Alba Historical

 King Malcolm IV They called him the Maiden King – a touch unfairly, perhaps – because he was perceived to be more of a monk than a monarch. He was also Scotland's first child king, taking up the throne at the age of 13 and dying at 24 before he had a chance to prove his manhood. Nevertheless, the reign of Malcolm IV, from 1153 to 1165, earned good contemporary reviews after its relatively seamless continuation of policies and outlook of his grandfather and predecessor David I Malcolm's father, David I's son Earl Henry, had died tragically and suddenly in his thirties in 1152 while he had been proving himself an equally able successor to his father. In 1139 Henry had married Ada de Warenne, the daughter of the Earl of Surrey, a leading Anglo-Norman baron. As soon as Earl Henry was dead, David saw to it that Henry's oldest son, Malcolm, then aged 12, was the new king-designate. He handed the boy over to Earl Duncan MacDuff of Fife, the foremost Scottish earl, who, at the...

 MacBeth The real story of the man is far from Shakespeare's celebrated version. Indeed, MacBeth's 17-year reign was a prosperous and generous one, and he was to be fondly remembered as the last great Celtic king of Scots. The single most important fact we know about MacBeth is enshrined in a line borrowed from a Latin poem composed within a generation of his death. It says: "In his time there were productive seasons" - fertile tempus erat. Or, as Andrew Wyntoun, the 15th Century Scottish chronicler put it: "All his tyme was gret plenté/Aboundand baith in land and sé." Scots in MacBeth's time still believed in vestiges of sacral kingship, which meant that if calamity came upon the land in such disasters as war, famine, pestilence or atrocious weather, the solution was to sacrifice the king. MacBeth could thus have earned no higher praise. According to an Irish poem, he actually radiated the prosperity for which he was so famous - he was 'ruddy-faced,...

 Scotland's Ancient Woodlands The scale of Scotland's great Medieval forest is hinted at by the Victorian writer J.E Harting in his British  extinct Animals. “We can scarcely overestimate the wildness that everywhere prevailed,” he wrote, "In the south, a vast forest filled the intervening space between Chillingham and Hamilton, a distance,  as the crow flies of about 80 miles, including within it Ettrick and numerous other forests, and further north the great Caledonian wood, known even at Rome, covered the greater part of both the Lowlands and the Highlands, its recesses affording shelter to bears, wolves, wild boars, and wild white cattle." In Medieval times, people travelled inland fearfully. The forests were nature's place, the habitat of the forces of darkness, treacherous to the superstitious. Harting achieved a knee-knocking portrait of a wolf-infested wilderness. "The time of James V... a great part of Ross, Inverness, almost the whole of Cromarty, a...

 Pilgrimage With more than its share of patron saints, Scotland was a magnet for pilgrims from abroad. Scots also took to the holy routes, which were often long, arduous, and dangerous. Pilgrimage and the cults of saints were as popular with the Pictish, Irish, Norse and Scots peoples of Scotland as with any others in Christendom. With major shrines at the heart of important reliquary churches at Iona, St Andrews, Kirkwall, Whithorn, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Dunfermline and Tain, Scotland had more than its fair share of patron saints, ranging from Andrew – an apostle of Christ - through national, indigenous saints such as Ninian, Columba and Kentigern, to a multiplicity of lesser holy men and martyrs. From the earliest times, Scots were recognised on the pilgrimage of the early missionaries  were elected saints, with some, such as Columba of lona, who died in 597, regarded as saints even during their own lifetime. These places of burial became renowned.  Possibly the oldest shri...

 The first Gaelic King to rule over the Picts He is Scotland's Alfred the Great, our forgotten hero king who repelled the Viking invaders, founded the kingdom of Alba, and fought off England's first attempt at conquest. He is Constantine II, known in Gaelic as Constantin MacAed, one of Scotland's greatest Medieval kings. He reigned from 900 to 943 and his achievements may even outstrip those of Robert the Bruce. Yet he is little known today, probably because he has never attracted the attention of a great storyteller like Walter Scott or Robert Louis Stevenson. But Constantine can be seen, in many ways, as the founder of the Scottish nation. King Constantine II was the grandson of Kenneth MacAlpin, the first Gaelic king to rule over the Picts. Kenneth died at Forteviot in 858 and his brother Domnall took over the kingship. It was Domnall who introduced Gaelic Law to the Pictish kingdom. Domnall died in 862 and was succeeded by his nephew, Kenneth's son, Constantine. Thi...

 King of Scotland Kenneth MacAlpin came out of relative obscurity to found a royal line that ended with Bonnie Prince Charlie almost a thousand years later. Famed for uniting the Picts and the Gaels, many legends have grown up about him. These produced a contradictory series of tales – few of which can be taken at face value. Kenneth – or in Gaelic, Cináed mac Ailpín was born about 800AD, in Dál Riata - which, despite the prestige of lona, had become a backwater. Most of the kings who ruled in this period paid tribute to the Picts, who were the regional superpower. The first Viking raids upon Britain and Ireland were taking place at this time. Lindisfarne was burned in 793 and Iona was attacked half a dozen times before 826. The Pictish heartland escaped serious attack from these early raiders, but the smaller and less well organised kingdom of the Gaels of Dál Riata where Kenneth was growing up – was thrown into disarray. The one spirited king, Aed the White, had died in 778 and n...

 Battle of Dunnichen This piece is a follow-up to  King Bidei The Picts have left a unique record of the battle in the form of a magnificent piece of sculpture.  The so-called Battle Stone in Aberlemno kirkyard - about four miles north of Dunnichen-is a Pictish stone, 2.3 metres high. It has a cross in heavy relief on one side and Pictish symbols on the other, above a vivid portrayal of warriors in battle. There are several good reasons for thinking that the scenes on the Aberlemno Stone depict the Battle of Dunnichen. Experts date it to the early 8th century, within a few decades of the event. It is not far from the site of the battle. And one set of warriors on the stone is wearing helmets with long nose-guards of a type known to have existed among the Anglo-Saxons. It is a remarkable record of the battle, showing superb details of weapons and methods of fighting – the Pictish equivalent of the Bayeux Tapestry. The Aberlemno Battle Stone has four separate images from th...

 Our forgotten Pictish King The Battle of Dunnichen If the Pictish army led by King Bridei had lost to the invading Angles at the Battle of Dunnichen, then Scotland as we know it today simply would not exist. It was one of the most important battles of our early medieval history, and this is reflected in the fact that we know more about it than any other single event in 7th century Scotland. The Picts destroyed King Egfrith's Anglian army from Northumbria on May 20, 685, and their resounding victory helped form the political landscape of northern Britain for 200 years. They recovered territory, including Fife, which the Angles had occupied for almost 30 years. There had been a Pictish rebellion. against Northumbrian control in 672, which had ended in bloody defeat. Northumbrian sources luridly, though probably with exaggeration, tell us that the victors were able to cross dry-shod over two rivers, so full were they of the bodies of slain Picts. These rivers were the Carron and the ...