Loch Leven |
Before travelling north, I made a foray into Fife to get a notion of the principal woman in the story of Macbeth
Lady Macbeth has had a bad press since Shakespeare
envisioned her as a ruthless, ambitious woman giving support to her sometimes wavering
husband.
In fact, Gruoch was as steely as her image and is one of the
few woman of her time to have left an impression on history.
She was a royal princess in her own right, being the
grand-daughter of a king.
Gruoch
ingen Boite (c. 1015–1054)
was the daughter of Boite mac Cináeda, son of Cináed (Kenneth) III
Before 1032,
Gruoch was married to Gille Coemgáin mac Maíl Brigti, who had killed Findlaích,
Macbeth's father to take the title of Mormaer of Moray.
MacBethad
mac Findlaích (Macbeth) avenged the death of his father by killing Gille
and his supporters in 1032 and assuming the title of Mormaer.
Gruoch had
at least one son, Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin, by Gille. After the death of her
husband, she married Macbeth and he adopted her son. This may seem strange to
modern eyes but marriages were a matter of dynastic alliances in early medieval
Alba.
Lulach was destined to reign, albeit briefly,
as King of Scots
The marriage
probably infuriated Malcolm II who was trying to extinguish the tanist
tradition and replace it with one of primogeniture in his own line.
The next
year, one of her male relatives, probably her only brother, was murdered by
Malcolm II as he maintained his hold on the throne by eliminating all who had
claims to the throne under the old system of tanistry where the kingship
alternated between different branches of the royal family. Malcolm
may also have killed Gruoch’s father, Boite, who was his rival for the crown.
Grouch had no reason
to be loyal to Malcolm or Duncan, his chosen successor.
She seems to have a special attachment to Fife, having lands
there from her great-grandfather Duff who had ruled as king from 962 to 966 when
succession still alternated between collateral royal lines. Her branch had
become Thanes of Fife on their exclusion from the system. A system that
collapsed with the accession of Duncan.
St Serf's Isle on Loch Leven |
Her father Boite and
she had made grants of land to the Culdee monastery on St Serf's isle in Loch
Leven. Macbeth's name also appears on the ancient charters along with gifts of
land in Kirkness and Bogie to the Culdees of Loch Leven.
The remains of the Augustinian chapel on St Serf's Isle |
St Serf's Isle is now part of the RSPB reserve and landing on it would disturb nesting birds.
Maiden castle is a motte, an artificial hill, at one time topped
by a wooden palisade. It stands in Kennoway in Fife.
The site is
traditionally associated with "Macduff, Thane of Fife".
Maiden Castle, the Motte , now covered with trees |
Hector Boece
(1526) described it as surrounded by seven ramparts and ditches and as the
place where for a long time lived the descendants of the
"illustrious" Macduff
The Macduff of Shakespeare's play is an invention designed to
please the new Stuart monarch, a dramatic means of contrasting his loyalty to
Duncan against the perfidious treachery of Macbeth, the regicide. It also provided a retelling of the Stewarts’
descent from the mythical Banquo.
Castle Macduff from a later period |
Macbeth’s reputation
was being besmirched by the Canmore dynasty long before the Bard as they too
sought to prove the legitimacy of their line.
The Culdee monastery was replaced with Augustinian monks by
David I who, with his Norman background, understood the need for hierarchy and
structure in ecclesiastical as well as political circles.
By that time the
Gaelic-Celtic society of interlinked kinships and family loyalties had been
replaced by feudalism.
Shakespeare did get one thing correct. Queen Gruoch, his Lady Macbeth, was the equal
of any of her male contemporaries in the dynastic struggles of the nascent
Kingdom of Alba.
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