" and be a nation again" ?........The Battle of Dun Nechtan 20th May 685..

Not blue woad but green alkanet which gives a red dye

This year is the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, 1314 and we are to vote on the status of Scotland as a country.

 In a few days, on the 20^th May, it will be the anniversary of a much older battle, one that decided if the country now erroneously called Scot-land would exist at all...and it wasn't fought by the Scots.

In 685, the Scotti were a small enclave on the west coast called Dal Riata, an extension of their native kingdom in present day Ulster. They had been comprehensively defeated at the battle of Desgastan (possibly Dawston in Liddesdale) in 603 by the might of the regional super-power, the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria.

The Brythonic people of southern uplands, the Gododdin, had long been subsumed into the Northumbrian kingdom, a decline hastened by their disasterous support of their southern cousins from Wales against the all-conquering Angles.

Oswiu, the Northumbrian monarch, had extended his domain northwards into what was the land of the Picts

Bede records that “ Oswiu subjected the greater part of the Pictish race to the dominion of the Angles” He installed puppet rulers and controlled the kingdoms of the Britons of Strathclyde and the Scots of Dal Riada as well.

Aberlemno stone showing a ? hunting scene

The power of Northumbria grew unchallenged in Northern Britain.

Oswiu's death in 670 and the succession of his son Ecgfrith created an opportunity for the Picts. They rid themselves of the Northumbrian vassal king and rose in rebellion in 672. Ecgfrith was furious and savagely crushed the revolt with his army of horsemen on the plain between the rivers Carron and Avon. This is the first record of cavalry being used in British history.

It took twelve years for the Picts to recover under their new king, Brudei or Bridei mac Beli, in the lands north of the Tay.

Given the hostility between the two nations and their cultural and ethnic differences, it is a strange quirk of history that the kings, Ecgfrith and Brudei, were cousins. Due to dynastic marriages made by earlier Northumbrian kings, in more peaceful attempts to control the north, they shared a common ancestor in Aethelfrith of Northumbria.

How history repeats itself or, at least, the desire for military conquest among rulers does. Was not the appalling conflict of 1914 called “the cousin's war”?

Remembering the cavalry and the slaughter of 672, the Picts avoided pitched battle in 685 and feigning retreat, lured the Northumbrians into their trap at Dun Nechtan, also known as Nechtan's Mere or  Lin Garan “the pool of the Heron”. The site is usually taken as Dunnichen Moss, a marshy area beneath a fortified hill-top near Aberlemno in Angus. The marsh ws drained in the ninetenth century but appears on old maps.

The Northumbrians were comprehensively defeated and Ecgfrith slain.

 His body was taken to Iona, the resting place of Pictish kings where Brudei himself was laid to rest some eight years later.

 The power of Northumbria was broken north of the Forth and the policy of aggressive amalgamation of the petty kingdoms of Northern Britain under Anglian rule was checked permanently.

 Had there been no victory for the Picts at Dun Nechtan, their country of Alba which morphed into Scotland as subsequent rulers created their own alliances, conquests and marriages, would not have existed. Northumbria might have gone on to unite the southern half of our island,  the Mercians, and the Saxons with its northern empire. Who knows  what would have transpired and would any of it have mattered?

There is another candidiate for Dun Nechtan. Dunachton in the Badenoch has a fortified hilltop, a symbol stone and has many features in its favour but wherever the battle was fought, the outcome was the same - on Saturday 20th May 685, the Picts prevented the kingdom of Northumbria from annexing the whole of Northern Britain.

Is this a depiction of the Battle of Dun Nechtan?

The carved symbol stone in Aberlemno Kirk-yard, appears to show a battle between two armies, with distinctive helmets. Those with nose guards are very similar to those use by the Angles -a depiction of the Battle of Dun Nechtan perhaps.  The sun appears high in the sky between the two upper horsemen and the battle was apparently fought in the afternoon.

The skills of the stone carvers of ancient Pictland survived in their descendants judging by the quality of the lettering in copperplate inscriptions carved into the eighteenth century gravestones in the kirk yard.

Coppper-plate  writing carved on a grave stone

As is the case with most people, who governs you is not as important as how you are governed.   It was the strain of imposed tribute taxes and slavery that caused the Picts to rise up, not the ambitions of their kings.   Nations are merely accidents of history.