Queen Tomnat

The documentary sources for early medieval Scotland represent the historical record of a patriarchal society and therefore mention few women. The small number of females whose existence was acknowledged by the annalists and chroniclers were usually of high status like the kings and clerics with whom they were associated as wives, mothers or sisters. In a previous post (Two Pictish Princesses) I turned the spotlight on an obscure royal lady called Eithne whose father ruled the Picts in the late 8th century. Here I draw attention to another woman of royal status, this time of Scottish rather than of Pictish origin.

My starting-point, as with Princess Eithne, is an entry in the Irish annals:

695  Tomnat, Ferchar’s wife, died.

This is the only mention of Tomnat so she is usually overlooked by historians and omitted from modern studies of the period. A clue to her identity, however, is provided by a later entry:

697  Ferchar Fota died.

The proximity of these two entries suggests that the Ferchar mentioned in each is the same man: Ferchar Fota (Ferchar the Tall), a powerful king and warlord of Dal Riada. Ferchar is an interesting figure because his career was played out against a backdrop of dynastic upheaval among the Scots. He rose to power as king of Cenel Loairn, one of the great royal kindreds of Argyll, whose heartland lay around the modern town of Oban. His ambitions led him to challenge Cenel nGabrain, the most powerful kindred, for paramount kingship over the whole of Dal Riada. A series of fierce battles was fought until, in 696, Ferchar defeated his rivals to attain overall sovereignty. His reign as over-king of the Scots was brief and within less than two years he was dead.

We should probably regard Tomnat as Ferchar Fota’s queen. An alternative view, namely that she was the wife of an earlier Ferchar who died in 651, requires that her death-notice in the annals is a misplaced entry that belongs in the middle of the century. There seems no justification in relocating her to this earlier generation. Identifying her husband as the great warlord of Cenel Loairn seems more logical, especially as Ferchar Fota’s importance in Dal Riadan politics may have attracted the annalists’ attention to other aspects of his life. His marriage may thus have been worthy of note and, when his wife died, news of her death would have reached the monastery on Iona where the annals were being compiled.

Sadly, Tomnat passed away a short time before her husband gained the over-kingship of Dal Riada so she missed her chance to be an early ‘Queen of Scots’. Nevertheless, she left a significant legacy to her people by bearing two mighty sons who grew up to be great war-leaders of Cenel Loairn in the early years of the 8th century. These men were Selbach and Ainfcellach, both of whom would eventually continue their father’s struggle against his Cenel nGabrain rivals. Their own sons, the grandchildren of Ferchar and Tomnat, carried the fight into the following generation before being finally overwhelmed in a disastrous conflict with the Picts.

 

The name Kirkintilloch

A few miles to the east of Glasgow stands the town of Kirkintilloch. At first sight the name of this place seems to be an example of the kirk- type found all over Scotland. Names prefixed by kirk(originally a Scandinavian word) usually mean “Church of…” and often contain the name of a saint, e.g. Kirkpatrick (Church of St Patrick) or Kirkbride (Church of St. Bridget). Closer inspection of Kirkintilloch reveals, however, that it is not in fact a kirk- name at all but instead provides a curious snapshot of early medieval history.

In one version of the ninth-century Welsh chronicle Historia Brittonum (The History of the Britons) the Antonine Wall is said to terminate in the west at Carpentaloch. This is the oldest form of Kirkintilloch and shows clearly that it does not belong among the typical kirk- names. It had a different origin that pre-dated the arrival of Scandinavian words as elements in Scottish nomenclature.

Carpentaloch can be broken down as caer-pen-tulach, a hybrid name formed from Brittonic and Gaelic words and meaning “Fort at the head of the hills”. This form must have originated at a time when Strathclyde, the last surviving kingdom of the North Britons, was absorbing an influx of Gaelic-speaking immigrants of Scottish or Norse-Scottish ancestry. Such a hybrid place-name can only have been formed after 870, when Strathclyde was ravaged by Vikings and brought within their sphere of colonisation. Prior to this time Brittonic speech held sway and Gaelic terms such as tulach (hill) were absent from the area’s etymology. The original form of Kirkintilloch may thus have been Caer-pen-bryn or something broadly similar. Eventually, long after bryn was replaced by tulach, the Brittonic word pen (head) was altered to cenn which has the same meaning in Gaelic. This change will have occurred when the ancient speech of the Britons was in terminal decline, probably in the decades after 1018 when Strathclyde’s last native king died in battle. By c.1300, when the town of Kerkintalloch was first recorded in Scottish landholding documents, only the prefix caer (fort) remained to indicate that the original inhabitants were speakers of a language that had long since faded away.

Reference: W.J. Watson, The history of the Celtic place-names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926), p.348.