Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban.: Volume I. History and Ethnology. by Skene William Forbes

Author:Skene, William Forbes [Skene, William Forbes]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Scottish History
Publisher: Grian Press
Published: 2014-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Kingdom of Scotia.

Moravia is here not included among the Norwegian and Danish possessions. On the death of Sigurd, the Norwegian earl of Orkney, it had become freed from the Norwegian rule, and its rulers appear to have considered themselves so far independent as to claim the Celtic title of Ri or king, Findlaec, the son of Ruadhri, who appears in the sagas under the name of Finleikr Jarl, and whose slaughter by the sons of his brother Maelbrigdi in 1020 is recorded by Tighernac as Mormaer of Moreb, is termed in the Ulster Annals ‘Ri Albain’; and Tighernac, in recording the death of his successor Malcolm, the son of his brother Maelbrigdi, and one of those who slew him, in 1029, terms him ‘Ri Albain’.567 There can therefore be little doubt that the king Maelbaethe, who submitted to King Cnut, was Macbeth, the son of Findlaec, who appears under the same title which had been borne by his cousin and his father.568 The native rulers of Airergaidhel or Argathelia appear also to have borne the Celtic title of Ri, and it is probable that Jehmarc represents in a corrupted form the name of the ruler of this district.569 These kings would probably have little scruple in rendering their submission to King Cnut the Dane, from their having so recently been under Norwegian rule.

Three years after this expedition Malcolm died. Tighernac records his death in 1034 as king of Alban and head of the nobility of the west of Europe;570 but we now obtain an additional source of information for this period of the history of very great value in the Chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who was born in the reign of this Malcolm, in the year 1028, and notices a few of the events in Scottish history which took place during his own lifetime. The first Scotch event noticed by him is the death of Malcolm, which he says took place on the twenty-fifth of November 1034, and he terms him ‘king of Scotia’.571 The kings of Alban occasionally appear as kings of the Scots, but this is the first instance in which the name of Scotia is applied as a territorial designation of their kingdom. Used by a contemporary writer, who was himself a native of Ireland, it is evident that the name of Scotia had now been transferred from Ireland, the proper Scotia of the previous centuries, and become adopted for the kingdom of the Scots in Britain in the reign of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, which ushers in the eleventh century, superseding the previous name of Alban.

With Malcolm the descendants of Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the Scottish dynasty, became extinct in the male line. Had any male descendant existed, there would have been great risk of the territories now composing the kingdom becoming again disunited. As Malcolm had no son, but at least two daughters who had male issue, Cumbria and Lothian would naturally have passed to the nearest heir in the female line;

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