A New History of the Picts by McHardy Stuart;

Author:McHardy, Stuart;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 6175965
Publisher: Luath Press Ltd
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

the flight before Máelchá’s son; and the death of Gabrán son of Domangart.

[Annals of Ulster, URL 546.1]

Adomnan, one of Columba’s successors as the Abbot of Iona, writing in the later years of the seventh century tells us Bridei Mac Maelchon was king of the Picts. Gabran was a Dalriadan but it is notable that the reference in the Annals of Ulster refers to neither Gabran or Bridei as a king. Adomnan tells us that the saint on one of his visits to King Bruide at Inverness that he was ‘in the presence of the ruler of the Orcades’ [Ibid]. This has been interpreted as meaning that the ruler of the Orcades was not only a king but was in some sense a sub-king to Bridei. However this is not stated explicitly, though Bridei is referred to as a king. By Adomnan’s time, under the pressure for Northumbrian expansion it seems likely that a centralised kingship was beginning to form amongst the Picts. It is this process, the development of kingship in response to external aggression that I suggest led to the formation of the Pictish kingdom north of the Forth–Clyde line and in Columba’s role in the Dalriada kingship process we can perhaps discern how the Church would have played a part in such a development. By the end of the seventh century the Church in Scotland was under the control of Rome and was much more centralised and rigidly structured than the original Columban Church had been. This must have affected how the leaders of the Picts reacted to their own political situation.

The Scots were perhaps already a more coherently structured grouping prior to this. The document known as the Senchus FerN’Alban, generally believed to be based on a 10th century original but with material from earlier describes the Dalriadan Scots as being divided into three main groupings, the Cenel nGabrain, the Cenel nOengusa and Cenel Loairnd. These terms clearly conform to the fundamental tribal idea of claiming descent from a common ancestor, these here being Gabrain, Oengusa and Loairnd, with Gabrain possibly being the father of that Aedan crowned as king by Columba in the sixth century. It is hardly a stretch to see the linkage between the concepts of Cenel and the clan in later times. This is clear evidence that the basic tribal system of the Q-Celtic speaking tribes of Dalriada survived into at least the sixth if not the seventh century, though like the Pictish tribal system it was in a process of change. Adomnan specifically tells us that

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