Note 148 — Chapter V · The Line of Atholl.

Tigh. An. Ult. 1058. Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton is the first to mention the popular story of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinnan, but he places the death of Macbeth at Lumphanan, attributing it to “a knycht nowcht borne of wyf,” who is transformed by Boece into Macduff. As Fife was “in the crown” in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore, who granted the earldom to his son Ethelred, the Macduff Earl of Fife of the fabulists—a being unknown to Wynton—must be set down as a myth. Since the days of the younger Angus, the founder of St. Andrews, the province appears to have been connected with the royal family—the abbacy of the leading monastery of the district having been held by Constantine the Second, just as the abbacy of Dunkeld belonged invariably to a member of the house of Atholl—and the first earl, who cannot be traced to the reigning family, was Dufagan or Duff, a witness of the Foundation Charter of Scone in the time of Alexander the First; his immediate successors being Constantine and Gillemichael Macduff. Fife appears to have been the latest earldom held by the old Scottish tenure, and its earls, like the earls of Atholl—a branch of the reigning family—never appear in the ranks of the king’s enemies. Indeed they may be looked upon in early times as premier Earls of Scotland, with certain privileges attaching to their dignity, to account for which the legend of Macduff was probably framed; though it is not impossible that the earldom with its prominent position and privileges was granted to the historical Duff or Dufagan as a reward for his assistance in restoring the sons of Malcolm to the throne. Many examples could be given of the transposition of events from one period to another. A prominent one occurs in Norwegian history, the whole of the actions of Olaf Tryggveson in England having been transferred to Olaf the Saint.