireland, and materially to influence the history of both countries. They make their first appearance in the year 793 in an attack upon the island of Lindisfarne. Simeon of Durham tells us that their approach was heralded by ‘fearful prodigies which terrified the wretched nation of the Angles; inasmuch as horrible lightnings and dragons in the air and flashes of fire were often seen glancing and flying to and fro; which signs indicated the great famine and the terrible and unutterable slaughter of multitudes which ensued,’ and he gives the following graphic account of their attack upon Lindisfarne. ‘In the same year, of a truth, the Pagans from the northern region came with a naval armament to Britain like stinging hornets, and over-ran the country in all directions like fierce wolves, plundering, tearing, and killing not only sheep and oxen, but priests and levites, and choirs of monks and nuns. They came, as we before said, to the church of Lindisfarne, and laid all waste with dreadful havoc, trod with unhallowed feet the holy places, dug up the altars, and carried off all the treasures of the holy church. Some of the brethren they killed, some they carried off in chains, many they cast out naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea.’^[420] They seem to have been mainly attracted to those islands where monastic establishments were to be found as affording richest plunder; and the scene above depicted by Simeon was no doubt repeated at the sack of each monastery.

In the following year they ravaged the harbours of King Ecgfrid, and plundered the monastery at the mouth of the river Wear; but, says Simeon, ‘St. Cuthbert did not allow them to depart unpunished, for their chief was there put to a cruel death by the Angles, and a short time afterwards a violent storm shattered, destroyed, and broke up their vessels, and the sea swallowed up very many of them; some, however, were cast ashore and speedily slain without mercy; and these things befel them justly, since they heavily injured those who had not injured them.’^[421]

Another body of these pirates directed their attacks against the Western Isles in 794, when the Ulster Annals record that these islands were utterly laid waste by a people to whom they apply the general term of Gentiles, and the church of Iona is plundered by them. In 796 Osuald the Patrician, who had been appointed to the kingdom of Northumbria by some of the chiefs of that nation on the death of King Ethelred, who was slain in that year on the 18th of April, was twenty-seven days after expelled from the kingdom, and with a few followers retired to the island of Lindisfarne, and thence went by ship with some of the brethren to the king of the Picts, Constantin. In 798 the northern pirates took spoils of the sea between Erin and Alban, which no doubt implies that the Western Isles were again laid waste by them. In 802 I-Columchill, or Iona, is burnt by them, and in 806 the community of Iona, amounting to sixty-eight persons, are slain by them.^[422] Besides the general term of Gentiles, that of Gall, the Irish word for stranger, was likewise applied to them, and two nations were distinguished as Finngaill, white or fair-haired Galls, and Dubhgaill, black or dark-haired Galls—the former being Norwegians, to whom also the term of Lochlannach, or people of Lochlann, was applied, and the latter, Danes.^[423] Iona, when thus ravaged by these pirates, and its community almost entirely cut off by them, was still the head of all the Columban churches, and this catastrophe seems to have led to a resolution to remove the seat of the supremacy to a safer locality. This was not to be found in any of the Western Isles, and the respective claims of Scotland and Ireland were solved by the foundation in each country of a church which should be supreme over the Columban monasteries in that country. In Ireland, accordingly, a new church was commenced in the year following the slaughter of the Iona monks, at a place called Cennanus, in Meath, now Kells, which had been given to the Columban Church three years before, and the church was finished in the year 814. In Scotland the position selected was at the pass where the Tay makes its way through the barrier of the Grampians; and here, while Constantin ruled over both Dalriada and the Picts, he founded the Church of Dunkeld,^[424] in which he may possibly have put the brethren from Lindisfarne who took refuge with him in 796.

On his death, which took place in 820,^[425] his brother Aengus, who had ruled over Dalriada during the last four years of Constantin’s reign, succeeded him as king of the Picts, and ruled over both kingdoms for the first five years of his reign, in the last year of which we find recorded the martyrdom of Blathmhaic, son of Flann, by the Gentiles in Hi Coluimcille. During the remainder of his reign we find Dalriada governed successively by Aed, son of Boanta, and by his own son Eoganan. It is to this Aengus, son of Fergus, that the later chronicles have erroneously attributed the foundation of St. Andrews; but as the kings of this family are termed kings of Fortrenn, and are found bearing the same names, it is probable that they belonged to the royal family of which the first Aengus, son of Fergus, was the founder, and which appears to have been peculiarly connected with the province of Fortrenn. The death of Aengus, son of Fergus, is recorded by the Ulster Annals in 834,^[426] and again we find a conflict between the old Pictish law of succession and the custom more recently introduced of permitting the sons of previous kings to occupy the throne, for the Pictish Chronicle tells us that Drest, son of Constantin, and Talorgan, son of Wthoil, reigned jointly for three years. The former, who was the son of Constantin mac Fergus, was probably accepted by the southern Picts, while those of the northern provinces were more tenacious of the old law, and supported a king the name of whose father was not borne by any of the previous kings.

We find, however, at this time a third competitor, who appears to have asserted his right to rule over the southern Picts. This was Alpin, of Scottish race by paternal descent, but whose Pictish name shows that his maternal descent was from that race. We are told in the Chronicle of Huntingdon that ‘in the year 834 there was a conflict between the Scots and Picts at Easter, and many of the more noble of the Picts were slain, and Alpin, king of the Scots, remained victorious, but being elated with his success, he was, in another battle fought on the 20th of July in the same year, defeated and decapitated.’^[427]

Alpin seems to have made this attempt at the head of those Scots who were still to be found in the country, and was probably supported by a part of the Pictish nation who were favourable to his cause. Tradition points to the Carse of Gowrie as the scene of his attempt, and Pitalpin, now Pitelpie, near Dundee, as the locality of the battle in which he was defeated and slain; and the occurrence of a place near St. Andrews called Rathalpin or the Fort of Alpin, now Rathelpie, seems to indicate that it was in the province of ‘Fib’ or Fife that he found his support and established himself after his first success.

After the two kings Drest and Talorgan, who are said to have reigned jointly, the Pictish Chronicle has Uven, son of Unuist, who reigned three years. He is obviously the Eoganan, son of Aengus, who ruled over Dalriada for thirteen years, and probably succeeded Drest as king of the southern Picts. We find, therefore, the principle of male succession making a further step in advance, as the sons of both the previous kings, Constantin and Angus, thus reign after them over part at least of the Pictish nation; but in his reign the Picts were doomed to receive so crushing a blow from the Danish pirates that it seems to have almost exterminated the family connected with Fortrenn, and paved the way for the successful attempt of the son of Alpin the Scot to place himself on the throne of the Picts. In the ancient Tract on the wars of the Gaedheal with the Galls we are told that in the year 839 there came to Dublin threescore and five ships, and Leinster was plundered by them to the sea and the plain of Bregia, extending from Dublin to Drogheda. After the plundering of Leinster and Bregia they went northwards, when the people of Dalriada gave battle to this fleet, and Eoganan, son of Aengus, king of Dalriada, was slain in that battle. The Danes seem from this to have attempted to invade Scotland through Dalriada; but in recording the same event the Ulster Annals tell us that a battle was fought by the Gentiles against the men of Fortrenn, in which Eoganan son of Aengus, Bran son of Aengus, Aed son of Boanta, and others innumerable, were slain.^[428] These two notices taken in combination very clearly show us that at this time the people of Dalriada and the men of Fortrenn were the same, and that Eoganan, the son of Aengus, ruled over both.

The Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that ‘Kynadius succeeded his father Alpin in his kingdom, and that in the seventh year of his reign, which corresponds with the year 839, while the Danish pirates, having occupied the Pictish shores, had crushed the Picts, who were defending themselves, with a great slaughter, Kynadius, passing into their remaining territories, turned his arms against them, and having slain many, compelled them to take flight, and was the first king of the Scots who acquired the monarchy of the whole of Alban, and ruled in it over the Scots.’^[429] The allusion here to the defeat of the men of Fortrenn by the Danes is obvious, and this account certainly conveys the impression that Kenneth acted in concert with them, if he did not merely take advantage of the great defeat of the Picts to renew the attempt his father had made.

Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan make Kenneth the immediate successor of Eoganan in Dalriada, but the Pictish Chronicle places two kings as reigning over the Picts—Wrad, son of Bargoit, who reigned three years, and Bred one year; so that, while the events of the year 839 appear to have placed him in possession of Dalriada, they did not, as the Chronicle of Huntingdon implies, establish him on the throne of the Picts. Bred is the last of the line of Pictish kings in the Pictish Chronicle, and the reigns of himself and his predecessor, amounting to four years, bring us to the year 844. This was the twelfth year of Kenneth’s reign, and the Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that ‘in his twelfth year Kenneth encountered the Picts seven times in one day, and having destroyed many, confirmed the kingdom to himself.’^[430]

This is the true year of Kenneth’s possession of the Pictish kingdom, and it is with this year that the Pictish Chronicle commences his reign. Here we are told that ‘Kinadius, son of Alpin, the first of the Scots, governed Pictavia happily for sixteen years. Two years, however, before he came to Pictavia, he acquired the kingdom of Dalriada.’^[431] The name of the father of Bred, the last king of the Picts, is not given in the Pictish Chronicle, but in the later chronicles he is called Brude, son of Ferat, and his reign limited to one month. He is followed in these chronicles by three kings whose reigns amount to six years. These are Kinat, son of Ferat, one year; Brude, son of Fotel, two years; and Drest, son of Ferat, three years; and the latter is said to have been slain by the Scots ‘at Forteviot according to some, and at Scone according to others,’^[432] and he is followed by Kenneth mac Alpin, who reigns sixteen years. This would bring his accession to the Pictish throne down to the year 850, and this is in fact the era upon which all the late calculations as to the duration of the kingdom of the Scots are based. It is possible that these kings may have existed and maintained a six years’ struggle with Kenneth before the last of them was slain; but they rest upon authority which cannot be considered trustworthy. The length of the reign assigned to Kenneth of sixteen years by the same chronicler is quite inconsistent with the introduction of these supposed kings; and the year 844 remains as undoubtedly the true era of the accession of the Scottish race to the Pictish throne. In the seventh year of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, or 851, he is said in the Pictish Chronicle to have transferred the relics of Saint Columba to a church which he had built.^[433] This was no doubt the final carrying out of the arrangement by which the supremacy of Iona was to be transferred in Ireland to Kells, and in Scotland to Dunkeld. It is there that Kenneth had either completed a church begun by Constantin, or founded a new church, and a portion of Saint Columba’s relics was now transferred to each place. The subsequent events of Kenneth’s reign are given in the Pictish Chronicle in very general terms. He is said to have invaded Saxonia or Lothian six times, and to have burnt Dunbar and Melrose, usurped presumably by the Angles, while the Britons are said to have burnt Dunblane, and the Danes to have laid waste Pictavia as far as ‘Cluanan’ or Cluny and Dunkeld.^[434] There is, however, no record of these events to be found elsewhere.

During the latter years of Kenneth’s reign, a people appear in close association with the Norwegian pirates, and joining in their plundering expeditions, who are termed Gallgaidhel. This name is formed by the combination of the two words ‘Gall,’ a stranger, a foreigner, and ‘Gaidhel,’ the national name of the Gaelic race. It was certainly first applied to the people of Galloway, and the proper name of this province, Galwethia, is formed from Galwyddel, the Welsh equivalent of Gallgaidhel. It seems to have been applied to them as a Gaelic race under the rule of Galls or foreigners; Galloway being for centuries a province of the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria, and the term ‘Gall’ having been applied to the Saxons before it was almost exclusively appropriated to the Norwegian and Danish pirates. Towards the end of the eighth century the power of the Angles in Galloway seems to have become weakened, and the native races began to assert their independent action. The bishopric, which had been founded by the Angles in 727, ceases with Beadulf, the last Bishop, about the year 796; and William of Malmesbury tells us that he could find no record of any subsequent bishop, because the bishopric soon ceased being situated in the remote corner of the Angles, and having become exposed to the attacks of the Scots or Picts.^[435]

In the Islands Landnamabok we are told that ‘Harold the Fairhaired, king of Norway, subdued all the Sudreys or Western Isles, so far west that no Norwegian king has since conquered farther except King Magnus Barefoot; but he had no sooner returned than vikings, both Scottish and Irish, cast themselves into the islands, and made war, and plundered far and wide. When King Harold heard this he sent westward Ketill Flatnose, the son of Bjarnan Bunu, to reconquer the islands.’ Ketill departed for the west, and subdued all the Sudreys. He made himself king over them.^[436] The Laxdaela Saga, however, makes Ketill a petty king in Norway, who left it on the extension of Harold’s kingdom, and on arriving in Scotland with his vessel, was well received there by men of rank, as he was both a celebrated man and of high descent. They offered him any possessions he pleased, so that Ketill settled there with all his kindred. Ketill, however, must have settled in the Sudreys before Harold’s time, as his daughter Audur married Olaf the White, who became king of Dublin in 852; and in 856 we find a notice in the Ulster Annals of a great war between the Gentiles and Maelsechnaill along with the Gallgaidhel who were with them, and in 857 a victory by Imair and Amlaiph, against Caittil Finn with the Gallgaidhel in Munster.^[437] Caittil Finn is no doubt the same person as Ketill Flatnose, and the Gallgaidhel those Scotch and Irish vikings whom he had brought under his authority. There is no doubt that the name of Gallgaidhel was applied to the Gaelic population of the Western Isles called Innse Gall or the islands of the Galls, and the name, which originally belonged exclusively to the Gallwegians when under Anglic dominion, was extended to the islanders when under that of the Norwegians. In the fragments of Irish Annals published by the Irish Archæological Society, we are told that in 852 ‘a battle was given by Aedh, king of Ailech, the most valiant king of his time, to the fleet of the Gallgaidhel. They were Scots and foster-children of the Northmen, and at one time used to be called Northmen. They were defeated and slain by Aedh, and many of their heads carried off by Niall with him; and the Irish were justified in committing this havoc, for these men were wont to act like Lochlans;’ and again, in 858, that ‘the Gallgaidhel were a people who had renounced their baptism, and were usually called Northmen, for they had the customs of the Northmen, and had been fostered by them, and though the original Northmen were bad to the churches, these were by far worse in whatever part of Erin they used to be.’be.’^[438]

The name, however, as applied to a territory, continued to be exclusively appropriated to Galloway.

The Pictish Chronicle adds that Kenneth died ‘tumore ani,’ on the Ides of February on the third of the week, in his palace of Forteviot, on the river Earn, and this fixes 860 as the year of his death. St. Berchan says of him—

Flann Mainistrech says of him that he was the first king who possessed the kingdom of Scone, of the Gaidhel; and by the Ulster Annals, the Annales Cambriæ, and others, in recording his death, he is invariably called king of the Picts.^[440] He appears to have had two sons, Constantin and Aed, and three daughters, one married to Run, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, another married to Amlaimh or Olaf the White, the Norwegian king of Dublin, and a third, Maelmaire, married to Aedh Finnliath, king of Ireland, who died in 879.^[441]

There is no more obscure period in the annals of the northern kingdoms than the latter part of the eighth and the first half of the ninth centuries, and no more difficult question than to ascertain the nature and true character of that revolution which placed a Scottish race in possession of the kingdom of Scone. For this period we lose the guidance of the great Anglic historian Bede, and of the Irish annalist Tighernac. When we refer to trustworthy sources of information, we can find no record of any revolution at this time. They exhibit to us only the great confusion into which these kingdoms were thrown by the incessant depredations of the Norwegian and Danish piratical hordes. In the oldest and most authentic lists of kings we find Kenneth mac Alpin and his descendants following the Pictish kings as belonging to the same series. By the annalists who record the events of this period Kenneth is simply termed king of the Picts. The historical documents which make any direct statement on the subject, with one exception, belong to an artificial system of history, constructed after the eleventh century to serve the purposes of a political and ecclesiastical controversy, and cannot be trusted to afford us anything but distorted fragments of true history, and we are left with the solitary statement of Flann Mainistrech, that Kenneth was the first king who gave the kingdom of Scone to the Gaidheal.

That Kenneth mac Alpin was a Scot by paternal descent, and that the succession to the throne of the Pictish kingdom of Scone was eventually perpetuated in his race, may be held to be as certain as any event of that period can be ascertained; but the slender record we possess of the events of his reign does not exhibit them to us as implying the conquest of one nation by another, still less of the Picts by the Scots of Dalriada, as is usually assumed. The name of Kenneth’s father, Alpin, shows that he was of the Pictish race by maternal descent, and that he may have had a claim to the throne, but these events exhibit themselves to us more as a war of succession—in which Alpin and his son Kenneth were supported in their claim to the throne not only by a party among the Picts, but by the remains of the Scots of Dalriada who were still to be found in the country,—than as a foreign invasion. During the reigns of Kenneth and his three successors, they were simply kings of Scottish paternal descent, ruling over the same kingdom and the same people who had previously been governed by those of Pictish race. The country of which Scone was the capital was still Cruithintuath, or Pictavia its Latin equivalent. The people were still the men of Fortrenn or the Picts, and the deaths of these kings of Scottish race were still recorded as those of kings of the Picts. The period was one very favourable to such a change being easily and quietly made. The Picts had no repugnance to any of their kings being paternally of foreign descent, so that they represented a Pictish royal family, and were held to belong to a Pictish tribe through their mothers. The old Pictish law of succession too, had broken down, among the southern Picts at least, under Anglic influence, and the right of the sons of Pictish kings to ascend the throne had been more than once recognised. Shortly after Alpin had put forward his claim, the Picts of Fortrenn had sustained a most crushing blow from the Danes, and were as completely prostrated by them as the Scots of Dalriada had been a century before by the powerful Pictish king Aengus mac Fergus. That it was followed by a rising everywhere of the remains of the Scots of Dalriada we may well believe, but an additional and very potent element existed among his means of support. The ban against the Columban clergy who had been so long dispossessed of their foundations in the territories of the southern Picts had been partially removed by the foundation of Dunkeld, which probably gave them some footing again in the country, and they may have now gladly seized upon such an opportunity as the combination of a king of Scottish race claiming the throne with the temporary prostration of the most powerful tribe among the Picts to make an effort to recover them. The Pictish Chronicle clearly indicates this as one of the great causes of the fall of the Pictish monarchy. It says, ‘For God thought them worthy to be made aliens from and stript of their hereditary possessions as their perverseness deserved, because they not only spurned the rites and the precepts of the Lord, but also refused to allow themselves to be placed on an equal footing with others.’^[442] This appears to refer very plainly to the original expulsion of those of the Columban clergy who would not conform to the decree issued by Nectan, king of the Picts, and to the Roman usages it enforced, as well as to the ban which had been kept up against them till it was partially relaxed by Constantin when he founded Dunkeld; and when Kenneth transferred the relics of Saint Columba to Dunkeld, they seem to have regained their footing as far as he could effect it, as we find that the abbot of Dunkeld was placed at the head of the Pictish Church.^[443]

Two questions still remain to be solved. The first is, Where was the kingdom of his father Alpin, and where did Kenneth rule during the first six years after his father’s death in 832? Not in the kingdom of the Picts, for he only obtained the Pictish throne in the twelfth year of his reign, in the year 844. Not in Dalriada, for he did not obtain that kingdom till after the year 839, and two years before he became king of the Picts. If, then, he did not commence his reign either in Dalriada or in Pictavia, it must have been in some part of Scotland south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, or else he must have been in Irish Dalriada or elsewhere in Ireland. The later chronicles tell us that ‘with wonderful eagerness he led the Scots from Ergadia into the land of the Picts,’^[444] but this is part of that artificial system by which the later kingdom of the Scots was, by the suppression of a century, connected immediately with the earlier Scottish kingdom of Dalriada. The earliest tradition which indicates this appears to have at one time formed a part of the Pictish Chronicle. In narrating the events of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, there are in this chronicle some expressions which show that this part of it had once been preceded by an account of the mode in which he obtained the Pictish throne.^[445] The compiler, however, of one of the later chronicles obviously had a copy of the Pictish Chronicle before him. It was also known to Ranulph Higden, who used it in his Polychronicon, and in both the events of Kenneth’s reign are preceded by what is obviously a traditionary account of how the Scots obtained possession of the Pictish kingdom.^[446] The same tale appears also in the chronicle contained in the Scalachronica, where it also precedes the account of the reign of Kenneth, and it was likewise known to Giraldus Cambrensis, who narrates part of it.^[447] Comparing the four editions of this narrative with each other and with the expressions in the Pictish Chronicle referring to it, we can make a fair approximation to what this lost passage of the chronicle contained. It seems to have commenced with Bede’s statement that in the course of time the Scots came from Ireland under their leader Reuda, and obtained a settlement either by permission or by force among the Picts. We are then told that the Scots inhabited Galloway, to which Giraldus adds that they afterwards effected an extension of their territories, and the Scalachronica ‘as also Argyll and others of the Isles.’ The Scots thus living in conjunction with the Picts, and having obtained from them a district to inhabit, contrive a plot against them. They invite the magnates of the Picts, according to Scalachronica, to a great council, and coming privately armed they slew the great lords of the Picts, and afterwards sent for others and slew them; according to the other editions, to a banquet where they had undermined the seats, and having withdrawn the supports the sitters fell into the hollow places prepared for them, and were slain without difficulty; and profiting by this treachery the Scots took their land reaching from sea to sea, which is now called Scotia; and thus Kenneth, son of Alpin, invaded Pictavia and destroyed the Picts.^[448] This, of course, can only be viewed as a traditionary account, but it seems to contain a reference to the subsequent history of the Scots of Dalriada, after they were driven out by the Picts. It narrates Alpin’s invasion of Galloway with his Scots, and then repeats from Bede the first settlement of the Scottish colony, stating that they inhabited Galloway along with the Picts. His son Kenneth acquires the kingdom of Dalriada, and the Scots again emerge and extend themselves into Argyll and the Isles. Kenneth then invades the kingdom of the Picts, but does not finally subdue it till five years after; and in place of this we have the story of the plot by which he treacherously slays the principal nobles of the Picts. St. Berchan in his so-called prophecy alludes to this tale, but adds it to a reference to a war, and removes the scene of it to Scone. He says—

Now the Scalachronica places it in the time of Drust, son of Feradach, the last king of the Picts, who was slain at Scone by treason. This would bring the event to the year 850, after Kenneth had been already six years in possession of the Pictish throne.

We may gather from this tale that Kenneth emerged from Galloway where the last remnant of the Scots of Dalriada disappear from history nearly a century before; and if the appearance of the Norwegians on the scene had led the people of Galloway, as well as Scots from other quarters, to adopt the same piratical life under the name of Gallgaidhel, we can readily understand that Kenneth, taking advantage of the crushing blow inflicted on the Picts of Fortrenn by the Danes, would be readily joined by Scots from all quarters in regaining the kingdom of Dalriada, and prosecuting his father’s claim to the throne of the Picts.

But there is another legend which appears also to refer to this period. It is that contained in the life of St. Cadroë. We are there told, after that part of the legend which relates to the settlement of the Scots in Ireland, that many years passed when the Scots crossed the Irish Channel and took possession of Iona, and then continuing their voyage enter the region of Rossia, evidently the province of Ross, by the river Rosis, which is also evidently the river Rasay, the old name of the Blackwater, which flows from a small lake called Loch Droma,^[450] on the ridge separating the eastern and western watershed, and flows through the long valley leading from near the head of Loch Broom till it falls into the river Conan, some miles above Dingwall. From thence they proceed southward to Rigmoneth, the old name for St. Andrews, and to Bellathor, which must have been situated at or near Scone. There is no record of any Scots ever having reached St. Andrews or Scone till the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, and this part of the legend seems to refer to this time; but the previous part of it is obviously ecclesiastical in its character, and it is probable that it rather belongs to the return of the Columban clergy, who may have gone from Ireland to Iona and thence by Ross-shire to Rosemarkie, an old Columban foundation, from which they had been dispossessed by Boniface, and finally to Rigmoneth in Fifeshire and Bellachoir in Perthshire; and in this view it is difficult to avoid connecting it with the legend of St. Adrian, who, like St. Boniface, is brought from the east and lands in the eastern parts of Scotland then occupied by the Picts, having with him six thousand and six hundred and six persons, composed of confessors, clerics, and lay people. These men with their bishop did many signs in the kingdom of the Picts, afterwards desired to have a residence in the Isle of May, where the Danes, who then devastated the whole of Britain, came and slew them.^[451] Their martyrdom is connected with a Danish invasion in 875. The east part of Scotland in which they had their first settlement was evidently Fife. Their arrival is almost coincident with the invasion of the kingdom of the Picts by the Scots under Kenneth, and the large number who are said to have come shows that the traditionary history was really one of the immigration of a people. Hector Boece, in referring to this legend, tells us that while some write that they were Hungarians, others say that they were a company collected from Scots and Angles.^[452] It is perhaps not an unreasonable conclusion that the Scots invaded the Pictish territories in two bands—one under Kenneth across Drumalban against the southern Picts, and the other from sea by Loch Broom against the northern Picts.

The second question we have to solve is, To what family of the Scots of Dalriada did Kenneth, by paternal descent, belong? The ordinary pedigree, which traces his descent through the kings of Dalriada of the Cinel Gabhran, and identifies his father Alpin with Alpin son of Eachach, the last of the Dalriadic kings, is not older than the twelfth century, and is unquestionably artificial; but we have indications that two other lines of descent were attributed to him. St. Berchan, in his so-called prophecy, after a few stanzas which refer to Conall, the son of Comgall, the king of Dalriada who received Saint Columba as narrated by Adamnan, passes at once to the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, with these words:—

Conall, according to the Tract on the Men of Alban, had seven sons,^[453] from any one of whom Kenneth may have descended, and this would attach him to that tribe of the Dalriads termed the Cinel Comgall, from whom the district of Cowall takes its name; but the same tract contains another statement, which seems to present to us a more authentic notice of his descent. According to this tradition, from Eachach Buidhe, son of Aedain, the king of Dalriada inaugurated by Saint Columba, there branched off two clans, ‘the clan Fergusa Gall, son of Eachach Buidhe, or the Gabhranaigh, and the clan Conall Cerr, son of Eochaid Buidhe, who are the men of Fife in the sovereignty; that is, the clan of Kenneth, son of Alpin, son of Aidan.’^[454] This has all the appearance of a genuine fragment which has been preserved from some older source. The reference to Fife, which appears to have been the province which mainly supported the claim of this family, and in which Rathelpin, or the Fort of Alpin, was situated, and the appearance of a Conall, son of Aidan, in Kintyre, in 807, by whom Conall, son of Tadg, the then Pictish governor of Dalriada was slain,^[455] and who was probably a son of the same Aidan here made father of Alpin, gives great probability to it. We may therefore conclude that Kenneth mac Alpin belonged to the Cinel Gabhran, but was descended from a different branch than that which had furnished the kings of that race to Dalriada.

Kenneth mac Alpin was succeeded by his brother Donald, who, according to the Pictish Chronicle, held the same kingdom for four years. His death is recorded by the Annals of Ulster four years after that of Kenneth, with the same title of king of the Picts. He died, according to the Pictish Chronicle, at his palace of Cinn Belachoir, on the ides, or 13th, of April. St. Berchan says of him—

The later chronicles differ as to the place of his death. By some he is said to have died at Rath Inveramon, and by others to have been slain at Scone. These names, however, can all be referred to localities in the immediate neighbourhood of Scone, and probably belonged to the defences and possessions of that central seat of the monarchy.^[456] The only event recorded in his reign is the curious notice in the Pictish Chronicle that in his time the Gaedhel established with their king in Forteviot the rights and laws of the kingdom of Edus, son of Echdach.^[457] The reference is here unquestionably to that Aedfin, son of Eachach, whose death as king of the Dalriads is recorded by the Annals of Ulster in 778, and who appears to have been the last of the Scots who attempted to make any stand against the rule of the Picts over Dalriada, and by his kingdom that of the Scots of Dalriada must be meant. Among the rights and laws now established was probably the law of succession among the Scots, which is usually termed the law of Tanistry, and which, in its preference of the male over the female succession, was opposed to that of the Picts. This law, as we have seen, had to some extent been partially introduced among the southern Picts before the accession of Kenneth, and would therefore now be established at Forteviot with less difficulty.

It was in accordance with this law that Donald was succeeded by Constantin, son of Kenneth mac Alpin, who reigned sixteen years. The Pictish Chronicle records that in his first year Maelsechnaill, king of Ireland, died, and his death took place on Tuesday the 30th November 863,^[458] which gives us the true commencement of this reign. After two years Amlaibh with his Gentiles laid waste Pictavia, and occupied it from the kalends of January to the feast of St. Patrick—that is, from the first of January to the 17th of March; and in the following year, while withdrawing with his booty, he was attacked and slain by Constantin.^[459]

The Ulster Annals record the same event when they tell us that in 866 Amlaiph and Aiusle went to Fortrenn with the Galls of Erin and Alban, and laid waste all Cruithintuaith, of which name Pictavia is here the Latin equivalent, and took hostages.^[460] This Amlaib, or Amlaiph, was Olaf the White, king of Dublin, who had married a daughter of Kenneth mac Alpin; and his occupation of the country and the hostages he took may have been in connection with some claim through his wife; but his death did not really take place till some years after,^[461] for we find from the Ulster Annals that in the year 870 Alclyde was besieged by the Northmen under the same Amlaiph, along with Imhair, another of their kings, and destroyed after a four months’ siege. Another annalist tells us that after having wasted the people who were in the citadel by hunger and thirst, and succeeded in drawing off the water from the well that was in it, the Northmen entered upon them and first carried off all the riches that were within it, and afterwards a great host of prisoners were brought into captivity.^[462] On this occasion they appear to have also attacked both the Picts of Galloway and the Angles of Bernicia, for in the following year we are told that Amlaiph and Imhair returned to Dublin from Alban with two hundred ships, and a great booty of men, Angles, Britons, and Picts, was brought with them to Ireland in captivity.^[463] After this we hear no more of Amlaiph or Olaf the White of Dublin. In 872 the Ulster Annals tell us that Artgha, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, was slain by the advice of Constantin.^[464] This was Arthgal, a lineal descendant of Dunnagual, whose death was recorded in 760, and the father of that Run who married the daughter of Kenneth mac Alpin.^[465] We thus see that after the death of the last of this line, who is called king of Alclyde, in 750, and the subjection of his kingdom to the Angles, it now again reappears as an independent kingdom with the new designation of that of the Britons of Strathclyde. It was probably in connection with this event that St. Berchan, in referring to the battles fought by Constantin, says—