Note (return) — Chapter IV

Allowing for exaggeration, it is not too much to say that Thorfinn and his cousin Macbeth must, after the death of their cousin Duncan in 1040, between them have held all that is now Scotland save the Lothians, until about 1057, when Macbeth was slain. To us it is interesting to note14 that Duncan died, not in old age, (as Shakespeare, following Boece and the English chronicler Holinshed would have us believe) but a young man of thirty-nine years, either in, or after, Thorfinn's battle, and that he fell a victim not of Groa, Macbeth's wife's cup of poison, but possibly of her husband's dagger at Bothgowanan or Pitgavenny, a smithy about two miles from Elgin. We should also note that Thorfinn's cruelty made it difficult for him ever to hope to obtain and keep the throne of Scotland, which thus fell to Macbeth.