Pictish Chronicle

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The Pictish Chronicle is a name used to refer to a pseudo-historical account of the kings of the Picts beginning many thousand years before history was recorded in Pictavia and ending after Pictavia had been enveloped by Scotland.

Contents

Version A

There are several versions of the Pictish Chronicle. The so-called "A" text is probably the oldest, the fullest, and seems to have fewer errors than other versions. The original (albeit lost) manuscript seems to date from the early years of the reign of Kenneth II of Scotland (who ruled Scotland from 971 until 995) since he is the last king mentioned and the chronicler does not know the length of his reign. This chronicle survives only in the 14th century Poppleton Manuscript.

It is in three parts:

  1. Cronica de origine antiquorum Pictorum, an account of the origins of the Picts, mostly from the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville.
  2. A list of Pictish kings.
  3. Chronicle of the Kings of Alba .

It is evident that the latter two sections were originally written in Gaelic since a few Gaelic words have not been translated into Latin.

Version D

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. (Giric's conquests appear as Bernicia, rather than Ireland (Hibernia), in some versions.)

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.

This says that Áed reigned one year and was killed by his successor Giric in Strathallan. (Other king lists have the same report.)

Here Giric, or Grig, is named "Makdougall", son of Dúngal.

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. [1]

This account is not found in the Poppleton Manuscript. The lists known as "D", "F", "I", "K", and "N", [2] contain this version and is copied by the Chronicle of Melrose . [3]

The Latin material interpolated in Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykl states that King Dub was murdered at Forres, and links this to an eclipse of the sun which can be dated to 20 July 966.

See also

Bibliography

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domnall mac Ailpín</span> King of the Picts from 858 to 862

Domnall mac Ailpín, anglicised sometimes as Donald MacAlpin and known in most modern regnal lists as Donald I, was King of the Picts from 858 to 862. He followed his brother Kenneth I to the Pictish throne.

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Causantín or Constantín mac Fergusa (789–820) was king of the Picts, in modern Scotland, from 789 until 820. He was until the Victorian era sometimes counted as Constantine I of Scotland; the title is now generally given to Causantín mac Cináeda. He is credited with having founded the church at Dunkeld which later received relics of St Columba from Iona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giric</span> King of the Picts from 878 to 889

Giric mac Dúngail, in modern English his name is Gregory or Greg MacDougal and nicknamed Mac Rath, was a king of the Picts or the king of Alba. 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 the sole king or ruled jointly with Eochaid, on his ancestry, and if he should be considered a Pictish king or the first king of Alba.

De Situ Albanie is the name given to the first of seven Scottish documents found in the so-called Poppleton Manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. It was probably written sometime between 1202 and 1214, in the reign of the William the Lion, by a French-speaking resident of Scotland, as an introduction to the compilation.

The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, or Scottish Chronicle, is a short written chronicle covering the period from the time of Kenneth MacAlpin until the reign of Kenneth II. W.F. Skene called it the Chronicle of the Kings of Scots, and some have called it the Older Scottish Chronicle, but Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is emerging as the standard scholarly name.

The Poppleton manuscript is the name given to the fourteenth-century codex probably compiled by Robert of Poppleton, a Carmelite friar who was the Prior of Hulne, near Alnwick. The manuscript contains numerous works, such as a map of the world, and works by Orosius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales. It is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Origins of the Kingdom of Alba</span>

The origins of the Kingdom of Alba pertain to the origins of the Kingdom of Alba, or the Gaelic Kingdom of Scotland, either as a mythological event or a historical process, during the Early Middle Ages.

Taran Mac Ainften was a King of the Picts from 693 until 697, according to the Pictish king-lists. His name is the same as that of the Celtic thunder-god, Taranis.

References

  1. Skene, op. cit., p. 151, quoted in A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, pp. 364365. The untranslated texts are given by M.O. Anderson, pp. 264ff.
  2. The surviving lists and their origins and relationships are discussed extensively by Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson.
  3. The Chronicle of Melrose account, from Skene, op. cit, pp. 22 & 224, is quoted in A.O. Anderson, Early Sources, p. 368.