Celtic

Cormac, the navigator, the first missionary to the Orkneys, who perhaps reached the Faroes and Iceland; and Drostan, the founder of the Scottish monastery of Deer. The character of the Celtic Church of Columba was, like its Church of mother church in Ireland, modified by migration to a country only Columba. in small part Christian. It was a missionary church, not diocesan but monastic, with an abbot who was a presbyter, not a bishop, for its head, though the office of bishop for ordination existed, and bishops were, in Ireland at least, more numerous than in the later church. It spread, not by the erection of parishes and the care of parochial clergy, but by the reproduction of similar monasteries, the homes of those who adopted a religious life, the only schools in an age of war. It preferred islands for its monasteries for safety, and, in the case of some of its members, who sought, in the language of those times, "a desert in the ocean," as hermitages where they might live and die apart from the world. But these were exceptions. The idea of the Celtic monastery was that of a Christian celibate society. Its inmates regarded themselves as being, and often were, members of a family or clan, preserving the customs of their race so far as consistent with celibacy and religious discipline. Of eleven successors of Columba as abbot nine were of his kin. The rule, though its confession is primitive, adapted to an infant and isolated church planted in a heathen world, did not differ greatly from that of later orders. Implicit obedience to the superior, poverty, chastity, hospitality, were the chief precepts. The observance of Easter according to the ancient cycle, the use of the semicircular instead of the coronal tonsure, and a peculiar ritual for mass and baptism were its chief deviations from the practice of the catholic church as fixed by the council of Nice, to which it yielded in the beginning of the 8th century; frequent prayer, the singing of psalms and hymns, the reading of Scripture, the copying and illuminating of MSS., the teaching of children and novices, and the labour to provide and prepare the necessary food (the service of women being excluded) were the occupations of the monks. A similar conventual system of which St Bridget, abbess of Kildare, was foundress enlisted the fervour of her sex, and had followers in Darlugdach, abbess of Kildare, who founded Abernethy, in Ebba at Coldingham, and in Hilda at Lindisfarne. It was a form of Christianity fitted to excite the wonder and gain the affection of the heathen amongst whom the monks came, practising as well as preaching the self-denying doctrine of the cross. The religion of the Celts is a shadowy outline on the page of history. Notices of idols are rare. They had not the art necessary for an ideal representation of the human form, though they learnt to decorate the rude stone monuments of an earlier age with elaborate tracery. They had no temples. The mysterious circles of massive stones, with no covering but the heavens, may have served for places of worship, as well as memorials of the more illustrious dead. The names of gods are conspicuously absent, though antiquaries trace the worship of the Sun in the Beltane fires and other rites; but in the account of their adversaries we read of demons whom they invoked. Divination by rods or twigs, incantations or spells, strange rites connected with the elements of water and of fire, choice of weather, lucky times, the watching of the voice of birds," are mentioned as amongst the practices of the Druids, a priestly caste revered for superior learning and, if we may accept Cæsar as an authority, highly educated. This, rather than fetish or animal worship, appears to have been their cult. It was, so far as scanty indications allow a generalization, by an empirical knowledge of the minor and secondary rather than the greater phenomena of nature that the Druids of Britain and Ireland exercised influence,the tempest and its elements-wind and rain and snow, thunder and lightning-rather than the sun, moon, and stars. Whatever its precise form, this religion made a feeble resistance to the Christian, taught by the monks, with learning drawn from Scripture and some acquaintance with Latin as well as Christian literature, and enforced by the example of a pure life and the hope of a future world. The charms of music and poetry, in which the Celt delighted, were turned to sacred use. Columba was a protector of the bards,-himself a bard.

When we pass to civil history our knowledge is restricted 597-685. to a list of names and battles; but the labours of recent scholars allow a brief account of the Celtic races from the end of the 6th to their union in the middle of the 9th century, in part hypothetical, yet a great advance on the absolute blank which made historians of the 18th century decline the task in despair.

The Britons, whose chief king had ruled at Alclyde, Britons were separated from their fellow-countrymen, the Cymry in of StrathWales, shortly after Columba's death by the rapid advance clyde. of the Anglian kingdom of Northumberland, founded in the middle of the 6th century by Ida of Bamborough. One of his successors, Ethelfred, struck the blow, completed by the wars of the next king, Edwin, which severed modern Wales from British Cum'oria and Strathclyde. Even Mona, the holy isle of both heathen and Christian Britons, became Anglesey, the island of the Angles. A later incursion towards the end of the century reached Carlisle and separated the kingdom of Alclyde, which had for its boundary the Catrail or Picts' trench between Peel Fell and Galashiels, from English Cumbria (Cumberland south of the Solway), and reduced for a short time Strathclyde to a subject province. When Bede wrote in 731 an Anglian bishopric had been established at Whithorn, which continued till 803. The decline of the Northumbrian kingdom in the 8th century enabled the kings of Strathclyde to reassert their independence and maintain their rule within a restricted district more nearly answering to the valley of the Clyde, and in Galloway, in which there are some faint indications of a Pictish population, till it was united to the kingdom of Scone by the election of Donald, brother of Constantine II., king of the Scots, to its throne.

umbrian

Of the Scots of Dalriada somewhat more is known. Their history is interwoven with that of the Picts and meets at many points that of the Angles of Northumberland, who during the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century, when their kings were the greatest in Britain, endeavoured to push their boundaries beyond the Forth and the Clyde. The history of this kingdom-see NORTH- NorthUMBERLAND (KINGDOM OF)-forms part of that of Scot- supreland during these centuries. It planted in LOTHIAN (q.v.) macy. the seed from which the civilization of Scotland grew. To an early period of the contest between the Angles and the Britons, and to the country between the Forth and the Tweed and Solway, perhaps belong the battles magnified by successive poets who celebrated the hero of British mec'iæval romance. Whether these battles were really fought in southern Scotland and on the borders, and Arthur's Seat was one of his strongholds, still "unknown is the grave of Arthur." Before Edwin's death (633) his kingdom extended to the Forth, and the future capital of Scotland the Mynyd Agned and Dunedin of the British and Gaelic received the name of Edwinsburgh from him in place of Celts. During the reign of Oswald (635-642) the Northumbrians were reconverted by Aidan, a monk whom Oswald summoned from Iona, and who became monastic bishop of Lindisfarne-a southern Iona-from which the Celtic form of the Christian church spread amongst the Angles of the north and east of England, until the council of Whitby and the election of Wilfrid to the see of York restored the Roman ritual and diocesan episcopacy, when Colman, their Celtic bishop at Lindisfarne, retired with his monks to Iona. Oswald's brother Oswy extended the dominion of Northumberland over a portion of the country Adamnan relates miracles of Columba scarcely above the level of the northern Picts beyond the Forth. In his reign lived of the practices of the Druids. But superstition is not vanquished CUTHBERT (q.v.), the apostle of Lothian, where the monasby superstition. Celibacy was a protest against the promiscuous tery of St Ebba at Coldingham, the church on the Bass, intercourse for which Christian fathers condemn the Celts. Fasts and vigils contrasted with the gross, perhaps cannibal, practices the three churches of St Baldred at Auldham, Tynningstill in use. The intense faith in Christ, of lives such as Patrick'shame, and Preston, and the sanctuary of Wedale (Stow) and Columba's, won the victory of the cross.

"It is not with the 'screod' our destiny is,
Nor with the bird on the top of the twig,
Nor with the trunk of a knotted tree,

Nor with a 'seadan' hand in hand.

I adore not the voice of birds,

Nor the 'screod' nor destiny nor lots in this world,
Nor a son nor chance nor woman;

My Druid is Christ the Son of God,

Christ, Son of Mary, the Great Abbot,

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

kept alive the memory of the Celtic Church. His name

685-756. is preserved in St Cuthbert's church at Edinburgh and in | The Picts of Stirling, Perth, and Forfar, corresponding Kirkcudbright. To the same period belong two inscriptions, the earliest records of Anglian speech, one on the cross of Bewcastle in Cumberland, commemorating Alfred, a son of Oswy, the other, taken perhaps from a poem of Cadmon, at Ruthwell in Dumfries. Neither the Tweed nor the Solway was at this period a line of division. Oswy was succeeded by his son Egfrid (685), against whom the Picts successfully rebelled; and the Scots and a considerable part of the Britons also recovered their freedom. Anglian bishops, however, continued to hold the see of Whithorn during the whole of the 8th century. The Northumbrian kings, more successful in the west than in the east, gradually advanced from Carlisle along the coast of Ayr, and even took Alclyde. In what is now England their power declined from the middle of the 8th century before the rise of Mercia. Shortly before the commencement of the 9th century the descents of the Danes began, which led to the conflict for England between them and the Saxons of Wessex. The success of the latter under Alfred and his descendants transferred the supremacy to the princes of the southern kingdom, who, gradually advancing northwards, before the close of that century united all England under their sceptre.

aunals.

Before its fall Northumberland produced three great men, the founders of English literature and learning, though two of them wrote chiefly in Latin,-Cadmon, the monk of Whitby, the first English poet; Bede, the monk of Jarrow, the first English historian; and Alcuin, the monk of York, whose school might have become the first English university, had he not lived in the decline of Northumbrian greatness and been attracted to the court of Charlemagne. It is to this early dawn of talent among the Angles of Northumberland that England owes its name of the land of the Angles and its language that of English. The northern dialect spoken by the Angles was the speech of Lothian, north as well as south (in Northumberland) of the Tweed, and was preserved in the broad Scotch of the Lowlands, while modern English was formed from the southern dialect of Alfred, Chaucer, and Wycliffe. This early Teutonic civilization of the lowland district of Scotland, in spite of the Danish wars, the Celtic conquest, and border feuds, never died out, and it became at a later time the centre from which the Anglo-Saxon character permeated the whole of Scotland, without suppressing, as in England, the Celtic. Their union, more or less complete in different districts, is, after the difference in the extent of the Roman conquest, the second main fact of Scottish history, distinguishing it from that of England. Both, to a great degree, were the result of physical geography. The mountains and arms of the sea repelled invaders and preserved longer the ancient race and its customs.

Early It is necessary, before tracing the causes which led to Pictish the union of races in Scotland, to form some notion of northern Scotland during the century preceding Kenneth Macalpine, during which-the light of Adamnan and Bede being withdrawn we are left to the guidance of the Pictish Chronicle and the Irish Annals. The Picts whom Columba converted appear to have been consolidated under a single monarch. Brude, the son of Mailochon, ruled from Inverness to Iona on the west and on the north to the Orkneys. A sub-king or chief from these islands appears at his court. The absence of any other Pictish king, the reception of the Columbite mission in Buchan under Drostan, a disciple of Columba, and perhaps Columba himself, the foundation of the church of Mortlach near Aberdeen by Machar, another of his disciples, favour the conclusion that the dominion of Brude included Aberdeen as well as Moray and Ross. Its southern limits are unknown.

to Strathearn and Menteith,-Athole and Gowrie, Angus and Mearns, had been already converted by Ninian in the 5th century-may have already come under a single king ruling perhaps at Abernethy, with mormaers under him. It seems certain that Abernethy was earlier than Dunkeld a centre of the Celtic Church distinct from Iona, and the seat of the first three bishops of Scotland. Its round tower cannot be safely ascribed to an earlier date thar the 9th century, but may have been preceded by a church dedicated to St Bridget either in the 5th by Nechtan Morbet, or in the 6th century by Garnard, son of Donald, a later Pictish king. Although there exists a complete list of the Pictish kings from Brude, son of Mailochon, to Brude, son of Ferat, conquered by Kenneth Macalpine, and of the Scots of Dalriada from Aidan (converted by Columba) to Kenneth Macalpine, with their regnal years, it is only here and there that a figure emerges sufficiently distinct to enter history. Parts of these lists are fictitious and others doubtful, nor do we know over what extent of country the various monarchs ruled. Of the figures more or less prominent amongst the Pictish kings are Brude, the son of Derili, the contemporary of Adamnan, who was present at the synod of Tara when the law called Kain Adamnan, freeing women from military service, was adopted, and who died in 706, being then styled king of Fortren. Nechtan, another son of Derili, was the contemporary of Bede, who gives (710) the letter of Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth, to him when he adopted the Roman Easter and the tonsure. Six years later Nechtan expelled the Columbite monks from his dominions. They retired to Dalriada, as their brethren in Northumberland had done when a similar change was made by Oswy. Nechtan also asked for masons to build a church in the Roman style, to be dedicated to St Peter, and several churches in honour of that apostle were founded within his territory. Shortly after, Egbert, an Anglian monk, persuaded the community of Hy (Iona) itself to conform, but too late to lead to the union of the churches of the Scots and the Picts, which were separated also by political

causes.

Fifteen years later the greatest Pictish monarch, Angus Angus MacFergus, after a contest with more than one rival, Macgained the supremacy, which he held for thirty years Fergus (731-761). In revenge for the capture of his son Brude by Dungal, son of Selvach, king of the Dalriad Scots, he attacked Argyll, and laid waste the whole country, destroying Dunnad ( on Loch Crinan), then the capital, burnt Creich (in Mull), and put in chains Dungal and Feradach, the sons of Selvach. He next conquered (739), and it is said drowned, Talorgan, son of Drostan, king of Athole, one of his rivals, and, resuming the Dalriad war, reduced the whole of the western Highlands. The Britons of Strathclyde were assailed by a brother of Angus, who 1 But there had been a time when not one but several Pictish kings ruled the northern and central districts of Scotland, and of this we have perhaps a trace in the Pictish legend according to which Cruithne, the eponymus of the race, had seven sons, Cait, Cee, Ciric, Fib, Fidach, Fotla, Fortren. Conjecture identifies five of these names with districts known in later history,-Cait with Caithness, Ciric with Mearns (Magh Circen, the plain of Ciric), Fib with Fife, Fotla with Athole (Athfotla), Fortren with southern Perthshire, connecting it with a division of the same county in a tract of the 12th century. (Comp. plate VI.) Six of the divisions-Angus and Mearns, Athole and Gowrie, Strathearn and Menteith, Fife and Fortreive, Mar and Buchan, Moray and Ross-fairly correspond to districts afterwards ruled by the Celtic mormaers of Angus, Athole, Strathearn, Fife, Mar, and Moray; Caithness in the 9th century became Norse, and a new earl (of March) was introduced from the south of the Forth. They correspond also to seven great earldoms of Scotland, which appear with more or less distinctness on several occasions in the reigns of the Alexanders. This, at least, is a highly ingenioun theory, but not certain history.

867-914. and Harold the Fairhaired, who in 872 became sole king |
of Norway, soon after led an expedition against the vikings,
who had already seized Orkney and Shetland, and estab-
lished an earldom under Rognwald, earl of Mori, whose
son Hrolf the Ganger conquered Normandy in the begin-
ning of the next century. The position of Scotland,
therefore, when Kenneth united the Picts and Scots was
this central Scotland from sea to sea-Argyll and the
Isles, Perthshire, Angus and Mearns, and Fife-was under
the dominion of the king who had Scone for his capital;
the south-west district-the valley of the Clyde, Ayr,
Dumfries, and Galloway-was under a British king at
Dumbarton; the south-east district or Lothian was part
of "Saxon or Sassenach Land," the general Celtic name
for the country of the Anglo-Saxons, but now owing to
the divided state of Northumberland held by different
lords; the north of Scotland was under independent Celtic
chiefs, as Moray and Mar, or already occupied by Norse-
men, as Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, and the Hebrides.
The whole Celtic population was Christian; but the Norse
Religion invaders were still heathen. Their religion was similar
of Norse to that of their Anglo-Saxon kin, of a type higher than
vikings. the paganism of the Celts. It resembled the Celtic indeed
in the absence or infrequency of idols, but a complex
mythology peopled heaven with gods-Woden and Thor,
Freya and Balder, and others of inferior rank-devised
legends of the origin of earth and man, Valhalla the
hero's paradise, and a shadowy hell for all who were not
heroes. Some of its legends are coloured from Christian
sources, and underneath the mythology may be detected
a ruder and more ancient superstitious belief in omens and
divination, -a nature-worship more like that of the Celts..
But it is the later form which represents the Norse character
as it was when it came into contact with the nations of
Britain, its daring defiance of man and the gods, its
struggle with, yet in the end its calm acceptance of, the
decrees of fate. The Norsemen both at home and in their
colonies in Scotland embraced Christianity under Olaf
Tryggvason in the end of the 10th century; but along
with Christianity they retained the old heathen senti-
ments and customs, which, like their language, mingled
with and modified the Celtic character on the western but
far more on the northern coasts and islands, where the
population was largely Norse. A strain neither Celtic nor
Teutonic nor Norman occasionally meets us in Scottish
history it is derived from the blood or memory of the
Norse vikings.

Kenneth
Mac-

:

3. Later Celtic Period: Growth of the Kingdom of Scone from Kenneth Macalpine to Malcolm Canmore.-During alpine. this period, though the Celtic annals are still obscure, we can trace the united Celtic kingdom growing on all sides under Kenneth's successors, southward by the conquest of Lothian on the east and by the union of the Strathclyde kingdom on the west, and for a time by holding English Cumbria under the English kings, and northward by the gradual incorporation of Angus, Mearns, Moray, and possibly the southern district of Aberdeen. Kenneth Macalpine's reign of sixteen years (844-860) was a time of incessant war. He invaded Saxony (Lothian) six times, burnt Dunbar, and seized Melrose (already a rich abbey, though on a different site from the Cistercian foundation of David I.), while the Britons (of Strathclyde) burnt Dunblane and the Danes wasted the land of the Picts as far as Cluny and Dunkeld. After they left Kenneth rebuilt the church of Dunkeld and replaced in it Columba's relics. He died at Forteviot and was buried at Iona.

Perhaps tanistry, by which the successor to the king was
elected during his life from the eldest and worthiest of
his kin, usually a collateral in preference to a descendant,
was one feature, for it certainly prevailed amongst the
Irish and Scottish Gaels. The next king, who succeeded
in accordance with that custom, was Constantine I. (863- Constan-
877), son of Kenneth. His reign was occupied with tine 1.
conflicts with the Norsemen. Olaf the White, the Norse
king of Dublin, laid waste the country of the Picts and
Britons year after year, and in 870 reduced Alclyde,
the British capital; but, as he disappears from history, he
probably fell in a subsequent raid. He is said to have
married a daughter of Kenneth, and some claim in her
right may account for his Scottish wars. In the south the
Danish leader Halfdan devastated Northumberland and
Galloway; while in the north Thorsten the Red- —a son of
Olaf by Audur, the wealthy daughter of Ketil Flatnose
(called Finn, "the Fair," by the Celts), a Norse viking of
the Hebrides, who afterwards went to Iceland and figures
in the sagas-conquered the coast of Caithness and Suther-
land as far as Ekkials Bakki (the Oikel). But he was
killed in the following year. Constantine met with the
same fate at a battle at Inverdovat in Fife in 877, at the
hands of another band of northern marauders. His death
led to a disputed succession. His heir, according to the
custom of tanistry, was his brother Aodh, who was killed
by his own people after a year. Eocha, the son of Run,
a king of the Britons, claimed in right of his mother, a
daughter of Kenneth, according to the Pictish law, and
governed at first along with Ciric or Grig, his tutor; then Grig
Grig ruled alone, until they were both expelled from the
kingdom and Donald II., son of Constantine, came to the
throne (889). The Pictish Chronicle reports that during
the government of Grig the Scottish Church was freed
from subjection to the laws of the Picts (meaning probably
from liability to secular service).
from liability to secular service). Grig is also said to
have subdued all Bernicia and "almost Anglia,” a state-
ment which if confined to the north of the Northumbrian
kingdom is not improbable, for it had then fallen into
anarchy through the attacks of the Danes. The church
of Ecclesgreig near Montrose possibly commemorates Grig
and indicates the northward extension of the monarchy of
Scone. In the reign of Donald II. (889-900), son of Donal.(
Constantine I., Scotland was again attacked by the II.
Norsemen. Sigurd, the Norse earl of Orkney, seized
Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and part of Moray, where
he built the fort of Burghead, between the Findhorn and
the Spey. Farther south the Danes took Dunottar, where
Donald was slain. After his time the name of the kingdom
of Scone was no longer Pictavia, but Albania or Alba, a
more ancient title of northern Scotland, perhaps resumed
to mark the growth of the Scottish-Pictish monarchy in
the central and eastern Highlands.

Donald II. was followed by Constantine II. (900-940), Constan-
son of Aodh and grandson of Kenneth, and his long reign is tine II.
a proof of his power. He was the greatest Scottish king,
as Angus MacFergus had been the greatest of the pure
Pictish race. In the first part of it his kingdom was still
beset by the Norsemen. In his third year they wasted
Dunkeld and all Alba. Next year they were repulsed in
Strathearn. In his 8th year Rognwald, the Danish king
of Dublin, with earls Ottir and Oswle Crakaban, ravaged
Dunblane. Six years later the same leaders were de-
feated on the Tyne ( in East Lothian) by Constantine,
who had been summoned to assist Eldred, lord of Bam-
borough. Ottir was slain, but Rognwald escaped and
reappears some years later as king of Northumberland.
This is a battle whose site and incidents are told in a con-
flicting manner by different chronicles; but it appears
certain that Constantine saved his dominions from further

Malcolm

L

II.

serious attacks by the vikings. He had now to meet a successor of Athelstan, expelled Olaf, son of Sitric, from 914 more formidable foe,-the West Saxons, whose kings, the Northumberland, and in the following year, to prevent the descendants of Alfred, were steadily moving northwards. Cumbrians from again aiding the Danes, he "harried In spite of his wars, Constantine found time in the early Cumberland and gave it all up to Malcolm, king of Scots, part of his reign for two important reforms, one eccle- on condition that he should be his fellow-worker both on siastical, the other civil. In his sixth year (906) he, along sea and land." This was the same policy which led his with Cellach, bishop of St Andrews-the first of twelve father to call in the aid of Erik Bloody-Axe. The kings Celtic bishops of Scotland-swore on the Hill of Faith of Wessex wisely granted what they could not hold to the at Scone (906) that "the laws and discipline of the faith, and best northern warrior, Celt or Scandinavian, under cothe rights of the churches and the gospel, should be pre-ditions which acknowledged more or less strictly their served on an equal footing with the Scots." This obscure supremacy. The Cumbria so granted was the country notice of the Pictish Chronicle indicates the establishment south of the Solway to the Dee, but it may also have or restoration of the Scottish Church, which the Pictish included Strathclyde, for at this period Strathclyde Waelas kings had oppressed, to an equality with that of the Pictish. and Cumbrians are frequently used as equivalent names. As a sign of the union the crozier of St Columba, called Malcolm lent no aid to Erik Bloody-Axe, when in the Cathbuadth ("victory in battle "), was borne before Con- reign of Eadred he tried (949) to recover Northumberland, stantine's armies. Two years later, on the death of but he joined his brother-in-law Olaf, Sitric's son, in an Donald, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, Constantine expedition with the same object, when they laid waste procured the election of his own brother Donald to that the country as far south as the Tees. Three years later kingdom. Though he thus strengthened church and state, Erik again returned, and finally drove Olaf back to IreAlfred's successors were too powerful for him. The Anglo- land, where he founded the kingdom of Dublin, which Saxon Chronicle records of Edward the Elder, that in 924, lasted till the battle of Clontarf. Malcolm died fighting having built a fort at Bakewell, in the Peak of Derbyshire, either against the men of Mearns or of Moray. Three "the king and nation of the Scots, Rognwald the North- kings followed (954-971),-Indulf, son of Constantine, umbrian and others, and also the king of the Strath- Duff, son of Malcolm, Colin, son of Indulf; in the reign clyde Welsh and his people, chose him for father and of Indulf the Northumbrians evacuated Edinburgh, which lord." His son Athelstan is related by the same authority to thenceforward was Scottish ground. A Saxon burgh, a have subjugated all the kings in the island, amongst whom fort, perhaps a town, was now for the first time within are mentioned by name Howell king of the west Welsh, the Celtic kingdom. Constantine king of the Scots, Owen king of Gwent, and Eldred of Bamborough, who "made peace with oaths at Emmet and renounced every kind_of_idolatry." These entries are not beyond suspicion. The Peak was a distant point for the Scottish king. Rognwald, the Northumbrian, died in 920, according to the Irish Annals. Howell and Constantine were already Christians and could not have then renounced idolatry. If there is any truth in the submission of the Scots to 'Edward the Elder it did not last, for some years later the Chronicle states that Athelstan went into Scotland with a land and sea force and ravaged a great part of it. A league of the northern kings against Athelstan was dispersed (937) by his great victory at Brunanburgh (? Wendun, between Aldborough and Knaresborough, according to Skene). The forces allied against him were those of Constantine, his son-in-law Olaf, son of Sitric (called also the Red), and another Olaf, son of Godfrey, from Ireland, besides the Strathclyde and north Welsh kings. For Athelstan there fought, in addition to his own West Saxons, the Mercians and some mercenaries from Norway, amongst them Egil, son of Skalagrim, the hero of a famous Icelandic saga. No greater slaughter had been known since the Anglo-Saxons, "proud war-smiths," as their poet calls them, overcame the Welsh and gained England. A son of Constantine was slain, four kings, and seven earls. Constantine himself escaped to Scotland, where in old age he resigned the crown for the tonsure and became abbot of the Culdees of St Andrews. Athelstan died two years after Brunanburgh, but before his death granted Northumberland to Erik Bloody-Axe, son of Harold Haarfagr, who was almost immediately expelled by the Irish Danes. Athelstan, even after so great a victory, could not annex Northumberland, much less Scotland, to his dominions.

Constantine's successor, Malcolm L. (943-954), son of Donald II., began his reign by invading Moray and killing Cellach, its chief king. Meantime the Danish kings of Dublin had been endeavouring to maintain their hold on Northumberland with the aid of the Cumbrians, whose country they had already settled, and in this attempt the two Olafs had a temporary success; but Eadmund, the

Kenneth II. (971-995), son of Malcolm, soon after his Kenneth accession made a raid on Northumberland as far south as Cleveland. The statement of two English chroniclers (John of Wallingford and Henry of Huntingdon), that Lothian was ceded to him by Eadgar on condition of homage, and that the people should still use the language of the Anglès, is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon or any Scottish chronicle. Nor is it easy to believe the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as amplified by Florence of Worcester, that Kenneth was one of the kings who rowed Eadgar on the Dee in sign of homage. At this time, in the north and west, the Orkney earls were all-powerful, and Kenneth was occupied with contests nearer his own territory, especially with the mormaer of Angus, whose grandson, through his daughter Fenella, he slew at Dunsinane, and in revenge for which he was himself treacherously killed at Fettercairn in Mearns by Fenella, whoso name is still preserved in the traditions of that district. The foundation of the church at Brechin is attributed to this king.

Kenneth was followed, as he had been preceded, by insignificant kings,-Constantine, son of Colin, and Kenneth, son of Duff. His son, Malcolm II. (1005-34), gained Malcolm the throne by the slaughter of his predecessor Duff at II Monzievaird, and at once turned his arms southwards; but his first attempt to conquer northern Northumberland was repelled by Ethelred, son of Waltheof, its earl, who defeated him at Durham. About the same time Sigurd, earl of Orkney, having defeated Finlay, mormaer of Moray, became ruler, according to the Norse saga, of, "Ross and Moray, Sutherland and the dales" of Caithness. He had conflicts with other Scottish chiefs, but appears to have made terms with the kings of both Norway and Scotland, -with Olaf Tryggvason by becoming Christian and with Malcolm by marrying his daughter. He fell at Clontarf (1014), the memorable battle near Dublin, by which Brian Boru and his son Murcadh defeated the Danish kings in Ireland and restored a Celtic dynasty. Malcolm conferred the earldom of Caithness on his grandson Thorfinn, the infant son of Sigurd; and Sigurd's Orkney earldom fell to his sons, Somerled, Brusi, and Einar; while Moray again