Crom Cruach
Easter Ross had become a borderland, a unique zone where Picts, Scots and Norse intermingled and collided. The sagas around 890 AD tell of "resorts" under Norse control as far south as Loch Ness and of a further extension of their influence to Moray from 1014 to 1064 AD. Places, such as Cadboll, Arboll, Bindal "sheaf-valley", Shandwick "Sand-vik or Sandy Bay", Dingwall "Thing vollr or Place of the Parliament", Falls of Rogie "Roke or splashing foaming river", Gizzen Briggs, and other sites, retain Viking names. Legend has it that Port an Righ (Bay of the Kings) on the Black Isle is the site where a ship holding three Viking kings was wrecked in the 10th century. Cairn Irenan still marks the spot on the Kilcoy estate (Killearnan Parish, Black Isle), where the Viking prince Irenan was felled in battle and buried. In or around the yeare 995, Findlaec (Finlay), mormaer of Moray [and father of Macbeth, the future King of Scots] challenged Norseman Sigurd II Hlodvirsson of Orkeny on a pitched summer’s battle in Caithness. Three men who carried his finely embroidered raven-banner were killed, but Sigurd was able to claim a victory of sorts. The Norse were credited with forays as far as the Mediterranean and Baltic seas around 700 AD. In 910, they settled the Normandy area of France more permanently and, as Normans, they invaded the Angles in 1066.
| The Ross Clan is one of Scotland’s oldest Clans and most historians now agree that their origin is from the ancient Clan Andrew, which is derived from Anrias, a progenitor of the Ross and MacKenzie Clans. Anrias was descended from the O’Beolains, an Irish Gaelic tribe of the sixth and seventh centuries, who first brought Christianity to Scotland. They became hereditary abbots of the old monastery of Applecross founded by St. Maelrubha, who later created the Earls of Ross and communities in Armagh, Down, and Fermanagh-by the ancient Irish it was called Feor Magh Eanagh. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries the sept of Mael Ruanaigh (the Culdees) are noted in the annals as kings of Cremthainn or Meath, although this appears to be a reference to the district of Cremthann in Connacht. Adjoining the territory of outer Monaghan or Oriel, with the districts included in the adjacent counties of Leitrim and Fermanagh: Cavan, of which name are yet preserved in that of Lough Erne and the river Erne, upon which and their tributaries these districts border. and was divided into the two principalities of Upper or East Breifne and Lower or West Breifne, the former composed almost entirely of the present county of Cavan, and the latter that of Leitrim. |  |
The Eile of Munster were originally a tribe of western King’s County (Offaly in Meath), where place-names recall their early residence in that region. The Luighne were of County Sligo, where they had settled as fighting men to the Northern Gaels in the early centuries A.D. The Cianacht were closely related to the Dealbhna and the Saithne and were closely related to the Cianacht and Dealbhna-of southern part of the kingdom of Brega midway between the River Boyne and the River Liffey. At Killaloe of Munster and of the Dalcassians was one of the twelve dioceses that constitute the ecclesiastical province of Cashel, and comprehends parts of the Queen’s county (Laois), Limerick, Galway, and King’s county (Offaly), with a large portion of the county of Tipperary, and the greater part of Clare. The Cianacht of the Erainn akin to the Belgae of Southwest Britain, were generally known as the Ulaid in the North, and as the Érainn or Desi in the South, as were closely related to the Dealbhna and Saithne. But the Cenél Loairn territory and Moray comprised the northern part of Scottish Dal Riada.
Earls of Ross' territory was Faster Ross and the first documented Chief was Fearchar Mac ant – Saqairt (a Farquhar), the Priest’s son, who helped King Alexander II against the old Celtic dynasty. Farquhar joined forces with the King to crush a rebellion in the province of Moray in 1215. Even though he was a direct descendant of the Irish King Naill of the Nine Hostages, he was granted a Norman knighthood by King Alexander and, a few years later, the Earldom of Ross (1234 AD). At this time, Tain, an early shrine created by St. Dutlac, was the capital of Ross. Now a ruin, it played an import role in Scotland’s religious history during the Middle Ages. In the late 15th and early 16th century King James IV made annual pilgrimages there. However, battered by its enemies, and many of its relics destroyed by changing religious influences, the capital was transferred to the town of Dingwall.
Ross & Cromarty is a northern county of Scotland. It was originally the land bounded by the Moray Firth and Dornoch Firth.