Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/214

 some of Columba's relics to Dunkeld, and dying at Forteviot was buried at Iona. Donald, also a son of Alpin, and called in the ‘Annals of Ulster’ king of the Picts, succeeded, and reigned four years, or, according to another account, three years and three months. This was too short a period for many events, and although his reign has been amplified by Fordun, Boece, and Buchanan, the only fact handed down by the older annalists and certainly authentic is that along with his people the Gaels he established the rights and laws of Aedh, the son of Echdach, at Forteviot. ‘In hujus tempore jura ac leges Edi filii Echdach fecerunt Gvedeli cum rege suo in Fothur-tha-baichte, i.e. Forteviot’ (, Chronicle of Picts and Scots, p. 8). These were the laws of Aedh, a Dalriad king of the eighth century, the exact contents of which are unknown, but probably included the custom of tanistry, the succession to the crown by the eldest and worthiest of the royal blood, perhaps also the right to exact certain dues from the Picts called Cain and Cuairt (, Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 41). Donald died in 864 at his palace of Kinn Belachoir (Pictish Chronicle) or Rath Inver Amon, or, according to another account, was killed at Scone, near which the other places named are, and was succeeded by Constantine I, son of his brother Kenneth, according to the rule of tanistry.

[Skene's Celtic Scotland, i. 322; Tract on Coronation Stone, p. 35.]  DONALD VI (d. 900), son of Constantine I [q. v.], king of Celtic Scotland, succeeded Eocha and Grig (Gregory), who had reigned jointly, the latter, perhaps, being the representative of the northern Celts or Picts and the former a son of Run of the British race, but by his mother a grandson of Kenneth Macalpin. His reign, when the kings of Scone are first called kings of Alban and no longer of the Picts by the Irish annalists, was during the period of the great Danish Vikings, who now began to settle in instead of ravaging the coasts. Guthorm Athelstan about this period, defeated by Alfred, became a christian and settled in the eastern district called the Danelege. Halfdene, who commanded the northern half of the formerly united Danish host, attacked and settled in Northumbria. The Celts in Ireland succeeded in repelling the Danish invaders till 919, when Sitric, by their defeat at Rathfarnham, laid the foundation of the Danish kingdom of Dublin. Another band of northern Vikings, led by Hrolf (Rollo), sought the more distant shores of Normandy. Meanwhile Harold Harfagr was consolidating the kingdom of Norway, and a little later Gorm the old that of Denmark.

The less fertile Scotland had a short period of comparative quiet. Donald is said by Fordun to have made peace with Ronald and Sitric, his kinsman, the successors of Guthorm, Danish chiefs not clearly identified (Scotichronicon, iv. 20).

Sigurd, brother of Ronald, earl of Moire, the second earl of Orkney, indeed invaded northern Scotland and took possession of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and Moray, according to one account, as far as Ekkiallsakki (Burghhead, between the Findhorn and Spey), where he defeated Melbrigda Tönn (the Tooth), but died from a wound of the tooth of his defeated foe's head slung over his saddle, according to the Norse Saga. But this north-eastern part of Scotland had probably never been under the Celtic kings of Scone. According to the narrative of ‘The Wars of the Gaedhill with the Gael’ ( edit. p. 29) a later attack, led by Sitric, son of Imhair, came further south, defeated the Scots, and (, i. 338) slew Donald at Dun-fother (Dunottar) in Kincardine. But the Ulster annals, as well as the earliest Scottish historians, ignore this invasion, and record the death of Donald about 900, according to Fordun, at Forres, not in battle but from infirmity, brought on by his labour in reducing the highland robber tribes, though Fordun adds a doubt whether he may not have been poisoned. He was succeeded by Constantine, the son of Aedh the predecessor of Gregory.

[Wyntoun and Fordun; Wars of the Gaedhill and Gael; Annals of Ulster; and for modern accounts see Skene's Celtic Scotland, i. 335, and Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 50.]  DONALD, ADAM (1703–1780), called ‘the prophet of Bethelnie,’ was born at the hamlet of that name, twenty miles north of Aberdeen, in 1703. Notwithstanding his extraordinary stature and build, which caused the country folk to regard him as a changeling ‘supernatural in mind as well as in body,’ he was unable from some infirmity to labour with his hands, while his parents, struggling peasants, could ill afford to maintain him. Donald had therefore to solve the perplexity of how to live. ‘Observing,’ says his biographer, ‘with what a superstitious veneration the ignorant people around him contemplated that uncouth figure he inherited from nature, he shrewdly availed himself of this propensity for obtaining a subsistence through life. He therefore affected an uncommon reservedness of manner, pretended