Angus Folklore: A Pictish Timeline in Angus

This article provides a very basic summary of events in Angus during the 'Pictish centuries'. More details can be found in previous posts detailed at the bottom of this page. I leave out possible very early Irish settlement in Angus as this is not datable and will be covered in separate articles.

The Fifth Century

I have posted several times before about the province of Circinn (which may have comprised Angus and the Mearns) and the supposition that Angus may be named after the powerful warlord Angus mac Fergus. Other rulers may have been based in our area, such as the 5th century king Nechtan Morbet, who possibly gave his name to Dunnichen. This piece merely summarises some other Pictish associations of the area, without providing a full overview of Angus in its context as a Pictish region.

The Sixth Century

The mid 6^th century represents the historical horizon for Pictland. The dominant leader was Brude mac Maelchon, whose main power base was certainly north of the Grampians and probably located near Inverness. Despite the fact that he is said to have authorised the settlement of St Columba in Iona, he and the saint had a combative encounter at his stronghold and he likely resisted the pressure to convert to Christianity, albeit some sources state that he did succumb to the new religion.

We do not know for certain whether Brude ruled south of the mountains. He may have claimed over-lordship in the area. There is an intriguing entry in the Irish Annals of Tigernach under the year 752:

The battle of Asreth in the land of Circen, between the Picts on both sides; and in it Brude, Maelchon's son fell.

It has been suggested, probably correctly, that this notice is misplaced and that it should be under the year 584. There has been speculation that the powerful king of Dál Riata, Áedán mac Gabráin, launched an attack on southern Pictland towards the close of the 6th century in order to bolster the succession of his own son Gartnait as king of Picts. Gartnait may well have had a Pictish mother and been eligible for the crown, but if so the intrusion of these Scottish outsiders did not go unchallenged.

The Annals of Tigernach again tell us about a major event, which seems to have been a very bloody battle fought somewhere in the region of Strathmore:

The slaughter of the sons of Áedán, namely Bran and Domangart and Eochaid Find and Arthur, in the battle of Circhend; in which Áedán was conquered.

This was a rare defeat for the Scottish king and may have taken place around the year 590. The alliance of the brothers suggests that they were embarked on an enterprise to carve out territories for themselves in southern Pictland. It is possible that their defeat was more significant than has generally been supposed and that it prevented a large scale Scottish (that is Irish/Gaelic) takeover of the region.

The Seventh Century

The Northumbrian English did have control over a large part of southern Pictland by the middle of the 7th century, though it is perhaps unlikely that they were able to occupy any large part of the territory. Their nominal border was the River Forth, though it seems that they were able to exact tribute from the Picts and may have installed compliant, puppet rulers over Pictish provinces.

The ruler Brudei was a son of the British king of Dumbarton, Bili, and had connections with the Scots also. The biographer of St Columba, Adomnán, was a particular friend of his. We can't recover all the details which led him to make war on the Northumbrian overlords, but it was a spectacular success, culminating with the Battle of Dunnichen in 685, otherwise known as Nechtansmere and Llyn Garan. I have written elsewhere about this decisive encounter and expressed the belief that it was indeed a battle which took place in Angus, rather than a suggestion that it took place at Dunnachton in northern Pictland. The latter suggestion is based on the historian Bede's assertion that the English king Ecgfrith and his army were lured between precipitous mountain passes and annihilated there. While Angus is not highly mountainous, I believe Bede's version was based on orally remembered and exaggerated survivors' tales. Just like the battle mention a century before, this famous victory guaranteed the survival of Pictish independence and culture for several more centuries.

The Eighth Century

As mentioned above, the common belief is that the county of Angus takes its name from king Angus mac Fergus, properly Onuist mac Urguist). Angus died in the year 761. There has been speculation that Angus was Scottish in descent rather than Pictish and that his name implies that he was linked with one of the three tribes of Dál Riata. This tribe, the Cenél nÓengusa, had their main territory in the island of Islay. The name of the latter may have been transferred to the Isla, the river which separates Angus from Gowrie in Perthshire.

Boundaries were sometimes regarded as sacred places and certainly liminal areas where the gap between the physical world and the Otherworld was very thin. Such seems to be the case here in Glen Isla. In an Irish tract which reproduced the 9th century Welsh Historia Brittonum we hear about the Wonders of Alba, which include:

a valley in Angus, in which shouting is heard every Monday night; Glen Ailbe is its name, and it is not known who makes the noise.

The Pictish king named Brude, Der-ile's son, is of interest here. Der-ile or Der-ili is an Irish name meaning 'daughter of the Isla' or 'daughter of Islay'. Brude's brother was Nechtan Der-ile. He evidently had a power base at Dunnichen and invited clerics from Northumbria to visit him there. Do we have faint evidence of a Pictish kindred based in Angus? Both brothers may have been involved in a civil war which raged through southern Pictland. There is mention too of a third brother, Kenneth or Cinaed, who was slaughtered in unknown circumstances in the year 713, along with the otherwise unknown 'son of Mathgernan'.

Angus himself may have been militarily active in our area. The following notice, from the Annals of Tigernach, in the year 729, may refer to a skirmish which took place at Kinblethmont, not far north of Arbroath:

The battle of Druimm-Derg- Blathung [took place] between Picts, namely Drust and Angus, the king of the Picts; and Drust was killed there, on the twelfth day of the month of August.

The Ninth Century

According to one version of the foundation story of St Andrews, there was a royal site on the Angus coast, at 'Moneclatu, which is now called Monichi [Monikie]' It was here that Pictish queen Findchaem (or Finchem) gave birth to a daughter named Mouren. The place has not been identified archaeologically and it does not seem there was a continuing royal site here which was used by rulers after the union of the Picts and Scots. To the west of here however is the parish of Monifieth, which was associated with the early church. There was a settlement of Culdees here and the land was gifted to them by the Celtic Earls of Angus.

There is precious information about the Pictish twilight in our area, or whether the mormaers, or 'great stewards' who controlled the area on behalf of the Scottish king (and who gradually became earls), had Pictish as well as Gaelic blood. While there may have been some Irish infiltration into Pictland at an early date - perhaps in the 5th or 6th century - we can probably say that Gaelic did not become the primary language in Angus until the late 9th century. It only enjoyed a primacy of around three centuries before it started to retreat.