Chalum-chille nam feart ‘s nan tuam.
Columcille of the graves and tombs.

An appropriate quotation from a Gaelic invocation introduces PAS member John Marsden’s study of the Dark Age kings that history and tradition assert were buried on the holy island of Iona, in the ancient burial ground of Reilig Odhráin. The tradition that the Kings of Scots down to Donald Bán were buried on Iona is one of the best-known and most persistent of Scottish historical legends, mentioned in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though treated with scepticism by some, such as Dr Johnston, whose comments on his visit to Columba’s isle are quoted in the Preface (7-8).

Tradition is one thing, and history often another, however; the author has undertaken to examine its reality in the light of the earliest reliable historical records, to identify the kings whose burial on Iona can be confirmed by reliable sources, and to give an account of each ruler’s life and times.

The Reilig Odhráin itself is dealt with first, with an account of the tradition of the kings through the centuries, the founding of the monastery of Iona and the early kingdoms of Scotland. The extraordinarily Pagan legend of Odhrán volunteering to hallow the island by being buried alive, found in the C12th Irish Life of St Columba, is one of the most striking of Iona’s legends, but may be no more than a late attempt to explain the name Reilig Odhráin.

The bulk of the book covers the careers of one Anglian, one Pictish, two Irish, eighteen Scottish and three Norse kings whose burial on Iona is well attested. This is a smaller total than the forty-eight kings of Scots, four kings of Ireland and eight kings of Norway stated to have been laid to rest there by Martin Martin in 1703, but is no bad number, and helps to explain the continuing sanctity of the island in the Middle Ages, when the Lords of the Isles and many other Gaelic chieftains were buried on Iona, many of their elaborate graveslabs still surviving. A chapter at the end of the book gives some details of these later burials.

Legend dubiously records that every king of the Scots from Fergus Mór onwards was buried on Iona, but the first historically attested internment is - ironically - that of Ecgfrith of Northumbria after his death at the Battle of Dunnichen in 685. This being so, it is likely enough that kings of Dál Riada had already been buried there; however, the first Scottish king to be dealt with here is Kenneth son of Alpin. Many of the regal biographies are short indeed, not simply to save space but because there is so little known for sure about many of the early kings except (usually) their descent and how they met their generally violent deaths. The last person with some claim to the title of king to be mentioned here is Uspak, known as Hakon, sea-king of the Hebrides, who died in 1230.

Most names, whether Gaelic, Norse or other, have been Anglicised, which will no doubt make them easier to pronounce for the general reader. I prefer the ancient forms myself, not least on aesthetic grounds. To see the old spellings gives them an extra element of "distancing" that seems appropriate to names from remote times. On the subject of spelling, the Maetae, identified here with the southern Picts, should be Maeatae (26).

The book is illustrated by some C19th engravings of Iona and its tombstones. It is a pity that not one of the kings whose careers are covered here has an identifiable monument, though conceivably something of the sort might reward the archaeologist’s spade in the future. In the meantime, John Marsden’s book will remind the reader that the soil of the Reilig Odhráin contains more royal dust than any other patch of Scotland.

Niall M Robertson.