Note 150 — Chapter VI · The Line of Atholl Restored.

Chalmers (Caledonia, vol. i., p. 422) maintains that Ingebiorge could not have been the mother of Malcolm’s eldest son Duncan, as her first husband, Thorfin, survived till 1074, and Duncan was knighted soon after 1072, when he must have been at least fifteen years of age. But Thorfin died “in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson,” whom his sons accompanied as Jarls of the Orkneys to the battle of Stanford Bridge in 1066. Malcolm was married to Margaret in 1070, Duncan was not knighted before the death of the Conqueror, in 1087, when he must have been more than fifteen; and as five or six years elapsed between the death of Thorfin and the marriage of Malcolm to Margaret, I see no reason for doubting the account of the Orkneyinga Saga, though many for hesitating to affix the stigma of illegitimacy upon Duncan, whose donations to Dunfermlyn are confirmed by David without any allusion to such a bar to his right to the crown.