May 20 has become a major feature in the modern Pictophile's calendar, largely as a result of Graeme Cruickshank"s own efforts to promote the importance of the battle between the Picts and the Northumbrians which took place on that day in AD 685. The publication of this account in 1991 took on an additional significance in view of the threat from quarrying to West Dunnichen Hill, a candidate for the site of Dun Nechtain, and The Pinkfoot Press is to be applauded both for its timely publication and for a most attractive and well-printed product, using recycled paper to considerable advantage.

This is a lively and stimulating examination of the battle itself and the circumstances that led up to it, and the author wears his scholarship lightly. After setting the historical scene from around AD 600, there follows a persuasive reconstruction of the route taken by the Northumbrian army into Pictland and of the tactics employed by the Picts to win victory: approaching from the north-west and skirting the south side of West Dunnichen Hill, the Northumbrians were trapped between the hill and the boggy mire ofNechtansmere. Assessing the victory, Graeme suggests that the Pictish king had achieved 90% success: revenge for the terrible defeat of the Picts by the Northumbrians some thirteen years earlier, a check to Northumbrian territorial expansion into Pictland, liberation of the southern part of Pictland which had been under Northumbrian control for thirty years, and the establishment of a secure boundary along the River Forth between the Pictish kingdom and Angiian Lothian.

In a section entitled "Relics of the Battle", Graeme discusses a verse from a document known as the Fragmentary Irish Annals, which celebrates the battle, and examines the battle-scene on the Aberlemno Kirkyard stone which he has identified very plausibly as a likely representation of this particular battle. He also considers three visions of the battle, two contemporary with it, and one which took place in 1950. Looking at the modern topography of Dunnichen, he concludes that Nechton's dun could have been either on West Dunnichen Hill or on Castle Hill (the latter having implications for his reconstruction of the battle), and that Nechton's mire survives today as a "small parcel of marshy ground" east of the modern kirk (a neat play on the Pictish word pit).

A section on the "Historiography of the Battle" examines written sources fiom Adomnan to the C20th, leading on to a final plea for the Battle of Dunnichen to be accorded its proper status in history as one of the "great and decisive battles of Scotland". The work ends with an appendix on the Pictish symbol stone known as the Dunnichen Stone.

This eloquent essay is a revised version of Graeme's Nechtansmere 1300: A Commemoration, published in 1985 as part of the celebrations marking the thirteenth centenary of one of Scotland's most significant battles. In 1985 we were promised a fuller version with references; six years later that expanded account is still a promise, and it begs the question: for whom was this version written? It is more detailed and assumes more knowledge on the part of the reader than would be appropriate for a purely popular account, yet it fails to back up the argument with the references needed by the reader already hooked on Pictish studies. For example, we are twice informed that the battle took place at around 3 pm on that fateful day in May 685 (4, 17), but nowhere is this extraordinarily precise detail explained or substantiated.

It is perhaps unfair, but inevitable, that the 1991 version should be compared with the original 1985 publication to discover what has been altered or added. The author's feelings about the name of the battle have hardened: rather than bear the English name of Nechtansmere, it should be known as the Battle of Dunnichen. It is perhaps surprising that he chose to prefer the Irish name rather than the Battle of Lin Garan, the name used in the early C9th by Nennius, as this is likely to have been the Pictish name; Lin Garan, meaning "the pool of the herons", was aptly described by Kenneth Jackson as a "remote and insignificant puddle" until it was made famous by the battle (Jackson, 1955, 78). Nevertheless, the Battle of Dunnichen has a more comprehensible ring about it than either Nechtansmere or Lin Garan for modern pilgrims to the site.

This change on the author's part is explained, but another important change is neither explained nor justified. Thus far the reviewer has avoided using the names of the Pictish or Northumbrian kings involved in the battle; the English king was Ecgfrith, and the Pictish king had one name spelled several different ways, of which Graeme uses Brudei in his 1985 publication and Bruide in the 1991 revision. Neither version is commonly used, and both should have been explained. There are in fact a number of spellings of this name in the primary sources: the king lists, the Irish annals and Adomnan, of which the most commonly used by modern scholars are Bridei and Brude. Graeme is presumably now using Bruide because that is the spelling used in the verse quoted on pages 22-3, despite the fact that this is an Irish rather than a Pictish or even Latin spelling. It should be noted that there is a revised translation of this verse in the 1991 publication.

The account of the battle closest in date and most detailed is given by Bede, and yet the original passage is not quoted here, except for one phrase concerning the outcome of the battle in which there is an unfortunate error in the Latin:'lfluere ac recro sublapsa referri" (30) should read "Ifluere ac retro sublapsa referri".

Discussing the historical background, the author remarks of the Gododdin supporters who set out around AD 600 to confront the English at the Battle of Catterick, that "army' seems too grand a term for a mere three hundred warriors" (6); Kenneth Jackson argued very plausibly that each of the three hundred or so warrior chiefs mentioned in the poem would have been accompanied by his own warband, and that the total could have been in the region of three thousand (1969, 14-5). After the death of the Northumbrian king AEthelfrith in 616, his sons sought refuge in Pictland, at which the author expresses surprise (7), but they were safer with the enemy of their father's successor than in his kingdom.

When we come to Bridei son of Bill (here called Bruide), Graeme discusses the blood relationship between Bridei and the Northumbrian king Ecgfrith, concluding that Bridei was the second-grand-nephew of Ecgfiith (10-2, fig 1). This is based on the assumption, for which there is no direct evidence, that Bridei had a Pictish mother and lays aside Nennius' statement that the two men were cousins. What he does not mention is that Bili, Bridei's father, was son of the king of Strathclyde and, as Smyth argued (1984, 624), the relationship between Bridei and Ecgfrith could as plausibly have lain entirely in a shared British ancestry. An alternative explanation was argued by Kirby (1976, 289): they were both related to the Pictish king Talorcan, Bridei as nephew and Ecgfrith as cousin, thereby making them first cousins once removed. Clearly Pictish genealogy is fraught with difficulties!

We shall look forward to the author's promised interpretation of the battle-scene on the Aberlemno Kirkyard cross-slab (25); his identification of this unique scene as a probable commemoration of the Battle of Dunnichen has won general (and acknowledged) acceptance. It is not enough, however, to claim here that a "persuasive argument can be made for dating the execution of the battle-scene very close to 685" without detailing any of the argument.

The stone is usually dated on art-historical grounds to a century later than the battle. It is worth considering why, if it commemorates the Battle of Dunnichen, this stone should be located at Aberlemno. Despite Graeme's dismissal of the idea (1990, 6), it seems to this reviewer that there is evidence to suggest that the ridge between the valleys of the South Esk and the Lunan was an area of special importance in Pictish times (Ritchie, 1989, 22). Was this Ecgfiith's target?

Graeme's desire to believe that the Aberlemno Kirkyard stone can be dated close to the time of the battle obliges him to suggest a date in the C5th or C6th for the symbol stone found at Dunnichen itself, though he admits that a link with the battle is not to be "totally discounted" (43). It is, in fact, as likely that the Dunnichen Stone was carved in the C7th as that it belonged to the C5th or C6th. There is no evidence to suggest that the two vertical lines down either side of the stone were cut in the C19th (43). Several instances are known in which symbol stones were re-used in antiquity as cover slabs for cist burials, and this may be one possible explanation for the two grooves. The author's interpretation of the symbols follows the theory argued by Charles Thomas (most recently expounded in 1984). Some may feel that Graeme's estimation of the stone as the best example of a Class I monument is over-enthusiastic (44).

If this essay was written for a popular audience, as the level of argument suggests, the use of the term Class I is unsuitable, particularly as the Aberlemno Kirkyard stone is not here labelled Class II; the terms symbol stones and symbol-bearing cross-slabs are easier for non-specialists to follow.

It is a pity in a revised edition to find that there are still a number of spelling mistakes, of which the recurrent misspelling of occurred (as "occured") is the most irritating, but this is a minor flaw in comparison with the absorbing interest of the whole.

Anna Ritchie.

References

Cruickshank, G - Picts: An appraisal (PAS Occl Paper 1, 1990).

Jackson, Kenneth - The Britons in Southern Scotland (Antiquity 24,1955, 77-88).

The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish Poem (Edinburgh U P, 1969).

Kirby, D P - "..per universas Pictorum provincias" in Bonner, G (Ed)- Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration ofthe thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London,1976, 286-324).

Ritchie, Anna - Picts (HMSO, 1989).

Smyth, A P - Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80-1000 (Amold, 1984).

Thomas, Charles - The Pictish Class I Symbol Stones in Friell, J G P & Watson, W (Eds)- Pictish Studies (BAR British Series 125, 1984, 169-87).