The Auldest Tung

Calefrisia

Both Calefrisia and Calefrisian are attempts to provide shorthand ways of representing what lies in North-East Scotland north of the Firth of Forth and a strip of land on its northern shore. I appreciate neither has the elegance of Attic or, more pertinently, Doric. Indeed, if anyone has alternatives that look better on the page and slip more smoothly off the tongue but are still precise I would not hesitate to adopt them. However, back to William Skene and, after a brief walk in parallel, it seems we have arrived at a point where he and I go our separate ways and twice, even thrice, over.

The first parting of company is not because he is wrong but simply because he did not have at his disposal the mapping resources of today. In his paper he states that the Sidlaws, and indeed the Ochils of Stirlingshire, were the frontier between Germanic and Pict. However, we now know that in neither case are the assertions correct. The actual borders were well beyond, the latter ten miles further north and the former some twenty miles north-west at least. And Skene on the same basis also accepts Dun Nechtain at Dunnichen but we now have far better explanation of where, why and where, which I believe he himself would have accepted simply as more likely.

The second parting, however, is because he may not be right. He states that Dun Nechtain spelled not only the expulsion of Angles from north of the Forth, as it turns out correct, but also the end of Old Frisian settlement north of the Forth, which in terms of new settlements might well be true but there seems to be little evidence of any reduction. Expansion, i.e. Anglic-encouraged expansion through the attraction and settlement of more contemporary Germanics, Angles themselves, Saxons and Jutes, whatever, that might have been taking place, and there might be some topographical evidence of just that, could have been curtailed. But that there was cleansing of what was already there, i.e. one hundred and fifty year old, Old-Frisian settlements, seems not just scant but non-existent. I repeat that Bridei, although king of Picts was not Pictish, indeed he was half-Angle with Anglic possibly his mother-tongue, so would he not have been able to talk directly, if with a different accent, to the Germanic people under his wing? And would he not have been able just as directly to calm whatever concerns they had, to gain their loyalty, which, if they were indeed Old-Frisian, if Caledonian-Old-Frisian, could be almost as easily given to a known known, Picts, as a known unknown, Angles, by simply agreeing with them that they should continue their lives as before? Indeed, trading from their mainly coastal enclaves, as they no doubt did both north and south along their side of and also across the North Sea, would it not have been as economically advantageous to the inland Picts as it was to them, if they continued their customary ways? And if they did it best not by forced adoption of Pictish but by speaking and working in their own CaleFrisian, then so be it.

And the third parting seems to be because he apparently goes off in another direction, ostensibly largely leaving CaleFrisia behind. It appears to fade from his vision as he goes on to explore another subject, that of possibly yet another but still Germanic people’s Scottish involvement and perhaps an older one still, spotlighting a recurring word and therefore, it has to be assumed, presence. He notes it, the word, is to be found in the vicinity of both the Ochils and Sidlaws. But is also there in Irish texts and Scottish records of a thousand years ago with regard to the area behind Culross on the First of Forth, from there to The Law and Law Hill in the Ochils ten miles to the north, again by Inverkeilor in Angus, on old maps on the banks of the Don by Inverurie and possibly still here on the ground today behind North Berwick in East Lothian just as it also appears to be in Kent, Cheshire and Ireland.

The word, as applied to both districts and persons is “comgall”. Its source, at least as believed by Skene, is, coincidentally or not as in Comgall of Bangor, ultimately Irish but consideration thereof is something for another place and time. Instead what is of interest here, although of no direct influence to our linguistic story, its brief prominence in Pictland as the 7^th Century became the 8^th and the way it perhaps throws new light, firstly, on what consolidated an emergent Calefrisia and, secondly, made its perpetuation possible.

But first there is a problem, indeed a linguistic one. Skene argues that the “comgall” in question is a descriptor in Gaelic that distinguishes a third group of “gall”, of foreign, Germanic invaders, which is not only in addition to Fingall, Viking and/or Norse, and Dubhgall, Dane, but pre-dates both certainly by three and quite probably four hundred years. However, in the languages that have come down to us from the descendants of those same foreigners and similar, comgal, congal or kongel, whatever way it is spelt also simply means royal, or kingly, if you like. In Danish kong is king, royal is kongelige, noun and adjective. In Dutch it is koning, like Coningsburgh, and koninklijk, in other words king-like, indeed “pure-like king-like”, whilst in German it is Koenig, like Cunninghame, perhaps Cummingston in Moray, even Cumineston in Aberdeenshire, and koeniglich. And in modern Frisian it is kening, like Kennington, and keninklik. In other words there is every chance that a “comgal” area was simply “the king’s”.

Now, as it happens, what Skene then goes on to argue with regard to “comgall” does not contradict this alternative. It just ignores it, understandably as his destination is elsewhere. He can afford to move on. However, what his analysis to get there provides is probably insights, firstly, into a time about which very, very little is known, secondly, probably the seeds of why even today The Borders sometimes appear to be somewhat reluctantly in Scotland rather than “Angle”-land, thirdly, why that has never been said of east Scotland above the Forth and finally the real source of the Doric and its like, i.e. not as seemingly thought conventionally today as a derivative of New Anglic, nor even a parallel language to it both in time and place with some, indeed many, of the same basic characteristics but one which predates it with a life of its own, a life which unlike Anglic’s continues today.

Skene maintained that there were Comgalls operating on both sides of the Firth of Forth. His evidence is as solid as it can be, given the distance in time. In 710 AD it is reported even as far as Ireland that there is “devastation on the race of the Comgalls”. Two “sons”, that is descendants, of Doirgarto are killed, one in Pictland, the other on “the” island. And two years later, in the same Annals of Ulster, a third “son” of Doirgarto, Congal, note Congal, is also said to have died, again on an island, this time a named one, which was also burned. The island is Fidra.

And to those events Skene adds the information that the Doigarto family were Pictish, were involved, along with other Comgail-, Camgall- or Comgall in the foundation of St. Andrews as the Pictish religious centre and that their lands were by Fife's Loch Leven. Thus we have in the first decade of the 8^th Century the Comgall family as clearly an integral part of the upper echelons of Pictish aristocracy socially to the extent of involvement in the St. Andrew’s mythology. But their involvement went further. It was also political, not least because for the thirty-odd years from 697 AD until 729 AD the kings of the Picts were also Comgall, on the face of it all well and good, except that two generations, just two generations, earlier the Comgails had been Dal Riadian Scots, apparently Gaels not Picts. Indeed they had even provided three of the Gaelic kings in the first half of the previous century. Moreover, the last of those kings, if Irish records are to be believed, may have died, admittedly a very old man and very much retired, only sixteen years earlier. So the question is what had happened to cause these changes of location and power-base and the is answer Mag Rath.

Mag Rath was a battle fought in the summer of 637 AD at or near Moira in Northern Ireland. It was extended, possibly lasting a week, and ferocious and would be the encounter that basically separated the Scots and Irish Gaels, Gaidhlig Scotland from Gaeilge Ireland. In 507 AD Irish records report the death of Domangart Reti of Kintyre, one candidate for our Doigarto. He was succeeded by presumably his eldest son, a certain Comgall, who reigned for thirty-five years, was the source of the Comgall branch of Scots Gaels that settled originally in Cowal, and was in turn succeeded for another fourteen years by a brother, Gabran, founder of a second Gaelic branch, nGabrain, centred back on Kintyre, after which Scots Gaeldom was ruled by one or other branch or jointly until about 650 AD.

But back to Mag Rath. In an internal Irish fight Scots Gaels under Domnall Breac, nGabrain Domnall Breac, took sides, for Congal Ceach, against the Irish High King, sent troops and lost, both on land and at about the same time at sea. As a result the lands the Scots Gaels still retained in Ireland were confiscated. They were no longer accessible. There was no going back. But there was a proviso and it was that whilst three of the four main tribes of Scots Gaels seem to have been consensual in the taking part in Mag Rath, one may not and for a very simple reason. Also in Ireland their king and then joint ruler of all the Scots Gaels had recently been killed in another battle against none other than Congal Ceach. And they remembered. Indeed not only did they remember they seem also to have taken their hat from the Scots Gael peg and, since their lands in Cowal to the north bordered Pictish territory, hung it at the highest level on their neighbour’s. Moreover, within precisely sixty years through one of their number, Dargart mac Finguine, the other Doigarto candidate, marrying the right woman, the Pictish princess, Der-Ilei, probably daughter or perhaps sister of Bridei of Dun Nechtain and having children with her they would rise right to the very top. But not quite yet.

On Bridei of Dun Nechtain’s death in 693 AD he had been replaced for four years more by Taran, possibly his grandson, but not without opposition. In 694 AD Dunottar was placed under siege once again and in 696/7 AD Taran was deposed, possibly leaving permanently for Ireland in 698 AD. His replacement was confusingly another Bridei but a son of Der-Ilei so also grandson of Bridei of Dun Nechtain, perhaps even a half-brother of Taran but one that was also Comgall, indeed also “son” of Dargart or Doirgarto, but this time literally.

The younger Bridei reigned until 706 AD as the Scots Gaels fought amongst themselves, again literally brother-on-brother, but it was whilst Northumbria on the death of Aldfrid, in 704 AD, found itself with a seven-year-old successor, Osred, requiring a regent, who came and just as quickly went. Thus Pictland was for the decade of the younger Bridei’s rule an island of relative calm in choppy seas. Indeed, it was under his rule that the Cain Adomnanin was introduced in 697 AD, best described as the first “Geneva Convention” on warfare. The only disturbance was in 699/700 AD when he withstood attack from Lothian Anglics, the first in the fifteen years since the great victory but one which floundered, the invading regional earl, controlling the lands from Berwick, perhaps Coldingham, to Edinburgh, himself killed.

On the younger Bridei’s death he was succeeded by his full brother, another Nechtan, a founder of churches and monasteries, but one who nevertheless had some problems of a less pacific nature, which takes us back to Comgalls, his brethren, on both sides of the water and to Fidra. It, with Bass Rock and Craigleith, is one of three islets on the southern side of the entrance to the Firth of Forth close to the Dunbar shore, where Direleton is to the west, Auldhame to the east and North Berwick in between. It is in an area that has long had connections across the Firth. Indeed until relatively recently there was still a ferry. And those connections may not only have been in terms of travel but also people. In simpler times from as early as 450 AD as, I maintain, topography shows, it would have been Old-Frisian to Old-Frisian. Then from 638 AD the assumption, by the incoming Angles at least, might have been Old-Frisian on the north shore and Anglic to the south, perhaps from 685 AD under Ecgfrith, briefly Anglic to Anglic or even by those on the north shore, as seems most realistic, not least because of its mixed “laws” and “hills”, on the south shore still a majority Old-Frisian population but with Anglic implantation and overlords. In such circumstances it would not have been surprising if it were also assumed from the north there would be political sympathy amongst the major part of the East Lothian population that could be tapped into, even that elements of it could be persuaded not only to regard Northumbrian Anglics as the “opposition” but Lothian-Anglics too.

It also made sense politically for the Picts, post a heavy defeat in 708 AD by those very same Lothian-Anglics at the Battle of Mag Manonn, probably at or near Slamannan just beyond the limits of both their territories so a clash not an invasion, to try to use that sympathy literally in their fight-back through attacks initially on outlying positions like Fidra. Hence there was in 710 AD in Pictland the loss of one Comgall fighting both for king and family, maybe in internal Pictish quarrels, maybe in holding off the Angles after the battle, maybe a combination of the two, then the loss of another in a seemingly unsuccessful attack on the at that time presumably Anglic island. It was perhaps a low point, of which other, non-Comgall Gaels in 711 AD look to have tried to take advantage. They mounted a probably not very successful raid on the Orkneys before there was in 712 AD something of a Pictish revival, the positive from which was the taking finally of both Fidra itself and the stronghold on it, reducing the latter to ashes, but with the negative of the third Comgall death in the process.

And in 730 AD the same situation might be assumed also to have been the case. Except that in the meantime there had been considerable changes in circumstances. In 713 AD there had been another period of civil war in Pictland. Who challenged whom is unknown. And at much the same time Osred, the former child-king of Northumbria, assumed full power and promptly started to enrage his own ruling class. Indeed so great was their fury that in 717 AD he was somewhat mysteriously killed in battle on the “southern border”, which one is unknown, to be replaced by Coenred, who himself lasted only two years, and then by Osric, brother, half-brother or cousin of infuriating Osred, who lasted a decade.

Meanwhile in Pictland, internal fighting over for the moment, peace reigned not only with Comgall and the somewhat saintly Nechtan retaining power at home but because the Northumbrians were too busy arguing amongst themselves. That was until 724 AD, when confusion returned. Nechtan was deposed but not by a Pictish Pict but Drust, perhaps a half-brother, also a Gael, but not Comgall. He was nGabhran. Then Drust would last two years until replaced by another nGabhran, Alpin, who within a year was also on his way, defeated twice in a series of four battles by Angus, not a Comgall but affiliated with Nechtan brought out of monastic exile and restored in 729 AD as the figurehead until his death and Angus taking over fully in 732 AD.

It meant that in twenty years Pictland had had five kings, one twice, and Northumbria five also. Each too had had two bouts of civil war but in 730 AD Pictland had regained some stability, with a successful military man behind the throne, whereas Northumbria had as its king a man, Ceolwulf, over whom there was some disagreement, who would be deposed the following year, restored and then fifteen years later abdicate to become a monk, which by all account is what he probably had wanted to be all along. He was even later declared a saint.

In the circumstances it is then hardly surprising that, no doubt at the instigation of Angus, Pictish sallies across the Forth were resumed and as part thereof Fidra was attacked and again burned, this time by Dungal, Angus’s nephew. It implies that Fidra was not just a place of great strategic importance, Skene certainly believed so, and important enough for the Pictish king’s nephew to be involved in fighting over it, but that it was held by anti-Pictish, i.e. Northumbrian-Anglic and/or Lothian-Anglic forces once more. Moreover it says that the Picts were on the offensive, at which point we come to the vexed question of Athelstaneford.

This is the battle, at which the Scottish Saltire, the Cross of St. Andrew, is first said to have been seen as a vision of clouds across a blue sky. It is also said to have taken place in about 832 AD but is recorded by nobody, neither Roger of Wendover nor the Irish Annals, nobody.

Athelstaneford itself is a village on the Lothian mainland five miles south of Fidra and lies on the edge of the “hill”-locked and presumably Anglic Haddington enclave. The battle itself was between not Northumbria but locally-raised Lothian-Anglic forces on one side and the Pictish King, Angus, son of Fergus, on the other. And in 832 AD the Pictish king indeed was Angus, son of Fergus. He had come to the throne in 820 AD and would die in 834 AD at a time when Northumbria was already having to cope with Norse harassment and its own infighting once more.

However, said Angus, son of Fergus is also said to have been the grandson or grandnephew of the Angus of a century earlier. Moreover, the earlier Angus is said to have been son of Fergus also, to have been involved with the establishment of St. Andrews as a religious centre and its mythology, following on the work of Nechtan, and to have extended Pictish influence immensely. In the 730s AD from 731 AD onwards he is known to have fought and defeated the Gaels over a decade. Then there was perhaps even an attempt by him to replace the Northumbrian king in 740s AD, although quite why seems problematic, and then a campaign against the Britons of Dumbarton in 750s AD before his death in 761 AD and by then a man in his 70s but with a reputation. His final demise is recorded by Bede as,

“Oengus, king of the Picts, died. From the beginning of his reign right to the end he perpetrated bloody crimes, like a tyrannical slaughterer.”

which says two things. The first is that Northumbrian Anglic Bede maligned him because they had never bested him and feared him accordingly. The second is that he started early, from about 730 AD with the taking of Fidra, the death of nephew, Dungal, in battle, against whom and place both unknown, perhaps that beginning, and he kept on it right until his last breath. And there is one more thing. What if the battle, in which Dungal died were “Athelstaneford”. In other words legend has not forgotten, small though it was numerically, the battle’s importance politically, but it has confused Anguses, sons of Ferguses, forcing a mistaken skip forward of a century. Furthermore it has by cloaking the whole thing, deliberately or not, in religious trappings created still more historical confusion about whatever occurred in about 730 AD somewhere in East Lothian that, firstly, freed that era’s Angus enough to be able with confidence to return to his heartland north of the Forth and almost immediately turn his attention west and onto the Gaels and, secondly, although Edinburgh was not taken until 954 AD on Northumbria’s collapse, to ensure it would be the last time the Northumbrians played any significant role north of the Forth with all that meant indeed, still means for the future, independent development of CaleFrisia and its economy. Moreover, culturally, linguistically it could also have meant Calefrisian again from as early as 730 AD also developing independently, i.e. separately to Anglic even Lothian-Anglic, in fact to Lowland Scots in general, into what today might have understandable Anglic similarities, because of shared and proximate Germanic origins, but was not Anglic-sourced and has since been allowed by fate to have a continuing life of its own and therefore a history.