| Notes |
- Cin?ed mac Ailp?n (after 800 ? 13 February 858) (Anglicised Kenneth MacAlpin) was king of the Picts and, according to national myth, first king of Scots. Cin?ed's undisputed legacy was to produce a dynasty of rulers who claimed descent from him. Even though he cannot 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 Cin?ed of myth, conqueror of the Picts and founder of the kingdom of Alba, was born in the centuries after the real Cin?ed died. In the reign of Cin?ed mac M?il Coluim, when the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba was compiled, the annalist wrote:
? So Kinadius son of Alpinus, first of the Scots, ruled this Pictland prosperously for 16 years. Pictland was named after the Picts, whom, as we have said, Kinadius destroyed. ... Two years before he came to Pictland, he had received the kingdom of D?l Riata. ?
In the 15th century Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, a history in verse, added little to the account in the Chronicle:
? 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! ?
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 Cin?ed's father had been murdered by the Picts, and a detailed, and entirely unsupported, account of how Cin?ed avenged him and conquered the Picts. Buchanan was not as credulous as many, and he did not 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 Cin?ed was a Gael, and a king of D?l Riata, who had inherited the throne of Pictland through a Pictish mother. Other Gaels, such as Caustant?n and ?engus, 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 Cin?ed produced by Skene and subsequent historians, while accepting others. Medievalist Alex Woolf, interviewed by The Scotsman in 2004, is quoted as saying:
? The myth of Kenneth conquering the Picts - it?s about 1210, 1220 that that?s first talked about. There?s actually no hint at all that he was a Scot. ... If you look at contemporary sources there are four other Pictish kings after him. So he?s the fifth last of the Pictish kings rather than the first Scottish king." ?
Many other historians could be quoted in terms similar to Woolf.
Background
Cin?ed's origins are uncertain, as are his ties, if any, to previous kings of the Picts or D?l Riata. Among the genealogies contained in the Middle Irish Rawlinson B.502 manuscript, dating from around 1130, is the supposed descent of M?el Coluim mac Cin?eda. Medieval genealogies are unreliable sources, but some historians accept Cin?ed's descent from the Cen?l nGabrain of D?l Riata. The manuscript provides the following ancestry for Cin?ed:
... Cin?ed mac Ailp?n son of Eochaid son of ?ed Find son of Domangart son of Domnall Brecc son of Eochaid Buide son of ?ed?n son of Gabr?n son of Domangart son of Fergus M?r ...[4]
Leaving aside the shadowy kings before ?ed?n son of Gabr?n, the genealogy is certainly flawed insofar as ?ed Find, who died c. 778, could not reasonably be the son of Domangart, who was killed c. 673. The conventional account would insert two generations between ?ed Find and Domangart: Eochaid mac Echdach, father of ?ed Find, who died c. 733, and his father Eochaid.
Although later traditions provided details of his reign and death, Cin?ed's father Alp?n is not listed as among the kings in the Duan Albanach, which provides the following sequence of kings leading up to Cin?ed:
Naoi m-bliadhna Cusaintin chain, The nine years of Causant?n the fair;,
a naoi Aongusa ar Albain, The nine of Aongus over Alba;
cethre bliadhna Aodha ?in, The four years of Aodh the noble;
is a tri d?ug Eoghan?in. And the thirteen of Eoghan?n.
Tr?ocha bliadhain Cionaoith chruaidh, The thirty years of Cionaoth the hardy,
It is supposed that these kings are the Caustant?n son of Fergus and his brother ?engus, who have already been mentioned, ?engus's son E?gan?n, as well as the obscure ?ed mac Boanta, but this sequence is considered doubtful if the list is intended to represent kings of D?l Riata, as it should if Cin?ed were king there.
The idea that Cin?ed was a Gael is not entirely rejected, but modern historiography distinguishes between Cin?ed as a Gael by culture, and perhaps in ancestry, and Cin?ed as a king of Gaelic D?l Riata. Cin?ed 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 ?engus 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 Caustant?n son of Fergus, on the Dupplin Cross. Other evidence, such as that furnished by place-names, suggests the spread of Gaelic culture through Pictland in the centuries before Cin?ed. For example, Atholl, a name used in the Annals of Ulster for the year 739, has been thought to be "New Ireland".
Reign
Compared with the many questions on his origins, Cin?ed's ascent to power and subsequent reign can be dealt with simply. Cin?ed'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 E?gan son of ?engus of Fortriu, his brother Bran, ?ed 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.
Cin?ed'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 D?l Riata for two years before becoming Pictish king in 843, but this is not generally accepted. In 849, Cin?ed 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 Cin?ed, although what should be made of the report is unclear:
Gofraid mac Fergusa, chief of Airg?alla, went to Alba, to strengthen the Dal Riata, at the request of Cin?ed mac Ailp?n.
Cin?ed 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" is not used until the time of Cin?ed's grandsons, Domnall and Causant?n. The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland quote a verse lamenting Cin?ed's death:
Because Cin?ed 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.
Cin?ed left at least two sons, Causant?n and ?ed, who were later kings, and and at least two daughters. One daughter married Run, king of Strathclyde, Eochaid being the result of this marriage. Cin?ed's daughter M?el Muire married two important Irish kings of the U? N?ill. Her first husband was ?ed Finnliath of the Cen?l nE?gain. Niall Gl?ndub, ancestor of the O'Neill, was the son of this marriage. Her second husband was Flann Sinna of Clann Cholm?in. As the wife and mother of kings, when M?el Muire died in 913, her death was reported by the Annals of Ulster, an unusual thing for the misogynistic chronicles of the age.
|
797 - 860 (63 years)