Note 140 — Chapter V · The Line of Atholl.

Innes, Ap. 5. Tigh. 1040. Mar. Scot. 1040. Slain “a duce suo,” writes Marianus. Tighernach adds immaturâ ætate, contrary to all modern ideas of Duncan. Marianus was born in 1028, Tighernach was his senior; their authority, therefore, at this period, as contemporaries, is very great. Bothgowanan means “the smith’s bothy,” and under this word may lurk some long forgotten tradition of the real circumstances of Duncan’s murder. The vision of a weary fugitive, a deserted king, rises before the mind’s eye, recalling “Beaton’s mill” and the fate of James the Third. Two hundred years after his death a chaplain was appointed by his descendant, Alexander the Second, to celebrate masses in Elgin Cathedral for the benefit of Duncan’s soul. No allusion is made in the Saga to any alliance between Thorfin and Macbeth, and whilst the former is described as collecting reinforcements from Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, Duncan retires upon Moray as a friendly province in which he recruits his forces. Considering the hereditary enmity between the Jarls of Orkney and the Mormaors of Moray, it seems more probable that the ill fortune of the young king tempted Macbeth to aspire to the crown, and to murder his rival in “the Smith’s bothy,” where he was resting after retreating from the field of his last defeat. In the Saga, Kali disappears after the battle and is heard of no more, from which it would appear that the Orkneymen and their allies had nothing to do with his death, of which they were probably ignorant.