The Kings of Alba

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The Kings of Alba

• Scotlands First Kingdom

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The Kings of Alba

• Kenneth Mac Alpin ( -858)
• His descendants after 900AD power-sharing of the
  descendants.
• The kingship was explicitly Gaelic.
• End of the familys monopoly in 1034. Mael Coluim
  (Malcolm) mac Cineada (1005-34).

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The Kings of Alba

• New breed of kings.
• Duncan I (killed by Macbeth in battle r.
  1040-1057). (Both descended from Kenneth M Alpin
  through their mothers).
• MacDuff (the last descendant of Kenneth to rule).

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The Kings of Alba

• They did not rule the whole of Scotland.
• The west and SW were infrequently under their
  rule.
• The earlier Celtic royal residences on hilltops
  gave way to large churches or a string of local
  courts across the country.

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Malcolm III

• Mael Coluim mac Donchada
• (1057-93)

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Malcolm and David
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Malcolm III and Margaret
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The Canmore Dynasty (the ten kings)

• After Macbeths reign came Malcolm III who
  probably used Edinburgh Castle as one of his
  strongholds.
• (11th century).
• It was during this dynasty after David I that the
  Celtic method of appointing a new king gave way
  to the now familiar method of primogeniture
  (first-born).

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The Canmore Dynasty

• Many changes came to Scotland during this dynasty
  strongly influenced by the Anglo-Norman system of
  rule (landholding and allegiance, Normans in
  Britain after 1066).
• Growth of the Roman church, supplanting of the
  Celtic-style monasteries.
• Centralization of administration.

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The Canmore Dynasty (12th-13th century)

• Taxation and trading on the basis of the burgh
  system.
• Especially in the 13th century the influence of
  England on the Scottish state. Uncertainity about
  the status of the Scottish monarchy.

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The Canmore Dynasty

• Many Scottish nobles owned land in both Scotland
  and England which meant that legally they owed
  allegiance both to the Scottish and English
  crowns.

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David I (1124-53)

• David I- his reign led to the dynamic Scottish
  monarchy of the 12-13 centuries.
• During his time
• rapid reform of church
• Economic development driven by burgess colonists

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David I
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David I

• Son of Mael Coluim mac Donnchada.
• He received a Norman-style education in England.
• He ruled initially as prince of the Cumbrian
  region.
• He introduced English and Continental techniques
  of government.
• King of Scotland 1124.

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David I

• South of the Forth after 1124 feudal lordships
  for friends and dependants.
• Reform of the church, brought in European
  monastic orders Austinians and the Cistercians.
• New elite of government.
• He was opposed by the Gaelic nobility.

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David I

• String of royal castles and burghs from Aberdeen
  to Inverness.
• 1136 unprecedented degree of power. Stability of
  his kingdom.
• Tried to integrate parts of northern England into
  his kingdom (Northumbria).
• First native coinage.

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Language during the time of David I

• It is during the time of David and his
  predecessor that Gaelic reaches its status as the
  language of most of Scotland (excluding the
  northern islands of Shetland and Orkney).

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Spread of Gaelic

• The spread of Gaelic culture eastwards
• The use of Gaelic by the Columban Church (Iona)
  and their missonaries.
• The use of Gaelic in the courts of the first
  Scottish kings in eastern Scotland (Pictland)
  (from c850- ).

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languages

• After c500AD various forms of Germanic/English
  arrived in Scotland and developed.
• Dumfriesshire, Galloway.
• It was the towns that eventually promoted
  English. The burghs.
• Under David Is rule, we see the promotion of
  English language and custom in the Lowlands.

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Wars of Independence

• 1286-c1353

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Wars of Independence

• The attempted subjugation of Scotland by its
  neighbour to the south.
• Amicable relationship between the two for much of
  the 13th century.
• But Edward I intervened at the death of Alexander
  III.
• Edwards son and Margaret, Alexanders
  grand-daughter.

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Wars of Independence

• William Wallace, battle of Falkirk, 1298, his
  death 1305
• Robert Bruce- new king (having killed John
  Comyn). Descendant of David I
• Edward I (dies 1307)
• Battle of Bannockburn 1314 (Bruce accepted as
  king)
• Robert Bruces reign 1306-29

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Robert Bruce and Isabella of Mar
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Wars of Independence

• The recognition of Scotlands independence.

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The Lordship of the Isles

• http//www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/lor
  ds_of_the_isles/

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Lordship of the Isles
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Power-Lordship of the Isles

• When the centre of Gaelic power moved from Dal
  Riata in the west to Pictland in the 9th century,
  a new political entity took shape in the west.
• By then there was an important Scandinavian
  presence there.
• The first so-called king of the Isles (Ri Innse
  Gall or Triath nan Eilean) was Godfrey son of
  Harald (d.989).

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Power-Lordship of the Isles

• In the ensuing century there was competition for
  the lordship from Norway, Scotland, earls of
  Orkney, kings of Dublin, and some Irish local
  kings.
• Authority was divided between Scotland and
  Norway.
• Finally, in 1266, Norway ceded their part to
  Scotland (treaty of Perth).

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Power-Lordship of the Isles

• During the Wars of Independence, the MacDoughalls
  oppossed Robert the Bruce.
• By the 14th century, the Isles had become the
  centre of Gaelic culture in Scotland with close
  links with Ireland.
• The Council of the Isles (justice and
  administration). Control of the seaways.

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Power-Lordship of the Isles

• The Lords of the Isles (Righ Inse Gall) and the
  chiefs encouraged their younger men to become
  mercenaries. They were known as Gall-Oglaigh
  (Gallowglasses), and fought for the waring Irish
  kings of the period. They were described
• These sort of men be those that do not lightly
  abandon the field, but bide the brunt to the
  death.

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Power-Lordship of the Isles

• The Gallowglasses became much sought-after in
  Europe, and were greatly feared.
• Many were given lands in Ireland. MacDonalds,
  MacDonnells, MacSweens.
• A warrior society.

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Gallowglasses
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Power-Lordship of the Isles

• By the 15th century, there was greater and
  greater conflict with the Crown of Scotland.
• By the beginning of the following century, the
  break-up of the Lordship.
• The power-vacuum is largely taken up by the
  various powerful clans.

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The end of the Lordship of the Isles

• An attempt in 1462 by the Lord of the isles (John
  of Islay) to topple the king of Scotland James
  III (Stewart family) with the help of the English
  king (Edward IV) failed, and John lost his lands,
  and within three generations, the old Lordship
  had crumbled.
• This led the whole west of Scotland to become a
  patchwork of clan territories.

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After the Lordship of the Isles

• One important achievement of the old principality
  was the Great Music (An Ceol Mor). I.e. the
  pipers.
• The canon of the pipers went to 300 pieces.
• The piping college of the MacCrimmonds was in
  existence well before the first reference in 1580.

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The Scottish Clans

• From the beginnings to Culloden..

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The Clans

• The clan was the most obvious manifestation of
  the centrality of kinship to the organisation of
  society in Gaelic Scotland.
• This was a key legacy of the medieval Scottish
  kingdom from its Gaelic prototype.

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The word clann

• The word mainly used before clan was cenel, other
  words were cinneadh, siol and sliochd.
• Clan was used from c11th century.
• Surnames began at the very highest levels as a
  means of identifying members of a ruling lineage..

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The origins of the Clans

• Clan is from clann, the Gaelic word for children.
  Clansmen and women saw themselves as descended
  from common name-fathers, often distant ancestors
  who in some meaningful sense were the first of
  that name.
• So, Clan Donald (Clann Domhnaill) were originally
  the children of Donald.

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The origins of the Clans

• The Clan Campbell , the most powerful grouping in
  the SW of Scotland insisted they were descended
  from the Irish mythic hero Diarmaid the Boar.
• (In fact, the Campbells more likely descended
  from the Old Brittonic speaking peoples of the SW
  of Scotland, related to the Britons in the south.)

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The origins of the Clans

• Even before the fall of the Lordship of the
  Isles, the extreme rivalry between the clans was
  coming to a head.
• A famous event was the battle of the clans in
  1396. This event between the Clan Cameron and
  Clan Chattan was fought without protective armour
  between thirty men on either side.

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The origins of the Clans

• The lawlessness of some of the clans can be seen
  in the person of the Wolf of Badenoch. In 1390,
  he burned down the town and cathedral of Moray
  because the bishop had criticized him.
• He belonged to the family of the Stewarts.
• His family had been one of the Anglo-Normans who
  settled in Scotland.

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The Time of the Forays (Plunder)-the clans and
the time of the Stewarts

• The period between the break-up of the Lordship
  of the Isles and the Jacobite rebellions (1715,
  1745) is often called in Gaelic Linn na Creach
  (the Time of Plunder).

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Linn na Creach

• Yet, the Lowlands and the king of Scotland were
  not oblivious to such untamed behaviour.
• The Stewarts had now long occupied the throne of
  Scotland, beginning in the 1400s.
• The first Stewart to be king of both Scotland and
  England-James VI (James I of England) needed he
  could control the whole of his Scottish kingdom
  if he were to be taken seriously.

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James VI (1566-1625)

• Attempts were made to found towns in the Gaelic
  areas of the west of Scotland.
• During the same period the Statutes of Iona were
  introduced to try and eradicate the Gaelic
  culture and the society which had built it.
• The clan bards were made illegal. The sons of the
  chiefs were to receive an English education.

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Education Act 1616

• The Gaelic language was blamed as one of the
  chief and principal causes of the continuance of
  barbarity and incivility amongst the Isles and
  Highlands. It was to be abolished and removed.
• One clan the MacGregors were deprived of their
  name. The chief Alasdair MacGregor was executed
  for refusing to change his name. The power of
  names in clan culture.

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Rob Roy MacGregor

• He became a leader in what was to be one of the
  first Jacobite rebellions (1689). This was in
  protest at the expulsion of James II and the
  enthronment of William of Orange.
• The battle of Killiecrankie.
• Rob Roy was finally obliged to take another name,
  and he chose Campbell.

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Rob Roy MacGregor

• When the clans rose again in 1715 and 1719 Rob
  Roy marched with them. He was badly wounded in
  the defeat at the Battle of Glen Shield.
• He finally surrended in an amnesty and died in
  1734.
• He was an educated man, who wrote in both English
  and Gaelic.
• Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel in 1818 called Rob
  Roy.

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The Jacobite Cause

• Change in the Air

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The Jacobite Cause

• The Jacobite rebellions.
• Why?
• The long dynasty of the Stewarts (nine monarchs)
  was seen as the legitimate line of succession in
  Scotland.
• Merging of the Crowns 1603.
• Resistance to the Act of Union 1707
• The Creation of the United Kingdom.

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The Jacobite Cause
Grandson of James IV And Margaret Tudor
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Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward
Stewart) 1720-88
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The Jacobite Risings

• There were several, leading to the rightly famous
  rising of 1745.
• But, in 1715, the earl of Mar gathered twenty-six
  clan chiefs to Braemar and raised the banner for
  the exiled James.
• It was not supported by all the clans, the it
  ended in a stalemate.

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The Jacobite Rising of 1745

• No other event in Scottish history has inspired
  so much heated debate as this Rising. It has been
  analyzed as an internal dynastic struggle, an an
  international power play and as an internal Civil
  War.
• The feelings of the contemporary Gaels is
  reflected in a large corpus of song and story.
  That poetry is overwhelmingly Jacobite. (map)

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A Gaelic History of Scotland

• That Gaelic poetry of the time displays the deep
  values of traditional Gaelic society in Scotland
• Loyalty to the rightful ruler.
• The signs that presaged a Gaelic resurgence.
• The right to reject tyranny.
• The yearning for religious tolerance.

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Highland gentleman mid 18th century
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A Gaelic History of Scotland

• The conflict was not a rebellion of Gaelic
  Catholics against Protestant Lowlanders and
  English.
• Many Presbyterians fought on the Jacobite side,
  as did many Episcopalians.
• The real sense of the rebellion was to restore
  the proper king to the throne, but also to
  restore Scotlands independence.

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Analysis of the battle

• The command structure of the Jacobite Army was
  not well organized.
• The Prince was commander in chief, but strategic
  decisions were taken by Colonel Sullivan.
• There was poor co-ordination at a tactical level.

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Culloden

• The battle of Culloden was not in the ordinary
  sense a battle between the Scots and the English.
• There were Scots in the Loyalist Army (under
  Cumberland). Four of his 16 infantry units were
  Scottish.
• This having been said, it is fair to say that
  King Georges soldiers were there to protect the
  new United Kingdom, whilst the Jacobite army was
  there to restore Scottish Independence.

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A Gaelic History of Scotland

• This Anglicization had the effect of destroying
  the old link between the clan and his people. The
  Gaelic-speaking tenantry could now be removed at
  will by the landlords, who saw that people could
  not produce the profits that the new economic
  system required.
• This led to large-scale clearances where people
  were forcilbly evicted from their homes (the
  first was in Glengarry 1785).

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The Clearances

• Highland landlords had greater powers over their
  tenants than any in contemporary Europe.
• A number of factors combined (including the
  Potato Famine of 1846-7) made Clearance a
  recurring catastrophe of the nineteenth century.
• In the Gaelic poetry of the time, the recurring
  image is that of the Lowland shepherd who arrives
  in the Highlands with his flocks of sheep which
  displace the Highlanders for the profit of the
  landlords.

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A Gaelic History of Scotland

• After the rebels had been crushed at Culloden,
  the Highlanders no longer posed a threat to the
  Anglo-British state.
• Especially after the popularity of MacPhersons
  Ossian in the 1760s, the Highlander came to be
  identified as a noble-savage.
• The popular potrayal of the lost world of the
  Celts reinforced its disconnection from the
  reality of industrialisation and empire.

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A Gaelic History of Scotland

• The ever-deepening social and cultural crisis in
  the Highlands led to a retreat into religion as
  an internal community.
• The Church of Scotland saw a disruption of its
  unity in 1843, and the formation of the Free
  Church. This was evangelical inspiration, and
  rejecting the the world. In Galeic terms it also
  rejected secular culture, music, song and dance.

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A Gaelic History of Scotland

• Catholicism had been identified with the Jacobite
  cause. (incorrectly)
• Many Catholic communities in the Highlands and
  Islands left Scotland in the 19th century for
  Canada and the USA. By 1878, almost all the
  Gaelic Catholics were in the county of Inverness
  and the diocese of Argyll and the Isles.

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Crofters cottage c1760
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Clan Society

• Kinship was the organizing principle of Highland
  clans, although in reality not everyone in a
  given clan was related.
• The clan was a political institution which
  claimed an ideology of kinship, but which is also
  based on an historical reality.
• The people who operated as members of a clan
  accepted tha authority of a common leader

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Clan Society

• One writer commenting on the clan system at the
  time of the battle of Culloden (1746) said
• A Highland clan is a set of people all bearing
  the same surname and believing themselves to be
  related to one another and to be descended from a
  common stock.

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Clan Society

• In each clan there are several subordinate
  tribes who own their dependence on their
  immediate chief, but all agree in owning
  allegiance to the supreme chief of the clan or
  kindred and look on it as their duty to support
  him in all his adventures.

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Clan Society

• Despite the ideology of kinship, people who were
  of different origins could find themselves
  dependent upon a particular chieftain, living on
  his estate, and effectively becoming members of
  his clan.
• They often took his surname as their own.

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Clan Society

• There are a number of terms in Gaelic for
  referring to lineages and kin. (clann, siol,
  sliocht)
• The term clann itself appears in family names by
  c1100 in Scotland (The Book of Deer), but most of
  the known clans are names after founding
  ancestors who can be dated to the era 1150 to
  1350.

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Clan Society

• For example, the MacDougalls, called Clann
  Dughaill in Gaelic are named after a Dughall who
  lived in the later twelfth century.
• The children of a ruler and their children would
  found new lineages , called Sliochdan. They might
  take on a new name like the Clan Ranald, a branch
  of the Clan Donald descended from Raghnall, the
  second son of the Lord of the Isles.

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Clan Society chieftains

• Clann chieftains often inherited many of the
  attributes of the earlier local kings (righe) of
  earlier Gaelic society.
• One commonly expressed belief (by the bards) was
  that the chieftain had a special relationship
  with the territory. This can be seen in the
  laments in which nature mourns the death of a
  chielftain.

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Clan Society chieftains

• As late as the mid 1700s, when Prince Charles
  Edward Stewart was anticipated to return to
  Scotland, he was pictured in the Gaelic poetry of
  the time as restoring the bounty of the land.
• When the same Bonnie Prince Charlie died in 1788,
  William Ross sang

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Clan Society

• Tha gach beinn, gach cnoc s gach sliabh
• Air am faca sinn thu triall
• Nis air chall an dreach s am fiabh
• O nach tig thu chaoibh nan cian.

• Every mountain, hill and moor-side
• On which we saw you travelling
• Has now lost its comeliness
• Since you will never return.

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Clan Society warrior/clansmen

• Amongst the specialized, high-ranking professions
  in Gaelic society was that of the warrior.
• An 18th century writer said that they were well
  trained in managing the sword, in wrestling,
  swimming, jumping, dancing, shooting with bows
  and arrows, and were stout seamen.

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Clan Society warrior/clansmen

• Before about 1600, most of the fighting men were
  taken from the higher ranks of society. The
  buannachan were a kind of permanent fighting
  force, together with the Leine-chneas or
  bodyguard.
• After that date many more fighters were taken
  from the tuath (common people), with the growth
  in that period after c1600 of warfare.

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Clan Society warrior/clansmen

• Despite the strict assignment of rank, people
  were not segregated from each other, because of
  being inferior in status.
• Rather everyone celebrated their ties of kinship
  and inter-dependence with the noble leaders of
  society, and these ties created a sense of
  self-esteem amongst Highland people as a whole
  (Gaels).

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The Aftermath of Culloden

• It could be said that many communities of the
  Gàidhealtachd lost their sense of involvement in
  the physical and political world in exchange for
  a belief in a personal spiritual struggle
  (Compare North American natives the Ghost
  Dance).
• Once Gaeldom no longer seemed to pose a threat,
  it was pilfered for elements to add local colour
  to the British Empire.

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Gaeldom in Retreat

• In a period when Gaelic was already in decline,
  An Comunn Gaidhealach (The Highland Society) was
  established in 1891 with the express aim of
  encouraging the Gaelic language and tradition.
• It has been the patron of an annual competition
  called the Mod, modelled on the Welsh Eisteddfod.

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Gaeldom in Retreat

• Such institutions, laudable though they may be,
  tended to impose new styles of performance
  typical of the late Victorian era.
• The same kinds of innovation and improvement
  effected the traditions of bagpipe playing.
• Contrary to popular belief, the bagpipes were
  never prohibited after Culloden.

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Gaeldom in Retreat

• Rather a lack of native institutions led to a
  certain decline, although the British military
  became the principle patron of piping in both the
  Lowlands and the Highlands. (Highland Games).
• Such Highland Games, often far from the realities
  of the Gaelic world, led to the introduction of
  ideas and styles once foreign to Gaelic music.
  (changing the tempo).

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Scottish identity

• In the context of the Scottish revival in the
  twentieth century, major writers such as
  Somhairle MacLean (Gaelic), Hugh MacDiarmid
  (Lallans), William Auld (Esperanto) emerged who
  brought Scottish writing back to the foreground.

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Scottish identity

• It is interesting to see how some aspects of the
  Gaelic history of Scotland have been integrated
  into a more generalised Scottish identity.
• The kilt can be seen frequently in Glasgow, and
  learning Gaelic is more found in the Lowlands
  than the Highlands. The pipes and the tartan now
  belong to all Scots whatever their origin.