fife-kinross-clackmannan-1933/03-041

Transcription

INVENTORY OF MONUMENTS IN FIFE, KINROSS, AND CLACKMANNAN.

bronze knife with what was left of a wooden haft, and a fragment of a pin or awl
of bronze.
Gold relics are represented in the Museum by torcs from Largo, ¹ Fife, and a pair
of armlets from Alloa, Clackmannanshire. ²

II.

HISTORY.

i.
According to an early tradition Fife (Fib) formed one of the seven provinces of
Pictland, ³ and a Pictish population is attested by the number of place -names with
the prefix Pit or Pet(h), which occasionally alternates with its Gaelic equivalent
Baile, a "township," as in Pitcruivie or Balcruvie, Pitskellie or Balskellie. ⁴ This
Gaelic intrusion probably followed the union of Picts and Scots about the middle of
the 9th century under a Scottish or Gaelic dynasty as the kingdom of Alba. Thereafter
Fife is associated with a district known as " Fothreve," which at a later time was the
name of a deanery in the diocese of St. Andrews. Its original boundaries are not
specified, but as a deanery it covered everything east of the Ochils as far as an
irregular line drawn from the mouth of the River Leven to the neighbourhood of
Newburgh. A 12th century tract ⁵ describes the "region" of Fife and Fothreve
as one of those formerly governed by a sub-king (regulus), and possibly to this
source may be traced the popular designation of the province as "the kingdom
of Fife".
Under Gaelic rule the district took on a fresh importance. In 908 St. Andrews
became the seat of the "bishop of Alba" (cf. p .xlvi). Macbeth (1040-57) and his
wife Gruoch head the list of beneficiaries of the Culdees of Lochleven (No. 581), and
other gifts of land were made by later monarchs. Macbeth's successor, Malcolm III,
"Canmore", established his royal residence at Dunfermline. Thus for a time Fife
was the seat of both political and ecclesiastical power.
In 1067 the Princess Margaret of England was driven by contrary winds to land
at Rosyth and was hospitably received at Dunfermline, where three years later she
married Malcolm Canmore. To this marriage can be traced the Anglo-Norman in-
fluence which became so powerful in the reigns of her sons and great-grandsons.
Queen Margaret herself was a patroness of the Culdees, and founded at Dunfermline
the church of the Holy Trinity. The nobler structure (No. 197), which succeeded it,
however, was erected by her son David I, who with his immediate successors initiated
far-reaching reforms, both ecclesiastical and political. New bishoprics were con-
stituted, religious houses founded, and parishes took shape, each with its own church
and priest, while the Scottish kingdom was feudalised on Anglo-Norman lines.

1 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xviii (1883-4), p. 233.
2 Ibid., xvii (1882-3), p. 447.
3 Chronicles of Picts and Scots, p. 25.
4 Balmerino and its Abbey, Rev. James Campbell, D.D., p. 613.
5 De Situ Albanie, in A Critical Essay on the Early Inhabitants of Scotland, by Thomas Innes,
ed. 1885, p. 412.

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