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Dundurn in Strathearn where Giric is said by the Chronicle of Melrose to have died

Giric mac Dúngail (floruit circa 878–889) was a king in northern Britain in the late ninth century. The Irish annals record nothing of Giric's reign, nor do Anglo-Saxon writings add anything, and the meagre information which survives is contradictory. Modern historians disagree as to whether Giric was sole king, or ruled jointly with Eochaid, on his ancestry, and if he should be considered a king of the Picts, or perhaps the first king of Alba.

Although little is now known of Giric, he was regarded as an important figure in Scotland in the High Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages. Scots chroniclers such as John of Fordun, Andrew of Wyntoun, Hector Boece and the humanist scholar George Buchanan wrote of Giric as "King Gregory the Great" and told how he had conquered half of England and Ireland too.

Sources

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Compared to neighbouring Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England, few records of ninth and tenth century events in northern Britain survive. The main local source from the period is the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, a list of kings from Cináed mac Ailpín to Cináed mac Maíl Coluim (died 995). The list survives in the Poppleton Manuscript, a thirteenth century compilation. Originally simply a list of kings with reign lengths, the other details contained in the Poppleton Manuscript version were added in the tenth and twelfth centuries.[1] In addition to this, later king lists survive.[2] The entry for Giric's reign in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is corrupt, and at variance with all other king lists.[3]

In the absence of contemporary annalistic reports, any reconstruction of Giric's time is reliant on later sources, many of doubtful reliability. The earliest of these, dating from the 11th century, are the Duan Albanach, the Prophecy of Berchán and the writings of Flann Mainistrech. Later yet, the histories of John of Fordun, Andrew of Wyntoun, and Hector Boece, date from the 14th and 15th centuries.[4]

Background

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Northern Britain in the late ninth and early tenth centuries
Main article: Origins of the Kingdom of Alba

The dominant kingdom in eastern Scotland before the Viking Age was the northern Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, on the shores of the Moray Firth. By the ninth century, the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata appears to have been subject to the kings of Fortriu of the family of Constantín mac Fergusa. Constantín's family dominated Fortriu after 789 and perhaps, if Constantín was a kinsman of Óengus mac Fergusa, from around 730. All this came to an end in 839 with a defeat by Viking armies reported by the Annals of Ulster in which the king of Fortriu Eogán mac Óengusa and his brother Bran, Constantín's nephews, together with the king of Dál Riata, Áed mac Boanta, "and others almost innumerable" were killed.[5] These deaths led to a period of instability lasting a decade when several families attempted to establish their dominance in Pictland. By around 848 Cináed mac Ailpín had emerged as the winner.[6]

According to later accounts Cináed mac Ailpín destroyed the Picts and established the kingdom of Scotland, the founding of which is dated to 843, the year in which Cináed was said to have come to power. The historical record for ninth century Scotland is meagre, but the Irish annals and the tenth century Chronicle of the Kings of Alba agree that Cináed was a Pictish king, and call him "king of the Picts" at his death. The same style is used of Cináed's brother Domnall and son Constantín.[7]

The kingdom ruled by Cináed's descendants—older works used the name House of Alpin to describe them but descent from Cináed was the defining factor[8]—lay to the south of the previously dominant kingdom of Fortriu, centred in the lands around the River Tay. The extent of Cináed's nameless kingdom is uncertain, but it certainly extended from the Firth of Forth in the south to the Mounth in the north, and perhaps much further north. Whether it extended beyond the mountainous spine of north Britain—Druim Alban—is unclear. The core of the kingdom was similar to the old counties of Mearns, Forfar, Perth, Fife, and Kinross. Among the chief ecclesiastical centres named in the records are Dunkeld, probably seat of the bishop of the kingdom, and Cell Rígmonaid (modern St Andrews).[9]

Cináed's son Constantín died in 876, probably killed fighting against a Viking army which had come north from Northumbria in 874.[10] The surviving record portrays Constantín as the last Pictish king.[11]

The Chronicle of Melrose and some versions of the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba say that Giric died at Dundurn in Strathearn.

Son of Fortune

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... the Son of Fortune shall come; he shall rule over Alba as one Lord.[12]
The Britons will be low in his time; high will be Alba of melodious boats.
Pleasant to my heart and my body is what my spirit tells me:
The rule of the Son of Fortune in his land in the east will cast misery from Scotland.
Seventeen years (in fortresses of valour) in the sovereignty of Scotland.
He will have in bondage in his house Saxons, Foreigners, and Britons.[13]
The Prophecy of Berchán.[14]

The Prophecy of Berchán, an 11th century verse history of Scots and Irish kings presented as a prophecy, is a notably difficult source. As the Prophecy refers to kings by epithets, but never by name, linking it to other materials is not straightforward. The Prophecy refers to Giric by the epithet Mac Rath, "the Son of Fortune".[15]

The entry on Giric in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is perhaps corrupt. It states:

And Eochaid, son of Run, the king of the Britons [of Strathclyde, and] grandson of Kenneth by his daughter reigned for eleven years; although other say that Giric, the son of another, reigned at this time, because he became Eochaid's foster-father and guardian.
And in [Eochaid's] second year, Áed, Niall's son, died; and his ninth year, on the very day of [St] Cyricus, an eclipse of the sun occurred. Eochaid with his foster-father was now expelled from the kingdom.[16]

Kenneth is Cináed mac Ailpín; Áed, Niall's son is Áed Findliath, who died on 20 November 879; and St Cyrus's day was 16 June, on which day a solar eclipse occurred in 885.[17]

Gregory the Great

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By the 12th century, Giric had acquired legendary status as liberator of the Scottish church from Pictish oppression and, fantastically, as conqueror of Ireland and most of England. As a result Giric was known as Gregory the Great. This tale appears in the variant of the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba which is interpolated in Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland. Here Giric, or Grig, is named "Makdougall", son of Dúngal. Giric, and Eochaid, are omitted from the Duan Albanach, but they are not unique in this.

This account, found in the Poppleton Manuscript, is not matched by other regnal lists. The lists known as "D", "F", "I", "K", and "N",[18] contain a different version, copied by the Chronicle of Melrose.[19] List "D", which may be taken as typical, contains this account of Giric:

Giric, Dungal's son, reigned for twelve years; and he died in Dundurn, and was buried in Iona. He subdued to himself all Ireland, and nearly [all] England; and he was the first to give liberty to the Scottish church, which was in servitude up to that time, after the custom and fashion of the Picts.[20]

Giric's conquests appear as Bernicia, rather than Ireland (Hibernia), in some versions. William Forbes Skene saw a connection between this and the account in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto which claims that soon after the death of King Halfdan, the Northumbrians and the Northmen united under King Guthfrith to defeat a Scots invasion.[21]

Ut regem nostrum Girich

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In a recent discussion of the "Dunkeld Litany", which was largely fabricated in Schottenklöster in Germany in late Medieval and Early Modern times, Thomas Owen Clancy offers the provisional conclusion that, within the emendations and additions, there lies an authentic 9th century Litany. The significance of this Litany for the question of Giric's authenticity and kingship is contained in a prayer for the king and the army, where the king named is Giric:

Ut regem nostrum Girich cum exercito suo ab omnibus inimicorum insiidis tuearis et defendas ...[22]
That it may please thee to keep and guard Giric our king and his army from all enemies and snares ...

He shall rule over Alba as one Lord

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A.A.M. Duncan argues that the association of Giric and Eochaid in the kingship is spurious, that Giric alone was king of the Picts, which he claimed as the son of daughter of Cináed mac Ailpín, and that the report that he was Eochaid's guardian (alumpnus) is a misreading of uncle (auunculus). A.P. Smyth proposed that Giric was a nephew of Cináed mac Ailpín, the son of his brother Domnall, which appears to rest on what is probably a scribal error. The entry also states that an otherwise unknown Causantín mac Domnaill (or mac Dúngail) was king. Finally, Benjamin Hudson has suggested that Giric, rather than being a member of Cenél nGabráin dynasty of Cináed mac Ailpín and his kin, was a member of the northern Cenél Loairn descended dynasty of Moray, and accepts the existence of Giric's brother Causantín.

Notes

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  1. ^ Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 87–93; Dumville, "Chronicle of the Kings of Alba".
  2. ^ Anderson, Kings and kingship, reproduces these lists and discusses their origins.
  3. ^ On this, note Dumville's comments regarding damnatio memoriae, Dumville, "Chronicle of the Kings of Alba", p. 75; see also Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 117–121.
  4. '^ Have a look through Broun, Irish Identity; Watt festschrift.
  5. ^ Annals of Ulster, s.a. 838.
  6. ^ Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 57–67 & 93–98; Smyth, Warlords and Holy Men, pp. 180–185; Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, pp. 8–10.
  7. ^ Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 93–117 & 320–322; Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, pp. 13–14; Herbert, "Ri Éirenn, Ri Alban"; Dumville, "Chronicle of the Kings of Alba", p. 76.
  8. ^ Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 220–221 & 256–257.
  9. ^ Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 98–101; Driscoll, Alba pp. 33–51; Foster, Picts, Gaels and Scots, pp. 8 fig. 1, 39 fig. 24., & 110–111.
  10. ^ Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 106–116; Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 72–75, s.a. 875.
  11. ^ Needed.
  12. ^ Alternatively, "he shall knead Alba into one kingdom"; A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, pp. 366–367.
  13. ^ Hostages signifying his rule over these peoples. Foreigners, (Old Irish: gall), means Scandinavians or Norse Gaels.
  14. ^ After A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, pp. 366–367.
  15. ^ A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, pp. 366–367. Hudson, The Prophecy of Berchán, is the fullest study of this source.
  16. ^ Skene's Chronicles of the Picts..., p. 9, quoted in A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, pp. 363–364.
  17. ^ St Cyrus day and the eclipse: A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, p. 364, note 3. Confirming the eclipse, see the NASA Catalog of Solar Eclipses: 0801 to 0900.
  18. ^ The surviving lists and their origins and relationships are discussed extensively by Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson.
  19. ^ The Chronicle of Melrose account, from Skene, op. cit, pp. 22 & 224, is quoted in A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, p. 368.
  20. ^ Skene, op. cit., p. 151, quoted in A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, pp. 364–365. The untranslated texts are give by M.O. Anderson, pp. 264ff.
  21. ^ A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, p. 365, note 2; A.O. Anderson, Scottish Annals, pp. 62–64. Guthfrith appears to have reigned in Jórvík from 883 to 24 August 895.
  22. ^ Hudson, p. 206.

References

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  • Anderson, Alan Orr (1922), Anderson, Marjorie Ogilvie (ed.), Early Sources of Scottish History A.D. 500 to 1286, vol. I (1990 revised & corrected ed.), Stamford: Paul Watkins, ISBN 1-871615-03-8 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  • Anderson, Alan Orr (1908), Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers A.D. 500 to 1286, London: D. Nutt
  • Anderson, M. O. (1980), Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, ISBN 0-7011-1604-8 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)
  • Boece, Buik of the Croniclis (II, 457ff) (Google books)
  • Broun, Dauvit (1999), The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of the Scots in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, ISBN 0-85115-375-5
  • Buchanan (ed/tr Aikman), Rerum (Google books)
  • Clancy, Thomas Owen (2002), "Scottish Saints and National Identities in the Early Middle Ages", in Thacker, Alan; Sharpe, Richard (eds.), Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-820394-2
  • Driscoll, Stephen (2002), Alba: The Gaelic Kingdom of Scotland AD 800–1124, The Making of Scotland, Edinburgh: Birlinn, ISBN 1-84158-145-3
  • Dumville, David (2000), "The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba", in Taylor, Simon (ed.), Kings, clerics and chronicles in Scotland 500–1297, Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 73–86, ISBN 1-85182-516-9
  • Duncan, A. A. M. (2002), The Kingship of the Scots 842–1292: Succession and Independence, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 0-7486-1626-8
  • Fordoun, Chronicle
  • Foster, Sally M. (2004), Picts, Gaels and Scots: Early Historic Scotland, London: Batsford, ISBN 0-7134-8874-3 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)
  • Herbert, Máire (2000), "Ri Éirenn, Ri Alban: kingship and identity in the ninth and tenth centuries", in Taylor, Simon (ed.), Kings, clerics and chronicles in Scotland 500–1297 (PDF), Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 62–72, ISBN 1-85182-516-9
  • Hogg, Ballad of King Gregory (Google Books)
  • Hudson, Benjamin T (1996), The Prophecy of Berchán: Irish and Scottish High-Kings of the Early Middle Ages, London: Greenwood, ISBN 0313295670
  • Pinkerton, Inquiry (Google books)
  • Skene, Picts and Scots
  • Smyth, Alfred P. (1989), Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80–1000, The New History of Scotland, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 0-7486-0100-7 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)
  • Taylor, Simon, ed. (2000), Kings, clerics and chronicles in Scotland 500–1297: Essays in honour of Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday, Dublin: Four Courts Press, ISBN 1-85182-516-9
  • Williams, Ann; Smyth, Alfred P.; Kirby, D. P., eds. (1991), "Giric I, king of Scots", A Biographical Dictionary of Dark-Age Britain, London: Seaby, ISBN 1-85264-047-2
  • Woolf, Alex (2007), From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070, The New Edinburgh History of Scotland, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 0-7486-1234-5 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
  • Wyntoun, Chronicle (Internet Archive)


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