Mid-Argyll Theme
- 14
From Dál Riata to
Scotland
The conventional story how the Kingdom of
Scotland emerged gives a high profile to the kings
of Dál Riata, the ruling family in the area
around Kilmartin. In this picture the Dál
Riatan fort of Dunadd appears as a kind of embryo
of the later Kingdom of Scotland, for it was from
here that it all grew.
Constantine son of Fergus, king of Dál
Riata (789-820), had become so powerful that he
subdued Pictland, occupied the Pictish power centre
at Forteviot, and built a church at Dunkeld in
about 815, in the heart of Pictish territory. It
was a sign that the Scots had achieved (at least
for a while) both secular and ecclesiastical
control of the Picts.
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This control was not maintained,
however, and Dál Riata lost their
grip of Pictland for a while, but finally
the Scots and the Picts were united under
the power of another king of Dál
Riata, Cinaed mac Ailpín. His
re-conquest of Pictland, and his removal
of the relics of St Columba to the church
of Dunkeld making it the national shrine
of his new realm in 849, sounded the
death-knell for Pictland as an independent
kingdom. Now the Scots were in charge of a
'united kingdom' - one which was still
called Pictland, but within a few decades
adopted a new name, Alba - the old Gaelic
name for Britain, and still the Gaelic
name for Scotland. It was to be a Gaelic
kingdom, and the Pictish language would
rapidly disappear under the rule of the
new Dál Riatan rulers - Cinaed and
his dynasty.
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The name Custantin
filius Fircussu [Constantine son of
Fergus] is just decipherable on the
base of the Dupplin Cross, originally
erected at the Pictish royal palace at
Forteviot [Replica, photo K.
Forsyth]
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That is the conventional picture of how Scotland
emerged. There are serious problems with such a
model, however, and the picture of Gaelic warriors
overpowering Pictland does not sit easily alongside
some of the few detailed records we have of this
period:
- In 736, a Pictish king seized Dunadd, laid
waste Dál Riata and captured two sons of
the Dál Riatan king, binding them in
chains. Dál Riata was crushed as a
political and military force, by the king of the
Picts - hardly suggestive that it was about to
take over Pictland.
- At the end of the eighth century Vikings
began to attack Dál Riata, which would
hardly have helped the Gaels to build up the
military strength necessary to invade and
conquer Pictland.
- In the years around 791-805, it seems that
the king of Dál Riata was the son of
Constantine, then king of the Picts. If the king
of the Picts was able to impose his son as ruler
of Dál Riata, it suggests that Dál
Riata was still weak - certainly too weak to
launch a takeover of Pictland.
Recent research has therefore cast doubt on the
traditional view of a Gaelic conquest of Pictland.
An alternative is that Pictland thoroughly
dominated the Gaels to their west, from that attack
of 736 onwards. By the time of Cinaed mac Ailpin,
Dál Riata had virtually ceased to exist as a
viable kingdom, and it more or less completely
disappears from the annals. The last king of
Dál Riata to be mentioned is Donn Corci
('Brown Oats' - a nickname?) who died in 792.
Rather than seeing Cinaed mac Ailpín as a
Dál Riatan king who put an end to the Picts,
we should perhaps see him as the Pictish ruler who
oversaw the final disappearance of Dál
Riata. After all, when he dies in 858 he is 'King
of the Picts', not King of Dál Riata, though
he may have had some Dál Riatan
ancestry.
This king's uniquely successful family
monopolised the kingship of Pictland for a long
time thereafter, in spite of opposition from
competing families. It may have been to justify
their unusual success in holding onto power that
the dynasty invented the myth of the 'conquest' by
Cinaed of Dál Riata. In this case, when
Cinaed moved the relics of Columba to his great
church at Dunkeld, far from representing the
Dál Riata's triumph, this signalled the
ultimate collapse of her integrity when even her
patron saint was absorbed by the all-powerful
Pictish church.
Key
References
- J. Bannerman (1999), 'The Scottish Takeover
of Pictland'
- D. Broun (1994), 'The Origin of Scottish
Identity'
- D. Broun (1998), 'Pictish Kings,
761-839'
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This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.