The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

262 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
previous arguments regarding Abthanes, these facts can be
accounted for in one way only. They must, in the first place,
have been all created during the reign of Edgar or Alexander
I. ; in the second place, the rights possessed by the monks of
Dunkeld, to the exclusion of their bishop, proves that the abbas
who possessed them all must have been the Culdee abbot of
Dunkeld, who was only superseded b}^ the bishop in the reign
of David I. ; and thirdly, as we find them all in the crown at
such an early period, the king of Scotland must have been that
abbot's heir. Now, it is a very
remarkable circumstance that
these three facts are actually true of the abbet of Dunkeld during
the reign of Edgar, for he was Ethelred, Edgar's youngest
brother, and he died without issue, so that the king of Scotland
was in reality his heir. As the arguments regarding the
necessary origin of these three Abthanedoms are thus so
remarkably supported by the fact that there did
time a person in whom these requisites are to
exist at the
be found, a
fact otherwise so very unlikely to occur, we are warranted in
concluding that this was their real origin, and that Ethelred,
the abbot of Dunkeld, must have received from his brother
Edgar three Thanedoms, which, in consequence,
received the
peculiar appellation of Abthanedoms, and which, upon his
death, fell to the crown. It would also appear that as he
was the onl)- abbot of royal blood to whom such a munificent
gift would be appropriate, so these were the only Abthanedoms
in Scotland. This will likewise account for the appellation
given by Fordun to Crinan. At that period there was certainly
no such title in Scotland, but it is equally certain that there
were no charters, and although Crinan had not the name, he
may have been in fact the same thing. He was certainly abbot
of Dunkeld, and he may have likewise possessed that extensive
territory which, from the same circumstance, was afterwards
called the Abthanedom of Dull. Fordun certainly inspected
the records of Dunkeld, and the circumstance can only be
explained by supposing that Fordun ma}' have there seen the
deed granting the Abthanedom of Dull to Ethelred, abbot of
Dunkeld, which would naturally state that it had been possessed
by his proavus crinan. and from which P'ordun would
conclude that as Crinan possessed the thing, he was also known