The Dark King and The Strangest Death

Three Dark Secrets

   This is one of the strangest, most convoluted tales ever associated with a king in Scotland, so bear with me while I pick out some of the strands - without a promise that I will come to the bottom of the mystery in any way.  The king named Dubh, 'the black', ruled for only a few years in the late 10th century.  No surprise in this, given the turbulence of the era and the competitive, rival kindreds which supplied the leaders of the fledgeling Scottish nation. There are few facts known about the reign of Dub, but a body of legend around him which probably arouse later.  We know that he likely rules in conjunction with another king and that his death was associated with an eclipse of the sun.

   The few recorded facts of the reign can be summarised quickly.  The son of King Malcolm I, Dubh came to power in 962 when the previous ruler Indulf (or Indulb) died. Early annals state there was continued emnity between rival kingship factions which resulted in Dubh defeating Indulf's son Cuilén in battle.  The place of this encounter - 'upon the ridge of Crup' - can't be identified, but it was possibly somewhere in Atholl as the mormaer of that provice, Dubdon, died there, as did the abbot of Dunkeld, named Duchad. Further internal aggression apparently led to Dubh's death in the year 967, but the earliest sources are silent about the circumstances, unlike others. One source says that he was driven out of the kingdom, possibly by a resurgent Cuilén , but it seems more likely that he was killed and in the north of the kingdom.  Several historical sources state that he invaded the northern province of Fortriu and that he died in Forres.  And that's where the stories take a strange twist.

   It is thought possible that Dubh and Cuilén ruled jointly for a period, an arrangement known as comrighe, with each being lethrí 'co-king' who shared the kingship rather than either ruling as Iánri 'full king.' After Cuilén's defeat Dubh rode north to quell factional enemies. The 12th century Prophecy of Berchan contains much traditional material couched in enigmatic terms, and it says the following about Dubh's raid:

One of the kings goes on an useless expedition across the upper regions in the Plain of Fortriu; though he may have gone, he does not return, the black of the three dark secrets will fall.

   What the three darks secrets exactly were, we shall unfortunately never discover. (They find a curious echo in the work of historian Andrew of Wyntoun, when a descendant of the Mac Duff kindred makes three requests of Malcolm III.)


  The various accounts differ on what happened afterwards. The 14th century historian John of Fordun (Chronica, IV. 26, partly relying on earlier sources) says that that Dubh led his army to Forres, where he was slain, after which his body was hidden under a bridge at Kinloss and the sun refused to shine until it had been removed. Was the eclipse one of the three dark secrets?

Death by the Moon:  The Eclipse of Kings

   The first thing to say is that there was an actual eclipse in northern Europe around this time. A. O. Anderson advised that L’art de Verifier les Dates stated the event occurred at 4pm on 20th July 966. However, the 19th century historian W. F. Skene gave the date as 10th July 967. It has been suggested that this eclipse could not actually be seen in Scotland, but this is not certain.  The Annals of Ulster state that the king died in 967, but the discrepancy is a minor point.

   If the actual event was real and the death of the king also, the association between the two events would have been recognised as portenteous. The theme of a solar eclipse accompanying treachery is common in European literature.  Plus the other motif of the 'sun refusing to shine when a murder is done' is another widespread motif in folklore (motif F.961.1.1 in Thomson's Motif-Index, iii, 247).  As far as may be judged, Dubh was regarded (albeit in somewhat later writing) as a good and just ruler.  However, it should be noted that royal death being associated with heavenly events did not necessarily signify the worth of the ruler involved.  William of Malmesbury relates a tale of King William Rufus (in his De Gestis Regum) on the night before he died, when he 'dreamt that he was being bled, and a spurt of blood [shot] up to the sky overcast the sun and brought darkness upon the day'.  

   In Scotland the significance of strange celestial occurrences was also marked and from a very early date.  The Annals of Ulster note that the moon was like blood around the time of the death of the Argyll king Domangart, son of Domnall Brecc, in 673.  The Pictish king Angus son of Fergus also had his passing marked by a 'dark moon'.

   Most significantly, in this northern context, is the tradition which surrounds the king named Giric, who died a century before Dubh. In a parallel with Dubh, Giric - co-incidentally or not - also jointly ruled with another king, named Eochaid.  Giric was linked to the middle-eastern saint variously named St Cyricus or Cyrus (or Giric) and early records (the source once called the Pictish Chronicle) states that an eclipse of the sun took place in the ninth year of this king's rule, on the saint's day, 16th June 885. On this very day (according to the Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland), 'Eochard with his foster-father was now expelled from the kingdom.'  The ancient church of St Cyrus (anciently Ecclesgreig) was in the Mearns and the king, under alliases Greg and Gregory seems very much associated with this region, with memories in place-names in neighbouring Angus.  (Both Angus and Mearns seem to have formed the Pictish province of Circinn.)  It is also noteworthy that Dubh himself had a son named Giric.

Sueno's Stone

   There is a possibility that the death and aftermath of Dubh is recorded in stone, on the massive monument known as Sueno's Stone, erected near Forres. This stone takes its name erroneously from a Viking king (Swein) who is supposed to have battled the Scots here, a story inspired in part by the scenes of armed violence carved on the stone.  Spurious Viking tradition aside, it has also been conjectured that the stone is showing a message relating to a great battle here, possibly between the kingdom of Scots and the semi-autonomous rulers who sometimes displayed too much independence in  this area, which in Pictish times had been named Fortriu and was later named Moray.  

   But surely the site is significant.  Just outside Moray, on the road to Kinloss.  A.A.M. Duncan proposed that the battle refers directly to that in which Dubh was slain.  There is what appears to be a body stricken prone and laid beneath an arch or bridge (along with other corpses), and a head within a box - the head of the slain monarch?  It may be the stone was set up by Dubh's brother, Kenneth II (Cináed mac Maíl Coluim), who reigned from 971-995.  Kenneth was a ferociously active ruler who campaigned in many regions and he notable continued the feud in the far north, contending with Cuilén's brother Amlaíb.

Sueno's Stone

The Compensation of Clan MacDuff

   While Dubh's brother Kenneth ruled in the late 10th century, the later descendants of Dubh did not. True, the Annals of Ulster record the death in 1005 of Cinaed mac Duib,  Kenneth III, king of Scots, but here the line - as rulers of the kingdom - falters.  The reasons and details are not clear.  This Kenneth III had a son named Giric, who may have ruled jointly with him (echoing past and future arrangements). Eligibility to rule was never straight forward in Gaelic society under the convoluted laws of tanistry, and sometimes changes were made to regulate succession among competing kindreds.  For whatever reason, the children of Dubh were set aside. Whether or not they had a prior territorial claim on the region, Dubh's descendants may have  become Mormaers and then Earls of Fife.  The ancestry is not certain.  But it is thought that Macbeth's queen Gruoch was a member of this kindred. Her grand-daughter married a son of Malcolm III named Aedh and the MacDuff rulers of Fife descend from this line.

  They held this office until the latter 14th century.  This kindred maintained a powerful, symbolic connection with the ritual enthronement of Scottish kings during this period, which was undoubtedly part of the compensation of the clan for being excluded from eligibility for the kingship.  While this may appear odd, there are parallels from Ireland to show it was a feature in the upper echelons of Gaelic society. F. J. O'Byrne points out that ousted sub-kings still sometimes actually owned the inauguration sites of kings and therefore claimed and practised the rite to inaugurate new rulers.As late as the 16th century, he points out:

both Ó Catháin (O’Kane) and Ó hÁgáin (O’Hagan) of Tulach Óg were essential partners in the legal installation of O’Neill. A tract on the Uí Fiachrach says that at the inauguration of Ó Dubhda (O’Dowd of Tireragh), his arms, apparel and horse were given to Ó Caomháin, representative of an ousted dynasty... [Irish Kings and High Kings, p. 21]

   According to Duncan (writing in Scotland, The Making of the Kingdom), the clan MacDuff were 'clearly close to the royal line in a special sense' and Bannerman writes:

Such inaugural nobles were often heads of dynastic segments rewarded in this way for
demitting their own legitimate claims to kingship within the kin-based system of
succession. That the ruling family of the province of Fife was closely related to the
reigning royal house is indicated by their shared forenames Donnchadh (Duncan), Mael-
Coluim (Malcolm) and perhaps particularly the otherwise rare Causantín (Constantine).
Dub king of Scots (d. 966) belonged to this royal dynasty and is the only one of that name on record, which makes it all the more certain that he was the eponymous ancestor of the Clann Duib of Fife.

   The chief of the kindred was allowed the hereditary right to crown the new king of Scotland at Scone. The 15th century historian Andrew of Wyntoun claimed that MacDuff thane of Fife requested of Malcolm III the privilege for himself and his successors of enthroning the king of Scots at his inauguration, but the link is older than that.  There was also a 'Law of Clan MacDuff', whereby anyone claiming kinship with the head of the clan within the ninth degree could claim santuary following a crime at Mac Duff's Cross (a monument later destroyed, though its base remains) which was situated on the border of Fife and Perthshire.  Here there are traces of a uniquely powerful kindred with deep roots, special affiliations, and a family system that retained strong echoes of early medieval Gaelic structures.

Site of MacDuff's Cross in Fife.

Enter the Witches - A Later Fiction?

   

   Mention witches and Scottish kings and one would inevitably think of Macbeth and the Weird Sisters. But 16th century, and later historians, first associated the obscure ruler Dubh with witches, albeit the tales was not as richly worked as in the literary Macbeth version. It seems highly coincidental that the area of Forres, associated as it is with Dubh's death and the Sueno Stone, should be the place where Macbeth encountered the three hags. Of interest also is the possibility that Gruoch, Macbeth's wife, was an ancestress of the MacDuff rulers of Fife. (The victorian historian W. F. Skene surmised that the descendants of Dubh arrived in Fife as followers of Macbeth in the 11th century.) Whatever the connections, the story of witches associated with Dubh was embelished out of all historical recognition. From the original scant few lines recorded about the king initially, he was later the centre of a melodramatic supernatural drama, culminating in the lurid tale inncluded by George Sinclair (Satan's Invisible World, included at the bottom of this piece). At the instigation of his dynastic rivals, several witches tormented the king and caused him to wither away for six months before he actually died by mistreating a wax image of him. Other versions, including that of John Leslie, state the ruler was given noxious medicine which hastened his demise.




Shakespeare not only used those traditions and pseudo-histories of Macbeth found in recent historians, but also utilised traditions associated with Dub, as filtered through the dubious inventions of Hector Boece's Scotorum Historiae, and its translation by John Bellenden. According to the latter, Dubh or Duff had hanged several relatives of the captain of Forres castle, for conspiring with witches against him. Donwald's wife took umbrage and tasked her husband with killing the king the next time he stayed at the castle. This was done during the night when he was alseep. Dubh's throat was cut and the corpse removed from the fortress. The next morning, when the alarm was raised, Donwald angrily accused the king's two chamberlains. The body was concealed beneath a stream: 'and buryit it in the middis thairof, quhair the streme usit to pas; syne put ane gret stane abone his body, that na thing suld appeir hid in the said place.'



Shakespeare also utilised Ralph Holished's re-imagining of the eclipse tale, which Holinshed expanded to ratchet up the sense of eerie occurrence:

For the space of six moneths togither, after this heinous murther thus committed, there apeered no sunn by day, nor moone by night in anie part of the realme, but still was the skie covered with continuall clouds, and sometimes such outragious windes arose, with lightenings and tempests, that the people were in great feare of present destruction... Monstrous sights also that were seen within the Scottish kingdome that yeere were these: horses in Louthian, being of singular beautie and swiftnesse, did eate their owne flesh, and would in no wise taste anie other meate. In Angus there was a gentlewoman brought foorth a child without eires, nose, hand, or foot. There was a sparhawke also strangled by an owle... But all men understood that the abhominable murther of king Duffe was the cause heereof.

 

Selected Sources

Neil Aitchison. Macbeth, Man and Myth (Stroud, 1999).
A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History (1922, rep. Stamford, 1990).
John Bannerman, 'MacDuff of Fife,' in Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community, ed. Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer, pp. 20-38 (Edinburgh, 1993).
A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland, The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975).
A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots 842-1292, Succession and Independence (Edinburgh  2002).
Michael Evans, The Deaths of Kings, Royal Deaths in Medieval England (London, 2003).
Sally M. Foster, Picts, Gaels and Scots (London, 1996).
B. T. Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland (Westport, 1994).

B. T. Hudson, The Prophecy of Berchan, Irish and Scottish High Kings in the Middle Ages (Westport, 1996).
F. J. O' Byrne, Irish Kings and High Kings (London, 1973).
George Sinclair, Satan's Invisible World Discovered (Edinburgh, 1685).

The Resonance at Scone

Scone remains renowned as the crowning place of the the Scottish kings, and probable some Pictish kings before them, but there is scant evidence that there was even a unified Pictish seat of power at Scone before the union with the Scots, and Forteviot in Strathearn seems to have been the primary seat of power in the region associated with royalty.

   Nevertheless Scone was an important central site in southern Pictland with ritual associations which likely went back beyond history. As A. A. Duncan memorably described it (in Scotland, The Making of the Kingdom, p. 115), Scone was

where the salt water of the sea (and the powers of death who dwell in it) are finally turned back by the living waters of the river...

   This was a very likely ritual site, build on a barrow or ancient tomb, later called the Moot Hill (or, more ludicrously, Boot Hill), the scene of an inter-Pictish battle in 728.  The latter encounter was spoecificallt located at Caislen Credi, which possibly means Hill of Belief.  But there is a possible refernce to the Irish goddess Créde, as discussed below.  Nothing is clear about any of these references or hints, and even the brief desciption of the battle is tantalising rather than illuminating:

A pitiful battle between Picts at Caislen Credi; and the rout was upon the same Alpin, and his territories and his men were all taken from him. And Nechtan, Derile’s son, took the kingship of the Picts.

   Duncan notes reference to the description of Scone in the Prophecy of Berchan as 'of the high shields' and 'of melodious shields', which he conjectures is a reference to the beating of shields in acclamation at the enthronement of a new ruler.  The putative burial chamber, on top of which rightful rulers were ritually elevated to kingship, he stated was likely an ancestral goddess.  The true king marries the goddess of the land, and there is a trace of this pagan resonance when the 12th century king David I (noted for his rigid Christian piety as a 'sair saint') 'abhorred the obsequia', some kind of ritaual offering, at his inauguration on this spot.

The seal of King David I

   There may have been an earlier event on this hjoly spot which, in part, aimed at Christianising the place, while retaining its sanctity.  The annals record this event, probably in the year 906:

And in his sixth year king Constantine and bishop Cellach upon the Hill of Credulity near the royal city of Scone, pledged themselves that the laws and disciplines of the faith, and the rights in churches and gospels, should be kept in conformity with [the customs of] the Scots. From that day the hill has deserved this name - that is, the Hill of Credulity...

Cuckoo in flight:  bird of the Scone goddess?

   It is possible that the goddess Créde is a superimposition of a character, imposed by Scottish kings upon an equivalent or similar Pictish deity they found resident in this holy place.  The Irish goddess was possibly a personification of the regenerative powers of spring, and one source mentions here as one 'for whom the cuckooo calls'.  A figure very much like her is features in a poem named The Song of Créde, where she is portrayed as daughter of King Guaire of Aidne.  She falls in love with the tragic hero Dinertach.  She also seems to appear in the tale of Cano mac Gartnainn, which certainly contains echoes of cultural contact between the Picts of northern Britain and the Gaels of Britain and Ireland.  Her role as an ancestral figure is testified by the recording of Clann Créidhe and Síol Creidhe, Men of Connacht,  where she was regarded as ancestors of the O’Connors.  But the exact connection with Scone is as allusive as the appearance of the cuckoo itself.

The Cradle and the Crown - Birth Legends of Royals

   The mystery over the actual births of kings and queens is intimately associated with the mystery and legends of their ancestry, which in many cases had deep roops in paganism.  Even in Christian times recourse to outlandish claims of ancestry were not entirely extinguished.  Hence, the family of King Edward I in the 13th century proudly boasted that their frequent violent rages existed because they were descendants of a daughter of Satan.

   One especially prevalent legend Europe-wide is the story that the coming of a powerful ruler is marked by some significant celestial event.  This occurrence lingered into modern times, as Catherine Crowe in her supernatural compendium The Night Side of Nature (1848) reports:

On the 16 August 1769, Frederick II of Prussia is said to have dreamed that a star fell from heaven and occasioned such an extraordinary glare that he could with great difficulty find his way through it. He mentioned the dream to his attendants, and it was afterwards observed that it was on that day that Napoleon was born.

  Portents surrounding the arrival of a powerful prince were also evident in Britain. Shakespeare even commented on the legends which marked the birth of the powerful Welsh ruler Owen Glendwr, who was born in 1359. Stories circulated that on the eveing he was born the horses of Griffith Vychan, his father, were found standing in their stables up to their fetlocks in blood.  In a Scottish context, the coming of the child who who grown up to be James IV was also marked by supernatural signs.  Born in March 1472, there was an ausicious and prominent comet seen over Scotland in the previous months, foretelling his glory.  The 16th century historian John Lesley wrote:

James, eldeft fone to King James the third, wes borne the day of March 1472, quha eftiruart wes callit James the fourt, and wes ane jufte and guide prince. And comette mervellus appeirit in the fouthe, the xvij day of Januer till the xviij day of Februar, caftand gret beames of licht touart the fouth, and wes placet betuix the pole and the pleyaidis callit the fevin ftarnis, quhilk the aftrologis did afferme to be ane figne of mony mervellus changes in the warld.

   One can understand why, in retrospect, origin myths are attached to the stars among rulers.  Rather more intriguing, possibly, are those tales given to kings who disappointed in their promise or destinies.  Such a one was King James VI (afterwards I of England), who did not shine under either numeral. Young James's beginning was more inauspicious than his five royal namesakes before him.  There was doubt expressed about his paternity, and his mother pertinently commented to the suspicious Lord Darnley, soon after his son's birth in June 1566: 

My Lord, here I protest to God, and as I shall answer to Him at the great day of Judgement, this is your sone and no other man’s sone, and I am desirous that all here, both ladies and others, bear witness, for he is so much your sone that I fear it will be the worse for him.

   At the christening of the destined king, the reformer John Knox saw an idiot begging at the gates of Stirling Castle, which might have been taken as a bad omen.  The prince was born with caul over his face, contrarily said to be a mark of good luck and a guarantor that the person would never die by drowning.  There was even more mystery.  A long time later an infant was uncovered secreted within the walls of Edinburgh Castle, wrapped in a gold cloth.  Rumours states that this was possibly the true James VI and the boy who came to manhood and the throne was actually a child of Lady Reres or the Earl of Mar.
 

  Sometimes coincidence conspired to make the birth of an heir even more auspicious.  This was the case in the first born son of King Alexander III.  The Norse were still a major threat to the realm, especially in the Western Isles. However there was a double celebration celebrated in Scotland , as told by the chronicler John of Fordun:

Whence in all the bounds of Scotland redoubled praise resounded to God; because in the same day by one messenger came news of the death of the King of Norway who had plagued the king and kingdom, and by another the king was told of his son's birth.

      King Haakon IV was roundly defeated in the Battle of Large in October 1263, effectively ending four centuries plus of Scandinavian threat to the northern part of Britain.

   Other Scottish royal legends associated with birth are rather more insubstantial, but still intriguing.  King Robert II was born by caeserian in 1316 after his mother Princess Marjorie was thrown by a horse, the infant being cut from the dead body of his mother.  The trauma of the birth crippled him for life, and in earlier centuries such disfigurement would have ruled him out of his rightful leadership.  King James II (b. 1430) was renowned for his ferocious temper and evidence of his tempestuous nature was plain to see - a violent red birthmark covering his cheeck.  He was called 'James of the Fiery Face,' and was an accomplished ruler (and featured in Francois Villon's Ballade des Seigneurs de Tempis Jadis).

   King Robert III was born (around 1340) with the wrong name.  When it was clear he would inherit the kingdom he was obligied to change his given name, John, to Robert.  John was an unlucky name.  In Scotland it was borne by Robert Bruce's unfortunate predecessor, King John Balliol.  The historian John Lesley again comments:  'The nobilitie had an ill opinions of the name Jhone, because the kings of France and Jngland of that name war tane in the weiris, quhair for tha changet the name Jhon in Robert, eftir the name of his father. ' John of England had surrended his crown to the pope, while John of France captured by the English at Poitiers.

   There is a strange, unsubstantial tale concerning the birth of Malcom III (around 1031), which credits his existance to a dalliance between his father, King Duncan, and a miller's daughter near Forteviot in Perthshire.  This vestige of tradition either links back to customs of Celtic fosterage whereby high-born boys were placed in the care and raised by commoners, or otherwise it is a remnant tradition which gave supernatural parentage to some kings.  This latter theme is evident in both Celtic and Norse legends and features in stories about the origins of rulers such as King Harald the Fair and King Cormac mac Airt.

   Malcolm III's wife was the redoubtable Queen Margaret and her fame cascaded down her own lineage and throughout Scotland. An items of hers was peculiarly guarded by her descendants, though we don't know the full story behind it. The chemise sark of Margaret (who was regarded as a saint) was carefully cherished. There is notice in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland which details the expenses of bringing from Dunfermline to Stirling Castle via Inverkeithing this item, as a talisman to Mary of Gueldres, queen of James II, protecting her from any natal danger while she was giving birth to the future James III. The sark was again summoned for at the birth of James V in the early 16th century.  What became of it afterwards is not known.


                                                                                          

Eight Legs, Six Webs, One Cave: Bruce and the Spider

At the risk of being anachronistic, you can see the modern day tabloid versions of the headline:  EERIE ARACHNID INSPIRES WANNABE ROYAL...KING THANKS EIGHT LEGGED FRIEND FOR INSPIRATION.  Everyone sort of knows the legend of Robert Bruce and the spider and it is sort of a shame to delve into the tale too deep and risk spoiling the charm.  The basic story is that the exhausted king, on the run from the English after being crowned at Scone in 1305, was near breaking point.  He took refuge (the story usually says in a cave) and watched a spider repeatedly rebuild its webs after it collapsed several times (six times, some say), giving him the resolve and courage to muster his strength and fight back once again against his foes.  Since that time, it is advised, anyone with the blood of Bruce in their veins is committing a crime if ever they harm a spider.

Possible Settings

Those who might be foolhardy enough to want to visit eevery site whetre Robert Bruce encountered his inspirational spider would be kept busy for quite some time.  Here are some of the alleged sites where the story took place, in no particular order, most of them in the west of Scotland, with a proponderance in Bruce's home territory of Carrick, Ayrshire:

• The island of Rathlin, northern Ireland.

• Aberdeen.

• The King's Caves, Machrie, isle of Arran.

• West of the Kirtle Water, Kirkpatrick Fleming, Dumfriesshire.

• A hayrick in Carrick Field.

• Bruce's cave, north face of Hadyard Hill, Dailly, Carrick.

• Drumadoon, Arran.

• King's Cave, opposite Campbelltown, Argyll.

• King's Cave, Blackwaterfoot, Arran.

Bronze cast of Bruce's skull.

The Wrong Spider Man?

   One very plausible theory states that the original tale of the spider giving inspiration to the downtrod hero was originally attached to a different man, Sir James Douglas, who was a major player in Scotland's War of Independence. David Hume of Godscroft told the tale several centuries before it gained currency as a popular fable attached to the Bruce, in his History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus published in 1644. Godscoft has Douglas narrate the incident:

I spied a spider clymbing by his webb the height of an trie and at 12 several times I perceived his web brokeand the spider fel to the gound. But the 13 tyme he attempted and clambe up the tree.

   Like the spider story, Douglas - although a bona fide hero - has been magnified in his deeds by tradition.  Sir Walter Scott, who had a hand in weaving a version of the Bruce/Spider fable is his Tales of the Grandfather, has Douglas heroically perishing while fighting the Moors in Spain (in 1330), throwing the silver casket containing the heart of his beloved Bruce into the throng of the enemy as his last act and uttering, 'Go first into the battle, brave heart, as ever ye have done.'

Foreign Parallels (Worldwide Web of Folklore?)

   Many good legends, especially those with a simple moral, have variants found in lands far and wide. Strangely, there are no exact replicants of the Bruce/spider story, but there are other tales associating spiders with famous men. When Frederick II, the Great (king of Prussia 1740-8), was at Sans Souci he went to fetch a drink. Momentarily distracted he left his cup to one side and when he returned found that a spider had fallen into it. he called for a fresh cup and at the same moment heart a gun shot. His cook, who had tried to poison his drink, shot himself. A ceiling in the place was decorated with a spider to commemorate the event. When Mohammed was hiding in a cave from his enemies, the Koreishites, at the entrance there miraculously appeared an acacia tree. A wood pigeon nestled in its branches and a spider had woven a large web between the tree and the cave mouth.  Mohammed's enemies were deceived and passed onwards.  An allied story is told of David who was saved by the agents of Saul when a spider covered the mouth of a cave in the desert of Ziph. A 12th century yarn has the japanese hero Yoritomo being saved in a similar manner while he laid hidden in a hollow.

A Fugitive King

   The legend of Bruce and the Spider is one of many connected with the king as he was in hiding or evading the superior forces of his enemies. Stories and traditions of the fugitive Bruce are attached to many places and should possibly be taken with a pinch of salt in some cases at least. Among the spots where Bruce and his few followers is supposed to have rested while on the run is the King's Island in the River Garry, near Blair Atholl, and nearby Bonskeid (close to Killiecrankie). A thrilling tale has the king being set upon by his own bloodhounds in Galloway by the Earl of Pembroke and John of Lorn. Bruce either his or did battle in certain places in legend, but never visited in real life. One of these in Glenesk in Angus where he is supposed to have found his mortal enemy Comyn.

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