a messenger to Gwynedd to ascertain who was entitled to the lead some say that Maeldaf the elder, the Lord of Penardd, adjudged it to the men of Arvon; Joruerth, the son of Madog, on the authority of his own information, affirms that Idno the aged assigned it to the men of the black-headed shafts. And thereupon the men of Arvon advanced in the van, and were valorous there. And Taliessin sang "Behold! from the ardency of their blades, The men of Arvon with their ruddy lances." Old Welsh Laws, p. 50. Elidyr Mwynvawr was the head of one of the families descended from Dyfnwal Hen, and so were Rydderch Hacl, Nudd Hael, and Mordav Hael, and Clyddno Eiddyn was of the race of Coel. They are called "Gwyr y Gogledd," or Men of the North, and the scene of the dispute as to who should lead was the banks of the river Forth, for the river Gweryd in the north is the Forth, it having been, according to the old description of 1165, called, "Britannice, Weryd." The author of the Genealogia annexed to Nennius describes four of these kings of the north-Urien, Rydderch, Gwallawg, and Morcant-as warring against Hussa, son of Ida, the king of Bernicia, who reigned from 567 to 574; and the battle of Ardderyd, fought in 573, by which the anti-Christian party were finally crushed, resulted in the consolidation of these petty states into the kingdom of Cumbria or Strathclyde, and the establishment of Rydderch as king in the strong fortress of Alclyde or Dumbarton rock, which became from henceforth the chief seat of the kingdom. Here we find Rydderch established when he sent a message to St. Columba, to consult him, as supposed to possess prophetic power, whether he should be slain by his enemies, as recorded by Adomnan in his Life of St. Columba, who calls him "Rex Rodarcus filius Totail qui Petra Cloithe regnavit." St. Columba's reply"De eodem rege et regno et populo ejus "-was, that he would not fall into the hands of his enemies, but die in his own house: which prophecy, adds Adomnan, was fulfilled, as he died a peaceful death. If Joceline reports a real fact, when he says that he died in the same year as St. Kentigern, his death must have taken place either in the year 603 or 614, according to which is the true date of St. Kentigern's death;* and during that time he consolidated his power, and re-established the bishopric of Glasgow. The chronicle of 977 records, in 580, the death of Gwrgi and Peredur, the sons of Eliver Gosgorddvaur, another of these northern kings, and, in 593, the death of Dunawd, son of Pabo Post Prydain; and the Genealogia state that against Theodric, son of Ida, who reigned in Bernicia from 580 to 587, Urien with his sons fought valiantly, and adds, "In illo tempore aliquando hostes, nunc cives, vincebantur," showing the character of the struggle which was taking place between the Cymric population and the increasing power of the Angles. * The Chronicle of 977 places Kentigern's death in 612; but the Aberdeen Breviary, in the Life of Baldred, places his death on Sunday, the 13th January 603. The 13th of January is St. Kentigern's day, and it fell upon a Sunday in 603 and also in 614. The first date is to be preferred. In 603 a great effort appears to have been made by the Celtic tribes to drive back the Angles, under Aidan, king of the Scots who inhabit Britain, whom Bede describes as invading Bernicia with an immense and brave army, and being defeated and put to flight at Degsastan, now Dawston, in Liddesdale, where almost all his army were slain, and he himself escaped with a few only of his followers. This disaster must have crushed the efforts of the Celtic tribes to resist the Angles for the time, and enabled the latter to extend their territories unresisted, till in the reign of Edwin they reached the shores of the Firth of Forth. After the death of Edwin, when Cadwallawn had established his power, Tighernac records, in 638, the battle of Glenmairison, in which the people of Donaldbrec were put to flight, "et obsessio Etain," and afterwards, in 642, that Donaldbrec was slain in the fifteenth year of his reign in the battle of Strathcauin by Ohan, king of the Britons, and in the same year a battle between Oswy and the Britons. The same transactions are repeated at a later date in Tighernac, when the first battle is said to have been in Calithros, and the second in Strathcarn, while the name of the British king is given as Haan; but the first are the true dates. Donaldbrec was the king of Dalriada, and the son of that Aidan who had been defeated in 603. Glenmairison must not be confounded with the glen called Glenmoriston on Loch Ness. It was in Calithros, and Calithros appears to have been the same with the district called Calatria, in which Callander is situated. It lay between the Carron and the Avon, extending on the west at least to the place called Carriden on the Avon, and bounded on the east by the Firth of Forth, including in its limits the parishes of Kineil and Careden; and within this district Glenmairison must have been situated, though it cannot now be identified. Etain was no doubt Eiddyn or Caereden, and the upper part of the valley of the Carron was called Strath Carron, in which there was a royal forest termed in old charters Strathcawin. These events then indicate a great struggle between Donaldbrec and the Britons, in which the former was defeated and finally slain in 642. If my conjecture is correct, that Aidan led a combined force of Scots and Britons, he was in fact for the time performing the functions of Guledig or "Dux Bellorum" in the north; and this struggle probably indicated an attempt on the part of Donaldbrec to maintain the same position. Who Ohan or Haan was, we do not know. He may have been a king of Alclyde and a successor of Rydderch, but it is more probable that he was no other than Cadwallawn himself, whom Tighernac calls Chon, and that the object of the war was whether Donald should retain his father's position, or whether Cadwallawn, who had now become powerful in the south, should extend his supremacy over the north likewise.* The passages quoted from Tighernac will be found in the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, recently published in the series of Scottish Records, and an account of Calatria will be found in the introduction, p. lxxx. The great defeat of the combined forces of the Mercians and Britons in 655 by Oswy, king of Northumbria, in which Penda, king of the Mercians, was slain, and Cadwallawn escaped with his life, terminated the power of the latter, and led to the subjection of the Cumbrian Britons to the kings of Northumbria, and two years afterwards the Annals of Ulster record the death of Gureit or Guriad, king of Alclyde. The subjection of the Britons to the Angles lasted till the year 686, when Ecfrid, king of Northumbria, was slain in the battle of Dunnichen, and during that time no king of Alclyde is recorded. It was also during this time that Ecfrid granted to Lindisfarne, Carlisle, with territory to the extent of fifteen miles round it; but the result of the defeat and death of Ecfrid was, as Bede tells us, that a part of the Britons recovered their liberty, and that this part was the British kingdom of Cumbria or Strathclyde appears from this, that the kings of Alclyde again appear in the Annals as independent kings. In 694 died Domnall MacAuin rex Alochluaithe, and, in 722, Beli filius Elfin rex Alochluaithe. In the Welsh pedigrees annexed to Nennius, a genealogy is given, in which this Beli, son of Elfin, appears, and his descent is there given from Dyfnwal Hen, the ancestor of Rydderch Hael, and stem-father of the second group of northern families. Although the Britons of Strathclyde had recovered their liberty, and the Picts had regained that part of the "Provincia Pictorum" north of the Forth which the |