Strathclyde by Tim Clarkson

Author:Tim Clarkson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2017-12-26T05:00:00+00:00

6

KING DUNMAIL

Dyfnwal, son of Owain, began his reign in what seems to have been a time of relative peace between the Cumbrians and their neighbours. There is no record of warfare involving Strathclyde in the immediate post-Brunanburh period, between 938 and 944, nor any hint that the kingdom lay under the yoke of a foreign power. An entry in the Annals of the Four Masters, an Irish chronicle written in the seventeenth century, tells of an English victory over Constantin mac Áeda, Anlaf Cuarán and the Britons in 940, but this is undoubtedly a misplaced record of Brunanburh.1 During the early 940s, Dyfnwal appears to have maintained fairly stable relations with the kings of Alba, Dublin, York and Wessex. This picture is mirrored in a contemporary account of the travels of a Scottish holy man, St Cathroe, who went on pilgrimage around this time.

Vita Kaddroe, ‘Life of Cathroe’, is a hagiographical account written within a decade of the saint’s death at the Frankish monastery of Metz c.971. Its author was Ousmann (or Reimann) a monk at Metz who had lived there during Cathroe’s abbacy.2 From the Vita we learn that the saint was born around the year 900, in the kingdom of Alba, to aristocratic parents whose names were Fochereach and Bania. The names Cathroe and Fochereach suggest that the family was Gaelic-speaking, although their recent ancestry may have been Pictish. There is a hint that they lived in Perthshire: young Cathroe became a teacher at a monastic school overseen by St Bean, his paternal uncle, who may have been based in Strathearn.3 At around forty years of age, probably in 940 or 941, Cathroe embarked on a pilgrimage to the Continent, following a path taken by many Celtic monks before him. The first stage of his journey brought him to a church dedicated to St Brigit of Kildare, most likely at the monastery of Abernethy in Fife where, according to local tradition, one of Brigit’s nuns had founded a mission among pagan Picts in the sixth century. From there, the Scottish king Constantin mac Áeda is said to have personally escorted Cathroe on the next stage of his journey, bringing him to terra Cumbrorum, ‘the land of the Cumbrians’. A more realistic scenario is that Constantin provided the pilgrim with a company of soldiers to guarantee his safe passage to the Strathclyde border. Crossing into Cumbrian territory, Cathroe was welcomed by King Dovenald (Dovenaldus) whom the Vita describes as a relative. Dovenald is undoubtedly Dyfnwal, son of Owain, king of Strathclyde.4 The name was rendered by the hagiographer in a form similar to its tenth-century pronunciation. It is possible that the original source or informant, who may have been Cathroe himself, had in mind the equivalent Gaelic form Domnall (pronounced ‘Dovnal’) rather than the Cumbric name but this does not challenge the identification with Dyfnwal, despite attempts by some historians to see Dovenald as an otherwise unknown Scottish prince on the throne of Strathclyde.5 The precise nature of Dyfnwal’s kinship with Cathroe is not explained and could have been based on marriage rather than blood.

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