Hiya, I'm Bruce Fummey. When you think of Scottish history you probably think of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Robert the Bruce,
Mary Queen of Scots, but if I asked you: ‘Who was the last Celtic King of Scots?’ What name would you give me?
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In the meantime, let me tell you a Celtic story. So who was the last Celtic King of Scots?
Now whatever name comes into your head right now can you tell me in the comments section below?
And don’t worry it’s not a trap, there's no judgement. I’d just really like to know what people think.
My guess is that few, if any, will choose the name that I've got in my head right now,
but he belonged to a family, and a tumultuous period that changed Scotland forever.
Now the weather forecast for the next few days is such that we’re not supposed to move about,
and that’s why I’m in my dining room. In an ideal world I would have taken you to Dunsinane Hill
where Shakespeare placed the death of Macbeth,
or Lumphanan where it actually happened.
Now I made a video where I suggested that Macbeth was the last Celtic King of Scots.
Now obviously if it was as simple as that then this would be a pretty short video.
Now I wasn’t out to deceive you. I’ll leave a link below to Fiona Watson’s fantastic book: Macbeth: a True Story.
In the meantime let me explain. In a dodgy Shakespeare play,
they said that Macbeth killed a guy called King Duncan and that’s fair enough,
I accept that. It also says in that play that when Duncan was killed his two son’s fled:
Malcolm south to England, and his younger brother Donald Ban fled to Ireland.
Now I’m reasonably OK with that as well, but the play has them as adult warriors.
In fact Malcolm was 9 and Donald was 7. Macbeth would have settled down in the Strathearn Valley.
It's not far from me. See my video about the History of Scotland’s Birth. There’ll be a link at the end.
But from the age of 9 Malcolm grew up, not in Celtic Scotland, but in Saxon England.
It was with Saxon troops that he came back to Scotland fourteen years later to overthrow the Celtic king Macbeth
and defeat him at the Battle of Dunsinane Hill.
It was with more Saxon troops that he returned and killed Macbeth at Lumphanan three years later.
Now, Malcolm Canmore was now the King of Scots, but was he the last Celtic King of Scots?
He does have a claim to be the last Celtic king of Scots. He’d been born in Scotland, to a Celtic father, Duncan.
Actually Duncan's the anglicised name of the Shakespeare play. In Gaelic he would have been called Donnachadh.
Malcolm married twice. His first wife was Norse. They had three boys.
The eldest was named Donnachadh after his grandad. We’ll come back to him.
Malcolm’s second wife was the Saxon princess, Margaret.
Now you might know her as Saint Margaret. She fled north with her brother when
William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066.
The chapel that's at the top of Edinburgh Castle is dedicated to her, if you've ever been there.
They had eight children, so maybe she wasn’t quite as saintly as you might think.
They gave the first few Saxon names. They probably still had hope of a Saxon revival
to put their children back on the English throne.
Their later children got Norman names, and Malcolm and Margaret made their base in Dunfermline,
just a little bit closer to those Saxon territories. So Malcolm Canmore had been born in Celtic Scotland,
but grown up in Saxon England, married a Saxon and given their children Saxon, then Norman names.
Mind you he died in a typically Celtic way raiding and pillaging in the north of England.
When Malcolm died his brother took the throne, remember the one that had fled at the same time from Macbeth, right?
Donald Ban, Donald the Third of Scotland. So was Donald the Third, the last Celtic King of Scots?
Well, when Macbeth killed their dad and Malcolm fled south,
Donald seems to have been taken to Ireland, so he may not have been brought up in Celtic Scotland,
but Celtic Ireland surely has got to be the next best thing, but was he the last Celtic King of Scots?
What happened to Malcolm’s children I hear you ask, well they fled to England.
Now, there’s competing stories about the extent to which they jumped or were pushed,
but they obviously felt safer growing up at the English court than with Uncle Donald in the Scottish one.
But some of Malcolm Canmore’s kids in England thought they should be King of Scots.
In 1094 Donnachadh, the eldest, remember him? He came north.
Now Donnachadh’s an interesting character; born in Scotland, with a Celtic name, he’d been down south way longer than his brothers and sisters.
You see when William of Normandy (William the Conqueror) took over England,
Malcolm kept up the cross-border raiding. Eventually William came north to a place called Abernethy
and made Malcolm swear an oath to behave himself.
But just in case Malcolm’s oath swearing wasn’t enough, he wanted a hostage.
Now imagine you’re lined up with your brothers and sisters and your dad says: I swear on my son’s life!
And William the Conqueror says: ‘Oh aye, which one?’ and dad points at you and says: ‘That one.’
Wo hoo, what must it have been like, as a wee laddie to have to wave goodbye to your dad,
knowing he was a lying thieving cattle raiding git, and head off to England to guarantee his good behaviour?
Worse still to then find out that he'd kept on raiding. Oh no – Squeaky bum time.
Now Donnachadh wasn’t killed. He was much too valuable. He was raised in the Norman court, taught Norman ways,
and on the death of William the Conqueror knighted as a Norman.
By the time he came north to overthrow his uncle Donald Ban,
sent by the Norman English king, with a Norman English Army,
led by his Saxon uncle Edgar, the Celtic Donnachadh wasn’t nearly as Celtic as the wee boy who’d left.
I wonder if he saw himself as a Celtic King? The Scots certainly didn’t.
They must have looked back wistfully to Macbeth, and then Malcolm Canmore had turned towards the Saxon English.
Uncle Donald brought the good old Celtic times back. Now Donald had been deposed and here was Duncan the Norman.
Mair English than his faither.
The Scots rose up against him with enough force to impose their demands. He could remain King,
but he had to send his Norman knights and entourage back south.
Reluctantly Duncan saw that his position was weak, so he sent his English men at arms south,
and a Scotsman stabbed him. Are you mental Duncan? What did you think was going to happen?
Oh aye, send you’re Norman protectors home and everything will be hunkydory.
What could possibly go wrong? It’s a good job Uncle Donald had been waiting in the wings for another go eh?
Welcome back Donald the Third. Often, in the stories that I tell, geopolitical conflicts can really
be reduced down to a family power struggle. Here’s one where it seems to me that a family power struggle really masks a
wider conflict between Celtic and Anglo Norman cultures.
With Uncle Donald back, the Celts had re-asserted themselves, at least for a while.
So there was an ongoing tussle for the Scottish throne, between sons of Malcolm Canmore,
coming up here with their southern ways, and their uncle Donald who represented tradition.
Now you’re about to hear a list of names. Don’t worry they’re basically the Canmore boys in order of age.
The next of Malcolm Canmore’s lads to arrive with English support didn’t even have the veneer of a Celtic name.
This time it was Edger. Now, a charter at the time sees him
"possessing the whole land of Lothian and the kingship of Scots by the gift of my lord William, king of the English."
Aye possessing the whole land of Lothian maybe, but North of the Forth they know what your up to,
and that tussle between Celtic and Saxon Scotland continued.
When he died in suspicious, or at the very least uncertain circumstances, he was followed by his brother Alexander.
This time the Canmore boys didn’t make the mistake of leaving Uncle Donald healthy and waiting in the wings.
Uncle Donald’s eyes were put out and he was dumped in a deep, dark dungeon to be forgotten about.
Now when Alexander died without children, he was replaced by his younger brother David.
David was even more Norman than his elder brothers. Born with a Norman name,
brought up in the Norman court, he brought Norman knights to Scotland with him:
Bruces, Wallaces, Comyns, you get the picture. David the First, the last of Malcolm Canmore’s sons,
completed the transformation from Celtic to Saxon to Norman.
They say that it had been young David’s idea to put his uncle’s eyes out in the first place, so that Donald the Third,
the man who I’m going to suggest was the last Celtic king of Scots, died a blind man in a dark dungeon,
forgotten… until now.
Anyway, there’s a cheery thought to end on.
A choice of viewing now. If you want more about David the First, click this video here.
If you’d rather find out more about the time and place of Scotland’s birth, then choose this video here.
In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.