The Iding athelings were additionally handed over to the monks of Iona for conversion and baptism. Why? The initiative belongs either to the king or to the abbot of Iona, probably the latter for obvious reasons. We cannot assume that Oswald, Oswiu and Æbbe were baptised on arrival, so one of two abbots might have been responsible. In 617, when the Idings arrived at Dunadd, the abbot of Iona was Fergno Brit, perhaps a Briton judging by his name. He was the fourth abbot and the first to come from a new generation who had not been the companions or kin of Colm Cille. He died in 623 and was succeeded by a nephew of Lasrén, the third abbot. Ségéne (623–52) was a kinsman of Colm Cille and one of the longest-serving of the founder’s successors. He is credited with playing an active role among Irish churches in the propagation of Iona’s primacy, and of Colm Cille’s sanctity and authority. It is tempting, therefore, to see Ségéne as the motivating force behind the Bernician conversions, especially since he and Oswald enjoyed a close friendship. That friendship might well have begun during the abbacy of Fergno while Oswald was still in his teenage years; it was close enough for Oswald to learn fluent Irish from him.
The community on Iona must by the 620s have been used to playing a fostering role in the careers of royal youths, not just from the kingdoms of the Cenél Conaill and Dál Riata, but from other royal houses: the Britons of Strathclyde, perhaps, or from Bernicia. In part their role was educational: to teach these youths discipline and the virtues of hard work. They were also acculturated, imbued with the cultural, moral and aesthetic values of Irish society and particularly those of the Columban church. There was a substantial political dimension to their fostering. In a world in which institutional Christianity still stood on fragile foundations, indoctrination in the values and political virtues of Christian kingship must have motivated the community of such a political Christian as Colm Cille. His ordination of Áedán, whether it was the first genuine anointing in Europe or not, set a deliberate precedent intended to ensure that righteous kings were those approved and legitimised by the church, as heathen kings had been by their priests. In return, abbots received appropriate patronage from their kings in the form of land grants and protection. Fostering, along with other more subtle aspects of patronage, was part of the reinforcing process of this relationship which became more complex during the seventh century but which, in essence, was that forged between Iona and Dál Riata. As part of that process Oswald, his brother Oswiu and their sister Æbbe became thoroughly Irish. In the case of Oswiu, he took his integration one step further: he fathered a child with an Irish princess, Fina, daughter of Colman Rimidh, a joint high king of the Northern Uí Néill. That child would in turn become king of Northumbria, in unconventional circumstances.
Oswald’s conversion may have been a matter of formality, part of his obligation towards his hosts. But I think there is more. Many an aspiring tyrant, when in power, has conveniently forgotten promises made on the way up the greasy pole. Oswald did not. He would maintain links with his abbot, Ségéne; they were to meet again on terms of intimacy after Oswald became king. He had gone to Dál Riata as an impressionable youth, had been nurtured there, had become in effect an Ionan protégé. He was taught elements of scripture; his view of history was informed by Old Testament accounts of David and Goliath, of Saul and Elijah but also by legendary tales of great Irish high kings.
For its part, the Iona community must have seen in the Bernician athelings an opportunity both to expand the interests and influence of its church and a fulfilment of divine providence. Here were young men whose kingdom, should they reclaim it, was a rising power in the north, a heathen land ripe for conversion. In the future Christian kings of Bernicia might carry the Columban ideal to all the English: it was a potentially vast source of future patronage and prestige. And then, Oswald would not have been the first Bernician to describe his homeland: plains and hills rich in pasture and cattle, as Ireland was; a rocky royal fortress like Dunadd only on a much grander scale; and close by, a few miles to the north, a tidal island of mythical beauty. Long before King Oswald sent for an Irish bishop, the Columban community must surely have appreciated Lindisfarne’s potential as a new Iona in the East, as perfect a site for a royal monastery as could be conceived. And either Oswald, his brother or his cousin Osric would become their Bernician king. These were young men of talent and prospects, well worth the investment Abbot Ségéne and his fellow-monks would make in their futures if they survived the more secular challenges which the king and his enemies would set them. Iona would prepare them morally and spiritually for the trials ahead, could endorse their divine claims and pray for them. Only apprenticeship as warriors and the political interests of the Dál Riatan kings would ensure their earthly success in battle.
By chance, an extraordinary and unique document survives to shed insight into the military organisation of Dál Riata within which Oswald and Oswiu were trained. It is called the Senchus Fer n’Alban.48 It was compiled in Old Irish during the tenth century, but probably derives from a seventh-century Latin original. Aside from sets of Dál Riatan genealogies of patchy historical validity and a number of annalistic entries, the Senchus records the civil and military obligations of the three tribes of the kingdom: the Cenél Loairn, Cenél nŒngusa and the ruling Cenél nGabráin, Áedán’s immediate kin. The material has been corrupted in the course of its various copyings and transmissions; even so, what emerges from the jumble is a strong sense of the customary military structure of an Early Medieval tribal kingdom, for which there is no insular parallel.
The three kin branches of Dál Riata were assessed in terms of the number of fighting men the king could raise for a hosting. The assessment is by tech, or ‘house’. The Cenél Loairn, whose territory consisted roughly of north Argyll, including Mull and Iona, Lismore and the coast west of Loch Awe with their capital at Oban, comprised 420 techs; the Cenél nŒngusa, ruling the lands of Islay and perhaps Colonsay, had 430 techs; the ruling dynasty of Cenél nGabráin, controlling Kintyre and Cowal, with their principal stronghold at Dunadd, was assessed at 560 techs.*9
Dál Riatan kings were able to summon their fighting levies under three circumstances: to repel an invading army; to guard their borders against a threatened invasion; and to attack a rebellious tuath or tribe across a border. This seems to cover pretty much any eventuality under which a king might wish to wage war. In reality, such impositions involved some sort of give-and-take: those kings with a reputation for success in battle, and who did not attempt to keep their levies in the field past harvest time, were more likely to elicit a positive response to raising their banner than those who were poor or thoughtless commanders.
Likewise, we have to be sceptical about the actual fighting strength of the Dál Riatan kings based on the tech render. Between them, the three tribes were supposed to be able to raise about fifteen hundred fighting men, to be carried against their enemies in around seventy-five seven-bench boats.49 Each tech rendered a warrior and an oarsman. This probably reflects an ancient concept of tribal division into sevenths or septs, each of a hundred techs rendering a man per estate; a very similar customary concept survived in Wales until quite late as the cantref or hundred-house system. That each tech should provide an armed warrior and an oarsman gives an indication of the status of the warrior as estate-owner with a life interest, tied to both land and king in a concentric web of patronage and obligation whose origins lie deep in the Iron Ages of the British Isles.
The warbands of a king, even one as powerful as Áedán, might never actually have consisted of as many as fifteen hundred men, but the impression given by historical accounts of the period of relatively small armies is broadly consistent with this scale of warfare. Áedán’s warbands were also swelled by contingents led by exiles such as Osric and Oswald and their followers, obliged and willing to join in whatever dynastic scraps were justified by the king’s ambitions.
The Dál Riatan system of levies was evidently adapted to its peculiarly maritime interests; its borders were prima
rily the beaches of its islands and if it wished to maintain its imperium over ancestral lands in Ireland it was essential for its naval capability to be maintained at strength. Whether its craft were bespoke warships or, like the little ships of Dunkirk, an allsorts of fishing and trading vessels pressed into temporary service, is frustratingly unclear. There certainly were vessels of many different designs and purposes, from river coracles and punts to ocean-going curraghs and masted wooden sailing barks. Their crews were consummate and confident sailors, as Colm Cille’s monks were. In Adomnán’s Life of Saint Columba alone more than fifty sea voyages of one kind or another are described.50 That a range of such craft was familiar to the peoples of Atlantic Britain is demonstrated impressively by their maintenance of relations with the peoples not just of the northern seas, but of Frankia, Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. These links go as far back as the Bronze Age; as far, in fact, as Continental knowledge of the existence of metallic ores in the rocks of Britain and Ireland. Through and beyond the period of Roman domination, vessels plied Atlantic waters. By the end of the seventh century bulk trade of minerals and grain, the sort of interaction we would recognise as maritime trade, was a thing of the long distant past. Deep harbours with organised facilities which we, or the merchants of Alexandria or Constantinople, would recognise did not exist on the Atlantic seaboard. The emporia of the Irish Sea basin, if they existed on anything like the scale of Sarre in Kent or Lundenwic (which is extremely doubtful), might be located on the Scillies, at Meols near the mouth of the River Mersey, and at Dalkey Island near Dún Laoghaire. At best they were probably beach markets which occurred as and when ships arrived: irregular, opportunistic and unregulated although watched with great acquisitive interest by kings. Bulk trade requires towns for redistribution; and there were no towns in the sense that we understand urbanism in seventh-century Britain or Ireland.
No such emporium has yet been positively identified in the lands of Dál Riata, although it is conceivable that Colm Cille’s foundation at Derry might reflect the existence of a trading site there in the late sixth century. Dunadd, now more than two miles inland, might have had an Early Medieval port; it gives on to very low-lying land that might once have been open water. Beach markets almost certainly existed at Tintagel in Cornwall, where a very high proportion of ‘Dark Age’ Atlantic imports have been recovered; and at Whithorn in Galloway, where there was probably a monastery from the sixth century and earlier. The absence of identified emporia does not mean that the Dál Riatan kings and their fostered princelings had no access to the finer things in life. Excavations at Dunadd have shown that wheel-thrown pottery, beads, glass vessels and tessera for decorative inlays, mostly from Gaul, found their way to courts that could afford to pay high prices for luxury goods.51 Dunadd was special because it was the place where the fruits of Dál Riata’s success were recycled into items of superb metalwork: brooches and bowls, swords and military trappings, which were probably the equal of those items recovered in the Staffordshire hoard. Such items were redistributed along lines of patronage, those reflected in the detail of the Senchus Fer n’Alban, which reinforced the shared sense of success of the Irish diaspora as well as the power of its great kings. The closeness of Dunadd’s relationship with Iona is shown both by the presence of imported pottery on Iona and by the presence at Dunadd of traces of dyes used in the manufacture of holy books. Iona, as befitted the foundation of Colm Cille, seems also to have maintained its own independent links with the Continent, evidenced by the visit of Gaulish sea captains and a Gaulish bishop, Arculf.52
It is tempting to think that Oswald and his companions, having fought in the battles of Eochaid Buide and his son Domnall Brecc (‘Freckled Donald’), returned to their homeland wearing a share of the trappings which fame and fortune had won for them. More precious, perhaps, was the Whiteblade nickname that Oswald’s hosts, or perhaps his enemies, gave him during the time in which he came of age in Dál Riata. The young Bernician atheling had proved himself a worthy soldier by the time he left the court of Domnall Brecc. Iona and the Irish left their mark on Oswald. It seems he left his mark on them too.
One vital question hangs over Oswald’s exile: at no point in his sixteen years at the court of Dál Riata, so far as we know, did he attempt to raise an army against his Deiran cousin Edwin, who had ruled the Northumbrian kingdoms since the death of Æthelfrith. Was he waiting for the right opportunity? Did he fear that Edwin’s power was too great to take on? Did the kings of Dál Riata advise or rule against such a move? We cannot say. If impetuosity fought with wise counsel, the counsel prevailed.
*1I am indebted to Herman Moisl for this information. Lamnguin has otherwise been variously translated as ‘Blessed hand’ and ‘Flashing blade’.
*2Iona was originally, and up to Bede’s day, called Hii; it acquired its more famous moniker through a scribal error on the part of a monk misreading the Latin Iova.
*3Áedán mac Gabráin, late contemporary of Colm Cille and king of Dál Riata between about 574 and his death in 606–8.
*4Sharpe 1995, 356. Saul’s anointing occurs in I Samuel. Collins 1977, 41–4 doubts that the biblical precedent is relevant and cites late Roman practices for the origins of the anointing ritual. Nelson 1977 urges caution on the significance of ecclesiastical aspects of an essentially secular theatre.
*5Noted in the Annals of Clonmacnoise, Annals of Tigernach and Chronicon Scotorum. Moisl 1983, 105. Cruithne is the Ulster territory of the Dál n’Araide, long-standing rivals of Dál Riata.
*6HB 57. ‘That is’, id est in Latin, is recognised as a gloss, or explanatory remark, later than the original; but it does not necessarily invalidate it.
*7A short sword or stabbing knife used in close combat and whose name gave the Saxons their tribal moniker. The Welsh Saes (meaning English) and Scots Sassenach retain the link. Neither is complimentary.
*8 See p.71; Alcock 2003, 150.
*9See Glossary, Appendix C, p.414.
V
Uncle Edwin
Wulf sceal on bearowe,
earm anhaga
The wolf must inhabit the forest,
wretched and solitary
Æthelfrith’s nemesis Edwin had, like Oswald, spent many years in exile, from perhaps the early 590s until 617. He faced the same uncertainties and opportunities as his rival, but while Oswald was to be secure in the protection of Dál Riata in the far north, Edwin was pursued from one southern kingdom to another by a relentless foe: ‘he wandered secretly as a fugitive for many years through many places and kingdoms.’53 Æthelfrith’s determination to exterminate Deiran opposition to his rule is admirable in its persistence. From Gwynedd to Mercia to East Anglia, Edwin was never safe from the bribes and threats of the mighty Bernician king. The fear of the hunted animal seems to have left its mark on Edwin, whose insecurities can be traced as a recurring subtext in Bede’s exhaustive treatment of his conversion. His life reads like a three-act drama, the fate of his dynasty a tragi-comic testimony to the slings and arrows of Early Medieval fortunes.
Edwin’s first exile, as a young boy, seems to have been among the British of Gwynedd. The evidence for this episode is circumstantial: a medieval Welsh Triad, in denouncing his later predations, describes him as a ‘Great oppressor of Mon [Anglesey], nurtured in the Island’.54 Reginald of Durham, writing in the twelfth century but with access to British and Mercian sources now lost, relates that Edwin was brought up, that is to say fostered, by Cadfan ap Iago of Gwynedd. Cadfan is real enough: his gravestone survives in Llangadwaladr churchyard on Anglesey. There is no doubt, either, that he was a Christian king. The Latin inscription on his memorial calls him rex sapientissimus—most wise—a distinction earned by clerics, which may suggest he abdicated to take holy orders. Cadfan had a son, Cadwallon. If, as is likely, Edwin was raised as his foster brother, one senses there must have been ill-feeling between them, given the bloody end their relationship would meet more than thirty years later.
Edwin, raised in one of
the great courts of Britain, ought to have been converted and baptised there at an early age. Indeed, there is a curious and troublesome reference to this in two versions of the Welsh Annals, which record variously that Edwin was baptised in the year 626 (which agrees with Bede’s account) by a Briton, Rhun son of Urien (which does not) or by Bishop Paulinus of the mission to Kent.55 So the story of his long drawn-out adult induction into the Roman church, described with such psychological subtlety by Bede, poses some serious questions.
If Edwin grew up on Anglesey in the court of Gwynedd he, like Oswald, must have learned to fight in the king’s warband alongside those loyal Deiran gesiths who formed his retinue-in-exile. Although there were probably others, only one major battle is recorded in this period: the Battle of Chester around the year 615/16, in which Æthelfrith fought the king of Powys and slew over a thousand monks praying for the British. Historians generally agree that this was not a battle fought for territorial advantage: Powys did not border on Northumbria. But a Welsh Annal variant records that in the battle Iago ap Beli died.56 Iago was Cadfan’s father. The obvious conclusions to draw are that Æthelfrith was making war on the British of Wales because they were harbouring his enemy Edwin; that the kings of Gwynedd and Powys were in military alliance to defend against the Bernicians; and that Edwin survived the battle.
The King in the North Page 8