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Crom Cruach

The Teutonic name, Ross, was very likely in their pre-Celtic Ogham and P-Celtic vocabularies. They had a concept of eternity and the infinite. After 30 years of patience and restraint following repeated battles as far north as Inverness, the Picts finally butchered the Teutonic armies of the Anglo-Saxons who occupied their southern lands. The slaughter took place on May 20, 685 AD, at Nechtansmere in Angus. The Picts feigned a retreat, drawing the Northumbrians deeper into the highlands to Lin Garan (or Nechtan's Mere) a marshy lake in Forfarshire.

Contingents of Strathclyde Britons and Dalraidic Scots may have fought with the Picts at the battle of Nechtansmere. Had this later King Bridei (Brude) lost, the whole of Scotland might have been English. The Britons came from three very powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. The people of Kent and the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are of Jutish origin and also those opposite the Isle of Wight, that part of the kingdom of Wessex which is still today called the nation of the Jutes. The Damnonii were a Brythonic tribe near Kent in the area around modern Glasgow and Strathclyde in west central Scotland; the Votadini were a tribe in south-east Scotland and north-east England; and an Osraighe settlement of Brigantines fleeing from the final Roman occupation of their tribal territories in north-central England. The Laigin settled first in southern Britain and then in Ireland. Bernicia became part of Northumbria, and by 954 was overrun by the Danish kingdom of York. The concept of a "duthus" as a sacred clan centre was an early tradition in Ross.

Across the Pentland Firth ferries link Caithness with Orkney but has a land boundary with Sutherland. In the wake of the Scots incursionists followed the Celtic missionaries about 565. By the early 7th century there was a unified Pictish kingdom north of a line from the Clyde to the Forth rivers. Gaelic replaced Norn entirely in the Western Isles and Ogham in 4th century Irish colonies in Wales. The church of St. Duthac (Dhubthaich) was greatly revered. King Malcolm III Canmore of Scots, who ruled from 1057 to 1093 (after Macbeth), proposed that clan chiefs be named from (or give their names to) their duthus. As the clan system became strengthened under his rule, Scotland replaced Alba.

The Norse looted Western Scottish monasteries (793 - 806), established resorts in the Inner and Outer Hebrides until they settled Skye and Lewis at the beginning of the 9th century AD, settled parts of northeast Ireland, evicted Danish Vikings from the Shetlands and Orkneys, and went on to settle Iceland (870 AD) and Greenland (900 AD) before exploring the Atlantic Coast of Canada (1000 AD). The Danes slowly established settlements in England in general, none of the native Britons or Angles were able to stop these Northmen in any significant way. The northern Picts and Scots seemed to have something in common with the Norse Vikings; intermarriages, common in Caithness and Sutherland, were even more extensive throughout the Western Isles.

 

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