General Notes

REFN: 1599AN
Alias:<ALIA> Cinead I /MacAlpin/
REFN: P1599
King of Picts and Alba, King of Galloway. Acceded to the throne 839.
Kenneth I the Hardy (ca. 810-858; Kenneth mac Alpin) succeeded his
father, Alpin II, to the throne of Dalriada. He soo n obtained the Pictish
throne in 843 and became the first king to rule the Pi cts of Pictavia and
the Scots of Dalriada. It is possible that intermarriage with the Picts
helped secure Kenneth's throne. The joint kingdom was known as Alba from
the Latin for white.
Recalling the peculiarity of a matrilineal s uccession which governed
Pictish crowns, it is evident that Kenneth Mac Alpin grounded his claims
to the Pictish crown from his mother's bloodlines. In 83 9, the Picts
suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Vikings. The No rsemen
had conquered and settled Shetland, the Outer Hebrides and as far sout h
as the mouth of the Clyde. Caithness, Sutherland and even Dalriada were
b eing attacked and harassed by the long boats. The brutalizing defeat at
the h ands of the Vikings in 839 killed most of the Pictish nobility,
including the King of Picts and Scots Uven Mac Angus II, his brother
Bran, and "numberless others". This opened Mac Alpin's claim to the
vacant Pictish throne (via his mother who was a Pictish princess). The
Pictish kingdoms had been severely w eakened by attacks from the Vikings
and were in no condition to dispute his c laim.
His claim to the crown of Dalriada came from his father, who was a membe r
of clan Gabhran, which had produced most Scottish kings, such as his
ance stors King Eachaidh, King Alpin Mac Eachaidh, King Aed, and King
Fergus. His Pictish mother was descended from the royal house of
Fortrenn, and his great- grand uncle, Alpin Mac Eachaidh had actually
reigned as King of Picts until d eposed by Oengus I. It is thus that
Kenneth Mac Alpin was one of several nobl es with a claim to the crown of
Picts and Scots.
The sources for facts of ho w Kenneth Mac Alpin, the avenging son of the
slain Alpin, became King of Pict s and Scots are few and suspect. Two such
sources, The Prophecy of St. Bercha n, and De Instructione Principus note
that in 841 Mac Alpin attacked the remn ants of the Pictish army and
defeated them (he is lauded as "the raven feeder "). Mac Alpin then
invites the Pictish king, Drust IX, and the remaining Pict ish nobles to
Scone to perhaps settle the issue of Dalriada's freedom or MacA lpin's
claim to the Dalriadic crown. Faced with a recently victorious MacAlpi n
in the south and a devastated army in the north, Drust, as well as all
cl aimants to the Pictish throne from the seven royal houses attend this
meeting at Scone. Legend has it that the Scots came secretly armed to
Scone, where D rust and the Pictish nobles were killed. This event has
come to be known as M acAlpin's Treason.
Although their king and royal houses had been murdered and their armies
wiped out in the north by the Vikings and decimated in the south by the
Scots, the Picts nonetheless resist Scottish domination and as late a s
the 12th year of MacAlpin's reign The Chronicle of Huntington tells us
th at Mac Alpin "fought successfully against the Picts seven times in one
day" ( perhaps wiping out the last remnants of an independent Pictish
armed force).
By the year 843, he had created a semblance of unity among the warring
socie ties of the Picts, Scots, Britons, and Angles after he had defeated
the Picts in battle. MacAlpin created his capital at Forteviot, also
called Scone, in Pictish territory. He then moved his religious center to
Dunkeld on the River Tay in present-day Perthshire, to where he
transferred the remains of St. Co lumba from the Isle of Iona.
At roughly the same time that the people of Wales were separated from the
invading Saxons by the artificial boundary of Offa's Dyke, MacAlpin was
creating a kingdom of Scotland. MacAlpin's successes in p art were due to
the threat coming from the raid