General Notes

REFN: 9275AN
REFN: P3554
Prince Fergus De Galloway (born 1096) was a contemporary and close
relative of King Somerled, both being direct descendants through
Godfraidh (Godfrey) mac Fergus, Lord of the Isles who died in 853 A.D.
Some other sour ces list Prince Fergus as a son of Olave the Red, King of
Man and father-in-l aw of King Somerled, making Fergus not only Somerled's
cousin through his gra ndfather Gilledomnan “Gilli” ) but also his
brother-in-law through Somerled's wife Ragnhildis, the daughter of King
Olave the Red. The MacDowalls of Gallo way are the senior descendants in
the male line of the princely house of Ferg us, first of the ancient Lords
of Galloway and the Rulers of Cumbria who main tained native leadership
adopting Normanization under King David I of Scotlan d (1124-1153). Today
the family is known as the MacDowalls. The Chief of the MacDowalls of
Garthland (senior stirp) holds the title as Baron of Garthland and
Castlesemple.
From the establishment of the nation of Scotland by King K enneth I
(MacAlpin) with the help of Galloway in 843 until 1096 when our firs t
recognized ancestor Fergus of Galloway was born, clear conclusions are
"p ractically impossible" about the history of Galloway and its engulfing
Strath clyDe and Western Isles. the time was characterized by Gaelic
(Irish) settlem ent but Viking rule in greater pre-Galloway, the bounds of
which sometimes ex tended over the Western half of the Lowlands of modern
Scotland. As Pictavia (Cruithintuath) then Albania and later Scotia,
early Scotland initially conta ined neither the Lowlands nor the Northern
Islands (the Orkneys and Shetlands , with Caithness and Sutherland) nor
the Western Isles ("Sudreys" in Norse or "Innse Gall" in Gaelic). These
islands and proximal mainland were dominated by the Norse (Norwegian
"Finn gall" or white strangers) cadre of Vikings. The ruling Viking
Northmen in Galloway, however, were alternately Norse, Danes, and Norse.
Under them Galloway "was a power with which the kingdom founded by
Kenneth, and the kingdom of the Northern English, always had to reckon".
An influx of Irish under Rueda (Riata) had returned with Scots of
Galloway in s upport of Kenneth’s northward war of succession. These
Cruithne (pronounced C reenie), which means Pict but here refers to old
Ulster Irish of the same sto ck (perhaps driven across by the Romans),
continued to populate Galloway. The y were "fierce, ignorant and
barbarically wild with a jurisprudence of ancien t custom exercised
locally by the hereditary Brehon (judge) on what later bec ame baronial
Mote-hills. The Irish and Scots law of tanistry called for the b est
qualified successor in the Chiefly family, and Brehon law required male
ownership of and succession to land. The politics as in Ireland were
tribal. Each tribe or "tuath" in Ireland or "cenel" (Cinel) among Scots
was governed by an ordained, semi-sacred "king" chosen from the
patriarchal family of the cenel, and this was not disrupted by invasion
or conquest by outsiders. One of the several kings in a region was the
"ruiri" or overking; and within a pr ovince such as Galloway these were
subject to a sovereign called an "ollam ri " which made Galwegians
compatible with overlordship by the Norse, Danes, and others. The
arrangement still allowed the Scottish monarchy to occasionally assume a
fourth tier of government corresponding to a "high king" in Ireland.
Initially, the alliance of the Norse with Kenneth I was evident
among the h onors given to Galloway for its assistance in the recovery of
Scottish Dalria da and the crown of Pictavia from the Picts. Kenneth
macAlpin gave his daught er, "a Galloway lass both by birth and kindred",
to Olaf (Olave) a Norse chie f of Galloway, who not long after was seated
on the throne of Dublin by the a ssistance of the Galwegians. Olaf later
captured Dumbarton in his unsuccessfu l claim to the Scottish throne when
Kenneth die