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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-04 > 0829723083
From: Stewart Baldwin < >
Subject: Re: New Dark Age Britain Book
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 06:38:03 GMT
Jared Olar < > wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Apr 1996, Nancy Lauer wrote:
>> Jared,
>>
>> I appreciate the offer -- the line goes like this:
<considerable snipping>
>> Eanfrith, King of Bernicia m. a princess of the Picts
>> Domnall m. sister of Talorcan, King of the Picts
>> Garnard, King of the Picts
>The Pictish pedigree you have here is quite correct. Eanfrith fled to
>the Picts, where he married an Pictish heiress and sired at least two
>children, King Talorg or Talorcan, and a daughter who married a
>certain man named Domhnall, thereby becoming the mother of King
There is no proof of a daughter who married Domnall. See the more
detailed comments below.
>Garnard or Gartnaich mac Domhnall. Hector Munro Chadwick has a lot of great
>stuff in EARLY SCOTLAND. He and/or others suggest that Domhnall is none
>other than the Scottish king *Domhnall Breac*, which is chronologically
>plausible but, I fear, unverifiable.
>> Spondana m. Eochaid II, King of the Scots
Ditto for this marriage. See below.
>In Hector Boece's CHRONICLE OF SCOTLAND (written in the 1500's A.D. and
>full of a humongous gob of legend and fiction) says that a Scottish king
>named "Eugenius" married a Pictish princess named "Spondana, daughter of
>Garnardus, King of the Picts." I do not know if any earlier sources
>provide the name Spondana or the name of Eochaidh/Eugenius'
>father-in-law. I've seen a more recent hypothesis which proposes a
>different ancestry for Eochaidh's wife. Whoever her father really
>was--and Gartnaich mac Domhnall seems chronologically acceptable--we know
>she was Pictish, because she and Eochaidh had a son named ALPIN, a
>Pictish name--and this Alpin ruled over both his father's people (Scots)
>and his mother's people (Picts).
>> Eochaid III
>> Aodh
>Also called Aedh, "Aedh Fionn"--the White.
>> Eochaid IV, King of the Scots m. Urgusia or Fergusa
Ditto for this marriage. See below.
>This is the traditional name of Eochaidh's Pictish wife. Again, because
>Alpin is a Picitish name, and Kenneth MacAlpin successfully asserted a
>right to the Pictish throne, we know that his mother must have been
>Pictish. Hector Boece says she was named "Fergusiana, sister of Hungus,
>King of the Picts." This means she was daughter of a man named Uirguist or
>Fergus, since King Hungus or Aenghus was the son of a Uirguist or
>Fergus. (It has been suggested that Fergus the same as Aedh Fionn's
>brother of the same name, but again, that is not verifiable.)
Since Angus and his brother Constantine, sons of Fergus, kings of the
Picts, were also kings of the Scots (i.e., Dal Riata), it is
reasonable to suppose that their father was Fergus, king of Dal Riata,
and this seems to be commonly accepted by recent authors on the
subject (e.g., Anderson, Miller, Hudson, etc.).
>> Alpine, King of Kintyre, Crowned King of the Scots 844
>> Kenneth I MacAlpine
None of the Pictish princesses named above rests on any good
authority, and the contemporary and near contemporary records do not
have a single example of a Pictish princess being named, or any
relationship involving Pictish women being explicitly stated (unless
you want to count Eochaid, son of Run and maternal grandson of Kenneth
Mac Alpin as a king of the Picts succeeding according to Pictish
matrilineal custom). In general, the father's names are known for
Pictish kings, and there are even a few cases where the father can be
identified with a reasonable degree of certainty. (Plus several
Pictish kings whose father had the same name as someone else known in
the records, but without proof one way or the other whether it was the
same man - for example, the sixth century Pictish king Brude, who may
or may not have been a son of Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd.)
Although no Pictish relationships through females are explicitly
stated in the early records, there is one case where such a
relationship can be deduced with a high degree of probability, and
that is given by the following table.
Aethelfrith, d. 616
king of Northumbria
_________________|________________________
| | |
(Pictish md. Eanfrith d. 633 Oswald d. 641 Oswy d. 670
princess)| k. Bernicia k. Northumbria k. Northumbria
|................... |
| | |
Talorcan daughter md. Beli of Ecgfrith d. 685
k. Picts | Strathclyde k. Northumbria
653-657 | killed by his
Brude cousin Brude at
k. Picts Nechtansmere
671-693
The key piece of information here is that the "Historia Brittonum"
(which is not contemporary, but is only about 150 years after the
fact) refers to Brude and Ecgfrith as cousins ("fratruelis"). This
piece if data, combined with Talorcan's status as king of the Picts,
along with what is known about matrilineal succession (which was
probably practiced by the Picts), makes the above table probable,
though not certain (the dotted line being the weakest part).
It would be really nice if enough evidence survived to reconstruct a
genealogy for the Pictish kings (especially given their unusual
succession laws, which are not fully understood), but no known
evidence exists to do this. However, that hasn't stopped people from
conjecturing such genealogies. Here are a few attempts by well known
scholars in the area.
Anderson, M. O., "Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland" (Edinburgh,
1973).
Jackson, A, "The Symbol Stones of Scotland" (Orkney, 1987) [I have
not seen this book, but I understand that it contains conjectural
Pictish genealogies.]
Kirby, D. P., "... peruniversas Pictorum provincias", in Gerald
Bonner, ed., "Famulus Christi: Essays in Commeration of the
Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede (London,
1976), pp. 287-324.
Miller, M., "Eanfrith's Pictish son", in "Northern History", vol. 14
(1978), pp. 47-66.
Miller, M., "The Last Century of Pictish Succession", in "Scottish
Studies", vol. 23 (1979), pp. 39-67.
Miller, M., "Matriliny by Treaty: The Pictish foundation legend", in
Whitelock et al, ed., "Ireland in Early Medieval Europe: Studies in
memory of Kathleen Hughes" (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 133-161.
It should be kept in mind that the above attempts are CONJECTURES
(apologies for shouting, but I wanted to make sure it was clear), as
the above authors freely admit, and should not be regarded as proven,
or even probable.
Stewart Baldwin
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