Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/53

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Constantine
47
Constantine

nicle, Olaf was slain by Constantine when on a raid in the following year, but the 'Annals of Ulster' relate that he destroyed Alrhyth (Dumbarton) after a four months' siege, in 870, and retired in 871 to Dublin with two hundred ships and a great bodjy of men, Anglo-Britons and Picts. After this he disappears from the Irish annals, so that his death may possibly have been antedated by some years in the account of the Pictish Chronicle. Ivar, another of the Norse Vikings of Dublin, who had fought along with Olaf, died about the same time, but Scotland was still exposed to incursions from other leaders of the same race. Thorstein the Red, a son of Olaf, by Audur, the wealthy daughter of Ketill Flatnose, attacked the northern districts, and, according to the 'Icelandic Landnamabok,' conquered 'Katanes and Suderland, Ross and Norway, and more than half Scotland.' But his kingdom, which, perhaps, was acquiesced in by Constantine, who had slight hold of the northern parts, was brief, and he was slain by the men of Alba by a stratagem or treachery in 875. In the South Halfdane the Danish leader who led the northern of the two bands (Guthrum, Alfred's opponent commanded the other), into which the formerly united host of that people was divided, ravaged the east coast of Britain, laid waste Northumbria, and destroyed the Picts (of Galloway?) and the people of Strathclyde.

Two years later another band of Danes, the Irish Dubhgall, or Black Strangers, having been driven from Ireland by the Fingall, or White Strangers, made a sudden descent on Scotland by way of the Clyde and, penetrating into the interior, defeated the Scots at Dollar, from which they passed to Inverdovat, in the parish of Forgan in Fife, where Constantine was slain (877). Tradition points to the long black cave, near Crail, as the scene of his death.

[Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings; Skene's Celtic Scotland.]

Æ. M.


CONSTANTINE II (d. 952), son of Ædh, king of Scotland or Alba, one of the most important monarchs of the race of Kenneth Macalpine, as is indicated by the length of his reiffn. He succeeded his cousin Donald VI, son ofUonstantine I, who was a brother of Ædh, in 900. In the third year of his reign the northmen plundered Dunkeld, but were defeated in the following year in Stratheam, when their leader, Ivar of the Hy Ivar (i.e. tribe of Ivar), or perhaps grandson of its founder, the first Ivar, was slain by the men of Fortrenn, the central district of Scotland, fighting under the protection of the Cathbuaidh, the crozier of Columba. In his sixth year an assembly at the Moot Hill of Scone, presided over by Constantine and Kellach, the bishop of Kilrymouth (St. Andrews), agreed that 'the laws and discipline of the faith and the rights of the churches and gospels should be preserved equally with the Scots.' By this obscure reference we are probably to understand that the Pictish and Scottish churches, both long before then christian, were united on a footing of equality under the Bishop of St. Andrews, and that the Dunkeld supremacy which had succeeded that of Iona came to an end. In 908 the death of Donald, the last British king of Strathclyde, a district now almost confined to Galloway, Ayr, and Dumfries, gave Constantine the opportunity of procuring what is usually called the election of his brother Donald to the throne of that kingdom, which remained in a condition of subjection, ruled over by a prince of the Macalpine family until its complete union to Scotland in the reign of Malcolm II. This peaceful addition to his kingdom was followed by a period during which Constantine had to maintain a fierce contest with the Danish pirates led by Regnwald (Reginald), a descendant of Ivar, son of Ragnar Lodbrog. In 912, along with Ottir the jarl and Oswyl Oracaban, Reginald ravaged Dunblane (Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxon Kings, ii. 114, but other writers understand by the passage in Symeon of Durham, 'Historia Regum,' Dublin and not Dunblane, Arnold, Introduction to Symeon, ii. xxv). He then seems to have transferred the scene of his operations to the Isle of Man and the south coast of Ireland, making a descent on Waterford, but in 918 he again invaded Scotland from the south, but having in view specially the conquest of Northumberland. Eldred, lord of Bamborough, called in the aid of Constantine to repulse the Danish invader, and at the memorable though apparently indecisive battle of Corbridge-on-the-Tyne three of the four divisions of the Danish army were defeated by Constantine, and Earls Ottir and Gracaban slain. Reginald with the fourth division then attacked the Scots in rear, but night put an end to the battle, in which many Scots, but none of their chiefs, were slain. The victory was claimed by both sides, but Reginald succeeded in making his way east and taking for a time possession of Bernacia, the northern part of Northumbria. This view, which is that of Mr. Skene, appears on the whole a more probable and consistent account of these transactions than the view of Mr. Hinde, followed with modifications by Mr. Arnold, in his edition of Symeon of Durham, that there were two battles, one in 913–914, in which Reginald was victor, and drove