User:Angusmclellan/Giric

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.

Background


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. 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.

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.

The kingdom ruled by Cináed's descendants&mdash;older works used the name House of Alpin to describe them but descent from Cináed was the defining factor &mdash;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&mdash;Druim Alban&mdash;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).

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

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
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".

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."

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.

Gregory the Great
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", contain a different version, copied by the Chronicle of Melrose. 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."

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.

Ut regem nostrum Girich
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 ... 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
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.