Everything about Kenneth I totally explained
Cináed mac Ailpín (
Modern Gaelic:
Coinneach mac Ailpein), commonly
Anglicised as
Kenneth MacAlpin and known in most modern regnal lists as
Kenneth I (died
13 February 858) was
king of the Picts and, according to
national myth, first
king of Scots, earning him the posthumous nickname of
An Ferbasach, "The Conqueror". Kenneth's undisputed legacy was to produce a dynasty of rulers who claimed descent from him. Even though he can't be regarded as the father of Scotland, he was the founder of the dynasty which ruled that country for much of the medieval period.
King of Scots?
The Kenneth of myth, conqueror of the
Picts and founder of the
Kingdom of Alba, was born in the centuries after the real Kenneth died. In the reign of
Kenneth II (Cináed mac Maíl Coluim), when the
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba was compiled, the annalist wrote:
In the 15th century
Andrew of Wyntoun's
Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, a history in verse, added little to the account in the Chronicle:
When
humanist scholar
George Buchanan wrote his history
Rerum Scoticarum Historia in the 1570s, a great deal of lurid detail had been added to the story. Buchanan included an account of how Kenneth's father had been murdered by the Picts, and a detailed, and entirely unsupported, account of how Kenneth avenged him and conquered the Picts. Buchanan wasn't as credulous as many, and he didn't include the tale of
MacAlpin's Treason, a story from
Giraldus Cambrensis, who reused a tale of
Saxon treachery at a feast in
Geoffrey of Monmouth's inventive
Historia Regum Britanniae.
Later 19th century historians such as
William Forbes Skene brought new standards of accuracy to early Scottish history, while Celticists such as
Whitley Stokes and
Kuno Meyer cast a critical eye over Welsh and Irish sources. As a result, much of the misleading and vivid detail was removed from the scholarly series of events, even if it remained in the popular accounts. Rather than a conquest of the Picts, instead the idea of Pictish
matrilineal succession, mentioned by
Bede and apparently the only way to make sense of the
list of Kings of the Picts found in the
Pictish Chronicle, advanced the idea that Kenneth was a
Gael, and a king of
Dál Riata, who had inherited the throne of Pictland through a Pictish mother. Other Gaels, such as
Caustantín and
Óengus, the sons of Fergus, were identified among the Pictish king lists, as were
Angles such as Talorcen son of
Eanfrith, and
Britons such as
Bridei son of Beli.
Modern historians would reject parts of the Kenneth produced by Skene and subsequent historians, while accepting others. Medievalist
Alex Woolf, interviewed by
The Scotsman in 2004, is quoted as saying:
Many other historians could be quoted in terms similar to Woolf.
Background
Kenneth's origins are uncertain, as are his ties, if any, to previous kings of the Picts or Dál Riata. Among the genealogies contained in the
Middle Irish Rawlinson B.502 manuscript, dating from around 1130, is the supposed descent of
Malcolm II of Scotland. Medieval genealogies are unreliable sources, but some historians accept Kenneth's descent from the Cenél nGabrain of Dál Riata. The manuscript provides the following ancestry for Kenneth:
... Cináed mac Ailpín son of Eochaid son of Áed Find son of Domangart son of Domnall Brecc son of Eochaid Buide son of Áedán son of Gabrán son of Domangart son of Fergus Mór ...
Leaving aside the shadowy kings before Áedán son of Gabrán, the genealogy is certainly flawed insofar as Áed Find, who died c. 778, couldn't reasonably be the son of Domangart, who was killed c. 673. The conventional account would insert two generations between Áed Find and Domangart:
Eochaid mac Echdach, father of Áed Find, who died c. 733, and his father
Eochaid.
Although later traditions provided details of his reign and death, Kenneth's father
Alpin isn't listed as among the kings in the
Duan Albanach, which provides the following sequence of kings leading up to Kenneth:
| Naoi m-bliadhna Cusaintin chain, |
The nine years of Causantín the fair;, |
| a naoi Aongusa ar Albain, |
The nine of Aongus over Alba; |
| cethre bliadhna Aodha áin, |
The four years of Aodh the noble; |
| is a tri déug Eoghanáin. |
And the thirteen of Eoghanán. |
| Tríocha bliadhain Cionaoith chruaidh, |
The thirty years of Cionaoth the hardy, |
It is supposed that these kings are the
Constantine son of Fergus and his brother
Óengus II (Angus II), who have already been mentioned, Óengus's son
Uen (Eóganán), as well as the obscure
Áed mac Boanta, but this sequence is considered doubtful if the list is intended to represent kings of Dál Riata, as it should if Kenneth were king there.
The idea that Kenneth was a Gael isn't entirely rejected, but modern historiography distinguishes between Kenneth as a Gael by culture, and perhaps in ancestry, and Kenneth as a king of Gaelic Dál Riata. Kenneth could well have been the first sort of Gael. Kings of the Picts before him, from
Bridei son of Der-Ilei, his brother
Nechtan as well as
Óengus I (Angus I) son of Fergus and his presumed descendants were all at least partly Gaelicised. The idea that the Gaelic names of Pictish kings in
Irish annals represented translations of Pictish ones was challenged by the discovery of the inscription
Custantin filius Fircus(sa), the
latinised name of the Pictish king Caustantín son of Fergus, on the
Dupplin Cross.
Other evidence, such as that furnished by place-names, suggests the spread of Gaelic culture through western Pictland in the centuries before Kenneth. For example,
Atholl, a name used in the
Annals of Ulster for the year 739, has been thought to be "New
Ireland", and
Argyll derives from
Oir-Ghàidheal, the land of the "eastern Gaels".
Reign
Compared with the many questions on his origins, Kenneth's ascent to power and subsequent reign can be dealt with simply. Kenneth's rise can be placed in the context of the recent end of the previous dynasty, which had dominated
Fortriu for two or four generations. This followed the death of king Uen son of Óengus of Fortriu, his brother Bran, Áed mac Boanta "and others almost innumerable" in battle against the
Vikings in
839. The resulting succession crisis seems, if the Pictish Chronicle king-lists have any validity, to have resulted in at least four would-be kings warring for supreme power.
Kenneth's reign is dated from
843, it was probably not until
848 that he defeated the last of his rivals for power. The Pictish Chronicle claims that he was king in Dál Riata for two years before becoming Pictish king in 843, but this isn't generally accepted. In
849, Kenneth had relics of
Columba, which may have included the
Monymusk Reliquary, transferred from
Iona to
Dunkeld. Other that these bare facts, the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba reports that he invaded
Saxonia six times, captured
Melrose and burnt
Dunbar, and also that Vikings laid waste to Pictland, reaching far into the interior. The
Annals of the Four Masters, not generally a good source on Scottish matters, do make mention of Kenneth, although what should be made of the report is unclear:
Gofraid mac Fergusa, chief of Airgíalla, went to Alba, to strengthen the Dal Riata, at the request of Kenneth MacAlpin.
The reign of Kenneth also saw an increased degree of Norse settlement in the outlying areas of modern Scotland. Shetland,the Orkneys, Caithness, Sutherland, the Western Isles and the Isle of Man, and part of Ross were settled; the links between Kenneth's kingdom and Ireland were weakened, those with southern England and the continent almost broken. In the face of this, Kenneth and his successors were forced to consolidate their position in their kingdom, and the union between the Picts and the Gaels, already progressing for several centuries, began to strengthen. By the time of Donald II, the kings would be called kings neither of the Gaels or the Scots but of
Alba.
Kenneth died from a tumour on 13 February, 858 at the palace of
Cinnbelachoir, perhaps near
Scone. The annals report the death as that of the "king of the Picts", not the "king of Alba". The title "king of Alba" isn't used until the time of Kenneth's grandsons,
Donald II (Domnall mac Causantín) and
Constantine II (Constantín mac Áeda). The
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland quote a verse lamenting Kenneth's death:
Because Cináed with many troops lives no longer
there is weeping in every house;
there is no king of his worth under heaven
as far as the borders of Rome.
Kenneth left at least two sons,
Constantine and
Áed, who were later kings, and at least two daughters. One daughter married
Run, king of
Strathclyde,
Eochaid being the result of this marriage. Kenneth's daughter
Máel Muire married two important Irish kings of the
Uí Néill. Her first husband was
Aed Finliath of the
Cenél nEógain.
Niall Glúndub, ancestor of the
O'Neill, was the son of this marriage. Her second husband was
Flann Sinna of Clann Cholmáin. As the wife and mother of kings, when Máel Muire died in 913, her death was reported by the Annals of Ulster, an unusual thing for the misogynistic chronicles of the age.
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