User:ModernDayTrilobite/Druim Alban

Druim Alban (Scots Gaelic for "the Ridge of Alba" ) was a medieval term for a mountain range in Scotland. It has also been known as Dorsum Britanniae, or "the Spine of Britain", in Latin texts. Though there is no historical consensus on which specific range is indicated by the term, it is known to have been the traditional boundary between Pictish territory and the kingdom of Dál Riata.

Bullet points (to become prose later)

 * Dunshea 2013
 * "Skene's survey of the medieval and early modern sources made one point incontrovertibly clear: we are dealing with a watershed." (275–76)
 * quotes Skene as saying "The great distinguishing feature applied to Drumalbane by these authorities is, that it divides the rivers flowing into the western sea from those flowing into the eastern"
 * first mentioned (in any form) as "Dorsum Britanniae" in Adomnán's Life of Columba (a late 7th-century text) (276)
 * first mentioned in the vernacular (as "Druim Alban") in a prophecy within the 16th-century manuscript Harleian 5280 (280)
 * medieval chroniclers (John of Fordun, c14; Andrew Wyntoun, c15) mention Druim Alban when discussing the extent of Fergus Mor's conquests (281)
 * Wyntoun uses "Drwmalbane", seemingly an earlier vernacular usage than Harleian?
 * Druim Alban (in various spellings) also appears in various king-lists, believed to originate from an 11th-century Irish one (282)
 * Dunshea questions the term's usages by Alfred Smyth ("the Grampians, or the Highland massif as a whole") and Richard Sharpe ("the principal chain of the Scottish mountains" without further explanation) (282)
 * the east-west alignment of all of Scotland's major mountain ranges problematizes identification (283)
 * Fraser's "Adomnán, Cummene Ailbe and the Picts" (183–98) may be useful? (283)
 * the term may have been deliberately ambiguous even in Adomnán's usage, as an indicator of "far away somewhere" (284)
 * identifies Carn Droma, a cairn at the boundary of Argyll and Breadalbane, as a watershed-dividing landmark that could plausibly be Druim Alban (287–88)
 * Dunshea 2012 (seems to be an early version of the argument, that he expands further upon the following year)
 * Pont maps identify Druim Alban as "betuix Carne Druyme [Carn Droma] and Badenoch" (91)
 * "The 'Spine of Alba', in other words, was a barrier which ran from Carn Droma north to Badenoch and the upper tributaries of the Spey." (91)
 * Druim Alban cannot have been a generalized term b/c of its role as a "national and a legal frontier" (91)
 * "The various sources can be reconciled, however, if we take Druim Alban as a label for the upland area defined by the watershed divide." (92)
 * Evans 2018
 * mainly just useful as an alt source identifying Druim Alban as the divider between east and west in Scotland (42)

it seems like Dunshea is the only person writing about Druim Alban in detail. how do we have an entire mountain range that's struggling to meet GNG??????