Noteringar |
- Lord i Argyll, Skottland.
Somerled, the celebrated ruler of Argyle, who is also mentioned in the Orkney saga, and in the saga of King Hacon Haconsson as the founder of his dynasty, is styled king or petty king only in this Chronicle and the Irish annals. The sagas do not mention his father, but from a genealogy, preserved it would seem among his descendants, the Mac Donalds, and printed in Johnstone's Antiquitates Celto-Norinannicæ, p. 152, we learn that he was son of Gilbrigid, and grandson of Gil-Adomnan. Skene (Highlanders in Scotland, V. ii. p. 40, 41) informs us, from two curious old Gaelic MSS, that Gil-Adoninan was driven out from his possessions in Scotland by the violence of the Lochians and Fingalls (i.e., the Norwegians), and took refuge in Ireland, and that Gillebridd, as it would appear, made an unsuccessful attempt to recover his paternal lands, which, however, was at last effected by Somerled, who put himself at the head of the inhabitants of Morven, and by a series of rapid attacks succeeded, after considerable struggle, in expelling the Norwegians, and making himself master of the whole of Morven, Lochaber, and north Argyle, to which he soon afterwards added the southern district of Argyle. Perhaps we may be able to carry the genealogy still farther up than to Gil-Adomnan. In the Annals of the Four Masters it is stated that Somerled, son of Gilbrigid, king of Innsie Gall (i.e., the Sudreys), died in 1083. It seems evident from the repetition of the personal names that this Somerled was the father of Gil-Adomnan, and that, being originally and properly Lord of Argyle, he had also acquired some of the adjacent isles, as Jura, Mull, etc, enough to procure him the title of Insular king. We might even be inclined to think that Gil-Adomnan, being, as we presume, his son, was expelled his dominions by Godred of Man, not, as Mr Skene suggests, by Magnus of Norway, who already found Godred and Lagman fully established in the Isles. Indeed the chief family possessions of Godred, being as demonstrated above, the island of Isla, which is next to Jura and Argyle, we may guess that not only in the earlier years of Godred, before he conquered Man, but even in the times of their respective ancestors, there existed constant feuds between both families, such as generally used to rage among neigh-bouring clans in those days, and that the expulsion of Gil-Adoninan to Ireland was only a continuation of ancient conflicts. Seeing, farther, that the Norwegian name of Somerled, which appears twice in the dynasty, indicates some connection with Norwegian families, and that the powerful Earl Sigurd, the father of Thorfinn, had really a son his first-born, named Somerled, while the husband of his sister, the Sudreyan earl, is called Gille (i.e., Gilbrigid, Gilchrist, Gil-Adomnan, or another similar name), we find it rather likely that Somerled the elder was a descendant of Earl Gille by the sister of Earl Sigurd, and that his name, as well as that of Earl Sigurd's son, was derived from the same common ancestor; say, it is even probable that Somerled of the Isles, who seems to have been born about 1020, was immediately named after the Orkneyan earl who died about that time. (Chronicle of Man and the Sudreys, note 14)
Cantyre (Kintyre på Skottland, nära Inre Hebriderna) Somerled Mac Gillabride, född före 1140. Grundare av dynastin Lords of the Isles. Han var son till Gillibride (Gilbert) och sonson till Gillaegammon, som grundade kungariket Argathelia (=Argyll). Död i slaget vid Renfrew år 1164. Sumerled, Lord of Argyll; and this was the cause of the ruin of the whole kingdom of the Isles, for he had issue by her four sons, Dugald, Reginald, Angus and Olave. (The family records of the Bruces and the Cumyns' tryckt Kinnard, Falkirk, januari 1870.)
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