Bring Back the King! But Find Him First!

Some kings are not supposed to lie easily in death. Take Mary Queen of Scots.  At first she was put to rest, if not ignominiously, then without full honours, in Peterborough Cathedral.  When her son became James I of England, nothing less would do than to give her the full, symbolic honour of reburial in Westminster Cathedral.

   The monarchs of Scotland who have met their end in England have not been lucky with their ultimate resting places.  Worst of all was King James IV who, after his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, was wrapped in lead and conveyed to Berwick and then to Newcastle.  The Queen of England (Catherine of Aragon) wanted to ship the corpse to her husband Henry VIII who was fighting in France.  But the idea seemed a bit un-English, not to say impractical, to the commanders in the north of England.

Death steals the crown of King James IV (from contemporary woodcut)

Then came an almost comic tussle over the Scottish king's remains.  Bishop Ruthal of Durham had already nabbed some keepsakes of the king for his cathedral and wanted James's body as the centrepiece of his collection.  But the victor of Flodden, the Earl of Surrey, would not have it.  So the corpse was conveyed south.  After this the tale gets a bit muddy.  A story that the corpse was displayed naked on horseback in the streets of London is almost certainly untrue. The corpse was in fact stored in a lumber room in a monastery at Shene in  Surrey while Henry VIII deliberated what to do with it.  Then it was forgotten by most.

   Yet even that  was not the end of the indignity.  Queen Elizabeth's glazier, a rogue named Lancelot Young, took it upon himself to remove the king's head and use it as a football.  It was later given a, sort-of decent burial in a London churchyard.  The rest of the body, it seems, lies buried in the ruins of Shene, perhaps where peaceful Richmond Park is now.  In the light of the recent discovery of King Richard III in a carpark in Leicester, calls have been made to seek out the remains of the Scottish monarch.  Will it actually be done?  I doubt it.

   History is full of could- have/would-have be's.  Perhaps the best chance of a dignified end for the king's remains would have been if Ruthal had his way and the body remained - for a time at least - at Durham.  At least there he would have been within restful distance of Scotland.  There would have been a chance of eventual repatriation for the body too. After all the marauding Malcolm Canmore was at first interred in Tynemouth Abbey, but then brought home to Scotland by his son, Alexander.

   Is there hope for the return of James IV still?

The Afterlife of King James IV, to be published by Chronos Books, April 2019

                                                                   

Canmore - Who Was Bighead?

The head that wears the crown has to be large. But what exactly does this mean - symbolically big, physically huge, an appellation with mystical connotations? Severed heads loomed large in several strains of Celtic legend and the cult of the severed head was an attested reality in pagan times. The most famous survival in literature, thanks to his starring role in the Mabinogion, is Bendigeidfran, Brân the Blessed, whose separated head entertained his comrades as they journeyed back from campaign in Ireland and was interred on the White Hill in London to protect the Island of the Mighty being invaded by foreigners.

   Also in the Mabinogion - in the tale of Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed - there is a character named Pendaran who teaches Pryderi. This name is a compound of pen and taran and seemed to mean 'big headed'. T. F. O' Rahilly (in Early Irish History and Mythology, p. 515) also highlights the Irish name Condollos 'Great-headed' (cennmór), which he states 'would have been [an] appropriate [appellation] of the Otherworld deity. . . and such appellatives were frequently used as names of men.’ In the year 580 the Irish annals record the death of 'Cennaleth, king of the Picts' (alternately called Cindaeladh, Cennalath). Nothing is known of this person, albeit that he reigned during the time of Aedan mac Gabran of Dal Riada and was perhaps an oppenent of his. H. M. Chadwick (Early Scotland, p. 14) states that the name seems to be Gaelic and then speculates that, 'Perhaps it was a nickname, denoting “head-warrior” or “speckled-head”.'



   All of which brings us to the most famous Big Head of them all, Malcolm Canmore. King Malcolm III ruled from 1058 to 1093, dying on campaign in Northumbria where he focussed much of his warfare. Otherwise known in Gaelic as Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, his alternative designation by later historians was King Malcolm III Canmore. Putting aside the puzzle of whether Canmore in his case was an indicator of a physical characteristic, or a nickname applied to the primacy of his chieftainship, or even a quasi-pagan name steeped in antiquity, the historian A. A. M. Duncan stated that the name did not relate to this Malclom at all, but to Malcolm IV, otherwise known as the Maiden, who reigned from 1153 until 1165 (at the age of 24).

   In The Kingship of the Scots (2002, pp. 74-75), Duncan points out that the nickname was not used by contemporaries of Malcom III, but was only entered into later written histories.  Moreover, there is a record by the chronicler William of Newburgh that suggests that the notoriously ailing Malcolm IV may have been afflicted with a condition that would have well matched the soubriquet 'big head'.  William states that the young king suffered from severe pains in the feet and head for several years before his death.  This, according, to Duncan shows that: 

Malcolm IV suffered from Paget’s disease, osteatis deformans. . . whose hallmark is “excessive and disorganized resorption and formation of bone”, particularly observable in the tibia and the skull...Those with such pronounced symptoms experience pain, even severe pain, in the affected bones, but, even before modern treatments, the disorder was itself not rapidly fatal unless bone sarcoma, signaled by rapidly worsening pain, set in.

   He adds that the Annals of Ulster noted his demise by stating that  Maelcoluim Cennmor son of Henry, highking of Alba, died, and it was only later that the name became fixed to the previous King Malcolm.  He then cites transference of nicknames in other dynasties, such as 'the legend of Kyffhäuser which arose after the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250 and was later applied to his grandfather, Frederick I.’  But of course there is still the possibility that it was wrongly ascribed by the Annals of Ulster to the wrong ruler.

   Whatever the truth, the name Canmore has a mysterious resonance still, and we are unlikely to ever pinpoint the exact relevance of its meaning.

X-Ray of skull affected by Paget's Disease

Murder at the Feast, The Treachery of Scone

Many Murders, Many Feasts?

Like the last post, which featured the holy island of Iona, I will return to the subject of this piece, Scone, as it is a place with nearly as many legendary and historical accretions. Primary among these is the story that the Scottish king Cináed mac Ailpín, or Kenneth mac Alpin, murdered a number of Pictish nobles at a feast in this place and thus affected the political union of the Picts and Scots. The first thing to say about this legend - and it is a legend - is, apart from the fact that the story is old, there are plenty of parallel tales from other places.



   It would be as well to look at Ireland first, as there may be obvious common Gaelic ancestry to the motifs of death at the feast or extinction of ancient races. When tribal names ceased to be used, for whatever reason, later writers sometimes explained this by saying that the entire identified people had been wiped out. In Ireland it was stated that the tribes named the Domnainn and Gáliain were exterminated. The Gáliain suffered a nasty supernatural end when most of them were killed by druids chanting malevolent spells against them. The tale about a massacre of Picts appears as the title to a tale, Braflang Scóine, 'Treachery of Scone', which appears in the 12th century Book of Leinster as one of the famous tales which poets should be able to recite. The fame of the legend was widespread soon after this, for a version of it was known by Giraldus Cambrensis in Wales. His work Liber de Printipis Instructione, 'Instructions for Princes,' was started in the late twelfth century. According to him:

The Scots betook themselves to their customary and, as it were, innate treacheries, in which they excel all other nations. They brought together as to a banquet all the nobles of the Picts, and taking advantage of their excessive drunkenness and gluttony, they noted their opportunity and drew out the bolts which held up the boards; and the Picts fell into the hollows of the benches on which they were sitting, caught up in a strange trap up to the knees, so that they could not get up; and the Scots immediately slaughtered them all.

   Gerald may well have heard this story while he was in Leinster in the winter of 1186. Earlier in the 12th century the English Henry of Huntingdon may have been drawing on different, Scottish sources when he wrote that Kenneth attacked the Picts and secured the monarchy, battling against them seven times in a single day (an oblique reference to overcoming all seven legendary Pictish regions in one go?).


    Beyond Britain of course there are plenty of corollaries of the murder at the feast legend. The Scottish historian M. O. Anderson found a parallel to the tale in the Russian Primary Chronicle. The ancient Greek writer Herodotus gives two prototypes for the murder at the feast tale: Cyaxares of the Medes invites the Scythians to a feast and slays them after getting them intoxicated. Queen Neitakri of Egypt drowns feasting nobles who had been responsible for the murder of her brother in an underground chamber.



 Meanwhile we could cite the supposed murder of Celtic Britons by the Saxon Hengist in similar circumstances, as contained in the tales given by Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth. This tale also harks back to the supposedly historical incident of 88 BC when  Mithridates V, the Great, invited sixty Celtic chiefs of Galatia to a feast and slaughtered them all.

Berchán, Fordun and Other Early Versions

   The earliest account of the treachery incident in embedded in the Prophecy of Berchán, a long poem celebrating many Irish and Scottish kings which in its present form is 14th century, but containing much early material.  This source speaks of Picts - signified as 'fierce men of the east' - being tricked and slaughtered by Kenneth 'in the middle of Scone of the high shields'.  Digging in the earth is alluded to, possibly linking the earliest tradition to the tale told by Giraldus.  According to the latter, a band of Pictish aristocrats were invited to a banquet and after they became sufficiently drunk, bolts were withdrawn from the benches they sat it, they fell into a trap or pit beneath and were slaughtered.  (An alternative translation of Braflang Scóine is 'The Pit-fall of Scone'), A note in the Pictish kings lists stated that one of their last rulers, Drust son of Ferat, died at Forteviot, and there is a possibility that the story of his death migrated to Scone and was magnified.

   The Berchán text magnifies the ferocity of Kenneth, 'a man who will feed scald-crows':

He is the first king from the men of Ireland in Scotland who will take kingship in the east; it will be after strength of spear and sword, after sudden death, after sudden slaughter. The fools in the east are deceived by him, they dig the earth, mighty the occupation; a deadly goad-pit, death by wounding, on the floor of noble shielded Scone. Seventeen years, heights of valour, in high-kingship of Scotland; after the slaughter of Picts, after the harassing of Vikings, he dies on the banks of the Earn.

    A far different version of events is offered by John of Fordun in his Chronicle of the Scottish Nation [IV. 3]. In his story, Kenneth's Gaelic chief men are too scared of the Picts to attack. So Kenneth disguises himself with luminous fish scales on his cloak and, during the night, and passes himself off as an angel with a message that God commanded them to attack the Picts. The following day the Gaels fought the Picts and overcame them. Hector Boece adopted this story in the 16th century But the tale likewise has parallels elsewhere. Herodotus tells the story of the exiled Pisistratus to restore himself to power in Athens. He found a handsome and statuesque young woman called Phye, dressed her in armour and mounted her in his own chariot to impersonate the goddess Athene, patron of the city. When they drove through Athens, the crowds were awed into accepting his rule once more. The disguise theme is a well-attested occurrence in folklore, occurring throughout Eurrope (firstly in Italy in the 14th century) and suggests a story that Fordun had picked up from oral sources. The 'disguise as a deity' theme is classified as K1828, and 'disguise as an angel' K1828.1, in Thomson's Motif-Index iv, 438.

   This tale is both a dilution of the more brutal earlier tale, transmuting it into a folk legend, but also contains the trace of the tradition that there was an ideological, religious element to the suppression of Pictish independence. A chronicle in the Poppleton manuscript refers back to a lost source describing the destruction of the Picts as a divinely ordained act in revenge for them going against God's will, 'because they not only spurned the Lord’s mass and precept, but also wished to be held equal to theirs in the law of justice [or, 'they did not wish to be held equal to others in justice.].' This may have been a reference to some stubborn Pictish adherence to customs in their own Church.   A 13th century record referring to the reign of King Giric mac Dúngail (878-889) returns to this scheme and states that 'he was the first to give liberty to the Scottish churhc, which was in servitude up to this time, after the custom and fashion of the Picts.'


   But whatever the facts, Kenneth had not singled out the Picts aggressively on their own for religious or any other reasons.  He is reported to have fought against the Saxons 6 times and burned Melrose and Dunbar in a southern campaign.

Versions in Later Historians

 By the time of the Declaration of Arbroath in the early 14th century it was believed (by some at least) that the Picts had been entirely wiped out. There was little original added to the legends in the 15th century Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland:

Quhen Alpyne this kyng was dede,
He left a sowne wes cal'd Kyned,
Dowchty man he wes and stout,
All the Peychtis he put out.
Gret bataylis than dyd he,
To pwt in freedom his cuntre!   

   In the 15th century the Scotonichron of Walter Bower added folkloric and other elements to explain the supposed reasons behind Kenneth's aggression against the Pictish nobles. First was that the Picts killed the king's father Alpin, and also an alliance between pagan English and Pictish forces. More strangely, another reason was the theft of a hunting dog taken by the Picts from the Scots. The 16th century work of John Leslie said that Kenneth defeated the Pictish king Dunster and invaded their town of Camelodonum, killing the inhabitants. Then he passed through all Pictish provinces, nearly putting their name into oblivion and out of memory. Those who escaped went to Denmark or Norway or to Northumberland. Kenneth divided countries among his husbandmen, renamed them. Also in the 16th century George Buchanan repeats Fordun fish scale disguise story. There was a mighty slaughter of the Picts in battle. Kenneth decimated the Picts and defeated them in a fight again in the following year:

The force of the Picts was wholly broken by this overthrow, and Kennethus wasted Lothian and the adjacent country together with those beyond the Forth, that they might never be able again to recover themselves. The garrisons, for fear, surrendered themselves. Those few Picts who were left alive fled into England, to an indigent and necessitous condition.

The Killer Kenneth?

 Both Kenneth and his father Alpin bore Pictish names and their origins remain mysterious. One conundrum is the fact that all his immediate descendants and successors undoubtedly bore Gaelic names.It is undoubtedly true that the external pressures of Viking raids may have weakened the two north British nations and forced a union. But cultural trends were perhaps moving towards a kingship which encompassed a wide territory. Contemporary with the supposed conqueror Kenneth, Ireland had its first high-king in the person of Máelsechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid. It has to be noted that slaughters during feasts actually occurred. Kenneth's own son-in-law Áed Findliath in 870 gave a banquet at Dublin for the purpose of slaughtering the chieftains of the Vikings.

   Yet it seems to easy to credit that a single act of treachery could have 'wiped out' the Picts. Apart from the apparently Pictish names there is the fact that several kings in the immediate generations following Kenneth described themselves as kings of the Picts. Many generations before them there had been Gaelic-Pictish cultural and settlement cross-fertilisation which makes the cataclysmic murder theory untenable. Kenneth is supposed to have reigned for 16 years over the Picts and was also responsible for bringing relics of St Columba from Iona into mainland Scotland, a move which was partially in response to Viking incursions in the the west. It is widely thought that he dignified Dunkeld with the saint's relics. Some of the relics also went to Ireland at the same time.


   Whether Kenneth took advantage of Scandinavian aggression in Pictland is another bone of contention. There was a massive victory for the Vikings there in the year 839 which must have weakened its fighting capabilities. But the notion that he deliberately took advantage of this turmoil is not specifically mentioned until Fordun in the 14th century. What actually happened in terms of the Scots' motivations and actions and the subsequent fate of the Picts is hard to fathom . One pragmatic theory is imagining that the Scots, hemmed in by political pressure from several directions and physically constricted by the geography of Dal Riada, chose to take advantage of expansion into Pictland when the inhabitants of that region were more concentrated on the threat from Norse warbands. This was the favoured solution of Isabel Henderson.

   When he died he was mourned by the bards, and a fragment of his eulogy has survived:

That Cinaed with his hosts is no more [or, Kenneth, of many stables]
Brings weeping to every home:
No king of his worth under heaven
Is there, to the bounds of Rome.

The Vanished Race:  Picts in Tradition

  One side-effect of the legend of the Pictish massacre is the supposed extinction of the Picts entirely. One popular and widespread folk tale is the story of the last picts, popularly known as 'Heather Ale' in some versions.  According to this the Pictish race dwindled into a single father and son who were captured by the Scots and forced to reveal the secret of their race's heather ale.  The father asked his son be killed and then he would reveal the recipe.  This was done, but he said his son may have given up the secret but he never would, so he flung himself off nearby cliffs.  The tale is localised in may places, particularly Galloway, where it has mingled with the legend that Picts once lived in this region.

   The Northern Isles also have there legends of the people.  In one of these, the Picts arrived here from Picardy, but quarrelled among themselves.  Some fled to Scotland, others to the furthermost part of the isles and the last of them were slain by Norsemen.  They were noted for their diminutive size.  Part of this tradition was set down in writing in the Historia Norvegiae, around 1180, portraying the Picts as magical pygmies who built fabulous walled towns morning and evening but vanished underground in their houses at noon. The folk tales therefore seem to have been developing in parallel, or at least closely following, the 'state sponsored' version of the massacre of the Picts at Scone.

Chapel on the supposed site of the Moot Hill at Scone

Sources Consulted

A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, 1922, rep. Paul Watkins, Stamford, 1990.

M.O. Anderson, Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1973.

John Bannerman, ‘The Scottish takeover of Pictland and the relics of Columba,’ John Bannerman, in Spes Scotorum, Hope of Scots, Saint Columba, Ireland and Scotland, ed. Dauvit Broun and Thomas Owen Clancy, T and T Clark, Edinburgh, 1999, pp. 71-94.

Peter Berresford Ellis, Celt and Saxon, The Struggle For Britain AD 410-937, Constable, London, 1992; paperback edn 1994.

Alan Bruford, ‘What happened to the Caledonians?’, in Alba, Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era, ed. E. J. Cowan and R. Andrew McDonald, The Tuckwell Press, East Linton, 2000, pp. 43-68.

George Buchanan, Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582).  A hypertext edition by Dana F. Sutton, University of California, Irvine.

Thomas Owen Clancy, ed., The Triumph Tree, Scotland’s Earliest Poetry AD 550-1350, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1998.
Myles Dillon and Nora K. Chadwick, The Celtic Realms, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967.

A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842-1292, Succession and Independence, Edinburgh University Press, 2002.

Isabel Henderson, The Picts, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967.

Benjamin T. Hudson, The Kings of Celtic Scotland, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1994.

Benjamin T. Hudson, The Prophecy of Berchán, Irish and Scottish High-Kings of the Early Middle Ages, Greenwood Press, Westport, Conneticut, 1996.

John Leslie, The Historie of Scotland, translated (1596) by Father James Dalrymple, volume I STS, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh (1888).

Alan Macquarrie, Medieval Scotland, Kingship and Nation, Sutton Publishing Ltd, Stroud, 2004.

F. J. O' Byrne, Irish Kings and High-kings, BT Batsford, London, 1973.

T. F. O' Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, T. F. O’Rahilly, Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, 1946; rep. 1999.

Smyth, Alfred P., Warlords and Holy Men, Scotland AD 80-1000, 1984, rep. Edinburgh University Press, 1989.

River Tay near Perth

     

The Iona Dead - To Walk On Kings (Ecgfrith and Bridei)

Set foot on the island of Iona and you are immediately immersed in an undeniable spiritual atmosphere which would, you think, be corrosive to the views of hardened atheists.  But there is another layer of otherworldly significance here, or perhaps underworldly influence.  For to walk here is to walk on the remains of umpteen kings from many nations.

   The number of rulers buried here is disputed, and the numbers will be considered in future posts.  But one initial, surprising fact is that the first king recognised as being laid to rest here was neither Gael nor Pict, nor even a Briton of Strathclyde, let along a Viking:  he was in fact a northern English ruler.

   Ecgfrith son of Oswiu had been overlord of the southern Picts and had led his warband into their territory when they attempted to cast off Northumbrian rule in the year 685.  Against him was Pictish ruler Brude (or Bridei), a son of Beli, the British king of Strathclyde.  The English were lured into a fatal place and their king was slaughtered.  Some of the Northumbrians survived and escape, others were captured, but it was a decisive victory for the Picts. (Further details can be read in my Angus blog:   The Battle of Dún Nechtain, A Rearguard Action in Defence of Dunnichen).

   It was believed that Ecgfrith's remains were taken to Iona for burial, possibly because members of his family had close connections with the religious community there.  But the fact has recently been disputed by the historian James Fraser who ingeniously suggests that the ruler was interred in 'Columba's other island', Icolmkill in the Firth of Forth.  Whichever fate befell his body, the attitude of the Irish church on mainland Ireland was not so forgiving.  In the year before his death a senior Northumbrian noble had taken a fleet and seriously ravaged the eastern seaboard of Meath.  The motives are not entirely clear, but may have involved the presence of exiled British warriors from the north of Britain there.  Some of those affected in the Irish church were instilled with the desire for revenge and watched events in Pictland with great interest as news of the Northumbrians riding north filtered back to them.  Recent history had made them partisan and they weren't supporting the English in their venture, as one early surviving poem makes clear:

Iniu Feras Bruide Cath

Today Bruide gives battle

over his grandfather’s land [or, for his grandfather's heritage]

unless it is the command of God’s son

that it be restored.

Today Oswiu’s son was slain

in battle against iron [blue?]swords 

even though he did penance,

it was penance too late.

Today Oswiu’s son was slain,

Who used to have dark drinks [black draughts?]

Christ has heard our prayer 

That Bruide would save Brega [?]

   

Almost nothing else is known of the victory of Nechtansmere, except that he was styled in some sources 'king of Fortriu' (in northern Pictland) and that he died eight years after his decisive victory. But there is a curious account of him buried in the 10th century Irish Life of St Adamnan of Columba. It seems that Bruide's body was also carried to Iona for internment (one wonders if he was to be buried next to the man he had killed?). According to the hagiographical tradition:

The body of Bruide, son of Bile, king of the Cruithnigh, was brought to Ia, and his death was sorrowful and grievous to Adamnan, and he desired that the body of Bruide should be brought to him into the house that night. Adamnan watched by the body till morning. Next day, when the body began to move and open its eyes, a certain pious man came to the door of the house, and said, ‘If Adamnan’s object be to raise the dead, I say he should not do so, for it will be a degradation to every Cleric who shall succeed to his place, if he too cannot raise the dead.’ ‘There is something of right in that,’ replied Adamnan. ‘Therefore, as it is more proper, let us give our blessing to the body, and to the soul of Bruide.’ Then Bruide resigned his spirit to heaven again, with the blessing of Adamnan, and the congregation of Ia. [Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, and Other Early Memorials of Scottish History, ed W. F. Skene, H. M. Register House, Edinburgh, 1867, 122-3.]

   What does the story mean?  Possibly nothing more than a passing nod to the realisation that the age of miracles beloved by the early Church was finished. After the story comes a poem, which may be very much earlier than the prose and perhaps even an echo of a composition written by Adamnan himself:                  

         Many wonders doth he perform,

                                                                                                  The king who was born of Mary, 

He takes away life,

           Death of Bruide son of Bile:

           It is rare, it is rare,

           After ruling the northern kingdom

           That a hollow stick of withered oak

           Is about the king of Alcluaith.

   The above translation was given, somewhat inaccurately, by Skene.  A more accurate translation was given by M.O. and A. O. Anderson in their edition of the  Life of St Columba (1961, 96-97):

The King that is born of Mary performs many wonders :  life to a scuapan  in Mull, death to Brude, Bile’s son. It is strange, it is strange, that after his being in the kingship of the people a block of hollow withered oak should be about the son of the king of Ail-Cluaithe.

   The meaning of scuapan is something like 'little sheaves', but what it alludes to is unclear.  Probably it is not a person's name, but whether it alludes to harvest time, a once known incident, or something else, is not now known. 

   Regardless of the mysteries, it may well be fact that victor and conquered lie close by each other in the quiet island rest of Iona.

   
   

Queens and Women Rulers

Who were the earliest queens or female rulers in Scotland? 

Wife of the Silver Arm

Unfortunately we do not know any very definite rulers who fall out of the shadows of legend and can be identified as real? Far to the south we have the formidable Celtic British example of Boudicca and - almost in our area - there was the equally formidable Roman ally Cartimandua, ruler of the Brigantes, who was fully able to put a side her husband and partner her charioteer, plus engage in a civil war with her ex-partner. From classical evidence we probably only have the wispy testimony of Dio Cassius who tells the story of a meeting between Julia Augusta, wife of Severus, and an unnamed British woman (probably royal or at least high-born) in the far north during the Roman invasion of the region in 208 AD. This 'British woman' was presumably a Caledonian noble, a precursor of a Pictish princess. The encounter has the Roman lady query the tendency of native women to have multiple partners. The latter replies that, 'We fulfil the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women: for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest.' Although the speech may be rhetorical rather than actual, it may reflect the social habits and bearing on noble women in the far Celtic north. In another passage Dio says, 'They dwell in tents, naked and unshod, possess their women in common, and in common near all the offspring.' 

   We know that the named husband of this woman - Argentocoxos - bore a legitimately Celtic name, meaning 'silver leg', reminiscent of the Irish god Lugh of the Silver Arm. 

Pictish Matriliny

The existence of the concept of matriliny among the Picts has long been disputed and remained for many decades a bone of contention, along with the dispute about which language, Celtic or pre-Celtic, the northern tribes spoke. At its simplest the most prevalent view might be represented, almost randomly, by this quote (The Celtic Realms, 75): 'Succession among the Picts was through the female. Moreover there are indications in the traditions of the Picts that the fathers were often, if not usually, members of unrelated clans, sometimes foreign princes on a visit.'  The theme of Pictish matriliny occurs in various Irish texts, but the earliest known version is the one given by Bede.  According to his tale, the Picts ventured to the north of Ireland and were then sent on to the northern part of Britain.  The Picts had no women with them and they were given wives by the Irish on the condition that 'wherever the matter was in doubt, they should choose a king for themselves from the female royal lineage rather than the male'.  The king lists of the Picts overwhelmingly show that no king succeeded his father until  near the very end of the records, though an admitted complication is that the lists are doubtfully historic until around the time of the late 6th century Bridei son of Maelchon.

   In the end the arguments about the existence or form of succession among the Picts is a cultural cul-de-sac, much like the previous and still occasionally combustible disagreements about which language or languages they spoke. What can be said, at least, is that there are traces of evidence to suggest that the status of female royals was significant in the sense that they seem to have sustained their own courts and centres of power. In one of the admittedly later Legend of St Andrew there is a story of the cleric Regulus travelling to the religious centre of Monikie (in Angus), where he met the Pictish queen named Findchaem and her newly born daughter Mouren. (Those interested can read further in my Angus Folklore blog).

Drusticc of Galloway 

One of the earliest attested female royals was Drusticc, a 6th century figure most associated with Galloway. As befits the tangled cultural associations of that area in the post-Roman period, her origins are unclear. Drusticc is mentioned in the Book of Ui Maine and the Book of Leinster; in the latter (fol. 373a) being named in a list of saints as mother of Lonan of Treoit (a Galloway saint), son of Talmach: 

Dustric, daughter of Drust, king of the Britons of the north, and mother of Lonan, Talmach's son. Of her it is said: 'Drust, king of the free estuary from the shore had one perfect daughter, Dustricc, very haughty to others; the mother of Lonan, Talmach's son. 

Another fragment of tradition about her occurs in the Martyrology of Donegal:

Truist, king of the free bay on the strand, Had one perfect daughter, Dustricc, she was for every good deed (renowned). 

 The most complete legend of her appears in the Irish Liber Hymnorum, in a preface to the story of the hymn Parce, Domine, supposedly composed by Mugint in Whithorn. The story runs that Finnian of Moville journeyed with fellow monks Rioc, Talmach and others to receive instruction from Mugint at the famous monastery of Whithorn. Also at Whithorn was Drusticc, daughter of a British king Drust, who had entrusted her to Mugint to be educated. On the arrival of the Irish saints the princess became infatuated by Rioc and promised Finnian all Mugint's library if she were allowed to marry him. Unfortunately, Finnian fooled her by sending Talmach to her in the night in the shape of Rioc. After their assignation Drusticc became pregnant with Lonan and blamed Rioc. Mugint became infuriated at this diplomatic incident and told a boy to attack Finnian with an axe when he came into the church, but became the victim of the attack himself, by divine justice. In repentance he composed the hymn Parce, Domine. (See Anderson, Early Sources, 7-8; MacQueen, St Nynia, 42-44). 

The Isle of Whithorn 

   The tale may seem plausible enough, but the cultural background is complicated. Galloway was undoubtedly heavily influenced by the Irish in early times, but was overwhelmingly British Celtic in speech and character before its assimilation by the English of Northumbria in the 8th century. Its rulers may have been from the shadowy kingdom of Rheged, or possibly an offshoot of the more northerly kingdom of Strathclyde. Yet Drust as a name does not appear in the extant king's lists of either dynasty. It is a Pictish name and seems to give credence to the later erroneous tradition that there were Picts living in Galloway. Ninian, founder of Whithorn, supposedly converted the Picts to the north, and there may have been some influx of noble converts or students to his religious settlement. (There is a Pictish symbol stone in the area.) Drust appears in the Pictish king-lists and there were two rulers who may have been contemporary with the 6th century St Finnian.

   A similar legend is noted in the Irish Life of St Cuthbert, where the Northumbrian saint goes into seclusion in the northern wilderness, but attracts the unwanted attentions of a Pictish princess. When she accuses him of rape, the earth opens up and swallows her at a place named Corruen.

Castle Maol 

The Gaelic Tradition - A False Historical Dawn?

   The most intriguing Gaelic tradition of female leadership, albeit one which is only possibly associated with Scotland, is the story of Cúchulain's gaining the spear of Bulga from the warrior Scáthach or from her double, Aífe. The Irish hero was trained in a number of heroic feats by Scáthach, the 'Shadowy One', who has sometimes been linked with the island of Skye. In 'The Wooing of Emer' (Tochmar Emire) the Irish hero and his fellows travel to Alba and receive instruction at the dun or fort of Scáthach. Whether or not Skye is indeed Tir Scáith, the Land of Scathach, is impossible to determine now with any certainty. Dunscaith possibly remembers her, but in historical times it was a seat of the MacDonalds of Sleat (and was taken forcibly by the MacLeods in the 16th century). One tradition states that the fairies built this stronghold in a single night.

  Other traditions associating women with martial prowess are evident in the outer isles. Martin Martin, in A Voyage to St Kilda (first published in 1698, following a journey the previous year). He tells us of a valley on the island named the 'Female Warrior's Glen', where her reputed house was still standing and used as a summer shieling by islanders. After giving a description of the house and describing her love of hunting, Martin leaves the subject unfortunately by saying, 'There are several Traditions of this famous Amazon, with which I will not further trouble the Reader.'

   The Irish sources, when it comes to examining these very ancient threads, are too meagre to determine the true traces of the importance of female quasi-mythological female deities associated with early rulers. The alleged founder of the Irish settlement in Argyll was Fergus, son of Erc, and there are suggestions that Erc was 'perhaps a river goddess' (A.A.M. Duncan). A putative river god, Nes, may also feature in the Dal Riata lineage.  Sovereignty was imagined in very early ages among the Irish and others as a goddess whom any rightful ruler must wed.  One early image of this feminine force was Medb (and whose name signifies 'intoxication') who was specifically named as the consort of Ireland's king.  How far this can be correlated into Scotland's past is uncertain, but there is a possibility that the Moothill of Scone, ritual centre of the Picts before the Scots, is perhaps associated with a goddess cognate with the Gaelic Crede.

Traditions of the Hebrides

   Traditions of female rulers in the Hebrides are more evident, albeit tantalising in detail, than anywhere else in Scotland. An Irish writer, writing possibly in the 8th or 9th century, commenting on an earlier work by stated that the Ebudaes are under one king and they are all separated from one another by narrow straits: The king has nothing of his own; but all the property of all his subjects belongs to him. He is forced by definite law to act properly; and in order to prevent his being deflected by avarice from the right course, he learns justice by poverty, since he has no private possessions, but is supported at public expense. No woman is given to him for his own wife, but he takes on loan, one after another, any woman of whom he becomes enamoured. So he is not allowed to either pray or hope for children. Historical records of queens in the islands in confined to Eigg, when in April 617 the Annals of Tigernach and other sources record the death of Donnan of Eigg with 150 martyrs. Some of the Irish records record the cause of the death was that the saint took up his abode where the queen of the island's sheep used to graze. The territorial dispute led to her getting the monks killed, though some annals state the number of slain as being 52 and the culprits being sea robbers.

A recurring, if rather elusive, feature in folklore in the Hebrides is the tradition of giant women.The earliest instance is recorded as a fact in the Annals of Ulster, around the year 891: 

The sea threw [up] a woman in Scotland. [She was] 195 feet in height; her hair was 17 feet long; the finger of her hand was 7 feet long, and nose 7 feet. She was as white as swan’s down.

  Another name for the island of Eigg, coincidentally or not, was Eilean nam Ban Móra, 'The Isle of the Big Women'. ('The Isle of the Women' also features in the folk-tale 'Great Gulp' in More West Highland Tales.) On the farm named Heynish on Tiree (according to John Gregorson Campbell) there was an old burial ground called 'The Burial Place of the Big Women'. Stones from here were taken to build a farm outhouse and when a Mull man slept here in the barn one night, he was woken by his dog snarling at something unseen. Then he heard faint voices exclaim, 'This is the stone that was at my head.' He refused to sleep there again.

   Jura is another island which notably features magical women in folk stories. J. F. Campbell gave tale of 'Seven Big Women of Jura' in Popular Tales of the West Highlands. There are traces of traditions of giant goddesses who possessed herds of deer and Jura's name derives from Norse, meaning 'deer isle'. The Paps of Jura are conspicuous landmarks and are considered by some to be linked to ancient pagan worship as a cult centre. The scholar W. J. Watson went a considerable distance to claim the antiquity of tradition attached to the Hebrides. Taking Er-domon as an ancient designation of the Inner Hebrides (which appears sometimes in Irish written sources as Iardomon), he cites the area as the original home of the monstrous Fomorians of Gaelic legend and points our that one of their supposed rulers was 'Indech, son of the goddess Domnu'. Then he adds:

The connection of the Fomorians with the Isles shows that here we have to do with a goddess of the deep sea, who was the tutelary divinity of the Isles and the divine ancestress of their ancient kings. This Domnu is distinct from the goddess of the Irish fir Domnann.

Viking Queens and Others

   The tradition of female royals in the Western Isles is substantial and deserves looking at in some detail. John Gregorson Campbell informs that the island of Islay allegedly received its name from the Scandinavian princess Ile, who went to bath in a loch there, got stuck in the mud and drowned. 'The head and footstones of her grave are some distance from each other, and of three persons, who successively attempted to open the grave to see what the bones were like, each died mad!'

   The question as to whether the Scandinavian folklore on the Isles is a survival from earlier culture is unclear. St Kilda, as seen from above, has the remnants of a tradition of a female warrior, but whether it ultimately derives from Gaelic or Norse legend is impossible to determine. The word Kilda may come from the Norse keldur, deriving from a female water sprite recalled by the Icelandic kelda. There was at least some degree of cultural cross pollination among northern, even in written sources. In Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum we have the example of the 'wild Queen of Scotland' named Hermuthrada or Hermutrude. Whether this means we can believe that she was the remembered archetype of a royal Pictish woman of high lineage, as James Frazer stated in The Golden Bough, is another matter.

   The recurring theme of Norse princesses in the Hebrides is their coming to grief in various places and being buried in places afterwards remembered by tradition. So, we can example (in Tales from Barra) the remains of a daughter of a Norwegian king found on Barra at the place named Tràighiais. Her grave was for centuries pointed out at Eoligarry, near where a schoolhouse was later built. In Skye, between Duntulm and Flodigarry, is the peak named on maps as Sron Vourlinn , but locally known as Sron Bhiornal. Here was buried a Norse princess named Biornal who wanted to be laid at rest high in the hills so her tomb could look across the sea to her native land. This princess is said to have burnt the islands of Raasay and Rona in revenge for the murder of her brother Storab in the former place.

   Coeffin Castle in Lismore was the supposed home of the Viking prince Caifean. His sister Beothail died of a broken heart when her lover died in a far away war and she was buried at Eirebal. However she did not feel at peace in this place and made her lament known (reported by Lord Campbell in Records of Argyll (1885) and reprinted in The Lore of Scotland):

My heart is grinding behind the stone, Down to dust, down to dust.While he of the fair and clustering locks (Man of my love, man of my love), Lies in quiet, and I not near him, Far from the tower, far from the tower.

   News of her post-mortem disquiet reached her father, the King of Lochlann, and he sent a longship to carry her home. Her bones were washed in a holy well on Lismore and transported back to Scandinavia to lie beside her ancestors. But still she did not rest easy, for there was a small bone from her toe which was left behind in the holy well. The toe was recovered and laid with the rest of her remains and at last she was at peace. 

   On Skye (according to Seton Gordon, Otta Swire and many others) there is another royal Viking woman interred beneath the very prominent cairn of stones on the summit of Beinn na Calliche. Swire adds the tradition that, 'It was believed that if she saw danger approaching she would return to warn her children’s children.’ The most famous female Scandinavian relic of Skye's folklore in one Saucy Mary (probably not her given name). According to Otta Swire:

To the east of the little town of Kyleakin a small promontory juts out, crowned by the ruins of Castle Maol. The main wall of the ruin, eleven feet thick, was cracked from top to bottom in the great storm of 1 February 1948, bust Castle Maol still stands as 'saucy' today as when it was built in the twelfth century by 'Saucy Mary', a Norwegian princess, wife of a Macdonald of the time, who used the castle to extract toll from every ship which passed through the Kyles. It is said she had a chain across from the castle to the mainland shore. Some chain! Later, Castle Maol came into the possession of the Mackinnons of Strath.

   Alasdair  Alpin Macgregor notes an identical tradition from Lewis, where the Norse princess's chain stretched across the narrows between Lundale and Bernera.

   The South Uist version of a common tale ('Mór, Princess of Lochlann,' by Duncan MacDonald, in Scottish Traditional Tales) tells of a local woman who prevented the wandering spirit of a woman returning to her grave by placing her distaff across it. The spirit said she was the daughter of the King of Lochlann, and had drowned in the sea nearby. She told the Uist woman where her casket full of treasure was buried, but despite looking for it, the treasure was never recovered. Some versions of this tale place the setting in Uig on Lewis, and one in particular states that a local woman was tending her cattle in a summer shieling at Cnoceothail one evening in the 17th century, a place which overlooks the cemetery of Baille-na-Cille. Around midnight she saw all the graves open and the bodies rise and scatter in all directions. Later, one by one, they returned to their tombs, except one which was long delayed, so the woman again placed her distaff across the grave to prevent the spirit returning and demanded to know its identity and where it had been. The form stated it had been delayed because it had further to go than the others, returning to the place of birth in Norway. In return for allowing her to return to her resting place the spirit woman informed the woman that there was a magical blue stone in a nearby loch and that, if it was recovered, it would bestow great powers on her son. The local woman recovered the stone and gave it to her son, Kenneth, Coinneach Odhar, who became the great Brahan Seer. An outlying tradition from the central Highlands seeks to explain the decimation of the great Caledonian Forest.  A Scandinavian king employed his foster-mother, a winged monster or muime, to destroy the trees.  (Later legend also blamed another woman for deforestation in the region:  Mary, Queen of Scots).  Also on the mainland, there is a tale of a maiden and her Viking lover Prince Olaf coming to improbable grief at their own hands because of a romantic misunderstanding, set around the island in Loch Maree.

Fairy Queen and Witches

   In more recent centuries the female figure transmuted from the supposed real to the more elusive and intangible.  On Islay the hill of  Ìle was a home of the Fairy Queen and she dispensed wisdom here to all the women of the land.  Those who missed drinking from her magical cup remained stupid and were scorned as being 'still on the hill when wisdom was handed out'.  In Lowland Scotland the witch ruler was named Gyre-Carlin(e), sometimes identified with Nic Nevin.  Under the latter name she appears in the 16th century Complaynt of Scotland and in the Bannatyne Manuscript, in the same era the Gyre-Carlin is called the 'Queen of Jowis' who is married to Mohammed.  The poet Alexander Montgomerie described her figure in his Flyting:

Nicnevin with her nymphes, in number anew
With charms from Caitness and Chanrie of Ross
Whose cunning consists in casting a clew.

  Spanish Postscript

   A late tradition from Mull concerns the daughter of the King of Spain, Viola (in Gaelic Bheòla)  . She dreamt that she could find the man of her dreams if she sailed with the Spanish armada. When her ship came into Tobermory Bay the local Macleans went out to meet her and when Viola saw the face of Maclean of Duart she recognised her dream man. But the wife of Duart learned of this and that her husband was visiting the vessel every day. Her consultation with local witches failed to find a solution, until one of them succeeded in sinking the ship. A variant tells that the jealous wife did the job herself by smuggling gunpowder aboard a ball of wood (with the complicity of her English servant Smollett), while another version has the Spanish sending another ship to Scotland to seek revenge, piloted by Captain Forrest.  Maclean's wife enlisted the 18 witches of Mull, who transformed into seagulls, raised a storm and sunk the ship opposite Coire-na-theanchoir Bay. 

   It is true that a Spanish ship -  the Almirante di Florencia or the San Juan de Sicilia - foundered in Tobermory Bay, but the exact circumstances are unknown.  Another version of the tale had the entire crew being killed, apart from the cook, who was carried by the blast to Strongarbh.  Successive attempts in recent years by the Duke of Argyll and others to rescue the supposed sunken treasure on the galleon have not succeeded.

                                                                   Selected Sources

Anderson, A. O., Early Sources of Scottish History, volume 1, rep. Paul Watkins, Stamford, 1990. 
Boyle, Alexander, 'Matrilineal Succession in the Pictish Monarchy,' The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 161, Part 1 (Apr. 1977), pp. 1-10.

Bruford, A. J., and MacDonald, D.A. (ed.), Scottish Traditional Tales, Polygon, Edinburgh, 1994.

Campbell, J.F., More West Highland Tales, 1940, rep. Birlinn, Edinburgh, 1994. Volume 1.

Campbell, John Gregorson, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, James MacLehose, Glasgow, 1902.

Chadwick, H. M., Early Scotland, The Picts, The Scots and The Welsh of Southern Scotland, Cambridge University Press, 1949.

Chadwick, N. K., ‘Pictish and Celtic Marriage in Early Literary Tradition,’ Scottish Gaelic Studies 8 , 1958, pp. 56-116.

Chadwick, N. K. and Dillon, Myles, The Celtic Realms, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967.

Dixon, J. H., Gairloch and Guide to Loch Maree, 1886, rep. Gairloch and District Heritage Society, 1974.

Duncan, A.A.M., Scotland, The Making of the Kingdom, 1975, rep. The Mercat Press, Edinburgh, 1989.

Gordon, Seton, Highways and Byways in the Central Highlands, Macmillan, London, 1948.

Gordon, Seton, Highways and Byways in the West Highlands, 1935, reprinted Birlinn, Edinburgh, 1995.

Macgregor, Alasdair Alpin, The Haunted Isles, Life in the Hebrides, Alexander Maclehose and Co., London, 1933.

Mackenzie, Alexander, The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer, 1877, ed. Elizabeth Sutherland, rep. Constable, London, 1977.

Macpherson, John, Tales From Barra, new edition, Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2014.

MacQueen, John, St Nynia, Edinburgh, Polygon, 1990.

Martin Martin, A Voyage to St Kilda, R. Griffiths, London, 1749.

Newton, Norman S., Islay, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1988.

O' Rahilly, T. F., Early Irish History and Mythology, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946.

Smyth, Alfred P., Warlords and Holy Men, Scotland AD 80-1000, rep. Edinburgh University Press, 1989.

Swire, Otta, Skye, The Island and its Legends, 2nd. edn., London, Blackie & Sons, 1961.

Watson, W. J., The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, 1926, rep. Birlinn, Edinburgh, 1993.

Westwood, Jennifer and Kingshill, Sophia, The Lore of Scotland, A Guide to Scottish Legends, Random House, Lonon, 2009. 

Woolf, Alex, 'Pictish Matriliny Reconsidered,' The Innes Review vol. 49, no. 2 (Autumn 1998), 147-67.