Note 64 — CHAPTER THE THIRD. CONSTANTINE THE SECOND—A. D. 900-943.

An. Ult. 901–903. The Egill’s Saga (Antiq. Celt.-Scand. p. 32), in describing Olave the Red, calls him “the son of a native Scot, by a descendant of Ragnar Lodbroc,” meaning by the expression “a native Scot,” that his father was of Scottish descent by both parents. This description cannot apply to Olave’s father Sitric and his brothers, the well-known grandsons of Ivar, whose children could not possibly have been of pure Scottish descent. It is remarkable, however, that the name of the father of Sitric and his brothers is never mentioned by the Irish annalists, who invariably call them Hy Ivar, or grandsons of Ivar (for the Hy had not yet become a family prefix), whilst they also frequently allude to Godfrey and Sitric, the sons of Ivar, and their descendants, who never attained to the same celebrity as the others. These latter more famous Hy Ivar appear to have been in some way connected with the Western Isles, where their descendants were long regarded in the light of a royal race. The first appearance of Reginald Hy Ivar is in a naval battle off the Isle of Man; and as his family had no footing at that time either in England, Scotland, or Ireland, he must have recruited his fleet from amongst the Gall-Gael. Nearly thirty years later the son of Reginald was driven from the same Western Islands, which he probably had inherited in his childhood (for Reginald and his brothers were young), when the English and Irish possessions of his father fell to the share of his uncles Sitric and Godfrey. (An. Ult. 942. An. F. M. 940.) After the death of Godfrey Mac Fergus in 853, who figures in the genealogy of Somarled, lord of the Oirir-Gael, and must have been (from his name) of Scottish descent by the father’s side, the Isles next appear under the rule of Caittil or Ketil, a Norwegian, but as his sons settled in Iceland after the expedition of Harfager (Landnamabok), he could not have transmitted his power to his descendants; and the Sagas say that the Isles then fell into the hands of Scottish and Irish Vikings. If one of these Vikings, a Scottish lord of the Gall-Gael or Oirir-Gael, had married Ivar’s daughter, the description in the Egill’s Saga would exactly apply to himself, his wife, and his sons, and it would be only necessary to suppose that the writer of the Saga, aware of Olave’s descent from a Scottish Viking and a grand-daughter of Ragnar Lodbroc, made him by mistake the son instead of the grandson of the Scot. This supposition would equally account for the connection of the Hy Ivar with the Isles, and the ignorance of the Irish annalists respecting their father’s name.