Note 134 — Chapter V · The Line of Atholl.

Fordun, to whom such a being as a married abbot would have been an abomination, metamorphosed the ancestor of the royal family of Scotland into an Abthane, asserting that the word Abbas could only be a clerical error for Abthanus, an officer whom he places over all the king’s Thanes, l. 4., c. 43. The contemporary Tighernach, however, Wynton, and the author of the Chronicle in the Reg. Prior. St. And. (Innes, Ap. 5), were ignorant that Crinan was known under any other title but that of abbot, and though Abthanages are to be met with in the charters, I have never yet chanced to light upon an Abthane. Such a name, in fact, would have been simply applicable to the maor of an abbot instead of the king—the holder of an ecclesiastical Thanage.