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The place of Aberdeenshire
and Banffshire in history — physical features —earliest history: the Romans
— the Taixali and Devana — Severus's expedition: supposed roman camps —
Eirde houses, pit dwellings, and crannogs — duns, raths, and cathairs—
"druidical circles" and " standing - stones " — sculptured monoliths—flint
implements—early population— legends of the saints and the researches of the
Aberdeen historians—the 'book of deer '—St Columba and the conversion of the
northern Picts : traces of him in Aberdeenshire and Banffshire—other
saints—ecclesiastical controversy and the expulsion of the columban monks —
St Fergus — st rule and king Hungus at Braemar — king Grig's connection with
aberdeenshire and his services to the church—St Manire and religious decay —
the Viking age: inroads of Sscandinavians — Thorfinn and Macbeth — final
overthrow of Macbeth at Lumphanan — Lulach and Maelsnechtan — power' of the
northern kings in Buchan.
Separated from central
Scotland by the Mounth or Eastern Grampians, and bounded on two sides by the
sea, the territory between the Dee and the Spey occupied a position of
comparative isolation from the rest of the country until steam navigation
and railways broke down all the old territorial barriers. From the earliest
days when history has anything to tell us concerning it, this north -
eastern province, consisting of the two modern counties of Aberdeen and
Banff, has played a distinctive and important part in the affairs of
Scotland. Unconquered, if not uninvaded, by the Romans, it formed after
their departure one of the seven provinces into which Pictland or Alban of
the early middle ages was divided, and it long continued to assert for
itself a semi - independent political existence. Throughout the range of its
history it has been the home of a sturdy population, warlike in its early
Celtic and perhaps pre-Celtic days, and more forceful in the arts of peace
as well as war when the new Teutonic elements came in. When southern
Scotland up to the two great firths was linked with South Britain, and its
future capital was rising up around the stronghold of an Anglo-Saxon prince,
this north-eastern territory was the mainstay of independent Alban. In the
eleventh century, as in the nineteenth, the picturesque upper valley of the
Dee was the favourite retreat of the sovereign, and many of the recorded
transactions of the Scottish kings took place within these counties. They
were crossed and recrossed by Edward I. in his vain endeavour to impose the
English yoke; and in the great war of national independence Robert Bruce,
himself, it may be said, an Aberdeenshire magnate, as guardian of his nephew
the Earl of Mar, won his first decisive victory in the battle of Barra,
where he annihilated the power of the Cumyns and the English interest in the
north. A century later it was Aberdeenshire men, under another Earl of Mar
and the Provost of Aberdeen, that repelled the invasion of Celtic barbarism
at Harlaw. At three subsequent crises of Scottish history this district was
to be the centre of national conflict. Here alone the Reformation of the
sixteenth century and the Covenant of the seventeenth met ivith strenuous
and sustained resistance, and it was here that the first Jacobite rebellion
of the eighteenth century was organised. In this north-eastern province of
Scotland, moreover, the native endowments of mind and character have been
developed and turned to account by a singularly effective system of
education. As scholars, as soldiers, as civilians in the public service, in
professional life, and in the various walks of commerce and industry,
Aberdeenshire men have done their part in the work of the world, and the
same sound stock still contributes its output of mind and energy to the
manifold activities of the empire. Some of the elements and forces that have
developed and moulded the character of the people of these north-eastern
counties will become apparent in the course of this brief survey of their
history.
In fortunes and in history
the two counties of Banff and Aberdeen may be regarded as one : there is no
natural or recognisable line of demarcation between them, and in these pages
the name Aberdeenshire is frequently used as an inclusive designation for
both. The extreme length of the territory is about ninety, and its breadth
about sixty miles. Every variety of highland and lowland country is to be
found within its limits. Beginning with the low ground of Buchan and the
fertile districts of Formartine, Garioch, and Lower Banffshire, it rises
through Strathbogie and Mar to the highest tract of land in the United
Kingdom, culminating in the Cairngorm range. Less than half the land of the
two counties is under cultivation. Woods and plantations occupy less than a
sixth part of the uncultivated area. The rest is mountain and moor, yielding
pasturage for moderate flocks of sheep, or for deer, and at the lower
elevations for cattle. In former days the woodlands were much more extensive
than they are now, and, well within the range of modern history, the large
forests of Stocket, Hallforest, and Drum existed in the immediate
neighbourhood of Aberdeen. The upland glens afforded shelter and precarious
subsistence to populations driven back from the low country by the
immigration of robuster races. Ethnologists tell us of indications of an
early people of Iberian type preceding or partly contemporaneous with the
Celts in the north • and different Celtic branches prevailed at different
periods. In the meagrely recorded middle ages the Scandinavian sea-rovers
began to ravage the low country. Frisian and Flemish immigrants arrived,
and, with the Anglo-Saxon inflow from England at the Norman Conquest,
changed the whole character of society.
Aberdeenshire first emerges
above the horizon of history in the early days of the Roman occupation of
Britain. Whatever may have been the site of the battle described by Tacitus,
the country north of the Mounth must be believed to have contributed its
quota to the confederated Caledonian host under the commander whom the
historian calls Galgacus. Fought somewhere to the south of the Mounth, the
battle may have been less calamitous to the country we now call
Aberdeenshire than to the Scottish midlands, by which its brunt had been
chiefly borne; and this has been suggested as a reason for that adjustment
of the balance of power which gave the northern or transmontane Picts their
ascendancy in the history of Alban. The fleet which Agricola sent round the
north of Scotland must have sailed along this coast and learned something of
the geography of the region. Certain it is that within the next half century
the Alexandrian geographer, Ptolemy, had published his Tables containing
scraps of information that must have been derived from Roman sources. Here
Aberdeenshire bears the name of Taixalon; and Kinnaird Head, or possibly
Rattray Head, is the promontory of the Taixali. The Taixali had a "city"
called Uevana, the site of which has been a theme of much controversy. At
one time the uncritical patriotism of local historians easily identified it
with the city at the mouth of the Dee or the one near the mouth of the Don ;
but there is no evidence that any city existed where Aberdeen or Old
Aberdeen now stands until many centuries after the time of Ptolemy. More
critical writers, and among them George Chalmers, Prof. John Stuart of
Marischal College, and Dr Joseph Robertson, held it to be clearly
established that Devana was at Peterculter, in Lower Deeside, where Prof.
Stuart discovered, at Anguston, about three miles from the ancient camp of
Normandykes, what he and others conceived to be its remains. In recent
years, however, Devana has been transferred by Mr W. F. Skene to the
vicinity of Loch Davan, about two miles from the Dinnet station of the
Deeside railway. It is argued that this site agrees with Ptolemy better than
the other, and a point is made of the abundance of traces of ancient
habitation in the locality. The same view is strongly supported by an
accomplished local antiquary, Air John G. Michie, minister of Dinnet and
author of an exhaustive monograph on Loch Kinnord, who not only finds in
Devana the latinised form of Davan, the " town of the two lakes " (Davan and
Kinnord), but lays stress on the ancient remains just referred to, and on
the recovery from the bottom of the lake of weapons of war and articles of
household use that seem to be of Roman manufacture. Except that Peterculter
is nearer the supposed track of the Romans, there is little to be said in
opposition to the considerations that would lead us to connect the ancient
Devana with Loch Davan.
During the second century of
the Christian era several punitive expeditions were sent against the
Caledonian tribes, but nothing is known to have occurred that has any direct
bearing upon Aberdeenshire until the Emperor Severus came north at the head
of a large army in 208 for the purpose of finally subduing the whole of
independent Caledonia. In his campaign of roadmaking and warfare Severus
pressed on till he reached " the farthest end of the island." The
inhabitants of the country beyond the Roman frontier are now spoken of as
two nations, the Meatse and the Caledon... The latter would seem to have
been in possession of Aberdeenshire, though not confined to it, and they are
described as a hardy people who dwelt in huts, neglected the cultivation of
land and the fish within their reach, and lived by pasturage, the chase, and
the natural fruits of the earth. In battle they were unencumbered with
clothing and fought with a short spear and dagger from chariots drawn by
small fleet horses. Such a country, without agriculture of cities in the
Roman sense, was ill-suited to be the winter quarters of an army of
invasion, and immense numbers of the Romans are reported to have perished in
these northern wilds.
The testimony of written
history is to a certain extent reinforced by that of archaeological remains.
Supposed Roman camps and roads were brought into vogue in Aberdeenshire, as
elsewhere, by the enthusiasm of General Roy, who had made a study of Roman
military works and examined all kinds of ancient remains during the survey
of Scotland in which he was engaged about the middle of the eighteenth
century, but who unfortunately relied on the spurious work attributed to the
monkish chronicler Richard of Cirencesler. As regards Aberdeenshire, Roy was
seconded in his views by another distinguished officer, who had his
residence in the county, Colonel Shand of Templeland. The camp at Ardoch, in
southern Perthshire, was taken as an undisputed Roman starting-point, and
there was a theoretical north-eastward route by Perth, Battledykes, the Vale
of Strathmore, and the Mearns, to Stonehaven or Urie, from which it passed
to the ford of the Dee commanded by the camp of Normandykes at Peterculter.
Until Roman camps came into fashion this camp, in accordance with its name,
had been traditionally associated with the Northmen. It is now nearly
undistinguishable, but was carefully surveyed in 1807, when its outlines
were more distinct, by Prof. Stuart and others, and was found to measure
about a hundred acres, and to form an " oblong square." A similar but larger
camp at Glenmailen, or Buss, on the upper water of the Ythan, about thirty
miles north of Normandykes, was surveyed by Colonel Shand, and it is
contended that no native army of numbers sufficient to require so large
camps can ever have been intrenched in these parts.
But while it may be regarded
as a possibility, if nothing more, that a large Roman army had for a time
its quarters at Glenmailen, the course of its progress thither and its
farther progress towards " the farthest end of the island" can only be
matter of vague conjecture. One of the ancient routes in middle
Aberdeenshire crossed the Don and the Ury at a point where the Bass
commanded the passages, and, beyond the Ythan camp, Colonel Shand made one
of his discoveries of military remains at a ford of the Deveron at
Auchengoul. Another supposed Roman camp is found near the western extremity
of the parish of Marnoch, whence the route is carried by Deskford and Cullen
to the Spey below Gordon Castle. No confidence, however, can be placed in
these hypothetical routes, nor is the occasional discovery of Roman coins or
medals—as on the road between Stonehaven and Culter and in the Red Moss of
Crathes, at one extremity of our territory, and in Lower Banffshire at the
other—any evidence that they had been deposited there by their original
possessors. Aberdeenshire men may have been among the Caledonians punished
by Carausius, towards the close of the third century, after he had organised
a fleet of galleys for the repression of the sea-rovers already beginning to
ravage the North Sea coasts. Once more the attacks from the north were
repelled in 368-369, but Gibbon is apparently guilty of one of his flights
of imagination when he asserts that the strong hand of Theodosius
confined the trembling Caledonians to the northeast angle of the island,"
even though the panegyric of Claudian on this noted general (the father of a
still more noted emperor) makes him stain the region of Thule with the blood
of the Picts and vanquish the Saxon pirates in the waters of Orkney. The
restoration of the Roman power was short-lived, and within forty years,
though Stilicho flourished during that time, the last of the Roman eagles
had quitted the British Isles.
Of positive Roman influence
in the north-east no indication has come down to us, and it is evident that
no real conquest of the region can have taken place. The long-continued wars
with a powerful foe would tend to weaken and deteriorate those native
populations upon which it bore most heauly, and this effect would be
accentuated by the systems of slavery and impressment; but Aberdeenshire,
suffering less by this struggle than provinces farther south, may have
gained in relative importance and strength in the latter days of the Roman
occupation.
But if the literary documents
of its oldest history are meagre, Aberdeenshire is rich above all other
Scottish counties in relics that serve in some slight degree for guidance in
the darkness that overspreads its early life. Prominent among these are the
"eirde" or earth houses, in use in Roman and post-Roman times, which were
entered by a small and easily concealed opening, and were connected with
dwellings above-ground of perishable materials long since obliterated. Such
subterranean recesses are described by Tacitus as in use among the Germans
of his time as shelters from the cold of winter and repositories for the
concealment of valuables. Nowhere in these islands are they so abundant as
in the districts of West Aberdeenshire, bordering on the Highland line. Lake
dwellings or crannogs existed at Loch Kinnord, the Loch of Leys, now
drained, and Loch Goul in New-Machar. Down to the days of the Anglo-Saxon
colonisation the defensive structures of the country were represented by
hill-forts, or duns, occupying commanding positions, while raths and
cathairs were more closely related to the ordinary life and dwellings of the
population. The rath, or residence of the chief, gave place to the feudal
castle, and the cathair to the undefended homestead or "farm town." Many
traces of the greater fortifications survive, as on the Hill of Durn, the
Convals, Dunecht, Barra, Bennachie, and Tap o' Noth. The stronghold of
Dunecht, on the summit of its conical hill, encloses an area of more than
two acres, and consists of five concentric walls, three of earthwork and two
of stone. The space within the fortification had been occupied by wooden or
wattled dwellings, and is large enough to have been an asylum for women,
children, and cattle. The so-called "Druidical" circles and
"standing-stones," which still abound, were associated in historic times
with the administration of justice and other public business. They were also
connected with the disposal of the dead whether by burial or incineration.
Another class of standing-stones are the sculptured monuments depicted and
discussed in the magnificent volumes edited for the original Spalding Club
by its secretary and joint-founder, Dr John Stuart of the Register House.
These belong chiefly to the early Christian period. Yet more distinctive as
a speciality of Aberdeenshire archaeology, and found more abundantly in the
northeast of Scotland than in any other part of the country, are the
arrow-heads, spear-heads, and other flint implements, the fine workmanship
of which bears witness to the industry and skill of a martial population.
The raw material of these implements is found in detrital masses at Cruden,
on the coast of Buchan, and less abundantly at Belhelvie and elsewhere; and
remains of flint workshops have been discovered not only in the vicinity of
these sources of flint but at inland places, as Barra, Inverurie, and
Alford. Ages after they had been superseded by metallic weapons the flint
arrowheads continued to be objects of superstitious dread as "elf shots " or
" elf bolts "—a survival, we may infer, from days when they imparted a new
sense of terror and power as the most efficacious weapon of war and the
chase.
The population, when history
dawns upon it, is rude if we are to judge by modern standards, but there had
been ingenious and skilful men in its ranks. Under conditions which seem
unpropitious, man had more and more asserted his mastery, and in spite of
his own strifes and wars had been gaining ground in his perennial contest
with the forces of nature. He was an artificer and huntsman, and in his
degree an agriculturist, for in the eirde houses the evidences have been
found of the cultivation of the domestic animals and the cereals.
Aberdeenshire in those early times was evidently occupied by an active and
resolute people, perhaps as advanced as any "barbarians" who never came
under the sway of Rome.
In another direction the
early history of Aberdeenshire is distinguishable from that of Pictland as a
whole. The legends of the saints, widely as they differ from exact records
contemporaneous or nearly so with the events they describe, are not entirely
devoid of historic value. The great repertory of early legend relating to
persons who played a considerable part in the life of the two north -
eastern counties is the ' Breviary of Aberdeen,' and though its biographical
memorials are of much later date than the lives with which they are
concerned, they at least preserve the names and fame of men whose memory was
cherished by the Church.
As regards the general data
of Aberdeenshire history, inestimable service has been done by the
publication of its original documents in the extensive library issued by the
two Spalding Clubs. For no other part of the country, indeed, are the
authentic materials of territorial history so ample and so accessible.
Earliest and most valuable of all is the ' Book of Deer,' the one literary
relic of ancient Pictland. Written at the old Columban monastery on the
banks of the Ugie, it is in origin as well as substance an Aberdeenshire
document—in form the parchment service-book of the monastery, its margins
and blank pages inscribed with a body of memoranda of the gifts of land and
concessions of privilege to the monks by the Celtic rulers of the district,
the latest entry being a summary of a charter by David I. Incidentally a
great deal of light is thrown by these notitiae on the social organisation
of Buchan in the middle ages.
About the period of nearly
two centuries between the departure of the Romans and the conversion of the
northern Picts to Christianity, there is little to be gleaned of particular
events in Aberdeenshire. Christianity had reached the south of Scotland
before the Romans left. The first missionary who crossed the Mounth of whom
we have any certain knowledge is St Ternan, who died at Banchory, called
after him Banchory-Ternan, and whose relics were treasured both there and in
the Church of Aberdeen. We also find traces of St Kentigern, otherwise St
Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, who at one period of his life was
associated with St David in Wales, and had St Asaph for one of his
disciples. In West Aberdeenshire the Church of Glengairn was dedicated to
him, and a Welsh connection is implied in the dedications of Migvie and
Lumphanan to St Finan and of Midmar to St Midan, two Welsh saints likewise
associated in adjacent parishes of Anglesea. St Kentigern, however, was a
sixth - century saint and contemporary of Columba, and the presence of his
disciples in Aberdeenshire shows that to a certain extent it was a
meeting-place of two great currents of Christianity—one from the south, and
the other, which was by far the more important, from Iona. The conversion of
the northern Picts as a people was unquestionably due to the initiative and
influence of the great man known as St Columba, St Colm, or Columcille.
Having persuaded Brude mac
Maelchon, King of the Picts, whose seat was on the Ness, to become a
Christian—so runs the legend in the ' Book of Deer'—Columcille, accompanied
by Drostan, arrived in Aberdeenshire in pursuance of his mission. He first
appears at Aberdour, an early centre of population, where numerous
hut-foundations have been found deeply embedded in peat; and here he
receives from the Pictish ruler of the district the gift of a cathair or
"town." From Aberdour he passes on through Buchan, and wishing to establish
a central station on the Ugie, he asks the mormaer Bede for a second cathair.
It was at first refused, but the story goes on to say that presently Bede's
young son became dangerously ill, and that, beseeching the prayers of the
clerics for the recovery of the sick child, the anxious mormaer now freely
granted the desired cathair, and with it the lands between the stone
landmarks Cloch-in-Tiprat and Cloch-pette-mic-Garnait. Having established
the Monastery of Deer and left Drostan in charge of the mission, Columcille
passed on to other fields of labour. Such is the story in the ' Book of
Deer.' The name of Columba is borne by the Buchan fishing village of St
Colms, or St Combs; the parish of Lonmay, in which the village is situated,
was also formerly St Colms; and St Colm's Kirk stood at the east end of the
village, overlooking the sea. As at Aberdour, so in Lonmay and the adjacent
parish of Rathen, the traces have been found of early population on a
considerable scale. Farther along the coast, St Columba was held in
reverence as tutelar saint of Belhelvie. The inland churches of New-machar
and Daviot were dedicated to him, as was also that of Alvah in Banffshire,
while a chapel at Portsoy connects his name with the coast of that county.
Thus we obtain an indication of the method by which the Picts were brought
under the influence of Christianity. Beginning with the heads of the
kingdom, the province, and the clan, and obtaining cathairs in central
places for the protection of the Christian brotherhood and infant church, St
Columba* passed through Pictland on his missionary tour.
We are dealing with tradition
and legend, but that it has an underlying basis of truth seems clear. The '
Breviary of Aberdeen,' as well as the ' Book of Deer,' brings St Drostan
into personal relations with St Columba, but some of the annalists give him
a later date. He was of the " family of Iona." For a time he lived as a
hermit in the lone valley of Lochlee, among the Grampians just outside the
southern limit of Aberdeenshire, while from his monastery of Kil-drostan or
Aberlour, on the Spey, Christianity was carried to the adjacent highlands of
Upper Banffshire. Maluog of Lismore, otherwise known as St Moloch, appears
to have introduced it at Mortlach, one of the earliest ecclesiastical
foundations in these parts; and St Machar came to the banks of the Don with
a special commission from Columba; St Marnan laboured from Aberchirder to
Leochel; and to Keith is traced St Maelrubha or Malruve, whose name, when
his fame was forgotten, became curiously disguised in the "Summer Eve" fairs
held at Keith and other places about the beginning of September. To Adamnan
were dedicated the churches of Forvie, Aboyne, and Forglen, the
last-mentioned distinguished as having the custody of the mysterious
brecbannoch or banner of Columba.
The split in the Columban
Church at the beginning of the eighth century over the questions of Easter
and the form of the tonsure, followed as it was by the expulsion from
Pictland by King Nectan of the clerics who clung to the Columban usages, had
no doubt affected the northeastern monasteries; and there is reason to
believe that Faelchu, who after the banishment headed the Columban party at
Iona, is identical with Wolok (or Volocus of the Aberdeen Breviary), the
zealous missionary whose sphere extended from Glass and Balvenie, in
Banffshire, to Logie-Mar, the ancient seat of population around Lochs
Kinnord and Davan.1 The Roman influence received an impulse at Longley in
Buchan from " Fergus the Pict, a bishop of Ireland." who was at a Council at
Rome in 721, and it is seen in the numerous dedications that began to be
made to the apostle Peter. A somewhat later incident is the arrival of
Regulus or St Rule at Braemar with the relics of St Andrew, and his meeting
there with King Hungus on his return towards his seat in Forfarshire from a
Highland expedition.
In the ninth century, after
the union of the Pietish and Scottish thrones by Kenneth mac Alpin in 843, a
rather shadowy hero, at once mythical and real, comes upon the scene in the
person of King Grig, Girg, Giric, or Cyric, sometimes dignified with the
title of Gregory the Great. Chalmers says he was mormaer of the country
between the Dee and the Spey, but gives no authority for the statement; and
Buchanan, following the fabulous chronicles, makes him overwhelm the Picts,
crush the Britons, conquer England, and subdue Ireland. The ' Book of Deer'
mentions a Giric as father of one of the benefactors of the monastery; but
in history King Grig's activity seems to have been exerted from Fortrenn, or
central Scotland, then the regal and political headquarters. He came to the
throne by means of a successful rebellion against Eth or Hugh "of the swift
foot," the last of Kenneth's sons, who was wounded in battle at Strathallan
and died at Nrurim, "in a dangerous pass." It has been contended that "Nrurim"
is Inverurie, but no evidence can be adduced for such a conclusion; and
though Fordun, the fourteenth-century chronicler and canon of Aberdeen,
makes Grig's own death occur at Dunnideer, other chroniclers, with more
appearance of warrant, place it at Dundurn, the principal stronghold of
Fortrenn. Grig's fame turns chiefly upon his success in winning over the
clergy to his side. "This is he who first gave liberty to the Scottish
Church, which had been until now under servitude according to the law and
custom of the Picts," says the Chronicle of the Picts and Scots; and " In
freedom from mormaer and toisech " is the refrain of the ' Book of Deer.'
Lay exactions and servitudes were repugnant to the Church, which Grig, an
adventurer and usurper, conciliated by issuing in its favour a decree of
relief from these liabilities.
In the earlier part of that
century Christianity in Aberdeenshire seems to have fallen on evil times.
The narrative of St Manire's work in the Aberdeen Breviary discloses the
existence in the wilder districts of a "wood folk," still addicted to old
superstitions, and speaking a language or dialect differing from that of the
low country and of most of the Christian teachers. Manire was skilled in
both tongues. He encountered the prejudices of the Columban Christians, who
seem to have been relapsing into paganism but preserved sufficient memories
of the Iona ritual to furnish them with an excuse for opposing his
innovations. But in spite of hostility and personal danger, Manire, who was
founder of the church of Crathie, persevered until success attended his
labours. The difference of speech, as indicating difference of race or
history, is an interesting point with regard to the upland and remoter
districts, which are significantly prominent in Scottish hagiology.
An external influence
powerfully affecting the course of events had now come into operation. It
was in the latter part of the eighth century that the Scandinavian Vikings
began to ravage the British coasts. The beginning of the Viking age, indeed,
is of much earlier date. Long before the close of the Roman power the
maritime tribes of the North Sea began their long buccaneering expeditions,
some of which extended even as far as the Levant. It can easily be
understood how Scotland, and even England, in the early ages should offer
little temptation to the adventurous seamen whom pressure of population on
both sides of the Cattegat and Sound sent forth to roam the seas and live by
the spoils of war. The earliest Scandinavian descents on the Scottish shores
were directed against the monastic communities, which had gathered some
wealth and thus offered temptation to the pagan sea-rovers. Aberdeenshire
had few inlets for their long-boats, which must have been constantly
cruising along its coast; but the Moray Firth (or "Fiord") on the one side
afforded them stations and settlements, while by the Firth of Tay, on the
other, the Viking steersmen found a way of access to the political
headquarters of the country, where their ravages among the southern Picts
were a main cause of the seating of Kenneth mac Alpin on the Pictish throne.
The alliance of the Scottish King Constantine with Athelstan of England
checked for a time the Scandinavian raids; but on Constantine rebelling
against the Anglo-Saxon pretensions, Athelstan invaded the country as far as
the foot of the Eastern Grampians, while his fleet scoured the coast along
by Buchanness and as far as Caithness. Malcolm I. (942-954) made an
expedition to the north to wrest the country beyond the Spey from the Norse,
and the reign of Indulph, who succeeded him, is memorable in Scottish
history for the evacuation of Edinburgh by its Anglo - Saxon founders, while
the Pictish Chronicle assigns to it the first Scandinavian raid into Buchan.
The north-eastern province, enjoying at least comparative immunity from the
turmoils of the time, had grown in relative importance and become worth the
attention of the hungry followers in Orkney of Eric of the Bloody Axe, whose
descent on Buchan in Indulph's time seems to be identical with the inroad at
Cullen in 961 which led to the battle of the Baads, of popular tradition,
and to the death of Indulph as recorded in the later chronicles.
Traditionary story also tells of a battle of Gamrie on the same coast during
the same epoch of history.
Sigurd the Stout, upon whom
Olaf Tryggveson, the first Christian king of Norway, had forced a nominal
acceptance of the new faith, continued the raiding expeditions; among those
with whom he fought being Finlay, son of Ruadri and father of Macbeth—three
mormaers of Moray, who each received the title of "Ri-Albain," or King of
Alban, and yielded but scant obedience to the greater King of Scotland,
whose power was south of the Mounth. These northern kings, with the':
forces, were a buffer against the Norse of the northern mainland, and they
exercised authority in the country east of the Spey.
Several conflicts are
mentioned in the later chronicles as having occurred on the coasts or in the
interior of the two counties during the reign of Malcolm II. (1005-1034),
and Malcolm himself fought with the Danes in this province. The chronicles
are probably inexact, and in some cases there may be a confusion between
Malcolm the general King of Scotland and Malcolm the local king, who slew
Finlay and reigned in his stead (1020-1029). One of the fights is said to
have taken place at Mortlach in 1010, after a retreat before the victorious
Scandinavians from the western side of the Spey, but the details of this
alleged battle rest wholly upon late and untrustworthy authority. The Sagas
record that Sigurd married Malcolm's daughter, by whom he had a son, the
famous Thorfinn—a connection of which the Scottish annalists say nothing,
and it seems at least quite as likely that the northern as that the southern
Malcolm was Thorfinn's grandfather.
Swegen, King of Denmark, was
busy in the affairs of England with his ships and men. In 1012 an expedition
under his young son, Cnut, soon to be one of the most powerful of kings,
landed at Cruden Bay with the object, as would appear, of checking the tide
of Scandinavian evil fortune in Scotland which had culminated in the battles
of Barry and Aberlemno. The popular story in Abcrcromby's ' Martial
Atchievements' about Malcolm making up his differences with Cnut, and
ordering a church to be built and dedicated to St Olaf, the patron saint of
Norway, must be purely imaginary, for Olaf was at this time a youth of
seventeen ; he was slain in battle with Cnut in 1030, and his canonisation
did not take place till the following century.
Aberdeenshire bore a notable
part in the great and final trial of strength between Pagan and Christian,
Scandinavian and Celt, which took place at Clontarf in 1014. The Irish King
Brian Boru had carried on a long and successful struggle with the
Scandinavians. Both sides sought allies wherever they could find them.
Christian though he nominally was, Earl Sigurd took part with his pagan
kindred, while among King Brian's allies was Donald, mormaer of Mar. In West
Aberdeenshire Donald had suffered less than his seaside neighbours from the
Danish and Norwegian raids, but his sense of the gravity of the issue was
sufficiently strong to take him all the way to the shore of Dublin Bay to
bear a hand in the cause of patriotism and religion represented by the
Celtic king. Earl Sigurd, the mormaer of Mar, and the aged Brian Boru
himself, with most of the leaders on both sides, were among the slain; but
the battle was the severest blow which the Scandinavian interest had yet
received in these islands.
Thorfinn was a boy of five at
Earl Sigurd's death, when his grandfather, King Malcolm, gave him Sutherland
and Caithness, his older half-brothers dividing or fighting for the Orkney
earldom held of the King of Norway; in manhood he was a foremost warrior of
his time, reunited the Orkneys with his Scottish earldom, and went
sea-roving like all his kindred. His sway extended over the western seaboard
as far as Galloway, and on the death of his grandfather he had his fights
with King Duncan, who belonged to the rival family of Scottish kings. King
Cnut came to Scotland after visiting Rome in 1031, and received the
submission of Malcolm and two other kings—namely, Macbeth and Jehmarc or
Imergi; and for the time all Scotland was nominally under the over-lordship
of the Scandinavian King of England. Macbeth was a subordinate king in his
own right, and his wife, Gruoch, granddaughter of Kenneth IV., had become
heir to the Scottish throne, since Duncan had killed her brother to secure
the succession in his own family. Duncan went north to deal with Thorfinn,
and had Macbeth ostensibly helping him; but Macbeth. turned traitor, put him
to death, and, making his peace with Thorfinn, hurried south to seize the
reins of power. Thorfinn also went south, d iving the remains of Duncan's
army before him and subduing all the country as far as the Tay. In this
victorious march he would pass through Aberdeenshire, and over the Cairn-a-Mounth,
presumably by way of Torphins, the name of which may be a memento of the
episode.
With the support of Thorfinn
and his Norsemen, Macbeth, after being a petty king in the north for about a
dozen years, was for seventeen years King of Scotland. With his career
terminated the political influence of the Northmen in Aberdeenshire. Duncan
had left two young sons, one of whom, Malcolm, called Canmore, had found
refuge with his uncle Siward, the Danish Earl of Northumbria; and in
Malcolm's interest Siward came north in 1054 with armed forces by sea and
land and fought a successful battle on the Tay, but had to return south
without effecting his purpose of driving Macbeth from the throne. Malcolm
himself, now King of Cumbria, led an army against Macbeth in the summer of
1057. Fordun's report is that Macbeth, seeing his forces daily diminishing,
and those of his adversary increasing, suddenly fled to the north, w here he
hoped to find safety in the depths of the forests. Malcolm followed him
across the Mounth and overtook him at Lumphanan. The Shakespearean story is
taken from Hollinshed, whose narrative is a paraphrase from Hector Boece,
while Boece's authority is Fordun. But of Macbeth's discomfiture and death
at Lumphanan there can be no doubt. " Macbeth's Cairn," on the southern
slope of the Perk Hill, is now marked by a clump of trees in the midst of
cultivated land. In the period of agricultural improvement early in the
nineteenth century it was depleted for the erection of stone fences round
the adjacent fields, but was afterwards added to again as the fields were
cleared of stones. A " Macbeth's stone," on the adjacent Brae of Strcttum,
is said to mark the place where he received his death-wound, and the farm of
Cairnbethie, which has been formed around it, is a memorial of his name.
Kincardine O'Neil, where Wyntoun makes Malcolm Canmore await the issue of
the search and fray in the " Wode of Lunfanan," was of early importance as
commanding the ford of the Dee on the ancient route of travel by the
Cairn-a-Mounth Pass.
The kingship, so far as
Macbeth's party was concerned, devolved on Lulach, his stepson. Queen Gruoch
had been previously married to Gilcomgan, brother of Malcolm mac Maelbride,
the two brothers being concerned together in the insurrection of 1020, in
which Finlay perished. On the death of Malcolm in 1029 Gilcomgan became his
successor as local king, and three years afterwards was slain in his rath
with fifty ot his men, his cousin Macbeth taking his place both as local
king and as husband of Gruoch. Lulach was unfit for the position to which he
fell heir, and after a nominal reign of six months was slain at Essie in
Strath-bogie, perhaps in the Glen of Noth, where the Cairn of Mildewen marks
" the grave of a thousand." The local kingship held by Macbeth in his
younger days did not yet pass from the family, for we learn from the ' Book
of Deer' that Maelsnechtan, son of Lulach, gifted land to the monastery.
Thorfinn, whose sway, in some shadowy form at least, had extended over Mar
and Buchan, has an unrecorded, and therefore presumably peaceable,
disappearance from the scene. It has been supposed that the loss of his
support had hastened the fall of Macbeth. The Orkneyinga Saga tells us that
he was much lamented by his own people, but that in those lands which he had
conquered his rule was irksome, and that after his death many of those who
had been under it transferred their allegiance to their former chiefs,
whereupon "it soon became apparent how great a loss Thorfinn's death was to
his dominions."
There is some little evidence
in the ' Book of Deer' that throughout the greater part of the eleventh
century the northern claim of kingship over Alban had some reality in
Aberdeenshire. One of the entries is to the effect that Malcolm mac Kenneth
(Malcolm II.) gave the royal share in specified lands to the monastery, and
in the next entry we are told that Malcolm mac Maelbride gave the Delerc
while Mael-snechtan gave Pett Malduib. Malcolm mac Maelbride was ri or king
in the north, as we have seen, when Malcolm mac Kenneth was King of Scotia,
and both appear to have claimed kingship in Buchan and to have made grants
in virtue of the claim. If the obscurity attending the wars of Malcolm II.
is partly due to confusion between him and his northern namesake, it may
also be gathered that one result of the wars was to extend the authority of
Malcolm mac Maelbride in Aberdeenshire at the expense of that of the King of
Scotia. Dr John Stuart, in his preface to the ' Book of Deer' (p. li),
remarks that it is not easy to understand how lands presumably in the
neighbourhood of Deer could have been at the disposal of the mormaers of
Moray,—"lands," he says, " obviously subject to their rivals the kings of
Alban." But the so-called mormaers of Moray were, or claimed to be, the
kings of Alban, and the southern kings were now called kings of Scotia. The
division of the country between Macbeth and Thorfinn would be more
intelligible were it certain that the latter was the grandson of Malcolm mac
Maelbride, as also would the power of the Moray kings in Aberdeenshire. |
