CHAPTER III. EARLY WARS OF RACES.


In a work of this scope, it is impossible to describe all the wars
between the petty kingdoms peopled by races of various languages, which
occupied Scotland. In 603, in the wild moors at Degsastane, between the
Liddel burn and the passes of the Upper Tyne, the English Aethelfrith of
Deira, with an army of the still pagan ancestors of the Borderers,
utterly defeated Aidan, King of Argyll, with the Christian converted
Scots. Henceforth, for more than a century, the English between Forth
and Humber feared neither Scot of the west nor Pict of the north.

On the death of Aethelfrith (617), the Christian west and north exercised
their influences; one of Aethelfrith's exiled sons married a Pictish
princess, and became father of a Pictish king, another, Oswald, was
baptised at Iona; and the new king of the northern English of Lothian,
Edwin, was converted by Paullinus (627), and held Edinburgh as his
capital. Later, after an age of war and ruin, Oswald, the convert of
Iona, restored Christianity in northern England; and, after his fall, his
brother, Oswiu, consolidated the north English. In 685 Oswiu's son
Egfrith crossed the Forth and invaded Pictland with a Northumbrian army,
but was routed with great loss, and was slain at Nectan's Mere, in
Forfarshire. Thenceforth, till 761, the Picts were dominant, as against
Scots and north English, Angus MacFergus being then their leader (731-
761).

Now the invaders and settlers from Scandinavia, the Northmen on the west
coast, ravaged the Christian Scots of the west, and burned Iona: finally,
in 844-860, Kenneth MacAlpine of Kintyre, a Scot of Dalriada on the
paternal, a Pict on the mother's side, defeated the Picts and obtained