Origins of the Kingdom of Alba

The origins of the Scots have been the subject of numerous speculations over the centuries, including some extravagant ones, like the one made by Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm Abbey, in his Scotichronicon, in which he argued that the Scots were descended from an Egyptian pharaoh via the legendary princess Scota, who arrived in Scotland after traveling to Iberia and Ireland.

In the Life of St Cathróe of Metz, the hagiographer recounts the mythological origin of the saint's people, the Gaels.

According to the Life, he was educated in Armagh, before returning to Scotland and entering the service of King Constantine II (Causantín mac Áeda).

Constantine gave Cathróe conduct to the court of King Dyfnwal of Strathclyde, and from there made his way to Viking England, and finally, the continent.

[1] Medieval Scottish genealogies trace the origin of the Scots to Fergus Mór mac Eirc, the legendary founder of Dál Riata.

The model originates ultimately in the later Middle Ages, when the Germanic-speaking subjects of the Scottish king began to think of themselves as Scots, and began the ethnic and cultural disassociation of Scottish and Gaelic, previously two identical concepts, by calling their own brand of English Scottis and renaming Scottis as Erse.

One extreme example was John Pinkerton, who believed passionately that the people and language of lowland Scotland derived from a Gothic dialect spoken by the Picts.

The main thrust of the Germanicist model was destroyed in the nineteenth century when William Forbes Skene and others brought medieval Scotland into the frame of serious, recognisably modern scholarship.

It explains, for instance, why some popular historians believe that English became the language of Lowland Scotland in the reign of Malcolm III, owing to the influence of his wife, the Anglo-Hungarian Saint Margaret, when in fact no such thing happened for another few centuries.

The St Andrews historian Alex Woolf has recently put forward a case for relocating the Kingdom of Fortriu north of the Mounth (the Grampians).

By contrast, a northern recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes it clear that Fortriu was north of the Mounth, in the area visited by Columba.

The case has to be accepted, and there can be little doubt that the core of Fortriu lay to the north of the Grampian Mountains - in Moray, Ross and perhaps Mar and Buchan too.

The name change is first registered at the very beginning of the tenth century,[13] not long before Constantine II is alleged to have Scotticised the "Pictish" Church,[14] and at the height of Viking raids.