| conquest.
The "victory of the Scots" was in reality the pragmatic merger of two closely
related peoples, under pressure from outsiders, after centuries of proximity, and with a
singular recipe for intermarriage and sometime cooperation: matrilineal succession. This
recipe continued to have its effect on the royal succession, which incorporated the
Pictish system’s nuclear family succession while exchanging its matrilineal aspect.
What emerged was a modified form of succession, which served the exigencies of the time by
better providing for stability and continuity in the newly merged dynasty. Kenneth
MacAlpin’s daughter had married Run, king of Strathclyde, and it was her son Eochaid,
not either of Kenneth’s patrilineal grandsons, who was anointed king in 878. It was a
Pictish sense of territorial administration and nuclear family succession that continued
in the new kingdom.
There are many examples of the continuity of
pagan Celtic instituitions in the Christian kingdom, but the most important single
instance of syncretism in Scotland concerns St. Brigid of Kildare in Ireland, also known
as St. Bridget or St. Bride. The case of St. Bride also demonstrates the Celtic
tribal-cultural continuum with Ireland in action. The story of St. Bride begins in
Ireland. According to legend, she was the dughter of Dubhthach, a chieftain of Leinster,
and Brocca, a slave girl. Kildare means "church of the oak," and the likelihood
of Druidic associations in the name (referring to the sacred oak groves of the Druids)
lends support to the tradition that her fifth-century nunnery was built on the site of a
pagan cult center. This is far from exotic; it was usual for Christian churches to be
associated with former religious centers, just as it was usual for holy days to be
associated with pagan festivals as an aid to the establishment of the new religion. As we
have already seen in Chapter III, the land for St. Patrick’s Church at Elphin in
Rosscommon was donated to St. Patrick by the then Archdruid Ona, and the church itself was
long administered by his descendants. In any case, St. Brigid’s nunnery was
associated with her namesake, Brigid, who appears in ancient Irish literature as daughter
of the Daghda, or Otherworld god. She is ultimately the mother-goddess of fertility, and
was held to preside over learning, literature, craftsmen and especially the healing arts.
St. Brigid continued this tradition: As midwife of the Virgin Mary, she is often venerated
in her own right. Her nunnery at Kildare was under gessa or taboo: It was forbidden for a
man to enter the nunnery or pass through the hedge which surrounded it. Inside, her fire
was tended by the virgins of her nunnery, in nightly vigils, and it was said that the fire
burned for a thousand years.
Kildare, near Dublin, is not far from Tara,
the seat of the ancient High Kings, and site of their inauguration before the
"singing stone," which rang out in the sacral presence of the true king. The
stone and the place are pre—Celtic, and it is interesting that this, the most sacred
spot in Ireland since the dawn of memory, was never surmounted by a Christian church. This
may be related to the fact that the "feis," the pagan inauguration ceremony of
the High King, |
