Irish and Celtic Studies

Irish and Celtic Studies

Introduction

The beginning of the Scottish kingdom, popularly attributed to Kenneth I (Cinaed mac Alpin), and its development under the rule of his descendants, took place during that obscure period in medieval British history encompassing the ninth and tenth centuries. Few records have survived from this era; indeed it was not until the end of the eleventh century, during the reign of Malcolm III (Mael Coluim mac Donnchada), that Scottish historical records began to appear in any quantity.

Therefore, a brief chronicle of Scottish affairs from the mid-ninth to the late tenth century is extremely important for its record of events and for understanding the growth of the early Scottish kingdom. This chronicle, now preserved in a manuscript in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris, has been named variously the 'Pictish Chronicle', 'the Chronicle of the kings of Irish, version A', or 'the Poppleton Annals'; here it is identified simply as 'The Scottish Chronicle' (or, in brief, 'the Chronicle').

It was composed within the Scottish domain, and gives a perspective from the Scots' point of view on events within their own lands and in the northern British kingdom of Strathclyde, the Irish kingdoms and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. From a reading of the material, some insight into the social and cultural history of the early Scottish kingdom is possible, as the Chronicle alludes to now-lost sagas, indicates status among the aristocracy, and shows the Scots monarchs actively directing legal and ecclesiastical reforms within their domain. The Chronicle's preservation of Gaelic words within the text even allows for an estimation of the rate of language development among the eastern Gaels (Kelly, 1998, 15-296).

The hierarchical society in the 7th and 8th century

For Irish, the history in Middle Welsh are later and less conservative, more numerous, and more varied as between regions. Although ascribed to King Hywel Dda in the early tenth century, they date from the twelfth to fourteenth, having been updated by successive generations of scribes. Nevertheless, the two bodies of law have common roots in that, as with the languages, they diverged from a Common Celtic ancestor which existed around 750-500 B.C (Edwards, 2000, 259-589).

In focusing on kinship it would naturally draws on anthropologists, especially the standard introductory content. From one point of view the uses “kinship” in a narrow sense, for he explicitly avoids covering marriage in any depth (on the grounds that it has been treated elsewhere), and hence there is on affines. Even as regards cognates (“blood relatives”), one learns little about, the relations of brothers and sisters, or about what used to be called the avunculate (the mother's brother-sister's son relationship).

There has been a millions of words of wide-ranging scholarship has been written on early mediaeval Celtic society. The focus is on the earliest legal history. For Ireland this means documents first written down in the period 650-750 A.D., mostly in Old Irish rather than Latin, and some of them in verse. Supplemented by later glosses, they enable the author ...