Series 1 > Loyall dissuasive

INTRODUCTION
Ixxxv
When Malcolm u. submitted to Canute, King of England, he
was accompanied by two other kings, Macbeth, King of Moray,
and Jehmarc, Ruler of Argyll. Macbeth had just come into
his kingdom in 1032. Gillacomgan left a son by Gruoch
named Lulach, called the Simple. While Macbeth and Gruoch
were preparing to stir vigorously the caldron of Scottish
politics, Lulach’s life tended towards the seclusion figured by
his future home in the Loch Lunn Da Bhra in the peaceful
glen, called after him, Glen Rhe.1
King Malcolm n. died at Glamis, 25th November 1034.
He had removed the only possible successors in the male line,
and his eldest daughter, Bethoc, carried on the succession to
her son, Duncan. Bethoc, in 1000, married Crinan, the lay
abbot of Dunkeld, a powerful chief in Atholl, seneschal of
some western isles, and a warrior. Their son was Duncan,
now, at the death of his grandfather, a man of thirty-three
years. He was declared his successor as King of Scotland.
Macbeth the son (probably) of another daughter, Donada,
and husband of the daughter of the last male heir, Bodhe,
killed by Malcolm u., was about twenty-nine years of age.
Another important actor on the scene was Thorfinn, son of
a third daughter of Malcolm, of unknown name, who had
married Sigurd the Stout. He was about twenty-five years
old. Lulach was two years old. The turmoil began through
Duncan’s giving to his relative, Moddan, the earldom of
Caithness and Sutherland, ‘which had been in possession of
Sigurd, the father of Thorfinn, and as far as Scottish claim
1 Lunn Da Bhra, or Loondavra, is a peaceful little loch in a glen lying
between the hills which edge Loch Leven on the south, between Onich and
Corran, and those which overlook lower Loch Eil on the west. The farm¬
house, once the laird’s dwelling, visited by Bishop Robert Forbes in 1770, stands
over the loch on the west, but Lulach’s castle, called the Castle of Mamore,
stood on an island in the loch supplemented by a crannog, or artificial lake¬
dwelling, where the best trout now lie. The glen is called Glen Rhe, after
King Lulach, and the stream issuing from the loch is the Rhe, with Bunrhe at
its mouth. Ben Nevis guards it from the north wind. It is a most peaceful
spot, now the property of Lochiel.