Aethelred / Aedh, 1st Earl of Fife - Not the Earl of Fife?

Yes. Like the hatfield vs mcoy one maven and jcf have going and i wish they would stop so i could learn from professer swanstrom. This is intresting.

Now they have clans septs what ever you want to call them in ireland also way way back.

All of this leads up to the way I would answer some of Sharon's earlier questions.

If we are asking about the source for Ethelred having children, or the existence of a Moray princess, or the existence of Duff mac Eth, the answer is always going to be that these are the earliest recorded traditions. The tradition might have become garbled or might have been manipulated for political reasons, but it can't be tossed out because there is no contemporary record.

Some of my Scottish research buddies say at this point that the English rule of thumb is that nothing happened in medieval Scotland unless it can be proved from English sources. That's a joke (I think). More seriously, there is an idea among many Scottish genealogists that disregarding clan histories is a convenient way of turning most of Scottish history before 1745 into mere legend.

There has been a lot of work in the past generation to develop new ways of analyzing these old traditions.

One interesting example is the research into plant badges. It's now generally recognized that the clans that are fragments of the same archaic tribe often have the same plant badge, even though they often have different traditional male-line genealogies. And, when the plant badges are not the same the change can often be accounted for by traditional histories.

Moncrieffe pioneered a similar idea with heraldry. I think he was the first to show that many clans fall into one of two groups -- those who use or quarter the lion and those who use or quarter the galley. It was his theory that these were primitive totem symbols later adapted to heraldry. His idea was that the families with the lion belonged to the royal family of ancient Dalriada and the families with the galley belonged to the royal family of old Uppsala (Sweden).

This idea has been investigated and elaborated since then. You can get a glimpse of it here:
http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/westhigh.html

Now, the reason this idea of lions in heraldry is relevant here is that the odl MacDuffs and now their Wemyss of Wemyss heirs have as their coat of arms a red lion on a gold shield. There is a theory, perhaps arguable, that the lion in these colors is the "undifferenced" symbol of the old kings of Dalriada. The Scottish royal family uses a "differenced" version that adds a double tressure flory counterflory.

According to this theory the MacDuffs must have been in some significant sense the senior heirs of the old Dalriada line, and likely the senior heirs of Kenneth MacAlpin who came from that line. More importantly, the idea that the colors red and gold represent the senior line is something that almost certainly could only have developed later, after the advent of heraldry.

So, while it could be possible theoretically that the MacDuffs use the undifferenced red and gold arms because they are heirs of Duff, brother of Kenneth II, it is far more likely that they used that version because they are senior but disinherited line of Malcolm III. Therefore, the arms seem (emphasis on "seem") to support the tradition that the later MacDuffs were descendants of Ethelred. And, if true, this would be a far more reliable guide than looking for non-existent contemporary records.

All of this gets much more complicated in the detail. There are no actual records of the Scottish royal arms before William the Lion, who is supposed to have first used them. He was a great grandson of Malcolm III and lived at the time heraldry was first coming into use. It's not clear whether he used just the lion, or whether he also used the tressure. The earliest pictorial representation of the Scottish arms are from his son Alexander II. He definitely used an early form of the tressure.

One of the arguments in favor of the MacDuff descent from Ethelred is that the relationships were still close enough (3rd cousin, 4th cousin) that it's hard to believe the Scottish kings would have "allowed" a powerful family to use arms that implied seniority within the royal family unless there was a good reason.

The counter-argument is that the royal family probably didn't have much control over what arms the MacDuffs used (but then, they didn't try to counter it either). And, we can't be sure that the royal family didn't add the tressure as a way to make the same arms more prestigious (instead of seeing it as a simple difference).

The important point seems to be that both the royal family and the MacDuffs understood the lion in red and gold to represent the senior royal line of Dalriada, why other dynasts changed the colors (blue and white in Moray, for example).

There is also an odd incident in the history of the royal arms. Under James III the Scottish parliament passed an act removing the tressure from the royal arms. The most likely explanation is that the fleurs de lis in the tressure had potential political implications at a time when the king was considering a visit to France, but some people think Parliament might have wanted the king to assert a right to the old undifferenced arms now that the MacDuffs were out of the picture.

All of that is more than I intended to say, and goes far beyond the relatively simple message I lost this morning. I'm sorry it comes across as being so choppy. No doubt I've missed several important points, but the basic idea is that I am more persuaded by the evidences that work within a larger cultural context than in simple point, counter-point from written documents. .

Justin thank you for taking the time to tune in and contribute. I now understand better what it is i dont understand, and that's a very good place to be in. I have read some Moncrieff and enjoyed it.

Jacqueli, I've seen quite a bit the last few years about the Lebor Clann Glas but all of it pre-publication that never seems to get published. It's clearly a very uneven mishmash that preserves traditions from many sources. Some of the best stuff seems to be an approach that gives up the game of looking for confirmation in other sources and instead focuses on the structural parallels between fragments and Roman models. Very exciting stuff. Particularly if looking for a model that was used helps date the fragment.

Interesting, Justin, but a bit outside the area of current discussion. The influence of the Norse on the Hebrides, West Highlands, Shetlands and Faeroes is constantly underestimated. Even the clear influence of, and on, the Orkneys is downplayed.

The reason Thorfinn Sigurdsson was "Earl of Caithness" is that it's the northernmost tip of Scotland and the closest part of the mainland to the Orkneys - an easy reach from the islands.

Y-DNA tests on descendants of Somerled of Argyll and the Islands show that - like his name, a variant of the Norse "Sumarlidi" - his paternal ancestry was Norse. (We're back to Thorfinn again here - one of his older brothers was named Sumarlidi.)

Thorfinn himself is an interesting study in cross-cultural genetics: his mother was Scottish, his father was half-Irish (the distaff half), and his paternal grandmother was yet another Celt or part-Celt. But culturally he was all Norse.

(Geni claims I'm a direct descendant of Somerled *and* Thorfinn - but I know there's a weak link in the chain between Scotland and Anne Arundel.)

I do have some vikings in the family but my area of intrest right now is not so much my mothers mixed scotish english a smigon nordic and indian but my fathers irish and nordic roots.

What drew me here was justin,s portyal of scotish hearldy. I think in some extent that was on my fathers irish galic side.

So yes i,m a intresting mixed bag of cross cultures

Outside the current discussion? Chalk it up to my burning desire to get in, say my piece, and get out as economically as possible.

The point I failed to make clearly is that the question of whether Ethelred was Earl of Fife is part of a package deal. The tradition that makes him 1st Earl of Fife is part and parcel of him being an ancestor of the later MacDuffs.

The question might be unanswerable but if it can be answered at all, the methodology we're using here is all wrong. We need to approach medieval Scottish genealogy on its own terms, not try to import strategies that work better elsewhere.

The mixing in Norse areas is well-documented. The DNA of Somerled should be taken for granted at this point, but not particularly relevant except as an example of how tradition becomes corrupted at the fringes.

It's a point of smug satisfaction for me that I predicted long before DNA tests that Somerled's paternal line would turn out to be Norse, just from putting the conflicting traditions into the larger cultural context that I'm urging here. Back in the day, I argued at length that Somerled's supposed Gaelic ancestry was a clear fabrication to cover a later "adoption" into the Gaelic polity of the Isles ;)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Douglas,_3rd_Earl_of_Morton

Emphasis on "another place", Michael. This would not be the right thread for that.

What we have here is two incompatible traditions, one of which claims that there were "MacDuffs", or at least *a* Macduff, well back into the 11th century and possibly the 10th (Shakespeare used this one, and he didn't pull it out of his ear), and another which claims they originated in the *12th* century from a later "Dubh" who was the son of an "Edh" who is (IMHO falsely) equated with Ethelred of Dunkeld.

The only other prominent Ethelred in medieval Scottish history is Aelred of Rievaulx, born in Northumberland, visited the court of King David I of Scotland in Roxburgh, and eventually settled down at the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire. He was *not* a Scot but a Geordie, and no one wrote his name as "Heth" or "Beth" or "Aedh" or "Edh" or "Eth".

Nor was that the case with Aelred priest of Alwinside (fl. 1128-1138) or Aelred grieve of Gorgie (fl. 1186-1225), two minor figures who are only known because they got their names on one charter each.

So much for the "tradition" of equating "Ethelred" with "Aedh".

Wow - this discussion went all over the place. It's provenance was whether or not Ethelred was Thane of Fife:

Adding from the other discussion: Private User said:
Annotations to "The history ... of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross, by Robert Sibbald" suggest that the controversial "insuper comes de Fyfe" was an error of a different kind - not "formerly", but an incorrect expansion of an abbreviation "in com. de Fyfe" [in the county of Fife] - referring, perhaps, to the location of Dunkeld Abbey.

Considering that charters were drawn up in Gaelic at this period and then translated into Latin, there is at least some margin for error.

I'm cutting & pasting the points of Justin Durand's that stood out for me - just to have them in one place to refer to:

One thing that seems to be getting lost in this particular discussion is that we are looking at a nearly coherent tradition, and deciding whether to dismantle it. That is a fundamentally different project than trying to build a genealogy from the surviving records.
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The point I failed to make clearly is that the question of whether Ethelred was Earl of Fife is part of a package deal. The tradition that makes him 1st Earl of Fife is part and parcel of him being an ancestor of the later MacDuffs.
But in medieval Scotland the problem is quite different. The contemporary records extend only as far as the relevant families were paying attention to the central government. The bulk of relevant records are oral traditions, recorded in most cases by clan historians and household priests from about the 16th century on. There are probably hundreds of these little histories, many still in private hands and many almost inaccessible to the Internet genealogist except occasionally through individual clan websites (where they compete for attention among many more modern summaries). The surviving histories often draw on earlier histories of the same type that have since been lost.in the many clan wars.
With medieval Scottish genealogy you can't get just start from scratch and go where the surviving records lead. Instead, you have to collate these surviving histories for consistency and plausibility, supplementing them with the meager written records when possible.
This is why the accounts written by men like Moncrieffe and Learney are so valuable. They had access to more of these histories (not "records") than any of us will ever have. And this is why I'm particularly fond of Cairney. He takes time to put each of the families into the broader context of tribes fragmenting into clans and the different feuds into the larger context of ongoing dynastic rivalries.
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If we are asking about the source for Ethelred having children, or the existence of a Moray princess, or the existence of Duff mac Eth, the answer is always going to be that these are the earliest recorded traditions. The tradition might have become garbled or might have been manipulated for political reasons, but it can't be tossed out because there is no contemporary record.
Some of my Scottish research buddies say at this point that the English rule of thumb is that nothing happened in medieval Scotland unless it can be proved from English sources. That's a joke (I think). More seriously, there is an idea among many Scottish genealogists that disregarding clan histories is a convenient way of turning most of Scottish history before 1745 into mere legend.

On the matter of heraldry - and acknowledging how much I love these interludes where you realise just how much Justin actually knows about stuff, and just what a shame it is you're probably never going to be able to sit after dinner with a good port and get him to start to tell you the stories ... :-)

I don't think Ethelred is a necessary component of that 'proof' at all. The MacDuff's coat of arms could reflect their 'superior' claim with or without Ethelred as the link.

> What we have here is two incompatible traditions

That's going a bit far, I think. Two traditions, maybe. But if so they've been woven together more or less successfully for several hundred years now. It doesn't further the analysis to make overblown claims for the question.

> The MacDuff's coat of arms could reflect their 'superior' claim with or without Ethelred as the link.

Yes, I talked about some of that. They could have had a senior claim as representatives of the line from King Duff. The argument for thinking the claim must have been much more recent is that the idea that the red and gold lion represents the senior line was probably itself very recent.

The lion might have been the emblem or totem of Dalriada but if the Scottish kings didn't adopt a coat of arms until the advent of heraldry four generations later, it seems unlikely to have been connected to a color symbolism so much earlier in the time of Malcolm III.

Here, it helps to know that (broadly speaking) there are certain color combinations that somehow became associated in Scottish heraldry with certain districts. I don't know of a district association for red and gold. As far as I know that's the royal combination. The colors of Dalriada are green and gold. The colors of Moray are blue and white.

So, if the MacDuffs were heirs of the Moray line, we might expect to see them using the lion (Dalriada) in blue and white (Moray).

Justin Durand
=we are looking at a nearly coherent tradition, and deciding whether to dismantle it.=
=With medieval Scottish genealogy you can't get just start from scratch and go where the surviving records lead. Instead, you have to collate these surviving histories for consistency and plausibility, supplementing them with the meager written records when possible. =

Point taken.
I wasn't aware that this was a dismantling of a tradition. Certainly that carries a weight that gives pause.
I'm using the MacDuff clan versions that I can find on the Internet; & they contradict each other. First, I only found that Lulach's daughter married her cousin Aed of Ross. But now I've looked I also see the Ethelred as her husband story.
Moncrieffe and Learney & Cairney are not to be found (by me) on the Internet - not even credited by the clan pages. Can you take a moment to explain when they wrote and what their objectivity would have been?

=the question of whether Ethelred was Earl of Fife is part of a package deal. The tradition that makes him 1st Earl of Fife is part and parcel of him being an ancestor of the later MacDuffs.=
Now, this smacks of legend making to me. It also means we can't question the objectivity of attributing to him the office of Earl of Fife as well as the Abbot Of Dunkeld without risking dismantling the whole tradition. That makes the tradition suspiciously 'unrobust' to my mind.

I understand the value of oral tradition as a repository of historical - especially genealogical - knowledge. The Xhosa and Zulu tribes in SA have a genealogical history based on these oral memes - learned and passed on to a designated historian in every generation. But, like the Icelandic sagas, the stories have a timescale that need take no cognizance of historical reality, and the protagonists are always great men - because they're the point of the story being told to their descendants. It doesn't need English / Scot animosity to point out where historical records contradict or modify the account.

As far as I can see, the evidence suggests that Ethelred is unlikely to have been Earl of Fife. The ONLY doc being used to establish that makes no sense unless it is a translation typo.

That being said - we cannot solidly disprove that Ethelred wasn't Thane of Fife before Constantine, and so there seems good enough reason to leave the title there if people think it should stay.

I will also create an Earls of Fife Project to link into this - as it seems there are a number of profiles in this debate that should be attached to it.

On the question of whether Ethelred is Aed; and whether he married Lulach's daughter, seems a good place to separate off a new discussion.

Oops, cross posting again. Are you awake across the ocean there? :-)

I found a little piece tonight that I don't think I've ever seen before. This is the claim, surely bogus, that Malcolm III granted the MacDuffs the right to use the royal lion:

"When King Malcolm of Canmore was firmly established on the Throne, he called a Parliament at Forfair in 1057, and rewarded those who had aided him in attaining the crown, King Malcolm honored with three sorts of Privileges -

"That the Earl of Fife, by Office, shall bear the heraldic red lion rampant of the Royal House, and shall set the Crown upon the King's head on the stone of Scone at his Coronation."

http://www.clanmacduff.org/history.html

Interesting tidbit but this is too early for heraldry. Now that I know to look for it, there are many references to the parliament in 1057 but always in a quasi-mythical context. This is when Malcolm III turned his thanes into earls and barons and gave them coats of arms, etc. It would be interesting to know the earliest source.

I'm up early. No idea why.

> whether Ethelred is Aed; and whether he married Lulach's daughter, seems a good place to separate off a new discussion.

Maybe so, but it's worth clarifying something said earlier. Aed is not a translation of Ethelred. Of course not. It's a simple substitution for a familiar name for a foreign name, in the same way that Hrolf became Rollo in Normandy, or Saorbreathach became Justin in Ireland, or half the guys I know named Harry have the Hebrew name Chaim ;)

All invited to join and develop a Project for Earls of Fife:http://stage.geni.com/projects/Earls-of-Fife/30347

Justin, I'll paste that into the new Discussion before I answer it.

> I wasn't aware that this was a dismantling of a tradition

This is a good jumping off place for what I intended to write about this morning. The discussion got off to a bad start by arguing against Ethelred / Aed without putting the question in context.

Now I'm in the "3rd wheel" position of presenting the canonical tradition and arguing that a solid analysis of it should proceed differently than it has so far. It's not enough, I think, to take bits and pieces to argue in a vacuum.

It's easy to see how the version presented by Cairney looks like a blending of two separate traditions. It could be that, but assuming that's the case and just choosing one of them isn't the way to proceed.

If you read many different versions of the story, you'll see there is actually a good deal of minor variation. There are versions of the tradition that start with Aed / Ethelred and derive the name MacDuff from him, leaving out any idea of an older line of descent from King Duff. There are versions that throw in Duff mac Eth as the eponymous ancestor, but others that leave him out. And, there are versions that say the name MacDuff comes from an orthographic confusion of MacHeth (MacEth) and MacBeth.

You can see that some of these are more plausible on the face than others. I transcribed the Cairney version here, partly because it was handy but also because it is the fullest "canonical" version I know. Everything else is some variation on that.

I found a sheet in my notes (which is a miracle itself) that shows at some time in the distant past I was trying to work out a case for rejecting the strand that derives the MacDuffs from King Duff. It would not be that I believed that, but that I was trying to see if it could work.

What I came up with is the idea that the descent from King Duff is more likely to be an "authentic" tradition than the descent from Aed, but not for any of the reasons cited here. Analogizing to clans like the MacGregors, who claim descent from Gregor, legendary son of Kenneth MacAlpin, it seemed more common (to me) that in the heart of the Highlands the oldest clans take their name from old royal dynasts, while it's the younger, smaller clans that take their name from more recent ancestors.

I should probably point out here that saying the MacDuffs descend from King Duff wouldn't be a statement of fact, but a political statement. Clans like the MacDuffs were fragments of an older tribe. They were descendants of the archaic people of that region. It's just the Celtic habit of systematizing genealogy that assigns them a particular ancestor so they fit into the overall schema. Rather like the Norman de Mandevilles in Ulster who went native and ended up as McQuillans or the Norse family of Somerled who went native and ended up as MacDonalds and MacDougals, all of them with official pedigrees that integrated them into the local polity.

In spite of this, I don't actually have much trouble with the idea that the MacDuffs might have had two different eponymous ancestors, the older King Duff and a more recent someone, whom we can call Duff mac Eth for convenience. The name and nickname Duff (Dubh) is common enough that there shouldn't be any surprise if two men in the same family had it.

And, I'm personally convinced that the heraldry of the MacDuffs is significant in some way, almost certainly indicating that they are close cousins in some way of the Malcolm III line not just remote dynasts.

Sharon, there's a problem with your link. It goes to a blank file on the staging site.

Oh. Damn. Yes, I'm having a problem getting out of stage geni, and don't want to log off while I've got all these Discussion windows open. I sent you an invite - did you get that?